Warning – Double Feature assumes you just watched these two films. This is not a conversation to provide an introduction to these movies. This episode digs into the most difficult questions posed by two disturbing documentaries. It’s up to an individual audience member to decide if they wish to watch the films, but it’s certainly a bad idea to listen to this episode without having seen them.
The reckoning. A giant assault of Massive Attack returns to Double Feature with This Must Be The Place and the original Get Carter. Eric tries and fails to not talk about Robert Smith. Using a real-life icon as visual shorthand. Killing Nazis was once normal, then weird, then less weird. Succeeding despite fulfillment. A movie about the character after their interesting story is over. Going back to killing work with Get Carter. The things you learn about Get Carter from Hollywood parties. The lack of violence in a 70s film. Not being able to kill your way to an answer. Watching pornographic films projecting in people’s homes. The Get Carter score and trip-hop. Not wasting time when you plan to kill someone. The inconsistent feel of vigilante justice in cinema. Michael does not advocate killing people, then throws a state execution grenade. Enjoy.
The written word comes to life don’t roll your eyes at me. Writers who specifically hurt one person, with and without malice. Always showing up and actually covering the movies, like Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals and Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction. Curating film. Attacking the wall head on with Nocturnal Animals. Eric’s love of high fashion. Interpreting subtle casting choices. Superficiality, high society, and penetrating the defenses of the untouchable. Super brutal art drama. Stranger Than Fiction, or that one film where Will Ferrell is serious. Like Cold Souls and Waiter, but on Double Feature. Dying at a poetically-appropriate time. Bits from the Fight Club fire sale. Ignoring the question of free will because it’s never interesting. Not explaining the backstory in your meta-comedy. In hindsight, kale smoothies are kind of good.
Species films 1-4. Pronunciation guides courtesy of plingmichael.com. What makes a Killapalooza. Species is more than just green porn. Baby Michele Williams. All great actors started in horror films. ’90s icky creature films. Finding a good human specimen. Director Peter Medak returns to Double Feature for Species 2. Failure due to a lack of mutant rats. When you make things super rapey via gender swap. The Weezer of franchises. The last film when you can get a righteous jerk in. The inverse relationship of nudity and creature effects. Blah blah science. Mad scientists and succubus. Solving all your problems by creating alien harems. Gigantic Assault and Photos of You.
Couples, long and short. Double Feature, hyping art and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine. Patrons, hyping Double Feature and not picking this week’s films. When in doubt, Tilda Swinton. The curse of immortality. The non-horror, non-vampire-movie vampire movie. Having a sense of scale. The repetition of everything except art. Companionship, perspective, genius, and nihilism. Comparing any given moment in time to the greatest moments in all human history. People kept together through murder. It’s probably not in our best interest to kill each other. Murder as a relationship test. Florida Man, the movie. Whether you sympathize with the person giving or receiving road head. Making films for little money. Festivals and additional content.
You wake up, and suddenly everything is different. Kittie is exciting and nü, like Kickstarter, which helped fund Bokeh and used to almost-fund Double Feature. The things that are out-of-focus. What if everyone else just disappeared? Pragmatism versus religion and nihilism. Having a survivable worldview. Michael makes an argument against survival in a world without new films. There is no point in life; Michael’s okay with that and Eric’s panicking about it. The Signal is a nü and interesting horror anthology. The number of directors in your horror anthology. Films showing small pieces of a global event. Bold choices, like male nudity and a secret anthology full of unreliable narrators. Finding something familiar to hold onto in difficult films. The use of tonal shifts in film and improving the overall narrative through the anthology format.
Adult whimsey, the burden of eternal life, and the vision of Hayao Miyazaki contrasted against Guillermo del Toro. Howl’s Moving Castle. Early use of computers in animation. Animation that looks good has succeeded. Filmmakers should be free to explore, change, and grow. Miyazaki as an anti-war activist. War as background noise to Americans and in Howl’s Moving Castle. Enriching a film with weird characters. Secret Mexican Frankenstein. Unhinged Ron Perlman. ¿Como se dice gravitas en español? The State of American Cinema is … uh, let’s talk about that another time.
Creating art kills humans. Other things that could be done For Your Consideration. Double Feature gets rained on. The happy warrior spirit of creation vs the nihilism of trying to get art made. Eric Thirteen performs for the patreons. Life on set. The drama of film production. For Your Consideration shows how rumors run wild. Double Feature fucks up Christopher Guest. The non-documentary Christopher Guest movie is the most honest. Terry Gilliam and the frustrating life of an artist. Art is hard. The story outside The Man Who Killed Don Quixote makes a call for not ignoring the real-life artist.
Two films about innate genius, giggles, and sniffing. Miloš Forman’s Amadeus is one of the greatest films ever made. Using bookends and unreliable narration to tell a more interesting story. Michael’s firsthand experience of being the Mozart and Salieri in his music career. Madness and genius in film. Double Sleepy Nap Time returns. Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Portraying smell in film with the help of macro shots. How did this film get made? Why didn’t people listen to Roger Ebert and see Perfume? Eric discusses the unusually weird ending of Perfume. Michael discusses the totally normal ending of Perfume.
Considering the voice of the writer and cinematographer. A new journey explores the work of David Mamet and Roger Deakins. Learning about screenwriting through brute force, with and without notes. The Untouchables, seen through the writing of Mamet. Poetics and smart, big, bright light cinema. Watching The Ladykillers and listening for the voice of a film after the Coen Brothers. Telling a story exclusively through the visuals. Eric explains dirtying up the frame.
