Fifteen Minute Film Fanatics

It’s easy for some people to laugh at Conan the Barbarian, John Milius’s 1982 film about Robert E. Howard’s most famous creation: it seems like the cinematic equivalent of middle-schoolers playing Dungeons and Dragons. But this is an honest (as in “unpretentious”) film with ideas: the pagan existentialism of Thulsa Doom, the theology of Subatai, and the difference between soldiers and warriors are...

A genuine crowd-pleaser that couldn’t please enough crowds in 1988, Tucker: The Man and His Dream has finally found an audience. Tim defends 80s Coppola and calls out critics who dismissed his post-Godfather II output; Dan talks about the film’s enthusiasm for its subject and how that enthusiasm helps the viewer feel like those who find themselves in any great leader’s orbit. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk...

We all know the rules of the Looney Tunes universe: rabbits can outrun bullets, shots to the face don’t kill, and the laws of gravity don’t always apply. But that universe is still very much like our own, in which we all strive to be like Bugs Bunny, but are really like Daffy Duck. If there’s an aesthetic of frustration, Chuck Jones is its Shakespeare. Join us for a conversation about Rabbit Fire,...

Being lighthearted and amusing can be a painful business. That’s one of the themes of Limelight, Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 portrait of the artist as an older man. It’s like a combination of The Red Shoes and Death of a Salesman, with elements of The Entertainer and The King of Comedy. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about the ways in which art and love prove to be antidotes to poisonous despair....

We all know the rules of courtroom dramas. We welcome the confusion we feel during the case and the sense of release upon hearing the jury’s decision: this is true in Witness for the Prosecution, Anatomy of a Murder, and, of course, The Verdict. But what if the feeling of disorientation that we enjoy in the middle of these films was heightened and then examined by the director as a subject on its...

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker with an intuitive sense for showing the right thing at the right time, whether he is offering the story of a maniacal conquistador, Count Dracula, or himself eating his own shoe. Klaus Kinski was, according to many, more monster than man and an actor who resembled the megalomaniacs he portrayed. Together, Herzog and Kinski made five films. Kinski died in 1991; in 1999,...

In a past episode in which they discussed the films of Tom Cruise, Mike told Dan, “You’re the smartest person I know who ever made it all the way through Eyes Wide Shut.” After reading a forthcoming biography of Stanley Kubrick, Dan returned to the film and urged it on Mike, who rewatched it, but who still finds it a total failure. Dan thinks it’s a sobering and startling portrayal of a man exiled...

Can a film do everything wrong yet still find its defenders, who not only acknowledge each of the film’s faults but find these faults endearing? Such is the case with Mike and The Omen, the 1976 Richard Donner blockbuster that—like Satan himself—has spawned sequels, remakes, and imitations. Dan tries to point out all the things that are bad about The Omen, but Mike spins each one into a perverse m...

Have you seen that other Capra film in which the protagonist in a moment of crisis, attempts suicide on Christmas Eve? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about Meet John Doe (1941), a film Frank Capra made five years before It’s a Wonderful Life and which shares that film’s celebration of the common man—the John Doe—living and working and dying across the country. We know we’d all be better off—...

There’s nothing like being conned at the movies. Join Mike and Dan as they talk about George Roy Hill’s beautifully-constructed toy, The Sting. Dan explains how the long con in the film is like a theatrical production and how con games and films are similar forms of art. Mike revs up with a rant about why Pauline Kael is overrated, continues with one about how Robert Shaw is underrated, and finall...

If we had seen Donnie Darko in high school, we would been drawn to the Easter eggs throughout the film and made videos in which we pointed them out with big red arrows. But there’s more to this tale of time travel than a dorm-room discussion of free will vs. determinism: we now appreciate the ways in which Richard Kelly dramatizes teenage dread and the fear of one’s insignificance. Being a teenage...

How should one deal with evil? What are people capable of doing when they are given unconstrained liberty? Why does democracy work when people run things physically away from the very people it wants to assist? These are a few of the questions that arise as one watches John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Progress and civilization are wonderful—but the train that signals them also...

What if you could receive the adulation and respect of strangers but not from your own family-or even yourself? In Wild Strawberries (1957), Ingmar Bergman dramatizes a journey into a man’s memories, insecurities, and fears in a way that may borrow the technique of Death of a Salesman but not its final scenes or the fate of its hero. For all we hear about the bleakness of Bergman’s vision, the fil...

Samuel Johnson once asked, “What enemy would invade Scotland, where there is nothing to be got?” He must never have seen I Know Where I’m Going (1945). In their fifth examination of a Powell and Pressburger film, Mike and Dan talk about what makes this cinematic Scotland a more authentic place than England and how the film’s heroine gains maturity and depth once she abandons her itinerary. Dan bri...

We are used to entering cinematic fantasy worlds in which we learn the rules of how the world works and then watch our hero navigate through it: think of Star Wars, Dune, The Matrix, and The Wizard of Oz, and Lord of the Rings. But Spirited Away (2001) works differently than these, with a logic that seems just out of reach and which we, like the hero, try to discern. Join Mike and Dan for an appre...

Minority Report (2002) is Exhibit A of how screenwriters love the premises of Philip K. Dick’s source materials and then adapt his core thought experiments into genres that get people in theatres. Mike and Dan discuss the ways in which Minority Report examines a thorny idea laden with ethical complexities while also offering Spielberg at his popcorn-selling best. We get serious questions about the...

In 1962, Donald E. Westlake used the pseudonym Richard Stark and published The Hunter, the story of Parker, a betrayed thief who seeks vengeance with more determination than we see from the T-1000 in Terminator 2. Four years later, Lee Marvin starred in John Boorman’s Point Blank, an adaptation of The Hunter. The film renamed Parker to Walker, but also reimagined the revenge plot as one of a man u...

In 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “She’s got everything she needs; she’s an artist; she don’t look back.” About twenty years later, Gabriel Axel brilliantly dramatized this idea in Babette’s Feast (1987). A film as perfect as a film can be, Babette’s Feast treats the viewer to the pleasures of autotelic endeavors: things we do for their own sake because we enjoy them. Like last week’s film, Big Night, this...

Sometimes, the idea for a film would work on paper—such is the case with Big Night (1996), a film that packs in as much real life a full novel. “Love” as a secret ingredient to a great recipe may be a cliché, but how else to explain the joy people get from cooking large meals for people they care about, gathered around a big table? Mike and Dan discuss how the two restaurants in the film offer two...

There may be some dated or downright silly elements of Cutter’s Way, Ivan Passer’s 1981 mystery—but what’s great about it outweighs any of its clumsiness and stays in the viewer’s memory. Not enough people know about John Heard’s performance as the unhinged, unlikable, yet undeniably compelling Alex Cutter; this film without any scenes of military conflict is one of the best about Vietnam. Join Mi...

“What makes something funny” is difficult to articulate, but Mike and Dan try with one of their favorite comedies, Albert Brooks’ Lost in America. His 1985 film about married professionals who yearn to hit the road (like they saw in Easy Rider) works because there’s nothing to rescue the viewer from the awkwardness and downward spiral of every scene. The characters’ conflicts and anxieties are hil...

If you have seen Sluizer’s original 1988 thriller—not his 1993 American remake with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland--you’ll know exactly why we are doing it as a companion piece to Rope. You’ll also nod along with us when we praise the film’s cold precision: it’s not surprising that Sluzier states in the opening clip that Stanley Kubrick admired the film and saw it ten times. Why we often tell...

Rope (1948) may not be top-shelf Hitchcock, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and worth repeated viewings. After arguing back at those who find Jimmy Stewart miscast, Mike and Dan talk about how the film stands as another example of Hitchcock using violence to dramatize the sex lives of his characters. Mike lists the ways in which the director resembles the killer, specifically Brandon: a...

In 1973, William Friedkin terrorized the world with The Exorcist and then decided to make a film even more grim: a remake of George Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. This was an audacious move, since the 1953 original was already well-loved and regarded as one of the most suspenseful films of all time. But Friedkin followed his muse and created Sorcerer (1977), which belongs in the pantheon of Great Un...

Jake and Elwood sing “Everybody Needs Someone to Love” and everybody loves The Blues Brothers: “You … me … them … everybody!” Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about John Landis’s 1980 film that has become movie comfort-food for people raised on the original SNL and others who have come to the film without any knowledge of John Belushi or Dan Ackroyd’s careers. So many comedy sketches fall flat...