Random Acts of Cinema

The first true B-movie entry into our randomized journey through the Criterion Collection starts with a mushroom cloud of a bang.  Spencer Gordon Bennett's The Atomic Submarine (1959) follows the intrepid crew of the US Navy Submarine Tiger Shark as it sails to the North Pole to hunt down a mysterious extra-terrestrial threat. That's right: it's U.F.O.'s underwater!  Is this film classic schlock,...

We follow up last week's selection with one of the Hollywood classics that inspired it.  Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows  melodrama challenges conservative America's expectations of age, class, and femininity as it follows an unconventional romance set against a backdrop of a quaint New England community.  Lauded as one of the paragon's of the so-called "women's films" of mid-century studio...

Holding onto the dream of bourgeois America has never seemed so impossible, stupid, crass, and funny as in Jon Waters' Polyester (1981).  Divine heads up a cast of Waters-regulars and boorish newcomers to tell the story of the dissolution of Francine Fishpaw's family as it succumbs to adulatory, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug addiction, hooliganism, murder, and a lot of real-world smells than...

Bowie! Sakamoto! Obsession! Uh, POW camp! And...war atrocities!? Torture? Ritual suicide? A subtle exploration of the despondency of an officer in charge of a prison camp facing the different cultural interpretations of the honor of surrendering while simultaneously tormented by his absence at the coup d'etat and subsequent executions of his comrades during the February 26 incident of 1939?  Why,...

Stylistic pastiche. Symmetrical framing. Murray. Schwartzman. 1960s-centric jukebox soundtrack. It looks like this must be our first Wes Anderson movie. A tale of young love set against scouting, parents in a failing marriage, a lovelorn "cop", and an oncoming storm of the century combine to either charm or annoy Mike and Charlie. But which is it?   If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's fil...

We're back into The Collection with another heavy-hitter. And it's our first foray into the French New Wave film's of Francois Truffaut. Paris! Kidnapping! Murder! Secret identities! Flashbacks! Shoot-outs in the snow! Oddly-subtitled novelty songs!  Does this movie really have it all?! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Wes Anderson's Moonrise K...

Is the 11th episode the right time for a podcast retrospective? It is if you need to hand out a bunch of prestigious Randies, the official awards of the Random Acts of Cinema podcast. Come join us as we put order to all of the randomness by deciding which of the first 10 films we've watched are the best of the best by category.  If you'd like to listen ahead for next week's review, we'll be watchi...

Hitchock.  Bergman.  Peck.  And...Salvador Dali?  Sounds about right. Let's see whether or not using psychoanalysis and the combined dream-logic of cinema and surrealist art as devices to advance the plot of a thriller actually works.   If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, well, we won't be watching one.  Instead, we are going to be hosting the first Rando Awards of 2019.  We will be...

In our first break from format we're following up last week's movie - The Mikado (1939) - with a film exploring the men behind that comic opera: Gilbert and Sullivan. At first, Mike Leigh's historical drama does some work to explain the circumstances that led to setting The Mikado in imperial Japan, and the second seeks to humanize that choice my exploring the efforts and daily dramas of the entir...

Imagine it's 1939.  The world stands at the precipice of war.  So why not make a film adaptation of a classic English comic opera set in Imperial Japan, but all of the character and place names are silly baby-talk?  And this reliance of nonsense serves as a stand-in for "foreign" which is contrasted against a view of Japanese culture as arbitrarily cruel and hidebound to antiquated and contradicto...

This random number generator selection process that we're using seems to be doing the trick. For what better way to follow up a 1960s Czech medieval drama than a 1980s British coming-of-age comic drama? Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Laundrette is just what we needed. Th-Th-Th-Th-Thatcher. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be reviewing and discussing Victor Shertzinger's  Th...

Now we're getting into it. This is the real deep-level Criterion Collection stuff here. Legendary - but largely unknown in the U.S. - all-time Czech historic cinema: František Vláčil's 1967 medieval epic Marketa Lazarova .  Feuding clans must contend with themselves, the Holy Roman Empire, and the occasional mad Christian preacher. Have we found our first hidden gem, or is this the first sign that...

This is the second of two iconic Japanese filmmakers in a row.  Last week we went big with Kurosawa so that can only mean Yasujiro Ozu is next.  His Autumn Afternoon of 1962 brings us into the gentlest of domestic dramas.  But can it possibly be... too gentle? If you'd like to watch ahead fro next week's film, we'll be reviewing and discussing František Vláčil's Marketa Lazarova (1967).

This is a big one. If we were to compile our top 10 most "classic" Criterion titles, this film would be somewhere on that list.  Probably.  At least that's what we are going to find out for sure in this weeks review of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon of 1950.  Our first foray into Japanese cinema! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's films, we'll be reviewing and discussing Yasujiro Ozu's An Aut...

What's the perfect follow-up to a gritty tale of crime in 1981 Chicago? Why, it could only be a 1964 Italian social satire of love, family, Sicilian customs, and the law!  Pietro Germi's Seduced and Abandoned introduces us to our first Criterion comedy.  Linen suits and dolly zooms! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we'll be reviewing and discussing Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950...

We jump forward 26 years to go on a caper with Michael Mann's Thief of 1981. It's got everything: perpetually wet city streets, magic hour danish, and an entirely non-comedic performance by Jim Belushi (some things never change...zing!)

We're off to a truly grand start of our self-determined but entirely aimless journey through the Criterion Collection with Sir Laurence Olivier's 1955 filmed adaptation of William Shakespeare's Richard III . Come for the acting, but stay for the hats! If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we'll be reviewing and discussing Michael Mann's Thief (1981).

Quiet on the set! Before we start watching movies, come an meet your hosts: Mike and Charlie. We lay out the structure and rules of the podcast, discuss why we wanted to do this in the first place, and select our first film. Tune in next week for our inaugural review of Lawrence Olivier's Richard III (1955).