The Projectors

This month we’re taking a nice, long, EUROPEAN VACATION and we’re weaving in and out of about six countries throughout the theme. Today’s stop is Germany but don’t expect any of that stereotypical German dryness. No, Wim Wenders has a knack for humanity and sweetness that defies the stereotype. Fassbinder displays broad emotions as well but Wenders seems like a much nicer person. Our second discus...

We’re leaving the future behind and decompressing with a nice EUROPEAN VACATION all September long. French, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian. We’re backpacking across the Old World and our first stop is Italy with a discussion of an iconic director and one of his biggest films. Federico Fellini’s 1960 film “LA DOLCE VITA” catapulted him and his lead, Marcello Mastroianni, into international super...

Our month’s theme and our year’s theme have crossed over. You could call it “LARS VON TRIER’S BULLSHIT TOMORROW” but it may not be bullshit for Lars or the character of Justine so much as cathartic. Imagine being overwhelmed with crippling depression and then you discover a rogue planet is hurtling towards Earth. Guys who get their astronomy news from Joe Rogan aren’t too worried about it but you...

We’re winding out our theme of dystopian futures in movies and we absolutely have to go back in time, once again, and try to prevent catastrophe. The Terminator is back and this time? He’s your new dad and he’s been sent back in time by your 45 year old self. Devastation may have been delayed but still imminent. There’s hope still in keeping John Connor alive to destroy Skynet tomorrow. The resist...

We’re near the end of this month’s movie theme examining various futures in film. We’ve been calling it SOME BULLSHIT TOMORRROW and while most tomorrows have been bullshit, this near future has some optimism. This future is so concerned with CTE damage in combat sports that humans have been replaced by fighting robots. Imagine if your rock ‘em sock ‘em robots could dance and dismember. Shawn Levy’...

SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW is the movie theme all August and how can we go through a month of strange futures without including a selection from the director that made today’s discussion? Yeah, a lot of our tomorrows are definitely bullshit but Cronenberg’s future doesn’t seem so stressed. Seems like your refrigerator could have fleshy bits and holes made just for you. The TV remote could look and fee...

When you’re getting into the concepts of SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROWs many classic literary interpretations have stood the test of time. It’s felt “1984” a few times this month and today’s selection is no different but perhaps it feels a little closer in its mediocre society. Things are cluttered, disconnected and cartoonishly inept. Life lived under paperwork and forms in drab buildings, some of them...

For this month’s movie theme, SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW, late stage humanity can come subtly. You live your life, as normal as far as you can see it, then you become accused. You assert some faith in the law and individual right that you’ve been told exists. Maybe you can maneuver these charges if only you knew what the charges were. If only you knew what they were saying behind the door that is only...

SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW is the theme and it’s all about dystopian futures and perhaps familiar places of history, altered, from before their time. Today’s discussion is a time capsule of a corner of a music and subculture scene amongst the rubble of postwar England. This gaggle of strange kids, some more lethal than others, thrive whereas the countries greatest titles and traditions fall. Top of th...

How can you not sit down with a couple of 80’s heavy hitters for our month’s dystopian theme “SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW”? Especially the one we’re discussing in this episode. This privatized authoritarian world of technocratic mediocrity might hit closer to home than any future film we’re discussing all month. The near future setting of Old Detroit is extremely violent and absurd. There are no deep s...

When it’s SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW your dystopia can manifest in many forms and styles. Maybe your megacity is cold and logical, devoid of love and sorrow, but you got some level three seductress dime pieces walking around ready for whatever? But don’t catch feelings! If you do you’ll be machine gunned into a pool and the Alphaville Synchronized Swimming Club will surround you in the water and make...

It’s dystopian future month all August and some futures seem a little too close for comfort. This movie is about the year 2022. It came out in 2013. Now it’s 2024 and there’s no day devoted to mass killing, yet, but the undercurrent of violent obsession in our society combined with our propagandized fear of the impoverished makes this movie concept not at all hard to grasp. James DeMonaco’s dystop...

We’re getting deep into some strange futures all month. SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW is the perfect follow up to last month’s war movie theme but is it war that gave us the strange future we’re seeing in this episode? Some say a meteor. Maybe something alien. Something shifted the world. We’re talking about our very first Andrei Tarkovsky film with his 1979 psychological dystopian flick “STALKER” starri...

We’re in the future all month long for August’s theme that we’ve dubbed “SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW” and so far we’re 2 for 2 on post nuclear war societies. Every Monday (mostly) is a vintage selection (vintage is considered 1969 and before) and we’re going into a bizarre and fairly deep cut 1962 science fiction film that ponders the limits of humanity and the humanity of the things humans, and humano...

Glory & Propaganda is done and now we must head into the future and then back to the present to prevent the future. New month, new theme but war still lingers and this future is as bleak as they come. It’s all about tomorrow all August in a them we’re calling “SOME BULLSHIT TOMORROW”. Much of what we discuss this month  will occur in the aftermath of nuclear fire. It’s all Oppenheimer sequels...

We’re doubling down this week on selections for our overarching year’s theme called “A DREARY YEAR OF LARS VON TRIER”. By the end of what is already a complete shithole year, we will have discussed a dozen movies by the dreary Danish auteur Lars von Trier. We’re now over halfway there. Today’s film discussion is one of his most notorious and amongst the smallest casts we’ve ever discussed for a mo...

We took some time off to deep dive into some topics but now we’ve returned to this year’s overarching theme in which we discuss a dozen Lars von Trier movies before it’s all said and done. Could this year get any shittier? Well maybe we can help make it feel more terrible in this DREARY YEAR OF VON TRIER. We’re going back to back this week and today we wrap up von Trier’s “Golden Hearts Trilogy” w...

And so we say goodbye to war movies this month. GLORY & PROPAGANDA comes to an end and Angela won’t miss it but jokes on her because next month’s topic is dystopian futures. The aftermath of GLORY & PROPAGANDA. We’re going deeper into film history for the theme’s farewell in a discussion that is also our only movie this month about the U.S. Civil War. It was almost “Shenandoah” but we figu...

No shortage of atrocities in this month’s theme we’re calling GLORY & PROPAGANDA and so we dive into another brutal event in a movie that presents itself in an animated hybrid documentary style. Israeli media, and US media for that matter, doesn’t often show its military actions in such a straightforward, yet resentful, manner but the Sabra and Shatila Massacre committed by the Philangist forc...

For GLORY & PROPAGANDA this month we already discussed a Vietnam war movie but why not discuss a Korean War movie that is pretty much about the Vietnam War? Today’s discussion is amongst our most comical this month and it’s a film that got passed on by a lot of directors until one particular man took the reigns and established, from this point on, a very prolific and influential style. Robert...

We’re approaching the end of July’s theme of GLORY & PROPAGANDA. How appropriate that this month has men carrying guns in every discussion. When you’re a French solider in “The Great War” you gotta keep your head on a swivel, even in them trenches. Then you got these shithead commanding officers who seem to want to throw you on the meat pile quickly. Displays of common sense might seem like co...

GLORY & PROPAGANDA means war movies all month long and there isn’t very many war flicks about the first gulf war. “Three Kings” is one you might think of immediately. On the other hand it’s an interesting thing to capture the mundanity of a particular conflict and during that first gulf war in 1990, a lot of soldiers charged up without seeing quite as much action as they prepared for. I mean,...

For the war movies we’re discussing in this month’s theme that we’re calling “GLORY & PROPAGANDA” one person’s inspiring tale of right and might can be, to another person, a study in the horrors of power and supremacy. We’re studying all types this month in war film but the undertones of this cult hit from 1997 seems to skirt by some to this very day. Allegedly the novel’s tone is different bu...

CORRECTION: This film is based on the writings of Saddi Yacef NOT Franco Solinas the screenwriter. It’s GLORY & PROPAGANDA all month for our theme and let me ask you a question…are you ready for a revolution? Our covid stricken hosts discuss one of the most realistic war films ever made and the reverberations of the conflict it depicts resonates soundly on screen because the movie about the co...

War movies are happening all month in a theme we call GLORY & PROPAGANDA and we wrap up WW2 week with a tearjerker anime. You can call what the U.S. did in Japan brutal, we won’t deny that, but boy did all that bombing inspire some great film art. Bob’s grandfather was escorting oil tankers coming from South America on a Navy ship during this time so you can’t blame him for what happened to th...