Trylove

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom! VIDEODROME repurposes our own understanding of our bodies to tell a different story about critical media viewing. But does its wide lens preclude it from making a more pointed statement? Fuck James Woods. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Full of Seussian grotesqueries and allegorical slavery, FANTASTIC PLANET is probably remembered for exactly what it deserves to be remembered for (creative, creepy, crawly creatures, trippy visuals, and an extremely 1970s soundtrack). What it doesn't deliver is the intangible, experimental storytelling psychedelia that its marketing seems to sell the movie on. Do its depictions of sexuality, socie...

Content warning: Consistent stylized violence and one instance of attempted sexual assault. Katsuhiro Otomo’s film adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga, AKIRA, pits brother against brother as stand-in for the larger confrontation bubbling beneath the cracked asphalt of Neo-Tokyo’s bloody streets: a reckoning between the military, youth culture, masculinity, and nuclear anxieties with the shared t...

THE HIDDEN is an '80s movie like many '80s movies in that it's super tropey, kinda gross, full of zany practical effects, and sloppily aimed at the conservativism of the age. Its twists on the burgeoning action/horror genre include some progressive(???) gender politics, a direct indictment of the American political schema (in which a white male need only say "I want to be president" to become pres...

Thicc men, thin characters. We sure as hell didn't see THIS one at the Trylon! Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Featuring special guests Ben Hanson and John Carson! Directed by Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, 28 DAYS LATER) and written by Alex Garland (EX MACHINA, ANNIHILATION), SUNSHINE is a fun little space thing with dreams of being the next big postmodern space opera. What it ends up being is more of a bizarre tonal roller coaster (hitting all the notes from courtroom drama to odyssey thriller to gross-out...

Strap in for a second STORY about POLICE! The follow-up to Jackie Chan's blockbuster POLICE STORY (1985) doubles down on the stunts, explosions, and smarm of the original and adds more plot than is strictly necessary (about 25 minutes' worth). Despite that, and some reprehensible treatment of a deaf/mute villain, it's still a fun moment-to-moment movie that juggles violence and comedy with an appr...

CW: some discussions of violence towards women (as played for comedy). Whatever else Jackie Chan is (poet, philosopher, philanderer, tax evader, bigot, tool of the state), he's a man who understands that the best part of martial arts is its humor. Like the best of Chan's work, POLICE STORY is a creative, reactionary, and funny celebration of the beauty of expressive motion. It also has a minute-lo...

Featuring special guest and THE FIFTH ELEMENT stan Seth Zarate! What does THE FIFTH ELEMENT add to the sci-fi canon? It's certainly not the first action/comedy/sci-fi hybrid. It's also a slurry of politically unfocused mishmash that seems altogether uninterested in exploring the endpoints of those elements. If it's special, it's because of the world built around it – one that features gender-fluid...

Forget what you heard about FARGO (1996): BARTON FINK is actually the Coens' most autobiographical movie. Telling the bizarre odyssey of self-righteous playwright-turned-Hollywood screenwriter Barton Fink, the film was scripted during a bout of writer's block while making MILLER'S CROSSING (1990) – and counting the rings of this script, that adds up. It indicts Barton himself (no small feat in a m...

The Coen Brothers' 2009 existential dramedy A SERIOUS MAN trades on their Jewish upbringing to paint a larger picture about the voices that take over amid the inescapable silence of organized religion. As Harry says, it's a movie about "paying more attention to the people in your life." With eternal suffering the only constant in human existence, inaction is a recurring motif – the line, "I didn't...

Featuring special guest Eric Leith! In Tom Reagan's gritty gangster world, caring is a quick way to get yourself shot. It's too bad, then, that he cares very much about Leo O'Bannon, his Irish mob boss, and Verna Bernbaum, the woman they both think they love. When Verna's brother runs afoul of the rival Italian mafia, Tom is forced to reconcile the charge of his position, his loyalty to Leo, and t...

CW: Discussions of suicide as plot. Listening advisement: Harry's track ended up sounding bad. Sorry. While watching THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, it's easy to see why it's one of the Coen Brothers' relatively overlooked films: nested between box office smashes O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000) and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (2003), it failed to break even on its modest budget and has become a cult classic i...

Featuring special guest and honorary Minnesotan Emily Csuy! FARGO is probably a non-Minnesotan's first impression of Minnesotans, but how essentially Minnesotan is it? Why is it set here, and what does that choice reveal about the Coen Brothers' attitude toward their home state? How often does a Minnesotan actually say "you betcha"? Is FARGO secretly a case study for the Second Noble Truth of Budd...

Featuring Nabil Azzouzi! Just to put it out front: THE PLEASURE GARDEN isn't a mystery, thriller, or horror film. It has its moments (it's even funny sometimes, which is awe-inspiring for a 90-year-old movie to pull off), but being Alfred Hitchcock's first feature, it's most interesting to watch in the context of his filmography. It's got the corrupting influence of power; it's got love and lust;...

In a special, spoilery, distinctly non-Trylony episode, we're proud to host Nick Ransbottom (@TheEzioKenway) to talk about Rob Letterman's loose adaptation of the 2016 video game of the same name. We – four video game-literate men in the same general demographic – all liked it a lot. Go figure! And then go see it! It probably would've been enough to make POKÉMON: DETECTIVE PIKACHU a facsimile of t...

Content warning: This film contains depictions of attempted sexual assault and plenty of "period-specific" racism. Heavy on the air quotes. For all his cowboy pageantry and vague machismo, John McCabe is just a sad, insecure man (and not the kind who's rewarded for it, either). In Robert Altman's "anti-Western" MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, he's a wingless frog who keeps bumping his ass, flailing to e...

Inside CLUELESS (1995)'s comedic portrayal of stereotypically vapid California Beverly Hills high schoolers' lives, there might be a genuine message of self-actualization through social performance. Does it earn that appraisal? Does it matter? As guest Charlie Mackin says, "If you're becoming a better person just because you want to become a better person, that's an okay motivation to do things."...

Featuring Nick Grossman! Throughout our little series on Akira Kurosawa's most popular works, we keep setting up each movie as the progenitor of modern genre pieces (STRAY DOG for police procedurals, YOJIMBO for highfalutin' Westerns, etc.). Even so, SEVEN SAMURAI is the genesis of most character-led ensemble movies – period – and has itself been remade countless times. It uses several samurai (bo...

A straight-laced detective quickly frays when his gun is stolen on the bus home, leading him on a slow chase across Tokyo during a heatwave – and leading modern cinema to the genesis of police procedurals. Akira Kurosawa's STRAY DOG is noir with a heart, pulp with a conscience, and drama scarred with the impact of World War II on three generations of Japanese society. In this episode, we argue tha...

Comparisons to STAR WARS aren't necessarily a bad way to look at THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958), but they won't add much to your viewing experience. Yes, Akira Kurosawa's feudal epic (featuring Toshiro Mifune as General Rokurota Makabe and Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki) lives in a cleverly-built world of deposed princesses and disgraced swordsmen, but it's also a picaresque grounded in people of the lo...

The closeness of Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa's relationship – a closeness that would be their undoing – is well-exemplified in RED BEARD. Their final collaboration for a number of reasons (personal and financial clashes are both rumored), the movie isn't typical Kurosawa, either. The director said as much at the time, admitting that the movie represented a turning point toward the conservati...

(You can skip to about 10 minutes in if you want to hear about the movie. It’s all sexy ASMR and shop talk until then.) SANJURO (1962), sequel to the groundbreaking YOJIMBO (1961), is not so groundbreaking. It’s where you start to get a sense for the commercial viability of Toshiro Mifune’s inimitable character (he’d go on to appear in ZATOICHI MEETS YOJIMBO in 1970, pairing him up with the blind...

Longtime Akira Kurosawa muse Toshiro Mifune’s grumpy ronin with a heart of gold in YOJIMBO (1961) codified the “man with no name” archetype on which Western movies survived for decades (including Sergio Leone's unlicensed 1964 remake A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS). The movie's synopsis – a town stuck in a bloody spat between two profiteering families is forced to reconcile when a mercenary swordsman blows...

Featuring Emily Csuy, Aaron Grossman, and Cody Narveson! Martha Coolidge's second directorial credit, VALLEY GIRL, can be a frustrating movie to love. Steeped in (plausibly self-aware) '80s aesthetics and some adorably goofy lingo (see "trippendicular"), it also has something to say about the cultural challenges of just relating to another person – and how we sometimes create those challenges for...