Sub Titles

Violence comes in many shades. Tim and Matt talk all of ‘em here before settling on The Old Ultraviolence for which A Clockwork Orange is notorious. We got great evil performances all around as Tim brings The Big Heat and No Country for Old Men for consideration. Not exactly easy movies to watch, but we see what narrative purpose violence can serve and which forms are the oldest and most insidious...

I don’t know how much explaining the theme on this one needs but this has to be the silliest episode we’ve recorded thus far. Partially that’s because Weezer is a silly band who ruined Tim’s song. But it’s also partially because of the list of bands that opened for Weezer right after Blue Album . Matt talks Veruca Salt and Archers of Loaf, tune in to find out who all the rejects are too.

Who doesn’t love a good episode driven by angst and trauma? Tim and Matt indulge a couple of their pet passions as Tim, inspired by the historicism of our Saving Private Ryan episode, traipses through WWII films made during WWII and Matt, inspired by himself and all the sad white boys these past 10 episodes, looks at how pop-punk is doing in the 2010s and now, after it’s commercial heyday.

Not since [ checks notes ] one episodes ago have Matt and Tim been so confused by the popularity of a film! Maybe five episodes ago if you want the Forrest Gump Hate Parade of 2021. At any rate, Saving Private Ryan and it’s nonsensical plot is on the block this week before Tim takes us through other films looking at WWII in retrospect. The Malickissance continues with the titan The Thin Red Line g...

Beck and his music are difficult to parse in 2021, largely because what he was/is so good at is the norm now rather than progressive like in 1996 when Odelay delighted and confused listeners. Matt talks Beck’s importance and influence in terms of his uncanny ability to break down several genres and styles to stitch them together, then two other artists with similar Deconstructionist impulses worki...

After dutifully attending to the “Why is this movie number 1 on IMDB?” conversation, Tim and Matt consider how communities are established in terrible situations. Prison obviously falls into that category. Tim also guides us through the society of survival among Antarctic scientists in The Thing and the “this is what we got” vibes of McCabe and Mrs. Miller . Two podcast favorites in Carpenter and...

Automatic for the People is sort of notoriously R.E.M.’s death album, the one in the throes of existential wonder. While death does appear throughout the album, it’s more an extended contemplation of mortality and what, if anything, lies beyond this life. “Find the River” suggests nothing. Matt plumbs into The Antler’s gorgeously heart-rending Hospice and the howling pain of Touché Amoré’s Stage F...

We got paid in Part 1, and now we owe. Tim and Matt consider the importance of Butch and Sundance before Tim offers two other movies with exacting forces looking for recompense. Terrence Malick Appreciation Month continues with his Days of Heaven up for consideration against Delbert Mann’s Separate Tables . Can Malick keep the perfect game alive? Will a meta argument sway Matt? Can anyone be happy...

Teenage angst hasn’t paid Matt well in any literal way, but he does maintain a soft spot for many of the rock bands it has. Cobain made that the first line on the prickly follow-up to Nevermind , In Utero , and immediately cast it as a rejection of fame and Nevermind itself. In this episode, Matt offers albums by two other artists who teenage angst paid off well and who seem hell-bent on getting b...

The Silence of the Lambs seemingly gets only more popular and influential with time, which is genuinely impressive for what could easily be seen as a (good) genre film. We talk about genre films, about the cinematic legacy of The Silence of the Lambs (especially to a genre we don’t like as much which I’ve now decided is called Nu-Horror), and why we can’t seem to get enough of murderous psychopath...

“Juicy” is one of the greatest rags-to-riches songs ever put to tape. A humorous and detailed story of coming from “sardines for dinner” to “Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.” The sensation of “making it” runs through Ready to Die , and in this episode Matt presents two other albums from artists wrestling with their fame, status, and wealth in Watch the Throne , by Jay-Z and Kanye in their imperial...

Everyone’s favorite region of the U.S., as Matt teases in part 1. Maybe not, but it could be the most mythologized (though not represented). Beyond being the origin of a Lion King joke none of us got as kids, In the Heat of the Night leaves front-and-center the matter from which Southern identity can never escape: race. Tim talks Daughters of the Dust , a hyper-specific look at the Gullah of the l...

Our theme this week comes from Robert Christgau, who can turn a phrase better than any other music critic. (The) Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency & I is all nervy energy, jittery mood swings, and mid-20s panic. It’s also an album Matt and Tim like quite a lot. For replacements, Matt offers two albums even closer to his heart in Motion City Soundtrack’s I Am the Movie and Los Campesinos! No Blues...

Matt and especially Tim are never far from railing on Forrest Gump , that famed jaunt through the 20th century with terrible disability politics and Tom Hanks doing a funny voice. We’re constitutionally unable to let that go, but Tim does try to steer us to the theme of History Class with two films inhabiting specific places and eras in Meek’s Cutoff and Zodiac. We like those films much more and g...

Courtney Love’s acerbic lyricism breathed precious fresh air into a male-dominated genre. In the spirit of Hole’s Live Through This , Matt looks to two groups fronted and run by women with strong musical chops and even stronger voices confronting the, often stupid, men around them in love and their scenes. Justine Frischmann of Elastica and Brody Dalle of The Distillers bring fire and wit to Brit-...

Journalism has long been a pressurized and risky endeavor, not just in the era of Fake News. All the President’s Men stands as a look into a profession and the unique ideological challenges involved as much as a glimpse of a historical moment. Tim offers Warren Beatty’s Reds and James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News as two other films presenting some seemingly eternal political challenges and other uniq...

The Replacements brand of heart-on-sleeve heartland punk is well established and adored. Also well established is their legendary drinking and raucous behavior (banned for life from SNL!). Matt talks two albums that continue in Tim’s Drunk and Full of Tunes legacy in The Hold Steady’s woozy yet bitchin’ Almost Killed Me and Japandroids’ blaring and nostalgic Post-Nothing.

Chaplin’s riotous Modern Times has several incredible sight gags, including two scenes of characters traversing the “guts” of machines. Of course, Modern Times is also a film about how industrialization and alienation of labor make us disposable cogs for a larger, more nebulous machine. Tim tracks more (mostly) metaphorical visions of individuals being disposable objects and Food for Machines in D...

East Coast Hip Hop in the mid 90s doesn’t need me to make its importance evident; the names made themselves important. Illmatic gets the shaft on the Spin list but it’s due respect in this episode. Nas’ brilliant poetry vividly captures a place, Queensbridge, as a microcosm of NYC and the East Coast Hip Hop scene in the mid 90s. Matt presents Mobb Deep’s The Infamous and Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt a...

The Wild Bunch’s famous, and visceral, opening becomes the theme this episode as Tim offers movies that make clear the power of many ants over just a few scorpions. The Ox-Bow Incident and Silence are two movies in which sheer numbers overwhelm staunch individual conviction, forever altering worldviews in the process.

An episode Matt has been eyeing up since the beginning, full of music he can remember listening to as long as he has listened to music. Listen to Matt and Tim giggle like children at Dookie and then more seriously consider its legacy, one Green Day still has a tough time living down. Dookie’s brilliant, fun Pop-Punk set the stage for a generation of bands speaking the concerns and troubles of adol...

Jack Lemmon plays an all-time sad sack in The Apartment , someone with little to look positively on even when it’s Christmas. Tim offers two other movies that have similarly Blue Christmases in 3 Godfathers ,  a John Ford allegory of the three wise men, and Three Days of the Condor , a Sydney Pollack film wherein Christmas rolls on unperturbed as Robert Redford becomes increasingly paranoid a...

Outkast’s magnum opus ends with audio of their infamous Source Awards acceptance speech, Andre barking at a booing crowd “The South’s got something to say.” And with that, the theme of our Aquemini episode, an album Matt thinks Spin has far too low. Outkast still have heavy influence on Atlanta specifically and hip hop in general; in this episode Matt discusses two other footholds in Southern hip...

We’re 20 episodes in! Which is exciting, and also means it’s time for another bonus episode. Our cups runneth over with takes and Deci’s Midnight Runners is our chance to dig further into something that piqued our interest from the ten prior episodes. Matt bends the broad arc of Shoegaze history to give some more shine to a genre and artists he genuinely thinks most people would love. Listen in fo...

It’s hard for Kubrick to not make a movie feel like him but he was working Out of Type with the swords-and-sandals epic Spartacus . Tim guides us through two replacement titles by other beloved directors with hyper-unique styles. John Carpenter plays it straight and even sweet on Starman and David Lynch’s vision of a twisted America take a back seat in the warm, heartfelt action of The Straight St...