Junk Filter

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TEASER - 162: The Zone of Interest (with James Slaymaker) Mar 23, 2024

Show notes

Access 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 adapt Martin Amis’ Holocaust novel for the screen, including his determination to create two separate films inside one film: what we see (the bucolic family life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss) and what we hear (the horrifying sounds of death from over the wall of the concentration camp next door). Glazer uses 21st century technology to tell this story to indicate that this film is not about history, but about the present moment, including provocative ideas about the ways we all try to compartmentalize and overcompensate to tune out the horrors of the world that make our own comfortable lives possible.

We also compare The Zone of Interest to other Holocaust works to discuss why it’s so difficult to tell these stories with sensitivity and respect and without compromise, some of the most noteworthy sequences, and what the film has in common with Alain Resnais’ masterful short film about Auschwitz, Night and Fog.

And of course we discuss some of the bad faith arguments from Zone of Interest haters, and some hot takes online from people who even if they saw and liked it, may not have grasped its point.

Night and Fog is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Follow James Slaymaker on Twitter.

James’ book Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, is now available in paperback and Kindle.

Trailer #2 for The Zone of Interest (Glazer, 2023)

161: Dune: Part Two - The Kwisatz Tabarnak (with Jacob Bacharach) Mar 15, 2024

Show notes

The 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 to extend the metaphor: are the Bene Gesserit the Catholic Church? Are the Fremen the FLQ? And is Paul Atreides the saviour of an independent Quebec, the Kwisatz Tabarnak?

Plus: Jacob and I discuss the charms of Dune: Part Two including how the movie differs from Frank Herbert’s novel, the arrival of Christopher Walken as the Emperor qnd Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha, and our MVP Javier Bardem as Stilgar. Plus: Josh Brolin’s homoerotic ode to Timothée Chalamet, the dreaded Dune Popcorn Bucket, and a look at some of the galaxy-brained responses online from people who thought Paul was supposed to be the hero of the story.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly please subscribe at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Jacob Bacharach on Twitter and visit jacobbacharach.com

Trailer for Dune: Deuxième Partie(Villeneuve, 2024)

Action: The October Crisis of 1970 (Robin Spry, 1973) - great documentary from the National Film Board about the rise of the Quebec separatist movement

From New York To L.A. - Patsy Gallant, 1977

A Cerveza Cristal ad stitched into the Chilean cable airing of Star Wars: A New Hope in 2004

TEASER - 160: Burt Reynolds in the Eighties (with Will Sloan) Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

The 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 film as a director, 1981’s Sharky’s Machine, his botched 1986 downbeat Vegas drama Heat (originally a Robert Altman project with a screenplay from the great William Goldman), 1987’s Malone (basically a remake of Shane, shot in British Columbia with a stacked supporting cast) and his nadir, the tired 1987 romantic comedy-thriller Rent-A-Cop (co-starring Liza Minnelli in her first film out of rehab, set in Chicago but filmed at Cinecitta studios in Rome). As his career declined Burt looked increasingly checked-out as a movie star, but these films are fun to watch and talk about, especially since Heat and Malone in particular are almost very good movies despite themselves.

Along the way we discuss Burt’s short-lived discotheque in Atlanta, Marlon Brando’s pathological hatred of him, and the injuries Reynolds sustained on the set of City Heatthat left him with an addiction to painkillers that sparked health rumours in the early days of the AIDS crisis.

Plus Will talks about his new project The Journal of Stoogeological Studies: An Unauthorized Three Stooges Fanzine.

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter and subscribe to his great podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Michael and Us.

You can order The Journal of Stoogeological Studies: An Unauthorized Three Stooges Fanzine here.

Heat, Malone and Rent-A-Cop are currently available to watch on Tubi.

35mm open matte trailer for Sharky’s Machine (Reynolds, 1981)

UNLOCKED: 139: Oppenheimer (with Corey Atad) Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

In 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 formats Oppenheimer has been released in theatrically, take a look at how this movie reflects and departs from the source material (the biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer), and compare the film to its major stylistic influences, including Oliver Stone’s JFK, There Will Be Blood and The Man Who Fell To Earth.

We also discuss the Christopher Nolan redemption arc in general; how he uses the IMAX screen to create intimate horror, his fantastic cast of actors, the callbacks to his earlier works (Memento and even the Batman trilogy) and how some of the bozo decisions he often takes as a director somehow don’t take away from this film’s power.

Follow Corey Atad on Twitter.

Trailer for Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy in the aisles of Vidéo Club in Paris.

159: Year of the Dragon (with Adam Nayman) Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

CW: 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 of the disastrous Heaven’s Gate. Rourke plays Captain Stanley White, a highly-decorated Polish-American cop (and Vietnam veteran) transferred to New York’s Chinatown precinct who pursues an increasingly unhinged personal war against the young and ambitious new leader of the Triads, Joey Tai (Lone), using an ambitious Asian news reporter to do it, leading to an escalating bloodbath. MGM/UA had to add a disclaimer to the film after the release in the wake of protests and legal threats from the Chinese-American community set off by the rabble-rousing screenplay by Cimino and Oliver Stone (on the precipice of his own directing career)

Adam and I discuss Year of the Dragon as a Problematic Fave: an insanely detailed example of screen artifice (including a hyper-realistic fake New York Chinatown built at Dino DeLaurentiis’ studio lot in North Carolina that even fooled Stanley Kubrick) with movie star performances and spectacular filmmaking clashing against chaotic emotional (and racist) outbursts and WTF moments that mark this film as a secret highlight of eighties American cinema, influential not only on Kubrick but also Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Michael Mann. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!

Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter.

Enthusiastic program note for Year of the Dragon from the New Beverly Cinema’s blog, by Ariel Schudson, August 2016

Roger Ebert’s tv review of Year of the Dragon, August 1985

American Year of the Dragon trailer #2

Japanese Year of the Dragon trailer

Italian Year of the Dragon trailer

158: The Sci-Fi Visions of Peter Hyams (with Brandon Streussnig) Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

The 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 could fuse suspense and science-fiction. He would follow this with 1981’s Outland, a hybrid of Alien and High Noon starring Sean Connery, criticized at the time for being derivative but which rips when seen today, a dystopic vision of a future world ravaged by capitalism on steroids that actually anticipated the themes and production design of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner the following year.

Brandon and I make the case for 2010, Hyams’ 1984 sequel to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a worthy followup if not an essential work, offering a hopeful and utopic vision of man’s future contrasted against Kubrick’s colder take. Set against the topical US/Soviet arms race of the Reagan era and packed with thrills, it’s a much better film than you’ve been led to believe. And of course there’s Timecop, the biggest hit Jean-Claude Van Damme ever had.

This episode means to introduce you to the work of Peter Hyams, solid entertainments across many genres and ripe for rediscovery.

Plus: Brandon talks about the second edition of Vulture’s annual Stunt Movie Awards!

Follow Brandon Streussnig on Twitter.

The Stunt Awards Are Back, by Brandon Streussnig and Bilge Ebiri, for Vulture, January 17, 2024

David Letterman’s Timecop joke, 1994

Peter Hyams trailers

Capricorn One (1977)

Outland (1981)

2010 (1984)

Timecop (1994)

TEASER - 157: Five Corners (with Kieran Grant) Jan 19, 2024

Show notes

Access 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, Five Corners featured two actors on the brink of stardom (Tim Robbins and John Turturro) and one on the brink of superstardom (Jodie Foster, in one of her first screen roles after John Hinckley tried to impress her by shooting President Reagan). It was released hot on the heels of Moonstruck, the film that won the playwright John Patrick Shanley a screenplay Oscar, but this one was not as much of a crowd-pleaser. Audiences were divided over the film’s tone, starting off as an oddball slice-of-life comedy about intersecting characters in a Bronx neighbourhood in 1964 but then suddenly taking an unexpected lurch into horror/thriller territory.

Kieran I discuss first seeing Five Corners as teens, the thrill of seeing successful tone shifts in movies, why it vanished into obscurity for a time after HandMade Films closed shop, and how the themes (and cast) of this movie must have been an influence on Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing 2 years later.

Five Corners is currently streaming on Tubi and on Criterion Channel.

Trailer for Five Corners(Tony Bill, 1987)

156: The Cassandra Cat (with Ashley Naftule) Jan 08, 2024

Show notes

Arizona-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, hypocrites purple and lovers a bright red, scandalizing the adults into a panic and delighting all the children.

One of the few directors to win two prizes at Cannes, Jasný is not as well remembered as his Czech contemporaries like Miloš Forman but the artistic movement he was a part of was extremely influential on world cinema, using avant-garde techniques and comedy to express modern Czechoslovakian concerns in the brief period where the Soviet Union permitted more freedom of expression and less censorship.

We also discuss another, darker film by Jasný, 1969’s All My Good Countrymen, made right when Moscow sent tanks to Czechoslovakia to crush the revolution and reestablish “normalization” of the state. Despite winning the Best Director prize at Cannes for it, Jasný was pressured by the new regime to apologize for making the film, and instead went into exile along with his contemporaries, with their films banned domestically until the final days of the Soviet Union.

Plus: we discuss the Cat Movies retrospective on the Criterion Channel, including some favourite film felines of ours.

The Cassandra Cat and All My Good Countrymen are currently streaming on Criterion Channel.

Follow Ashley Naftule on Twitter.

Trailer for The Cassandra Cat (Vojtěch Jasný, 1963)

Highlights of cat movies not included as part of the Cat Movies Criterion series, mentioned on the show

Trailer for The Uncanny(Denis Héroux, 1977)

The incredible cat vs dog fight scene from The Cat (Lam Ngai Kai, 1992)

The Cat Telepathy scene from Go (Doug Liman, 1999)

Trailer for A Talking Cat!?!(David DeCouteau, 2013)

Trailer for Kedi(Ceyda Torun, 2016)

TEASER - 155: O.J.: Made in America - Part 2 (with Karen Geier) Dec 31, 2023

Show notes

Access 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 allowed the “Dream Team” to successfully change the subject of the case to the racist conduct of the LAPD, to the shocking verdict and the aftermath.

The last chapter of the film is a breathtaking descent into hell, with O.J. eventually found liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in civil court and his desperate attempts to resuscitate his showbiz career (while hiding the money from the Goldman family), finding himself at the absolute bottom of the entertainment food chain, including the exploitative hidden camera prank show “Juiced” and finally his arrest for what amounted to petty larceny in the demimonde of sports memorabilia collectors, where the judge threw the book at him.

Karen and I discuss how the culture was forever changed by the O.J. Simpson media circus and how this film is a masterclass in the study of a narcissist who felt none of the rules of the world applied to him, and how understanding personality cults helps to explain why O.J got away with it for so long and yet still could not avoid the fate of most sociopaths, in a film that is ultimately about white privilege as much as it is about justice denied and toxic celebrities.

Happy New Year to all our listeners and patrons!

Follow Karen Geier on Twitter.

TV commercial for “Juiced”, 2006

154: O.J.: Made in America - Part 1 (with Karen Geier) Dec 26, 2023

Show notes

The 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 her vicious murder and the manhunt once he became the prime suspect. But this story takes place against the larger story of Los Angeles; the mass post-war migration of Black Americans from the South to the west coast and the evolution of the racist LAPD’s law enforcement in the city that culminated in the beating of Rodney King and the subsequent riots in 1992, creating the conditions that gave O.J.’s “Dream Team” their winning strategy for the “Trial of the Century”.

Karen and I discuss our favourite parts of the documentary, O.J.’s narcissism and disinterest in the civil rights movement, his strange showbiz career and finally the night of the Bronco chase, which marked the beginning of a bleak new chapter in American life.

Part 2 of our discussion (about the trial, the verdict, and the aftermath) will be available exclusively to patrons of the podcast.

Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are only on the Patreon feed. To support this show directly and hear dozens of bonus episodes, consider becoming a patron at Patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Karen Geier on Twitter.

O.J. “Flying” Hertz commercial, 1980

O.J. “Nobody Does It Better” Hertz commercial, 1978

Trailer for 1988’s Traxx (the attempt to make a movie star out of local LA deejay Shadoe Stevens)

Trailer for O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016)

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