Erotic Thrillers: Part 1 – The Dawn of the Eighties

by Cláudio Alves

Mainstream cinema feels more sexless than ever. Even at the height of the Hays Code's second coming, sex had a place of pride in Hollywood, often sublimated into insinuation to avoid censorship. There's art to horniness, to making the camera a conduit of erotic reverie or a purveyor of desire, want itself synthesized as form. Sexual films can also be rich texts, telling us much about the times when they were made, the culture that created them, and the audiences that either embraced or repudiated the movie. Whether prurient or intellectual, there are many ways to engage with erotic cinema, especially when carnal craving collides with violence, and annihilation that goes beyond the ecstasy of an orgasm.

Erotic Thrillers is the theme of one of the Criterion Channel's latest collections, released right in time for the You Must Remember This podcast's new season - "Erotic 90s". After tackling the 80s last year, Karina Longworth is heading into a new decade, and we're going along for the ride. For the next few weeks, we'll explore all films in the Criterion program, taking a journey from 1980 to 1996. Let's begin the adventure with a Hitchcockian riff full of fucked-up notions of gender, a postmodern neo-noir, and an unlikely message picture… 

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TIFF: Adelaide Clemens impresses with ‘The Swearing Jar’

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s wonderful when a film serves as a showcase to a performer you’ve appreciated seeing before and had hoped would get another terrific part. Australian actress Adelaide Clemens, who has done plenty of TV work in her home country, delivered a very affecting turn in the underrated SundanceTV series Rectify as a soft-spoken spouse learning to find her own voice. She also recently appeared as the wife of Andrew Garfield’s Mormon detective in Under the Banner of Heaven. In just the opening scene of the Canadian film The Swearing Jar, it’s clear that Clemens is doing something altogether different and harbors tremendous untapped talent…

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Kathleen Turner and Straight Camp

by Nathaniel R

Romancing the Stone's most famous sight gag. © 20th Century Fox

At the risk of accidental humiliation, like having a stranger end up face down in your lap due to a freak mudslide, I would like to propose a theory that Romancing the Stone (1984) is straight camp. Since no one can agree on a definition of "camp", let alone a heternormative variation on such a traditionally gay style / point of view, it's a risk. But looking back at Robert Zemeckis' classic adventure rom-com, the word 'camp' if not 'campy' kept coming to mind.

Right from its defining cheesy prologue, a heightened visualization of the last pages of a romance novel's already purple prose, it's an artificial wonder...

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Streaming Roulette, March: Drive my car by the west side, Peggy Sue

by Nathaniel R

Before we begin we should note that between HBOMax (Dune, King Richard, Drive My Car, West Side Story), Netflix (Power of the Dog, Don't Look Up), Hulu (Nightmare Alley), AppleTV+ (CODA) and VOD (Belfast, Licorice Pizza) all of the Best Picture nominees are or will be available to watch at home this month before the Oscars (March 27th). 

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming titles by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

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Vintage '86

The Smackdown of '86 (with special guests) arrives in just 9 days. Before we get to the main event let's talk about what people were talking about that year in film, television, stage, music, and books... 

Great Big Box Office Hits: Movie stars rather than IP still ruled so the top ten made room for Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, and Bette Midler vehicles along with just 3 sequels (can you imagine a top ten box office of the year with just 3 sequels nowadays? It's hard to do). Military men and women were also the rage with the marines of Aliens, the airforce bros of Top Gun, and the traumatized foot soldiers of Platoon all extremely popular with moviegoers.

1. Top Gun (military drama)
2. Crocodile Dundee (comedy)
3. Platoon (military drama)
4. Karate Kid Part II (sequel)
5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (sci-fi sequel)...

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