Full Cast And Crew

Accompanied by their children (Dana Barron, Anthony Michael Hall), Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), are driving from Illinois to a California amusement park. As Clark increasingly fixates on a beautiful woman driving a sports car, the Griswolds deal with car probl ems and the death of a family member...and a dog. They reach Los Angeles, but, when Clark worries t...

The understated, minimalist 'Flash Gordon' showed admirable restraint in scenery, costuming, and acting.  JUST KIDDING, it's a completely over-the-top circus spectacle of indulgence and various aspects of a film crew working on movies with vastly different tones except they're all working on the same movie.  But FLASH means a lot to a lot of people, notably middle-aged white men who were 6 in 1980...

Local Hero  is a 1983 Scottish comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster. Up-and-coming Houston oil executive "Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small vil...

We turned 40!  OK, 40 episodes but still, from the comfortable vantage point of wisdom and jaded experience, we look back on Bob Fosse's groundbreaking autobiographical takedown of the myths of himself, 1979's 'All That Jazz'.  Featuring the innovative "Fosse Time" editing, more iconic imagery (or "pretty pictures" as Fosse would call snapshots of his choreography) than you can shake a bowler hat...

More cigarettes were consumed during the filming of Barbet Schroeder's 'Reversal Of Fortune' than during the filming of George Clooney's 'Goodnight And Good Luck'.  And that's saying something! Also: WOW that Felicity Huffman cameo hasn't aged well, has it?  Oh the irony.  Ron Silver acts the hell out of a pair of  eyeglasses, and Glenn Close is unreasonably good in a movie that's often as odd as...

Public Enemy's churning, propulsive 'Fight The Power" was like a Batman logo swirling in the air across America in 1989 as Spike Lee's 3rd feature 'Do The Right Thing' hit theaters to the kind of fearful white fright and tut tutting from "thinkers" and reviewers too hidebound in their own bubble to receive this transmission from a filmmaker perfectly formed to speak in his films in a way no mainst...

1987's 'Robocop' is a brilliantly dark and funny social satire about a far-off time when powerful corporations have undue influence over society and overly-militarized police forces terrorize innocent civilians.  GOOD THING THAT NEVER HAPPENED!  We dive into Paul Verhoeven before Joe Ezsterhas got his hooks in him and 'Showgirls' became synonymous with 'career-ending bomb', and not in a good way. 

2004's 'Mean Girls' was a 'Heathers' for a new generation and was directed by the brother of the guy who wrote 'Heathers' which is so weird, right?  Featuring a star performance by LiLo, SNL alum Tim Meadows' best film work, and Tina Fey's brilliant script, 'Mean Girls' redefined the High School Movie and we give it its due with return Friend Of The Pod Alex Potter, who comes back for her 2nd LiLo...

Jonathan Demme's 1991 'Silence Of The Lambs' is one of only three films to ever win "The Big Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  It was an unconventional film in so many interesting and unique ways: female protagonist navigating two violently dangerous serial killers but also the male-populated world that looks down on and is d...

Jack Finney's 1955 science-fiction novel 'The Body Snatchers' is maybe the only underlying intellectual property (aside from, like, the Bible or Shakespeare) to inspire FOUR feature film versions across 6 decades.  So we start at the beginning with the fantastic Don Siegel (Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, Charlie Varrick) directed 1956 version, morph into uncanny likenesses of ourselves as we g...

It's been called "a perfect movie. I can't think of literally one thing that could be changed or improved".  OK, our guest Frank DeRuggiero said that, but he has only one tattoo and its a Jaws tattoo so he knows from whence he speaks.  Not only do we get into all the great moments from THE iconic scare-movie of all time, but we also discuss the waterlogged giant paperback of Jaws every family on v...

Well now we got bad blood, cause CHRIS, see...he's one of those people who LOVES 'Ishtar' and thinks it's a misunderstood classic of epic comedic proportions, and Jason is one of those rational, thinking humans who understands intuitively (ok after watching only 45 minutes of it) that it's a colossal failure.  Also, Chris quotes Hamlet in defense of the also-maligned 1970's failed musical '1776' o...

When a movie pitch contains the words "Based on the popular board game" you KNOW you're either in for a debacle of 'Battleship' (sorry, Peter Berg) proportions OR for the brilliantly subversive 1985 film that has become a cult classic and features the brilliant comedy performances of Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Martin Mull, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Michael McKean, and Lesley Ann Warren.  T...

'Grease' is the word, it's got groove it's got feeling, and so does this in-depth podcast about the 40-years-and-counting worldwide phenomenon.  Why does this weird movie (and it's deeply weird) stand the test of time?  Easy: TRAVOLTA, SONGS, and KITSCH.  And so many other reasons. So yes; we'll get into Sandy and Danny and the gang and the great performances from Didi Conn, Stockard Channing, and...

James L. Brooks' feature directorial debut 'Terms Of Endearment' has been soiling hankies for 36 years.  ELEVEN Academy Award nominations.  Stellar performances from Jack Nicholson, Shirley MacClain, Debra Winger, and John Lithgow.  We also get into the haunting brilliance of the theme to Brooks' tv masterpiece 'Taxi', his surprising involvement in some of the most distinctive American film comedi...

We revisit the brilliant, still-vital "Heathers", THE definitive American High School movie, whose biting satire only barely covers the sensitive, beating, romantic heart that lies within.  Featuring star-making performances from Christian Slater and a 16-year-old Winona Ryder, "Heathers" is a dark, pulls-no-punches social satire that aims arrows in every direction, including at the misguided teen...

Keanu. Swayze.  Busey. Bodhi. Utah. Two.  There's simplistic poetry in Katharine Bigelow's 'Point Break' that, sure, you could miss if you were some kind of cinephile or something. But that would be to willfully deprive yourself of the many joys, expected and otherwise, of this fantastic, genre-busting actioner.  Swayze is simply iconic. It's a movie about chemistry, and we don't just mean the sur...

Terry Gilliam's 1986 masterpiece 'Brazil' has been called an Orwellian retro-futurist fantasy; a Political cartoon writ large; a Science-fiction masterpiece; not at all Science-fiction more like a documentary; a treatise on the unthinking rigidity of middle-management bureaucracy; a selfish landmark and memento of a life gone terribly wrong; a viking musical;  about the impossibility of escaping r...

It's a #tbt of sorts here at FCAC as we release our episode  on Spike Lee's (now) Oscar-winning feature, BLACKKKLANSMAN, which we recorded a few weeks ago. We discuss Spike, his career, the real Ron Stallworth, yacht rock, a couple movies we seem to have trouble remembering names of, and how this is an antidote for GREEN BOOK. Plus our reactions to the Oscar Noms, as well as Rants and Raves. Why a...

This week Jason and Chris are joined by guest co-host Gordon Ramsey (not the one you're thinking of ...) to discuss John Boorman's 1974 overstuffed, peerlessly ambitious, and deeply considered passion project, Zardoz! We address the question that has dogged viewers of the film as well as anyone who casually came across a still of Sean Connery's costume: What the hell is this about? Nihilism, gener...

Oh What A Tangled Web Of 'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse' Hot Takes We Weave!   Is it the greatest Spider-Man movie ever? Is it the greatest animated superhero movie ever?  Is it the greatest Marvel movie ever?? Look Out/Here Come The Hot Takes! Charles Mingus, Ralph Bakshi, all sorts of unexpected connections spring forth, which, if you know anything about us, is kind of our raisin detra, whic...

This week we dive into Disney's 'Escape To Witch Mountain', a superlative 1970's effort about telekinetic orphaned siblings fleeing the evil clutches of a business man determined to use their predictive abilities for financial gain.  Ray Milland, Donald Pleasance, and Eddie Albert lend their distinctive abilities to the effort, and a roster of studio-system pro actors rounds out the cast. And lest...

Wendell B. Harris, Jr won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival with his debut independent feature "Chameleon Street", a fictional retelling of the incredible life of professional imposter William Douglas Street, a man who pretended to be lawyers, reporters, students and doctors, even performing 36 successful hysterectomies.   "Chameleon Street" announced the arrival of a fully-f...

2019's Oscars played like a sequel to the 2017 Oscars ... but without the happy ending. Jason and Chris break down (sorta) the ceremony; the set, the winners, the losers, the songs, the snubs, and the question of why we're even talking about this stuff. Come for the praise of Billy Porter's tux-gown, stay for Olivia Coleman's speech!

LETTTTTT THE RIVER RUNNNNNNN.....Teased hair, eye-shadow that matches your earrings, a 10 o'clock with Slater and lunch with Mr. Trask at 1 downtown.  It's WORKING GIRL and it's got fantastic casting, superlative directing from Mike Nichols and, at the center, a singular performance from Melanie Griffith and another scene-stealing romp from Joan Cusack alongside excellent work from Alec Baldwin, S...