Filmsuck

Darren Aronofsky CAUGHT STEALING a Good Time

New Filmsuck episode! Dolores and I enthuse about CAUGHT STEALING. It's doing pretty badly at the box-office, though it's a timely dark comic noir of chaotic working class life, and Austin Butler has a delightful co-star in the cat actor playing Bud. 

Straying into Documentaries

Special guest Asali Echols, documentary filmmaker, talks to me about the current state of documentary films. We discuss a recent trend toward reviving the strict "observational documentary," led by filmmakers like Elizabeth Lo, whose breakthrough film was the dog's-eye-view movie STRAY (2020). Her upcoming new doc MISTRESS DISPELLER, about a "love industry" in China involving wives hiring undercover operatives to break up the relationships of husbands and their mistresses, tests the limits of Lo's "observational not interventionist" documentary filmmaking ethics. https://www.patreon.com/posts/straying-into-136099786

Cracking Ourselves Up: Self-presentation in Onscreen Comedy: PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF

New Filmsuck episode! While Dolores is making the world safe for opera in Santa Fe, I'm talking to my friend M Dalebout, whose area of scholarly expertise is identity construction in onscreen comedy. We start off with the 2025 HBO Max documentary PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF!

How Much is TOO MUCH?

New Filmsuck episode! I rage against Lena Dunham, who cursed us all with GIRLS and is back doing further harm to impressionable minds everywhere with her new, semi-autobiographical Netflix romantic comedy TOO MUCH. Dolores has a more measured reaction to this low-stakes entertainment about an arrested development case played by Megan Stalter (HACKS) who tries to get over a bad breakup by relocating from Brooklyn to London and immediately starting a messy relationship with an indie rocker played by Will Sharpe (WHITE LOTUS 3).How high is your Lena Dunham tolerance? 

WHITE LOTUS Season 4: How Deep is the Water?

Season 4 of Mike White's big hit show WHITE LOTUS might not be the most profound thing you've ever seen, but Dolores and Eileen still enjoy its excellent cast reveling in portraying the latest tales of ghastly behaviors of the rich.

Praise for SINNERS

Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen enthuse about the messy but compelling thrills of Ryan Coogler's delirious Deep South vampire extravaganza!

JOHN WICK and BALLERINA: Seeking Rough Justice

Action film enthusiasts rejoice! Special guest Forrest "Flacko" Miller of the lively and popular Movie Night Extravaganza podcast joins co-host Eileen Jones for an episode delving into the everybody's-a-killer world of JOHN WICK 1 - 4, including the new riotously violent spin-off BALLERINA starring Ana de Armas. Discussion includes wild speculation about the likely plot for the upcoming JOHN WICK 5, featuring the return of Keanu Reeves as everyone's favorite world-weary assassin.

Meet Your Heroes Part Deux: Interviewing Todd Haynes

All about that time Dolores interviewed her favorite living director Todd Haynes (SAFE, FAR FROM HEAVEN, I'M NOT THERE, CAROL, MAY DECEMBER)--which was only two weeks ago! Filmsuck co-hosts exult in all things Haynes, including his films, his academic background, his current political take, his unforgettable meeting with Barbra Streisand, his cocktail of choice, his upcoming projects, and much, much more. 

This Absurd Ritual, The Oscars

Late in the narcotizing Oscars 2025 telecast, host Conan O'Brien made the oddly poignant promise that "Through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here." It was a weird, oblique, it'll-be-okay reference to the seismic upheavals in America, after the whole nearly-four-hour show had made a point of avoiding any reference to them. Notice the absence of any outspoken left-wing celebrities who would've been inclined to rail at the current administration's punitive tear through the government? Mark Ruffalo? Susan Sarandon? Jane Fonda, who just made a barnburner of a speech at the SAG Awards--where were you? Not at the bland and careful Academy Awards ceremony, that's for sure!

We're Still Here

Talking about I'M STILL HERE, a new political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the fracturing of his leftist family in the early 1970s, during the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. It's the latest film by Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION), who knew the Paiva family personally, and it's Brazil's biggest film hit since the Covid pandemic. It's also up for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress for the formidable Fernanda Torres. Co-hosts aren't in total agreement about I'M STILL HERE--Eileen loved it while acknowledging Dolores's misgivings about the lack of class-consciousness and its extended structure following what happens to the family in the forty-plus years after the harrowing events of 1971.