Random Acts of Cinema

"Bowie to Bowie… Come in Bowie…" So begins a completely unrelated piece of Bowie-related media that one of us wishes he watched instead. Come have a listen to find out which of us has the appetite (or patience?) for a Nicolas Roeg-directed 1970s dystopian science fiction film starring a beguiling and beloved pop star at the top of his game.  Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Ran...

Jean-Luc Godard returns to the podcast with a stylish and cunning exposé of modern French man.  Or rather, a study of how women deal with the intransigent, petulant, sometimes comical, and always fragile masculinity of the perpetually dissatisfied narcissists that demand their attentions.  Two such long-suffering women are played by Nathalie Baye and Isabelle Hubert as entirely pragmatic and fully...

Kabuki and 1950's studio style combine in Keisuke Kinoshita's lavish and heart-wrenching account of a rural Japanese family planning for and coping with the responsibilities and struggles of ubasute - a village's custom to carry elderly family members to a mountaintop in winter and abandon them.  Gorgeous set and production design add a compelling dynamism to an otherwise carefully plotted family...

Internationally-neglected Spanish auteur Luis García Berlanga enters the collection neither with a bang, a whimper, a chop, nor a zap… but with a silenced gasp.  His celebrated black comedy somehow managed to slip past Franco's censors to show us a man slowly, haplessly, and inevitably lured with only the best intentions to utterly compromise his moral values.  It's a dirty job, but somebody has t...

And with the coming of another Rando Awards, so too passes another season of Random Acts of Cinema.  Join us as we look back and reflect on all the bests and the worsts of a solid year of Criterion films. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server  here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and mor...

This podcast is dedicated to all podcasters who ever podcasted, all… Nevermind, Pedro Almodovar does it better in his tragic, heartwarming, found-family melodrama about an unlikely group of women who find one another in Barcelona.  Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random...

Costa-Gavras puts the viewer in the middle of a two-sided conspiracy of wrestle power in an unnamed South American nation.  At its heart: a rebel-led kidnapping scheme to force the police state to release political prisoners. Corruption, torture, murder, and terror - all sponsored and plotted out by American "advisors" - are exposed in this chilling procedural. Join our  Patreon and support the po...

You know that Scorsese movie that everyone always forgets about but also everyone says that it's really their favorite?  What seems at first glance to be just another 80s comedy reveals itself to be a highly cinematic exploration of one man's polite decent into maddening frustration.  And we're joined by Derrick Scocchera to help find our way back uptown. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!...

The real strength of Richard Linklater's day-in-the-life ensemble film isn't the cast of all-time 1990s heavy hitters. It isn't the meticulous recreation of 1976 Austin, Texas. It's not the teen comedy hijinks. It's not the banging soundtrack. It's more that all this combines to present to its film going audience a hyper-specific and long-lost subculture unlike any presented in the vast offerings...

At the beginning of the 20th century, a deranged serial killer was convicted of seducing, marrying, robbing, and murdering over a dozen women.  It is believed that he killed many, many more than that.  So the lovable Tramp himself, Charlie Chaplin, decided to portray him in a movie.  What's his light-hearted take on this unexpected premise?  Human society is diseased and nothing matters.  In a fun...

Director Henri-Georges Clouzot maps out one of the all-time great thrillers.  "Explosive" is the right word in all possible ways to describe this film. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *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'...

Is it about corporate greed run amok?  Class warfare?  Human indulgence?  Human suffering?  Uh… the hubris of man? Well, it's definitely not about some dumb diamond necklace.  Roy Ward Baker's all-time classic account of the sailing and sinking of the Titanic is far more than simply a blueprint for later, better retellings.  It may very well set the high watermark for them all. Join our  Patreon a...

Special guest Michael Patrick Jann brings us an almost-lost character study of a young woman lost in a world that doesn't value her existence. Director/Writer/Star Barbara Loden crafts a little drama, a little crime, and all the grimey Pennsylvania you can handle. Understated and sublime; American independent cinema by a singular filmmaker who was way ahead of her time.  Join our  Patreon and supp...

Jacques Demy's dazzlingly colorful palette that is perhaps more symphonic than it's grand romantic score, sets the stage for a musical about young love and the obstacles it must endure in modern France. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random gift at our merch store .  T...

Sweeping vistas! Dangerous men driven by greed, glory, honor, and obsession! Is this what acclaimed epic director David Lean has in store for us today?  Well… it does feature some dramatically filmed trains.  That's one of his things, right? Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you lov...

I can't help it if I'm scarred from too many bad 1980s and 90s comic book movie adaptations that weren't faithful to the source material.  I know it shouldn't matter.  Especially if the movie was made in the 1940s, it's directed by podcast-favorites Powell and Pressburger, and it's actually excellent. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here !...

Can we chalk this up as another Walter Matthau all-time slam-dunk that most people have never heard of? Or is this old man spy caper exactly what it looks like?  We are joined by the duo Brad and Jake from the Never Did it  podcast as we race across the globe in search of a potential antidote to Moonraker (which Charlie still thinks is a very good old man spy caper for some reason). Join our  Patr...

Singular-voiced American comedic auteur Bobcat Goldthwait writes, directs, and stars in his absurdist satire of the 1980s stand-up comedy scene reimagined as a grimey city infested with infighting sub-castes of clowns whose insecurities, addictions, and lack of talent lock them in a perpetual rut of demeaning gigs, black-out benders, and petty jealousies.  But one stands apart: Shakes.  Perhaps th...

René Lalou's timeless (well, maybe not exactly) hand drawn science fiction epic turns a skeptical eye on human systems of power in an unimaginable world of inhuman blue giants (that are somehow even more human).  You know: it's your basic Jack and the Beanstalk meets Avatar situation.  With better (by which I mean funkier) music. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of...

The good days are long past for Chan and Leung, a couple slowly drifting apart, and losing themselves in the oncoming wave of modernity consisting of unemployment, debt, loneliness, and alienation.  But since Edward Yang directed it, somehow it's all beautiful. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yoursel...

There was a time, believe it or not, when the channel Bravo was willing to pay for some "celebrities" and a camera crew to get out of their comfort zones, go on various excursions around the world, and watch the sparks fly as they bicker, backstab, and try to make "reality" look fun for the audiences back home. That time was 1991. Those celebrities were John Lurie, Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Matt Di...

Brett Morgen's expressionistic documentary seeks to sidestep the question of "which is the real David Bowie?" and instead sees the creation of his personas as just one strategy used by the performer to craft a life of continuous artistic challenge and innovation.  "Reinvention" isn't so much a gimmick used to promote album and ticket sales as it is the inevitable path of a creative life.  Oh, and...

Director Jacques Becker's belle epoque period drama about gangsters sets their lives on such a delicate balance between honor death that the eponymous pretty blonde is all it takes to bring it crashing down.  Would you say a "love quadrangle" or a "love square"? Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourse...

Indie director Melvin van Peebles' one film for Columbia Pictures pointedly slams against the dictates and standards of studio filmmaking with his Godfrey Cambridge-starring vehicle about a white bigot who wakes up black and finds himself in a world that no longer tolerates his existence. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support...

Just in time for February: it's... Random Acts of Cinema's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.   Take me away from all of these possessives. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *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...