Full Cast And Crew

Chris Smith and Sarah Price's Sundance-winning first documentary feature, 'American Movie,' remains an iconic and thoroughly modern film to revisit or to experience for the first time. Like all truly great documentaries, it's ostensibly about a finite thing: hardscrabble, complicated Midwestern working-class 30-year-old lives at home, delivers newspapers, works at a local cemetery, and has big dre...

The sequel to Denis Villeneuve's 'Sicaro' is an impressive off-ramp from the first film's focus on drug cartels trafficking narcotics and stacking bodies. Italian director Stefano Sollima (Gomorra, ZeroZeroZero) focuses more intently on Josh Brolin's Matt Graver and Benicio Del Toro's Alejandro Gillick characters, as they face a (final?) confrontation with the outer limit of their own moral codes....

Denis Villeneuve's film 'Sicario' remains a vital and prescient glimpse into extra-judicial Governmental activities and the blurring of lines on both sides of the drug war, all brilliantly rendered by top-notch cinematography from Roger Deakins and a host of career-best performances from actors like Emily Blunt, James Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya, and, especially, Benicio Del Toro.  Harrowing, procedura...

An appreciation of the life and musical legacy of the peerless and uniquely self-deprecating Grateful Dead co-founder and éminence grise.

For my final episode of 2025, it's 'Nobody's Fool' one of my favorite films, and a true comfort watch in keeping with the theme of last week's episode.  Sweet, subtle, well-cast and directed, and slyly much more than it seems, it's both a paen to small-town life and a surprisingly unblinking look at the cost children pay for their parent's mistakes...and for the ones they make all on their own.

The news is unrelenting. Shootings in Bondi Beach.  Terror in the classrooms at Brown University.  The terrible deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife in LA.  The news is shocking and we become numb to the rippling effects but our minds and bodies internalize the fear, anxiety, and worry.  As I am between episodes at the moment, I thought it might be different to try and episode highlighting the calmin...

From a chance viewing of Saul Bass' iconic 'Psycho' titles on TCM sprung this exploration of the straightforward, human experience of watching 'Psycho' with an eye and ear towards how audience expectations were stoked and then subverted by Hitchcock. From the casting of Janet Leigh to the surprise departure of her character not even halfway through the film, the film toys with audience expectation...

This final episode about Milos Forman's brilliant and deeper-than-expected masterpiece adaptation of Ken Kesey's very 1960's novel explores the subtle emotional power of the film's editing and how it establishes certain critical scenes.  Praise for the depth and intelligence of Nicholson's acting while also appreciating Brad Dourif and the late Will Sampson's performance as the Chief are also indu...

Part 2 of my deep dive into Milos Forman's incredible 1975 film 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. In Part 2 I get into a handful of scenes from the first third of the film: the introduction of Nurse Ratched, the first time we meet McMurphy, the sit-down between McMurphy and Dr. Spivey, and the first few scenes on the ward with the fellas and the nurses.

Leaving behind one iconic adaptation of a popular novel in 'The Exorcist' and picking up another with this introductory episode about 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', Milos Forman and Bo Goldman's film based on Ken Kesey's counter-culture classic novel.  In this episode, I cover some of the film's journey from page to screen and from father to son(s). Casting, pre-production delays, and some con...

Finishing up my four-part exploration of The Exorcist, this episode considers the film's exorcism scenes, its ambiguous ending, and lasting legacy.  My newfound appreciation for the towering achievement represented by this film is perhaps news only to me, but totally genuine nonetheless.

In Part 3 of my multi-part deep dive re-exploration of William Friedkin's 1973 masterpiece 'The Exorcist' I take a detailed look at the filmmaking in the first half of the movie.  Considering the Northern Iraq sequence, the Georgetown sequences, Father Karras in NYC, and the Medical sequences featuring Regan up to and including the hypnotism scene. The absolute mastery of camera movement choices a...

The 2nd episode in a series of episodes about 'The Exorcist' is inspired by my rewatch of the film.  My original plan: to meticulously dissect each of three sections of the film in three subsequent episodes.  My new plan? To get this episode filled with my enthusiastic and emotional reactions out to you ASAP.  And to follow with two subsequent episodes if the interest (and downloads) are there.  ...

In this first of a multi-part exploration of William Friedkin's ground-breaking and massively successful adaptation of William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel 'The Exorcist': Friedkin & DP Owen Roizman coming off 'The French Connection' and into 'The Exorcist' Casting travails involving Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, and Audrey Hepburn. Jason Miller and Ellen Burstyn wil...

Here's the 2nd and final episode of my 'Back to the Future' revisit, enjoy! Huey Lewis guitarist Chris Hayes plays his signature parts from 'Power of Love'.  

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...