In our fourth episode of The Rise of A24 series, we are covering the newly minted cult classic Under the Silver Lake (2019) and the art cinema bonanza of L'Avventura (1960)

Special Guest - James Adamson, the host of the great Double Reel Podcast, a monthly magazine podcast for the discerning film nerd.

A24 had a cult following well before it broke into the mainstream in the 2020s. Their surprise win at the 2017 Oscars for Best Picture with Moonlight put them in the spotlight, but they remained resolutely an arthouse company pre-Covid. That’s why their behavior surrounding the marketing and distribution of Under the Silver Lake (2019) is so profoundly bizarre. David Robert Mitchell was coming off his 2015 horror masterpiece It Follows with this twisting absurdist L.A. noir starring Andrew Garfield. The whole affair seemed right in A24’s sweet spot. So much so that A24 pre-bought the distribution rights before a single shot was filmed. Then, after the movie played to a muted response at Cannes in 2018, they essentially abandoned it: moving the release date multiple times before finally dumping it onto just two screens in April 2019. What exactly was so unnerving that made A24 bury the film?

L’Avventura (1960) had a similarly consequential Cannes premiere in 1960. At its first screening, the audience jeered and booed so loudly that director Michelangelo Antonioni left the theater in tears. Yet later that same week, a group of prominent film critic, led by figures from Cahiers du Cinéma, drafted and signed an open letter defending the film as a bold step forward for cinema. That act of critical solidarity transformed L’Avventura from a public embarrassment into a landmark of cinematic modernism. What began in jeers was quickly reframed as a radical new vision of film art, and its stature has only grown since. Today it stands as one of the undisputed masterpieces of 20th-century cinema, a fixture on “greatest films” lists and a touchstone for generations of directors.

Under the Silver Lake, by contrast, never received that critical reprieve, its initial dismissal has lingered, but that has allowed a small, but vocal supporting group to form around the film as it becomes one of the first cult classics of the 2010s.

In our third episode of The Rise of A24 series, we are covering Kogonada's quiet meditation on familial AI, After Yang (2022) alongside the wondrous Late Spring (1949) by Yasujiro Ozu.

Special Guest - Lillian Crawford is a freelance writer covering film and culture for publications including Sight & Sound, BBC Culture, The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement. In addition to her writing, Lillian is a prolific programmer and curator, including for the BFI, the Barbican, the Garden Cinema, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Dan is unable to hide his adoration Kogonada's debut film Columbus (2017). It currently ranks 7th on his best films of the 21st Century (so far) List. His follow-up, After Yang, is a more murkier affair. Set in a future where robots have become immediate family members, Kogonada attempts to humanize and ground sci-fi in a hazy emotional uncanny valley. Are we supposed to feel for the AI as we would a human or are we just mirroring our own subjective experiences onto an avatar? Rather than providing answers, the film drifts between aching grief, transcendent love, and non-dystopic visions of the future.

Yasujiro Ozu is clearly a massive influence on Kogonada, and it is easy to see why with his film Late Spring (1949), a gorgeous melodrama about a daughter growing apart from her father. The film probably shares more with Kogonada's Columbus in its interplay between emotion and the natural world. Ozu is able to conjure the most hidden and profound emotions from his actors and the story. At the same time, he crafts a meticulous narrative that continues to propel forward even as the external drama remains subtle. A true masterpiece of filmmaking.

Jason Blum, The Town, July 2025

In a baffling moment of industry transparency, Jason Blum called into The Town podcast on the morning after M3GAN 2.0’s disastrous opening weekend in late June to discuss what went wrong. Jason is the founder and leader of the highly successful Blumhouse Productions, a movie studio that quickly rose to success in the 2010s by producing low-budget horror films. Jason is notorious for being open about the normally clandestine aspects of the moviemaking business, but The Town episode was extraordinarily illuminating and revealing. At the same time, Jason Blum was there to spin like any typical Hollywood mogul.

M3GAN 2.0 opened to only 10 million dollars on its premiere weekend in late June 2025, which was under a third of what the original film opened to in 2023. The sequel will end up with a total of 39 million dollars at the box office versus the 181 million dollars of the original. Adding insult to injury, the production budget on the sequel was 25 million vs the original’s 15 million, and the marketing budget for part two was certainly much higher as well. In short, M3GAN 2.0 is a huge bomb.

Full Article: https://film-trace.beehiiv.com/p/the-end-of-the-blum-supremacy

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