Critical Darlings

America has Wicker fever! The romantic story of a man made from wicker, NOT filled with bees, is a sweet, satirical hit.

Today on the show, we have Blank Check Universe favorite Esther Zuckerman on to discuss the film, its source material, romantasy in general, and of course the hotness of the wicker man in question. Does it all weave together? We don’t all agree, but there’s no doubt this one is a charmer—and a great showcase for Elizabeth Debicki, Olivia Colman, and Peter Dinklage.

Next week: Wild Horse Nine!

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Wildwood is the new stop motion joint from Laika and director Travis Knight, previously of Kubo And The Two Strings, Bumblebee, and Masters Of The Universe. It's a sweeping, surprisingly brutal fantasy that fully earns it's rare PG13 rating.

We're joined by Vulture's Rebecca Alter to discuss the movie, trends in animation, and the aesthestics of our failson overlords. No matter your take on Wildwood's quality as a movie, there's no question that it's an argument for the bespoke in an increasingly cookie cutter world.

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Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival!
In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia.
We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: ⁠⁠https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live⁠⁠

This week we’re joined by the brilliant Jia Tolentino to build monuments to our love…for this movie!

It’s You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s meta-doc about Elizabeth Holmes, her family, and her reality. It's a mesmerizing journey into the world of Holmes and her partner, the Billy Evans, in the month before Holmes imprisonment for fraud as CEO of Theranos. In classic Fielder style, the movie takes a turn, and becomes something else entirely, but is no less interesting.

Email us! CriticalDarlingsMailbag@gmail.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival!
In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia.
We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: ⁠⁠https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live⁠⁠

The Social Reckoning is Aaron Sorkin's semi-sequel to the Oscar-winning The Social Network. It updates the story of Silicon Valley boy-king Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook to the near-present. Despite a more tech-skeptical public, critics and audiences seem to have rejected the film. Thankfully, we have an expert to help unpack it: former Facebook employee George Civeris of ⁠Straightiolab!⁠ Despite much of the press and promotional focus around the movie, Zuckerberg, now embodied by Jeremy Strong, ends up playing a supporting role to Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White's characters, Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, and Jeff Horwitz a journalist trying to expose Facebook's growth-at-any-cost mindset.
We get into the inevitable comparisons to The Social Network, the lead performances (plus Betty Gilpin), and the mythology of Mark Zuckerberg as portrayed in both films.
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🚨🚨🚨 Big News! 🚨🚨🚨
Critical Darlings is going LIVE at The Savannah Film Festival!
In our first live podcast recording, we’re doing an awards season kickoff at 2pm on Tuesday October 29th at The Gutstein Gallery in Savannah Georgia.
We’ll be talking about the year’s awards narratives, the big races, and more. For more information and tickets, visit: https://filmfest.scad.edu/schedule/critical-darlings-awards-season-kickoff-live

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Digger may be exhausting to watch, but it sure is fun to talk about!
This week, we’re joined by Dana Stevens, Slate critic and author of Camera Man, to discuss Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s big-budget, big-swing meta-satire about climate, gerontocracy, art, and who knows what else. It may have flopped at the box office, but we’re (sort of) split on what to make of the movie and its knotty, sometimes gorgeous, sometimes clumsy presentation.
Next week, we’re reckoning with The Social Reckoning.
Email us! CriticalDarlingsMailbag@gmail.com

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