New Podcast: Us, Dumbo, The Beach Bum, and Gloria Bell

by Murtada Elfadl, Chris Feil, and Nathaniel R

 

Now that 2019 movies are more than underway, a new season of the Podcast is upon us! 

Index (55 minutes)
00:01 Julianne Moore is Gloria Bell
12:30 Jordan Peele's Us starring Lupita Nyong'o  [MAJOR SPOILERS]
33:30 Tim Burton's Dumbo
40:00 Randomness
42:50 Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum and Matthew McConaughey's strange year
52:00 Randomness

Supplemental Reading
• Film Comment Gloria Bell review
• Murtada's Beach Bum review
• Chris's Us review
• Jason's Serenity review
• Paulina García's great performance in the original Gloria

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Gloria Bell, Us, Dumbo

Beauty vs Beast: Nanny Dearest

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- today we're wishing a happy 32 to one of our absolute favorite working actresses, the great Mackenzie Davis. If you watched Halt and Catch Fire you got it the second her "Cameron" showed up and from that moment on it's just been a long slow waiting game for the rest of the world to catch up. But catch up they have, I think - I mean she is about to star in a Terminator movie so I think they have. Whether she'll have anything of actual substance to do in that we'll have to wait and see.

But we'll always have Tully! Jason Retiman's 2018 film was one of our faves (Nathaniel gave it several nominations and a win for its screenplay in his Film Bitch Awards), spinning an exquisite dissociative dramedy out of the newborn fugue state -- it reeks of new parent smell. The film's a showcase for Theron and Davis' easy charms -- one of the year's true pleasures was getting the chance to explore the constant moment of total anxiety in such capable hands. You feel a little bit saner on the far side of Tully.

survey tool

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Spring Breakers poll turned out to be closer than I anticipated, given how well James Franco's "Alien" was receieved at the time, but he won it only at 54% -- indeed nobody had anything kind to say about him or his performance in the comments. So we'll share some love for the girls, via Tom G:

"I give credit to Hudgens for trying to take risks with her career post HSM. She did Broadway as well and is generally regarded as the saving grace of the live musicals she appears in on TV."

Review: The Beach Bum

by Murtada Elfadl

If your favorite Matthew Mcconaughey mood is of the naked bongo drumming variety, then Harmony Korine has made just the movie for you. In The Beach Bum Mcconaughey is Moondog, a rebellious rogue living outside society in Florida doing exactly what he wants, whenever he wants it, and all the while high as a kite. He’s nice, benevolent, kind, mostly peaceful, accepting of all and of their foibles. He believes in true love and practices it (straight of course but not adverse to a bit of cross dressing). Even when he finds out his wife (Isla Fisher) is also sleeping with other people, it takes him literally only a minute to go from surprise to complete acceptance.

The plot -if we can call it that - is to follow Moondog along his travels in Key West and Miami...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Girls Gone Wildin'

Happy Monday to one and all, Jason from MNPP here with this week's brand new edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- enfant terrible provocateur Harmoney Korine is tossing another neon grenade our way this forthcoming Friday with his film The Beach Bum (reviewed at SXSW), twisting our sexual stoner preconceptions of Matthew McConaughey to suit his perverse needs. So for this week's contest, with Britney's voice still warbling in our heads, let's toss it back seven years to Korine's last much celebrated ode to the wacky Florida lifestyle, Spring Breakers.

In one corner we've got our four bikini kill co-eds (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) and everywhere else we've got the drug-dealing pistol-fellating Alien (James Franco), owner of shit.

survey solutions

PREVIOUSLY I figured last week's Eternal Sunshine contest wouldn't be close but it really, really, wasn't close -- Kirsten Dunst walked away with 92% of the vote over Elijah Wood's mega-creep; said Fitz:

"Mary, Mary, Mary. No contest. I think Kirsten Dunst's performance, as a supporting actor, was perhaps more impressive than Kate Winslet's with the limited time she got. Mary's arc was devastating, and Dunst (no surprises) was heartbreaking in the role. Sadly—just another Oscar nod that was denied Dunst who should have at least 6 and 1 win by now (her turns in Melancholia, The Beguiled, Bachelorette, All Good Things, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, The Cat's Meow, Eternal Sunshine, Interview with the Vampire were all Oscar-worthy performances)"

Soundtracking: Spring Breakers

by Chris Feil

Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is a masterstroke as definitive for its musical sensibility as any film in recent years. The film is a septic portrait of neon dreams gone sour, its partying coeds representing a state of mind numbed by a need to escape their bland existence. Where Korine finds more than beneath the drunken surface of their ultimately violent misbehavings, he also finds more pathos beneath the acid pop veneer that fuels their waywardness.

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