Random Acts of Cinema

Ivan Reitman, the master of the 1980s family-friendly action comedy, steps boldly into the 90s with a playful reinvention of one of the most singular R-rated action movie marquee names of the 20th-century: Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He plays detective John Kimble, an intimidating and violent cop who must transition to the gentler persona and methods of a small-town kindergarten teacher in order to un...

For Charlie's annual birthday episode, his very good friend Mike has chosen Terence Young's filmed adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel Dr. No.  That's right, there's technically a James Bond movie in the Criterion Collection.  And since the birthday boy is a super-fan, eager for a soapbox upon which to blurt out decades of pent-up interpretations, criticisms, and hot takes, get ready for a wild ride...

In a kind of alternate universe version of Trois Colours: Bleu , Juliette Binoche finds herself once more playing a Parisian woman, with an artistic bent, having lost her husband and daughter, navigating a second life in a search for new love and purpose.  Except that this time no one is dead; she's just divorced.  And rather than mourning her way from one brilliant visual to another to satisfy a...

This week we are joined by podcaster Alexei Toliopolous (@ThisisAlexei) of Total Reboot , Finding Desperado , and Finding Drago  to discuss his pick: Australian director Gillian Armstrong's first feature film My Brilliant Career.  This groundbreaking film blends elements from the eponymous novel and biography of Miles Franklin, exploring her struggles for independence and creative success at the e...

Three-peat!  Director Akira Kurosawa's first color feature finds the tragedies and human strength in a small shantytown, inhabited by an ensemble cast each facing their own poverty-driven struggles. What follows is a categorization of the ways in which people contend with suffering: ranging from the inspiring and humorous, to the accepting and despairing. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week...

It's been a long time since we've had a musical on this podcast.  And this is a big one. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' adapt the stage musical (which is - sort of - and adaptation of Romeo and Juliet ) wherein two rival gangs sing and dance through fights and fight-dances and dance-fights.  Maria (Natalie Wood) and Tony (Richard Beymer) are our star-crossed lovers trying to secure their love in...

Acclaimed American director Sydney Pollack examines the lives of struggling New York City actors working on a competitive and fraught soap opera.  Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a talented, but difficult, and under appreciated actor who financial needs and uncompromising nature lead him to take a role as a woman, played by a woman.  Becoming an unexpected feminist icon, Michael further chall...

Shots of headlights in traffic, people going down escalators, whirring machinery in a factory, the Hoover dam, a lady smoking a cigarette, and a controlled demolition of a tenement high rise.  All this is made at once familiar and deeply profound with sublime photography and a pulsing Philip Glass score.  Godfrey Reggio's first entry in the "qatsi" trilogy revels in the splendor of isolation and a...

Get ready, Randy has picked another big one for us.  And he actually picked the first film by a celebrated director for once.  David Lynch's Eraserhead is such a desperately ambitious, risk-everything film that one is tempted to call it "groundbreaking" except for the fact that it's so unique in its vision and execution that you'd be hard pressed to name what it broke ground for.  Jack Nance plays...

This is a big one that we've been waiting for: Jean-Luc Godard's highly influential, widely lauded, experimental, sci-fi/noir mashup.  Hard bitten detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine)has traveled through space in his Ford Galaxy to Alphaville, to uncover the mystery of a missing scientist. He finds a a strange, sterile, funhouse mirror of 1965 Paris, ruled by a cold omnipresent computer.  W...

What happens when two seemingly incompatible masters of their craft with nothing to prove get together to make an discomforting powder keg character study that dramatically ratchets its way into a desperately... sweet romance?  You get director Paul Thomas Anderson's collaboration with Adam Sandler who plays Barry, a brow-beaten introvert who must contend with the demands of his bullying sisters,...

A couple of lonely hearts (played by Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco) find true love in this affecting documentary-style romanctic drama directed by Leonard Kastle.  Oh, and they con then kill a bunch of women across the United States, because these is actually a shockingly brutal ripped-from-the-headlines true crime film.  But I guess it's also that first thing too. If you'd like to watch ahead...

The back room boys are at it again!  That's right, we're jumping back into the endlessly charming (so far) films of Powell and Pressburger.  Sammy Rice (played by David Farrah) is a scientist working for an ill-defined problem-solving crew that the British government relies on for technical advice during the Second World War.  Will his ever-suffering girl Susan (Kathleen Byron) give him the suppor...

Julliette Binoche deadpans.  Sudden fade to black! Dum dum da dummmmm..!  Repeat that about four more times and you have one of the most iconic pieces of 1990s European cinema.  Does this formula hold up for two jaded cinephiles at the end of 2020?  The first installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski's ambitious Three Colours Trilogy doesn't pull any punches with his breathless character study of a woma...

If you are celebrated auteur Jean-Luc Godard, it's the 1960s, and your cranking out about 7 movies a year, the odds are strong that there's going to be some winners and losers in the mix.  And the question today is whether or not this picaresque travel film about a  married couple (played by Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc) braving the traffic jam, car crash, and cannibal-strewn French countryside to...

When you imagine the lead character in the Talented Mr. Ripley , do you picture a wild-eyed Dennis Hopper in coveralls and a cowboy hat wandering around 1977 Hamburg?  No?  Well apparently Wim Wenders was the only director bold enough to take Patricia Highsmith's legendary anti-hero in that...uh...specific direction.  But if that has scared you off, don't worry: the movie is mostly about Bruno Gan...

Who is up for a largely improvised drama set in poverty-stricken Thatcher-era London?  Anyone?  Ok, we get it, but what if we told you it was directed by Mike Leigh and it features early virtuoso performances by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman?  And that they aren't even the best part?  Hint: it's a acerbic but tender characterization by Phil Daniels as a wise-ass brother navigating the dole, neighborhoo...

Come join us as we discuss director G. W. Pabst's adaptation of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's legendary musical set in the London underwold.  Gang boss Mackie Messer (aka Mack the Knife played by Rudolf Forster) plots to marry Polly Peachum (Carola Neher) daughter of the beggar king, while his scorned lover Jenny (Lotte Lenya) seeks to have him arrested by police chief Tiger Brown (Reinhold Sch...

[Insert eye-rolling pun about dipping our toes back into familiar Waters here]... That's right, we're once more spending the day with the Dreamland Players, reveling in the trash and the wigs of Jon Waters' decades-long seedy send-up of American culture.  Divine smirks, whines, and stomps his way into our hearts as Dawn Davenport, following her sordid decline from dissatisfied youth to art experim...

Francois Truffaut (clearly famous mostly because he's mentioned in our theme song) crafts an oddly gentle love-triangle period piece, full of joy, friendship, understanding, frustration, and tragedy.  A kind of bohemian fusion of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Sarre) play two fast friends living in France on the precipice of World War I.  A chance encounter with...

It looks like Randy finally decided to pick for us a good, old-fashioned, big-budget, mid-century, historical war epic.  Michael Caine plays Peter O'Toole playing David Bowie as Michael Caine in the Role of Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead alongside Stanley Baker as Lieutenant John Chard: both men of hesitant bravery competing with one another for the command of a small regiment of British soldiers de...

Hey maaaan... remember the 60s?  Doesn't matter, because this isn't really that movie.  Unless your idea of the decade is an hilariously acerbic Richard E. Grant (as the eponymous Withnail) drunkenly rampaging through the English countryside screaming at river fish and ladies in tea shops. Paul McGann (...and I) is there to suffer along for the ride, giving and taking timeless quotes and stumbling...

As the spookiest of holidays approaches, Randy (the random number generator) has selected an appropriately themed film for us to watch.  That is, if we can handle all of these darn thrills and chills. But with Benjamin Christensen's seminal half-documentary/half-historical fiction approach to his study on the history of medieval witchcraft, a rapid-fire mix of visual delights and horrors leads the...

Will we be doing the entire episode doing our best Jack Nicholson impressions, or will we give this very serious movie the very serious attention it deserves?  The only way to find out is to join us as we discuss director Bob Rafelson's character study of modern alienation starring the man himself. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Benjamin Chri...

Oh boy.  Here's a blast from the not-so-nostalgic past.  Geoffrey Rush plays piano virtuoso David Helfgott, in Scott Hick's most 90s biopic of all 90s biopics.  Talent and determination are hindered by a domineering father and an unbridled ambition to be the best.  But the resulting mental breakdown isn't enough to stop the spirit of a genius. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we...