Filmically Perfect

Anthony Mann took an aging genre, the western, and an aging star, James Stewart, and turned them both around in Winchester ’73. This film began a partnership that lasted for several years and several marvelous, gritty films. Mann also populates this film (as well as his other westerns) with a fascinating array of players from the amazingly saucy Shelley Winters to the psychotic, giggling Dan Durye...

Pat O’Brien as a priest, James Cagney as a murderous hood, and Humphrey Bogart as a sleazy lawyer? How can you go wrong? Lay it all in the extremely capable hands of Warners’ go-to guy, Michael Curtiz, and you’ve got one fine movie! Whaddaya say?

What a better choice for Friday the 13th than Stanley Kubrick acidic comedy about the destruction of our world via Nuclear Holocaust? With an absolutely stellar cast, including great folks like Keenan Wynn and James Earl Jones in small roles, Kubrick just couldn’t go wrong. And so we complete our second season of Filmically Perfect and, as Vera Lynn sings over the blossoming mushroom clouds, “We’l...

The first and best--often imitated never equalled--even by its creators! Join us as we reminisce about one of THE summer movies!

Orson Welles--twenty-five years old--comes to Hollywood and makes this film. Amazing.

Philip Kaufman’s EPIC filming of Tom Wolfe’s book about the Mercury Space Program is not only a PERFECT MOVIE, but arguably one of the best films of the 1980s! A funny, exciting, touching, important story of bravery, foolishness, love, barbeque, and all things human. A grand portrait of seven brave men and the new world they blazed their trail into!

From that fateful day in 1975, when Film Guy Geo. Willeman got his Super 8mm print of Metropolis, it was a given that this film would be part of our Perfect Movie List. Sure, the story is fairly corny and some of the acting is heavy on the ham, but truly, there is nothing else quite like it. And now, thanks to our friends at Transit-Film, The F.W. Murnau Foundation and Kino Video, we can all enjoy...

Denis Sanders created the perfect Elvis Time Capsule with his 1970 film Elvis: That’s The Way It Is. Elvis fan or no, one cannot deny the power and influence this fellow from Memphis had on the world of popular music. Here we see him at the top of his newly regained powers, finally free of the crapulous films he had been making in the years preceding. Find the ORIGINAL version and revel in it!

After returning from exile to his native Spain, director Luis Buñuel made one his greatest and most controversial films--Viridiana. After its release, he found himself back on the slow boat to Churubusco, Mexico, where he made this very surreal and angry film, no doubt venting his cinematic spleen towards his Spanish foes.

Harsh--gritty--dark--and that’s just the opening credits!! Martin Scorsese’s unflinching portrait of boxer Jake LaMotta won the “Best Picture” award for 1980 and retains all of its power more than twenty-five years later. It also introduced us to two great actors: Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty!

GUANINE--ADENINE--THYMINE--CYTOSINE. The four amino acids that make up deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, the stuff that we are made of, to paraphrase Sam Spade. They are also the letters that make up the title of Andrew Niccol’s frighteningly prophetic film. Ten years after its release, the events of Gattaca ring truer than ever before. Except for the cool electric Studebaker Avantis--daggone it.

Roger Donaldson’s unfairly overlooked gem is, in our minds, one of the finest stories of the power of the human spirit EVER. Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Kiwi cyclist Burt Munro is funny and touching and very, very real. Add to that a certain cinematic verisimilitude not often found these days and you have one hell of a perfect movie!

Alfred Hitchcock, Ernest Lehman, Bernard Hermann, and Cary Grant--what a glorious quartet! Hitchcock winds up the 1950’s with one of his best films of all, the lively, effervescent, wonderful, perfect North by Northwest. A film often held up not only for its entertainment value, but one of the best examples of classical film-making!

Orson & the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Orson Welles on a cruise of total weirdness. A crazy amalgam of style and mystery and the strangely blonde tresses of the lovely Miss Hayworth. Even in the studio ordered recutting, this film is totally fascinating.

Once again, The Film Guys take to the phones to answer questions about love, life, and movies. The day this show was recorded, the “Blizzard of 2008” struck Ohio, dumping about fifteen inches of snow in less than a day on the startled citizenry

It was as inevitable as night--in the wake of the Coen Bros. Academy Award triumph with No Country For Old Men, J. Todd Anderson gets his chance to speak about his life as “storyboard artist to the stars!” Join The Film Guys and Niki as they talk about the history of storyboarding, as well as memories of their early days in the film school at Wright State University. You might just learn something...

One of New York’s finest cities gets its big moment with the above line of dialogue, snarled at a perp by the out-of-control “Popeye” Doyle, played by Gene Hackman, in his break through role. We dedicate this episode to his co-star, Roy Scheider, who passed away on February 10th, 2008. A stalwart and capable actor who appeared in another of our Perfect Movies, JAWS. Ironically, Robin Moore, author...

It's been way too long since we rummaged around the back of our several cinematic closets to bring to you some films we love, but will never be on the Filmically Perfect List of Perfect Movies. And what a triple feature: A Psychedelic Sci-Fi epic, a British romantic Comedy, and a Classic 70's road movie! And as an added treat, the Film Guys let our own Niki Dakota ramble on about one of her favori...

With the Academy Awards only a couple weeks away, what better film to chronicle than the one that made the first "Grand Slam", garnering all five top awards: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Even so, it is one of the most delightful motion pictures, a mixture of art and accessibility, visual and aural.

Director Fred Zinnemann made only one western during his career, but what a western! An excruciatingly simple and straight-forward tale, High Noon has become so iconic as to have become part of the English lexicon: high noon noun 1 midday. 2 an event or confrontation that is likely to decide the final outcome of a situation : the high noon of his quest for the presidential nomination. [ORIGIN: pop...

Robert Rossen's scalding tale of drunken love and billiards is as powerful today as it was forty some years ago. Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, and The Great One (Jackie Gleason) all bring their roles to gritty life. Even Martin Scorsese's color follow-up, The Color of Money, with all its cinematic bravado, cannot hold a candle to the stark black and white-ness of this amazing cinemat...

James Whale's 1935 follow-up to his film Frankenstein is a tour-de-force of gothic story-telling and all around ghoulish fun. Karloff adds another layer to his portrayal of The Monster while the highly nostrilled Ernest Thesiger weirds everyone out as the alchemist Dr. Praetorius.

Mix together equal parts Gable, Monroe, Wallach, and Clift, garnish with Miller and stir with John Huston and you've got one of the most bizarre cinematic cocktails. One has to wonder whether Huston gathered the three "doomed" stars for their talent or for all the emotional baggage they carried. For whatever reason, it worked. Gable in particular is amazing as the worn-out leader and hunter of the...

What better way to start of 2008 than with the Three Stooges?? And here they are in their sole Oscar-nominated short from 1934, Men In Black! Listen to the Film Guys completely befuddle Niki Dakota with their brilliant philosobabble!

John Lasseter's ground breaking feature set the stage for the digital animation explosion and, for good or ill, this type of animation is here to stay, effectively eradicating traditional animation in its wake. Fortunately Toy Story has what it takes to be a "keeper" and a Perfect Movie. Good story, great characters, wonderful music, sublime animation. Oh that more films, real or animated, could b...