Filmsuck

Parallel Mothers and Almodovar’s New Groove

This week we're tackling another 2022 Academy Award nominee, Pedro Almodovar's Parallel Mothers. It's not nominated for Best Picture or even Best International Feature Film, which is weird--what the hell, Academy? But Penelope Cruz is nominated for Best Actress in her seventh film with the director, and longtime Almodovar collaborator Alberto Inglesias is nominated for Best Original Score. This is a more overtly political film than most in Almodovar's oeuvre, with a narrative concerning the Spanish Civil War and the lingering agony over those who were murdered by fascists. It's also a vivid film melodrama, with a wild central point of tension--were the two mothers' babies switched shortly after birth?

Tragedy of Macbeth: A Banquet for Starving Film-Lovers

We're very keen on this audacious adaptation of Macbeth by Joel Coen, his first solo effort without brother Ethan. This might seem like an odd choice of project, but Coen stresses the link between Macbeth and earlier Coen "pulp noir" films. He also acknowledges his brilliant predecessors in making expressionistic black-and-white versions of Macbeth, saying in interviews that, while Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Throne of Blood is probably the greatest film adaptation, Orson Welles' 1948 Macbeth is the most emboldening: "That's a wacky movie. Welles had no problem rearranging, cutting, and inventing with Shakespeare. It was kind of liberating. You look at that and go, well, all right, he's doing it."

Nightmare Alleys and Film Noir

In this final episode of our "Favorite Film Genres" series, we take on what is perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most subversive, American film genre, film noir! We analyze the old and new versions of Nightmare Alley to help us define the dark, doom-obsessed, complex noir form: Guillermo del Toro's fantastical sin-soaked version currently playing in theaters, and the seemingly plainer but ultimately more searing and socially critical cult classic 1947 film noir. [WARNING: WE DO ALLLLL THE SPOILERS!]

West Side Stories and the Musical

In this week’s Filmsuck episode, our co-hosts throw down over which version of the great musical West Side Story reigns supreme. Eileen backs the 1961 version directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, while Dolores pulls for Steven Spielberg’s new version. That being said, co-hosts join forces to shake their fists at such Spielberg choices as overly CGIed and desaturated cinematography and some of the more egregious “social issue” scenes, like the lengthy one devoted to the purchase of a gun in order to point up the dangers of gun violence in a work that’s already taking on gang mayhem, racism, class hatred, abusive and corrupt policing…

 

Though Spielberg avoids the worst sin of the musical form, plugging in a random non-musically-gifted star and expecting them to pretend that they’re pulling off the singing and dancing you (don’t) see onscreen. Spielberg went for relatively unknown leads to at least secure good singers and dancers.

We hope you enjoy the latest installment of our “Favorite Film Genres” series with this wild series of rants on the musical! 

 

Todd Haynes: Avant-garde with Heart

Todd Haynes is co-host Dolores McElroy’s “favorite living director” for his films’ “meticulousness” and “visual splendor,” but above all the way he loves his subjects and makes them “vibrant and romantic”! Dressed for life at the front of a classroom, Haynes always projects the air of a nice, well-adjusted teacher--and indeed, he figured he’d wind up as a teacher who made experimental films on the side. But he made a splash in the late 1980s film world with his surprisingly moving film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, done in stop-motion animation using Barbie dolls as his cast, quickly became a leading light of the New Queen Cinema movement with his film Poison under conservative right-wing attack, and he’s been with us as a fascinating filmmaker ever since, with films as varied in content and approach as Safe, Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, Mildred Pierce, Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, and the new documentary The Velvet Underground.   

 

[MIND THE GAP: We got so embroiled in talking about Haynes, we talked right through a gap in the sound around the ten-minute mark. Just keep on listening, we come back strong!]

 

Liza Minnelli: Pizzazz with 4 Zs

We know we’ve sung high praises for all our Great Old Broads, but wow, was Liza Minnelli an amazing talent! In our final installment of the series, we discuss this multi-media star, tailor-made for the New Hollywood of the 1960s. Even though she had famous Hollywood movie studio parents, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Liza initially propelled herself toward life as a dancer and actor on stage. She had such early success, she won a Tony Award at age nineteen in her first leading role on Broadway, and the film industry quickly came calling. Ultimately becoming a star of all media--stage, screen, concerts, television--Minnelli gave her all in every performance, to the point that co-host Eileen notes that it’s exhausting just watching her sing-dance-act and do encore after encore. We talk about Minnelli’s extravagance and skill, her wild showbiz personal life, her admirable code of ethics, her relationship with her famous parents, and her investment in the glittering future. Minnelli poured every last ounce of herself into her performances, and we hope we returned the gesture this week on Filmsuck!

Elizabeth Taylor Part 2: The Last Star

So much Liz that we needed two episodes to deal with all that stardom. Here we cover everything from the Liz-starring film epic Cleopatra that bankrupted 20th Century-Fox to near-death from pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy to the scandalous Liz-and-Dick romance that included two marriages to Richard Burton plus one rebuke from the Pope to her Oscar-winning performance at age thirty-four as middle-aged harridan Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic to groundbreaking AIDS activism...

And a whole lot more besides! 

Soft, Pink, and Posh: The Cinema of Sofia Coppola

Here's our very special Filmsuck episode featuring author and film columnist Jessa Crispin, who joins us in a gleeful, long-overdue takedown of Sofia Coppola films! 

Vivien Leigh: Scorpio Rising

In the latest Filmsuck episode, we're talking scary-beautiful sorceress-star Vivien Leigh who played Scarlett O'Hara and Cleopatra and Anna Karenina and Blanch DuBois and many other iconic film roles. We also take on the recent, remarkably stupid film studies scholarship about her. 

Gloria Swanson: Have They Forgotten What a Star Looks Like?

We're kicking off our "Great Old Broads" series with the fabulously overdressed silent screen star Gloria Swanson, who set out to become a definitive figure of excess in the highly excessive Hollywood of the 1910s and 1920s. You know her as Norma Desmond, the unforgettably mad has-been star determined on making a comeback ("I hate that word! It's 'return'!") in the great 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. Though she played the part so magnificently, even people who knew her personally became convinced Gloria must be Norma in real life, Swanson actually stayed very sane and very busy for decades after the Talkies revolutionized the film industry, working steadily in film, television, radio, and theater. But Gloria agreed with Norma in one major way--a star ought to look like a star!