Late in the narcotizing Oscars 2025 telecast, host Conan O'Brien made the oddly poignant promise that "Through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here." It was a weird, oblique, it'll-be-okay reference to the seismic upheavals in America, after the whole nearly-four-hour show had made a point of avoiding any reference to them. Notice the absence of any outspoken left-wing celebrities who would've been inclined to rail at the current administration's punitive tear through the government? Mark Ruffalo? Susan Sarandon? Jane Fonda, who just made a barnburner of a speech at the SAG Awards--where were you? Not at the bland and careful Academy Awards ceremony, that's for sure!

Talking about I'M STILL HERE, a new political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the fracturing of his leftist family in the early 1970s, during the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. It's the latest film by Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION), who knew the Paiva family personally, and it's Brazil's biggest film hit since the Covid pandemic. It's also up for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress for the formidable Fernanda Torres. Co-hosts aren't in total agreement about I'M STILL HERE--Eileen loved it while acknowledging Dolores's misgivings about the lack of class-consciousness and its extended structure following what happens to the family in the forty-plus years after the harrowing events of 1971.

It's a Very Special Filmsuck episode open to the public! Co-host Eileen Jones interviews writer and cinephile Alex Deley, who wrote a fantastic piece for JACOBIN magazine about the glories of Lynch films.