This week, Morgan and Gavia discuss the first installment in Alan Pakula's paranoia trilogy, the 1971 film Klute, starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. Topics include Fonda's career and star persona, the film's relationship to both the paranoia thriller genre and to second wave feminism, its depiction of sex work, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss the beloved 2011 alien invasion movie Attack the Block, written and directed by Joe Cornish and starring John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker. Topics include the film's superb screenplay and slick direction, its smart fusion of genre and social commentary, Boyega's breakout performance and star persona, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan take a critical look at Oscar darling Promising Young Woman, the debut film from Emerald Fennell that stars Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham. Topics include the film's dubious approach to rape revenge narratives, its generally lackluster screenplay, its hollow aesthetic, and more. (TW for discussions of rape and sexual violence)
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan dive into Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece In the Mood for Love, starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as star-crossed lovers in 1960s Hong Kong whose spouses are having an affair. Topics include the film's rich visual language, its influence on current cinema, stunning performances from Leung and Cheung, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss the 2019 anime film Promare, from Studio Trigger. Topics include the film's queer subtext, its electrifying visuals, the many unexpected twists of its screenplay, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan dive into the nineties classic Men in Black, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as special agents tasked with supervising Earth's alien population. They discuss the film's political subtext, the star personas and winning performances of its lead actors, Sonnenfeld's visual panache as a director, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss John Cassavetes' 1977 film Opening Night, starring Gena Rowlands as an alcoholic actress struggling with a lead role in a Broadway play. Topics include Cassavetes' fascinating career, his collaboration with Rowlands, the film's treatment of the theater, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss Craig Roberts' indie dramedy Eternal Beauty, starring Sally Hawkins as a woman with paranoid schizophrenia. Topics include the film's stylistic influences, its frustrating treatment of mental illness, performances by Hawkins, Billie Piper, and David Thewlis, and much more.
Read MoreFor their 200th (!) episode, Gavia and Morgan take a trip to James Cameron's celebrated epic Titanic. They discuss the trope-laden but irresistible romance between Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron's dictatorial directing style, the phenomenon surrounding the film and its stars after its release, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss Sidney Poitier's highest-grossing film, A Patch of Blue (1965), in which Poitier stars as a man who befriends a young, blind white woman played by Elizabeth Hartman. They discuss Poitier's storied career, the film's complex treatment of race and disability, Hollywood in the 1960s, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan finally watch Christopher Nolan's much-delayed blockbuster Tenet, starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh. They, alas, bemoan its incoherent plotting, lousy treatment of women, muddy sound design, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Morgan and Gavia revisit the beloved romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. They place the film in the context of other romantic comedies from the 1930s and 1940s, consider the stars' public personas in conjunction with their roles in this film, discuss the movie's treatment of class and gender, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Morgan and Gavia dissect David Fincher's new film Mank, a biopic of Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter of Citizen Kane. They critique the film's approach to pastiching 1940s movies, question the decision to cast Gary Oldman in the lead role, dive into the film's discrepancies with the life of the real Mankiewicz, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss the trippy world of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's 2017 microbudget horror flick The Endless. They praise the film's innovative use of visual effects technology and tight storytelling technique, compare it to other indie horror films, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan dive into the second installment of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers. They discuss the film's departures from the novel, the difficulties of adapting the source text, Howard Shore's score, Andy Serkis' mesmerizing performance as Gollum, and much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan dig into Ben Wheatley's woefully misguided remake of Rebecca, the 1940 classic by Alfred Hitchcock. They compare the new movie, starring Armie Hammer and Lily James, to the original as well as Daphne du Maurier's beloved novel; bemoan its misunderstanding of the source material; critique its mystifyingly incompetent script; and (alas) much more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss Emilio Estevez's 2019 drama The Public, which stars Estevez as a sympathetic librarian, Michael K. Williams as a homeless man who instigates an overnight occupation of the library on one of the coldest nights of the year, Alec Baldwin as a police negotiator, and many more. Topics include the film's muddled politics, its frustrating employment of the white savior trope, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss the critically acclaimed film 37 Seconds, directed by Hikari and starring Mei Kayama as Yuma, a young woman and manga artist with cerebral palsy. Topics include the film's treatment of disability and Hikari's troublesome statements on this topic, Kayama's strong performance, other depictions of physical disability on film, and more.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan debate the merits of Roland Emmerich’s 1994 hit Stargate, starring James Spader and Kurt Russell. They discuss the film’s throwback entertainments, its questionable colonial politics, and the many TV properties and fandoms its spawned in the decades since.
Read MoreThis week, Morgan and Gavia discuss Elem Klimov's 1985 masterpiece of Soviet cinema Come and See, which follows a young boy (Alexei Kravchenko) through the horrors of Nazi-occupied Belarus in the Second World War. Topics include this film's treatment of war crimes, Hollywood's often romantic depiction of Nazis, the film's masterful cinematography and sound editing, and much more.
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