Trylove

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE doesn’t ask for much of its titular compassion – instead, it uses director Park Chan-wook’s sense of style and space to tell complementary stories of grief. By separating intent and action through a series of salacious plot twists, Park unites the players in grief across classes: deaf-mute laborer Ryu and his corporate superior Dong-jin and the left-wing terrorist Yeoung...

"But when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11 Richard Linklater’s breakthrough film is a cultural touchstone not for the 1970s, but how people who grew up in the 1970s remembered the 1970s in the 1990s. It’s a little bit preservationist and a little bit precious, but it’s remembered as a fun portrait of teenagehood post-Summer of Love and pre-Reagan – whatever that w...

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN does something The Office and Parks and Recreation could not: It walks a line between mocking life in Blaine, Missouri, and memorializing it without getting all sentimental. In this episode, we cut away for a few talking head segments that dive into the mockumentary’s pacing, focus, and empathy for the weirdos whose talent is outweighed by their desire to be somebody. “For The...

Sometimes, you just gotta feed the content monster… ‘cause he’s got the freakin’ MUNCHIES! Join us for a fun experiment in covering current-run movies – just stuff all three of us saw within the last month or so. Cody’s the only one who actually saw any of them with MoviePass, so the pun still works. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.co...

With special guest Kelly Krantz (https://twitter.com/kransekage_)! You may love THE DOOM GENERATION for its gonzo mix of sexploitation, comic violence, overacting, and non-comic violence, or you may hate it for… exactly the same reasons! Director Gregg Araki says he makes films “for” queer folks – and in this episode, we dig into what that means for a movie where people are getting their limbs blo...

Content warning: Depictions of sexual assault and suicide. During the Meiji period, Japanese society was seemingly split between those who desired the modernization that came with Western influence and those who insisted on upholding a “pure” Japan marked by tradition and classical thought – all in the borders of one country. LADY SNOWBLOOD is two things, too: It’s a stylish manga adaptation about...

Content warning: Depictions of domestic violence and suicide. THE GETAWAY follows a pretty conventional structure. Depending on how you look at it, that might flatten it a little bit or it might make its jagged edges a little more interesting! Either way, it’s worth examining as Sam Peckinpah’s most commercially successful movie – and another weird example of his incisive take on toxic masculinity...

Highly stylized, dark, and often gross, THE HEROIC TRIO is kind of a dark, inverted portrait of superhero movies that would come to dominate box offices in the 2000s. In this episode, we trace the impact of movies like THE HEROIC TRIO through the decades, from Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) to Sam Raimi’s DARKMAN (1990) and beyond. We also talk about the pissing kids and so much more! Get tickets to “...

Content warning: Discussions of attempted sexual assault. Reprehensible and unrepentant, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA trades in the same extensive violence and fragility-masked-by-corruption that became a trademark of director Sam Peckinpah. Running a seedy bar in Mexico City, small-time lowlife Bennie sees a chance to elevate himself above his station when the titular job lands in his lap....

Another entry in the “what do you even say about that movie” category, THE PRINCESS BRIDE is a seminal fantasy comedy that came smack in the middle of director Rob Reiner’s insane 1980s run. Anyway, a couple of us have incredibly strong nostalgia for it and a couple of us are more measured in our enthusiasm-cum-respect for the quirky comedy. It’s literally one of our most approachable episodes eve...

Absurd, theatrical, and meandering, THE TRIAL is an almost faithful adaptation of Kafka’s literary critique of legal bureaucracy. In this episode, we talk about the movie’s lack of narrative pull, its garish monochrome palette and impressive set design, and what it says that Orson Welles changed the lens of Kafka’s novel to focus on the individual – and then cast himself as the villain. Watch THE...

EMPEROR OF THE NORTH rides (haha) a thin line between two distinct tracks (lmao): “Mythological self-seriousness with a sort of ironic bent” and “formulaic and cheesy early thriller fare”. Lee Marvin’s A No. 1 and Keith Carradine’s Cigaret face off against a cartoonishly evil Ernest Borgnine as Shack, the psychotically disgruntled company man with a hatchet (or hammer) for hobos. It’s all a bit MA...

It turns out there’s no fence-sitting at the end of the Wild West. You wouldn’t call THE WILD BUNCH particularly swashbuckling, but there’s a sort of uncomfortable excitement to its bandolier antics. A band of outlaws eyes one last prize near the US/Mexico border in 1913. The sociopolitical tumult of the place, and the rapid advance of the punitive system of capital at the time, threaten to derail...

In RATCATCHER, everything is someone’s fault, but not everyone suffers for it. “Ratcatcher: Death, Garbage, and Glimpses of Beauty in 1970s Glasgow” by Dan Howard for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/03/26/ratcatcher-death-garbage-and-glimpses-of-beauty-in-1970s-glasgow/ “The Eyes of Morton Are Upon You: Morvern Callar and the Art of Expression” by Natalie Marlin for Pe...

Special guest Emma Youndtsmith joins Trylove for the first time to discuss a classic of ‘70s animated adaptations! WATERSHIP DOWN has a reputation for ruining childhoods, with gruesome imagery and dark implications about the systems of power in the natural world. You could read it as a post-WWII allegory, as a broader indictment of fascist hegemony, or just as a journey of self-discovery. But with...

In YI YI, the sudden illness of the matriarch in a three-generation household sends the lives of its inhabitants spiraling. In the emotional chaos, NJ, his wife Min Min, his daughter Ting Ting, and his son Yang Yang find themselves reckoning with the end of a generation and at the crossroads of many versions of themselves. In our discussion of director Edward Yang’s final film, we discuss the big...

TAIPEI STORY dives again into Edward Yang’s musings on the modern Taiwanese experience, juxtaposing the past with the future against a concrete-and-glass background of 1980s economic disparities. Childhood sweethearts Chin and Lung meet again later in life, when neither of them is quite ready to make anything happen. Debts, missed opportunities, and baseball fill the space between them – and as th...

Si’r and the other rebel youths of 1959 Taipei aren’t misguided – they just aren’t guided. In A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, Taiwanese director Edward Yang investigates the broadly social and intensely personal conditions that might’ve led to a teenage murder that occurred during his youth. Si’r and his friends (and his enemies) exist in the vacuum of identity between nations and generations, between warr...

The Man Hunos Bruno, our resident Bruce Willis authority, Seth Zarate (https://twitter.com/snzarate) is back and talking to his younger self on Trylove! LOOPER put Rian Johnson on the big-budget map and earned him the director’s seat on a fuckin’ STAR WARS movie. It’s the movie that tried to convince us Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt could feasibly look like the same person with varying deg...

Jo and Steve need their $4,000 back from their cab licensing go-between. What they get instead is a tour through San Francisco’s Chinatown, with stops at some of its most charismatic and enigmatic Chinese-American residents. Each person they meet holds up a kaleidoscope to the Chinese-American experience, muddying their picture of Chan and of their very culture. - “Chan is Missing: Reflecting on a...

A kidnapping, a political murder, a prison break – it was supposed to be simple. Prison warden Vito barters with the mob to exchange his stolen wife for Milo, a low-level thug locked up in Vito’s prison. Vito’s decision to keep Milo until the handoff proves wise: Not only is the mob in no hurry to let loose ends stay loose, but Vito begins to develop a certain consideration for Milo during their t...

While lacking some of the exploitation panache in which the poliziotteschi revels, CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN is an appropriately pulpy dive into the seedy, blood-soaked streets of ‘70s Italy amid a rash of violent crime in the years following an economic boom. A storied police captain and his naive district attorney butt heads when the attorney starts to pull the threads connecting the capta...

Welcome Dan Nagan of Everything We Learned (https://twitter.com/adapperdanman/) back to the program! Is there virtue in repetition? In EDGE OF TOMORROW, there’s a certain indignity to it – Tom Cruise’s Bill Cage dies repeatedly and violently in an inter-species war in search of a secret that could tip the scales in humanity’s favor. But in reliving a single failed decisive battle every day (thanks...

Dan Halsted is one of the premier film programmers in the United States. In addition to his role as head programmer for the historic Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR, Dan has amassed a collection of some of the most vital kung fu and exploitation films in existence. He’s salvaged the only known prints of several classics, he holds one of a small handful of many more, and he’s attracted the compan...

Featuring Natalie Marlin ( https://twitter.com/NataliesNotInIt)! For some, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD was an amusement. For others, it shattered growing cynicism. It’s an epic in the classic sense, thrilling and regaling with focused sights and sounds and craft so impactful it seems like wizardry. At the same time, it’s a bountiful narrative that works with the barest materials – neologisms, post-consumer...