Lists & Articles

Mr. Hot Dog Boy’s Top 17 Films of the 2010s

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Editor’s Note: We have been running The Swampflix Podcast for four years and over one-hundred episodes so far, broadcasting our thoughts on a wide range of movie topics into the digital void in hopes that someone, anyone out there is listening. The podcast doesn’t receive much direct feedback from its audience, but a few years ago we did discover one lengthy, thoughtful review from the mysterious Mr. Hot Dog Boy that totally got what we were trying to accomplish with the show. It still helps keep us motivated all these years later.

We occasionally shout-out this sentient hotdog man-boy on the pod in hopes that he’s still out there listening, and when we recently asked what his favorite films of the 2010s were, he actually responded. After all those years of mystery, it felt like being contacted by an A-List celebrity. We were honored for the contribution to our discussion of the decade’s great works (and impressed by Mr. Hot Dog Boy’s refined tastes), so we’re publishing his email submission to the show here:

Hello Swampflix! Here, as requested, is a list of my favorite movies of the decade. I have also included a brief recount of my Swampflix listening experience.

Mr. Hot Dog Boy’s Top 17 (?) of the 2010’s (in no particular order)

1. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) – This documentary about the beauty and madness of what true mastery and perfection requires gives me a crisis and makes me love it every time I think about it.

2. Paterson (2016) – I’m 100% biased as a New Jersey native but seeing the city of Paterson, NJ portrayed as a beautiful and poetic place was one of my cinematic joys of the 2010’s.

3. Avengers: Endgame (2019) – There’s no escaping the Disney-dominated world. This excellent sequel to 22 other big-budget films made a case that the dystopia might at least be admirable.

4. Mandy (2018) – I loved every sight and sound this film presented to me. Metal, neon, Nick-Cagian nightmarescape? Um, yes.

5. Annihilation (2018) – There’s been a lot of talk about how the horror genre has reached a new milestone of quality this decade. The same can be said about science fiction. This Jeff Vandermeer adaptation is one of the best of this decade’s excellent SF offerings.

6. Creed (2015) – Creed is just a damn good movie. This is a movie for everyone, but in a good way. If anyone wanted to know what an excellent good old-fashioned movie looks like in the 2010s, give them this one.

7. Little Women (2019) – I loved 2017’s Lady Bird and basically knew I’d be down for anything Greta Gerwig directed in the future. I saw Little Women at the tail-end of the decade. I cried basically from start to finish all the while being immensely impressed with the craft of the picture.

8. Get Out (2017) – I liked Us more than Get Out. So why list Get Out instead of Us? My wife watches nowhere near the amount of movies I do and we have drastically different tastes. This was the only movie this decade that I forced her to watch. It feels like a cinematic sea change.

9. Boy (2010) – Taika Waititi arrived as a generator of excellent films in the 2010s. This sentimental but fun film is my favorite of the bunch.

10. High Life (2018) – I’m always down for slow, contemplative, possibly about nothing French drama. However, set it in space and add weird sex and I especially love it!

11. Frances Ha (2012) – Noah Baumbach has been making great movies about people having existential crises since the 90s. This was my favorite of the decade from him.

12. Midsommar (2019) – I cannot believe what this movie looks like. Every time I watch it, or read anything about it, I still cannot believe how good it is.

13. Ingrid Goes West (2017) – We just need more films about how destructive social media can be. This movie wasn’t even that great but it scratched the itch to see more stories about this phenomenon that looms over our society.

14. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – What’s there even to say?

15. Phantom Thread (2017) – It’s such a pleasure to have filmmakers like P.T. Anderson around. You know any movie he makes will be fascinating and an event to go see. The supposed swan song of Daniel Day Lewis was another excellent entry in his filmography

16. 56 Up (2012) – I have not had a chance to see 2019’s 63 Up just yet, but this British documentary series continues to fascinate me. Seeing human beings grow from 7 years-old to 56 years-old runs the gamut of human experience. There is comedy and tragedy, success and failure. I think about this series all the time.

17. The Witch (2016) – This was the first of the modern, contemplative, impeccably crafted A24-distributed horror films I saw this decade. It blew me away.

Swampflix in 2010s

I started listening to the Swampflix podcast in 2016. I randomly found it while looking for movie sites based in NOLA to figure out what was happening in the city’s film scene. I immediately loved the podcast and have been a religious listener since then.

I’ve watched lots of movies I’ve enjoyed based on what I’ve heard on the podcast. I’ve also enjoyed lots of the dialogue on the episodes. Some highlights that come to mind:

#Horror: I have enjoyed and been convinced by Brandon’s constant cheerleading of internet horror. This was a personal highlight of that sub-genre for me.

A Gnome Named Norm: Britnee has a vault of movies she loves with a sincerity that is infectious. This problematic and unbelievable motion picture is burned into my brain forever now.

The Wild Boys and We are the Flesh: I don’t know what this genre is? Insane, horny art movies? They are good, keep watching and recommending them please.

Brandon and James arguing about Us and other movies. I love these arguments. The ability to productively argue about something and not devolve into a “fuck you” shout fest is a skill I see diminishing in today’s tribal landscape. Listening to you two fundamentally disagree but stay civil is something I really enjoy.

Brandon and CC’s coverage of the film festivals: I never got to make it to an NOFF so it was always great to get an overview of what they had seen.

I no longer live in NOLA, so the local coverage is not pertinent for me, but I still love the show and look forward to listening to it for as long as you are willing to make it. Thanks to all the contributors for making an awesome show!

-Mr. Hot Dog Boy

Britnee’s Top 20 Films of the 2010s

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1. Hereditary (2018) – I can’t rave about this movie enough. Not only is it my favorite film of the decade, it’s one of my favorite films of all time.

2. Call Me By Your Name (2017) – A film that will literally transport you to the summer of 1983 in Northern Italy. This is by far the best romantic film to come out over the past decade. I will forever be in love the the slow-motion dance scene of Armie Hammer dancing to “Love My Way” by The Psychedelic Furs. Elio + Oliver 4 Ever.

3. Dogtooth (2010) – This is first Greek film that I have ever seen as well as the first film I’ve seen by Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s a bizarre social experiment that is so damn dark. I hate that I love it so much, which is what I think Lanthimos was going for.

4. The Artist (2011) – A throwback to the silent, black and white era of filmmaking. This is proof that a film doesn’t need a whole lot of razzle-dazzle to achieve perfection.

5. The Queen of Versailles (2012) – Lauren Greenfield’s documentary about a disgustingly wealthy family’s journey to building the largest home in the USA during the 2008 economic crisis. This film shows the good, the bad, and the ugly of a broken family made up of garbage people.

6. Knife + Heart (2019) – Queer giallo set in the porn world of 1979 Paris. It’s all I ever wanted in a movie.

7. Mandy (2018) – How can one movie be so metal? It’s a jaw-dropping experience that left me extremely satisfied. This is proof that Nicolas Cage can seriously act.

8. Midsommar (2019) – Daytime cult horror that takes place in the beautiful open fields of Sweden. What’s not to love? Ari Aster is killing the movie game. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

9. Raw (2017) – Julia Ducournau’s debut feature film is a coming-of-age cannibal tale that I found to be strangely relatable. It has quite a few stomach-churning scenes that I still think about from time to time.

10. The Witch (2016) – The pinnacle of A24 horror. This is the film that gave us all the gift of Black Phillip, and I am forever grateful.

11. The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014) – When I don’t know what sort of movie I’m in the mood for, I pop in my DVD copy of The Hundred-Foot Journey and it always does the trick. This movie is always such a joy to watch and has a special place in my heart.

12. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) – This film marked the end of the Harry Potter franchise, which is something that was a major part of my life since I was 9 years old. The standards for this movie were so high, and it exceeded every one of them.

13. The Shape of Water (2017) – I love that a romantic tale between a mute woman and a sexy fish man did so well at the 2018 Academy Awards.

14. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) – I love love love The Hobbit film trilogy. This is the one that started it all, and I still get goosebumps when I watch it.

15. Stranger by the Lake (2014) – I’ve only recently seen this within the past few months, but it immediately won me over. The majority of the film takes place on the side of a lake reserved for outdoor cruising, so it’s obviously a good time. What I loved the most is that it has some of the creepiest voyeuristic camera shots that I’ve ever seen in any film.

16. The Neon Demon (2016) – This movie is so stylish. I just want to wear it! It has quite a few disturbing scenes that I found to be unexpected. It’s fabulously fun trash.

17. Krisha (2015) – A heartbreaking film that takes place in the hell that is Thanksgiving with family. The director/writer, Trey Edward Shults, uses his real-life family and friends to play the characters in this film, so it feels extremely personal.

18. Souvenir (2016) – An older woman with a washed up singing career falls for a young, handsome boxer, and it all happens at a pâté factory! The story feels quite simple and nothing too insane happens, and I think that’s why I love it so much.

19. Black Swan (2010) – There’s nothing quite like a spooky ballerina movie. I still get full body chills when I watch Black Swan.

20. In Fabric (2019) – I love movies about killer inanimate objects. In Fabric gave me everything I could even want and more from a movie about a killer dress.

-Britnee Lombas

JLo: All-American Hustler

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It’s almost undeniable that the most All-American event on the cultural calendar is the Super Bowl: a championship football game adored for its TV ads, its excessive snack food rituals, and its pop music spectacle intermission. There’s a reason why so much emphasis is placed on who will sing the National Anthem that kicks off the game every year (and how well they did or didn’t perform); the event is just as much a celebration of American culture as it is a championship football game. I’ve gradually stopped watching football over the years as pro wrestling, the Oscars, and RuPaul’s Drag Race have replaced it as my competitive sports events of choice, but even I still tune in for the Super Bowl Halftime Show most years due to my overriding interest in pop culture at large. This year was a great one! Whoever booked the game’s intermission entertainment made great use of its Miami venue by featuring Latinx entertainers like Shakira & Bad Bunny, representing an often-overlooked facet of the American cultural fabric that’s been especially politically charged under the xenophobic reign of the Trump Presidency. The centerpiece of this celebratory Latinx protest display was a pop music medley from singer-dancer-movie-star Jennifer Lopez, whose section of the show took the biggest, most direct political jabs of the event – while also conjuring Lopez’s most recent onscreen persona as a modern marvel of Cinema in particular.

The reason I’m talking about football & pop music on a movie blog is that JLo’s Halftime Show performance was greatly influenced by her recent movie-stealing role in the film Hustlers. Adapted from a New York Magazine article chronicling a real-life series of crimes, the film is a post-2008 Financial Crisis period piece about a ring of strip club employees who drugged & fleeced their wealthy Wall Street clientele for tens of thousands of dollars. Told in a flashback style directly borrowed from GoodFellas, the film is ostensibly aligned with the POV of its top-billed narrator character, played by Constance Wu. In practice, Wu is the lead performer in name only. As soon as Jennifer Lopez saunters onto the screen to perform a strip routine to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” the movie is entirely her show. Both the audience & Wu herself are fixated on the spectacle of the almighty JLo as she shows us the ropes – first on the gymnastic basics of working a stripper pole, then on the basics of fraudulently running up transactions on an unconscious client’s credit card. Some of Wu’s fixation on JLo’s Stripper Queen persona is explained to be a result of her character’s Mommy Issues (a refreshing change of course from cinema’s usual Daddy Issues fixation among macho narrators), but that almost feels like overkill. It’s self-evident; no explanation necessary. Even much-advertised cameo roles from major pop music personalities like Lizzo & Cardi B do little to distract from JLo’s nuclear charisma. She just casually walks away with the entire movie tucked into her overpriced designer handbag, never breaking a sweat.

Early in Hustlers, Constance Wu’s narrator pontificates that “This whole country is a strip club,” drawing a parallel between her industry’s sexual hustling to the “stolen money” of Wall Street’s own daily hustles. Nothing could better illustrate America’s function as the world’s largest strip club than JLo performing from atop a stripper pole at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Bringing her newfound exotic dancer skills from the Hustlers set to that All-American pop music venue was a brilliant maneuver, as she then had an entire nation gawking at her in awe the way Wu & Hustlers‘s (much smaller) audience had already been on the hook. And what did she do with this amplified, captivated audience? She redirected our eyeballs to Latinx children posing in cages on the football field, peeling back the pop culture escapism of Super Bowl spectacle to refresh our horror with ICE’s abuses in the ongoing refugee border crisis. JLo even emerged from one of her many onstage costume changes during her short set in a fur coat/body suit combo outfit that directly recalled her Hustlers costuming, except redesigned to resemble the American flag. In the movie, she welcomes Constance Wu into the warmth of her coat, purring “Climb into my fur.” On the stage, she opens her All-American fur in the same fashion, only to reveal that it’s a Puerto Rican flag on its reverse side – further emphasizing the Latinx prominence in America’s DNA that’s often dismissed by the country’s falsely “patriotic” right-wing goblins. This whole country is a strip club, and it was wonderful to see it get so flagrantly hustled by a performer who’s been in her prime for decades, with no signs of slowing down.

The only way Jo’s Halftime Show performance could have been more blatantly political is if she had ripped a picture of Donald Trump in half, à la Sinead O’Connor on SNL (although the political effectiveness of either performance is up for debate). The only way it could have been more directly tied to her movie-stealing, Oscars-snubbed persona in Hustlers is if she had looked directly into the camera to ask the entire country, “Doesn’t money make you horny?” You can even see her Hustlers persona echoed in how easily she steals the show from Shakira, who’s just as capable of a singer & dancer as Constance Wu is an actor. Shakira is both a sex bomb & a total goofball, positively lighting up that Super Bowl stage with her spectacular hip gyrations, her to-the-camera tongue-wagging, and her comically over-the-top song selections (like choosing to open with the werewolf anthem “She-Wolf”). As the first & longest sustained performer on that stage, Shakira should technically be positioned as the central star of the Halftime Show, with Lopez slotted as a special guest star. Instead, as with in Hustlers, JLo’s blinding charisma easily overpowers Shakira’s own formidable presence – emerging as the de facto star of the show. If the Super Bowl is going to stand as an annual distillation of American culture, it’s only appropriate that the event acknowledge the country’s Latinx contingent through artists like Shakira & JLo as well as the hedonistic exploitation & excess detailed in Hustlers – both of which are American as fuck. It’s your patriotic duty to give it a watch even if you care way more about movies & pop music than you care about football:

-Brandon Ledet

Episode #101 of The Swampflix Podcast: The Top Films of the 2010s

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Welcome to Episode #101 of The Swampflix Podcast. For this episode, the entire podcast crew assembles to discuss their favorite films of the 2010s.

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

James’s Top 25 Films of the 2010s
1. mother! (2017)
2. Certified Copy (2010)
3. Upstream Color (2013)
4. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
5. Shoplifters (2018)
6. The Florida Project (2017)
7. Moonlight (2016)
8. Uncut Gems (2019)
9. The Favourite (2018)
10. Burning (2018)
11. Mandy (2019)
12. Enemy (2014)
13. First Reformed (2018)
14. Annihilation (2018)
15. Arrival (2016)
16. Paddington 2 (2018)
17. Nocturnal Animals (2016)
18. Force Majeure (2014)
19. Inside Out (2015)
20. Phantom Thread (2017)
21. Girlhood (2014)
22. A Separation (2011)
23. Sorry to Bother You (2018)
24. Personal Shopper (2017)
25. The Act of Killing (2012)

Enjoy!

-James Cohn, Hanna Räsänen, Britnee Lombas, and Brandon Ledet

Laura Dern’s Oscar Story

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Back when we covered Alexander Payne’s abortion-themed political satire Citizen Ruth as a Movie of the Month, it occurred to me that it’s dispiritingly rare to see the great Laura Dern in a genuine leading role. Between Citizen Ruth, Rambling Rose, and Inland Empire, I could only find three feature films in which Dern was top-billed as the lead actor, despite decades of fine work on the big screen. Unfortunately, that means the full power of her consistently compelling screen presence largely goes unnoticed & unrewarded, relegated only to her value as a supporting player. Last year, Dern was at least utilized as a potent supporting actor in two major Oscar contenders: Marriage Story & Little Women – which were, interestingly enough, directed by both partners in a married couple (Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig, respectfully). Dern’s efforts have been rewarded with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Marriage Story in particular, her first nomination since she was recognized as a potential Best Supporting Actress for Wild in 2015 (a statue she lost to Patricia Arquette for Boyhood). What I find interesting about this year’s Dern nomination is how it’s been framed in some online criticism circles as a career-merit award or somehow just Industry recognition for Dern’s recent work on popular television programs like Big Little Lies & Twin Peaks: The Return. The nomination is being discussed as if Dern’s performance in Marriage Story isn’t especially awards-worthy, that she’s being recognized for her contributions to cinema at large. That’s bullshit.

Laura Dern is genuinely fantastic in Marriage Story, totally reshaping the texture of the entire film with just a few scenes of onscreen dialogue. In the film, she plays a high-priced divorce lawyer who escalates the stakes & tone of the central couple’s painful separation. As the films’ two leads, Adam Driver & Scarlet Johansson are allowed to really pick apart the emotional textures of that separation at length (for which they’ve both been nominated as Best Leads). It’s Dern’s thankless task to establish the much harsher, colder tone of the legal arena where that separation will reach its fever pitch. It’s a world that relies on calm doublespeak & practiced artifice, which clashes spectacularly against the raw, confessional emotions of the star combatants. Other lawyer characters played by Ray Liotta & Alan Alda in the film help sketch out the extreme boundaries of that legal hell world, but it’s Dern’s job to welcome Driver & Johansson’s leads through the hell’s front gates, opening up their intimate detangling to a Kafkaesque legal labyrinth that stretches the entire length of the country. Marriage Story is just as much about the cruelty & confusion inherent to navigating the legal system in the process of divorce as it is an intimate drama about a romantic meltdown. In that way, Dern’s supporting role as the first & most prominent lawyer featured onscreen greatly affects our perception of the battlefield where the central conflict unfolds.

Dern’s self-confident power lawyer enters the film by apologizing for her “schleppy” appearance, despite being dressed to the nines in designer jeans & drastic heels. We’re immediately aware that her words & her body language are expressing an entirely different sentiment than what she’s actually communicating. When she offers Johansson, a potential client, to take home cookies from her office, it’s a sly advertisement for her services, as Johansson will continue to keep her in mind long after she leaves the office as she snacks on those treats. When Dern quotes a Tom Petty song in casual conversation, it’s only so she can advertise that she negotiated his ex-wife’s divorce from the singer for a large sum. Of course, these textual subtleties are largely a result of Baumbach’s sharply written screenplay, but Dern is visibly having fun with the material onscreen, selling the full impact of the role in a way few other performers could. Her performative version of active “listening” while Johansson is recounting the details of her failing marriage is as tense as watching a snake coil in grass, waiting to strike at a potential meal. One of the film’s most outrageous moments is when Dern removes her blazer in court as if she’s overheated, entirely just to distract from the opposing counsel’s arguments by showing some skin. She warns her client that “This system rewards bad behavior,” and over time proves to exhibit most of that bad behavior herself, proudly. Laura Dern makes a spectacle out of this seemingly minor role, drawing subtle contrast between the meaning of her body language and the meaning of her spoken dialogue that only becomes more exponentially significant the longer you dwell on its details.

It might be easy to reduce Laura Dern’s Oscars attention for Marriage Story to a glib assumption that it’s a lifetime achievement award rather than recognition for this performance in particular. Between her limited screen time and her highlight-reel monologue where she rants about how “God is absent father” while the Virgin Mary is unfairly upheld as a maternal ideal, there’s plenty of fuel to feed that kind of cynicism. I just don’t think it’s fair to downplay the impact Dern’s presence has on the film at large. She is a gussied-up power lawyer who shapes audience perception on both the communal vanity of Los Angeles and the cutthroat mind games of courtroom etiquette: two major factors in how the marital drama in the forefront develops. The only truth to the argument that she would have gotten this same nomination for any role (say, her interpretation of a silently angry Marmee in Little Women) based on her career’s work at large is that Laura Dern would have killed any role Hollywood tossed her way. She always delivers. The true shame about her nomination this year is that wasn’t for a Best Leading Performance, since Hollywood so rarely affords her top-bill opportunities that she never really has a chance to earn that accolade. If we’re relegating Laura Dern’s powerful screen presence to Supporting Player status only, she might as well earn her first Oscar for her movie-stealing role in Marriage Story. Hopefully she’ll win, and more prominent lead roles will follow.

-Brandon Ledet

The Swampflix Guide to the Oscars, 2020

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There are 38 feature films nominated for the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony. We here at Swampflix are conspicuously more attracted to the lowbrow & genre-minded than we are to stuffy Awards Season releases, so as usual we have reviewed fewer than half of the films nominated (so far!). We’re still happy to see so many movies we enjoyed listed among the nominees, though, including four titles from our own Top 10 Films of 2019 list. The Academy rarely gets these things right when actually choosing the winners, but as a list this isn’t too shabby in terms of representing what 2019 cinema had to offer.

Listed below are the 16 Oscar-Nominated films from 2019 that we covered for the site, ranked from best to . . . least-best, based on our star ratings. Each entry is accompanied by a blurb, a link to our corresponding review, and a mention of the awards the films were nominated for.

1. Parasite, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best International Feature Film, and Best Production Design

“Money is an iron. For the Parks, it is the metaphorical iron that makes life smooth and effortless, and the iron strength of the walls that separate them from the riffraff below. For the Kims, it is the iron of prison bars that keep them in a metaphorical prison of society and, perhaps, a literal one; it is the weight that drags them down, a millstone to prevent them from ever escaping the trap of stratified social classes.”  – Boomer

2. Avengers: Endgame, nominated for Best Visual Effects

“This is the perfect capstone for this franchise. If there were never another MCU film, it would be totally fine, because as a finale, this is pitch perfect. Every important and semi-important character gets a moment to shine, as the Snap is undone (come on, you knew it would be). There’s even a moment where every living lady hero from the entire MCU is onscreen at once, and it is delightful, although I’m sure the internet is already full of comments about how it was ‘forced’ or ‘cheesy,’ but I don’t feed trolls and I try not to cross the bridges that they live under, so I wouldn’t know.” – Boomer

3. Knives Out, nominated for Best Original Screenplay

“I’ve long been a fan of comedy pastiches and homages of genres that function perfectly as examples of those genres despite humorous overtones; my go-to example is Hot Fuzz, which I always tout as having a more sophisticated murder mystery plot than most films than most straightforward criminal investigation media (our lead comes to a logical conclusion that fits all of the clues, but still turns out to be wrong). Knives Out is another rare gem of this type, a whodunnit comedy in the mold of Clue that has a sophisticated and winding plot.” – Boomer

4. Little Women, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Saiorse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score

“This is a beautiful film, a timeless piece of literature made fresh once more with a cast overbrimming with talent and filmed with an eye for chromatic storytelling and such beautiful Northeast scenery that when I tell you I was there, I was there. This is also such a talented cast that they breathe a new life into characters that, in the original text and in previous film incarnations, were at times sullen, unlikable, or intolerable.” – Boomer

5. The Lighthouse, nominated for Best Cinematography

“Packed to the walls with more sex, violence, and broad toilet humor than you’d typically expect from high-brow Cinema. If you can push past the initial barriers of Eggers’s patient pacing & period-specific dialogue, the movie is a riot.” – Brandon

6. I Lost My Body, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

“This is two films for the price of one. And it’s a very low price at that, considering its 80min runtime. As with all two-for-one bargains, however, one of the two complimentary films on this simultaneous double bill is far more satisfying & impressive than the other. To fully appreciate I Lost My Body, then, you have to appreciate its two dueling narratives as a package deal. The stronger movie in this combo pack carries the lesser, even if just by the virtue of their pairing.” – Brandon

7. Marriage Story, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Adam Driver), Best Actress (Scarlett Johannson), Best Supporting Actress (Laura Dern), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score

“A superb breakup story about how you can love somebody so much, and create a life with them that you love, and it still has to dissolve. It specifically illustrates how hard it can be for parents when their child arbitrarily prefers one over the other. The way those formative childhood phases affect permanent legal repercussions is devastating, as is the realization that you might not actually be best parent for your own child.” – The Podcast Crew

8. Joker, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing

“None of the endless months of vitriolic complaints against its honor resonated with me in the theater, where I mostly just saw a creepy character study anchored by an effectively chilling performance. If anything, the fact that a movie this unassuming and, frankly, this trashy was somehow causing chaos in the Oscars discourse only made it more perversely amusing.” – Brandon

9. Missing Link, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

“Very cute in its slapstick humor, and often stunning in its visual artistry. It’s about on par with The Boxtrolls all told, which is to say it’s mediocre by Laika standards but still on a level far above most modern children’s cinema.” – Brandon

10. 1917, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects

“The video game mission plot might not make for especially complex drama between its solider protagonists, but the way those babyfaced boys contrast against the unearthly gore, rot, and decay of the war-torn earth beneath them is viscerally upsetting. There are many ways in which the long-take gimmick is a distracting technical exercise, but it does force you to stew in that discomfort for long, uninterrupted stretches. It’s surprisingly brutal in that way.” – Brandon

11. Once Upon a Time . . . In Hollywood, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Leonard Dicaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Brad Pitt), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing

“I appreciate this movie most as a passionate argument for a sentiment I could not agree with less. I have no love for the traditional machismo & endless parade of cheap-o Westerns that clogged up Los Angeles in these twilight hours of the Studio Era. Still, it was entertaining to watch an idiosyncratic filmmaker with niche interests wax nostalgic about the slimy, uncool bullshit only he cares about.” – Brandon

12. The Irishman, nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino and Joe Pesci), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Production Design, and Best Visual Effects

“Finds plenty more to say about the corruption & violence of organized crime that Scorsese has not addressed in previous efforts. Unfortunately, it allows that new material to be drowned out by an overwhelming flood of the same-old-same-old.” – Brandon

13. Jojo Rabbit, nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Scarlett Johannson), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, and Best Production Design

“Works best as a maternal parallel to the paternal drama of Boy. The difference is that I left Boy marveling at how he pulled off such a delicate tonal balance with such confident poise, whereas I left Jojo Rabbit wondering if I had just seen him lose his balance entirely and tumble to the floor for the first time.” – Brandon

14. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, nominated for Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

“Look, Rise of Skywalker is good. It’s not great like The Force Awakens or passable like The Last Jedi, but it’s also not that spectacular either. It doesn’t take the chances that TLJ took, and I was glad that the return of JJ Abrams meant that we went back to mostly practical FX for the aliens (those stupid chihuahua horses from TLJ will haunt me to my goddamned grave) even if the resultant film felt like he was trying to railroad the ending back to his original concepts after not liking how another director played with his toys.” – Boomer

15. Ad Astra, nominated for Best Sound Mixing

“Has all the building blocks needed to achieve something great; they’re just arranged in a confoundingly dull configuration. Worse, there’s literally not one thing about its combination of vintage sci-fi pulp & faux-philosophical melodrama that Interstellar didn’t already achieve to greater success, so there’s constantly a better viewing option hanging over its head.” – Brandon

16. Rocketman, nominated for Best Original Song

“The narration continually reassures the audience that Elton John’s life was ravaged by sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, but everything we see onscreen is musical theatre kids playing dress-up in squeaky clean sound stage environments.” – Brandon

-Brandon Ledet & Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Swampflix’s Top 10 Films of 2019

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1. Midsommar – A cathartic breakup drama disguised as a gruesome daytime horror. This traumatic nightmare-comedy about a toxic romance that’s far outstayed its welcome is distinguished by its morbid sense of humor, its detailed costume & production design, its preference for atmospheric dread over traditional jump scares, and its continuation of occultist, Wicker Man-style folk horror into a new generation of genre nerdom.

2. Parasite – Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece is a twisty, crowd-pleasing thriller about class resentment, with a particular focus on how Capitalism forces its lowliest casualties to fight over the crumbs that fall from on high. It’s a genuine phenomenon that such a savage commentary on class politics has become so universally popular, earning sold-out screenings & ecstatic critical praise for months on end as its distribution exponentially spreads. When was the last time such a wide audience embraced a movie that features *gasp* subtitles, much less such a tonally explosive expression of economic anger?

3. Knife+Heart – This is fantastic smut, especially if you happen to enjoy classic slashers & gialli. Picture Dario Argento’s Cruising. Set against a gay porno shoot in 1970s Paris, it really turns the usual male gaze & female victim empathy of those genres on their head in a fascinating way. And it only improves on repeat viewings as its psychedelic flashback imagery and its Goblin-inspired synth soundtrack from M83 sink further into your subconscious.

4. In Fabric – A tongue-in-cheek anthology horror about a sentient killer dress. Fully indulging in the Theatre of the Absurd, it’s a fun watch, but it also makes fashion photography, corporate employment, and romantic loneliness legitimately menacing. Especially recommended for anyone who’d be enticed by an arthouse remake of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, as it could easily be read as both over-the-top camp and a deadly serious creep-out.

5. Knives Out – A modernized Agatha Christie-style whodunnit comedy in the mold of Clue that manages to deliver both a sophisticated, winding plot and pointed class politics. Like Get Out before it, it mocks a specifically Left version of political ignorance vis-à-vis latent and uninspected racism among the privileged class. Stumbling upon something this fun and this fiercely political feels like finding a rare gem in the cinematic wilderness.

6. The Lighthouse – Willem Dafoe & Robert Pattinson costar as a lighthouse-keeper odd couple who gradually grow insane with hate & lust for each other. A black & white period drama crammed into a squared-off aspect ratio, this functions as an unholy, horned-up mashup of Guy Maddin & HP Lovecraft as well as a seafaring, swashbuckling mutation of Persona. It pushes the basic tenets of traditional masculinity and macho bonding rituals into the realm of a hallucinatory fever dream.

7. Us – A surreal reimagining of C.H.U.D. that reflects & refracts ugly, discomforting truths about modern American class divides – mostly in the way that escaping the darkness of poverty is often impossible, and that those who manage to somehow embody the mythological idea of social mobility must do so at the expense of others. It also commands a nightmare-logic looseness throughout that was only hinted at in Peele’s debut, leaning heavily into the horror of The Uncanny. It’s like getting an extra hour to poke around in The Sunken Place.

8. The Beach Bum – An abrasive stoner-bummer in which Matthew McConaughey plays a Florida-famous poet named Moondog. Harmony Korine always works best when he reins his indulgences in with a little guiding structure, and this one does so by riffing on 90s Major Studio Comedy tropes to hideous success. It’s basically Korine staging Billy Madison on the lower decks of a Jimmy Buffett pleasure cruise, a perfect continuation of the Floridian hellscape he previously sketched out in Spring Breakers.

9. Uncut Gems – Another Good Time-style panic attack from the Safdie Brothers, in which New York City is just as loud, chaotic, and crowded as it feels irl. Adam Sandler’s manic performance of gambling addiction & familial regret toys with audiences’ empathy, and its larger story of international jewelry trade emphasizes upsetting truths about the exploitation & suffering that’s behind all the world’s beautiful stones.

10. The Irishman – A late-career mafia epic from Martin Scorsese, the undisputed master of that genre. It’s a beautiful yet tragic story about obsoletion and the emptiness of a life spent mired in sensationalist violence, one with a metatextual significance in the life of its aging, self-reflective filmmaker.

Read Boomer’s picks here.
Read Brandon’s picks here.
Read Britnee’s picks here.
Read CC’s picks here.
See Hanna’s picks here.
Hear James’s picks here.

-The Swampflix Crew

Movies to See in New Orleans this Week 1/23/20 – 1/29/20

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Here are the movies we’re most excited about that are playing in New Orleans this week, including a few major Oscar contenders.

Best Picture Oscar Nominees

Parasite – The latest from Bong Joon-ho (director of Okja and Swampflix’s favorite movie of 2014, Snowpiercer) is a twisty, crowd-pleasing thriller about class resentment that’s been selling out screenings & earning ecstatic critical praise for months as its distribution exponentially spreads. Don’t miss your chance to see one of 2019’s universally beloved genre gems big, loud, and with an enraptured crowd. Playing at AMC Elmwood and Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge.

Little Women – Greta Gerwig’s directorial follow-up to Lady Bird is an ambitious literary adaptation that scrambles the timelines & narrative structure of its source material to break free from the expectations set by its cultural familiarity. Major bonus points: yet another featured role for 2019 MVP Florence Pugh, who had a legendary year between this, Midsommar, and Fighting with my Family. Playing at AMC Elmwood.

Once Upon a Time . . . In Hollywood! – I enjoyed Tarantino’s latest overwritten provocation despite it communicating a sentiment I couldn’t agree with less. Do I wish the macho drunkards & Westerns of Old Hollywood kept clogging up LA with their mundane traditionalism forever and ever? Not at all, but it’s still amusing to watch an idiosyncratic filmmaker with niche interests passionately wax nostalgic about the gross bullshit only they care about. Playing at AMC Elmwood.

Other Movies

Paper Moon (1973) – Peter Bogdanovich’s classic roadtrip dramedy about a conman’s unlikely friendship with a young child (who may or may not be his daughter).  One of the true gems of the New Hollywood era. Screening Sunday 1/26 and Wednesday 1/29 as part of The Prytania’s regular Classic Movies series.

Gretel and Hansel– Oz Perkins warps the age-old fairy tale into one of those new-fangled “elevated,” Atmospheric Horrors everyone loves to rattle on about.  Given the director’s past work on The Blackcoat’s Daughter & I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, it promises to be a total creep-out with detailed attention paid to eerie, immersive sound design. Playing wide.

The Turning – Another Atmospheric Horror literary adaptation, this one tackling Henry James’s 19th Century ghost story The Turn of the Screw.  Of particular interest to anyone who’s interested in following the career of the young Brooklynn Prince after her whirlwind debut in The Florida Project. Playing wide.

-Brandon Ledet

Episode #100 of The Swampflix Podcast: Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) & The Sight and Sound Top 100

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Welcome to Episode #100 of The Swampflix Podcast.  To celebrate our 100th episode, we attempt to tackle the modest topic of The Greatest Films of All Time.  We look to The Sight & Sound Top 100 list to help us with this endeavor, starting with Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966).

Enjoy!

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

-James Cohn, Hanna Räsänen, Britnee Lombas, and Brandon Ledet