148 – mother!

Key art for mother! (2017)

Tim and Jen defend a movie you either love or hate, Darren Aronofsky’s mother!

See crybaby Kyle Smith’s review of mother! at the world’s worst magazine if you want to know what kind of thing gets your hosts into a theater to see a movie.

Jen whiffed the explanation of the bad blood between Satoshi Kon and Darren Aronofsky. The situation is way more complicated than the latter purchasing the rights to Perfect Blue (which never happened, incidentally). The Animation Obsessive Substack did a deep dive.

Looking for an exploration of the meaning of the pelican-in-her-piety from someone way more informed than Jen? The nice people at the St. Mary Magdalen School of Theology have you covered.

For more Aronofsky, listen to the episode where we compared Pi to an obscure British television series, Hammer House of Horror.

147 – R.O.T.O.R.

Brad Overturf as the titular character in R.O.T.O.R. (1987)
To quote Bill Corbett: “We…SEE…HIM!!”

Jen and Tim finally tackle one of their shared albatrosses— the Robocop before Robocop, R.O.T.O.R.!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!

Isadora Fox wrote a piece in memory of actress Margaret Trigg for New York magazine back in 2004. The article details her struggles with disordered eating and poor mental health, but also serves as a eulogy for a legitimately talented person gone too soon.

You can also watch an entire episode of Aliens in the Family, the unlamented sitcom Trigg starred in for 8 episodes. By the way, Aliens in the Family was co-written by everyone’s least favorite “satirist,” Andy Borowitz.

Like abysmal independent films from the 80s? Why not try our episode on Things?

146 – Enter the Void

Enter the Void (2009) key art

Tim gets a little treat this month— we talked about one of his personal favorites, Gaspar Noé’s trippy version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Enter the Void!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!

Read an interview at Den of Geek with a voluble Noé about Enter the Void.

Towards the end, the weird trip turns into a bad trip, like sometimes mushroom trips or acid trips turn into bad trips. But a bad trip can be very rewarding, because when you come out of one, it’s like coming out of a bad dream where you get killed or something, and the moment you wake up, you still feel the presence of that reality and the dream, or the nightmare, is always real. But you feel so safe coming back to the real world, and some people said when they came out of this movie that they were still scared. – Gaspar Noé on Enter the Void

The Hype Williams-directed video Tim got so mad about is for Kanye West’s “All of the Lights.” Honestly a pretty pallid copy of the title sequence Tim loves so much.

See Paz de la Huerta crash the shooting of Louis Theroux’s Scientology documentary. 

For more transgressive cinema, listen to our episode about Lars von Trier’s divisive masterpiece Antichrist.