Random Acts of Cinema

1.  One.  Un.  Eins.  Welcome to the first episode of the Spirit Guides… is what I would say if we watched the films of the Criterion Collection in numerical order.  It took us nearly seven seasons, but we've finally been assigned spine number one: Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion .  Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and (scene-stealing) Erich von Stroheim, trace the lives of prisoners-of-war and their...

This week we are joined by special guest Max to (sub in for Mike and) discuss one of the great concert films of all time.  Music.  Death.  Controversy.  The Rolling Stones and the directing trio of the Maysle brothers and Catherine Zwerin find themselves in the middle of a decade-defining disaster: 1969's free concert at Altamont. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a ra...

Huh… Apparently Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made a few movies together. Wonder if this one is any good? *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937).

Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.  These are the things that you come to Random Acts of Cinema for.  Paul Thomas Anderson almost manages to reach our podcastly levels of hedonism and vice in his late 90s indie apogee covering the late 70s porn apogee. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'...

Imagine a world where, whenever you think you are alone, there are always a bunch of dudes in trench coats quietly standing behind you and resting their hands on your shoulder.  And they can read your mind.  And they talk about you to their friends.  And sometimes they sneak into your dreams. Now imagine that there is nothing creepy about that and it's actually very reassuring.  And that maybe we...

Andrew Haigh directs a totally-not-boring movie about people talking about a marriage that seems find but maybe it really isn't.  But, like I said, in a totally-not-boring way. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and r...

Did you know that the Beatles also made movies?!?  Yeah, so did we. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Andrew Haigh 45 Years  (2015).

This is not your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate's neo-noir western.  This is John Sayle's interrogating generational legacies of racism, corruption, compromise, and passion in a south Texas border town. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead f...

Come listen to two woodworkers talk about this one guy who specializes in wooden bench-style kung fu. Oh, and Jackie Chan is in it also.  I guess he directs it too. But let's get back to this bench… *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we wil...

"Once a lawyer, always a drunkard, and now looking like 2010s David Bowie."  So says newly-minted gangster "Rolls Royce" Wensel describing himself to the POSSIBLY love of his life, the daring thief "Bull" Weed.  And it turns out that this, the first American gangster movie (yay!), was also a love triangle (boo!). *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our m...

A classic Bergman film. Well, a classic Martin Bergman film. About Temecula.  Where your favorite podcast hosts first met.  Anyway… two neurotic New Yorkers - with ulterior motives - take on a couple of quick gigs in the wine country of (southern) California. Perhaps romance is in the air for this strangely legit cast? *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at...

Content warning: This episode addresses a film that explicitly addresses issues related to and depicts the actions of violent sexual assault. Director Martha Coolidge blends drama and documentary in an unflinching consideration of her rape as a younger woman.  Ostensibly a dramatic recreation of the events surrounding and during the assault, she breaks through the dramatic wall to discuss the proj...

Who's ready for an anthology movie about mostly Americans in France writing about mostly not Americans in France for an imagined audience of mostly Americans in America?  And sometimes everyone speaks French.  But mostly they don't.  Wes Anderson works with his ever-growing company of highest-profile players to construct this triptych of art and insanity, love and revolution, and food and crime.  ...

Dead or alive, you're listening to me.  Paul Verhoeven somehow achieves both badass copaganda action movie and cutting satire of American violence, consumerism, corporate greed, and bad TV. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be dis...

Seijun Suzuki dreams up yet another ever-so-slightly-surreal Yakuza picture.  Thank god. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and more! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1987).

That Pat Brennan… what a man!  Come listen to us face an ethical quandary when we stumble upon a real treasure of a western, that is still undeniably a 1950s western.  What am I talking about?  Let's just say that it can be summed up in two words: Henry Silva. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and...

The more you learn about this movie, the more clear it becomes that what you'd think to be the good parts are the bad parts, and that the bad parts are really the good parts. Making movies is hard.  Sidney Lumet directs a visually stunning reimagining of the Wizard of Oz and then some other stuff is in it too. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  mer...

We know y'all are some nasty freaks out there who have been waiting a long time for this one to drop.   Guy Madden comes back with an irreverently cinematic fake/real/fake documentary about his home town of Winnipeg.   It's black and white, it's out of focus, the cuts are fast and many.   It's psycho-sexual.   It's arty AF.   Is he going to vignette any shots?   Uh, yeah. *Come support the podcast...

Samuel Fuller turns a critical eye on the state of mental health treatment in the United States to, uh… well, not really.  Mostly he just uses a stage theater's idea of a mental hospital as a narrative device for exploring three major American anxieties in the 1960s.  Want to complain about nukes?  Have a patient do a one-man show for a while about how we went insane after building them.  And you...

Documentarian of the ages Errol Morris turns his gentle eye toward the old fellers of a small town in Florida and just sort of lets them do their thing.  Talking about gobblers, wigglers, growing sand, ambidexterity, fake (or maybe real) jewels, seeing the perfection of God in nature, and the magical definition of the word "therefore." *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love...

Gillo Pontecorvo directs a cast of unknowns in his big swing on the historical action/drama about a British agent sent to use all of his cynical wile to foment a slave revolt on Portuguese colony island. Keep careful eye out for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Marlon Brando at his understated best. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch store...

Roberto Rossellini travels length of the Italian peninsula in the immediate aftermath of WWII to share 6 stories about the lives of Italian civilians and partisans and their relationships with foreign Allied troops.  Love, tragedy, heroism, and sacrifice result from the difficulties of communicating purpose and need of individuals confronted with the inhumane machine of war. *Come support the podc...

What does it mean to die?  What does it mean to truly live… on a road trip across Spain with Terence Stamp, John Hurt, and Tim Roth in a giant white Mercedes Benz?  Director Stephen Frears grabbles with these enduring questions in his sun-soaked take-down of the neo noir.  Ten Years after snitching on his compatriots, a criminal in hiding is rousted from his dreamy Spanish village life by two hit...

One, two monks kneel before you That's what I said now Monks, monks who adore you Just go ahead now One has diamonds in his pockets And that's some bread now This one says he has tuberculosis It's in his lungs now… Juan Bustillo Oro takes us on a Rashomon-esque journey into nightmarish memory in this 1930s Mexican classic. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gif...

Finally, a movie comes along with the guts to ask the question: can you be a Fourierist AND a Vebleninian at the same time?  Explore this question and more at the Manhattan debutante ball season after parties of Whit Stillman's career defining entrée about class, love, and pretentious discussion topics. *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our  merch stor...