Review by Trylon volunteer Dave Berglund In the decade following the release and subsequent canonization of The Matrix, the film was regularly referenced as a key discussion text for the intersection of film and existential philosophy. Five years after the film’s theatrical run, I keenly remember seeing images from… Continue reading
With nearly 200 movies to his credit, Dick Miller is one of those guys you’ve seen on screen many times, somebody you sorta kinda recognize from other films, even though you can’t quite come up with his name. Miller was a versatile actor from the earliest days of his career… Continue reading
Enter the pleasantly surreal world of animator Caleb Wood: by turns manic, contemplative and hypnotic, it’s a place where anything can happen and causality is permanently on vacation. Wood is part of a generation of animators whose work thrives on the Internet. In this retrospective, Wood presents high-speed roadkill slideshows,… Continue reading
Just the other day Trylon volunteer Dave Berglund pointed me toward an article by Alissa Wilkinson in The Atlantic about the small but growing phenomenon of indie faith-based filmmaking. It’s important to note that the article isn’t talking about movies aimed at the “faith-and-family” crowd — movies like Left Behind… Continue reading
Shion Sono’s Why Don’t You Play In Hell? is a wacky, blood-drenched homage to the movies, and to the people who love the movies. It’s as over-the-top and goofy as anything you’re likely to see on the big screen this year. The movie starts with a Japanese toothpaste commercial, in… Continue reading
It’s week two in our Pedro Almodóvar series, and All About My Mother (1999) is one of the director’s best — filled with humor, tragedy, bold primary colors and improbable coincidences. Esoteric and desultory, All About My Mother floats and lands on a grieving mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth). She seeks… Continue reading
Review by Trylon volunteer Elizabeth Doyle Pedro Almodóvar has an unquestionably keen eye – one filled with great affection – for women. His films are best known for their wild use of color and staunch female performances, but in the case of Hable con ella (Talk to Her), while the… Continue reading
Pioneer is a white-knuckle drama about deep-sea divers laying undersea oil pipeline, and the early scenes evoke any number of submarine movies: metal groans under enormous undersea pressure, sweaty people eye bulkheads nervously, hoping they don’t collapse, and tough guys bet everything on making it out alive one more time. … Continue reading
Review by Trylon volunteer Maria Gomez In few films has there been the kind of intense chemistry between two actors as that of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. They had that sizzling heat that turned them into one of the most exciting couples to watch onscreen. It is the same… Continue reading
Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) is a CIA analyst who works in an obscure office in Washington D.C., part of a research group that spitballs unlikely what-if scenarios that are then squirreled away in the agency’s vast archives. It’s a job he find less than fulfilling. But one day, Turner goes… Continue reading
Review by Trylon super-sleuth Caty Rent Murder on the Orient Express is the most famous of Agatha Christie’s whodunits featuring the vain and fussy detective Hercule Poirot. As is often the case in the mystery genre, the facts of the case aren’t as important as the method and quirks and… Continue reading
Review by Trylon Political Conspiracies Director Aaron Vehling The most paranoid man in America in the 1970s — well, at least the most powerful paranoid man at the time — was President Richard Nixon, whose own unbridled fear and anxiety led to him to tape most conversations in the White House… Continue reading
Review by Trylon volunteer Caty Rent How To Marry A Millionaire is a light but lively romantic comedy from 1953, also the first comedy to be shot in CinemaScope. The cast packs a punch with Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and Lauren Bacall all starring together in glorious Technicolor. Grable landed… Continue reading
It’s another in our Masterpieces of Paranoia series! De Palma, master of the homage, borrows from Blow-Up and The Conversation and goes totally de Palma on them, creating a movie of tremendous style and insight into filmmaking. Sound engineer John Travolta accidentally records evidence of a murder, but is… Continue reading
Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep is on the shortlist of essential noirs: it’s fast-paced, cynical and razor-sharp, with a very young Lauren Bacall playing Vivian Rutledge, whose half-sister Carmen (Martha Vickers) has fallen in with a den of pornographers. Humphrey Bogart plays Raymond Chandler’s world-weary private eye Philip Marlowe. As… Continue reading
All white-knuckle paranoia and crisply-photographed Cold War flop sweat, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate jangles nerves by diving into the heart of mid-century America’s deepest fears. Chinese operatives capture an American patrol that’s been lured off the beaten track during the Korean War. The soldiers are brainwashed, provided with… Continue reading
Review by Trylon resident beatnik Dave Gomshay Many editions of William S. Burroughs’ books come emblazoned with Norman Mailer’s oft-quoted declaration of the iconic writer’s genius, but it is model and future Once Bitten actress Lauren Hutton who gets to sing us his praises at the very beginning… Continue reading
Review by Andrea Matthews Clark “Paramount’s SCHOCKING, SUSPENSE-FILLED MASTERPIECE OF LOVE…AND MURDER.” This was how Double Indemnity was billed when it was released in 1944. The tagline: “You can’t kiss away a Murder!” Immediately we know we’re in for some pulpy fiction fun – a film noir journey that… Continue reading
Review by Trylon master swordsman Pat Vehling Spanning a staggering 26 films and 100 television episodes over the course of 27 years, the persona of Zatoichi is one of the most prolific characters on screen in film and television industries in post-war Japan – the only legacy that can… Continue reading
We’re in the depths of a brutal Minnesota winter, so it might seem weird to go see a movie about a failed expedition to the South Pole. But Ernest Shackleton’s perilous 1914 journey was an adventure the likes of which we can only imagine today. And the feature… Continue reading
Notorious but lovable schockmeister William Castle teams up with a fading Joan Crawford in this dumb, crude but quite entertaining melodrama. Lucy Harbin (Crawford) finds her husband in bed with a another woman. Grabbing an axe, she dispatches them both in a grisly fashion, without realizing that her young daughter… Continue reading
Let’s step into the Wayback machine and see what The New York Times‘ Nina Darnton had to say when Labyrinth premiered on June 27, 1986: ”LABYRINTH,” which opens today at the UA Gemini Twin and other theaters, is the product of an impressive collaboration between its executive producer,… Continue reading
Here in America it’s always been fashionable to make fun of the French and their zeal for the finer things in life, but everyone knows we secretly envy them. Who wouldn’t want to be a young sexy Parisian, smoking cigarettes, reading Baudelaire and picking up beautiful strangers in picturesque… Continue reading
Thomas Jerome Newton carries an English passport, but he’s not from England. He’s from another planet. He’s just arrived in New Mexico with a few thousand dollars’ worth of gold rings and a plan: he needs to become a wealthy industrialist, develop space technology centuries ahead of what’s currently available… Continue reading
Review by Andrea Matthews The world’s cinemas have long been haunted by vampires. The brilliant and truly frightening 1922 German film Nosferatu introduced the angular Count Orlock, a vampire with knife-sharp nails who slinks around in the shadows searching for victims. It was and still is an amazing creation. There… Continue reading
An American businessman (Josh Charles) is in Paris, trying to set up a big deal in the Middle East for his bosses back home. His negotiations appear to be successful, and he is instructed to fly immediately from Paris to Dubai. But as he sits in his hotel room, overlooking… Continue reading
Wondering if you should go to see Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman, which starts Friday at the Trylon? Let’s see what the New York Times said about the film when it premiered back in September 1925: If laughter really is a panacea or some ills, one might hazard… Continue reading
Our series “The Play’s the Thing: Vaclav Havel, Art and Politics” continues with Jan Němec’s A Report On Party and Guests. A pleasant afternoon outing is cut short when a few pushy intruders force a group of friends to play a round of ridiculous party games. Jan Němec’s absurdist parable… Continue reading
by Trylon volunteer Caty Rent Written in 1925 by Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes took the world by storm. There was already a stage adaptation in 1926 and a silent movie in 1928, which unfortunately is currently classified as a lost film. Then there was a musical on… Continue reading
Pavel Juráček’s two-part absurdist drama examines the life of a soldier under socialism, and features Vaclav Havel in a role as a patient seeking treatment. Preceded by The Uninvited Guest (Nezvaný host) (1969, 22m): When a boorish official enters and makes himself at home in a young couple’s flat,… Continue reading
Hausu is an absurd, winking and blood-drenched high-wire act, the sort of movie you’d get if Quentin Tarantino had directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show using only the sets of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. It might be a masterpiece, but no one has ever been able to tell: the movie… Continue reading
Review by Trylon volunteer Patrick Vehling In the Parisian suburbs lit by a dusk sun, a woman stands by the side of the road. A semi-trailer drives by slowly; the driver locks eyes with the tussle-haired woman, a woman he perceives to be a hooker. He parks, gets out and… Continue reading
By Trylon volunteer Dave Berglund There is a moment in The Cabin in the Woods that aptly fulfills what the late, great Alfred Hitchcock referred to as “refrigerator logic.” Refrigerator logic is, essentially, something nonsensical a filmmaker attempts to slip by viewers in the heat of their viewing… Continue reading
By Trylon volunteer Dave Berglund There is a sense in which Diabolique feels built for modern audiences. It is a film that has aged well in many respects – its verisimilitude is high, its performances are understated, and its suspense is taut. There is not an ounce of Hollywood… Continue reading
Review by Trylon volunteer Caty Rent If you haven’t seen Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2 yet, you can still enjoy this zany third installment of the Sam Raimi series. Army of Darkness does a pretty quick and efficient job of explaining what has already happened to… Continue reading
Journalist Kerri Miller likes to put people on the hot seat, but the tables will turn on Wednesday — she’ll be defending a secret movie at 7:00 at the Trylon, and you’re invited. After the show you can demand answers to all your movie-related question and she’ll have to answer…. Continue reading
With this masterful study of a woman’s descent into agoraphobic lunacy, Roman Polanski solidified himself as a daring and relentless horror stylist. A uniquely claustrophobic film that will test the nerves of even the most seasoned horror buffs. An absolute knockout of a movie…Prepare yourself to be demolished… Continue reading
By Trylon volunteer Colette Ricci Start talking about the sprawling rural deserts of Texas and it won’t be long before someone mentions The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For many, Texas Chainsaw introduced the idea of fearing rural southerners, and very well might be the crown jewel of the demented-rural-American horror… Continue reading
By Trylon volunteer Dave Berglund Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? begins with a middle-aged couple returning home after a long, formal evening of social drinking. With tongues loosened by a good, healthy buzz, it is immediately evident that George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) do not… Continue reading
By Trylon volunteer Ben Schmidt The Thing begins as dashing Air Force men in the Arctic help scientists at a research facility investigate a UFO crash. The spacecraft they have come to see is encased in ice. A scene where the men spread out to mark the saucer’s… Continue reading
