Gartbage Film

Happy Labour Day! We're here with an episode celebrating the self-employed individual's right to the yield of their labour: Michael Mann's Thief! We're discussing how indepth the character study of Frank goes, and how Mann loves playing cops against robbers both in front of and behind the camera. This is movie is a fantastic celebration of knowing the value of your labour and the d...

It's the last week of our birthday series, and we're wrapping up with a household comfort movie: Larry Blamire's indie b-movie parody, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra from 2001! This movie (and its sequels) stand apart from other bad-on-purpose parodies, and we're here to talk about how it achieves that through its dialogue, structure, music, and yes, love. We're campaigning to br...

This week we're celebrating a pillar of Taiwanese cinema: King Hu's foundational art-house wuxia A Touch of Zen from 197- mumble-mumble. If you're a fan of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , this is where it all started! We're discussing the lengths King Hu went to portray history in cinema, how this movie plays with scope and storytelling expectations, and our struggle with what lit...

This week we're talking about Bong Joon-ho's Parasite from 2019, which means we hit our patented discussions on societal collapse in record time! We're reliving our first-watch experience, diving deep into the political and societal themes to rant about billionaires, and rehashing 2019 Internet Discourse. Plus, we talk about the juicy non-fiction inspirations for the story. Next week w...

This week we're officially and appropriately going ape! It's time for the original 1968 Planet of the Apes. The ram's horn has got us punchy this week as we're learning that this is somehow the least pessimistic version of the movie, sort out our feelings on Charleton Heston, and rave about Jerry Goldsmith's pioneering experimental soundtrack. Plus, we're touching on some o...

This week we're tumbling through 21st-century Hong Kong for the judo-dramedy, Throw Down from 2004! We're exploring our newfound love of director Johnnie To's implicit storytelling vs more explicit storytelling, martial arts movies vs sports movies, and real positivity vs toxic positivity. Plus, we learn a lot about judo, a little about ourselves, and far too much about embracing the p...

This week we're taking on reality, surreality, and all points in between in our spoiler-filled discussion of the Daniels' Everything Everywhere All At Once ! We're reliving cinema-going memories as we break down how this movie makes us feel about chaos & nihilism, loosing boomer moms on the multiverse, and why communication is so dang hard. Plus, we're talking about what was cu...

It's the first Coen Bros movie we've covered on the pod, and one we think is an underappreciated part of their filmography: 2000's O Brother Where Art Thou? We're covering this movie's various inspirations from the Odyssey to Preston Sturges, its killer soundtrack, and we crown Tim Blake Nelson the king of the movie. Plus, how real is the reality of this movie? Let's talk a...

Do you feel that? It's this week's episode on 1990's Tremors ! Whether you're listening while stranded on a roof or commuting on a CAT loader, we think you'll enjoy our discussion on what makes this a great western and a fantastic monster movie. We're talking about how the limited budget on this movie was to its advantage, how it was born out of industrial shorts and biolog...

As actual summer begins, our Summer of Spielberg month ends with his big splash into showbiz: Jaws from 1975! We're talking about Robert Shaw's amazing writing contributions, the number of incredibly specific lessons this movie TRIED to teach us, and hungover tuba players. Plus, Erin wants to tell you about real life shark attacks! Next episode, we're sticking to POV monster shots with...

For week 3 of the Summer of Spielberg we're going back to the (almost) beginning: it's Close Encounters of the Third Kind from 1977! We're talking about the pioneering influence this movie had on sci-fi (Douglas Trumbull and Chris Carter, hello!), we get galaxy-brained about the general ideas of language & communication, and we wouldn't be us if we didn't spend some time ta...

Summer of Spielberg continues as we enter the dad-thriller canon with Catch Me If You Can from 2002! We're talking silly voices, real cons, and daddy issues. It's time to discuss the scam industry at large, where Frank Abagnale Jr fits into its history, what he thought of this movie, and his greatest hoax that only just came to light. Next week we're going into hard sci-fi with Close E...

It's Gar(t)bage Film's first anniversary, and we're ringing it in with a all-timer: Jurassic Park ! It's the start of the Summer of Spielberg! We're recounting how we imprinted on this movie as children, rail on billionaires who don't properly support their staff, and marvel at how impactful the dino sequences remain to this day. Plus, Nick has an upsetting game, and Erin l...

It's the end of Merry Musicals May, and we're wrapping up Steven Spielberg's West Side Story from 2021! We're here to celebrate Rita Moreno, our final musical survey, and we can't help but talk about how this compares to the 1961 and 1957 versions of the musical. Plus, we're diving into Leonard Bernstein's amazingly complex score to talk about what makes the musical sto...

Merry Musicals May hits the 21st century with Baz Luhrmann's anachronistic 2001 romantic jukebox, Moulin Rouge! We're reminiscing about how we didn't know any of these popular songs when this movie came out & its one original song, how it pushes the envelope for tone & musical artifice, and how Nicole Kidman physically decimated herself so severely that it changed Jodie Foster&...

Merry Musicals May continues with our landmark episode on a landmark musical, Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors from 1986! This movie is a delight from front to back. We're gushing about Ellen Greene & Rick Moranis' disparate voices, the design of Ashman & Menken's soundscape, the puppetting tours de force, and how it takes the time to rub our noses in its anti-consumierism...

The Merry Musicals of May continues with the movie loved by blues teens and rock-and-roll dads alike: The Blues Brothers from 1980! This movie got lodged early in our childhood memories, both for how we first experienced it and for how close to home its content hits, and we are still feeling its effects today. So get ready to learn a little about us, and a lot about the Deep Lore of the Blues Brot...

Welcome to the Merry Musical Month of May! For all 5 weeks of May we'll be covering musicals, so we had to start with the technicolor classic that's having its 70th anniversary this year, Singin' in the Rain from 1952. We're talking about the surprisingly meta layers, how it's a miracle anyone survived working on this movie, and we solve the mystery of why Gene Kelly HATED Malc...

This week we're becoming wiki-wiki-wild with Will Smith vehicle, Wild Wild West from 1999! This plot is coated with teflon, but we're doing our best to nail it down while getting into its origins as an ill-fated remake and the collateral damage it rained upon the world: poisoning the box office, tanking a video game franchise, and reverse press tours dragging into the new Willenium. Plus,...

This week we're covering a household favourite, Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train from 1951! There's nothing better than a 1950's thriller firing on all cylinders. We can't stop talking about Bruno as the platonic ideal of psychopaths, Hitchcock's perfect suspense set pieces, and the tension of sexual ambiguity in the '50's. Plus, Raymond Chandler's not al...

This week we're tackling the terrifying troubles that all teens wrestle with: puberty, friendship, and Toronto. That's right, we're talking Domee Shi's Turning Red! We're discussing how Domee Shi's life informed so much of this movie, being embarrassed by/for your family and, of course, boy bands by the barrel full. Plus, Nick shares a fact that shocks Erin to the very core...

In celebration of Toshiro Mifune's birthday on April 1st, we're here with one of his most celebrated roles: Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo from 1961! We discuss how this movie works perfectly as both a black-comedy satire or as a straight up action movie, how Yojimbo's DNA is present in virtually every action movie that followed, and why Kurosawa regretted making what's hailed as one...

This week we're shining a light on the Dave Foley vehicle and Canadian cult classic The Wrong Guy from 1997! If you like Kids in the Hall and the early seasons of the Simpsons, then this movie's for you. We're talking about the masterful physical/screaming comedy of Dave Foley, what separates this from a bog-standard thriller parody, and discuss all things local: Kids in the Hall, SCTV...

This week we travel back in time to 1999: we were young, had a passing understanding of what Egypt was, and we watched Stephen Sommers' The Mummy ! We wrestle with Pharaohs being the original job creators, the misadventures of Kevin J. O'Connor (including how camels feel about him), and talk about the upsetting Mummy trends in the 1920's. Plus, is the Mummy's Curse real? We're...

This week we're going to space and getting scared with Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror landmark, Alien from 1976! We spend a little time talking about what they (thankfully) cut out of this movie, a lot of time on the amazing characterization and lived-in production design, and a medium amount discussing composer Jerry Goldsmith's contributions (or lack thereof) to the movie. And it would...