Critical Darlings

Get your dipping sauces ready, it’s Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma!

Starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, this meta horror picture goes to some very strange places that nonetheless right feel at home with Schoenbrun’s dreamy-sexy vision: a haunted summer camp, an underground eldritch video store, and an emotionally moving Counting Crows music video to name just a few.

Though dripping in fountains of blood, the movie is also a sensitive depiction of sex and desire as refracted through Einbinder’s character’s obsession with the in-universe Camp Miasma. Camp Miasma is a past-its-prime, problematic horror franchise whose masters have now employed Einbinder's character, a young director, to create a “woke” reboot. She travels to the Pacific Northwest to meet the mysterious starlet of the first film, played by Anderson, who lives at the old campground, and both women unspool.

Alison recently wrote a profile of Schoenbrun in Vulture, and has been immersed in their work for some time, including their upcoming novel. We’ll get into their trajectory from We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, to I Saw the TV Glow, to Camp Miasma, and discuss its extremely dense themes, it’s incredible centerpiece musical sequence, go long on the mystic veil of childhood video stores, and much more. Plus, five whole minutes of The Dog Stars!

Next week, it’s mailbag time!

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After an absurd and depressing attempt by David Zaslov to bury Coyote Vs. Acme, it’s finally in theaters. What’s more, it’s great, making WB’s attempts to shelve the movie for a tax write-off seem all the feckless.

Rescued by the odd-duck distributor Ketchup Entertainment, the movie is a corporate satire and legal thriller about culpability and justice in a world stacked against the little guy—represented by the character of Wiley Coyote, and Will Forte, as Coyote’s ambulance-chasing attorney.

Today we’re joined by Looney Tunes expert Connor Ratliff, of The George Lucas Talk Show, Connor Ratliff’s Presents The Acting Class,⁠ Dead Eyes, and more, to discuss the movie, its rocky history, and a great deal of Looney Tunes lore. We get into a history of Ketchup, the movie’s surprisingly heartfelt center, which Looney Tunes are MAGA, and get into a little behind-the-scenes discussion with the help from Connor, including some of the film’s notable absences, and Senator Elmer Fudd’s official political affiliation.

Next week, we’re going to Camp Miasma! See you then.


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Ey wanna leahn howta shuck an oystah? Jaya Saxena of the new, worker-owned food publication Ravenous, joins us to discuss Tony, the micro-biopic about a pipsqueak version of Anthony Bourdain learning to love food in Provincetown, Mass.

From director Matt Johnson of Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie, and Blackberry, comes a fictionalized take on Bourdain’s early years. The script loosely covers about a chapter and a half from Bourdain’s hallowed Kitchen Confidential: the book that helped turn him from a working chef into one of the most important food writers in America. Bourdain’s reputation precedes him, but Tony largely sidesteps the mythology by downsizing Tony into a wannabe writer in need of a good ass-kicking.

We discuss Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, the allure of bad boys from greater Massachusetts, what exactly goes into a Lobster Thermidor, refillable ketchup bottles, and the movie’s depiction of drugs and suicide. Finally we get into our favorite food movies (Tampopo! Eat Drink Man Woman! Ratatouille!) and do our recommendations.

Next week, watch for falling anvils, it’s Coyote Vs. Acme.

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Dinosaurs are back in business this week, with The End of Oak Street, an original blockbuster about shooting dinos in the face while getting chomped by various raptors, dactyls, and giant primordial snakes.

We’re joined by Indiewire’s Matt Singer, host of Filmspotting: SVU, and author of the upcoming book Funny Business, to discuss the film, its blend of Amblin-influenced family filmmaking with director David Robert Mitchell’s acidic bite. The movie uses its familiar tropes to lull the audience into a lull before ripping those tropes apart, making the film stranger and darker than the marketing let on. Still, it’s been a hit with critics, if not with audiences at large.

We discuss how the story unfolds, Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway’s performances, the joys of shooting raptors in the face, sad giant snake monsters, The Last House, and break down the ending and what the movie is really about—Climate change, maybe? We also get into JJ Abrams’ trajectory as the head of Bad Robot, which produced the film, the state of puzzle box film and TV, and finally do our recommendations.

Next week, it’s lobster roll season, with the Anthony Bourdain biographical picture, Tony.

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In a technofascist parallel reality, singles are only allowed to have sex one night a year: it’s One Night Only, AKA The Sex Purge!

Comedian Josh Gondelman joins us to discuss this deeply strange film which has taken the box office by…not very much. Is that more evidence for the slow fade of theatrical rom coms, or is this just a really, really weird movie?

Directed by Will Gluck, and starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, We’re split on the movie’s charms, but we’re mesmerized by the movie’s vision of fascism + rom-com shenanigans. We discuss the movie’s world building, blacklist scripts, Callum Turner lookalikes, it’s lack of comedian supporting characters, the state of the rom-com, and the movie’s both-sides-ing of its own high concept premise.

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