Shut Up and Watch This – Details, episodes & analysis

This month we explore REPO MAN, the endlessly inventive 1984 cult movie by Alex Cox. Dave remembers catching the movie on late-night cable as a teen, but it was a true blind spot for Ashley until we sat down to watch it together. Emilio Estevez stars as Otto, a bored LA punk who falls under the spell of veteran repo man Harry Dean Stanton. Along the way, we encounter rival repo gangs, government ops, junkyard philosophers, UFO conspiracy theorists, and a mysterious 1964 Chevy Malibu with something terrifying in the trunk. Join us as we dissect the Repo Code, the amazing punk sampler soundtrack, and try to figure out what this movie actually is. Absurd punk sci-fi pastiche? Or a tongue-in-cheek indictment of Reagan-era capitalism and the death of the welfare state? As Ashley often says, why not both?

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© 2024 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

This time, Ashley chooses HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and it's a Mike Leigh rematch!

Long ago on Ep.8, Dave chose Leigh's NAKED (1993), which featured male characters so repellent that Ashley found the entire viewing experience to be extremely unpleasant. 

Now six years later, we discuss a Mike Leigh film she adores, longtime favorite HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, a seemingly lighthearted comedy simmering with tension and darkness. Sally Hawkins gives a brilliant, compulsively watchable performance as Poppy, a cheerful, free-spirited schoolteacher whose big heart and impulsive nature lead her straight into a series of unsettling encounters that her unshakeable sense of humor may not able to deliver her from. 

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© 2024 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

We're back from our hiatus with an all-new deep dive into Dave's pick. This week we're talking about TOOTSIE (1982) and we have questions: Can someone who disguises himself as another type of person really understand what it's like to be that kind of person? And more importantly, did the screenwriters of Tootsie actually intend to convey a subtle message that indeed you can not understand what it is like to be a woman in a patriarchal society by disguising yourself as one? Is Michael Dorsey, a.k.a. Dorothy Michaels (Dustin Hoffman), actually an anti-hero here? And what was up with that ending? Justice for Sandy and Julie!

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© 2023 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

A LETTER TO THREE WIVES is an odd film; it begins with the film’s villain, who we never see, providing character introductions, then proceeds to tell the story largely in flashbacks. Flashbacks are introduced by what we can only describe as an early vocoder effect that seems strangely out of place in a post-war drama. But the actors and the script really draw you into the domestic drama, most notably, Linda Darnell and national treasure Thema Ritter. Writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz would go on to win Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscars for this film, a feat he would repeat the next year for his masterpiece, ALL ABOUT EVE.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

There is a lot more to John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS than a synopsis or even first viewing can convey. First of all, what is it? Is it sci-fi à la The Twilight Zone or pre-Cronenberg body horror, or a thesis on man’s search for meaning? As it turns out, it’s a little bit of all of this, and maybe some other things too. Beautifully photographed and masterfully paced and edited, Seconds turns a relatively simple premise into a tense and multilayered examination of purpose, meaning and existence.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

To celebrate the changing of the seasons, we have an introspective look at how family death impacts the life of a young man, causing his retreat into a fantasy world that includes flying murder balls, corpse theft, slave labor on a mysterious red planet, and a tall man filled with what appears to be nacho cheese. Actually, maybe PHANTASM isn’t very introspective at all. This cult horror film is odd, plotless, dreamlike and yet somehow still compulsively watchable.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

Can we ever be sure of the motives of others? Can we even be sure of our own? Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION explores how emotions like greed, pride and fear shape our actions through the eyes of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), a professional wiretapper who wrestles with the implications of the information he is supplying. Lives are at stake, nothing is as it seems, and it may be Harry who loses his soul.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

While we certainly can’t claim to be in the know about all things mainstream, THAT THING YOU DO! (1995) seems to have been one of those flash in the pan films that came and went from the popular consciousness. Which is fitting since the film follows The Wonders, a fictional band that writes one catchy song and then fades away like so many Surfaris, Lemon Pipers, or Mysterians. Tom Hanks does an admirable job in his directorial debut. With its contagious soundtrack, and extremely likable cast, this movie is still a lot of fun, 25 years later.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

We open on a snowy plain, a tiny figure approaching from the horizon. What follows is a 32 part quasi-biography of the eccentric 20th century pianist told in the style of a multi-part TikTok video. Made in the early 90’s, THIRTY TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD is clearly ahead of its time with its fractal storytelling. We get bits of music, interviews, sketches, animations and audioscapes that each give us a glimpse into the man and the artist that was Glenn Gould. Don’t be intimidated by the large number of films. There is a little something for everyone, and if you hate one, you can just scroll up (or wait–they are short).

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson

Before the surge of coming of age films in the late 90s/early 00s, there weren’t many films that addressed adolescence from girl’s perspectives the way that films like STAND BY ME did for boys. So it is perhaps no surprise that the 1995 film NOW AND THEN captured the imaginations of a generation of girls. It has everything: relatable stories of growing up, a killer soundtrack, a passable mystery, the stars of Casper to crush on, and of course a trip to the library archives. Though the “now” story feels tacked on, the “then” storyline totally makes it  worth a watch.

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© 2022 Ashley Carr & Dave Wilson