Another year, another list! Dolly Back looks back on one of the most remarkable years in recent film exhibition. In a year marked by rare crossover appeal, audience rejection of tentpole films, important conversations regarding labour, and film projection on a glorious scale, your hosts dive into the films that powered their imaginations! Please enjoy another massive (and please make use of our timestamps) and easy listen, and make sure to listen to the very end for a special announcement! 3:30 ...
Jan 14, 2024•1 hr 52 min
Was the introduction of sound to cinema a crime? If so, Fritz Lang commits in the first-degree in his seminal thriller/drama M! Crossing paths with the radio medium and the crumbling Weimar Republic, M's soundscape is rich with texture and subtle connotation, though what strikes your hosts the most is Lang's deployment of silence. Join them as they hunt for an answer in the midst of German political cacophony as they discuss this classic's immaculate cinematography, genealogical relation to othe...
Dec 11, 2023•50 min
It's been a long, winding journey for Dolly Back to arrive at David Robert Mitchell's Los Angeles, putting their cinematic sleuthing skills to the ultimate test. In a film rife with prospective black boxes, hidden bunkers, secret treasures, your hosts contemplate the nature of structuring mystery in film narrative, making sense of Sam's journey into the Angeleno underworld as so many have before him. Drop by your hosts' case board as they dissect the libidinal core of the Neo-noir, our fascinati...
Nov 20, 2023•57 min
At the tail-end of October and beginning of November, Dolly Back could not find a better opportunity to spotlight this middle child of wintery weather. Bob Clark's 1974 slasher is near and dear to the hearts of Torontonian horror lovers, and a striking standard for all of its ilk yet to arrive. Offering a strikingly progressive perspective compared to the misogyny of its successors, your hosts dive into cult fascination with Black Christmas, such as its deployment of the Final Girl, odd setting,...
Nov 10, 2023•54 min
Dolly Back is sick with excitement at presenting its latest episode on Bong Joon-Ho's The Hos t (2006). Perhaps the most eminently celebrated South Korean director of his generation, Bong is at his pulpiest and most elemental in this monster movie, directly challenging American intervention in Korean affairs with a riff on the real-life dumping of formaldehyde into the Han River. Monsters wear many faces - illness, misinformation, and sometimes an unholy kaiju engaging in Korean tradition in its...
Oct 30, 2023•55 min
GROOVY ! Dolly Back couldn't be happier to tackle Sam Raimi's love letter to the horror genre, the Evil Dead franchise! The rare film trilogy that can elicit both intense laughter and abject terror within the same scene, is equal parts George Romero and Jacques Lacan, has curiously insisted upon the structure of its first film for its "re-quel". In celebration of one of genre filmmaking's finest balancing acts, join your hosts on a trip to Raimi's cabin in the woods in discussion of linearity, s...
Oct 16, 2023•1 hr 5 min
The beginning of Terence Malick's feature filmmaking career begins with neither a bang nor a whimper - but the ambivalent hum of 60s American suburbia. As real-world crime and Hollywood myths of the era coalesce, the filmmaker embarks upon an odyssey through a country in desperate search of new icons, spanning the bygone Western past of the nation with the schoolyard romances of the day. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek dazzle in one of the quietest and lovelorn romances in Hollywood history, indel...
Oct 06, 2023•57 min
William Friedkin lays it all on the line in this 1977 thriller, shaking his fist at the sky and the precarious times of an increasingly globalized and tragically nuclear world. Assembling a ragtag group of all nationalities on every level of production, the odyssey of four damned workers journeying to a pillar of flame with even more nitroglycerin stands as one of the tensest narratives put to film, plagued by issues as soon as the crew set foot in the jungle. Join your hosts as they discuss its...
Sep 16, 2023•57 min
Few filmmakers handle liminal spaces so casually and comfortably as Jia Zhangke... To the point where you could say he has a sort of home court advantage. Join your hosts this week as they explore the muddy digital textures, surreal animation, and concrete simulacra of Zhangke's THE WORLD. Amid the artifice of Beijing's World Park, we discover how Zhangke's various romances and tragedies coalesce into an elegy for all of those who may have been forgotten during his nation's drastic change at the...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Now it’s his turn - Abel Ferrara blazes onto the streets of New York with this gothic and visceral crime epic! Aiming to offer a more precise look at the cultural fabric of NYC while reflecting upon a post-Reagan America, the film is host to explosive performances from Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishbourne, and David Caruso, each manically reaching for some ephemeral goal. Join your hosts as they discuss its shadowy heritage, direct commentary, and commitment to artifice! Gavin Smith’s Intervi...
Aug 15, 2023•54 min
In a move of unappreciated genius a decade ago, Sofia Coppola swiftly turned her viewfinder to the beginning of the social media age and the unwitting victims falling into its web. In a period piece 3 years removed from its real-life events, The Bling Ring is an all-too voyeuristic and charming encapsulation of how rapidly our culture processes and produces information, everywhere from the styles we hunger for, the idols we worship, to the lives we sacrifice at their altar. Join your hosts as th...
Aug 07, 2023•56 min
How would you describe home? Your answer can stem anywhere from a simple one-word response to describing an experience beyond words. Marjane Satrapi's imaginative and harrowing Persepolis (2007) runs across this spectrum in one of the most distinct autobiographical accounts of the century. A chronicle that covers the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the Iran-Iraq War, and Satrapi's life story, this politically astute text breaks past the medium specific boundaries of its source material, with an emph...
Jul 28, 2023•57 min
In the shadow of Y2K, a new champion has risen - John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious stands as the long-running franchises most streamlined and personal chapters! One of two films not to include Vin Diesel, the Californian native recruits Paul Walker and Tyrese Gibson on a Miami Vice whirlwind, laying the groundwork for Fast's connection to contemporary hip hop, vigilantism, and high tech fascination. Your hosts additionally opt to explore another medium's obsession with speed, and how it orients ...
Jul 14, 2023•53 min
Armed with the shadows of post-war America and perhaps its greatest star in Humphrey Bogart, director Nicholas Ray chronicles the unraveling of "movie magic" and romance in his 1950 tour-de-force! It may not join the ranks of the polychromous widescreen tragedies he carved his name in cinema history with, but its aesthetic calling cards only serve to strengthen its exploration of the male psyche, our participation in the moral occult, and the small distances between fact and fiction. Join your h...
Jul 07, 2023•53 min
New York is about to explode! Sidney Lumet's tense filmmaking spills onto the streets as the century's most pivotal confrontations with American authority are still in the rearview mirror. Making the most of its real-life subject material, the documentary-like approach to tracking Al Pacino's Sonny Wortzik and his every move makes for one of the most thrilling and *sweatiest* heist films ever made. Sonny becomes a searing light - a media sensation walking a tightrope between financial freedom an...
Jun 02, 2023•58 min
Conjuring synthetic sound and Faustian fury, Brian De Palma's adaptation PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is one of cinema's most striking keystones, both as a cult object as well as an inspirational force of nature. As William Finley's Winslow Leach's appearance and creative sincerity are contorted into Expressionist angles by Paul Williams' Swan, their battle illustrates the recapitulation of myth across all mediums, the folly of eternal life in whatever form we can conceive it, and of course, artistic...
May 25, 2023•56 min
Dolly Back learns to live with Godzilla, as they take on Hideaki Anno's striking SHIN GODZILLA , equal parts brilliant political drama and show-stopping kaiju film! An excellent case study in where American and Japanese filmmakers and audiences diverge in their evaluation of a global icon, this outing boasts perhaps the most existentially terrifying creature design of the decade, and some of the most biting commentary of the Shinzo Abe administration amidst national tumult. Join your hosts as th...
May 10, 2023•57 min
Silence speaks volumes - a principle that Chantal Akerman exercises to the fullest in her profoundly lonely and austere masterclass, LES RENDEZ-VOUS D'ANNA ! As a filmmaker promotes her film across the European continent, her fleeting conversations become quiet ambushes on finding home and hearth. Often tuned out by her conversational partners, Anna is also trapped by the film's immaculate framing, brilliantly suffocated by the symmetry and stasis of Akerman's camera. Join your hosts on their pr...
May 03, 2023•54 min
Call us, listener. Dolly Back feels positively electric about finally visiting the world of David Lynch, in his 1997 neo-noir Lost Highway ! A product of pure, postmodern pulp, it also samples as a brilliant encapsulation of the end of the 20th century, where digital continues to intercede between spectators and their perception of reality, Americana undergoes a tragic metamorphosis, and time is thrown to the wind! Join your hosts on their getaway as they discuss the spatial politics of Robert B...
Apr 26, 2023•59 min
SOOOOMEBODY PLEASE… GET THIS MAN… A GUN! In what will certainly go down as one of the alltime great action franchises, your hosts track the impossible rise and delightful highs of the John Wick franchise, dialing in especially to Chapter 2. An entry which catapults the underworld mythology and tragic qualities of its humble predecessor, Chad Stahelski points his viewfinder at the proverbial action cinema mirror, borrowing from the masters he worked under, seminal action filmmakers, and effortles...
Apr 19, 2023•59 min
Starting off their second season, Dolly Back wrestles with a filmic friendship that couldn’t be further from their own partnership, yet profoundly truthful in its own right. Elaine May’s 1976 crepuscular drama sees Peter Falk’s Mikey and John Cassavetes’ Nicky darting around the alleys and diners of Philadelphia, quietly in search of that fabled brotherly love. As their bond threatens to unravel in evaluation of life, loves, and ill-gotten gains, May’s deployment of improv techniques, theater ba...
Apr 10, 2023•51 min
Marking one year of releases from yours truly, Dolly Back celebrates by gazing into the sunsetting Western, epitomized by John Ford's incredible The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ! A master who has grown weary of desert plains and gunplay - and making films at all! - leaps back into the saddle to write a eulogy for the mythology he and the medium helped edify in the American consciousness. A lawyer, a gunslinger, and an outlaw walk into a bar... and democracy erupts! In examination of its uniquel...
Apr 03, 2023•56 min
The year is 2006 - YouTube still has training wheels on, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are about to throw down, and digital filmmaking is ready to explode! In a year full of exciting experimentation from auteurs such as David Lynch and Michael Mann, directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine are the first to mix all these postmodern moments in an exciting cocktail, and a bonafide VEHICLE for Jason Statham! As his Chev Chellios tears apart downtown Los Angeles to avoid death-by-poison, your hosts dive into...
Mar 27, 2023•52 min
CW: Sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. For every happy wanderer and stranger, there remains a distance. In Mani Ratnam’s 1998 romance/political thriller, Bollywood tropes and the mythology of its star are flipped on their head in service of a harrowing national allegory, questioning how the idealized unions of Indian cinema could lead to reconciliation. In a film that evokes a postmodernist idea of multiple Indias, pan-Indian identity and Arabic poetry, as well as the relationship b...
Mar 20, 2023•57 min
Brotherly love, national values, and home - time has a funny way of sweeping them all away without discrimination. In an act of preserving fire, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1983 religious drama questions the ethics of returning to the past and bearing silent witness to the future, as collapses reality and surreality, man and woman, sane and insane, mortal and myth into spiritual equilibrium. By blurring these boundaries, what occurs in this late but absolutely seminal work is a striking dialogue on slipp...
Feb 28, 2023•59 min
Death haunts every corner of this sprawling, environmental epic from Studio Ghibli. Whether it is the exploration of its eponymous revenge spirit, nature's ability to survive through all adversity, or a protagonist marked from death, every aspect of Hayao Miyazaki and crew's filmmaking rises to meet fate, be it real-life climate calamity or our own struggle to live in harmony with the world. Join your hosts as they aim to capture a piece of this uncompromising masterclass, from the fidelity of i...
Feb 21, 2023•57 min
Happy Valentine's Day listeners - to celebrate, your hosts dive into one of the most kinetic and tender love stories put to film, in Gina Prince-Bythewood's debut Love and Basketball ! Doubling as star athletes and conflicted lovers, Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps deftly explore the grief of professional failure, the loss of the family unit, the forfeiture of one's dreams - and never letting their love for each other die out through it all. Check up as we dribble through this film's magnificent ligh...
Feb 14, 2023•59 min
Every end is a new beginning, and what Kevin Flynn refers to as biodigital jazz, your hosts view as a deeply spiritual, meditative encounter with the digital and non real. Helmed by Joseph Kosinski, an architecture student now responsible for one of the most slickly directed and highest grossing actioners of all time, had his roots in a similarly precise big swing that resurrects a past icon onscreen. In spite of its lack of commercial inertia, Legacy has since become an enduring film for many o...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Tofu, cake, snow, celluloid - Park Chan Wook’s 2005 slow burn thriller walks a retributive path towards a philosophy of purity. Geum-Ja, recently freed from a prison sentence for a crime she was wrongfully accused of, cultivates an intricate debt of human relationships that culminate in one of the most gruesome and casually cruel murders in the director’s career. Anchored by a female perspective, the middle child of his Revenge Trilogy casts angels, children, blunderbusses, and dogs in a symphon...
Jan 30, 2023•56 min
"Racism, or tradition as they call it nowadays, gets passed down like recipes" jokes Denzel Washington's Demetrius as he strolls down the beach with Sarita Choudhury's Mina, the two lovers opting to spice up the formula in their subversive but tender relationship. In a story that travels from Uganda to Jackson, Mississippi, a soundtrack that bounces between world and soul, and a perspective that alternates between old and young, Mira Nair deftly evaluates how shared cultural experiences can be o...
Jan 23, 2023•58 min
