Junk Filter

Latest Episodes:

21: Sad Affleck (with Ursula Lawrence) Mar 19, 2021

Show notes

This episode contains spoilers for both films.

Comedy writer Ursula Lawrence (Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything) joins the show from Madison, Wisconsin to discuss the last few years of the career of Ben Affleck.

Affleck has had quite the decade: after two big hits as a director with The Town and the Academy Award for Best Picture winning Argo, he announced he would be starring as Batman in a series of new DC films. From this point his personal life seemed to go into a tailspin: his marriage ended, the paparazzi covered his every vape break or DoorDash delivery, and he wound up going to rehab twice.

Ursula and I discuss two recent Affleck vehicles, both directed by Gavin O’Connor: 2016’s strange, overstuffed thriller The Accountant, and 2020’s understated alcoholism drama The Way Back.

Follow Ursula Lawrence on Twitter.

A review of The Accountant from the perspective of Tom Iland, an autistic person who is also a Certified Public Accountant!

“The Accountant is another example of Hollywood’s autism problem” by James Luxford, for Little White Lies, November 2016

TEASER - 19: Tony Scott's The Fan (with David Roth) Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

Junk Filter patrons can hear the entire 100 minute episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/48593297

Defector Media’s David Roth joins the podcast from New York City to discuss The Fan, Tony Scott’s 1996 psychological thriller about a deranged San Francisco Giants fan and struggling knife salesman (Robert DeNiro) who develops an extremely unhealthy fixation on superstar slugger Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), a player experiencing his own parallel career crisis. It’s not a good movie but an extremely fun movie to talk about, since it has major tone problems and a storyline that in another pair of hands could have been a great dark satire about the dangers of sports fandom.

David and I also talk at length about the Toronto Blue Jays, a team that might even have a shot this year.

Follow David Roth on Twitter

Trailer for The Fan (Tony Scott, 1996)

Supercut of all the times De Niro says “Bobby!” in The Fan

18: 52 Pick-Up (with Zach Vasquez) Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

Los Angeles-based film writer Zach Vasquez comes on the show to discuss John Frankenheimer’s sordid 1986 crime melodrama 52 Pick-Up, one of the only legit good movies made by Cannon Films, a slept-on eighties classic.

With a screenplay by Elmore Leonard adapted from his 1974 novel, 52 Pick-Up was not well-received upon release but time has been extremely kind to this shocking and grimy thriller about a wealthy businessman (Roy Scheider) who becomes the target of a blackmail plot, and has to use his wits to outsmart a trio of sadistic creeps from the porn world who keep upping the ante to horrifying levels.

Zach and I also talk about that brief period where Cannon Films tried to make prestigious arthouse/grindhouse fare, the greatness of Frankenheimer, the film’s engagement with the sleazy reality of Los Angeles in the eighties, it’s influence on the other great Elmore Leonard LA lowlife crime drama Jackie Brown, and how 52 Pick-Up contains not one but two unforgettable movie villains, Clarence Williams III and John Glover.

Follow Zach Vasquez on Twitter.

Zach's new piece about Fellini, for Crooked Marquee

A nice appreciation of the movie from the New Beverly Cinema blog.

Trailer for 52 Pick-Up (Frankenheimer, 1986)

17: Tha God Takeshi Kitano (with Dan Boeckner) Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

Dan Boeckner of Operators and Wolf Parade joins the pod today from Montreal to discuss Tha God Takeshi Kitano. Outside his homeland Kitano is best known for his prizewinning violent crime dramas, but in Japan “Beat” Takeshi is a superstar TV comedian whose serious arthouse film career was not taken seriously there for several years.

Dan and I discuss two of Kitano’s films that exemplify his singular comic sensibility: the deadpan Boiling Point (1990) and the galaxy-brained sex comedy Getting Any? (1994), two films about the plight of the young, frustrated Japanese male oaf, and the culture that made him this way.

Plus: a celebration of Takeshi Kitano the god of video game design with a look at his hilarious and impossible-to-play eighties game Takeshi’s Challenge (marketed to children!), and some thoughts about the new Adam Curtis documentary series Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

Follow Dan Boeckner on Twitter

Dan just launched a new Canadian politics podcast with Riley Quinn: The Bottlemen.

The incredible karaoke scene from Boiling Point (Kitano, 1990)

Trailer for Getting Any? (Kitano, 1994)

16: Cronenberg's Rabid (with Angelo Muredda) Feb 19, 2021

Show notes

Toronto-based writer and film critic Angelo Muredda joins the pod for a discussion of David Cronenberg’s Canuxploitation classic Rabid (1977), a depiction of a horrifying viral epidemic sweeping the city of Montreal that is fascinating to reconsider today as we approach the one year anniversary of the start of lockdowns in Canada related to the real-world Coronavirus pandemic. We discuss Cronenberg’s use of limited resources and the banality of seventies Canadian architecture and interior design to generate dread, his depictions of institutions and the scientist-monster heroes that serve as his usual protagonists, and we muse aloud about how Ontario Premier Doug Ford would respond if he had to preside over a Rabid-style pandemic.

Plus: a discussion about the latest essay from Martin Scorsese: in a world of media conglomerates controlling public access to what they consider “content” and streaming services algorithmically determining what audiences should see next, what will this do to the art of cinema?

Follow Angelo Muredda on Twitter

Rabid (David Cronenberg, 1977) - trailer

Martin Scorsese’s essay "Il Maestro: Federico Fellini and the Lost Magic of Cinema”, Harper’s Magazine, March 2021 issue

TEASER - 15: The Fandom Menace (with Jared Yates Sexton) Feb 15, 2021

Show notes

PATREON EPISODE: Subscribe to our Patreon to hear the whole 87 minute episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/47584756

Author and political commentator Jared Yates Sexton joins the pod to discuss the Disney Star Wars movies in great detail. Jared and I are both lapsed Star Wars fans and in this episode we talk about a bunch of things: our deteriorating relationship with these films and how the new Star Wars trilogy unintentionally encapsulates our political and cultural moment, with their pandering fan service, nonsensical story structure, and corporations pretending to be artists. And we discuss The Rise of Skywalker's ill-advised return of the Emperor, and the shabby treatment of Carrie Fisher...

Plus an extra discussion of toxic fandom as it pertains to Star Wars and Jesse's Twitter battle with Justice League fans.

Follow Jared on Twitter

Jared Yates Sexton's book, "American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People" (Dutton) is available now!

14: Found Footage Horror (with Joe Berkowitz) Feb 12, 2021

Show notes

Minneapolis-based author and Fast Company opinion columnist Joe Berkowitz joins the podcast this week to talk about the found footage horror genre with a focus on Ti West’s 2013 thriller The Sacrament, which presents a fictionalized version of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, set in the modern era and presented as an edgy documentary from Vice Media. Joe and I discuss the evolution of the Found Footage genre, their common structural problems, the use of Vice journalists in The Sacrament, and the overall “ethics” of cinematic exploitation.

Plus: a chat about the annoyingly obvious but noteworthy parallels between Trump and Reverend Jim Jones, and what a week of trolling Snyder Cut fans on Twitter with obvious jokes about a swearing Batman in the R-rated Zack Snyder's Justice League reveals about “superhero movies for grownups”

Follow Joe Berkowitz on Twitter

Joe Berkowitz’s new book “American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World” (HarperCollins) is available now!

Joe’s piece for Fast Company which inspired this episode

Guyana: Cult of the Damned (aka Guyana: Crime of the Century) (1979) - trailer

13: White SquallAnon (with David Hains) Jan 16, 2021

Show notes

Toronto-based journalist David Hains joins the pod on the eve of Trump’s exit from the White House, in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. Many people in the melee were members of QAnon, an elaborate pro-Trump online conspiracy theory that has picked up more believers during this pandemic year.

QAnon hates Hollywood for its supposedly depraved celebrities but ironically much of their language and belief structure comes from their misunderstanding of certain (unlikely) Hollywood movies, in particular Ridley Scott’s forgettable 1996 boys-on-the-high-seas adventure White Squall.

We talk about other random movies that influence the QAnon community’s conspiracy theories, including The Godfather, Part III (?!?!) and Dan Crenshaw’s recent “Georgia Reloaded” political commercial, with his problematic appropriation of Marvel movie imagery that inspired the most deranged of Trump’s supporters. How will this movement handle reality potentially shattering their certainty?

Plus: after his recent feud with Warner Bros, will Cyborg survive the Snyder Cut of Justice League?

Follow David Hains on Twitter.

Trailer forWhite Squall (Ridley Scott, 1996)

Georgia Reloaded (Crenshaw, 2020)

Jack Kirby’s son didn’t like the use of Captain America imagery being used by the violent mob in DC.

“A Former Marine Stormed The Capitol As Part of a Far-Right Militia” - Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker, January 14

12: Femme Fatale and Domino (with John Semley) Jan 11, 2021

Show notes

Spoilers abound during our discussion, please watch Femme Fatale before listening as there is a stunning twist you don’t want us to ruin for you. Femme Fatale is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime. No need to watch Domino first, or even at all!

For the first of likely several Junk Filter episodes about Brian De Palma, Toronto-based writer John Semley joins the program for a look at two films that bookend De Palma’s post-Hollywood exile in the land of European film financing, 2002’s Femme Fatale (a masterpiece) and 2019’s Domino (not a masterpiece). Along the way we talk about the director’s career-spanning obsessions, the concept of “Pure Cinema”, how Femme Fatale can be compared to Raising Cain and Mulholland Drive, and the plight of the aged auteur with nothing left to prove.

Plus John and I try to process the attempted insurrection in Washington and Twitter suspending Trump’s account in the aftermath.

Follow John Semley on Twitter.

One of the greatest modern movie trailers: the European teaser for Femme Fatale: it tells you everything and nothing at once.

11: The Bane Episode (with Corey Atad) Jan 04, 2021

Show notes

Toronto-based writer Corey Atad joins the pod today to talk about Bane, as a jumping off point to discuss Christopher Nolan, who seemed like one of the villains of 2020 as he was determined to release Tenet in theatres during a global pandemic, but who became a Good Guy at the end of the year when he started feuding with his studio Warner Bros. after they used Tenet’s disappointing box office totals to justify moving their entire 2021 release slate to HBOMax to prop up their streaming service at the expense of theatrical releases.

Audiences that went to see Tenet in August when it was assumed to be The Movie That Will Save Cinema were bound to be somewhat disappointed, but seen now without that kind of pressure on it, stoned on the couch at home, Corey and I argue that Tenet is actually a Dudes Rock movie and that its incomprehensibility can be best appreciated as a feature, not a bug.

Follow Corey Atad on Twitter.

Hilarious Tenet “Behind The Scenes” electronic press kit

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected