Trylove

20 years after the world’s last baby was born, revolutionary-turned-working stiff Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is content to coast until the end catches up to the world — until his former lover and the mother of his dead son Julian (Julianne Moore) wrangles him into a plan to escort expecting mother Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to safety. Remembered (and heavily cribbed) for its effective worldbuilding and...

With special guest Blake Hester! When a secretive businessman passes away before he can be crowned chairman of a local yakuza family, his daughter — a precocious, disaffected schoolgirl — is suddenly thrust into the role. Surprised by her coronation but determined to restore the group’s good name, Izumi (Hiroko Yakushimaru) reluctantly assumes control of the once-great Medaka Family to close the p...

The Trylon turns 15 this year! That means it’s been five years since we first welcomed Trylon Film Programmer John “Mo’ Retta Blues” Moret to the podcast for a 10th anniversary interview. With five years of history to look back on and an extra-long, banger-laden Fall 2024 calendar to discuss, we sat down again with John in the hallowed lobby of the Trylon to get the full scoop. (And talk about vid...

In Jonathan Glazer’s BIRTH, one woman’s inability to move past the death of her husband brings only more tragedy to her life when she’s forced to confront a version of him she never knew. When a 10-year-old boy named Sean (Cameron Bright) claims to be the reincarnation of Anna (Nicole Kidman)’s husband of the same name, the soon-to-be-remarried widow slowly but surely finds herself falling in love...

You’ve never seen a zombie movie like Shinichirou Ueda’s cult hit ONE CUT OF THE DEAD. It’s best if I don’t type anything more about it here, actually, just in case you haven’t seen it. (Little peek behind the curtain in keeping with the theme of the movie: It’s also because your editor is typing this on his lunch hour at his day job.) Suffice to say it’s one of the most clever takes on the genre...

Impenetrable musing or Tarkovsky’s best? NOSTALGHIA is one of the Russian director’s most personal, maybe his single most personal, but that’s not the only lens (or even the most interesting one) to look at it through. In this discussion of her first and only Tarkovsky (so far), Natalie joins to help us see this one more clearly through a new lens! References: Watch NOSTALGHIA on the Internet Arch...

Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie’s daughter), Anthony Perkins, and Berry Berenson (Perkins’s wife) star in a taut, almost-revenge tale directed by frequent Robert Altman collaborator Alan Rudolph — REMEMBER MY NAME is a classic example of a cult classic. We couldn’t be happier to welcome Kelly Krantz ( @kransekage_ ) back to chat about one of her favorite performer’s best performances! Stacked with cont...

Layers of social prestige have assigned Comtesse Louise de [name redacted] (Danielle Darrieux) a role that doesn’t accommodate her wider range of human desire. She knows that paying a debt by selling her diamond earrings, gifted by her husband General André de… (Charles Boyer), will offend the hierarchical foundations of her way of life — a life of privilege and excess — so instead of admitting fo...

With returning guest, master’s degree holder, and Trylon volunteer Benjamin Savard ( @ItBenjaminScott )! After POPEYE (1980) squashed the ‘80s for director Robert Altman, he came back with a wry, cynical film adaptation of Michael Tolkin’s 1988 novel, “The Player”. In the resulting movie of the same name, Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a bigshot Hollywood producer whose decency streak is lined wi...

With Abbie Phelps (@goodhunterabbie)! Orson Welles’s final Hollywood film has it all: A complicated production history, a contentious editing lifecycle, and a ‘true-to-vision’ recut that followed the original release by some 40 years. It’s a story about Hank Quinlan (played by Welles), a dyed-in-the-wool noir detective who’ll do anything to exact his version of justice, and Ramon Miguel Vargas (co...

With Finn Odum (@Finnematic)! LA CASA LOBO (THE WOLF HOUSE) is a harrowing journey through violent change. The leader of a cult spins a cautionary fairy tale to indoctrinate followers, telling the story of Maria, a girl who finds herself locked in an abandoned house in the woods after narrowly avoiding the jaws of an overbearing wolf outside. Afraid to return to her isolated community, Maria comes...

Frank Galvin will try the case — against the medical professionals whose negligence left a woman a vegetable, against the church that funds it, against the wishes of the victim’s family, and against just about everybody else. THE VERDICT, Sidney Lumet’s OTHER courtroom drama has a bit of a ‘70s vibe to it, despite releasing in 1982. Maybe it’s because of its miserable hero, an alcoholic lawyer por...

With Natalie Marlin! Whatever you know about ZARDOZ — it’s by the guy who made DELIVERANCE (1972), it’s a weird meme, Charlotte Rampling’s instant pregnancy, Sean Connery’s nutsling — we promise you, it’s just the beginning. A critically divisive movie that’s garnered a cult following in the five decades since its release, it’s certainly earned that reputation. It’s a movie where philosophical mis...

With Kelly Krantz! Liliana Cavani’s psychological, post-Holocaust perverted thriller went down as one of the most controversial movies of all time. In a concentration camp during World War II, concentration camp officer Max (Dirk Bogarde) and his prisoner victim Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) form a sadomasochistic relationship. Their relationship is colored as much by their shared depravity as by Max...

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a hinky Hitchcock tale of mistaken identity, assumed identity, shifting truths, and a man with a huge butt chin using a SpongeBob-comically-small razor. Cary Grant stars as an ad man who gets caught up in a Cold War game of cat-and-mouse (he’s the mouse) opposite double agent Eva Marie Saint, Broadly European Bad Guy James Mason, and the FBI/CIA/NSA/WTFE as the other players...

LEGEND is a 1985 fantasy film directed by Ridley Scott and written by William Hjortsberg. It stars Tom Cruise in one of his first leading roles as Jack, a pure-hearted forest-dweller who is in love with Princess Lily (played by Mia Sara). Hoping to show her something beautiful, Jack introduces Lily to two majestic unicorns that live in a remote part of the forest. In doing so, he breaks one of the...

THE BEASTMASTER is a 1982 fantasy action movie directed by Don Coscarelli (best known for the PHANTASM films #TheBallIsBack). Marc Singer stars as Dar, rightful heir to the throne of Aruk and prophesied slayer of the evil priest Maax (Rip Torn). Born with the power to speak to animals, Marc befriends a number of mammals on his journey to reclaim the throne (including other humans, though they play...

Featuring filmmaker/programmer Kris Montello and Something Rotten host Blake Hester! SAMURAI REINCARNATION is a 1981 samurai fantasy action film written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Shiro Amakusa (Kenji Sawada) is the sole survivor of a massacre of Japanese Christians during the Shimabara Rebellion. Witnessing the devastation, Shiro renounces the Christian God and vows vengeance on the Tokugawa...

Noted Arnie fan Celia Mattison is back to discuss the swords and sorcery classic! John Milius’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN adaptation limits its view of the character to his pursuit of vengeance and conquest. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a rich, pagan paean to one’s drive for self-determination! On this episode, we talk about what rocks in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making role, how James Earl Jones’...

Two years before ALIEN (1979), Ridley Scott packed a bunch of audacious ideas about empire, masculinity, and class into his feature debut: THE DUELLISTS. Rival officers in Napoleonic France, Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) and Armond d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) are thrown into a mythical, divinely comic cycle of nearly deadly clashes after d’Hubert is instructed to rein in Feraud’s glorified bloodlu...

There wasn’t anything quite like Michael Roemer’s NOTHING BUT A MAN before it, and there arguably hasn’t been anything quite like it since. All the same, it’s often cited as “ahead of its time” – a critical, realistic look, almost documentary in nature, at the life of a black American man in the middle stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), the son of a deadbeat drifter h...

Sweet, heartwarming, funny, and deeply weird, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH plays to its creator duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s strengths: swift writing, a flair for the dramatic, and deeply affecting images. David Niven stars as the should-be-late British RAF Squadron Leader Peter Carter, who falls in love with American soldier June (Kim Hunter) over the radio on his way to the hereafte...

Five nuns. One Briton man-whore. A harem-turned-convent high in the Himalayas. Fellas – what could go wrong??? In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s BLACK NARCISSUS, an adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1947 novel, external conditions reveal internal torment: Altitude, wind, and culture clashes in the hilltop former harem of Mopu help expose the repressed desires of a sisterhood operating in Calcu...

With special guest Bret Berg (Theatrical Sales Director at the American Genre Film Archive and Creator/VJ at the Museum of Home Video)! Bret Berg created the Museum of Home Video, a weekly stream comprising archival footage like commercials, TV shows, movies, and more, all edited for the quickest-hit emotional impact possible. Before he hosted two live MHV presentations at the Trylon ( RING, RING:...

With special guest and Minnesotan Drew Tenenbaum (@AshCoolBro)! A threshing accident, exploding parade floats and trailers – contestants and participants in the Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant meet untimely ends in a series of suspicious incidents in Mount Rose, Minnesota. In this episode (comprising exclusively Minnesota-born speakers), we discuss the class politics at play in...