Random Acts of Cinema
259 episodes - English - Latest episode: 21 days ago - ★★★★ - 13 ratingsEach week friends Mike and Charlie have Randy (the random number generator) select a film for them to watch from the Criterion Collection. Then they discuss and review it for your listening pleasure. It’s a podcast about the love of film, expanding horizons, painstakingly cataloging the duration of every long take, and friendship.
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Episodes
836 - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
June 07, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 47.7 MBYou’d think we’d spend this episode reflecting thoughtfully about the degree of influence Carrie Nation had on the America female suffrage and temperance movements, but we mostly end up focusing on mundane stuff like drugs, trans representation, murder, Shakespeare, midnight movies, and shocking behind-the-scenes dalliances. This is probably due to the influence of our delightful guest: Peaches Christ. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Ed...
994 - Local Hero (1983)
May 31, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 45 MBWe are joined by comedian and director Michael Patrick Jann (of The State and Michael Patrick Jann Can’t Direct Traffic) to discuss director Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero. A film where oil tycoon Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) tells Mac Macintyre (Peter Riegert) to go convince Urquhart (Dennis Lawson) and the other inhabitants of a small Scottish coastal town to sell out. But there’s one problem: the town is too charming!! Etc. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discu...
100 - Beastie Boys Video Anthology (2000)
May 24, 2021 15:04 - 1 hour - 64.9 MBIt’s a big one. It’s our 100th episode so we’re watching Criterion spine number 100. And we brought in our first 3-peat all-star guest and super fan Shelley to talk with us all about the legacy of Beastie Boys music videos. You know, all the classics like… uh… “Intergalatic Spaceman”, “Rampage”, and my favorite “3 DJs and 1 MC.” If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1983).
LD144 and 1017 - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962)
May 17, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 35.4 MBAs it turns out, the coexistence of two movies dedicated to the exploits of the fictionalized eighteenth-century German adventurer Baron Munchausen far from exclude one another from narrative authority. So for Mike’s birthday episode, why not just just do a double episode treating them like parts of an anthology that took a couple of centuries to make? We do just that with Karel Zeman’s 1962 The Fabulous Baron Munchausen and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen of 1989. It’s Ze...
LD133 - Bad Day at Black Rock
May 10, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 45.5 MBIs it a western/film noir mash-up, a subtly coded red scare-era warning, or a a heart-on-its-sleeve anti-racism morality tale? It definitely has a little of each, but is there enough of any to give Spencer Tracy’s oddly elderly WWII veteran a big enough stage to convince a desert town with a shameful secret to inspire a nation to live up to its principles? Not if Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin have anything to do with it. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we ...
724 - All That Jazz (1979)
May 03, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 40.4 MBCan Roy Scheider (playing Joe Gideon - a gossamer thin veiled version of director Bob Fosse) keep his addictions and self-destructive inclinations in check long enough to finish edits on a motion picture he’s directed while also choreographing a broadway musical extravaganza? Of course he can. But can he achieve true excellence in these tasks without succumbing to his most base impulses? Now that’s the question of the film. To answer this, Fosse sends up everyone including himself in thi...
835 - Valley of the Dolls (1967)
April 26, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 54.7 MB“Dolls” mean pills. There, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way... Mark Robson’s epic movie about three women finding their ways through the obstacle-ridden world of entertainment, offers a soapy and campy take on ambition and those living in the orbit of successful women. Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate protagonize against a series of professional rivals, embattled romances, addictions, medical calamities, and oh-so-many personal demons to reach both dizzying highs and d...
LD271 - Pulp Fiction (1994)
April 19, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 41.1 MBCriterion 25:17. The path of the righteous podcast is beset on all sides by the inequities of the tasteless and the incompetence of bad movies. Blessed is he who, in the name of quality and good filmmaking, shepherds the listeners through the valley of movie reviews. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls (1967).
926 - Manila in The Claws of Light (1975)
April 12, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBIt’s been a while since Randy picked something from a nation’s film output with which we have little-to-no familiarity. And a little 1970s Filipino cinema is just what we needed to break us out of the endless Criterion pattern of American/French/English/Japanese. With this - celebrated director Lino Brocka’s adaptation of a novel following a young man named Julio (played by Rafael Roco Jr.) who searches for his missing girlfriend through the poverty and exploitative working conditions of t...
254 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
April 05, 2021 16:11 - 1 hour - 40.9 MBWhat’s better than a 1970s, grimy, sun-baked, L.A.-based neo-noir about a well-intentioned stripclub owner (played with all of the nervous swagger of a Ben Gazzara in his prime) with a gambling problem who gets in too deep with the mob? Two for the price of one, that’s what. This week we’re talking about both the theatrical release and unexpectedly shorter director’s cut of John Cassavetes’ under-appreciated classic. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussin...
620 - Kindergarten Cop (1990)
March 29, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 61.3 MBIvan Reitman, the master of the 1980s family-friendly action comedy, steps boldly into the 90s with a playful reinvention of one of the most singular R-rated action movie marquee names of the 20th-century: Arnold Schwarzenegger. He plays detective John Kimble, an intimidating and violent cop who must transition to the gentler persona and methods of a small-town kindergarten teacher in order to uncover the identities of a mother (Penelope Ann Miller) and child (Christian and Joseph Cousins) ...
LD124 - Dr. No (1962)
March 22, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 46.4 MBFor Charlie's annual birthday episode, his very good friend Mike has chosen Terence Young's filmed adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel Dr. No. That's right, there's technically a James Bond movie in the Criterion Collection. And since the birthday boy is a super-fan, eager for a soapbox upon which to blurt out decades of pent-up interpretations, criticisms, and hot takes, get ready for a wild ride. Songs about fruit! Solitaire in the dark! Women's sunglasses! It's all here. If you'd li...
976 - Let the Sunshine In (2017)
March 15, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBIn a kind of alternate universe version of Trois Colours: Bleu, Juliette Binoche finds herself once more playing a Parisian woman, with an artistic bent, having lost her husband and daughter, navigating a second life in a search for new love and purpose. Except that this time no one is dead; she's just divorced. And rather than mourning her way from one brilliant visual to another to satisfy a decidedly male cinephile's gaze, Claire Denis directs Binoche (playing Isabelle) and a sequence o...
973 - My Brilliant Career (1979)
March 08, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 33.7 MBThis week we are joined by podcaster Alexei Toliopolous (@ThisisAlexei) of Total Reboot, Finding Desperado, and Finding Drago to discuss his pick: Australian director Gillian Armstrong's first feature film My Brilliant Career. This groundbreaking film blends elements from the eponymous novel and biography of Miles Franklin, exploring her struggles for independence and creative success at the end of the nineteenth century. We discuss pillow fights, English country dance decorum, Sam Neill's...
465 - Dodes’ka-den (1970)
March 01, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 53.1 MBThree-peat! Director Akira Kurosawa's first color feature finds the tragedies and human strength in a small shantytown, inhabited by an ensemble cast each facing their own poverty-driven struggles. What follows is a categorization of the ways in which people contend with suffering: ranging from the inspiring and humorous, to the accepting and despairing. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be joined by a special guest (!!) to discuss and review Gillian Armstrong's M...
LD072 - West Side Story (1961)
February 22, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 36.8 MBIt's been a long time since we've had a musical on this podcast. And this is a big one. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' adapt the stage musical (which is - sort of - and adaptation of Romeo and Juliet) wherein two rival gangs sing and dance through fights and fight-dances and dance-fights. Maria (Natalie Wood) and Tony (Richard Beymer) are our star-crossed lovers trying to secure their love in the face of teen violence, police harassment, gang loyalties, and the crushing pressures of racis...
738 - Tootsie (1982)
February 15, 2021 19:01 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBAcclaimed American director Sydney Pollack examines the lives of struggling New York City actors working on a competitive and fraught soap opera. Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a talented, but difficult, and under appreciated actor who financial needs and uncompromising nature lead him to take a role as a woman, played by a woman. Becoming an unexpected feminist icon, Michael further challenges societal demands on the accepted gender identities in 1980s America. Hard-hitting stuff. ...
640 - Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
February 08, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 40.3 MBShots of headlights in traffic, people going down escalators, whirring machinery in a factory, the Hoover dam, a lady smoking a cigarette, and a controlled demolition of a tenement high rise. All this is made at once familiar and deeply profound with sublime photography and a pulsing Philip Glass score. Godfrey Reggio’s first entry in the “qatsi” trilogy revels in the splendor of isolation and anonymity subjected onto humanity with our embrace of technology. Except everything looks deligh...
725 - Eraserhead (1977)
February 01, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBGet ready, Randy has picked another big one for us. And he actually picked the first film by a celebrated director for once. David Lynch's Eraserhead is such a desperately ambitious, risk-everything film that one is tempted to call it "groundbreaking" except for the fact that it's so unique in its vision and execution that you'd be hard pressed to name what it broke ground for. Jack Nance plays Henry, newly saddled with his helpless, mutated, infant offspring and coming face to face with ...
25 - Alphaville (1965)
January 25, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 39.5 MBThis is a big one that we’ve been waiting for: Jean-Luc Godard’s highly influential, widely lauded, experimental, sci-fi/noir mashup. Hard bitten detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine)has traveled through space in his Ford Galaxy to Alphaville, to uncover the mystery of a missing scientist. He finds a a strange, sterile, funhouse mirror of 1965 Paris, ruled by a cold omnipresent computer. Will the emotional awaking of Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina), the scientists daughter be enough ...
843 - Punch Drunk Love (2002)
January 18, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBWhat happens when two seemingly incompatible masters of their craft with nothing to prove get together to make an discomforting powder keg character study that dramatically ratchets its way into a desperately... sweet romance? You get director Paul Thomas Anderson's collaboration with Adam Sandler who plays Barry, a brow-beaten introvert who must contend with the demands of his bullying sisters, a phone-sex blackmail ring, and an unlikely love affair with the all-too understanding and equal...
200 - The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
January 11, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 34.9 MBA couple of lonely hearts (played by Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco) find true love in this affecting documentary-style romanctic drama directed by Leonard Kastle. Oh, and they con then kill a bunch of women across the United States, because these is actually a shockingly brutal ripped-from-the-headlines true crime film. But I guess it's also that first thing too. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk ...
441 - The Small Back Room (1949)
January 04, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBThe back room boys are at it again! That’s right, we’re jumping back into the endlessly charming (so far) films of Powell and Pressburger. Sammy Rice (played by David Farrah) is a scientist working for an ill-defined problem-solving crew that the British government relies on for technical advice during the Second World War. Will his ever-suffering girl Susan (Kathleen Byron) give him the support he needs to battle his addictions, his injuries, Byzantine office politics, and a series of ne...
587 - Three Colours: Blue
December 28, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 38.7 MBJulliette Binoche deadpans. Sudden fade to black! Dum dum da dummmmm..! Repeat that about four more times and you have one of the most iconic pieces of 1990s European cinema. Does this formula hold up for two jaded cinephiles at the end of 2020? The first installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski's ambitious Three Colours Trilogy doesn't pull any punches with his breathless character study of a woman rediscovering human connection after an unthinkable tragedy. If you'd like to watch ahead fo...
635 - Weekend (1967)
December 21, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 57.3 MBIf you are celebrated auteur Jean-Luc Godard, it’s the 1960s, and your cranking out about 7 movies a year, the odds are strong that there’s going to be some winners and losers in the mix. And the question today is whether or not this picaresque travel film about a married couple (played by Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc) braving the traffic jam, car crash, and cannibal-strewn French countryside to murder a family member in get their inheritance early is a good one or a bad one. It’s even mo...
739 - The American Friend (1977)
December 14, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 32.5 MBWhen you imagine the lead character in the Talented Mr. Ripley, do you picture a wild-eyed Dennis Hopper in coveralls and a cowboy hat wandering around 1977 Hamburg? No? Well apparently Wim Wenders was the only director bold enough to take Patricia Highsmith’s legendary anti-hero in that...uh...specific direction. But if that has scared you off, don’t worry: the movie is mostly about Bruno Ganz rocking a real sexy 1970s dad look while he clumsily tries his hand as a mob hitman. And it’s ...
890 - Meantime (1984)
December 07, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 51.4 MBWho is up for a largely improvised drama set in poverty-stricken Thatcher-era London? Anyone? Ok, we get it, but what if we told you it was directed by Mike Leigh and it features early virtuoso performances by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman? And that they aren’t even the best part? Hint: it’s a acerbic but tender characterization by Phil Daniels as a wise-ass brother navigating the dole, neighborhood skinheads, nagging parents, patronizing relatives, unemployment, and a society and government ...
405 - The Threepenny Opera (1931)
November 30, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 34.6 MBCome join us as we discuss director G. W. Pabst's adaptation of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's legendary musical set in the London underwold. Gang boss Mackie Messer (aka Mack the Knife played by Rudolf Forster) plots to marry Polly Peachum (Carola Neher) daughter of the beggar king, while his scorned lover Jenny (Lotte Lenya) seeks to have him arrested by police chief Tiger Brown (Reinhold Schunzel). With a few jaunty tunes and innumerable betrayals and getaways, this German language ex...
929 - Female Trouble (1974)
November 23, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 59.9 MB[Insert eye-rolling pun about dipping our toes back into familiar Waters here]... That's right, we're once more spending the day with the Dreamland Players, reveling in the trash and the wigs of Jon Waters' decades-long seedy send-up of American culture. Divine smirks, whines, and stomps his way into our hearts as Dawn Davenport, following her sordid decline from dissatisfied youth to art experiment/serial killer. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing an...
281 - Jules And Jim (1962)
November 16, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 32.8 MBFrancois Truffaut (clearly famous mostly because he's mentioned in our theme song) crafts an oddly gentle love-triangle period piece, full of joy, friendship, understanding, frustration, and tragedy. A kind of bohemian fusion of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Sarre) play two fast friends living in France on the precipice of World War I. A chance encounter with anarchist Catherine (preposterously absent from the title, and brilliantly played by Jeanne Mor...
LD54 - Zulu (1964)
November 09, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 61.9 MBIt looks like Randy finally decided to pick for us a good, old-fashioned, big-budget, mid-century, historical war epic. Michael Caine plays Peter O’Toole playing David Bowie as Michael Caine in the Role of Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead alongside Stanley Baker as Lieutenant John Chard: both men of hesitant bravery competing with one another for the command of a small regiment of British soldiers defending against a massive Zulu army in 1870s Natal. As you might imagine, there’s quite a lot t...
119 - Withnail & I (1987)
November 02, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 38.2 MBHey maaaan... remember the 60s? Doesn’t matter, because this isn’t really that movie. Unless your idea of the decade is an hilariously acerbic Richard E. Grant (as the eponymous Withnail) drunkenly rampaging through the English countryside screaming at river fish and ladies in tea shops. Paul McGann (...and I) is there to suffer along for the ride, giving and taking timeless quotes and stumbling into one soul-crushing circumstance after another. Maybe these two booze-addled out-of-work ac...
124 - Haxan or Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)
October 26, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 59.7 MBAs the spookiest of holidays approaches, Randy (the random number generator) has selected an appropriately themed film for us to watch. That is, if we can handle all of these darn thrills and chills. But with Benjamin Christensen's seminal half-documentary/half-historical fiction approach to his study on the history of medieval witchcraft, a rapid-fire mix of visual delights and horrors leads the audience into a terrifying world of witches, potions, curses, torture, mad monks, and Satan h...
546 - Five Easy Pieces (1970)
October 18, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 55.2 MBWill we be doing the entire episode doing our best Jack Nicholson impressions, or will we give this very serious movie the very serious attention it deserves? The only way to find out is to join us as we discuss director Bob Rafelson's character study of modern alienation starring the man himself. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Benjamin Christensen's Haxan (1922) just in time for Halloween!
LD335 - Shine (1996)
October 12, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 53 MBOh boy. Here's a blast from the not-so-nostalgic past. Geoffrey Rush plays piano virtuoso David Helfgott, in Scott Hick's most 90s biopic of all 90s biopics. Talent and determination are hindered by a domineering father and an unbridled ambition to be the best. But the resulting mental breakdown isn't enough to stop the spirit of a genius. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970).
440 - Brand Upon The Brain! (2006)
October 05, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 37.8 MBOh! The past! The past! Now we've done it. We've made mother cross. Imagine that sort of text and occasional narration over a feature length, black and white, largely-silent film comprised of quick cuts, sporadic sound effects, and haunting imagery. Guy Maddin's experimental film is about an adult Guy (Erik Steffen Maas) recalling his childhood (as young Guy, played by Sullivan Brown) on an island, where his domineering mother (Gretchen Krich) ran an orphanage where they extracted a youth...
233 - Stray Dog (1949)
September 28, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 47.7 MBWith Akira Kurosawa’s (ever heard of him?) seminal detective procedural, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune - ever heard of him?) and worldly but hardly hard-bitten senior detective Sato (Takashi Shimura - ever heard of him?!) hunt through the post-war Tokyo underworld looking for a stolen handgun, hoping to stop an escalating murder-spree in the sweltering summer heat. Among the topics discussed: linen suits, cameras pointed at the sun, and it should be called Stray Dogs (with an “s...
LD024 - Young And Innocent (1937)
September 21, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 36.5 MBWe're running from the law again with our boy Hitch(cock). This time with an earlier film in his esteemed oeuvre as we join two equally young and equally innocent fugitives - Erica (Nova Pilbeam) and Robert (Derrick De Marney) - in a race to prove their...uh...youth and innocence. Anyway, it's a romantic and comedic romp through the English countryside. Witty, adorable, thrilling, tender, and, well, pretty racist it turns out (spoiler alert.) If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's...
210 - Winter Light (1963)
September 14, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 61.7 MBWe've been dancing around this subject long enough. And how could we not when the Criterion Collection is our subject of inquiry? But we've finally hit the nail on the head. We've got ourselves a 100% genuine mid-century Scandinavian crisis-of-faith movie. And by director Ingmar Bergman no less. A pastor named Tomas (played by perfect-pastor-haircut Gunnar Björnstrand) quietly and with tremendous reserve, runs amok through a small Swedish town, strewing existential crises in his wake. T...
172 - Pépé Le Moko (1937)
September 07, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBOur first Jean Gabin film! He plays the eponymous thief, clever and charming, hiding out in the maze-like Casbah of Algiers - a hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one under the direction of Julien Duvivier. Local and French police are helpless to smoke out Pépé and his merciless but loyal cohort until Gaby, a beautiful tourist tourist played by Mirielle Balin, catches his eye. Obsession and desperation slowly turn his sanctuary into a prison, and the lackadaisically acute Inspect...
698 - King of the Hill (1993)
August 31, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 49.8 MBSteven Soderbergh really surprised us with this 1993 coming-of-age story set on the mean streets of 1930s St. Louis. Because we had never heard of it. Hard to believe that this nostalgia-bomb was missed by the two 90s kid hosts of this podcast. Based on the memoirs A. E. Hotchner, the film stars Jesse Bradford as Aaron, left to fend for himself against an onslaught of petty cops, bullies, bellboys, repo men, and so on as poverty and illness scattered his family during the Great Depression...
663 - Shoah (1985)
August 24, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 46.6 MBNote: This episode’s discussion and the film we are discussing, explicitly recounts the brutal methods, unimaginable suffering, and lingering trauma of the Holocaust. Sensitive listeners may want to skip this one and join us next week. The hosts of Random Acts of Cinema shy away neither from films of exceptional length nor films with difficult subject matter. But the double impact of both in Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary Shoah would seem to really put our constitutions to the t...
333 - Fists in the Pocket (1965)
August 17, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 35.2 MBDissatisfied youth, repressed sexuality, and nihilism running rampant in the dysfunctional Italian family unit is the theme of the week on Random Acts of Cinema. Director Marco Bellocchio’s cruel, bitter little film about Alessandro (played by Lou Castel) thinning out the ranks of his crumbling family through self-obsessed cruelty and murder is punctuated by brilliant photography, powerful acting, and a frantic score by Ennio Morricone. If you would like to watch ahead for next week’s film...
066 - The Orphic Trilogy (1930, 1950, and 1959)
August 10, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 38.2 MBWith his nearly 30-years-in-the-making thematic trilogy, director/poet Jean Cocteau uses innovative film techniques and diverse strategies steeped in personal and classical mythology to consider the needs, methods, obstacles, and curse of the creative mind and the creative life. First with his groundbreaking The Blood of a Poet (1930), non-narrative sequencing and "not surrealist" (but totally surrealist) imagery presents a groundbreaking experimental film. Orpheus (1950) is a dreamy retel...
453 - Chungking Express (1994)
August 03, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBWe are joined by Michael Patrick Jann, film and television writer/director and member of The State to discuss his personal pick: Wong Kar-wai’s frenetic romantic masterpiece Chungking Express. Two stories, each with a lovesick cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) and a self-possessed woman (Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong) navigating Hong Kong and exploring themes of love, heartbreak, street food, and obsession. Funny, adorable, charming, tender, and sexy - our protagonists pursue meaningful ...
1014 - Roma (2018)
July 27, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MBAlfonso Cuarón's drama-behind-the-drama has all of the trappings of a semi-autobiographical period piece. Meticulously recreated clothing, cars, furniture, street settings, and contemporaneous political turmoil are set largely in the eponymous neighborhood as a failing marriage takes its toll on a family. But of course the real protagonist is one of the maids, Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio) who faces her own obstacles of poverty, abandonment, unwanted pregnancy, and murderous rioters. ...
1036 - The Big Boss (1971)
July 20, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 50.8 MBIn the promotional material for Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (also known by a few other film titles) break-out star Bruce Lee is seen flying through the air, shirt half-torn from his body, contorted into a now-iconic running jump kick, certain to be delivered to the face of some punk to glorious effect. But does the movie pay-off with this acrobatic feat of violence, as promised on the poster? Yeah: it does. Because Bruce Lee is a movie star. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, ...
1007 - Until The End of the World (1991)
July 13, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 40.7 MBIt's a miracle I even made it out of Longwood alive. This town full of men with big mouths and no guts. I mean if you can just picture it: Wim Wenders made a nearly 5 hour long, globetrotting movie in 1991 predicting the technology, geopolitical concerns, and digital addictions of the 21st century with remarkable foresight. Solveig Dommartin heads up a luminous cast, redressed in 90s future noir, that makes use of gorgeous settings and beautiful photography to explore a magnetic woman's n...
569 - The Makioka Sisters (1983)
July 06, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 54.3 MBDirector Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters, based on the book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, catalogs the domestic dramas of the eponymous four women and their family circle in 1930s Japan. Matchmaking, marriage, and the juggling of suitors for the youngest two siblings become complicated by stubborn personalities, dwindling status in society, and the shame of past scandals. The demanding pressure of modernity and a changing Japan beleaguer the family into choices to either compromise or even ab...
165 - Man Bites Dog (1992) with Scott Sawitz
June 29, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBContent Disclaimer: This episode examines a film with extremely challenging subject matter. Exceptionally graphic depictions of violence, murder, racism, and brutal sexual assault are both celebrated and trivialized in Remy Belvaux's Man Bites Dog. Listeners who are sensitive to such content and the frank discussion of it are strongly encouraged not to listen to this episode. The hosts disliked the film and disliked talking about the film. Nevertheless, Man Bites Dog is a documentary-st...