ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Terry Teachout celebrate the ACF podcast's first anniversary! The celebrated critic, playwright, musician, joins Titus to discuss Vertigo, Hitchcock's most daring artistic endeavor. We talk about actors, studios, performances, music, the character of the tragedy & the darkness in Hitchcock himself.

Titus & John Marini continue their series on John Ford's Westerns with a discussion of Liberty Valance, the story of the emergence of the rule of law from the desert. We talk about love & violence, about civilization & progress, about the desert & the train, the free range & the city, gunfights & newspapers.

Titus & John Marini talk about John Ford's The Searchers--the best Western for the discussion of the sacred law of the family & the fundamental questions that emerge when law is as yet to be installed. We also talk about the Western & its place in American life, how Ford turned it into an art, & what Jorge Luis Borges called "our epic duties".

Titus & Flagg Taylor discuss Never let me go, the 2010 movie made from Nobel Prize Winner Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel about a dystopia where clones are exploited for organs & have to discover their humanity. Flagg is a poli.sci professor & has taught the novel in a course on dystopias, along with Orwell, Huxley, C.S. Lewis, & Koestler. We talk about the troubling realism of the story & the way a s...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss the impressive (Ben Solo) & the disappointing (everything else) parts of The Last Jedi. We talk about structural problems, mistakes concerning character relationships, & how to dramatize moral conflicts. We also talk about what was great about Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, what gems were scattered in Anakin Skywalker's story in the prequel trilogy, & how the...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss in detail the promise & the catastrophe that is Justice League. We go over the touches of cinematic greatness, the possibilities of the characters & the ideas of the creators--but also the unique example of studio executives destroying the most talented & successful partnerships of writers & directors in studio history.

Titus & George Dunn & Jason Eberl return in trio formation to discuss more Nolan movie-making--this time Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy's Westworld. They bring their academic expertise with them & we go through lots of philosophical ideas that are important to Westworld, to the story of American self-creation & its tech-empowered & tech-endangered future.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the great box office success A quiet place & its theme: Helicopter parenting. As all good horror movies do, it offers a moral teaching about the causes of fear & the path to moderation. The movie reflects on American society, suburbia, the loss of control & the fear of downward mobility, but it also restores birth-giving to its exalted place among the human experi...

Titus & Matt Zoller Seitz, famed critic, discuss Alex Garland's Annihilation. We go through the beautiful & the weird things en route to MZS's theory of the sci-fi as a cinema of ideas. I add a parallel theory of the horror movie. We talk Kubrick, Malick, Lynch, & Spielberg--on whom more in a future episode--to get at the grandeur of the director-poets who confront the crisis of our time.

Titus & Carl Eric Scott & Flagg Taylor discuss Jeff Nichols's Mud (2012, nominated for the Palme D'or in Cannes). It's a coming of age story set in Nichols's native Arkansas, on the Mississippi, & owes a lot to both Mark Twain's Huck Finn & Flannery O'Connor's violence & religion storytelling. It's all-American in the best way, not least because it showcases the full humanity of the drama of rural...

Titus & James Lileks discuss Steven Spielberg's magic-at-the-movies legacy before the release of Ready Player One, which might be his last attempt to win over a big audience. We talk about the darkness & manly danger in his movies, but also about the childish wonder & longing for beauty. We talk about Jaws & Close Encounters of the Third Kind, about Indiana Jones & Jurassic Park!

Titus & John Presnall discuss Brian De Palma's Body double, a movie we're both fascinated with, but which is obviously artful & obviously immoral. It's both vulgar & sophisticated. This combination hints at De Palma's touch of genius. He shows what sex & violence are in their interest to audiences, directors, & society. This is also De Palma's assertion of taking up the mantle from Hitchcock. Why...

Titus & John Presnall discuss another 70s movie about political crisis--Martin Scorsese & Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver. We talk about Travis Bickle's self-destruction & his insight into the corruption of the times, & how madness becomes the way to see clearly in a society where respectability means denying there is evil.

Titus & John Presnall discuss Steven Spielberg's career-making turn directing Jaws. We look at the New England township in light of Tocqueville, with all its failures of deliberation & association. We talk about the social crises of the 70s. We also then talk about the Western half of the movie, men trying their hand at heroism & the strange brotherhood that creates. We also talk about the ways in...

Titus & Carl Eric Scott discuss Roman J. Israel, Esq., the movie that earned Denzel Washington his newest Oscar nomination, written & directed by Dan Gilroy (who was nominated as writer for Nightcrawler). This is the best film on civil rights & the question of justice in America's criminal defense law (plea bargaining is the central & symbolic issue)since at least Separate but equal (the Thurgood...

Titus & Peter Paik discuss Alex Garland's directorial debut, Ex Machina. Sci-fi is the last place for heroes, where movie-makers and audiences explore together human nature and confront the future. In this case, technological creation & the Biblical account of creation in Genesis are juxtaposed in order to bring out the complicated relationship between freedom & control. This movie is a morality p...

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss Blade I & II, focusing on class conflict & David S. Goyer's great writing in a Marxian tradition, as well as the pinnacle of Wesley Snipes's career as a working class black hero. We also get to Goyer's Dark city, to other Marxian awakening stories like the Roddy Piper movie They live & the Wachawski's Matrix, We also get to look at Guillermo del Toro's work on Blade...

Titus & Eric Cook talk about Hitchcock's Rope: 2018 is the movie's 70th anniversary! This should be a classic--it's Hitchcock's thematic examination of class aspirations in relation to Enlightenment & a certain view of meritocracy. Hitchcock marries his usual moral depth with an unusual idea--you know who done it in advance. It's all about what the catastrophe means about mid-century America.

Titus & Caitlin Peartree discuss the poetic art of Wallace Stevens: 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. In 13 brief poems, Stevens reveals the natural temptation to make metaphors; the imaginative element in which the intellect does its work; & the need for a new poetry that can reveal human nature at work by arousing it to do the work--by coming up with images & thoughts that recall us to our basi...

Titus & Robert Tracinski discuss Groundhog Day on its 25th anniversary. We bring out the comedic theme, the inescapability of character, & the confrontation between American restlessness & the limits necessary to relational being & intellectual development. We talk about the confrontation of the big city & the small town. We talk about Toqvueville. We talk about Hollywood doubles, movies that come...

Titus & Caitlin Peartree discuss Wallace Stevens's poem about the all-important role played by poets in making sense of being & being human, The Idea of Order at Key West. Listen & marvel at the poet's "blessed rage for order". This is a poem you should compare to Hemingway's Old man & the sea; or to Pindar's first Olympian ode.

Titus & Armond White discuss the Better Than list summarizing 2017 in movies, in counter-cultural terms. We talk about Lady Bird & A quiet passion (the Emily Dickinson biopic), Valerian (the Luc Besson galactic blockbuster), & finally about Theo & Hugo & Call me by your name. The Better Than list is the only counter-cultural idea for awards season! Listen & share!

Titus & John Presnall conclude their discussion of the Godfather trilogy with the moral grandeur of tragedy. We see a third Corleone generation & we think about the similarities of character & the different fates that Americanization produces. We compare the Corleone with the Adams family, America's first political dynasty! We discuss the importance of Sicily, Rome, & Europe the Old World-New Worl...

Titus & John Presnall complete their discussion of the Godfather--they look at how Part II reverses the structure of the original & completes the portrayals of Vito & Michael Corleone. They discuss the all-American story of an immigrant family, of making it in New York, moving out West, & going international (Cuba). The Corleones rehearse American history & this changes the non-American Sicilian p...

Titus & Paul Rahe, Professor of political science, discuss assigning the Godfather to college students so that they understand the fundamental modern & ancient political alternatives, the transformation of concepts of justice, & the diversity of cultures contained within America, as well as their transformations. Then the discussion moves to Scorsese's Silence & its magisterial description of the...