Filmsuck

By: Eileen Jones and Dolores McElroy
  • Summary

  • Support us on Patreon.com/filmsuck for bonus episodes and more perks! A weekly podcast hosted by Eileen Jones, film critic at Jacobin magazine and recovering academic, and Dolores McElroy, diva enthusiast and lecturer in film and media at UC Berkeley. In this podcast for the people, we bring you the truth about the rotten state of cinema, its often odious or ham-fisted relationship to politics, and its occasional wondrous bursts of courage and brilliance. We consider the glories of cinemas past, and wonder about lots of things: what’s the role of contemporary film in a time of bad art and worse taste; popular entertainment in a time of fragmentation, generalized disaffection, and PTSD; and media in a time when it seems to have lost its power to get us off our asses? In short, what is to be done when film sucks?
    Copyright 2021 All rights reserved.
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Episodes
  • We're Still Here
    Feb 26 2025

    Talking about I'M STILL HERE, a new political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the fracturing of his leftist family in the early 1970s, during the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. It's the latest film by Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION), who knew the Paiva family personally, and it's Brazil's biggest film hit since the Covid pandemic. It's also up for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress for the formidable Fernanda Torres. Co-hosts aren't in total agreement about I'M STILL HERE--Eileen loved it while acknowledging Dolores's misgivings about the lack of class-consciousness and its extended structure following what happens to the family in the forty-plus years after the harrowing events of 1971.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Dissecting David Lynch
    Feb 4 2025

    It's a Very Special Filmsuck episode open to the public! Co-host Eileen Jones interviews writer and cinephile Alex Deley, who wrote a fantastic piece for JACOBIN magazine about the glories of Lynch films.

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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Cohost Experience Uneven FLOW
    Jan 29 2025

    We've got a rare total disagreement between co-hosts when it comes to FLOW, the highly praised Latvian animated feature that's up for Oscars for both Best Animated Film and Best International Film. Dolores found this dialogue-free tale of a housecat and several other animals trying to survive a disastrous flood moving, inspiring, and perhaps the greatest film this year. Whereas Eileen—who generally despises the whole movie history of animals being terrorized so we can be entertained and learn dubious lessons, going back to THE YEARLING and OLD YELLER—defies all critical and public opinion to declare her deathless hatred for this film.

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    58 mins

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