Random Acts of Cinema
259 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 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
2nd Annual Rando Awards
June 22, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 32.5 MBAfter months of campaigning and hype, constant drama and re-selection of the hosts, and hours of red carpet interviews, it’s finally happening. Looking back of the year of randomly chosen (and a few guest-selected) films we select and discuss the best of the arbitrary best. Who goes home with their hearts and career-hopes crushed? And who walks away with the most coveted award for excellence for their work in a film? The Randy Award. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we...
1034 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) with Briana & Maddy of Chapter One: Take Two
June 15, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBWe are joined this week by the hosts of the podcast Chapter One: Take Two - Briana McZant and Maddy McZant - to look deep into the eyes of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This one has it all: portraits of ladies, ladies on fire, portraits of ladies on fire, portraits of ladies that are literally on fire, and even a painting titled Portrait of a Lady on Fire that really isn’t a portrait of a lady on fire. And I’m not just being flip; this movie dives headfirst, with puzzle box p...
565 - The Great Dictator (1940) with Kevin Allison
June 08, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 36 MBThis week we are joined by special-guest Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State) to talk about a powerful and hilarious film: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. So, you know when fed-up people call fascists on their practices and they respond by saying they aren’t “technically” fascists? So then they are pressured to walk back their language a little bit and the criticism gets all muddied on a point of semantics based on strict political definitions? Like when a leader who ...
565 - The Great Dictator (1940) with Kevin Allison of Risk! and The State
June 08, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 36 MBThis week we are joined by special-guest Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State) to talk about a powerful and hilarious film: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. So, you know when fed-up people call fascists on their practices and they respond by saying they aren’t “technically” fascists? So then they are pressured to walk back their language a little bit and the criticism gets all muddied on a point of semantics based on strict political definitions? Like when a leader who ...
1000 - Son of Godzilla (1967) with Angie
June 01, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBFollowing the random selection and then explicit demand of AJ from the Cult Popture podcast, we’re dipping back into the Showa-era Godzilla films, with Jun Fukuda’s Son of Godzilla. We’re joined by longtime friend and Godzilla-expert Angie to help us make sense of this eighth(!) entry into the franchise. This time, there’s a baby Godzilla, a remote weather experiment station on a pacific island, a lady who has been hiding in a cave for some reason, and zero stakes. So it’s a pretty dis...
301 - An Angel At My Table (1990) w/ AJ and Richard of Cult Popture
May 25, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 35.1 MBJane Campion’s filmed adaptation of the memoirs of celebrated New Zealand poet and author Janet Frame offers a desperately poignant and often devastating account of childhood and womanhood in the twentieth century. Played by three different actors at three different periods of her life, Frame’s tender spirit and social anxieties make for a life of modestly monumental triumphs and gut-wrenching personal tragedies. We are joined by AJ and Richard of Cult Popture to help us understand the ...
301 - An Angel At My Table (1990) with AJ and Richard of Cult Popture
May 25, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 35.1 MBJane Campion’s filmed adaptation of the memoirs of celebrated New Zealand poet and author Janet Frame offers a desperately poignant and often devastating account of childhood and womanhood in the twentieth century. Played by three different actors at three different periods of her life, Frame’s tender spirit and social anxieties make for a life of modestly monumental triumphs and gut-wrenching personal tragedies. We are joined by AJ and Richard of Cult Popture to help us understand the ...
175 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
May 18, 2020 18:27 - 1 hour - 42 MBTerry Gilliam's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's acclaimed memoir is a diatribe against Nixonian America, account of a motorcycle race, drug travelogue, and only now the kind of advertisement that the Las Vegas chamber of commerce could get behind. But it's really the story of Thompson's proxy Raoul Duke's (played by Johnny Depp channeling a sort of mumbly Jim Carrey) desperately trying to channel the destructive energy of his drug buddy/lawyer Dr. Gonzo (played by Benicio del Toro channe...
806 - Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
May 11, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 53.3 MBSometimes all you need is a little classic Hollywood glamour. Jean Arthur and Cary Grant put on some saucy hats and deliver just that it is this action/adventure story about the daring lives of... uh... postal service pilots and the women who love them. Don't worry: Howard Hawks figures out how to make this work with the combination of thrilling special effects, edge-of-your seat danger, and themes of courage, friendship, love, and self-sacrifice. And did I mention Jean Arthur and Cary Gr...
671 - La Cage Aux Folles (1978)
May 04, 2020 11:30 - 1 hour - 31.9 MBYou know what would just be wonderful right about now? A delightful and beloved French farce. Edouard Molinaro’s classic tale of two gay nightclub owners’ attempt to put on a show of conservative domesticity in order to trick a right-wing politician into allowing their son to marry his daughter isn’t exactly timeless - in that it is SO set in 1978 - but it’s charm and hilarious send-up of straight gender performance make it one for the ages. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s f...
671 - La Cage Aux Folles (1978)
April 27, 2020 11:30 - 1 hour - 31.9 MBYou know what would just be wonderful right about now? A delightful and beloved French farce. Edouard Molinaro’s classic tale of two gay nightclub owners’ attempt to put on a show of conservative domesticity in order to trick a right-wing politician into allowing their son to marry his daughter isn’t exactly timeless - in that it is SO set in 1978 - but it’s charm and hilarious send-up of straight gender performance make it one for the ages. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s f...
616 - Shallow Grave (1994)
April 27, 2020 11:30 - 1 hour - 51.8 MBDanny Boyle is on the board! And in uncharacteristic fashion, we’re actually taking a look at the earlier film of a celebrated director rather than some weird, later period film. The randomness of our system was bound to get it right eventually. And the result is a gripping 90s thriller about three Scottish flat mates descending into madness, paranoia, and betrayal after the discovery of a bag full of a cash and their decision to dispose of the corpse of its former owner. And Ewan MacGre...
12 - This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
April 20, 2020 11:30 - 1 hour - 34.5 MBOn this week’s episode we turn the podcast up to eleve... Oh god. What am I doing? What have I become? With all of these quotable lines, super-clever improv, bad accents, hilarious songs, and tight, tight pants, will we be able to manage even a half-coherent conversation about Rob Reiner’s groundbreaking “rockumentary” parody This Is Spinal Tap? If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (1994).
012 - This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
April 20, 2020 11:30 - 1 hour - 34.5 MBOn this week’s episode we turn the podcast up to eleve... Oh god. What am I doing? What have I become? With all of these quotable lines, super-clever improv, bad accents, hilarious songs, and tight, tight pants, will we be able to manage even a half-coherent conversation about Rob Reiner’s groundbreaking “rockumentary” parody This Is Spinal Tap? If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (1994).
555 - The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
April 13, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 50.2 MBThe seedy, hand-to-mouth, day-to-day scramble in the life of a press agent in New York City seems an unlikely setup for a cruel and bitter piece of star-studded film noir. But Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster are up to the challenge in director Alexander Mackendrick’s take on the hustle and corruption here at the very heart of conservative America’s most nostalgic tent pole. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be reviewing and discussing Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Ta...
090 - Kwaidan (1965)
April 06, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 38.5 MBRandy has been selecting a lot of spooky films for use recently, and the trend continues with Masaki Kobayashi’s 1965 horror anthology Kwaidan. We’re treated to four eerie tales adapted from the collection of Japanese folklore of the same name. Each more gorgeously photographed than the next. Ghostly imperial courts, ice vampires, dead lovers, and mischievous teacup spirits round out the cast of nightmarish characters. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discu...
537 - C.H.U.D. (1984)
March 30, 2020 11:00 - 59 minutes - 39.6 MBThis movie is famous because of it’s hilariously clunky acronym. And you only THINK you know what it stands for. That’s just the first surprise that this old school VHS never-rent has in store for you. The second surprise is that, for all of its reputation, C.H.U.D. kind of has its charms. Well, there goes whatever good will this podcast managed to earn. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Shigeru Wakatsuki's Kwaidan (1965).
231 - The Last Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
March 23, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 31.1 MBEin Fritz Lang Film! And its a nightmarish psychological crime thriller that was banned by the Nazis no less! It’s also, strangely, a kind of sequel to two different and previously unrelated Lang films: Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and M (1931). In other words, this is a perfect place for us to start with this director. A world-weary police inspector begins to investigate a series of murders traced back to an enigmatic criminal mastermind pulling the strings of a vast organization of profess...
521 - Mystery Train (1989)
March 16, 2020 11:00 - 59 minutes - 39.9 MBWe have our first sample of Jim Jarmusch with this little gift that Mike chose for Charlie’s extra-special birthday episode. Is this classic three-part anthology set in crumbling Memphis environs a perfect present or a devastating disappointment? With tales of tourists on a rock n’ roll pilgrimage, a widow beset by colorful locals during an unexpected layover, and three working stiffs caught up in an unintended crime spree, the viewer is left to find either a maudlin kind of transcendental...
544 - Head (1968)
March 09, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBBob Rafelson’s Head offers an acid-dipped, musical journey through the artistic and professional frustrations of the Monkees, post TV show and struggling apologize for their existence with the verylanguage of the flower-powered, freak-out culture that had long-since rejected them. Never quite settling on a format, the film jumps from comic vignette, to surrealist mindscape, tv show parody, concert performance, and A Hard Day’s Night-style band chase reimagined as a sun-soaked Californian su...
011 - The Seventh Seal (1957)
March 02, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 52.6 MBThis is a big one folks. We’re starting our foray into the films of Ingmar Bergman with his (and maybe even the Criterion Collection’s) most iconic film: The Seventh Seal. Death! The Plague! Chess! Harlequin tights! This is the podcast that will determine once and for all: does it live up to the hype? We also tackle a few easy quandaries like: does God exist? If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bob Rafleson’s Head (1968).
654 - Repo Man (1984)
February 24, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 35.8 MBPodcast Episode. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bob Rafelson’s Head (1968).
727 - The Innocents (1961)
February 17, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 43.4 MBA rambling old English manor. Maze-like hallways leading to shuttered, dusty rooms. Whisperings of derangement, obsession, and suicide. Music boxes in minor keys. Creepy, dead-eyed children who speak in words beyond their years. Fog. Silhouettes in windows. Antique clown dolls seemingly moving on their own accord. This movie might have more gothic horror tropes in it than there are gothic horror tropes. Director Jack Clayton’s The Innocents has atmosphere to spare with Deborah Kerr l...
673 - Stromboli (1950)
February 10, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 34.5 MBFamed Neo-realist Roberto Rossolini cast an unlikely Ingrid Bergman as the lead in his 1950 film Stromboli. She plays Karin Bjornsen, a displaced and now stateless Lithuanian at the conclusion of World War 2, left unmoored and interred at a displaced persons camp in Italy. With no options remaining, she marries Antonio (played by Mario Vitale), a besmitten soldier who takes her home to his native island, and the tiny village of his birth. Left to make house while her husband works for a meag...
481 - Made In U.S.A. (1966)
February 03, 2020 12:00 - 58 minutes - 27 MBIn Made In U.S.A., Anna Karina plays a Philip Marlowe-inspired hard-boiled-but-in-a-A-line-dress detective scouring the underbelly of Atlantic-Cité for the killer of her murdered boyfriend. Director Jean-Luc Godard makes his first random appearance on the podcast with his French New Wave romp that spins 1940s Bogart into Go-Go Pop Art. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Roberto Rossolini’s Stromboli (1950).
061 - Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)
January 27, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 48.5 MBWe’re taking a break from our normally scheduled podcast for a very special episode. In remembrance of director Terry Jones, who passed away just before this recording, we watched his all-time comedy classic, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. And yeah, a lot of our so-called “review” is us just poorly reenacting our favorite jokes, but such is the group’s legacy for dorks like us. But we also get deep into a conversation about religious controversy in film, the merits and faults of a persiste...
504 - Hunger (2008)
January 20, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 53 MBDirector Steve McQueen’s first feature film goes deep into the circumstances of a series of prisoner protests in Northern Ireland in 1981. With a clinical and procedural examination of their bodies both as sites of victimization and instruments of protest, the film considers the cruelty, strategy, determination and oppression of modern incarceration. Among the inmates, Bobby Sands (played by Michael Fassbender) plans a resolute and deadly hunger strike until his republican brethren have th...
075 - Chasing Amy (1997)
January 13, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 43.2 MBWe are joined by podcast alums Shelley and Max for a viewing of celebrated and idiosyncratic auteur - hey, we're 90s kids - Kevin Smith’s first foray into a larger world of ambition, exposure, and budget, examine the love triangle between New Jersey natives and comic book creators Holden (played by charismatic star-on-the-rise and future academy award winner Ben Affleck), Banky (played by future My Name Is Earl powerhouse Jason Lee), and Alyssa (costar of the future box-office smash Big Dadd...
128 - Carl Th. Dreyer - My Metier (1995)
January 06, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour - 32.8 MBThis is a documentary about celebrated Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer that was released in the Criterion Collection in tandem with a collection of his celebrated films. So, it’s time to learn! And maybe review the quality of the documentary from a cinematic perspective. Does that even make sense for this podcast? Doesn’t matter. A random number generator told us to watch it, so we’re watching it. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and review...
117 - Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
December 30, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 47.9 MBLuis Bunuel joins illustrious list of directors to be featured on our podcast. What an honor! And in classic, Random-Acts-of-Cinema-fashion, we’re going to start with a later film in a filmmaker’s oeuvre that doesn’t quite fit the mold. Diary of a Chambermaid tells the 1920s-set story of Celestine, a beautiful and confident femme du chambre who takes employment at a large country estate filled with a mix of controlling, repressed, ignorant, perverse, boorish, and murderous characters. Sh...
359 - The Double Life Of Veronique (1991)
December 23, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 47.4 MBReflections, prisms, the dance of car lights across a rain sprinkled window to a Parisian cafe. It sure looks like we’re reviewing some 1990s art house cinema this week. And we are are doing exactly that, with the ur-Trois Coleurs trilogy entrant, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique. This film follows a period in the life of the titular character, played by Irene Jacob, and of her Polish doppelgänger Weronika, played by Jacob as well. They’re their unexplainable bond is e...
511 - Colossal Youth (2006)
December 16, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 35.3 MBNow we’re talking. This is some serious Criterion Collection viewing right here. Pedro Costa’s docufiction is a snail’s-paced meditation on the lives of the largely Cape Verde immigrants living in the Fontainhas neighborhood of Lisbon, Portugal. This movie is not concerned with entertaining you. This movie is not concerned with delighting you. The rose-colored glasses of studio cinema are nowhere to be found. Follow Ventura (played by himself) as we walks from home to home, visiting wi...
794 - Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
December 09, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 42 MBAh, if only we could go back to the bohemian nexus of the American folk scene in 1960s Greenwich village. To be among the beatnicks and intellectuals, musical anthropologists and legendary performers. Drinking coffee and arguing over varyingly intense leftist ideas. Living, loving, and just soaking in the timeless music so lionized during this romantic and vibrant time and place. Or we could just watch Joel and Ethan Cohen’s 2013 Inside Llewyn Davis and enter a bleak, frigid, desperately...
341 - A Canterbury Tale (1944)
December 02, 2019 12:00 - 59 minutes - 39.7 MBA plucky trio of young contributors to the Allied war effort find themselves caught up in a dastardly plot to poor glue in girls’ hair in a small English town. But mostly they all just come to learn about how the shared heritage of America and England is a noble culture worth celebrating. Basically, this is a government-sponsored bit of war-time propaganda, but it is directed by Powell and Pressburger, so that’s something. As the title suggests, it’s kind of related to Chaucer’s Canterbury T...
434 - Classe Tous Risques (1960)
November 25, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBWe’ve gone from a man-on-the-run crime drama made in 1979 Japan, to another only made in 1960 Italy and France. Claude Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques offers us a classic crime film full of desperate men, daring robberies, breathless car chases, the pathos of children living on the margins, and - because it’s a 1960 french crime movie - Jean-Paul Belmondo swaggering about with a wry grin. What a treat! If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be watching Michael Powell and...
384 - Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
November 18, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 36.3 MBShohei Imamura’s study of a killer on the run and the family members and victims that he leaves in his wake is presented as a fact-based accounting of dates, names, and crimes. At least, that’s what it seems to be at first glance. Really the film sutures together a largely non-chronological sequence of flashbacks, obliquely phrased conversations, and both random and coldly-calculated murders that leaves the viewer perfectly unsure over the question of underlying psychological motive. What...
566 - Insignificance (1985)
November 11, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 41 MBOne evening in 1954, Marylin Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Senator Joseph McCarthy gathered in Albert Einstein’s New York City hotel room to excitedly monologue at one another about subjects like fame, sex, motherhood, baseball, communism, and the precise shape of the universe. Or at least that’s what happens in Nicolas Roeg’s 1985 Insignificance. It’s basically the film adaptation of a stage play adaptation of one of those corny posters that imagines Marylin Monroe, Elvis Presley, Humphrey Bo...
594/1000 - Godzilla (1954)
November 04, 2019 12:00 - 1 hour - 33.6 MBTo celebrate the Collection’s 1000th spine number, we’re reviewing the film that started the kaiju-craze of the 20th century: Ishiro Honda’s 1954 masterpiece Godzilla. Because we’re SOOO clever, we get into the film as a response to fears in the atomic age, but mostly we try to contend with the surprising fact that the movie is genuinely very very good. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Nicolas Roeg’s Insignificance (1985).
964 - The Kid Brother (1927)
October 28, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 28.3 MBWith our first random foray into the silent era, Harold Loyld’s comic romance The Kid Brother - officially helmed by director Ted Wilde - has a plot. It’s fine. Charming enough. But really it’s platform to string together a series of brilliant physical comedy set pieces that the lead actor stumbles, flails, and seemingly improvises his way through. Farm hijinks, pranks on bullies, a chase/fight for his life on a derelict boat, and tree climbing highlight the chain of events and showcase Loyl...
366 - The Atomic Submarine (1959)
October 21, 2019 11:00 - 49 minutes - 32.7 MBThe first true B-movie entry into our randomized journey through the Criterion Collection starts with a mushroom cloud of a bang. Spencer Gordon Bennett’s The Atomic Submarine (1959) follows the intrepid crew of the US Navy Submarine Tiger Shark as it sails to the North Pole to hunt down a mysterious extra-terrestrial threat. That’s right: it’s U.F.O.’s underwater! Is this film classic schlock, a long-hidden treasure, or something more sinister and... unnatural? If you’d like to watch ah...
95 - All That Heaven Allows (1955)
October 14, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 33.1 MBWe follow up last week’s selection with one of the Hollywood classics that inspired it. Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows melodrama challenges conservative America’s expectations of age, class, and femininity as it follows an unconventional romance set against a backdrop of a quaint New England community. Lauded as one of the paragon’s of the so-called “women’s films” of mid-century studio pictures, Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson portray the star-crossed lovers that must navigate the obsta...
095 - All That Heaven Allows (1955)
October 14, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 33.1 MBWe follow up last week’s selection with one of the Hollywood classics that inspired it. Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows melodrama challenges conservative America’s expectations of age, class, and femininity as it follows an unconventional romance set against a backdrop of a quaint New England community. Lauded as one of the paragon’s of the so-called “women’s films” of mid-century studio pictures, Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson portray the star-crossed lovers that must navigate the obsta...
995 - Polyester (1981)
October 07, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 45.8 MBHolding onto the dream of bourgeois America has never seemed so impossible, stupid, crass, and funny as in Jon Waters’ Polyester (1981). Divine heads up a cast of Waters-regulars and boorish newcomers to tell the story of the dissolution of Francine Fishpaw’s family as it succumbs to adulatory, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug addiction, hooliganism, murder, and a lot of real-world smells thanks to the scratch-and-sniff gimmick of Odorama. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s f...
535 - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
September 30, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 31 MBBowie! Sakamoto! Obsession! Uh, POW camp! And...war atrocities!? Torture? Ritual suicide? A subtle exploration of the despondency of an officer in charge of a prison camp facing the different cultural interpretations of the honor of surrendering while simultaneously tormented by his absence at the coup d'etat and subsequent executions of his comrades during the February 26 incident of 1939? Why, that can only mean that we are watching Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawerence! If you'...
776 - Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
September 23, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 44.1 MBStylistic pastiche. Symmetrical framing. Murray. Schwartzman. 1960s-centric jukebox soundtrack. It looks like this must be our first Wes Anderson movie. A tale of young love set against scouting, parents in a failing marriage, a lovelorn “cop”, and an oncoming storm of the century combine to either charm or annoy Mike and Charlie. But which is it? If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawerence (1983).
315 - Shoot The Piano Player (1960)
September 16, 2019 11:30 - 56 minutes - 26.2 MBWe're back into The Collection with another heavy-hitter. And it's our first foray into the French New Wave film's of Francois Truffaut. Paris! Kidnapping! Murder! Secret identities! Flashbacks! Shoot-outs in the snow! Oddly-subtitled novelty songs! Does this movie really have it all?! If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012).
1st Rando Awards
September 09, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 48.3 MBIs the 11th episode the right time for a podcast retrospective? It is if you need to hand out a bunch of prestigious Randies, the official awards of the Random Acts of Cinema podcast. Come join us as we put order to all of the randomness by deciding which of the first 10 films we’ve watched are the best of the best by category. If you’d like to listen ahead for next week’s review, we’ll be watching Francois Truffaut’s Shoot The Piano Player (1960).
136 - Spellbound (1945)
September 02, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 35.9 MBHitchock. Bergman. Peck. And...Salvador Dali? Sounds about right. Let’s see whether or not using psychoanalysis and the combined dream-logic of cinema and surrealist art as devices to advance the plot of a thriller actually works. If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, well, we won’t be watching one. Instead, we are going to be hosting the first Rando Awards of 2019. We will be revisiting the first 10 films that we've watched so far and will be handing out prestigious R...
558 - Topsy-Turvy (1999)
August 26, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 38.6 MBIn our first break from format we’re following up last week’s movie - The Mikado (1939) - with a film exploring the men behind that comic opera: Gilbert and Sullivan. At first, Mike Leigh’s historical drama does some work to explain the circumstances that led to setting The Mikado in imperial Japan, and the second seeks to humanize that choice my exploring the efforts and daily dramas of the entire production leading up to its premiere in 1885. Does Topsy-Turvy justify The Mikado for a post-...
559 - The Mikado (1939)
August 19, 2019 11:00 - 59 minutes - 27.7 MBImagine it’s 1939. The world stands at the precipice of war. So why not make a film adaptation of a classic English comic opera set in Imperial Japan, but all of the character and place names are silly baby-talk? And this reliance of nonsense serves as a stand-in for “foreign” which is contrasted against a view of Japanese culture as arbitrarily cruel and hidebound to antiquated and contradictory social propriety? Except it’s not really about Japan, it’s actually just using tactless cult...