Full Cast And Crew

It's the 40th Anniversary of 'Back to the Future' and I read a review of Michael J. Fox's brief new memoir about the making of the film, and about his life before, during, and just after the film's release. This sent me to finally watch 2023's 'Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie', a brilliant documentary from noted director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconveniant Truth, It Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superma...

Like a thunderbolt from another dimension, a dimension where $90 million-dollar comedies with top-tier talent and a first-class, Oscar-winning cinematographer combine with an expensive location shoot in Hawaii (standing in for Viet Nam) to gross $200 million dollars and spawn at least two Pantheon-level comedy characters in Tom Cruise's Les Grossman and Robert Downey, Jr's Kirk Lazarus-as-Staff-Se...

Diane Keaton died over the weekend at the age of 79, and it's been fascinating to read her various obituaries and memories of her being shared.  Also interesting to contemplate what a singular presence she was for more than 50 years on stage and screen.  'Annie Hall' won Diane Keaton her only Academy Award, although she was also nominated for 'Reds', 'Marvin's Room' and 'Something's Gotta Give', w...

Gus Van Sant's 2nd feature, starring Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James Le Gros, Heather Graham, William S. Burroughs, James Remar, and Max Perlich.  

Continuing the Redford Appreciation Episodes with a revisit of Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford's 1972 deceptively revisionist Western, 'Jeremiah Johnson'. Shaped by Redford and Pollack from an apparently off-the-wall John Milius screenplay, and only shot on location in the Utah wilderness through Redford's intervention with the studio, 'Jeremiah Johnson' is, I think, secretly one of everybody's...

JC Chandor's 2nd feature film after 'Margin Call' was 2013's sailing-catastrophe film 'All Is Lost', and it's a unique film in that it has virtually no dialogue and a single cast member in Robert Redford, who delivers a tour-de-force of non-verbal acting filled with pathos, regret, and rueful recognition of one's own self-delusions. As we continue to contemplate Redford after his death last week,...

I'm joined by Charles Fleming, LA-based writer, author and returning FCAC guest to talk about todays news of the death of Robert Redford. We discuss Redford's extraordinary career and difference-making life, including his environmental activism and the Sundance Film Festival and Institute. Redford was born in Santa Monica and after a peripatetic youth marked by extreme religious pressure, hooligan...

Recent events have gotten me thinking about Roger Ebert's quote about movies being empathy machines, bringing us closer to people we might think we have nothing in common with. When I first saw the Berlinger/Sinofsky documentary 'Brother's Keeper' I was overwhelmed with empathy and heartbreak and humor and feeling for these odd-duck brothers and their ramshackle farm existence and the small town i...

Howard Berger and Marshall Julius have a brilliant new book out called 'Making Monsters: Inside Stories From The Creators of Hollywood's Most Iconic Creatures'.  It's an indispensable oral history and visually spectacular compendium of Hollywood history and personal reflections from the industry's pre-eminent special make-up effects artisans, and actors and directors who appreciate the work of the...

David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome' remains a shockingly prescient vision of the world we're living in now: technology overlords using computerized developments for their own nefarious means...except in the case of 1983 Toronto, personal enrichment isn't the end game: elimination of the freaks and geeks is. Featuring a tour-de-force performance from James Woods and an impressive commitment to allowing...

I recently learned of the senseless death of a friend from elementary school—someone I hadn't seen in over forty years.  His name was Joe Kane.   The news reached across all that time and unexpectedly unlocked a reservoir of childhood emotions I didn't even know I was still carrying.   Letting those feelings out left me feeling connected to Joe's spirit and to the memory of his kindness, a quality...

Here's the next episode in a little courtroom-drama jag I've been on; it's about the second of screenwriter Steven Zaillian's three directorial efforts, 'A Civil Action', from Zaillian's adaptation of the best-selling Jonathan Harr nonfiction book of the same name. Like 'The Rainmaker', 'A Civil Action' provides a large roster of fantastic actors opportunities to deliver amazing portrayals that re...

Dead & Company's 60th Anniversary three-show stand is an opportunity to talk about about the living history that the band's music represents, the ongoing and still-vital multi-generational pull of the concerts, which drew about 175,000 people, and the fascinating real-time challenge represented by sitting in with the band.  Using Sturgill Simpson and Trey Anastasio as examples of how players find...

In 1996, Francis Ford Coppola needed the money. He was coming off a run of films that included The Godfather Part III, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Jack.  His critical and box office results were at a career nadir. So he agreed to direct an adaptation of the John Grisham bestseller 'The Rainmaker' for Paramount.  He wouldn't direct another film for 10 years.  And he'd make only four more, including...

Well, it's come to this. Was it curiosity? Was is discovery? A sense of completism?   Oxygen deprivation? Whatever it was, I've now watched '2010: The Year We Make Contact' and I leave it for you to decide whether I'm any better for it.  

We've come to the end...or is it the beginning?  This is part 4 of my series of episodes about the emotional and intellectual contact Stanley Kubrick made between movie-goers and his epic science-fiction film of 1968. Here's the amazing mashup between Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' and the final sequence of 2001 . Please sign up for my newsletter if you haven't; it's free and filled with random recommendat...

In Part 3, I geek out into how incredible and evocative the HAL sequences are in this film; what an amazing sense of character and personality Kubrick creates through the use of Doug Rain's iconic, best-in-class voiceover and the varying cutaways to HAL's electronic eye in scenes featuring the computer. Be sure to check out my other episodes covering the other sections of 2001. Next up: THE STAR G...

In part 2 of my four-part series on 2001, I am going through the TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One) sequence in which Dr. Haywood Floyd of "The Council" visits the International Space Station, diverts some Russian scientist attentions, presents a specious, US Governmental coverup of the Clavius discovery to a group of cowed committee members, and then embarks to Clavius base on the Moon to visit t...

The first of my four-part series on Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' covers some introductory approach notes and the first sequence in the film: 'The Dawn Of Man'. In these episodes I want to avoid a nerdy technical discussion about how the filmmakers did what they did in this extraordinary, still-vital film masterpiece and instead focus on the remarkable ability of the film to inspire th...

I'd never seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre before this episode.  I had also never seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre II. Regrets, I have a few. And this apparent chainsaw-sized hole in my film-going life is at the heart the Brad Caleb Kane Experiment In Terror that are our Cannon Fodder series of episodes. Find out what happened in this chaotic mess of an episode.      

Cannon Fodder continues! John Frankenheimer finds himself directing for Cannon Films with Roy Scheider starring in Elmore Leonard's own adaptation of his 1974 novel 52 Pickup. Watch 52 Pickup on Prime before it leaves this weekend. Watch the excellent Cannon Films/Golan Globus unauthorized documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films Watch King Cohen , the Larry Cohen docu...

In this week's episode it's the debut of 'Cannon Fodder', a recurring series of episodes where I watch a curated selection of films made by schlockmeisters Golan/Globus in the 1980's for their Cannon Film Group, one of the most entertaining production shingles you'll ever hear or see. In Brad's view, he is a man of the people's cinema and I am a high-minded, opinionated cinephile. Duly diagnosed,...

Long before 'Waiting For Guffman', Christopher Guest directed 'The Big Picture', a heartfelt, hilariously incisive movie about making movies. The film was greenlit during British film executive David Puttnam's brief tenure running Columbia Pictures.  Co-written by Guest's 'Spinal Tap' co-star Michael McKean, who also turns in an unexpectedly warm and heartfelt performance, 'The Big Picture' is wor...

Ryan Coogler's original film 'Sinners' defied the so-called conventional wisdom of Hollywood and dropped only 6% week-to-week in its box office performance.  It was also the subject of a fascinating online discourse about how the film's box office performance was written about in industry media.  In this episode I recount the online controversy surrounding some of the reporting on the film and giv...

'Caddyshack', it turns out, is kind of a miracle of last-minute producer-led stitching together and salvaging, resulting in one of the more quotable films in comedy history.   Hard to believe that at the time, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Rodney Dangerfield were not yet the massive film stars they'd become as a result of this movie.   This episode delves into the coke-fueled nonstop party that wa...