Filmsuck (archived) — 2019/2020 Eileen Jones and Evgenia Kovda

Podcast Episode

This week’s Filmsuck is our public service in honor of the holidays! We discuss “hidden gems” of cinema, the great obscure films we love, including a long list compiled from suggestions by subscribers and friends. Bonus: a few Christmas movie suggestions!

On this week’s Filmsuck we try to figure out what the bright idea was behind the Netfix movie Mank directed by David Fincher from a script by his father Jack Fincher. It’s about screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’s fight with Orson Welles over script credit on Citizen Kane, a potentially interesting topic garbled up with fictional events and a total lack of imagination.

We’re discussing the hit Netflix series Queen’s Gambit after at least a hundred people recommended it. As Evgenia sums up this beguiling show, it’s about “the Wednesday Addams of chess.”’

On this week’s Filmsuck we talk about the new four-episode Showtime docuseries The Reagans, which makes the case for Ronald Reagan’s sleazy, racist, ruling-class demagoguery as California governor and two-term president paving the way for the vile politics of Donald Trump. Includes copious quotes from Eileen’s in-depth interview with docuseries director Matt Tyrnauer.

In this week’s special election episode of Filmsuck, we discuss the broad shift in the way the American election process has been represented in movies from WWII to the present day, and talk about some of our favorite election films including The Best Man, The Candidate, The Manchurian Candidate, Election, Dave, and an obscure new favorite of ours called Spinning Boris.