Trylove

Robina Rose’s bewitching NIGHTSHIFT invites viewers into the private rooms of a surreal London hotel in the 1980s during the wee hours of the night. An enigmatic receptionist (London artist, model, and counter-culture icon Jordan) is the go-between, performing a nearly wordless ritual of check-ins, sorting, prepping, tidying, and bearing witness to her tenants’ idiosyncrasies. NIGHTSHIFT’s 4K rest...

We don’t often get the chance to cover pre-Hays Code movies on this podcast, but when we do, we make sure that a former Catholic gets at least 30% of the airtime. MERRILY WE GO TO HELL wasn’t the most salacious rule-flouting film of its day — but even its title was enough to raise the hackles of 1930s Hollywood. By putting salacious topics front and center, like non-monogamy (gasp!), hedonism (sca...

Sure, it launched Richard Kelly and Jake Gyllenhaal’s careers, but DONNIE DARKO also cemented a cultural touchstone of upper-middle class teen alienation that’s only been burnished by time and rewatches. In a sense, Donnie is the average white suburbanite kid — but against the backdrop of a changing America and an aging boomer generation, basic empathy and self-awareness turn out to be a literal s...

It’s definitely not the best movie starring Indiana Jones, but it’s okay if it’s your favorite. For INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE — a movie on which the boys of the podcast are somewhat split — we’re talking what works and what doesn’t, daddy issues, the shadow self, and how this one stacks up to Indy’s best. References: “History’s Greatest Puzzle Room in which the Prize is Punching Nazis: In...

Anyone else think this guy looks familiar??? Charlie Chaplin’s first non-silent movie, THE GREAT DICTATOR , was both a sidesplitter and a rallying cry for a world at war. It’s best remembered for its closing monologue — a clear-eyed and impassioned call to reject the hatred and moral emptiness of the tide of fascism rising across the world at the time of its release — but it’s full of great bits a...

Seth Zarate is back to help us tackle RETURN OF THE JEDI , the sixth of nine (nice) numbered films in the main STAR WARS canon! This episode, we’re talkin’ about it all: Fathers, sex, spicy teddy bears, how differently this movie hits as an adult, the virtue of landing a plane as big as STAR WARS without crashing, and how the end of the world’s most-watched saga may be to blame for the whole mess...

With special guest and Trylon blog author Luke Mosher! THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is the best STAR WARS movie. I mean, come on. It’s got it all! Everything except a beginning and an ending. Like all the best stories! Lol! Since Cody’s out and we couldn’t find anyone else who prefers STAR WARS to EMPIRE, we’ve welcomed first-time guest Luke Mosher to unload about this series high point! Together, we t...

The fact that STAR WARS is so much more than a movie makes it a little tough to talk about as, like, just a movie. But with Natalie and Abbie, we’re actually strapped in for the best discussion of STAR WARS on the internet. In this wide-ranging discussion, we touch on the balance of intentionality and blind ambition on the part of George Lucas, STAR WARS as a corrective to the New Hollywood wave,...

Shortly before the deluge of Disneyslop, ROGUE ONE tried to give moviegoing audiences a different perspective on the far, far away world of STAR WARS. Series fan and podcaster Tony Wagner joins the podcast to talk about his close personal friend Admiral Raddus the time Star Wars went World War II, the Los Angeles Dodgers, godless CGI, and the guiding power of myth. Find Tony… On Twitter at @tonydw...

Whether you think it’s an ALIEN (1979) ripoff, a HIGH NOON (1952) pastiche, or a pretty fun action flick, you’re probably right about OUTLAND! In a rare turn, Kelly’s back in the guest chair for a movie she’d never seen before. Does she like what she finds? Do we? Do you? Did anybody? In this episode, we’re talking exploding heads, screenwriting 101, the two halves of OUTLAND, ridiculous German na...

This episode is… ALIVE!!! With Bob Buel, creator and host of 99 Questions (and first-time Trylove guest), we’re getting (re)animated about Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s timeless blend of piss-taking, homage-paying parody in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN . It’s a great discussion where people who’ve seen it dozens of times (Bob) help explain what makes it sticky, while new-ish-comers (Jason, Cody) look at it w...

Peter Yates’s Robert Mitchum vehicle THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE is an unglamorous picture of a rough way of life and the rough people who live it (on both sides of the law). With friend of the show and noted crime (movie) enthusiast Matt Clark, we pull back the grimy edges of this unromantic “anti-thriller” to expose the fragile, human narrative at its core — brought to life in part by the cantank...

Too funny to be drama and too dark to be comedy, Elaine May’s THE HEARTBREAK KID is instead a vehicle for comedic disgust — something all too rare in the New Hollywood era 1970s into which it was born. Charles Grodin is Lenny, running out on his somewhat annoying wife Lila (Jeanette Berlin) for the exciting unknown of Kelly (Cybill Shepherd). The premise is straightforward, but the way it plays ou...

Kon Ichikawa’s postwar drama looks wistfully at the Japan that WAS before World War II, suspiciously at the Japan that would be rebuilt, and begs consideration of the legitimacy of either. Retreating through Burma during World War II, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) discovers his gift for the harp (saung) just before Japan surrenders. Captain Inouye (Rentarō Mikuni) tasks the young soldier with de...

With Dan Nagan (@aDapperDanMan)! Mellow greetings! DEMOLITION MAN, Marco Brambilla’s only major motion picture credit is a bit of a chimera, both a fun action movie and a sort of sardonic parody of the genre. Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes are literal relics in a world gone soft: Snipes is there to terrorize it with old-fashioned chaos, and Stallone is there to rein him in with… old-fashione...

Wesley Snipes got his big action break in Kevin Hooks’ PASSENGER 57, an airplane heist movie about a security specialist and recent widower pulled back into the job to thwart an international terrorist’s airborne escape plan. Snipes seems really comfortable as not-Bruce Willis, punching and kicking his way through bad guys in the clouds and on the ground alike. In this episode, we chat about Snipe...

TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR is remembered as the first depiction of drag queens as non-gag main characters in a major Hollywood production. Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes), and Chi Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) are California-bound New York drag queens who find themselves sidetracked in a rural Midwestern(?) town. They find some of the locals int...

Claire Denis’s moving, poetic portrait of repression in the armed forces might be one of the best movies of all time. In the French Foreign Legion, there are beautiful, elegant young men; there’s their goblinish commander; and there’s nowhere else to go for any of them. The group’s leader, Galoup (Denis Lavant), is hopelessly in thrall to his own superior, Forestier (Michel Subor) — so when young...

With Natalie Marlin! Just like the earth he exploits, there’s something roiling under the surface of the wheel-and-dealing Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis): A devilish, almost cartoonishly villainous veneer conceals a deep self-hatred. And like all good capitalists, he uses it to fuel the next great pain he can inflict on the people and world around him, from the local preacher of a podunk town...

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps) are caught in a cycle: Reynolds’s obsession with his dressmaking craft and his deceased mother send him dithering between immense sweetness and crass irritability, with Alma often on the receiving end of both his affection and his aloofness. But while Alma’s not the first to suffer Reynolds’s mercurial temperament, she’s the first...

After making a movie that actually got a Best Picture nomination, Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed another that famously didn’t: THE MASTER, a psychological examination of postwar trauma and peacetime opportunism. In this episode, we try to go past the easy read of THE MASTER as simple corollary for cult dynamics, heap an appropriate amount of praise on Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams,...

Three podcasters watched a movie and recorded their conversation about it afterward… and I would like to think this was only a matter of chance. Our Paul Thomas Anderson series keeps a-rollin’ with MAGNOLIA , his “blank check” movie after the success of BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) . The intention was to make something he’d never get the chance to make again — something big and strange and audacious. Is t...

With Blake Hester! Paul Thomas Anderson’s retrospective dramatization of the ‘70s porn industry isn’t exactly rosy, but it’s certainly not dour, either. It’s kind of situated between those poles, balancing hangout vibes and deeply depressing shit to keep it right where you want a movie to be — tragic, fun, and eminently watchable. Find Blake… At https://blakehester.rocks/ On Bluesky at @metallicai...

THE LOST WEEKEND is a weird movie to talk about 80 years after it came out. It’s a drama directed by Billy Wilder about an alcoholic writer who keeps trying and failing to kick the habit, so you can see why you might have to give it a touch of grace for its various… depictions. In 1945, it was a beacon of empathy for the addict’s struggle, the first time an alcoholic was portrayed as more than an...

A touchstone of visual storytelling, an example of the power of short-form film, and an inspiration to surrealist storytellers like David Lynch, Maya Deren’s MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON pulls big philosophical questions out of simple materials. Through visual substitution, object manipulation, arrhythmic editing, and all sorts of narrative trickery, a surreal dream outlines one woman’s fruitless pursu...