In our very first episode, Josh and Alex discuss the movies they’ve been watching for #OccultOctober, which films truly terrified them as children, and play a horror-themed round of movie trivia. Alex professes her love of Rian Johnson, Josh is terrified of asshole children, and they both get excessively meta while discussing early to mid-90s horror narratives and the political realities they reflect.

After a long, unintended dormancy TFL is back! With our return, we’re proud to announce the upcoming TFL podcast, coming soon to earholes around the globe! As explained in the above short intro, Alexandra and I will be focusing on one genre or sub-genre of film per month, watching as many films as we care to that fit the subject, and then talking about them on our bi-weekly podcast.

An unfortunate side effect of the move is that we will both be without dedicated working spaces for the majority of the summer, which will of course make writing for TFL difficult. Instead of spending hours at coffee shops and libraries in the evening, we’ve decided to suspend major work on the site for at least the summer months of 2012.

What is in our psychology that is so fragile it breaks down? What are the elements that begin and sustain an unraveling? Sometimes a cause can be pinpointed but more often not. And even an obvious experience, like war, provides a multitude of individual responses. Apocalypse Now provides great examples of how war can unravel an individual’s moral sensibility.

When you shoot a million feet of film, you can probably edit any movie you’d like from it. I’m certain there’s a way that, with the proper voiceover, Captain Ben Willard’s harrowing journey could have been recut as the story of a family man fighting his way for home.

Apocalypse Now is one of those films we’ve been knocking around since the inception of TFL. On the surface it’s an obvious choice, but it’s also an exceedingly complex film by modern standards.

Josh breaks down the character of Max Cherry, as re-imagined from the novel by Elmore Leonard for the screen by director/writer Quentin Tarantino.

Music is just as much a character in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown as are Ordell and Jackie. The use of music in this film is eloquent. It rounds out the scenes and evokes emotion. And it also feels personal.

Tarantino’s Mind is a 2006 short film from a directing duo known as 300ml. The short co-stars Seu Jorge (best known for his soundtrack work on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic) as the unassuming target for his friends many conspiracy theories related to the Tarantino catalog. In short order, the various entanglements of Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Curdled, From Dusk Til Dawn and Kill Bill are ironed out.

When dealing with a name like Quentin Tarantino and a film like Jackie Brown, it’s important to give the film context. Prior to it’s 1997 release, Tarantino had only directed two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Yet, in this 1994 documentary from the BBC’s Omnibus series, directors like Monte Hellman and Terry Gilliam were practically falling out of their seats in heaping praise on the young director. He could essentially do no wrong… that is of course until he directed Jackie Brown.

These sources may be used as the basis for this months articles on Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Sources will continue to be cited directly when applicable. This article may be updated as the month progresses.

Please welcome our very first, and most hated, Quentin Tarantino film! Jackie Brown was a major letdown for film audiences looking for more accidental shootings and comical heroine overdoses. We had a decidedly different opinion of the film, and have decided to make it our spotlight film for March 2012.