M*A*S*H: The Worst Person You Know
Tim has good analysis and Matt has loud thoughts about some truly awful people.
Sound of Silver: Get Innocuous
LCD Soundsystem, Phoenix, Hot Chip. All three abidingly groovy, but which best plucks the heartstrings?
North By Northwest: To Thine Own Auteur Be True
Auteurs don’t just make movies, they make themselves in movies.
Jaws: 100 Years…100 Thrills
AFI maybe should have decided what “Thrills” means more deliberately, but Jaws, The Exorcist, and Notorious are fun movies to talk about regardless.
good kid, m.A.A.d.city: Concept Rap
Matt loves a good concept album and a good hip-hop album, and here the twain do meet with Kendrick Lamar, Danny Brown, and Lupe Fiasco.
Rocky: Losing the Last Fight
Whether it’s in boxing or gambling or family, we all have to fight hard to find meaning in losing.
Crooked Rain Crooked Rain: Pavement Covers
Do Matt and Tim like Pavement any better several months on? Ehh…
The Gold Rush: The Oceana Roll
Three movies that maybe couldn’t be more different in plots, but which all have little joys to savor.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: Myth & History
An indie classic, the genesis of a new Broadway musical, two progressive folk artists that prove Matt listens to at least some country-adjacent stuff.
Kala: Movie Placement
And I don’t want the world to see me fly like paper get high like planes when you come crash into me.
Duck Soup: Zany Brainy
Screwballs. We all love ‘em. We especially love ones with a bit of bite, like Duck Soup, The Palm Beach Story, and What’s Up, Doc?
Deci’s Midnight Runners #4: Metal & Lucas
With a Lucas Choose Your Own Adventure and an 80s metal bracket, you might say we’re operating at peak us.
Sullivan’s Travels: 1941
Which of The Devil and Daniel Webster and The Little Foxes gets the ultimate reward of sitting on the fence with pie?
Stankonia: 2000 Rap Hits
“Country Grammar” and “Southern Hospitality” enter. Only one can leave.
American Graffiti: Nostalgia
In which Matt crashes into the postmodern position that anything pre-1940s feels like fundamentally different history.
Untrue: Intimate
We all like feeling closely connected to our music, and few artists do that better than Burial, Julien Baker, and Death Cab for Cutie.
Cabaret: “Do You Still Think You Can Control Them?”
Control is illusory and the people of Cabaret, The Towering Inferno, and Ace in the Hole learn that the long, hard way.