More Than One Lesson

When it premiered on FX in January of 2013, The Americans entered a TV landscape that already featured an embarrassment of quality riches. After 5 seasons and 65 episodes though, it has emerged as some of the most absorbing storytelling in any medium in a very long time.

As someone with a strong fascination with the Cold War, I had great excitement for the pilot episode which introduced us to Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys) Jennings, two Soviet “illegals” in 1981 who had been living in the suburbs of Washington, DC for the better part of two decades. Having been placed in the United States by the KGB, Elizabeth and Philip have a cover marriage, cover jobs as travel agents with cover histories and even two cover children, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), neither of whom have any idea of their parents’ true identities. Elizabeth and Philip’s real job involves honey traps and murders in the name of the Soviet cause. After all of these years and missions, the life is wearing on Philip and he has begun to question if America is really as bad as the Soviet government would have their people believe. Elizabeth meanwhile is as committed as ever, firmly believing that every life she takes is justifiable in the effort to “make the world a better place.”

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Upon being asked after the release of the Dark Knight if he had a third installment planned, Christopher Nolan replied with asking ironically how many good third movies there were. Of course, Nolan eventually did complete his trilogy, whether it being against his better judgment or not depending on who one talks to. Throughout movie history, the essential functions of the third film in a series have either been as a fitting and satisfactory end to a particular storyline (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), a disappointing but nevertheless conclusive entry (Godfather III), or a debacle so big as to necessitate a reset to the franchise (Superman III/Spiderman 3, etc., etc.). In anticipation of another highly-anticipated third film, War for the Planet of the Apes, this weekly series will cover famous third films, infamous third films and otherwise, exploring how trilogy-enders or other types of third films have functioned in relation to its series.

Sometimes the best trilogies come in the strangest packages. This is certainly true for Park Chan-Wook’s self-proclaimed Vengeance Trilogy. Though not connected in any conventional narrative sense, the three films do contain enough cross-references, callbacks, and through lines to back the director’s claims. Principal actors in one film reappear in the next in a minor role, accentuated in ways meant to evoke their other screen selves within Chan-Wook’s universe. Certain visual tricks get re-introduced with each film, seemingly inconsequential objects in the first film become iconography by the third. What these connections mean in and of themselves are at first hard to read.

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In this episode, Tyler is joined by Andrew Klavan to discuss Denzel Washington’s Fences and Lewis John Carlino’s The Great Santini.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:50 – Intro, Worth Watching, Andrew Klavan
00:04:00- Fences
00:30:35- The Great Santini
01:09:48- Episode wrap-up, The Great Good Thing

In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs.

“Never meet your heroes.” It’s a phrase and a sentiment that we are all familiar with because there are some unfortunate souls who have met a celebrity or an inspirational figure and ended up gravely disappointed. Not many of us however have had that disappointment echo through history the way young Robert Ford’s did.

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Watching The Sea of Glass and Fire, the second film in the Revelation Road trilogy, the best way that I know how to describe it is: It’s a raisin cookie. Ever take a bite of a cookie you thought was chocolate chip and think, “Ugh! Raisins!” but then just plow ahead and finish it because, hey, you already started it and raisin cookies aren’t half bad?

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Streaming services, VOD releases, the “Golden Age of Television” and the like have all put movie exhibition in the same existential quandary faced with the advent of sound and color: how to put butts in seats? While everything from serving food and alcohol to installing indoor jungle gyms (!?) have been attempted to solve this problem, my new personal favorite requires going back in time rather than propelling forward. I’m talking about the phenomenon often referred to as Symphony at the Movies, a special form of film exhibition that is becoming more and popular across the country each year. Watching Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain in the theater is its own glorious thing; having its soundtrack performed by a major symphony orchestra while watching it proves quite another. Like Citizen Kane or Casablanca, the film requires no more new perspectives. Popular and critical culture have together provided a gluttony of prisms by which to view it. Instead, I humbly offer up the merits of experiencing an antiquated art (going to the symphony) combined with an art inevitably heading that way (going to the movies).

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In this episode, Tyler and Josh discuss James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour and Milos Forman’s Amadeus.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:50- Intro, Digisciple Me
00:01:35- The End of the Tour
00:45:45- Amadeus
01:24:45- Episode wrap-up

For this fifth outing, even fans of Disney’s venerable Pirates franchise may be sympathetic to the tongue-in-cheek boredom of the flamboyant swashbuckler Jack Sparrow as he introduces himself to the uninitiated characters in the film, a plucky pair of youthful protags.  Despite the generally underwhelming response to two most recent films in the series (2007’s At World’s End and 2011’s On Stranger Tides), there is no doubt that, with his portrayal of the lovably wily Sparrow, Johnny Depp has created one of the more enduring cinematic characters of the twentieth-first century.  It would be easy enough to fashion another film around his antics, but thankfully a fresh directing duo, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, working from veteran adventure film screenwriter Jeff Nathanson’s (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) script, manage to add some enjoyable new dimensions, at least aesthetically, to the proceedings.

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