This week we take great pride in presenting three films about people who dream of starting their own businesses. In the summer of 1963, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar develop a relationship. Jack, a wannabe rodeo cowboy, dreams of fixing up his parent's ranch and turning it into a success with Ennis. Ennis, a ranch hand haunted by a memory from his childhood, is desperate to not break the facade of domestic normalcy he has built with his wife, Alma, and their two daughters. Ang Lee's masterful exa...
Jun 29, 2025
This week- two films about ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, ancient races of people. No one knows who they were or what they were doing... Deep below the waves, in the city-state of Atlantis, is a nightmare for any unfortunate surface dweller caught by their raiding parties. Either forced to fight to the death in gladiatorial combat or sent to the mines to labor until you your body gives out. A pair of siblings get to experience all the nasty sides for themselves. Mea...
Jun 22, 2025
This week- a pair of films about young men who love beer. Van Wilder is in his seventh year at Coolidge College. After his father cuts off his tuition payment. Van comes up with a scheme to pay by organizing and running parties for the college's diverse social groups. Meanwhile, he is drawn into a triangle with journalism student Gwen and mean-spirited future status focused boyfriend. Will Van make it through his seventh year? Will he finally decide to put on a cap and gown and move on? Will he ...
Jun 15, 2025
This week- two films featuring men abusing their positions of power and the fallout from it. Miss Giddens is hired as a governess at Bly Manor. She is immediately taken with her young charge, Flora, and strikes an instant friendship with Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. Despite the encouraging start, small moments of discomfort begin to poke at Miss Giddens new normal. When Miles is expelled from his boarding school, Miss Giddens finds herself caught up in the effects from the not too distant past. ...
Jun 08, 2025
This week- a pair of movies about men chasing their dreams and competitive glory. Babe is a doctoral history student training to run a marathon. His brother, Doc, claims to work for an oil company. Doc really works for the government as a diamond courier for Christian Szell, a Nazi war criminal living in Uruguay. Soon all their paths will cross with devastating and violent consequences. Will Babe finish his thesis? Will Doc survive for the sequel? Do either know anyone who doesn't secretly work ...
Jun 01, 2025
This week- a trio of films with a brilliant Aussie actor. Edie Sedgwick is a young heiress who studied art and makes the move to New York City. Before long she finds herself a rising model in youthquake fashion and the muse of one of pop art's most enduring figures before addiction and socially ostracized lead to tragic results. The penultimate feature by George Hickenlooper with a stunning lead performance, Factory Girl. After his mother's death, J has to go live with his estranged grandmother....
May 25, 2025
This week- two films about dreamers being betrayed by trusted individuals working for the government. In 1968, William O'Neal is arrested for attempting to steal a car while posing as a federal agent. While in custody he is approached by the FBI who make an offer he can't refuse- the charges will disappear if he infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and relays information on its leader, Fred Hampton. Based on a true story, the second feature from Shaka King, Judas and the B...
May 18, 2025
This week- a pair of films about men on the edges of society taking youths under their wings. When washed up former football player, Curtis Plummer, is talked into spending his afternoons with his socially isolated niece, Jasmine. When he discovers her natural football throwing talent, he shapes her into the best quarterback to come out of their depressed former factory town. Inspired by but not even a little faithful to real events of the first girl to participate in the Pop Warner Football tou...
May 11, 2025
This week- a pair of films about people dragged into tangled webs of conspiracy. Rollie Taylor is the best practical effects artist that has ever been. When he's approached by an agent from the Department of Justice, he takes up the challenge of staging the assassination of an organized crime informant in public. Soon Rollie finds himself on the run from his employers with a trail of collateral damage and the NYPD detective at his heels. Will Rollie clear his name? What actually was the point of...
May 04, 2025
This week... Insurmountable obstacles, unfortunate events, and darker obsessions collide in four films about love that wounds and scars and ends unavoidably tragic. When a young woman is found murdered after leaving his house, down on his luck and violently tempered screenwriter Dix finds himself squarely in the police's frame. Only the testimony of his beautiful neighbor keeps him from immediate arrest. As his prosecution drags out, a relationship between them blooms. Can the blossoming relatio...
Apr 27, 2025
This week- two movies about puppets that want to become real boys. Malcolm Shanks is unable to hear or speak. He communicates through mime and puppetry. When a local mad scientist finds use of his talents, Shanks is set on a course of tragedy. The last film directed by genre icon and master of promotion William Castle- Shanks . The heavily sanitized for streaming audiences story of 1980s hair metal band Mötley Crüe. Inspired by the band's own autobiography and the first traditional narrative fea...
Apr 20, 2025
This week- a pair of films about bad dads creating generational trauma. Kōhei and his friends are making a video game. One day he and his girlfriend, Nami, go for a drive and come upon a huge seemingly abandoned mansion. Soon they discover that Nami's connection to it might be much deeper than they could have imagined. The film adaption of a 1999 PSX remake that never left Japan of a groundbreaking 1991 SNES visual novel that never left Japan- St. John's Wort (aka Otogirisō). Dong Zi is working ...
Apr 13, 2025
This week- two films about getting, in several common definition senses, a head, also using multiple definitions. When a teen in Biarritz, France decide to take advantage of his mother having to live in another country for work and begins hosting sex parties for the whole school to attend. Soon relationships are broken and videos from the parties begin making their way online threaten the make the activity known to all. The first feature from Eva Husson, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) . When th...
Apr 06, 2025
This week- a tour through Craig's Vinegar Syndrome collection brings ruin. When Madeline, who lost her ability to speak due to trauma, is picked up, on her way to therapy, by Tony, a human trafficker who enjoys writing taunting letters to his victim's families, she is soon forced into a life of addiction and sexual assault. Fortunately, she is given every Monday off to attend classes in revenge. A seminal, in both uses of the word, film in the rape-revenge genre: Thriller- A Cruel Picture . 16-y...
Mar 31, 2025
This week- two movies about magic and women at the end of their ropes. An up-and-coming Senator, Nick Rast, is on the fast track pushed by a kingmaker with a beautiful wife in a loveless marriage of convince and a terminally ill son. When a mysterious faith healer, Gregory Wolfe, seems to cure the boy, the powerful interests driving Rast won't allow this good turn to go unpunished. Are Wolfe's powers real? Is it all an elaborate scam? Just how easily manipulated is this senator?? Harlequin . Fra...
Mar 23, 2025
This week- a pair of films about the most basic human need for connection. Naturalist, Hank, lives in Africa with a huge number of big cats. Everyone around him are terrified of Hank's massive cat hoard, which continuously harms everyone that comes into contact with it while Hank laughs uproariously. Hank brings his family over for a visit, neglecting to mention how he is living and leaves them to fend for themselves unaware and unsuspecting. A massive undertaking that took over a decade to make...
Mar 16, 2025
This week- two films starring the brilliant Gene Hackman. Harry Moseby, a former football player turned private investigator, is hired to find a runaway sixteen-year-old. A search that will drag him into a conspiracy and coverup. The fourth genre redefining feature in a row from director Arthur Penn, Night Moves . A seasoned nuclear submarine commander and his new executive office clash over how to interpret their orders and at what point does on make a decision that could have grave consequence...
Mar 09, 2025
This week- a pair of films about women defying social expectations. Leaving her upper-middle class adoptive parents and normative school life behind, Raquel runs away to become a sex worker in São Paulo. Soon she works her way up the ranks, begins writing a blog (with client ratings), and becomes so popular that she begins making guest appearances on mainstream talk shows. Inspired by The Scorpion's Sweet Venom, the first autobiographical book by Bruna Surfistinha, Confessions of a Brazilian Cal...
Mar 02, 2025
This week- Craig and Dave chose violence. Identical twin brothers, Cale and Cade, are abducted and turned into something more than human by an entity. They are sent out to fight what the entity claims is "evil" and for some reason that means working very closely with a US black ops organization. Unfortunately, Cale is seen as defective and eventually released from his captivity... only to find his own ways of combating "evil". Has Cale gone too far? Will Cade ever question any of what he has bee...
Feb 23, 2025
This week- we celebrate our 400th episode with a four pack of films, each tailored to our individual tastes. Apparently, we all like crime. A lot. When Drew returns home after a long time away, this adoptive sister lover concocts a plan to escape with the addict of his eye. Even if it means murdering their adoptive father. Unfortunately, Papa isn't as slow as everyone else and makes plans of his own. An early film from John Swab, a favorite filmmaker of Tyler's, about existential criminal crisis...
Feb 16, 2025
This week- two films about women just trying to survive in harsh conditions. An observational documentary that intercuts conversations with Las Vegas based exotic dancers. They discuss their lives, their approach to the job, and how they were able to make a living after COVID closed stopped the action and dimmed the City of Neon Lights. The second in an ongoing documentary series, Stripped: Las Vegas . When D'Artagnan goes to Paris to join the Musketeers of King Louis XIII, he is immediately cau...
Feb 09, 2025
This week- a pair of comedic classics about absurdist dystopian patriarchies. When he goes to prison for killing the gang responsible for the death of his love, Saiga Riki-Oh (here called Ricky Ho Lik Wong), finds himself at odds with the corrupt system and its enforcers. A cult classic of ultra brutal slapstick martial art splatter violence that. Fun fact- after filming the finale, it took lead actor Fan Sui-wong three days to wash off the blood. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky . When the paranoid ...
Feb 02, 2025
This week- we change our earlier plans and try to catch some big fish in honor of David Lynch. In a nameless city, caught in an endless rain storm, a trio live with a mystery and possessive forces- Rabbits . A surgeon finds a man covered in deformities in a sideshow. Together they study human dignity and our social denial of it- The Elephant Man . A body dumped, a family given horrific news, a deeper horror lurking. Lumiere camera and Twin Peaks vibes- Premonitions Following an Evil Deed . An el...
Jan 26, 2025
This week two movies about young women and the lengths they will go to for love and connections. Tammy is a cheerleader with a crush on football player Michael. When Michael is abducted by Tammy's violent and jealous ex-boyfriend he is left in a coma hovering between life and death. Meanwhile, Dr. Wachinstein is preparing his new creation to show for his investors. All the potentially mad doctor needs is a fresh brain. What twist of fate will bring these three together? Can love blossom between ...
Jan 19, 2025
This week- two films about Japanese youth discovering themselves and the world around them told through vibes. Three boys decide to keep an eye on the local recluse who lives in a crumbling house with an overgrown garden, figuring he isn't long for this mortal coil. After a little stalking, the boys and old man begin to bond, through repairing the garden, and learn what drove him to be a self-imposed outcast from the world. A snapshot of the moment when childhood ends and repercussions of an act...
Jan 12, 2025
This week... a heaping helping of dramas about how the working class really should finally rise up. When Ani, a savvy young Brighton Beach stripper, meets Vanya, the son of disturbingly wealthy Russian oligarchs, they form a nontraditional* relationship. Before long, Vanya is faced with having to go back home to Russia and confesses his love to Ani and desire to marry her for a green card. When Vanya's parents learn of his nuptials, the honeymoon phase comes to a crashing end. The latest feature...
Jan 05, 2025
This week- we bring 2024 to a cheerful holiday end through torturing each other. When a serial killer has a cheap camcorder, nothing will stop him from recording his night drives around California or his crimes. A gift that will long give the joy of needing extra mental health care to one of us, Amateur Porn Star Killer 3: The Final Chapter. After barely surviving her encounter with Samuel, a young witch is now having her powers and body controlled by someone else. A gift that likely awakened so...
Dec 29, 2024
This week two movies about repercussions and the remorse of those who have to deal with them. Frances Glessner Lee was born into a wealthy family and had a lifelong interest in medicine and the burgeoning science of forensics. Dedicating her life and fortune to progressing the field. Her masterwork being the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of intricate dioramas with a wide variety of victims from all social classes and manners of death, which inspired many institutions and even f...
Dec 22, 2024
This week- two movies about living your life authentically to yourself in the face of societal pressure. When a performance art trio take up residency at an enigmatic and remote artistic institute, a journalist with gastric issues, Stones, is hired to document their day-today creative process. The trio, led by narcissist Elle di Elle, perform "sonic catering", making ASMR with culinary sounds. Stones finds his issues worsen as he is drawn ever deeper into their petty disagreements, power struggl...
Dec 15, 2024
This week- a pair of working vacations do not go as planned with massive consequences. 17 year-old skinhead Trevor is charged with throwing a brick the the window of a Pakistani man. Instead of being sentenced immediately, the judge sends him to a residential assessment center. There he is met with a staff who have patience that would make a saint furious. Can this last chance finally get through to Trevor and make him change his life's path or is he trapped unable to fit in the system's one siz...
Dec 08, 2024
