We continue our Camp Cinema season in our second episode covering The Love Witch (2016) and Black Swan (2010)

Special Guest: Filmmakers Emily Gallagher and Austin Elston of Fishtown FIlms

As the dust begins to settle on the 2010s, the topsy turvy decade begins to come into focus. At the start of the decade, Darren Aronofsky released Black Swan (2010) to critical acclaim. I saw it in a packed NYC theater opening weekend. The buzz was palpable. Looking back now, especially post mother! and the rise of peak tv, the trashy and overwrought elements of Black Swan overshadow the great performances and wonderful cinematography, which is why we have selected as our Naive Camp film for this episode.

The Love Witch had a much quieter release in 2016, but it clicked with a small group of film lovers. While filmmaking is mostly a communal art, Anna Biller was so involved with every aspect of The Love Witch that it could only exist because of her. Biller's retro and kitsch style can not obscure the riotous passion for filmmaking and gender theory at the heart of the film. It is so campy that one could argue it is post-camp in that it is both obsessed with artifice and serious at the same time. At the very least, The Love Witch exists mostly in deviance of the ideas presented in Sontag's Notes on Camp.

Welcome to the first episode of Season 13 of Film Trace. In this season, we will explore the notion of Camp in Film. Building off of Susan Sontag's foundational 1964 essay, Notes on Camp, we will explore two films each episode we think demonstrate Sontag's concepts of naive camp and intentional camp.

First off is the financial and critical disaster of Madame Web (2024). We argue this film is a good example of what Sontag would call naive camp: over the top, extravagant, but without much artistic merit. A spectacular failure. The open question with Madame is whether anyone involved thought it should be anything more than a lark inspired by the trashy comic book films of the 1990s.

Countering the cinematic cacophony of Madame Web is the arthouse excess of Pearl. Ti West was given a million dollars by A24 to create a prequel to his 2022 slasher X. The star of that film, Mia Goth, helped write the script and plays the titular Pearl. Boy this one is a doozy. Goth is out there in a place all her own. We think it is a great example of intentional camp: total excess that somehow succeeds in being a good film.

We felt like doing an Oscars show, so we did:

Topics of discussion

1. Intro: 2023's Film Trace movies. They stood the test of time, but were they awarded upon release?

2. Nominated film most obviously conceived specifically with little gold men in mind?

3. Nominated film conceived originally with absolutely no award hopes in mind?

4. Nominated director/writer/DP/actor most obviously groomed to one day become an Oscar winner?

5. Nominated director/writer/DOP/actor least groomed throughout their career to one day walk to the stage?

6. Conclusion: Release the hounds. What 2023 movies do we think will stand the test of time despite receiving zero nominations?

In the eighth and final episode of our Future Wars season, we discuss the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) alongside the b-movie stunner Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Alas we have come to the finale of our Future Wars cycle. It has been a long season with a super-sized eight episode run. Sci-fi is often a real bummer. Most of the movies we covered this season depicted humanity's future as a nightmarish dystopia. Here we trace back the genre to its roots.

The Day the Earth Stood Still established many sci-fi genre conventions while Invasion of the Body Snatchers brilliantly depicted the nebulous unease that took over American domestic life in 1950s. The start of the Cold War did a real number on Americans. The real threat of nuclear annihilation doused the tranquil domesticity of new suburbia in caustic self-doubt and a deep fear of outsiders. But whereas more recent Future War films demonstrated the totalizing destruction of AI, aliens, or ourselves, these films from the 1950s had less fatalistic finales. Perhaps the actual threat of destruction gave them reason to think of an imagined way out.

In the seventh episode of our Future Wars cycle, we discuss the classic Dr Strangelove (1964) alongside a bizarre artifact from the French New Wave, Alphaville (1965)

Special Guest: Good friend of the show and onscreen performer Harry Brammer, dialing in from Tokyo.

Here we have two masters, Kubrick and Godard, spinning tales of future conflict and war in the mid 1960s. Slipping in their polemics right before the great social upheavals of the decade, these films depict the western world teetering on the edge of breakdown. Kubrick's scolding satire in Strangelove still smolders 60 years later. He depicts the most powerful people in the world, people with the ability to end the human race, as complete and utter buffoons. The accuracy of his portrayal is startling as it has only become more true with time.

Godard's Alphaville is a very different story. Shot for next to nothing in Paris, this ambitious film can't support its own intellectual weight. While some scenes still pop off the screen, it is a trudge to get through despite it merits.

In the sixth episode of our Future Wars cycle, we discuss the last man on earth romp The Omega Man (1971) as well as the bonkers fever dream that is Zardoz (1974).

Special Guest: Sean Patrick from the great Everyone’s a Critic podcast

The 1970s were a trip. The Omega Man is a zany, over-the-top apocalypse movie that is helmed by maybe the worst possible choice for the role, Charlton Heston. Zardoz is a legendary cult film that makes even less sense now than it did on release. Films about the future mirror their present, and it was crystal clear that the human race was in La La Land in the 1970s. But what could be read as unserious in these movies is more a reflection of our present. We feel locked into a future of degrading democracy, climate, and personal prospects. The absurdity of these films reflects a different time, a time before Reagan, AIDs, and a slowly suffocating planet. Perhaps there is something in the openness and creativity of a film like Zardoz. That maybe, we aren't stuck in an express lane to Cyberpunk 2077, time will tell.

In the fifth episode of our Future Wars cycle, we tackle two giant films from the action sci fi maestro James Cameron: The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986).

Special Guest: David Riedel, film critic and co-host of the great Spoilerpiece Theatre podcast.

James Cameron is a master filmmaker. This two film run in the mid 1980s is iconic, legendary, and ground-breaking. When we think of this cycle's theme, Future Wars, we are ultimately thinking of Cameron and his oeuvre. The status of Terminator and Aliens is well-established, but it is interesting to look back at the actual films themselves instead of the cultural miasma surrounding them. Peeking behind the curtain is risky. A film that seemed powerful and important can easily be defrocked by time and an ever-changing collective consciousness. Terminator and Aliens have defied this normal cycle of art criticism. If anything, their power and status has been consistently reified decade and decade since their release. Perhaps if anything, the greatness of these films makes us mourn the loss of Cameron to the technical three ring circus of Avatar. What could have been becomes palpable when imbibing the tech noir vibes of Terminator or sweaty machismo of Aliens.

In the fourth episode of our Future Wars cycle, we explore two late 90s classic, The Matrix (1999) and Starship Trooper (1997).

Special Guest: Evan Crean, film critic and co-host of the great Spoilerpiece Theatre podcast.

Here we have two films with diametrically opposed authorial voices. The Matrix is self-serious, pointelty intellectual, and so cool that it borders on frigid sterility. Starship Troopers is a polemic anti-fascist satire that mirrors Baywatch more than it does Aliens. Nearing its 25th anniversary, The Matrix has been rightfully deemed classic cinema. Starship Troopers, on the other hand, remains on the fringes due to its multiplicitous and duplicitous nature.

Intention seems to hold an enhanced importance in the longevity of a film's reputation. While The Matrix can easily be called pretentious, it hasn't lost its potency over the last two decades. In many ways and despite its middling sequels, The Matrix has risen to a new level of respect in the 21st century. Not for its accuracy in depicting the future, but rather for its ability to capture the dissociating effects of technology on our everyday lives. Starship Troopers has sadly begun to fade. For those of us in on the joke, the political reality we have lived through has lessen the bite of the punchline and satire. It also calls into question the effectiveness of red-nosed satire, lighting up the social commentary in every scene. When Verhoeven is perhaps murkier with intentions like in the reclaimed masterpiece Showgirls, his wit and delightful skewering of America feels heavier and more accurate. In Troopers, the daytime tv look is perhaps too much of a veneer on a devolving society surging towards fascism.