Trylove

Inside its genre ‘guardrails,’ WITNESS tells the story of worlds brought together by tragedy – but whose intersection point (a haggard Harrison Ford and a repressed Kelly McGillis) exemplifies the deep, dignified richness of human love and connection. Also, Angus MacInnes dies horribly via grain entrapment and Danny Glover’s guts get spilled in cow shit. Watch WITNESS on the Internet Archive: http...

It’s not quite like the Jackie Chan movies you might be expecting. It’s more bizarre and slightly less martial arts-focused – but once you get on its wavelength, it’s truly a joy of a screwball action comedy. Watch TWIN DRAGONS (English subs) on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/jackie-chans-twin-dragons-full-movie-english-sub Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodc...

The opposition leader is dead, clubbed in the city square for all to see – and the ruling dictatorship does everything it can, which is literally everything, to deny responsibility. Z is a fictional account of the real, state-conducted assassination of a Greek leftist politician, but its satire achieves a degree of incisiveness rarely seen in the modern political thriller. By showing the audience...

Featuring Natalie Marlin (https://twitter.com/NataliesNotInIt)! Even though MILLENNIUM MAMBO shows us a vivid portrait of Vicky, a woman struggling with personal change at the dawn of the millennium, it’s arguably not REALLY about that. It’s almost more about her relationship to herself – rather, to the version of herself who makes those choices – as narrated by Vicky 10 years in the future. Vicky...

What if Toshirô Mifune was a little bit more of a churlish bastard – but what if that didn’t make you like him any less? You might get something like Hideo Gosha’s jidaigeki action film SAMURAI WOLF! It’s a fun, contemporary take on some of Kurosawa’s best movies and the tropes they codified, with a wandering ronin taking on the cause of the underdog and finding more of his own humanity in the peo...

A self-sentenced prisoner in Plato’s cave, Marcello Clerici thinks he chooses the shadows. Marcello doesn’t want to be a fascist. He doesn’t want to be an anti-fascist, either. He doesn’t want to be an academic, an assassin, a husband, son, straight, or gay. He wants to be normal. He wants to be nothing. THE CONFORMIST is a dizzying psycho-political thriller that digs into the motivations that lea...

We’re back with some relatively rapid-fire thoughts on a few of the biggest movies of the summer! ASTEROID CITY is sentimental bliss, DIAL OF DESTINY uses and abuses nostalgia, DEAD RECKONING’s villain is megastupid, BARBIE is a good-natured romp, and OPPENHEIMER is by turns awe-inspiring and embarrassing. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gm...

In the first half, he’s a hero – in the second, he’s losing his mind. T.E. Lawrence is the conflicted figure who inserts himself into the Arab Revolt during World War I, only to find his reputation, sanity, and very identity hanging in the balance. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is one of the best regarded movies of all time. Normally, that raises an eyebrow, but in this case, we find it’s absolutely still tr...

The reasons why some critics decried SUPER FLY on its release aren’t ours to criticize (but we make that mistake on this episode a couple times anyway), but they’re important to understanding its long-term impact. The bone it picks with the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement – that many of its victories were pyrrhic, and that America still has far to go before it can claim racial equity – make...

With returning guest and Perisphere senior editor Finn Odum! THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD might be the precursor to John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982), but the creature feature uses its tale of a plant-based alien invader to a vastly different end. Instead of honing in on the slow creep of bellicose masculinity, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD instead takes the opportunity to pound its chest at the Co...

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE doesn’t ask for much of its titular compassion – instead, it uses director Park Chan-wook’s sense of style and space to tell complementary stories of grief. By separating intent and action through a series of salacious plot twists, Park unites the players in grief across classes: deaf-mute laborer Ryu and his corporate superior Dong-jin and the left-wing terrorist Yeoung...

"But when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11 Richard Linklater’s breakthrough film is a cultural touchstone not for the 1970s, but how people who grew up in the 1970s remembered the 1970s in the 1990s. It’s a little bit preservationist and a little bit precious, but it’s remembered as a fun portrait of teenagehood post-Summer of Love and pre-Reagan – whatever that w...

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN does something The Office and Parks and Recreation could not: It walks a line between mocking life in Blaine, Missouri, and memorializing it without getting all sentimental. In this episode, we cut away for a few talking head segments that dive into the mockumentary’s pacing, focus, and empathy for the weirdos whose talent is outweighed by their desire to be somebody. “For The...

Sometimes, you just gotta feed the content monster… ‘cause he’s got the freakin’ MUNCHIES! Join us for a fun experiment in covering current-run movies – just stuff all three of us saw within the last month or so. Cody’s the only one who actually saw any of them with MoviePass, so the pun still works. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.co...

With special guest Kelly Krantz (https://twitter.com/kransekage_)! You may love THE DOOM GENERATION for its gonzo mix of sexploitation, comic violence, overacting, and non-comic violence, or you may hate it for… exactly the same reasons! Director Gregg Araki says he makes films “for” queer folks – and in this episode, we dig into what that means for a movie where people are getting their limbs blo...

Content warning: Depictions of sexual assault and suicide. During the Meiji period, Japanese society was seemingly split between those who desired the modernization that came with Western influence and those who insisted on upholding a “pure” Japan marked by tradition and classical thought – all in the borders of one country. LADY SNOWBLOOD is two things, too: It’s a stylish manga adaptation about...

Content warning: Depictions of domestic violence and suicide. THE GETAWAY follows a pretty conventional structure. Depending on how you look at it, that might flatten it a little bit or it might make its jagged edges a little more interesting! Either way, it’s worth examining as Sam Peckinpah’s most commercially successful movie – and another weird example of his incisive take on toxic masculinity...

Highly stylized, dark, and often gross, THE HEROIC TRIO is kind of a dark, inverted portrait of superhero movies that would come to dominate box offices in the 2000s. In this episode, we trace the impact of movies like THE HEROIC TRIO through the decades, from Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) to Sam Raimi’s DARKMAN (1990) and beyond. We also talk about the pissing kids and so much more! Get tickets to “...

Content warning: Discussions of attempted sexual assault. Reprehensible and unrepentant, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA trades in the same extensive violence and fragility-masked-by-corruption that became a trademark of director Sam Peckinpah. Running a seedy bar in Mexico City, small-time lowlife Bennie sees a chance to elevate himself above his station when the titular job lands in his lap....

Another entry in the “what do you even say about that movie” category, THE PRINCESS BRIDE is a seminal fantasy comedy that came smack in the middle of director Rob Reiner’s insane 1980s run. Anyway, a couple of us have incredibly strong nostalgia for it and a couple of us are more measured in our enthusiasm-cum-respect for the quirky comedy. It’s literally one of our most approachable episodes eve...

Absurd, theatrical, and meandering, THE TRIAL is an almost faithful adaptation of Kafka’s literary critique of legal bureaucracy. In this episode, we talk about the movie’s lack of narrative pull, its garish monochrome palette and impressive set design, and what it says that Orson Welles changed the lens of Kafka’s novel to focus on the individual – and then cast himself as the villain. Watch THE...

EMPEROR OF THE NORTH rides (haha) a thin line between two distinct tracks (lmao): “Mythological self-seriousness with a sort of ironic bent” and “formulaic and cheesy early thriller fare”. Lee Marvin’s A No. 1 and Keith Carradine’s Cigaret face off against a cartoonishly evil Ernest Borgnine as Shack, the psychotically disgruntled company man with a hatchet (or hammer) for hobos. It’s all a bit MA...

It turns out there’s no fence-sitting at the end of the Wild West. You wouldn’t call THE WILD BUNCH particularly swashbuckling, but there’s a sort of uncomfortable excitement to its bandolier antics. A band of outlaws eyes one last prize near the US/Mexico border in 1913. The sociopolitical tumult of the place, and the rapid advance of the punitive system of capital at the time, threaten to derail...

In RATCATCHER, everything is someone’s fault, but not everyone suffers for it. “Ratcatcher: Death, Garbage, and Glimpses of Beauty in 1970s Glasgow” by Dan Howard for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/03/26/ratcatcher-death-garbage-and-glimpses-of-beauty-in-1970s-glasgow/ “The Eyes of Morton Are Upon You: Morvern Callar and the Art of Expression” by Natalie Marlin for Pe...

Special guest Emma Youndtsmith joins Trylove for the first time to discuss a classic of ‘70s animated adaptations! WATERSHIP DOWN has a reputation for ruining childhoods, with gruesome imagery and dark implications about the systems of power in the natural world. You could read it as a post-WWII allegory, as a broader indictment of fascist hegemony, or just as a journey of self-discovery. But with...