Trylove

The rich hunt the poor for sport. The cops are on strike. The veterans are all out of work. Natasha Binder needs to find her estranged father. Chance Boudreaux needs $217 to pay his union dues. The realities of a one-sided class war meet the fantasies of New Orleans ultraviolence in HARD TARGET, John Woo’s first American production. The rich can afford to take human lives with impunity; the well-t...

Despite its signature bombast, THE KILLER doesn’t actually reinvent many of the tropes of action cinema. There’s plenty of gunpowder, gore, and squibs to be found in its 110-minute runtime. What makes it different – and what keeps it feeling fresh more than 30 years later – is how it uses those tropes to service a subversive story. Pitting hitman Ah Jong against Detective Li Ying and tossing an in...

Special guest Jenny Ackerson (@AckersonJenny) joins us for this extra-long discussion of PARIS, TEXAS! When director Wim Wenders and screenwriter Sam Shepard sat down to start PARIS, TEXAS, they wanted "to tell a story about America." The story they ended up telling was about Travis, an amnesiac reintegrating as if out of memory back into the deserts of the American southwest, intent on making his...

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom! (@TheEzioKenway). Filmed on location in the New York City of 1947 and narrated by its own legendary newspaper man-turned-producer Mark Hellinger, THE NAKED CITY is both a product of and commentary on its time and place. By shooting in a faux-Cinéma vérité style and constantly breaking its own fourth wall, THE NAKED CITY playfully reframes how we think about...

CW: THE WARRIORS contains violence against women, including threats of sexual violence. Our conversation will briefly touch on these elements. When Harry saw the Wonder Wheel come OUT TO PLA-Eee-AAAY on screen at the Trylon's "Up All Night" movie marathon back in November, he hooted and hollered from the back row. The quintessential midnight movie, THE WARRIORS (1979) is a love letter to a vision...

“𝘏𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘦, 𝘵𝘰𝘰. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘵. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘐 𝘥𝘰? 𝘐 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥, ‘𝘠𝘦𝘴, 𝘔𝘳. 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘬. 𝘐'𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘵.’ 𝘐'𝘮 𝘯𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘭!” Social constructs exist only to divide, removing humanity layer by layer until we don’t recognize the people and things we love right in front of our eyes. That might be what THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940), Ernst Lubitsch’s early rom-com, is saying with its depic...

Happy New Year's Eve! We’ve had a hell of a time making this podcast for almost a whole year(!!!), so we wanted to cap 2019 with a special episode to recognize the best and brightest moments of the year: the inaugural Trylove Golden Barry Awards! What’s the best film the Trylon played this year? What was the most memorable guest moment on our show? What's our favorite piece of Trylon trivia we lea...

Featuring special guest Matt Yost (@mattyost_)! CW: BLACK CHRISTMAS includes violent language including threats of rape and assault toward women. We discuss this as an element of the movie. BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) established many of the tropes and techniques that would lay the groundwork for HALLOWEEN (1978), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) – most modern horror cinema, actually. What's more, it's...

Featuring special guest Griffin Fillipitch! In 1937, story writer Melchior Lengyel pitched NINOTCHKA (1939) to MGM with a cutesy triptych: “Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism not so bad, after all.” Thank goodness it’s not ACTUALLY that. Greta Garbo’s comedy turn gives her mo...

CW: discussions of portrayed suicide. For all the artifice displayed by the Warsaw acting troupe in Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE, one thing is very real: their disdain for Nazi occupation and displacement of their people. Slowly infiltrating the ranks of Warsaw's occupying forces – sometimes by accident – they use the tools of their trade to subvert Hitler's ground offensive while having so...

Featuring special guest Dan Nagan! Like a samurai wandering without a master, John Frankenheimer's RONIN kind of meanders unjustifiably in the no-man’s land between Parisian noir and fantastic bombast. Too overwritten to be cool and underserved by questionable directorial choices, its characters feel out of place in a world made specially for them. Like the third of Sam’s absurd aphorisms, maybe i...

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom! BRUTE FORCE is a leftist melodrama that is at its best when it leans into its pulpy sensibilities. It displays an unprecedented amount of sympathy for a group of prison inmates who use their strength and camaraderie as they search for a way out of a flawed yet impenetrable system. As our heroes spiral towards their fate, we all find ourselves asking the sam...

Featuring Trylon volunteer Ben Savard! 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘥𝘰 𝘐𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰? 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘥𝘰, 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘥𝘰 Small-town senior Arnie Cunningham feels like he’s denied true happiness – by girls, the expectations of his parents, and by bullies at school. That all changes when the car of his dreams revs to life in the form of Christine, a cursed coupe t...

In the final complete movie released before Bruce Lee's death, ENTER THE DRAGON, characters stand in for themes and empires stand in for philosophies. It’s a little rough around the edges as a movie, but what can't be denied is its impact writ large on every form of media to this day. In this episode, we try to pick apart ENTER THE DRAGON’s various competing philosophical accusations and discover...

Media & Cultural Studies major who says he doesn’t know what that means ✔️ David Lynch hater ✔️ Likes tweeting ✔️ One of our favorite things is talking to people who know the Trylon from the inside out. On today’s episode, we’re elated to share a conversation we had with Ben Savard, a Trylon volunteer and professional film editor who says that his time with the theater has helped him figure ou...

Brian De Palma is a legendary and divisive filmmaker. Stephen King is an even more legendary and divisive storyteller. These two careers came together in 1976 to make CARRIE, now considered a landmark of the horror genre and one of King's most successful screen adaptations. Have you ever wondered what two cishet male twenty-something podcasters who don't know De Palma from De Niro think of it? Wel...

CW: discussions of violence. HAUSU is still a singular work 42 years after its release. In its walls, you'll find twists and parodies of pastoral life, arranged marriage, social expectations of women, and dozens of references to director Nobuhiko Obayashi's childhood trauma as a survivor of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. More than draw your eye with absurd grotesqueries, HAUSU wants t...

We’re all going to lose ourselves someday. The betrayal of the body is the surest thing since taxes. We’ll forget, or we’ll die, or both at the same time. It’s when we lose each other – the social trust of our communities – that our understanding of the world shatters like frozen blood. THE THING (1982) is another one of those horror classics that defies nature by remaining relevant, astounding, a...

Content warning: Discussions of suicide and self-harm. We can't escape our demons. We could go to the other edge of the universe, or jump to an entirely new one, but the burdens we bear will always follow – and despite the lack of gravity, they might be even heavier up there. A mishmash of bad CGI, decent acting, cheesy writing, and hellish concept hamstrung by bad editing courtesy of (you guessed...

Everyone who runs into eccentric amnesiac Mamiya develops a murderous apathy, fully aware of their crimes but unable to explain their motives. Toxically repressed detective Takabe is put on the case, set on discovering a reason – for Mamiya’s madness, for his victims’ bloodlust, and for his own fragile sanity. Who do we become when faced with the platonic ideal? How do our perceptions – of ourselv...

Welcome back Eric Leith (@biggergooseegg) for another episode! Whatever ALIEN (1979) added to cinema (including a treatise on aiming pop media at the powerful), ALIENS (1986) undid in favor of marketability and bloodshed. In the former, we found ourselves tightly wound aboard the Nostromo, trusting only in each other as Ellen Ripley faced the terrors of interplanetary capitalism. In ALIENS, we get...

CONTENT WARNING: Brief mention of rape and sexual assault. Featuring special guest Eric Leith (@biggergooseegg)! A perfect marriage of pulpy science fiction and gritty, sparse horror, Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece isn't just frequently cited as one of the best movies in either of these genres--it's frequently cited as one of the best movies ever made period! In this episode, the last surviving m...

Content warning: Discussion of problematic depictions of queer and marginalized communities. Brief mention of sexual assault. We start talking about the movie around four minutes in. HACKERS (1995) will always be fun to look back on. But it also feels timeless in how it uses the anti-capitalist queer origins of cyberpunk to build a world where young, tech-literate outcasts, blamed (and framed) for...

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom! What other noirs didn't have, THE THIN MAN series did: levity, breathing room, characters who weren't written full of life just to have it snuffed out on the next page. Nick and Nora Charles's charmed life as bourgeois socialites and functioning alcoholics could be an uneasy basis for a hard-boiled plot but for William Powell and Myrna Loy's bedrock perform...

Featuring Trylon film programmer John Moret! The Trylon Cinema (née "Microcinema") celebrates its 10th birthday this month with a day-long surprise movie marathon. Trylon film programmer John Moret calls it a rare "ritual space" – perhaps the only one in the Midwest – that celebrates the act of GOING to the movies rather than just SEEING one. For this episode, we were thrilled to welcome John in t...