Filmsuck (archived) — 2019/2020

Podcast Episode

This week’s Filmsuck is our public service in honor of the holidays! We discuss “hidden gems” of cinema, the great obscure films we love, including a long list compiled from suggestions by subscribers and friends. Bonus: a few Christmas movie suggestions!

On this week’s Filmsuck we try to figure out what the bright idea was behind the Netfix movie Mank directed by David Fincher from a script by his father Jack Fincher. It’s about screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’s fight with Orson Welles over script credit on Citizen Kane, a potentially interesting topic garbled up with fictional events and a total lack of imagination.

We’re discussing the hit Netflix series Queen’s Gambit after at least a hundred people recommended it. As Evgenia sums up this beguiling show, it’s about “the Wednesday Addams of chess.”’

On this week’s Filmsuck we talk about the new four-episode Showtime docuseries The Reagans, which makes the case for Ronald Reagan’s sleazy, racist, ruling-class demagoguery as California governor and two-term president paving the way for the vile politics of Donald Trump. Includes copious quotes from Eileen’s in-depth interview with docuseries director Matt Tyrnauer.

In this week’s special election episode of Filmsuck, we discuss the broad shift in the way the American election process has been represented in movies from WWII to the present day, and talk about some of our favorite election films including The Best Man, The Candidate, The Manchurian Candidate, Election, Dave, and an obscure new favorite of ours called Spinning Boris.

We interview film critic David Heslin, editor of Metro, Australia’s oldest film magazine, about the long career and many films of legendary French director Agnes Varda (Cleo From 5 to 7, Vagabond, One Sings the Other Doesn’t, The Gleaners and I).

Halloween Filmsuck! We interview Slavic languages scholar Sophie Pinkham, whose New Left Review piece “Nihilism for Oligarchs” got us interested in the scary, crazy, hard-to-classify set of Russian films called Dau. Financed by an oligarch, these films represent the efforts of thousands of mostly non-professional actors who spent years in period costumed, performing in character as oppressed Soviets living in an elaborate scientific institute set based on the one occupied by real-life physicist Lev Landau (nicknamed “Dau”). Lurid rumors of despotic directorial control, sexual assault, exploitation and animal cruelty have made these films highly controversial. You can watch the films here: https://www.dau.com/en And here is Sophie's article behind the paywall. Our patrons will get it in the pdf format. https://newleftreview.org/issues/II125/articles/sophie-pinkham-nihilism-for-oligarchs

This week’s Filmsuck takes on the Sofia Coppola problem. We talk about her new movie premiering on Apple Plus TV, On the Rocks, which has strong Lost in Translation vibes. It’s about the daddy issues (Bill Murray is the daddy) of an affluent but creatively blocked writer (Rashida Jones) who thinks her husband (Marlon Wayans) is cheating on her. It’s being described as a screwball comedy, which will surprise you if you see it and fail to laugh even once!

In this week’s Filmsuck we interview Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley, about the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma. It's supposed be to a scathing critique of Silicon Valley's manipulative social media business practices...yet why the hell does this crap film refuse to chart the actual history of the internet and the way its operations are entirely consistent with the ordinary workings of capitalism?