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With Natalie Marlin! Whatever you know about ZARDOZ — it’s by the guy who made DELIVERANCE (1972), it’s a weird meme, Charlotte Rampling’s instant pregnancy, Sean Connery’s nutsling — we promise you, it’s just the beginning. A critically divisive movie that’s garnered a cult following in the five decades since its release, it’s certainly earned that reputation. It’s a movie where philosophical mishmash rubs shoulders with overt sexual politics and more dick jokes than you can shake a dick at. But when you step back, it’s got way more going under the hood; in fact, some of us are convinced it’s an iconoclast warning signal for the era of the blockbuster, releasing just a year before JAWS (1975) and three before STAR WARS (1977). Go on this inter-Vortex journey with us as we welcome Natalie to go inside the big stone head, down the yellow brick road, and to the very heart of ZARDOZ! References: Watch ZARDOZ on the Internet Archive “Down the Yellow Brick Road and Through the Looking Glass: How Zardoz Was Colore

With Kelly Krantz! Liliana Cavani’s psychological, post-Holocaust perverted thriller went down as one of the most controversial movies of all time. In a concentration camp during World War II, concentration camp officer Max (Dirk Bogarde) and his prisoner victim Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) form a sadomasochistic relationship. Their relationship is colored as much by their shared depravity as by Max’s evil humanity and Lucia’s shame over her burgeoning desire. Pretty inflammatory stuff! Hence the reputation. But we’re not convinced it’s the irresponsible exploitation film it’s been remembered as. On this episode, we explain why by focusing on the lead characters’ psychology, what brings them together, and what dooms them from the start. References: Watch THE NIGHT PORTER on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/the-night-porter-1974-dirk-bogarde “Pain, Pleasure, and Depiction of Manipulation in The Night Porter” by Matt Lambert for Perisphere, the Trylon blog “This Just In: Evil is STILL Banal” by

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a hinky Hitchcock tale of mistaken identity, assumed identity, shifting truths, and a man with a huge butt chin using a SpongeBob-comically-small razor. Cary Grant stars as an ad man who gets caught up in a Cold War game of cat-and-mouse (he’s the mouse) opposite double agent Eva Marie Saint, Broadly European Bad Guy James Mason, and the FBI/CIA/NSA/WTFE as the other players stringing him along (they’re the cats). A certain amount of NORTH BY NORTHWEST is best appreciated in context of Hitchcock’s previous films. After all, screenwriter Ernest Lehman said he wanted to write “the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films”! To that end, it’s kind of a greatest hits collection, a suspenseful road movie keeping the tension high all the way from NYC to Mount Rushmore. What’s amazing is that it actually works totally on its own, too. Our discussion touches on the delightful sense of playfulness the movie has, Cary Grant as the perfect avatar of lovable pissantism, the cultural and political im

LEGEND is a 1985 fantasy film directed by Ridley Scott and written by William Hjortsberg. It stars Tom Cruise in one of his first leading roles as Jack, a pure-hearted forest-dweller who is in love with Princess Lily (played by Mia Sara). Hoping to show her something beautiful, Jack introduces Lily to two majestic unicorns that live in a remote part of the forest. In doing so, he breaks one of the forest’s most sacred rules: That mortals must never touch the unicorns, lest they “upset the order of the universe”. The encounter creates an opportunity for goblin emissaries of the Lord of Darkness (played by Tim Curry) to poison one of the unicorns, steal its horn (alicorn), capture the other unicorn and enslave Princess Lily, threatening to plunge the world into darkness — unless Jack, the pure-hearted hero, can return the unicorn’s horn and avoid everlasting darkness. It’s an arrow-straight premise with promise for more underneath — but after more than a dozen screenplay revisions and numerous cuts, LEGEND come

THE BEASTMASTER is a 1982 fantasy action movie directed by Don Coscarelli (best known for the PHANTASM films #TheBallIsBack). Marc Singer stars as Dar, rightful heir to the throne of Aruk and prophesied slayer of the evil priest Maax (Rip Torn). Born with the power to speak to animals, Marc befriends a number of mammals on his journey to reclaim the throne (including other humans, though they play a distant second fiddle to the beasts in this film, tbh). THE BEASTMASTER is not a GREAT movie, and a couple of us even struggled to find much joy in it at all. But it still makes for a great discussion, including an evaluation of the movie on its own terms and plenty of comparisons with its (much better) contemporary, CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982). Plus, what animal familiar would we pick? What’s the largest animal we could beat in single combat? (My money’s on Harry and the kangaroo.) Do these things: Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofun

Featuring filmmaker/programmer Kris Montello and Something Rotten host Blake Hester! SAMURAI REINCARNATION is a 1981 samurai fantasy action film written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Shiro Amakusa (Kenji Sawada) is the sole survivor of a massacre of Japanese Christians during the Shimabara Rebellion. Witnessing the devastation, Shiro renounces the Christian God and vows vengeance on the Tokugawa regime that perpetrated the massacre. Now in league with Satan, Shiro gains the power to resurrect the dead and assembles a team of the aggrieved undead to execute his plans, including disgraced samurai wife Gracia Hokusawa (Akiko Kano), the lustful monk Inshun Hozoin (Hideo Murota), legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (Ken Ogata), and young ninja Kirimaru Iga (Hiroyuki Sanada). The movie follows Shiro’s group as he amasses a demonic force, pursued by Musashi’s rival, Jubei Yagyu (played by Sonny Chiba). With noted Fukasaku Freak Blake Hester (of Something Rotten) and Kris Montello (filmmaker, Programming Manager f

Noted Arnie fan Celia Mattison is back to discuss the swords and sorcery classic! John Milius’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN adaptation limits its view of the character to his pursuit of vengeance and conquest. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a rich, pagan paean to one’s drive for self-determination! On this episode, we talk about what rocks in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making role, how James Earl Jones’s cold, calculating Thulsa Doom is a perfectly cast contrast to Conan’s Austro-Cimmerian barbarism, and the different paths men can go after they become self-aware. Find Celia on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CeliaMattison and on her Substack, “Deeper Into Movies”: https://deeperintomovies.substack.com/ Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care “Fathers True and False in Conan the Barbarian” by Chris Ryba-Tures for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/29/fathers-tru

Two years before ALIEN (1979), Ridley Scott packed a bunch of audacious ideas about empire, masculinity, and class into his feature debut: THE DUELLISTS. Rival officers in Napoleonic France, Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) and Armond d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) are thrown into a mythical, divinely comic cycle of nearly deadly clashes after d’Hubert is instructed to rein in Feraud’s glorified bloodlust. No matter how far he goes, d’Hubert always finds himself at the tip of Feraud’s sword. Over the course of almost two decades, Feraud and d’Hubert orbit concepts of honor, loyalty, and the essence of servitude as each hones their blade on the other’s ego. In this discussion, we talk about how some of the movie’s ideas feel far ahead of their time; how the movie deflates and then glorifies the art of honorable single combat; how important a love story really is in a movie like this; and how THE DUELLISTS serves as something of a codex for almost 50 years of Ridley Scott’s directorial endeavors. Donate to help our

There wasn’t anything quite like Michael Roemer’s NOTHING BUT A MAN before it, and there arguably hasn’t been anything quite like it since. All the same, it’s often cited as “ahead of its time” – a critical, realistic look, almost documentary in nature, at the life of a black American man in the middle stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), the son of a deadbeat drifter hoping to avoid the same fate, leaves behind the independence of his railroad section gang to settle down with Josie (Abbey Lincoln), a well-to-do schoolteacher. Duff’s pride – in his independence, in his manhood, in his blackness – attracts Josie, but rankles the black community around him, who’ve adapted to leaving well enough alone in the deep Southern town they call home. Duff’s chief critics include the aggressive white populace and Josie’s father, a black preacher and community organizer sitting comfortably under the thumb of the town’s white movers and shakers. Written and directed by a German Jew who left the

Sweet, heartwarming, funny, and deeply weird, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH plays to its creator duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s strengths: swift writing, a flair for the dramatic, and deeply affecting images. David Niven stars as the should-be-late British RAF Squadron Leader Peter Carter, who falls in love with American soldier June (Kim Hunter) over the radio on his way to the hereafter. But in the throes of World War II, Carter’s demise slides under the radar of the reaper sent to collect his soul (Marius Goring as the foppish Parisian Conductor 71), leaving the lovestruck Lancaster pilot in the lurch, legally speaking: Does his passion for a woman he met minutes before his intended death warrant a stay of execution? Or should he be sentenced to serve out the term of his miscarried doom? Going two for two on the Trylon’s Spring 2024 highlight of Powell and Pressburger’s production company The Archers, we discuss A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH from several angles on this episode: As postwar comfort ci

Five nuns. One Briton man-whore. A harem-turned-convent high in the Himalayas. Fellas – what could go wrong??? In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s BLACK NARCISSUS, an adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1947 novel, external conditions reveal internal torment: Altitude, wind, and culture clashes in the hilltop former harem of Mopu help expose the repressed desires of a sisterhood operating in Calcutta. In our discussion of this Technicolor classic, we discuss BLACK NARCISSUS’s potential misnomer as a “haunted house” movie; its cultural implications in the wake of the British empire’s slipping stranglehold over India post-World War II; and how the film’s art, direction, and performances highlight its masterful double-dip into both “high” and “low” art. Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care “Why Black Narcissus is a Haunted House Movie” by Sophie Durbin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog:

With special guest Bret Berg (Theatrical Sales Director at the American Genre Film Archive and Creator/VJ at the Museum of Home Video)! Bret Berg created the Museum of Home Video, a weekly stream comprising archival footage like commercials, TV shows, movies, and more, all edited for the quickest-hit emotional impact possible. Before he hosted two live MHV presentations at the Trylon (RING, RING: A DOORBELL CAM FANTASIA and THE MUSEUM OF HOME VIDEO’S GUIDE TO INFOMERCIALS), Bret sat down with us to chat about the project, his work, and the state of download culture. In this special interview episode, we discuss... The makings of a found footage showcase Meeting the Trylon's John Moret and Barry Kryshka a decade ago How you find the humanity in thousands of hours of strange, torrented content Young Sheldon What all this must be doing to Bret’s brain Find the Museum of Home Video’s streams at https://www.museumofhomevideo.com/ Follow the Museum of Home Video on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/museumofh

With special guest and Minnesotan Drew Tenenbaum (@AshCoolBro)! A threshing accident, exploding parade floats and trailers – contestants and participants in the Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant meet untimely ends in a series of suspicious incidents in Mount Rose, Minnesota. In this episode (comprising exclusively Minnesota-born speakers), we discuss the class politics at play in the movie, its turn with the mockumentary format, how many of its jokes actually land, and the shared satirical nostalgia we feel for the uniquely “Minnesota-ness” of DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. Find Drew… On Twitter at @AshCoolBro Making music mashups and other stuff on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ashcoolbro On a bunch of episodes of Stoop Kidz!, the Hey Arnold! podcast Harry, Cody, and Jason made with Emily Csuy: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stoop-kidz-a-hey-arnold-podcast/id1553292788 On itch.io: https://drewbys-games.itch.io/ In the credits of Décorum, the tabletop game Drew and Harry and Charlie Mack

With special guest Natalie Marlin (@NataliesNotInIt)! Bi Gan’s lovelorn neo-noir follows Luo (Huang Jue) as he pursues Wan (Tang Wei), the woman he fell in love with years before. Luo weaves in and out of half-recalled memories to trace Wan’s whereabouts, only brushing shoulders with reality as he dodges his own past in pursuit of the fading memory of love through decades of lost time. Famous for its non-linear structure, ethereal pacing, and the 59-minute long-take dream sequence that closes the film, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT uniquely mixes the concrete drive of emotion with the fleeting nature of memory. In this episode, we talk about how the first half sets up the second, the protagonist’s intentional unreliability as narrator, the mechanical and narrative achievement of its dreamy long-take ending, and have a little fun picking out the first-act callbacks in the second half of the movie. “Lost in the Dream” by Natalie Marlin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/02/13/lost-

Based on Charles Willeford’s noir novel, George Armitage’s MIAMI BLUES is ‘supposed’ to be about the escapades of Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward), a jaded, toothless Miami cop. Instead, it’s about Frederick J. Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin), a sociopathic, interloping hustler. Junior’s ongoing seduction of young prostitute Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) provides him insulation from Hoke’s suspicions, but threatens Junior’s own self-concept. In this episode, we talk about the ‘happy Sisyphean’ Junior, the movie’s comparison to a more typical noir, the pieces of this story that don’t fit, and why it’s better for them. MIAMI BLUES review by Roger Ebert (April 20, 1990) https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/miami-blues-1990 Review/Film: Cop, Thief and Prostitute in Miami by Janet Maslin for The New York Times (April 26, 1990) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/20/movies/review-film-cop-thief-and-prostitute-in-miami.html #NoirFestival #DCP Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in tou

The truth behind the assassination at the center of Brian De Palma’s political paranoia thriller BLOW OUT isn’t really the point. It’s more about the ways in which fact comes to be distorted through many lenses, each built on relative understandings of the core event itself. When he happens to catch the sound of a politician’s murder on tape while scouting new SFX for a movie, sound designer Jack (John Travolta) is driven to piece together the truth. But with only the audible half of the story, he needs the help of Sally (Nancy Allen), a survivor of the crash, to prove what he saw. Unfortunately for Jack and Sally, they’re both loose ends caught in the increasingly dangerous machinations of political rivals, a hitman gone rogue, and a media machine that thrives on the first thing it can call “truth”. Watch BLOW OUT on the Internet Archive Get tickets to THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR (Winter at the Trylon & the Heights) “Paranoia, Failure, and Female Representation: Brian De Palma’s Blow Out”

In Béla Tarr’s dour, slow drama WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, an aimless people’s anger and malaise is leveraged to violent ends by figures of power. A desolate town bristles when a traveling circus comes through with a stuffed whale as its centerpiece. Uncertain of its meaning, the townspeople respond with disbelief and skepticism as they suffer through the rapid decay of society playing out in parallel. Starry-eyed mail carrier János lets the grotesque attraction – and the shadowy Prince pulling the strings of the circus – enrapture his imagination while things fall apart, until János himself becomes its victim. Whether you see optimism, pessimism, the unfeeling cosmos, or just a reflection of yourself in the eyes of the impotent carcass rotting at the center of the town and its story, WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES positions itself among Tarr’s most watchable films – an enigma opting to expose rather than instruct. “A Whale of a Tale: Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies” by Luke Mosher for Perisphere, the Trylon blog #DC

With returning guest Blake Hester! BURST CITY is arguably more of a cultural document than a movie with a plot and a story. It consists largely of musical setpieces by the Japanese punk groups of its time, with plot threads (vengeful bikers, nuclear infrastructure, etc.) being more hinted at than shown. In this episode, Blake joins us to talk about BURST CITY's content, context, and creation. Find Blake… On Trylove episodes about POSSESSION (1981) and PULSE (2001) At Game Informer On Something Rotten, the podcast he co-hosts about nihilism in video games On Twitter at @metallicaisrad On Letterboxd at @blakedtfp Nuclear Punks Run Amok: Gakuryu Ishii’s “Burst CIty” by Margaret Barton-Fumo for Metrograph: https://metrograph.com/nuclear-punks-run-amok-gakuryu-ishiis-burst-city/ “REVIEW: Burst City (1982)” by Grant Watson for Fiction Machine: https://fictionmachine.com/2021/11/15/review-burst-city-1982/ DCP Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get

You’ve seen movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, HARD EIGHT. In fact, if you called it part of the PULP FICTION (1994) neo-noir craze, you wouldn’t be wrong. Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) is an avuncular elder hustler who takes John (John C. Reilly) and Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) under his wing, keeping new blood small-timer Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) at bay while he sets up a better life for the young lovebirds. When things go south, Sydney goes to extreme measures to preserve the fiction he’s built so he can stay the person he thinks he is – the person he wants John and Clementine to see. In this Dry Run discussion, we compare and contrast different takes about what HARD EIGHT is trying to ‘say,’ if anything, and the value of a frictionless story if it’s competently told. “Meet Sydney: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1996)” by MH Rowe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/14/meet-sydney-on-paul-thomas-andersons-hard-eight-1996/ Get tickets to “THE FIFT

Tim Burton’s debut feature feels a little bit like a filmmaker finding his footing. At the same time, it’s a trial by fire for Paul Reubens and Phil Hartman as they brought their creation, the capricious Pee-Wee Herman, to the big screen. It paid off, of course, cementing Pee-Wee as an icon of character comedy and a mainstay of American children’s programming. Depending on your history with the character, you could find in PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE a constant, dull, childish annoyance or a charming work of self-aware bliss. “Things You Shouldn’t Understand, Things You Couldn’t Understand: A Love Letter to the Cast of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Sohpie Durbin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/things-you-shouldnt-understand-things-you-couldnt-understand-a-love-letter-to-the-cast-of-pee-wees-big-adventure/ “I Lived It: The Joy of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Alex Kies for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/i-lived-it-the-joy-of-pee-wees-big-advent