Thanks, Academy! artwork

Thanks, Academy!

55 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 5 years ago - ★★★★★ - 16 ratings

Carina Magyar grabs a friend and makes them watch a random Best Picture winner until she's finally seen all 90 (and counting). The podcast began when Carina realized she had only seen 12 Best Picture winners ever, and most of those were the obvious blockbuster recent ones, despite being a lifelong cinephile. Each episode has a different guest trying to guess what the movie will be like ahead of time, watching the flick with Carina, then breaking down what they just saw from a first-timers' perspective. We're all comedians, so expect irreverent takes on film history's most "important" pictures. And thanks a lot, Academy.

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Episodes

Dances with Wolves with Trish Herrmann

March 17, 2020 20:27 - 46 minutes - 65 MB

We skipped out on the 4-hour director's cut and opted for Kevin Costner's 3-hour theatrical juggernaut, the movie that launched a thousand bloated Kevin Costner epics and put a hard stop on Hollywood's one-sided treatment of Native Americans. While Trish and I weren't qualified to really examine the racial politics of the story, as a movie, it holds up better than many Best Picture winners of that era (or this one) and does provide some real drama, mainly thanks to the animal actors. It's goo...

Forrest Gump with the Murphys

June 19, 2019 04:14 - 1 hour - 83.4 MB

I'm joined by 2019's Funniest Person in Austin Andrew Murphy and his brother Alex for a family tag team fresh look at this notoriously sappy gloss through the Baby Boom generation's childhood. The movie surprises us with how dark it is when you peer just beneath Robert Zemeckis's thick layer of Vaseline. But our darkest revelation is that Forrest Gump himself is The Problem with modern America -- his obliviousness standing in for white America's fantasy of a Great Again America that clearly d...

The Best Years of Our Lives with Mason Pitluk

June 11, 2019 06:50 - 1 hour - 72.8 MB

This movie did not play into our worst fears -- it's not war propaganda, it has redeeming and surprisingly strong female roles, and it contains more than a few genuinely entertaining scenes with good acting -- but it's still way too long for the extremely thin plot it's hung on. Basically a slice-of-life for three types of World War II veterans dealing with PTSD, we get yet another terrible protagonist, long and dull scenes of people not growing and changing, and ... I ran out of things. Se...

Wings with Asaf Ronen

May 28, 2019 10:00 - 50 minutes - 51.5 MB

At one point, Asaf calls this the 1920's version of Fast & the Furious, and he's absolutely right. Despite being a 2-and-a-half hour silent movie, there's plenty to watch: real airplane dog fights, male nudity (really), female nudity (really!), lesbians on a date (really!!!), men kissing each other (REALLY!!!!!!), and brutally realistic trench warfare filmed on the actual battlegrounds of World War I. But don't rush out too quickly to watch it, because it also features the least heroic "hero"...

Gigi with Hunter Duncan

May 21, 2019 10:43 - 1 hour - 91.7 MB

Hunter and I had less than zero idea what we were in for, which turns out to be easily the most misogynist musical we've ever seen. Even allowing for the '50s, and allowing for the setting of France, and allowing for the conventions of musicals, this film goes out of its way to reiterate, in every way possible, that women are objects with no complex emotions or agency over their lives. Nice hats and dresses, though. I didn't think it would be possible to be 110% furious at a movie just one we...

Green Book with Chris Cubas

May 14, 2019 07:48 - 48 minutes - 62.5 MB

This is an excellent example of how to be tone deaf in 2019. In a year when African-American filmmakers and actors dominated both the box office and the awards shows, this white-bread corn muffin of a throwback warms over a '90s approach to race relations and passes it off as drama. Not only are the racial politics of the movie incredibly obtuse, the story itself is an inert slog of a literal road trip through a neutered Deep South. Pair this up with "In the Heat of the Night" and the contras...

The Godfather with Adam Hrabik

May 07, 2019 10:32 - 58 minutes - 84.4 MB

One of the most celebrated films of all time ... only works if you're inherently interested in the Italian mafia. That's the conclusion we came to in this blockbuster episode that also covers ninja moves, Trump's posture, Christmas, and other junk. Sometimes the magic of two people watching a famous movie for the first time is ... not a magical response. Still, there's hope for the sequel, I guess. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hamlet with Erica Shultz

April 30, 2019 10:06 - 48 minutes - 58.2 MB

It feels weird to be surprised by this, but what a good movie! Turns out the most celebrated play of all time, when handled with straightforward care and interpretation, is a pretty damn good tale. There is the requisite amount of stilted 1940s acting, but all-in-all, it delivers what a Hamlet version has to -- you can follow the dialogue and plot -- and there's some pretty spicy meatballs thrown at us -- incestuous kisses, actually scary ghosts, unexpected comic relief. Erica takes a break f...

Amadeus with Mike Wiebe

April 16, 2019 17:21 - 54 minutes - 74.8 MB

Mike Wiebe drops by to watch a 3-hour+ movie about opera, but we had a great time because the movie's themes of jealousy, mediocrity, petty revenge, and sex / drugs / rock-n-roll struck a deep chord inside both of us. Definitely one to tune into if you've ever dwelt in that uncanny valley between talented and hack-like (in other words, every comedian ever), or seen someone younger than you achieve and exceed you through no visible effort whatsoever. Also, lots of Star Wars references somehow....

An American in Paris with Weird Brunch

April 09, 2019 06:01 - 46 minutes - 62.2 MB

Gene Kelly should have won for "Singin' in the Rain," probably the greatest movie musical of all time, but the Academy blew its wad the year before on this outing, which was pretentious enough to be Best Picture material, but not nearly as entertaining and full of, dare we say it, problematic relationships. By "we" I mean my fellow ladies of Weird Brunch (a storytelling podcast about odd shit, subscribe to it), who lend the more professional recording setup to the first episode recorded outsi...

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with JJ Summers

April 02, 2019 10:02 - 1 hour - 80.3 MB

For our halfway point, I searched high and low for someone who would be able to watch this movie with NO knowledge of what's going on, either from the reading the books or seeing other adaptations. JJ fit the bill perfectly, and with a rule in place that he could ask a maximum of 5 questions about what's going on, we set sail on an endless journey to get to damn end. For this epic episode, I included the entire 30-minute slow motion ending sequence uncut, so you can hear us slowly go insane a...

Schindler's List with Roxy Castillo

March 26, 2019 10:57 - 59 minutes - 69.8 MB

This is easily the most intense episode of the podcast to date, matching the tone of this relentlessly graphic movie. Roxy and I are both sensitive, but we share a defense mechanism of humor that we use to keep each other from falling apart during the more excruciating sequences. We laugh a lot out of sheer desperation, but at times, the movie's overwhelming power kills even our spirits. It's a great, great film, and one I hope I never have to watch again. Tune in for the avowedly inappropria...

The French Connection with Enzo Priesnitz

March 19, 2019 10:39 - 54 minutes - 66.8 MB

This is easily the most action-packed Best Picture we've watched yet, with car chases, shootouts, stakeouts, and all the primal elements of a cops-and-robbers movie. There's a freshness to it, though, a sense that the genre was being invented before our eyes with no conventions yet in place, no holds barred, no squeamishness from the ugly truths about either side. Gene Hackman is simply fantastic as the mostly-loathsome Popeye Doyle, and the direction by William Friedkin is unforgettable. Is ...

Driving Miss Daisy with Zac Brooks

March 12, 2019 10:33 - 51 minutes - 78.8 MB

Join me and Zac Brooks for the first-ever drunk episode, as we stumble through this cheesy '80s movie about race that's also somehow not at all about race. "Driving Miss Daisy" is a pleasant enough confection, and miles less offensive than other more recent confections (like "Shakespeare in Love" or "The Artist"), but lacks any deeper heft than emotional manipulation. We spend most of our time just trying to figure out why Dan Aykroyd was in this, how the fact that he is in this didn't tank t...

Terms of Endearment with Mac Blake

March 05, 2019 12:08 - 1 hour - 82.7 MB

This is a movie that now feels like a fairly mediocre network television drama. There must have been something positively sparkling about it in 1983 when it won practically every award out there, but aside from one or two iconic Jack Nicholson scenes and a handful of good lines, this is a plain old ramble of a movie through a standard divorces-and-dates plot. It does end with cancer, which must account for its reputation as a tear-jerker, but Mac and I were not moved to much beyond confusion....

Going My Way with Brett VerVoort

February 26, 2019 11:34 - 50 minutes - 68.2 MB

This Bing Crosby vehicle shoehorns in several chances for the crooner to croon, but in a neutered way since he plays an oh-so-saintly progressive priest sent to save an old New York parish from the crotchety ministrations of its elderly founder. Bing proves he's better at everything than everyone, winning competitions at such things as checkers, golf, singing, piano playing, priesting, baseballing, slang talking, and $10 giving. The plot is essentially "Sister Act" but without women. Some tru...

Gentleman's Agreement with JT Kelley

February 19, 2019 11:00 - 55 minutes - 71.4 MB

Another '40s drama, another barn-burning polemic on societal ills. This time, it's Gregory "Atticus Finch" Peck in his younger days solving anti-Semitism by posing as a Jewish journalist. While JT and I find and express every possible way in which that is an uncool thing to do, the movie still succeeds as an emotional gut punch to the American dream as a restrictive clause for WASPs only. This time, the endless moral debates were fascinatingly relevant. It's impressive just how 2019 some of t...

A Man for All Seasons with Joe Hafkey

February 12, 2019 11:42 - 49 minutes - 64.5 MB

Oh boy, oh boy, a movie about a lawyer having a dumb argument with an idiot. The story of Thomas More vs Henry VIII is not without its charms and intrigues, but you wouldn't know it from this dull plodding Kodachrome movie that feels like a cheap community theater edition. The acting is mostly dull, the script is nigh unintelligible, and the visuals are ponderous and unhelpful. That just leaves the debates. Lots and lots of debates. On the one hand, there's a bit of a Mueller vs Trump vibe go...

Oliver! with Melody Shifflet

February 05, 2019 11:59 - 1 hour - 78.3 MB

What a strange movie. It combines truly delightful cheesy Broadway song-and-dance numbers with some of the darkest human misery and bleakest human behavior possible. The movie feels aimed at kids sometimes, with the chipper children engaging in Bednobs & Broomsticks-style hijinks, and at other times ... well, we're not sure who the audience is for domestic abuse being justified by the abuse victim, but that's in there, too. Melody returns and we sip some tea and practice our bad cockney accen...

Spotlight with Lea'h Sampson

January 29, 2019 11:23 - 47 minutes - 63.2 MB

We were supposed to watch 3-hour Mozart marathon "Amadeus," but couldn't find a legal copy to stream, so we quickly rolled the dice again and landed on this recent winner about the Boston Globe's expose of the Catholic church's worldwide conspiracy to aid and abet child abuse. As a former newspaper reporter (and ex-Catholic, thanks to this very Globe series), this was like candy, watching a team of journalists slowly and methodically uncover one of the biggest news stories of all time. For a ...

Casablanca with Austin Smartt

January 22, 2019 11:11 - 43 minutes - 59.7 MB

It sure was great to see a classic live up to its billing for once. This is just a fantastic movie, and -- BONUS -- there's a great and quite explicit gay romance driving the plot. Oh, sure, Humphrey Bogart's Rick is still getting over his summer camp fling with Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa, but once he clears out those emotions, Captain Renault is right there to whisk Rick off his feet. Austin and I enjoyed the looks, the lewks, and the loooooooks between all these dewy-eyed fashionistas. But it's ...

Annie Hall with Bonnie Ambers

January 15, 2019 20:06 - 51 minutes - 64.2 MB

I've hated Woody Allen my whole life. Anytime I told people that, they'd ask if I'd seen this movie. I'd say no. They'd tell me to see this movie and then decide. So now I saw the movie. He still sucks, maybe even harder than ever. I capture Woody Allen agnostic Bonnie Ambers and bring her over to the right side of history with nary a push. Woody is disgusting in this movie, and if it weren't for Diane Keaton's incredible, luminous performance, would likely be a footnote in history. See ac...

Ordinary People with John Rabon

January 08, 2019 11:57 - 45 minutes - 58.6 MB

What do you get when you cross no plot with no music and a very small cast of characters all acting against type? You get paint drying. Robert Redford's directorial debut was impressive to somebody the year it came out, but in retrospect it drags like a student film and is full of inexplicably blank moments. The movie attempts to be "subtle" but goes to far and is flat-out dull. Check out John Rabon and I trying to keep our sanity as the movie drags on and on and on... See acast.com/privacy...

Gladiator with Brendan K. O'Grady

January 01, 2019 11:29 - 1 hour - 90.9 MB

Gladiator is an okay 90-minute acton movie stretched out to epic proportions and shot in an epic style without any epic content. The story and the stakes are strangely small -- one dude wants revenge on another dude, but first he has to show off how invincible he is. There is also a woman who both men pursue for the simple reason that she is the only woman -- even though dude one is married and dude two is her brother. Also, dogs and tigers. It's just a sports movie pretending to be something...

Titanic with Ky Krebs

December 25, 2018 11:05 - 1 hour - 94.1 MB

Titanic is a movie that seared itself so deeply into the world consciousness, it hardly seems worth revisiting. But it turns out there was a reason it blew away all records and became the biggest movie of all time (at the time): it's pretty damn good. Tune in as Ky Krebs watches for the first time and we rediscover the love and tragedy of James Cameron's most obvious, but still best, movie. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Sound of Music with my kids

December 18, 2018 11:50 - 52 minutes - 50.3 MB

We're about a third of the way through this project, it's Christmas season, and I'm stuck at home recovering from a major surgery, so I decided to abandon the "random order with random friends" part and watch the ONLY Best Picture winner that's fully suitable for young children, 1965's "The Sound of Music." As a bonus, my kids have seen this several times in school and other places, but I've really, truly, never watched this movie. Tune in as they guide me through and also introduce me to Wil...

Mutiny on the Bounty with Derek Kopswa

December 11, 2018 17:30 - 55 minutes - 77.7 MB

Based on a true story that's been told a hundred different ways, this 1935 version stars Clark Gable and presents the infamous mutiny as a battle between nice and mean. Gable's (comically American) Fletcher Christian believes the crew of the HMS Bounty should be treated with carrots, but Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh treats them with sticks. Also keelhauls, starvation, and all other manner of verbal and physical abuse. During the return voyage from Tahiti, Christian takes over the ship, pa...

In the Heat of the Night with Rob Gagnon

December 04, 2018 11:40 - 52 minutes - 70.5 MB

A fascinating look at the hard-headed racism of the 1960s South. Unflinching, unrelenting, but also grounded in enough reality to avoid being a mere polemic, this film basically tortures Sidney Poitier's Detective Tibbs as he tries to solve a high-profile murder case in a low-profile Mississippi town. Poitier's performance is majestic -- assured, but nuanced enough to allow his character to make mistakes, get scared, get confused, and still come across as the most competent cop in the state. ...

The Lost Weekend with Allen Edwin Butt

November 27, 2018 12:18 - 42 minutes - 57 MB

The most depressing Billy Wilder film for sure. This trudge through the story of one man's recidivist bender exposes the impossibility of living with alcoholism, and walks Ray Milland right up to the brink of suicide. Frightening -- indeed it's shot and scored like a horror film -- and bleak, the film has a mesmerizing power despite its downbeat story arc. The ending rings false, but was likely necessary for audiences to swallow what they just saw. Just because it's an old movie, don't take i...

All About Eve with Cassidy Wienecke

November 20, 2018 12:06 - 53 minutes - 74.2 MB

If you like intelligent verbal sparring, overly dramatic personalities, sizzling put-downs, Shakespearean plotting, gorgeous outfits, wisecracking sidekicks, high-falutin' accents, drunks, intense bathroom conversations, facial masks, or just movies in general, then this is the flick for you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chariots of Fire with Cara McConnell

November 13, 2018 23:48 - 46 minutes - 58.5 MB

Normally I write a summary but this movie is so boring it doesn't deserve one. It's about the 1924 Olympics, specifically Great Britain's track team, which did okay. Finland won more track medals that year but sure, let's learn about this team. The movie beat Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm dead. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Aaron Brooks

November 06, 2018 11:19 - 57 minutes - 73.5 MB

Everything about this movie is crazy, and not necessarily in a fun way. Like a lot of '70s movies, it focuses on an oddball group of people just kind of .... hanging out. Aaron and I get frustrated trying to make sense of it, which may be the point, but leads to a very unsatisfying experience, especially compared to the movie it beat for the award that year: Jaws. Still, the acting is top-notch and there are some iconic scenes for a reason. Dive in, cuckoos. See acast.com/privacy for privac...

The Apartment with Ella Gale

October 30, 2018 10:26 - 54 minutes - 68.2 MB

Quite possibly the perfect movie. A rare comedy winner starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, this screwball-ish comedy with a dramatic heart explores the absurd distance between loneliness and privacy in a world that still maintains a paper-thin Victorian morality atop a fully horny modern reality. The acting is superb, but this is a writer's movie first and foremost, stuffed with tense scenes, perfectly witty lines, dense layering, and huge laughs. The only reason the entire movie isn't...

Silence of the Lambs with Nikita Redkar

October 23, 2018 10:12 - 56 minutes - 54.8 MB

This movie didn't just win Best Picture, it won ALL the major Oscars, and it's easy to see why. Tense and gripping throughout, with some of the most incredible acting performances ever. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins perfectly convey a grounded reality within the high camp of Thomas Harris's shock-based plot. Jonathan Demme also deserves a lot of credit for making the movie feel coherent as it careened between moments of intimate terror and grotesque violence. But the real surprise is that ...

How Green Was My Valley with Nick Saverino

October 16, 2018 10:52 - 43 minutes - 44 MB

This endless dirge of Welsh coal miners singing hymns is a great movie to watch if you want to fall asleep. Plotless and devoid of any tension, the movie feels like a book someone forced you to read in middle school. It's honestly a miracle Nick and I didn't give up halfway through. Featuring "Miracle on 34th Street"'s Maureen O'Hara and future non-boring director John Ford at the helm, the film must have struck a chord in late-Depression America because it beat "Citizen Kane" for the trophy....

American Beauty with Vanessa Gonzalez

October 09, 2018 10:47 - 57 minutes - 58.8 MB

This movie is something else. It's played as a quirky slice-of-mid-life-crisis with wacky scenarios interspersed between hot-button topics, and I guess that's exactly what it was in the late '90s, but NOW, in 2018, knowing what we know about its star and speaking how we speak about victims of sexual assault, it's a horror movie that has romantic comedy lighting for some offensive reason. Kevin Spacey plays a manipulative self-centered pedophile who destroys his family and neighbors in pursuit...

The Artist with Avery Moore

September 25, 2018 10:45 - 34 minutes - 47.7 MB

Say, fellas, I got an idea! What if we take a vaguely creepy story about a vain and jealous man who will destroy himself and everyone around him in a tantrum the minute he's not universally adored, then remove all the dialogue and replace it with sweet music so nobody notices? What's that? We'll need a dog to complete the illusion that he's not a piece of shit? And set the story in Hollywood so the industry will give it awards? Done! Send screeners to the Academy immediately. Sincerely, Harve...

Platoon with Duncan Carson

September 18, 2018 10:58 - 52 minutes - 55.4 MB

Oliver Stone's Mary Sue autobiography about being a rich kid voluntarily joining up to fight in America's Dumbest War. The movie throws 75 characters at the screen, then adds 75,000 explodey noises in for good measure, but somehow Oscar-winning screenwriter Stone still can't cover up the clunkiest dialogue he's ever written. The movie is effective in its realism. Unfortunately, that means suffering through the reality of an obnoxious war full of half-crazed, leaderless, extremely un-woke sold...

Ben-Hur with Andrew Horneman

September 11, 2018 10:20 - 57 minutes - 55 MB

This movie is EPIC. It defines epic. And it clearly influenced both George Lucas and John Williams, because some of the scenes and score clips are obvious precursors to the Star Wars saga. But is it fun to watch? It was with Andrew, who developed an insta-crush on Charlton Heston's body that sustained him for almost the entire 3 hours and 45 minutes. For me? Well, it's a lot of men, manning around, plus 250% of your recommended daily allowance of Jesus. The movie still holds the record for th...

Shakespeare in Love with Brooke Cartus

September 04, 2018 10:46 - 51 minutes - 53.2 MB

If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, this is the Shakespeare movie for you. Stuffed with super obvious callbacks and sitcom plotting, this soft rock movie somehow captured the Academy's heart in a year stuffed with Big Important Dramas. Gwyneth Paltrow got an award for having boobs. Judi Dench got an award for having a face. Tom Stoppard got an award for copy-pasting. And Harvey Weinstein got an award for doing things we'd still rather not think about. Join Brooke and me a...

Rain Man with Christina Parrish

August 28, 2018 11:16 - 50 minutes - 51.8 MB

This movie is authenticity-adjacent. A weirdly world-music-infused score backdrops the story of an all-American road trip with a bad car salesman (played by human-adjacent Tom Cruise) and a quirky superhero (Dustin Hoffman doing an SNL sketch character). At times, the script gestures towards meaning, but for the most part this is "It Happened One Night" with an idiot savant instead of an heiress. Christina Parrish and I tear our hair out trying not to make inappropriate jokes (and, in the end...

Argo with Leo Garcia

August 21, 2018 11:29 - 51 minutes - 51.6 MB

This episode comes out all sorts of different for some reason (for one thing, I finally figured out how to optimize sound a little bit). Leo and I dive into the most recent winner featured so far on the podcast, Ben Affleck's "I'm going to direct myself being a hero" movie about one interesting side plot of the Iran Hostage Crisis. We dive into some hand-wringing about how you know the good side from the bad side when protests go wild, so that's heavy, but we also talk about jazz funerals and...

Chicago with Danny Goodwin

August 14, 2018 09:59 - 45 minutes - 47.8 MB

Danny and I dive into a winner that was controversial at the time, but honestly looks pretty smart today. (That NEVER happens!) "Chicago" is a stylish, fun, surprisingly deep look at the corrupting power of fame and the desperate violence of proto-feminism America. It's also a movie about imprisoned women in their underwear produced by Harvey Weinstein, so it's far from perfect, but we enjoy delving into its details. Plus we veer off into talking about "I, Tonya" and a few other relatively ob...

Gone With the Wind with Eric Nagurney

August 07, 2018 11:15 - 49 minutes - 51.3 MB

We knew what we were getting into, kind of, but neither myself nor Eric Nagurney had seen a single frame of Gone with the Wind in our lives, so it was a fresh assault of whitewashed Confederate history, treacly matte paintings, Broadway-style overacting, and whiplashing tonal shifts that lasted FAR longer than even what "4-hour-movie" implies. We hated it. Listen closely, and you'll hear our sanity leave the room at about the 15-minute mark. This isn't a BAD movie. On a technical level it has...

On the Waterfront with Pat Dean

July 31, 2018 10:56 - 1 hour - 64.1 MB

A movie that most people know only as a line -- "I coulda been a contender" -- has surprising twists and wrinkles that make it an unusual watch 50+ years later. Fortunately, I have Pat Dean as a co-pilot, and we dig deep into the subtext and meaning of this labor drama while also taking detours to make sure we're okay, we're doing fine, we're not too lonely. It's a surprisingly revealing and tender episode surrounding an even more surprisingly brutal and bleak film. Check it out, and also che...

Million Dollar Baby with Pat Sirois

July 24, 2018 11:32 - 52 minutes - 53.4 MB

This movie goes in fits and starts. The beginning is cartoon-ish and slow, the middle is full of some of the rawest boxing footage I've ever seen in a film, and the last half hour is a torturous drag through depressingville. Pat Sirois and I try to keep our sanity with all the emotional whiplash, and figure out a couple of True Facts about Clint Eastwood's inner life along the way. This episode is narrated by Morgan Freeman. RED ALERT: This movie was written by Paul Haggis of "Crash" fame so ...

The Sting with Lisa Friedrich

July 17, 2018 11:24 - 45 minutes - 45.1 MB

Lisa and I scratch our heads through one of the most complicated con movies I've ever seen, stuffed with ancillary characters and antiquated references. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are both compelling to watch -- and Redford does A LOT of sprinting in this movie if that's your thing -- but the real stars are the women. Eileen Brennan brings a casual vamp's charm to the rogue's gallery of con men, and Dimitra Arliss coyly plays a diner waitress who's much more than she appears. Other than t...

The Great Ziegfeld with Rachel Hall

July 10, 2018 11:04 - 53 minutes - 53.2 MB

Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was still very much a contemporary force in American entertainment when this was made. His late wife Billie Burke even had a hand in the casting of this movie, which was an enormous artistic and financial success for MGM. But what does that all add up to now? This three-hour biopic serves mainly to highlight two things -- that Ziegfeld was a "special effects" genius in his day (costumes and staging) to a degree that still astonishes today, and that his life was a mind-num...

Rocky with Mike MacRae

July 03, 2018 11:24 - 31 minutes - 35.7 MB

Unless you've actually watched it recently, I guarantee this movie is NOT what you think it is. The star-spangled sequels are so ingrained in our minds that it's weird to revisit the grimy impoverished underdog story that kicked off the mega-franchise. Mike MacRae had never seen the movie, and I THOUGHT I had but it was very different from my memories, so who knows? We both "dinged" along as iconic moments came up, then guffawed in bafflement at the weird scenes nobody talks about anymore: Ro...

It Happened One Night with Micheal Foulk

June 26, 2018 11:30 - 46 minutes - 51.5 MB

This movie is the origin of every trope in romantic comedies, road trip movies, AND Bugs Bunny cartoons. Micheal Foulk and I spend a lot of time delighting in the silliness of the plot, and puzzling over the manic depression of the film's main pixie dream boy, played by Clark Gable. It's one of only three films to ever win all "big five" awards: picture, director, actor, actress, writing. It's pretty good, but that accomplishment is probably more a reflection on the competition. There's no do...