More Than One Lesson

In this episode, Tyler and Reed discuss S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss John Carpenter’s Halloween.

As I write this, it is two years to the day since four students were murdered by a classmate at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington. 15 years earlier, I was a junior at that school, looking around the campus on the morning of April 21, 1999. It was the day after the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. School shootings were not as commonplace as they would become but I still remember feeling that if someone really wanted to commit such a horrific act on our campus, there would be little to stop them. Tragically, 15 years later that would turn out to be true.

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Clint Eastwood’s Sully is the director’s latest film about real life heroism. Starting with Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in 2006, Eastwood has made several films based on inspirational true stories, though often from an odd angle (telling Nelson Mandela’s story as a function of the rugby World Cup, for example). With Sully, however, Eastwood – ever the deconstructionist – has decided to approach what could be a straightforward story and treat it as an opportunity to meditate on the very nature of heroism itself.

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In this episode, Tyler and Josh discuss Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows and Neil Marshall’s The Descent. Please note that there are some audio issues with this episode. Thanks for your patience.

When This is Spinal Tap was released in 1984, the mockumentary was a relatively novel concept. One of the film’s leads, Christopher Guest, would return to it as a director and star in 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, reassembling much of Spinal Tap’s cast. The mockumentary format has become much more prevalent in the two decades since, both in Guest’s other films (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind) and on television (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Reno! 911, and Guest’s own Family Tree, just to name a few). However, at this point, comedy in general has been highly influenced – for better or worse – by the format. Improvisational comedy, which sees actors going on tangential riffs while the camera just rolls, has become so commonplace that it’s surprising anymore to see a comedy film or TV series that doesn’t rely on it, at least to some extent.

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In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss John Carpenter’s The Thing.

There’s something frustrating about a film that can’t quite decide what it wants to be. That isn’t to say that I did not enjoy Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant, but it would have done better to either commit to being a well-made, engrossing popcorn movie or a thoughtful character study about an autistic professional killer. Instead, The Accountant attempts to be both, the result being a pretty good – though decidedly flawed – movie that could have been great had the filmmakers chosen one path and fully committed to it.

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In this episode, Tyler and Reed discuss Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss John Carpenter’s They Live.