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Filmsuck

Eileen Jones and Dolores McElroy

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A weekly podcast hosted by Eileen Jones, film critic at Jacobin magazine and recovering academic, and Dolores McElroy, diva enthusiast and lecturer in film and media at UC Berkeley.

In this podcast for the people, we bring you the truth about the rotten state of cinema, its often odious or ham-fisted relationship to politics, and its occasional wondrous bursts of courage and brilliance. We consider the glories of cinemas past, and wonder about lots of things: what’s the role of contemporary film in a time of bad art and worse taste; popular entertainment in a time of fragmentation, generalized disaffection, and PTSD; and media in a time when it seems to have lost its power to get us off our asses?

In short, what is to be done when film sucks?

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  • 23 episodes
  • Avg 1 hr 5 min
  • English

Episodes 23

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  • #85
    Friday · 58 min

    Grading TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores have high praise for TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA, the new horror-comedy by up-and-coming writer-director Jane Schoenbrun (I SAW THE TV GLOW). It’s about nerdy, academically-trained filmmaker Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder of HACKS), who’s been hired to reboot an old 1980s slasher film franchise yet is in denial about the taboo sexual charge the slasher films give her. As part of her research and an expression of her intense fandom, she seeks out the reclusive star of the first CAMP MIASMA movie, Billy Presley, played by Gillian Anderson (THE X-FILES). Together at Billy’s wintry home in the mountains where the first low-budget CAMP MIASMA gore-fest was set and shot, Kris and Billy begin a collaboration on the rebooted franchise film by exploring the meaning and impact of the CAMP MIASMA films through their own increasingly intimate and erotically charged relationship.

  • #84
    August 18 · 1 hr 12 min

    Historic Re-release of THE DEVILS

    Host Eileen Jones is joined by writer and cinephile Alex Deley in celebrating Ken Russell's THE DEVILS, a 1971 film so controversial in its day that it was heavily censored, then banned in many countries, then released but rated X in the UK and USA, then critically reviled—Roger Ebert gave it zero stars—and then made very hard to find for decades. Now with a director's cut finally and fully restored in 4K, with an upcoming theatrical re-release, we can access and fully appreciate the brilliance of Russell's best film. Based on Aldous Huxley's 1952 book THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN, and John Whiting's 1960 stage adaptation THE DEVILS, the film concerns the appalling historical records of a 1634 case of demonic possession overtaking the nuns at an Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, which was supposedly achieved by the sorcery of the dissolute but popular priest Father Urbain Grandier (played by Oliver Reed). The tormented abbess, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave) falsely accuses Grandier of being in league with the devil, which suits the plans of Catholic statesman Cardinal Richelieu, who’s consolidating state power by crushing the authority of the feudal lords. Their walled and fortified cities include Loudun, and Grandier has served as a defiant champion of the people of Loudun. His brutal and carnivalesque trial, torture, and execution is a gruesome public spectacle precipitating Loudun’s destruction. Russell called this his most political film, saying it represents “what happens when the state takes over.”

  • #83
    August 18 · 1 hr 18 min

    NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and the Southern Gothic

    The only film that actor Charles Laughton directed is the now-celebrated NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955), a unique, nightmarish, dark fairy tale vision that's part of the "Southern Gothic" series of films currently running on the Criterion Channel. The film's an adaptation of Davis Grubb's 1953 novel, which in turn was based on the real-life Depression-era case of Harry Powers, a serial killer who answered lonely-hearts ads and then murdered widows for their life savings, killing several of their children in the process. Powers was hanged in West Virginia in 1932. In THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, the phony preacher "Reverend" Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) targets Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the widow of a bank robber who was hanged without ever divulging where he stashed the $10,000 he got away with. Once he's married to the doomed Willa, Harry Powell zeroes in on her children, John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Barnes), who clearly know where the money's hidden. Soon the orphaned children have to flee downriver to escape the predatory killer on their trail. They're taken in by a self-sufficient farm-woman, Miss Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who cares for needy children found wandering the roads during the Depression. Inevitably, there's an epic standoff between Miss Cooper and Harry Powell, with the fate of John and Pearl hanging in the balance.

  • #82
    June 17 · 1 hr

    Spring TV Potpourri

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores provide a rundown on what's on TV, which starts off as a cheerful endeavor and ends up in a state of despondency over our grim cultural moment. We report on the third season in twenty years of THE COMEBACK, the HBO Max cringe comedy starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, an eternally optimistic and terminally obtuse former TV sitcom star of the late 1980s-‘90s trying to get her career going again in the age of reality TV, AI, influencers, and online everything. Dolores also describes the "death-drive" third season of HBO Max's EUPHORIA, and Eileen despairs over an assortment of hellish offerings including the LORD OF THE FLIES miniseries (Netflix), the second season of BEEF (Netflix), the new David E. Kelley series MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES (Apple TV+), and the nostalgia-driven return of the hit aughts sitcom SCRUBS (Hulu).

  • #81
    June 17 · 1 hr 11 min

    DISCLOSURE DAY: Nostalgia for the Summer Blockbuster

    Filmsuck co-hosts enjoy the old-fashioned movie-fun of watching what's essentially one long chase in the new Steven Spielberg action-adventure DISCLOSURE DAY. It's his return to sci-fi alien-invasion-themed movies that are a specialty of his represented by CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982), and WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005). It's true that DISCLOSURE DAY might be sappy and absurdly implausible and have an ending that falls so flat it causes audience members to exclaim "What the hell?" But on the other hand, it's a Spielberg summer blockbuster just like we used to see in the olden times. Get it while you can.

  • #80
    April 22 · 1 hr 13 min

    NATCHEZ: Mississippi Goddam

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores praise the complex and ultimately harrowing Susannah Herbert documentary NATCHEZ, currently streaming on YouTube and Apple TV+ and soon to arrive at PBS. It focuses on the engine driving this Mississippi River port town's economy, which is tourism—specifically the guided tours through plantation houses that have, for nearly a hundred years, "stuck to the script" of the romantic fantasy of the gracious Old South. However, new tour guides and local activists, several of them Black locals, have emerged recently who insist on factually accurate tours that include the history of slavery and the people held in bondage who actually built those plantation houses and kept them running. In exploring the tensions around this issue in Natchez, a town of complex demographics that is considered a politically progressive "blue dot in a sea of red," Herbert gets representative citizens to talk more and more freely—and sometimes appallingly—about what they really think of their fraught history and current experience.

  • #79
    March 24 · 1 hr 5 min

    Chris Fleming: Saving Stand-up Comedy

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores express their admiration and affection for comedian Chris Fleming and his hilarious new HBO special CHRIS FLEMING: LIVE AT THE PALACE. Highly recommended! You may know Fleming from his dazzling comic flights on YouTube and Instagram, but as Fleming puts it, this special is designed to expand his audience beyond "women who brought a knife to prom." Wearing a four-way-stretch purple jumpsuit made by Prince's longtime costume designer Anthony Sartino, Fleming is able to prance, race, strut, flap, tumble, and moonwalk freely around the stage characterizing the freaky eccentrics and wanna-be-freaky normies who populate our world. He's pinpointed unerringly by the theater's spotlight operator who was "on the team that got Osama." Acknowledging his own unique appearance and category-busting affect that revives the old dream of queer liberation, Fleming says there's already been "a nationwide manhunt for my pronouns" and he/she/they will answer to any of them, leaving it up to the audience: "You tell me. You're looking at it."

  • #78
    March 10 · 55 min

    HAMNET: Good Grief

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores resisted seeing HAMNET, so they both marvel at the emotional impact it achieves by the poignant ending, when almost everyone in theater audiences dissolves into tears. HAMNET is a period tragedy by Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND) that’s been playing in arthouse theaters for two months. It’s still drawing crowds, and it’s nominated for a number of Academy Awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Zhao and the author of the source novel by Maggie O’Farrell), and Best Actress (Jessie Buckley). It deals with the relationship of husband and wife William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes Hathaway (Buckley), which is tested by the death of their eleven-year-old son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). The film’s seemingly grandiose theme is the way art can transform experiences such as grief over the loss of a loved one into a sense of meaning in terms of human life in the universe. But don’t scoff. You’re probably more susceptible to this idea than you think you are. Just wait till you cry through the final sequence.

  • #77
    March 10 · 1 hr 1 min

    THE BRIDE! A Messy Monster Mash

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the title character in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE!, played by Jessie Buckley (who also portrays the wry, raddled spirit of author Mary Shelley) is terrific. She has a brilliantly disheveled look of undead glamor featuring wild bleached-blonde hair, wonderfully garish orange dress, black lips, and the inky splotch that spews up from the corner of her mouth, a chemical stain left over from the process of reanimation. Dolores is forgiving of the way THE BRIDE!, especially in its addled second half, fails to live up to central character and best scenes, whereas Eileen can’t condemn Gyllenhaal hard enough for the dopey, unfocused, pretentious way she blows her opportunity to make an electrifying film.

  • #76
    January 27 · 1 hr 9 min

    The Schism Over THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

    Co-hosts disagree on THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, a new film about the title character (played by Amanda Seyfried) who founded the Shaker religion. Eileen liked it because she has a morbid religious streak that makes her obsessively interested in movies about old-time people who see visions and start mad spiritual communities. Dolores, on the other hand, hates movies set in the 18th century “when everything was so ILL” and found THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE a dull empty frustrating would-be-hipster work that makes the artfully simple utilitarian structures of Shaker architecture look like Restoration Hardware stores. A lively debate ensues!

  • #75
    January 15 · 56 min

    FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER: Here's to Strained Family Relations

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores found Jim Jarmusch’s new indie film Father Mother Sister Brother a sleep-inducing slog. It’s a comedy-drama anthology film in three chapters about difficult family relationships that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. Jarmusch calls it an “anti-action film” that avoids commercial expectations of such typically hard-hitting effects as “drama, violence, revenge, sex” in order to create a film that’s minimalist, focused, delicate, and deliberately simple, like “three flower arrangements.” So consider yourself warned!

  • #74
    Dec 16, 2025 · 53 min

    A Very TV Christmas

    In honor of the season, co-hosts Eileen and Dolores take on the made-for-TV holiday movie, focusing especially on the perennial Hallmark Channel favorite, A SHOE ADDICT’S CHRISTMAS (2018). It’s about a thirtysomething department store employee and shoe-lover named Noelle (Candace Cameron Bure) who’s lost both her creative and romantic mojo, which leads her guardian angel Charlie (Jean Smart) to use her Ghost of Christmas Past and Future powers in showing Noelle how to find a man and a plan. Naturally several Christmas miracles ensue. Eileen, a Hallmark Channel newbie, is appalled by these eye-hurting spectacles while Dolores points out how to read against the grain and discover the socially critical women-centered melodramas that survive in surreal forms in these ultra-popular movies.

  • #73
    Nov 18, 2025 · 1 hr 8 min

    FRANKENSTEIN: Guillermo Del Toro's Grand and Goofy Obsession

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores disagree when it comes to their basic reactions to the new FRANKENSTEIN, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro and currently playing on Netflix. Whereas Dolores finds a number of aspects of the film compelling, such the opulent production design, the sensitive performances of Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth, and the all-out melodramatic emotionalism typical of Del Toro, Eileen experienced such a blinding hatred of the whole thing she could only gradually realize that…yes, Mia Goth is always interesting.

  • #72
    Nov 4, 2025 · 1 hr 13 min

    BUGONIA: The Rhetorical Impasse

    Co-host Eileen Jones and special guest Conan Neutron of the Movie Night Extravaganza podcast enthuse about the wild and riveting new Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia. It concerns a pair of rural cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, who abduct the CEO of a pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone), convinced she’s an alien come to destroy planet Earth through corporate means. Their plan is to force her to arrange a meeting between the cousins and the “Andromedans” on their mother ship in order to negotiate an agreement for the aliens to leave Earth in peace. Which is a fairly reasonable account of what’s happening on Earth recently, compared to some of the explanations we hear.

  • #71
    Oct 7, 2025 · 57 min

    It's a Good Time for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

    Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is a must-see movie and a model for American filmmaking right now. An adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel VINELAND, ONE BATTLE makes brilliant use of such dynamic genres as action, dark comedy, and the political thriller to drive this depiction of an aging radical leftist in hiding, hilariously played by Leonardo DiCarprio, who’s trying to protect his teenage daughter from his past. Then they’re targeted by rightwing political forces led by the repulsive Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and compelled to go on the run. Don’t miss it!

  • #70
    Sep 13, 2025 · 57 min

    Darren Aronofsky CAUGHT STEALING a Good Time

    New Filmsuck episode! Dolores and I enthuse about CAUGHT STEALING. It's doing pretty badly at the box-office, though it's a timely dark comic noir of chaotic working class life, and Austin Butler has a delightful co-star in the cat actor playing Bud.

  • #69
    Aug 12, 2025 · 1 hr 14 min

    Straying into Documentaries

    Special guest Asali Echols, documentary filmmaker, talks to me about the current state of documentary films. We discuss a recent trend toward reviving the strict "observational documentary," led by filmmakers like Elizabeth Lo, whose breakthrough film was the dog's-eye-view movie STRAY (2020). Her upcoming new doc MISTRESS DISPELLER, about a "love industry" in China involving wives hiring undercover operatives to break up the relationships of husbands and their mistresses, tests the limits of Lo's "observational not interventionist" documentary filmmaking ethics. https://www.patreon.com/posts/straying-into-136099786

  • #67
    Jul 16, 2025 · 58 min

    How Much is TOO MUCH?

    New Filmsuck episode! I rage against Lena Dunham, who cursed us all with GIRLS and is back doing further harm to impressionable minds everywhere with her new, semi-autobiographical Netflix romantic comedy TOO MUCH. Dolores has a more measured reaction to this low-stakes entertainment about an arrested development case played by Megan Stalter (HACKS) who tries to get over a bad breakup by relocating from Brooklyn to London and immediately starting a messy relationship with an indie rocker played by Will Sharpe (WHITE LOTUS 3).How high is your Lena Dunham tolerance?

  • #66
    Jun 17, 2025 · 1 hr 6 min

    WHITE LOTUS Season 4: How Deep is the Water?

    Season 4 of Mike White's big hit show WHITE LOTUS might not be the most profound thing you've ever seen, but Dolores and Eileen still enjoy its excellent cast reveling in portraying the latest tales of ghastly behaviors of the rich.

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