Random Acts of Cinema

Oh! The past! The past! Now we've done it.  We've made mother cross.  Imagine that sort of text and occasional narration over a feature length, black and white, largely-silent film comprised of quick cuts, sporadic sound effects, and haunting imagery.  Guy Maddin's experimental film is about an adult Guy (Erik Steffen Maas) recalling his childhood (as young Guy, played by Sullivan Brown) on an isl...

With Akira Kurosawa's (ever heard of him?) seminal detective procedural, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune - ever heard of him?) and worldly but hardly hard-bitten senior detective Sato (Takashi Shimura - ever heard of him?!) hunt through the post-war Tokyo underworld looking for a stolen handgun, hoping to stop an escalating murder-spree in the sweltering summer heat.  Among the topics di...

We're running from the law again with our boy Hitch(cock).  This time with an earlier film in his esteemed oeuvre as we join two equally young and equally innocent fugitives - Erica (Nova Pilbeam) and Robert (Derrick De Marney) - in a race to prove their...uh...youth and innocence.  Anyway, it's a romantic and comedic romp through the English countryside.  Witty, adorable, thrilling, tender, and,...

We've been dancing around this subject long enough.  And how could we not when the Criterion Collection is our subject of inquiry? But we've finally hit the nail on the head.  We've got ourselves a 100% genuine mid-century Scandinavian crisis-of-faith movie.  And by director Ingmar Bergman no less.  A pastor named Tomas (played by perfect-pastor-haircut Gunnar Björnstrand) quietly and with tremend...

Our first Jean Gabin film!  He plays the eponymous thief, clever and charming, hiding out in the maze-like Casbah of Algiers - a hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one under the direction of Julien Duvivier.  Local and French police are helpless to smoke out Pépé and his merciless but loyal cohort until Gaby, a beautiful tourist tourist played by Mirielle Balin, catches his eye.  Obsessio...

Steven Soderbergh really surprised us with this 1993 coming-of-age story set on the mean streets of 1930s St. Louis.  Because we had never heard of it.  Hard to believe that this nostalgia-bomb was missed by the two 90s kid hosts of this podcast.  Based on the memoirs A. E. Hotchner, the film stars Jesse Bradford as Aaron, left to fend for himself against an onslaught of petty cops, bullies, bellb...

Note: This episode's discussion and the film we are discussing, explicitly recounts the brutal methods, unimaginable suffering, and lingering trauma of the Holocaust.  Sensitive listeners may want to skip this one and join us next week. The hosts of Random Acts of Cinema shy away neither from films of exceptional length nor films with difficult subject matter.  But the double impact of both in Cla...

Dissatisfied youth, repressed sexuality, and nihilism running rampant in the dysfunctional Italian family unit is the theme of the week on Random Acts of Cinema. Director Marco Bellocchio's cruel, bitter little film about Alessandro (played by Lou Castel) thinning out the ranks of his crumbling family through self-obsessed cruelty and murder is punctuated by brilliant photography, powerful acting,...

With his nearly 30-years-in-the-making thematic trilogy, director/poet Jean Cocteau uses innovative film techniques and diverse strategies steeped in personal and classical mythology to consider the needs, methods, obstacles, and curse of the creative mind and the creative life.  First with his groundbreaking The Blood of a Poet (1930), non-narrative sequencing and "not surrealist" (but totally su...

We are joined by Michael Patrick Jann, film and television writer/director and member of The State to discuss his personal pick: Wong Kar-wai's frenetic romantic masterpiece Chungking Express.  Two stories, each with a lovesick cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) and a self-possessed woman (Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong) navigating Hong Kong and exploring themes of love, heartbreak, street food, a...

Alfonso Cuarón's drama-behind-the-drama has all of the trappings of a semi-autobiographical period piece.  Meticulously recreated clothing, cars, furniture, street settings, and contemporaneous political turmoil are set largely in the eponymous neighborhood as a failing marriage takes its toll on a family.  But of course the real protagonist is one of the maids, Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio) w...

In the promotional material for Lo Wei's  The Big Boss  (also known by a few other film titles) break-out star Bruce Lee is seen flying through the air, shirt half-torn from his body, contorted into a now-iconic running jump kick, certain to be delivered to the face of some punk to glorious effect.  But does the movie pay-off with this acrobatic feat of violence, as promised on the poster?  Yeah:...

It's a miracle I even made it out of Longwood alive.  This town full of men with big mouths and no guts.  I mean if you can just picture it: Wim Wenders made a nearly 5 hour long, globetrotting movie in 1991 predicting the technology, geopolitical concerns, and digital addictions of the 21st century with remarkable foresight.  Solveig Dommartin heads up a luminous cast, redressed in 90s future noi...

Director Kon Ichikawa's  The Makioka Sisters , based on the book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, catalogs the domestic dramas of the eponymous four women and their family circle in 1930s Japan.  Matchmaking, marriage, and the juggling of suitors for the youngest two siblings become complicated by stubborn personalities, dwindling status in society, and the shame of past scandals.  The demanding pressure o...

Content Disclaimer: This episode examines a film with extremely challenging subject matter.  Exceptionally graphic depictions of violence, murder, racism, and brutal sexual assault are both celebrated and trivialized in Remy Belvaux's  Man Bites Dog.   Listeners who are sensitive to such content and the frank discussion of it are strongly encouraged not to listen to this episode.  The hosts dislik...

After months of campaigning and hype, constant drama and re-selection of the hosts, and hours of red carpet interviews, it's finally happening.  Looking back of the year of randomly chosen (and a few guest-selected) films we select and discuss the best of the arbitrary best.  Who goes home with their hearts and career-hopes crushed?  And who walks away with the most coveted award for excellence fo...

We are joined this week by the hosts of the podcast Chapter One: Take Two - Briana McZant and Maddy McZant - to look deep into the eyes of Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire.  This one has it all: portraits of ladies, ladies on fire, portraits of ladies on fire, portraits of ladies that are literally on fire, and even a painting titled Portrait of a Lady on Fire that really isn't a portra...

This week we are joined by special-guest Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State ) to talk about a powerful and hilarious film: Charlie Chaplin's  The Great Dictator . So, you know when fed-up people call fascists on their practices and they respond by saying they aren't "technically" fascists?  So then they are pressured to walk back their language a little bit and the criticism gets al...

Following the random selection and then explicit demand of AJ from the Cult Popture podcast, we're dipping back into the Showa-era Godzilla films, with Jun Fukuda's  Son of Godzilla .  We're joined by longtime friend and Godzilla-expert Angie to help us make sense of this eighth(!) entry into the franchise.   This time, there's a baby Godzilla, a remote weather experiment station on a pacific isla...

Jane Campion's filmed adaptation of the memoirs of celebrated New Zealand poet and author Janet Frame offers a desperately poignant and often devastating account of childhood and womanhood in the twentieth century.  Played by three different actors at three different periods of her life, Frame's tender spirit and social anxieties make for a life of modestly monumental triumphs and gut-wrenching pe...

Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's acclaimed memoir is a diatribe against Nixonian America, account of a motorcycle race, drug travelogue, and only now the kind of advertisement that the Las Vegas chamber of commerce could get behind.  But it's really the story of Thompson's proxy Raoul Duke's (played by Johnny Depp channeling a sort of mumbly Jim Carrey) desperately trying to chan...

Sometimes all you need is a little classic Hollywood glamour.  Jean Arthur and Cary Grant put on some saucy hats and deliver just that it is this action/adventure story about the daring lives of... uh... postal service pilots and the women who love them.  Don't worry: Howard Hawks figures out how to make this work with the combination of thrilling special effects, edge-of-your seat danger, and the...

You know what would just be wonderful right about now?  A delightful and beloved French farce.  Edouard Molinaro's classic tale of two gay nightclub owners' attempt to put on a show of conservative domesticity in order to trick a right-wing politician into allowing their son to marry his daughter isn't exactly timeless - in that it is SO set in 1978 - but it's charm and hilarious send-up of straig...

Danny Boyle is on the board!  And in uncharacteristic fashion, we're actually taking a look at the earlier film of a celebrated director rather than some weird, later period film.  The randomness of our system was bound to get it right eventually.  And the result is a gripping 90s thriller about three Scottish flat mates descending into madness, paranoia, and betrayal after the discovery of a bag...

On this week's episode we turn the podcast up to eleve... Oh god.  What am I doing?  What have I become?  With all of these quotable lines, super-clever improv, bad accents, hilarious songs, and tight, tight pants, will we be able to manage even a half-coherent conversation about Rob Reiner's groundbreaking "rockumentary" parody  This Is Spinal Tap ?   If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's...