Junk Filter
181 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 41 ratingsJunk Filter: a podcast about strange and overlooked artifacts from the worlds of film, music and popular culture with a generous side order of jokes and politics. Hosted by Jesse Hawken with guests from the worlds of Politics Twitter and Film Twitter. Original music for the program by Marker Starling. Follow us now on Twitter: @junkfilterpod
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Episodes
170: Fresh (with David Jamell Moses)
June 19, 2024 15:38 - 1 hour - 90.4 MBThe film writer David Jamell Moses joins the show for a discussion about a great nineties film that has been flying under the radar for too long, Boaz Yakin’s debut feature Fresh (1994) starring Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson and a 13 year old actor named Sean Nelson making his film debut, in one of the greatest screen acting performances by a child. Nelson plays Michael (aka Fresh), a quiet 12-year-old boy who runs drugs for rival gangsters in New York City, including one kingpin wh...
TEASER - 169: Cannon’s Prestige Pictures (with Jessica Ritchey)
May 28, 2024 02:10 - 6 minutes - 5.72 MBAccess this entire 105 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows) by becoming a Junk Filter patron for only $5.00 (US) a month! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/169-cannons-with-105061266 The film writer Jessica Ritchey returns for a show about Cannon Films, and the aggressive attempt by “The Go-Go Boys” Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to bring legitimacy to their schlock studio by financing projects designed to wi...
168: Second Wave Ska (with Elana Levin)
May 14, 2024 17:57 - 1 hour - 87.1 MBElana Levin from Graphic Policy Radio returns to the show for a deep dive into the second wave of Ska music, a brief but influential era when black and white UK musicians fused Jamaican dance music of the sixties into punk and new wave music of the seventies to create a sound that would further revolutionize American popular music in the nineties. The modern ska genre gets made fun of a lot (mozzarella sticks, anyone?) but Elana will have you know that ska music is not a joke. In an 18-mont...
TEASER - 167: Civil War (with Ursula Lawrence)
April 24, 2024 20:06 - 5 minutes - 5.38 MBAccess this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/167-civil-war-102981212 The comedy writer Ursula Lawrence (Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything) returns to the show from Madison, Wisconsin to discuss A24’s first foray into blockbuster filmmaking, Alex Garland’s Civil War, set in a near-future America torn into factions, ...
166: Road House (with Sean T. Collins)
April 15, 2024 12:31 - 1 hour - 95.9 MBThe writer Sean T. Collins joins the pod from Long Island for a deep dive into the original 1989 Road House and the 2024 remake now streaming on Amazon Prime. Sean’s book Pain Don’t Hurt offered daily meditations on specific elements of Road House for an entire year, and we discuss the many virtues of this eighties classic about Dalton, the second-greatest bouncer in the world (Patrick Swayze) who is hired by the owner of a violent honkytonk bar in Jasper, Missouri to clean up the place, ra...
165: Deep in the Heart (with Jonathan Hertzberg of Fun City Editions)
April 03, 2024 13:23 - 1 hour - 76.4 MBCW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence. The founder of Fun City Editions, Jonathan Hertzberg, joins the podcast from New York City to discuss the boutique video label and their latest blu-ray release, 1983’s Deep in the Heart, aka Handgun, directed by Ken Loach’s longtime English producer Tony Garnett. Deep in the Heart, a brutal portrayal of American gun culture as seen from an outsider’s perspective, stars the undersung actress Karen Young in her screen debut as a Boston sc...
TEASER - 164: Ghostbusters V (with Adam Jackson)
March 31, 2024 00:02 - 5 minutes - 4.81 MBAccess this entire 89 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/164-ghostbusters-101387544 The writer and friend of the pod Adam Jackson returns for a show about the Ghostbusters series, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with the latest installment, Ghostbusters V. We discuss the entire saga; from Ivan Reitman’s classic o...
163: Tenet (with Corey Atad)
March 26, 2024 20:56 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBThe writer Corey Atad joins me from Phuket, Thailand for a sequel to our Junk Filter episode about Bane that turned into a discussion about Tenet, and we return to the topic because of the recent cultural reconsideration of Christopher Nolan’s 2020 time-bending thriller, which was released during the pandemic and has taken some time to find an audience. Tenet got a one-week re-release in 70mm and IMAX 70mm in the leadup to this year’s Academy Awards, and Corey and I discuss the film as Nol...
TEASER - 162: The Zone of Interest (with James Slaymaker)
March 23, 2024 01:57 - 6 minutes - 6.26 MBAccess this entire 99 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/162-zone-of-with-100893723 The writer James Slaymaker, author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, returns to the pod from Southampton to discuss Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. In this wide-ranging conversation James and I discuss Glazer’s methodology to a...
161: Dune: Part Two - The Kwisatz Tabarnak (with Jacob Bacharach)
March 15, 2024 22:00 - 1 hour - 88.1 MBThe author Jacob Bacharach returns for a sequel to our Junk Filter episode about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, with a look at his long-awaited Dune: Part Two. Villeneuve said in interviews that he thought of Frank Herbert’s novel as an allegory for the French Canadians under the thumb of the authoritarian government of Maurice Duplessis that used the Catholic Church to subjugate the Quebecois people before the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Jacob and I use this allegory as a jumping off point t...
TEASER - 160: Burt Reynolds in the Eighties (with Will Sloan)
March 11, 2024 18:24 - 5 minutes - 5.1 MBThe writer and podcaster Will Sloan is back for a show about Burt Reynolds, who started the eighties as the most popular movie star in America but who by the end of the decade was consigned to a series of B-movies that asked less and less of him, in the years before his unexpected mid-nineties comeback in Boogie Nights (a film he hated even though he won awards and nominations for his performance). We discuss several of his eighties projects with a particular focus on four of them: his best...
UNLOCKED: 139: Oppenheimer (with Corey Atad)
March 11, 2024 02:50 - 1 hour - 106 MBIn honour of Oppenheimer winning the Oscar for Best Picture, we're unlocking our July 26, 2023 premium episode about the film. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are available exclusively to patrons of the podcast: you can support the show directly and get every episode by going to patreon.com/junkfilter The film writer Corey Atad returns to the show for a deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer. Beyond a discussion of the film itself we review the several film format...
159: Year of the Dragon (with Adam Nayman)
February 23, 2024 19:04 - 1 hour - 79.5 MBCW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence and racist themes. The film critic and author Adam Nayman returns to the show for a deep dive into Michael Cimino’s 1985 pulp crime thriller Year of the Dragon, starring Mickey Rourke, John Lone and introducing the fashion model Ariane Koizumi as the female lead. Year of the Dragon was Cimino’s attempt to reassert himself as an important (and commercially viable) American filmmaker after his post-Deer Hunter fall from grace in the wake ...
158: The Sci-Fi Visions of Peter Hyams (with Brandon Streussnig)
February 05, 2024 20:55 - 1 hour - 92.8 MBThe film writer Brandon Streussnig (Vulture, Fangoria, GQ) joins the pod for a discussion about the undersung director Peter Hyams through four of his science fiction movies across a career full of genre work, films that reveal a singular style can be applied to a craftsman, a former Chicago newsman turned director who also (controversially for his industry) served as his own cinematographer. His all-star conspiracy theory thriller Capricorn One (1977) established Hyams as a filmmaker who c...
TEASER - 157: Five Corners (with Kieran Grant)
January 19, 2024 15:17 - 4 minutes - 3.81 MBAccess this entire 89 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/157-five-corners-96799903 The music and film writer and editor Kieran Grant joins us to discuss the 1987 comedy/drama Five Corners, a cult film we love that has been hard to see properly for many years. The first American production from George Harrison’s HandMade Films, F...
156: The Cassandra Cat (with Ashley Naftule)
January 08, 2024 19:54 - 1 hour - 61 MBArizona-based writer and playwright Ashley Naftule returns to the podcast for a look at the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s, focusing on the recently rediscovered 1963 film The Cassandra Cat, and its director Vojtěch Jasný. In the strange fairy tale The Cassandra Cat, a village is disrupted when a travelling circus comes to town featuring a magical cat wearing sunglasses who can reveal the true natures of the townsfolk by changing their colours when he looks at them, turning thieves grey...
TEASER - 155: O.J.: Made in America - Part 2 (with Karen Geier)
December 31, 2023 17:53 - 4 minutes - 4.17 MBAccess this entire 107 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/155-o-j-made-in-95579279 In the second part of our salute to Ezra Edelman’s 2016 documentary O.J.: Made in America, Karen Geier and I discuss the back half of the film; from the beginning of the criminal trial, to the ways the prosecution messed up their argument and allow...
154: O.J.: Made in America - Part 1 (with Karen Geier)
December 26, 2023 15:33 - 1 hour - 99.2 MBThe writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns for a deep dive into Ezra Edelman’s Oscar-winning documentary from 2016, O.J.: Made in America, made for ESPN’s film unit ’30 for 30’ but released in theatres (the Academy changed the rules for the Documentary category after this 5 part docuseries won). This episode covers the first half of this fantastic 467 minute documentary, from O.J.’s origins as a superstar athlete and celebrity pitchman, his stormy marriage to Nicole that led to h...
TEASER - 153: Godzilla Minus One (with Ben Clarkson)
December 20, 2023 15:36 - 5 minutes - 5.17 MBAccess this entire 93 minute episode and additional monthly bonus episodes by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/153-godzilla-one-95000376 The cartoonist and co-creator of Justice Warriors, Ben Clarkson, joins the pod from Montreal to talk about Godzilla Minus One, the 33rd film in Toho Studios' venerable series which turns 70 years old next year. As big budget Hollywood movies underperform an...
152: Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (with Jacob Bacharach)
December 06, 2023 16:29 - 1 hour - 89.8 MBThe author Jacob Bacharach returns for a show about Ridley Scott’s latest, the 200 million dollar epic Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby. History nerds, YouTube film cranks and the Roman statue bluechecks on Twitter are up in arms about the latest from the Riddler, for straying too far from the real history and most egregiously for hiring their beloved Joker to portray their beloved Emperor of France as a cucked loser. Jacob and I highly enjoyed it as old Hollywood specta...
151: The Marvels & The Heroic Trio (with Jessica Ritchey)
November 22, 2023 02:23 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBThe writer Jessica Ritchey returns to the pod for a show about the continuing collapse of the superhero movie as the dominant American film genre with the latest MCU entry, Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, which cost $270 million dollars and after 4 release date changes finally opened last week and bombed as hard as a Marvel movie has ever bombed, especially considering it’s the sequel to a movie that made well over a billion dollars in 2019. We discuss what went wrong with The Marvels and the t...
150: The Exorcist (with Meg Shields)
November 06, 2023 17:42 - 1 hour - 70.6 MBFor the 150th episode of the podcast, returning guest Meg Shields joins me from Vancouver for a show about William Friedkin’s legendary horror film The Exorcist, which turns 50 years old this December. I had always been TOO SCARED to watch the original Exorcist (even though I had seen the first two sequels) so for this podcast, as a farewell tribute to Hurricane Billy who passed away this August, I watched it for the first time. Meg and I discuss this prototypical blockbuster based on the b...
TEASER - 149: Terence Davies (with Ben Nash and James Slaymaker)
October 30, 2023 16:16 - 3 minutes - 3.34 MBAccess this entire 83 minute episode and additional monthly bonus episodes by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/149-terence-with-91945894 To mark the passing of the great British filmmaker Terence Davies, I’m joined for this episode by two returning guests from the UK who are both big Davies heads, the film writers Ben Nash and James Slaymaker. Davies was from the working class and only became...
148: Sam Peckinpah: Junior Bonner (with Brian Abrams)
September 25, 2023 16:21 - 1 hour - 73.9 MBThe writer Brian Abrams, author of the new book "You Talkin' to Me?”: The Definitive Guide to Iconic Movie Quotes, joins me from New York City to discuss Sam Peckinpah and his underrated 1972 rodeo drama Junior Bonner starring Steve McQueen and Joe Don Baker. Right after Peckinpah wrapped on his controversial Straw Dogs in England, he jumped into production on Junior Bonner, a small-stakes character study about an aging rodeo rider (McQueen) who returns to his hometown of Prescott, Arizona ...
TEASER - 147: Miami Vice: GTA Vice City and John Woo (with Toph)
September 04, 2023 13:58 - 6 minutes - 5.93 MBAccess this entire 80 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/147-miami-vice-88727844 For the eighth episode in our Miami Vice series, Twitchstreamer and friend of the show Toph returns from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to discuss the international influence Vice had on gaming, manga and Hong Kong acti...
TEASER - 146: Miami Vice: Attack of the Clones (with Jessica Ritchey)
August 28, 2023 14:00 - 3 minutes - 3.58 MBAccess this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/146-miami-vice-88370980 Success breeds imitators, and on this seventh instalment of the pod’s Miami Vice series, the writer Jessica Ritchey returns to discuss the cultural peak of the series at the start of Season 2 and some now-forgo...
145: Papa Loach (with James Slaymaker)
August 24, 2023 13:28 - 1 hour - 82 MBThe writer James Slaymaker, author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, returns to the pod from Southampton for a discussion of selected works from the veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach, who at age 87 is about to release what is said to be his final feature, The Old Oak. Ken Loach’s 1969 feature Kes is a staple of the British school curriculum to this day and his 2016 film I, Daniel Blake won the Palme d’or at Cannes and was a big hit in the UK. We discuss the role Loach recently ...
144: Big Love for Pee-wee (with Karen Geier)
August 14, 2023 16:45 - 1 hour - 78.3 MBThe writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns to the pod to say farewell to Paul Reubens and his iconic Pee-wee Herman character. Reubens created the Pee-wee character in the mid 1970s as part of the LA improv troupe The Groundlings, in a cohort that included Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks. A failed attempt to join the cast of SNL in 1980 doubled his resolve to be successful; he took his Pee-wee Herman show from cult status on stage to a smash-hit movie for Warner Bros. (the feature deb...
TEASER - 143: Miami Vice: Ripped from the Headlines (with Matthew Kinkaid)
August 12, 2023 01:28 - 4 minutes - 4.04 MBAccess this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/143-miami-vice-87557729 Friend of the show and Miami Vice head Matthew Kinkaid joins us from San Antonio, Texas for the sixth episode in our summer sidebar series. We discuss selected Vice episodes from Seasons 3 and 4; when Michael ...
142: Breathless ’83 (with Aaron and Carlee from Hit Factory)
August 06, 2023 16:29 - 1 hour - 99.1 MBAaron and Carlee from the Hit Factory podcast return from San Francisco for a deep dive into the underrated 1983 American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark film Breathless, directed by Jim McBride. Assailed at the time of release for being a shallow exercise in style, to watch Breathless 40 years later is to see a work arguably as influential on the next generation of American filmmakers as Godard’s original had been on the New American Cinema of the 1970s; the remake’s cocktail of retro...
141: Miami Vice: Captain Real Estate (with Jeb Lund)
August 01, 2023 14:06 - 1 hour - 106 MBOn the fifth episode of this podcast’s summer sidebar series on NBC’s crime drama Miami Vice, the writer and podcaster Jeb Lund joins me from Tampa, Florida for a look at the two-season story arc that pitted Bob Balaban against G. Gordon Liddy. Balaban’s Ira Stone, an Army reporter who served with Sonny Crockett in Vietnam, shows up in Miami 10 years later tracking down his sworn enemy, the mysterious drug trafficker turned private militia financier “Captain Real Estate”, played by the Water...
TEASER - 140: Miami Vice: The Glamorous Life (with Sean Armstrong)
July 29, 2023 22:06 - 4 minutes - 3.97 MBAccess this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/140-miami-vice-86864671 The Miami Vice sidebar series continues with returning guest Sean Armstrong, a Toronto-based veteran boom operator for film and television (Star Trek: Discovery, Hannibal) For this episode we discuss the influe...
TEASER - 139: Oppenheimer (with Corey Atad)
July 26, 2023 15:44 - 5 minutes - 4.76 MBAccess this entire 115 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/139-oppenheimer-86689014 The film writer Corey Atad returns to the show for a deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer. Beyond a discussion of the film itself we review the several film formats Oppenheimer has been released in theatrically, how this movie ref...
138: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (with Scout Tafoya)
July 12, 2023 14:06 - 1 hour - 79.7 MBThe writer and filmmaker Scout Tafoya, author of the new book But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, joins the show to discuss one of Ford’s greatest films, the 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin. Made in the twilight of Ford’s career, the downbeat Liberty Valance is an example of what we would now call a filmmaker’s Late Style: a veteran director taking stock of their own legacy in their final works. Li...
137: Shatner in the Seventies (with Jessica Ritchey)
July 07, 2023 20:29 - 1 hour - 78.6 MBThe writer and critic Jessica Ritchey returns to the show for a look at the strange body of work William Shatner put together in the 1970s, the wilderness years in between the end of the Star Trek TV series and the start of the Star Trek film series. We focus on four of his films, all currently available to watch on YouTube: The Horror At 37,000 Feet (1973), a TV movie that combines The Exorcist with the Airport series, with Shatner as a defrocked priest fighting against the demonic posse...
TEASER - 136: Miami Vice: Castillo (with Sarah Kurchak)
July 01, 2023 14:49 - 2 minutes - 2.59 MBAccess this entire 102 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/136-miami-vice-85397729 Our Miami Vice series continues with Sarah Kurchak, a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in Time and Hazlitt, to discuss one of the greatest tv characters of all time, the commander of the Metro-Dade Organized Crime Bureau, Vice Division, Lt. Marti...
135: The Flash (with Adam Jackson)
June 23, 2023 16:20 - 1 hour - 94.2 MBReturning guest Adam Jackson joined me to bear witness to the box office failure The Flash, on track to lose Warner Bros 200 million dollars after opening with a dismal box office take that was less than half of what was originally projected. The Flash was caught up in several nightmares, including the public meltdown of its star Ezra Miller and three regime changes at WB/DC that led to several reshoots and a strange marketing plan that played down Miller and played up the various Batmans ...
TEASER - 134: Miami Vice: Dark Vice (with Morgan Richter)
June 19, 2023 18:32 - 5 minutes - 4.67 MBAccess this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/134-miami-vice-84809752 To continue our summer sidebar on NBC’s Miami Vice, we’re joined from Seattle by the author and pop-culture expert Morgan Richter, creator and host of Miami Vice Changed Everything on YouTube. Michael Mann once referred to the tone of Miami Vice as “Sunset N...
133: Miami Vice: The Calderone Arc (with James Majure)
June 12, 2023 12:29 - 1 hour - 79.2 MBThe pod’s sidebar series on NBC’s revolutionary TV crime drama Miami Vice (1984-1989) begins with returning guest and friend of the show James Majure joining us from Athens, GA. There is so much to discuss in terms of the influence of Vice on contemporary culture but we’re starting at the beginning, with the origins of the idea of Miami Vice, a glimpse into the real world conditions in the city of Miami in the early 80s that led to the concept, how the show refined its style and formula ove...
TEASER - 132: Rising Sun (with Aden Jordan)
June 07, 2023 02:50 - 3 minutes - 2.84 MBAccess this entire 84 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/132-rising-sun-84172029 I’m joined by Aden Jordan, a grant writer based in Southern California and patron of the podcast, to discuss Philip Kaufman’s 1993 deeply strange and lurid murder mystery Rising Sun, based on the bestseller by Michael Crichton, starring Sean Connery and Wesle...
131: Tubi or Not Tubi (with Doug Tilley)
May 29, 2023 16:54 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBCinema Smorgasbord’s Doug Tilley joins the pod for a discussion of the two major AVOD streaming services, Tubi and Pluto TV, and their massive libraries of free content, brought to you with short but forced advertising breaks. Even though Tubi has over 60 million regular monthly users, it still feels like an underground streaming platform, carrying tens of thousands of obscure films and documentaries along with recognizable catalog titles from major film studios spanning decades. Doug regu...
TEASER - 130: Return of the Jedi (with Rob Rousseau)
May 23, 2023 14:03 - 3 minutes - 3.49 MBAccess this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/130-return-of-83425574 Rob Rousseau returns to the show from Montreal for an episode commemorating this week’s 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi. Episode VI of “The Skywalker Saga” is not on the level of the first two films in the original trilogy but it’s still a lot of fun, ...
129: History of the Eagles (with Maggie Serota)
May 14, 2023 14:40 - 1 hour - 83.9 MBThe writer Maggie Serota returns to the show for a deep dive into the 2013 music documentary for Showtime, History of the Eagles, directed by Alison Ellwood. This comprehensive 3 hour documentary is the official story of one of America’s biggest rock bands, spanning their massive popularity in the seventies, their solo careers in the eighties and their reunion in the nineties, but Maggie and I think that as entertaining as the movie must be for fans of The Eagles, it’s even more fun to watc...
128: How to Blow Up a Pipeline (with Corey Atad)
April 20, 2023 17:42 - 1 hour - 85.3 MBThe writer Corey Atad returns to the pod for a discussion of the controversial new eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, an action film inspired by Andreas Malm’s best-selling non-fiction work that argues in favour of direct and destructive action against the fossil fuel industry to escalate the battle against climate change. The film dramatizes the blowing-up of a pipeline by depicting the act as if it were a heist film, with stopwatch-precise editing and flashbacks explaining how the mem...
TEASER - 127: The Benaissance: Air (with Ursula Lawrence)
April 14, 2023 00:57 - 4 minutes - 4.45 MBAccess this entire 77 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/127-benaissance-81474016 The comedy writer Ursula Lawrence returns to the podcast from Madison, Wisconsin for a discussion of the latest film from Ben Affleck as a director, Air, a film made by Amazon Studios that was so well-received when it screened at SXSW that it got picked up b...
126: Paint Your Wagon & Black Adam (with Jessica Ritchey)
March 31, 2023 17:41 - 1 hour - 85.1 MBThe Maryland-based writer and critic Jessica Ritchey is my special guest for a show that compares the current decline in the interconnected comic book movie business to the collapse in the late sixties of the Roadshow Musical with a look at the notorious 1969 musical western Paint Your Wagon (starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood) with 2022’s box office disappointment Black Adam, meant to launch a new DC superhero franchise for star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Hubris connects these two movi...
TEASER - 125: Sexy Beast (with Dan Siber)
March 10, 2023 02:25 - 3 minutes - 3.29 MBAccess this entire 84 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/125-sexy-beast-79799951 Dan Siber, an avid listener of the show and a Junk Filter patron, pitched his way on to the show for a discussion of Jonathan Glazer’s British crime drama Sexy Beast (2000), which is getting a prequel streaming series on Paramount+ this fall. Sexy Beast stands apart from the other cool British crime films of the period because ...
124: Raquel Welch and Myra Breckinridge (with Karen Geier)
February 28, 2023 19:47 - 1 hour - 78.9 MBToronto-based writer and content strategist Karen Geier returns to the show to discuss the late screen goddess Raquel Welch and her greatest role as a trans woman out to destroy the Hollywood patriarchy in the 1970 film version of Gore Vidal’s controversial best-selling novel Myra Breckinridge, produced on a high budget by 20th Century Fox in the early days of the new X rating. Long considered one of the worst movies ever made, Karen and I mount a defense of Myra Breckinridge as a ruthless ...
TEASER - 123: The Dick Tracy Trilogy (with Will Sloan)
February 19, 2023 04:11 - 3 minutes - 2.77 MBAccess this entire 70 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! https://www.patreon.com/posts/123-dick-tracy-78893447 The writer and podcaster Will Sloan returns for a show about Warren Beatty and his now-decades long relationship to Chester Gould’s classic thirties comic strip detective Dick Tracy. We discuss what we can now call The Dick Tracy trilogy: the gorgeously crafted 1990 blockbuster he starred in and directed, and two curious no-bud...
122: Aftersun (with Rafa Sales Ross)
February 14, 2023 19:54 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBThis episode contains major spoilers and deals with difficult subject matter, so please watch the film before you listen to this discussion. Freelance film critic and programmer Rafa Sales Ross joins me from Scotland to discuss Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun, starring newcomer Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in an Academy Award-nominated performance as Calum, a Scottish single father who takes his 11 year old daughter Sophie on a trip to a resort in Turkey in the late nineties, a sto...