NathanGordon

I've never seen it either! I'm not a Scorsese fan and haven't seen many of his films, apart from the big ones. I did recently watch a BFI produced documentary that Scorsese made in 1995, called A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies . It's basically a 4 hour appreciation of his influences and film history in general. It's very good -- highly recommended. It's in parts on YouTube.

If I don't enjoy pop music, then Moulin Rouge is just a bunch of yodeling idiots flapping their gums, right? I feel like accusing a film of having a trick which some people are unaffected by is a weak argument, because that is essentially how all of cinema operates -- it attempts to cast a specific spell over the viewer, argue a thesis, or ask a question. You think the "gimmick" is just trying to scare you? Because you don't need to be scared for the film to be effective (most horror movies aren't scary at all). Nearly every movie can be narrowed to a single gimmick and that's a reductive lense from which to criticize.

I think he talked about it on his episode of Crybabies, too.

I agree with everything here, and can especially relate to Devin's disliking of how the film actually worked on him, or how he liked how it functioned in spite of it. The style and characters are irritating to spend 90 minutes with but that's why it works, and it wouldn't otherwise. I don't think you can dismiss the marketing as purely a gimmick or not part and parcel of the film -- it's inseparable from it, it's the supertext of The Blair Witch Project. I understand people who hate it, but it's pop culture canon and absolutely part of this canon.

Everything is completely stupid in this movie, but the implied aftermath is INSANE. Americans have just bombed Myanmar, exploded nuclear warheads in Tajikistan, entered Russian airspace and launched missiles (against EDI) there, killed hundreds (thousands?) of civilians, killed several dozen Americans (including military personnel), and finally entered North Korea to start an international incident at the DMZ. Oh, and then left pieces of this still apparently functional super stealth bomber laying around. Okay, so it wasn't just me! That was bizarre.

I guess when I watch this, I identify with the characters getting lost in the woods. I grew up in a heavily forested part of the Pacific Northwest, and often got quite lost when I was younger. I used to have nightmares about getting lost or waking up alone in the woods. It was also around the time of the Green River killer, and there was a lot of panic about hitchhiking but also satanic murders, child abductions, and bodies found in the woods (a la Stand By Me). I feel like there was a lot of irrational hysteria in the early 1980s surrounding serial killers and mysterious kidnappings. So for me, I don't really find the witch stuff compelling (although I do think the ending is effective), but as a document of pants-on-head morons getting lost and desperate, it rings very true to me. I can't think of another film that conveys this as well except maybe Van Sant's Gerry, which is a very different film.

It's one thing when a human writes this as dialogue for another human to say, but it's another thing for the line to go unnoticed by the other characters. I guess Josh Lucas is thinking "Oh boy, she's going peepee with her hoohaw, I hope she plays with my weewee later!" Oof, why is this movie two hours, it's interminable. I'm going to have to watch this in Howard Kramer sized installments.

Metal Gear Solid (which came out the same year, I think) shamelessly ripped off Escape From NY and was still way better.

It's interesting how your perspective changes with time. When I was younger, I wanted to be Ferris Bueller; now I watch it and think that he's kind of a shit head who deserves a comeuppance. It's a fun movie, although it's not really saying much. The Breakfast Club is probably the quintessential film about white suburban angst from that decade. Again, now when I watch it I find myself sympathizing with the adult characters. Breakfast Club touches on some middle age weariness shared between the principal and janitor but it's not explored in depth. His films are always about the kids -- adults are basically an alien species that does not understand the ways of teenagers. In that sense I think they're a lot more nostalgic than something like Stand By Me, because they depict this totally idealized fantasy version of teenage life: they always get the cute guy/girl at the end, the adults are always dumb and lose (except for one sage character), whatever silly antics they get into are completely justified, and characters are almost always stereotypes (nerd, jock, popular blonde, etc).

So... when are the Howdies happening? I'm frothing with anticipation.

Miss Sodaro sounded so much like a friendly hobo on her way to an AA meeting for the free coffee that I had to check and make sure I wasn't riding a bus downtown.

This movie is frustrating because it never bothers to explain its internal mythology -- and you can't go to the source, because this is an original Stephen King screenplay. So many questions: Where/how/why the fuck do these cat-people shapeshifters exist? Except for the cursory psuedo-history in the introduction, there's exactly ONE line that references any context for their being -- the mother says something like "there's got to be more of us out there, we can't be the last ones". So are they searching for other "sleepwalkers"? Is their race being hunted, or are they dying out? Are the cats other shapeshifters, or are they just regular cats? Does this mean ALL cats are after the sleepwalkers? Why? And for that matter, why are cat-people fatally allergic (or whatever) to cats? This seems like an insane weakness for one species to have. On that note, it's no wonder the sleepwalkers have gone extinct -- they are fucking terrible at their jobs. The son spends the whole movie getting his ass kicked by a single teenage girl. The mother apparently can't even leave the house. How the hell have they even made it this far? What exactly are their powers? The shape shifting seems to come only out of surprise or anger, rather than need. They never change shape for any useful reason, other than to simply turn invisible, stay still, and hide. What a shitty power. Oh, and they can apparently turn a car (all cars? What about other things?) invisible, and change it from a Mustang to a Thunderbird. If you can feed on virgins, can you feed on children? It seems like virgins would be in short supply at high schools, especially when they're hot girls like Madchen Amick. Can they only feed on women, or are young men acceptable? Why not just go after another, easier, dumber teenager? Do you really need to take her out to several dates first? Why? WHY?

The Wailing is great! On my list too. People who love a good old CRAZY horror movie should seek it out. It's gonzo in the way that South Korea seems to have nailed over the last several years. Aside from that one, my other 2016 picks would be: The Lobster High Rise (naked Tom Hiddleston, y'all. Luke Evans is also terrific.) Krisha (indie family drama about a shitty alcoholic mother; sympathetic and authentic -- it doesn't excuse or villify the lead's behavior.) Green Room (that belly getting sliced is the movie moment of the year, for me.) Midnight Special disappointed me, but I maybe had too high expectations for it. The Invitation had great writing and excellent blocking in its tiny location, but I found a couple of the performances lacking. Karen Kusayama is a force to be reckoned with. Ha! I gave up trying to stay current musically shortly after I hit 30. Nowadays Pitchfork may as well be in a foreign language (the fuck is vaporwave or Ramones-core).

Wizard of Gore! I love HGL. I think this kind of sleaze may be a little too far off the beaten path for the podcast, though I'd love to hear it addressed at some point. I acknowledge that there was a Cannibal Holocaust episode, but that film is a total bummer. Herschell Gordon Lewis is fun, in the same way that Ed Wood and other z-grade exploitation junk were capable of. It's also fascinating to see how audience tastes and morality with regards to onscreen violence has changed over the years.

I watched this with the commentary last night -- lots of interesting tid bits -- the best revelation was that the single most expensive part of the film was the licensing of the Gilligan's Island theme song. There's a campfire scene at about 30 minutes in where they're joking about the show's characters and Josh briefly quotes a couple of lines. Worth listening to for some of the nuts and bolts of production, although you can find it summarized elsewhere. *Also, lead actress Heather Donahue left Hollywood/LA and is now a commercial marijuana grower. She has a book called "Grow Girl", a memoir about Blair Witch, marijuana, and her spiritual journey.

It's my favorite film of all time and I will fight you IRL.

I still haven't seen anything as magnificent as last year's The Duke of Burgundy. The Lobster of course was fucking fantastic. Weirdly romantic and sweet beneath its bizarre artifice, with a humanist touch that I think some people miss in Lanthimos. He just gets more and more confident, and unlike many foreign directors, didn't compromise his vision at all in his English language debut. The more I think about it, the more I love it. High Rise was not what I expected from Ben Wheatley, but an elevation of his talents to meet the material he adapted. Terrific performances in this film that seems like it's getting buried; there's been zero marketing, it's hardly been shown anywhere, and was released without fanfare to VOD in May. Something I've loved about Wheatley is the distinctly British perspective he brings to his films, whether it's the paganism of the Isles or the politics of Thatcher. Hiddleston is good in this but Luke Evans is amazing and must be seen. The Wailing aka Goksung is a good ol' batshit insane Korean horror film. There's murder, ghosts, demons, exorcism, and enough rain and mud to feel like you're being buried in the muck yourself. It's completely unhinged almost from the get-go and embraces its lunacy in a way that films like I Saw The Devil or HK classic Ebola Syndrome do. Dark, dirty fun. Weiner is amazing, brings up so many questions, and will be relevant forever. Go see it! And thank god Huma finally dumped that idiot. There's not a lot of technique in this but the content is unbelievable. Krisha is a tiny film that played festivals last year and some arthouse theaters this year, but I haven't read much about it online. Which is a shame, because it's one of the best independent films I've seen in a while. Naturally acted -- some of the cast are family -- and writing that feels lived-in and authentic. I know there are a lot of family dramas about alcoholism and addiction, but so few of them really get it right -- I say this as an alcoholic with 13 months of sobriety. This film captures the tragic reality of too many alcoholics who can't stop relapsing, and the family that finally gives up on them. The other crazy thing about Krisha is the look and style of it. It's not showy, but it's far more assured than you'd expect from a debut film. The director, Trey Edward Shults, interned with Terrence Malick on Tree of Life and did some camera work on his newest film. One can only assume Malick's influence is at work in Krisha. Go see it!

Their movies and musicals are far better than South Park the television show. There's individual episodes that stand out but I'm not sure why it has to continue on decades later. I know this podcast is heavily Gen X/Millenial but I'd rather hear some other, older comedy get discussed. Everyone has seen and loves South Park but of that audience, I wonder who has seen Bringing Up Baby or The Thin Man?

I don't find The Exorcist scary at all, not in the slightest, even a little silly. This is why considering a film's context and place in culture is so important. Contemporary fears, news events, cinematic literacy, semantic meanings -- these things change from decade to decade, and now day to day. It's very difficult for a modern viewer to qualify the merits of a film without attempting to quantify what came before, during, and afterwards. I don't mean to imply that you are incapable of this, not at all; this is for my own benefit. For better or worse, a big part of Blair Witch Project's legacy is its marketing. The film drummed up a word of mouth buzz that is probably impossible to achieve today. Again, it's redundant but important to note that this came out right before the cusp of total internet (and subsequent cel phone) saturation. The website for the film didn't look like the product of a typical marketing campaign; it made references to people, places, and events that seemed mundane enough to be authentic. There were photos and information that suggested, if not a documentary, an account of some sorts. Trailers were ambiguous, not really showing anything (while at the same time hiding in plain sight the fact that there was nothing to show), and directed people to the website. Access to information has made modern audiences extremely cynical and critical. This was the case in the 90s, which saw the dominance of corporate radio and cable news, but I believe that mainstream media consumers largely accepted the version of reality they were being presented with. Whatever narrative was being played out, whether it was Operation Desert Storm or The Real World: Seattle, a majority of viewers took it at face value. There was no "lamestream media", no Wikipedia for fact checking, no way to instantly crowdsource anything, and most importantly there was very little way for the general population to broadcast their opinions, criticism, or dissenting views to a larger audience. The Blair Witch Project arrived at the perfect time. Yes, other films had used "found footage", but who saw Cannibal Holocaust beside splatter junkies and film nerds? Other films had used the web for promotion, but no in such an interesting, subversive way; web sites at the time were little more than glorified press kits. Scream (1996) had just given audiences a winking meta horror joke -- "we know this is a movie, you know this is a movie" -- and in a way, Blair Witch takes that self-awareness even further. It's a movie, but is it just a movie? If it's not a "real" movie, then why does it look like a home movie? Why is this even playing in a theater? This doesn't even have a story, and I hate these people. What the fuck? What did I just watch? I'm not ashamed to say I found the ending of Blair Witch unsettling, although I hated everything that came before. I think it's a somewhat accidental but masterful use of classic horror technique, of just enough suggestion to play into a wide swath of anxieties -- satanic panic, being lost in the woods, rural hillbilly killers, annoying white girls, and maybe most presciently, the idea of our most intimate moments being preserved forever as digital video. Even if you don't think it's scary, I think you can appreciate the incredible impact this film had. It's true that a lot of it is "right time, right place" factors, but all art is a product of its time and place. Lastly, Blair Witch came out after a wave of big studios financing indie filmmakers, post-Pulp Fiction, and I think it forever cemented the business model. Hollywood has always loved an easy buck from genre movies, but there was a huge push for cheap independent film after Blair Witch. There's so many films that have benefitted from it, and not just Paranormal Activity. It's crazy to think that a movie made for less than half a million dollars is literally the most profitable film of all time.

I can't believe I've never seen this! I'll have to rectify that immediately. This is back when studios would still fund Ken Russell's occult obsessions and general weirdness. He managed to make some really interesting, bizarre films in the eighties -- Gothic and Lair of the White Worm are pretty out there and entertaining. White Worm would be perfect for HDTGM as well. These days Russell mostly does super cheap SOV cap, I'm not even sure they're movies in the traditional sense, more like magick rituals or something. Too much acid and Huxley, probably.

It's got a few striking images but overall dull and takes itself rather seriously. I don't think it's entered the cultural lexicon in the way that Labyrinth has -- Tim Curry's giant horned devil being the most enduring part of the film. The thing I like about Labyrinth (and to a lesser extent The Neverending Story) is that they craft unique fantasy worlds with mostly original mythologies. Legend is a pastiche of preexisting tropes like fairies, unicorns, and generic fantasy. Which would be fine, if it was doing anything new or interesting, but there's nothing subversive about it. I think this is the reason people don't remember it now; the plot is pretty generic -- which I think was the point, to make an updated mythic story.

I had college classes with Lola a long time ago -- funny, hard working lady. Three white people talking about blaxploitation without another perspective kind of gives me a rash though.

Kathleen Turner's career had already taken a dive by this time due to Hollywood wanting nothing to do with women over 40, but also her struggles with alcoholism. That stuff really catches up with you -- she was a mess and it's not surprising she was in dreck like this. The story of the production of this would be interesting, I think.

Cotton Comes to Harlem would be my pick. A great film in its own right, with more nuance than you'd expect. Black Caesar is quintessential as well, probably Fred Williamson's best, and a standout in the genre. Monkey Hustle is formulaic but has some good performances, as well as mainstay Rudy Ray Moore in a (thankfully) non-leading role. Indulgence choice would be Cleopatra Jones. Shaft is actually just an okay film, although Isaac Hayes' music is incredible. He is so underrated outside of crate diggers and soul-jazz aficionados.