Random Acts of Cinema

An all-star who's-who of mid-century Italian comedy (we assume) unite for a picture of staggering proportions!  Our boys stumble and bumble their way through a meticulously planned robbery and end up stealing… our hearts.  Director Mario Monicelli gives the world one of the great prototypes of the comedic heist. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord ser...

Content and Spoiler Warning:  This film dramatizes bullying, violence, against children, and a school shooting.  Those who may not want to listen to this episode should skip this one and join us next week. Can an all-boys boarding school serve as a microcosm of an entire nation's fractured state of values?  More importantly: should it?  Director Lindsay Anderson subverts the slice-of-life routines...

He lost his job.  He got his draft notice.  The only path forward for this cinefile is clear: alienate everyone in his life and fracture his sanity by filming a progressively more erratic week of his life.  Is he really searching for truth?  Is film even the right way to capture truth?  Does he really care about truth at all?  Director Jim McBride fake documentary is about how everything filmed is...

In the darkest of night, standing solitary vigil against the forces of evil: there stands the city's only hope for justice, for vengeance, for truth. There stands… The Cameraman! Director Buster Keaton mines the depths of obsession and action in this late silent-era masterpiece   Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podc...

Director Frank Capra returns to the podcast with his Oscar-hording smash hit romantic comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.  A glamorous heiress is on the run from her father as she embarks on a cross-country trek to get back to her playboy husband.  But a hard on his luck newspaperman knows a good story when he sees one, and takes her under his wing.  And wouldn't you know it?  These...

Director Spike Jonze upends Hollywood conventions in this mind-bending Malkovich.  Can Malkovich Malkovich before Malkovich Malkovich?  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 like to watch...

This time, Mira Nair unleashes her penchant for a  romance-set-among-a-sprawling-family-drama on the nation of India as a wedding is organized, threatened, and celebrated amidst the intensity of a rainy season that I guess is probably a metaphor for something. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself...

Hitch is back!  Or rather, here he is just as he's starting to become THE Alfred Hitchcock.  His first thriller blurs the boundaries between guilt, loss, obsession, and paranoia as a bloodthirsty killer of women stalks the London streets… on Tuesdays. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someo...

In his first film, renowned director Bernardo Bertolucci prowls through the not-so-innocent lives of strangers who just happened to be in a park on the night of a murder.  Each have good reason to embellish and omit details as they recount their day leading up to the murder to the police interrogator, but the director unsparingly shows all of the petty choices and disastrous missteps of them all....

It is neither a question of where Seijun Suzuki got his ideas from nor who got their ideas from him.  Rather it is simply the plain fact that there were the movies that came before his 1967 art/hitman freak-out masterpiece and then there were the movies that came after. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and ge...

1985.  Sammo Hung.  Jackie Chan.  It sounds like we have all of the ingredients for the perfect action/comedy.  And we do.  We definitely have those ingredients.  Hung directs a rag tag group of orphanage buddies, now older, as they are recruited to travel to Japan and infiltrate (via slapstick) a notorious Yakuza gang. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Dis...

We got ourselves a Mank!  More importantly, we got ourselves a study in contrast between the brash but insecure broadway diva Margo (Bette Davis) and the ambitiously talented wolf-in-sheep's-clothing Eve (Anne Baxter). Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy podcast. Join our  Patreon and support the podcast!  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the podcast and get yours...

A classic odd couple picture, except… it's a trio?! Hilarity and hijinks ensue when a couple of guys find themselves in the unlikeliest of situations: roommates! … Well, kind of.  Writer/director Jim Jarmusch jams John Lurie (as a pimp), Tom Waits (as a radio DJ), and Roberto Benigni (as a Roberto Benigni) into a Louisiana jail cell where tensions and unlikely loyalties form in this dryly funny, m...

Three heartbreaking stories interweave through Alejandro González Iñárritu's frantic and abrasive entry onto the cinematic world stage.  A lovelorn brother who turns to the brutal but lucrative opportunities of back alley dog fighting, a model confined to a crumbling apartment following a life-altering accident, and a hitman with a past who walks the streets unseen. Join our Patreon and support th...

Come listen to a free preview of our upcoming Patreon podcast Are You Friedkin Kidding Me?, where Mike, Charlie, and Alexandra (celebrated returning guest host) watch a different film (or tv show or documentary) from the oeuvre of acclaimed director William Friedkin.  And we're starting with his all-time genre-defining horror  masterpiece  The Exorcist  (1973). The first taste is free. Keep an eye...

Ok, we don't say it in the episode, but I've just decided that this movie is nothing more than a shameless War of the Worlds rip-off.  And now that I've achieved my attention-grabbing hot take, I'll just come clean and say that we loved George A. Romero's all-time classic movie about zom... I mean ghouls that started it all. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here ! *Come support the po...

Chic style and a confoundingly lithe ability to shift between classic-cool genres, director Jean-Jacques Beineix plots a Parisian escapade of crime, obsession, genius, whimsy, opera, sex, speed, and violence.  Get ready to be the only person in the theater with a single tear running down your face.  Because YOU get it. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server  here ! *Come support the podcast...

Stubborn, single-minded obsession forms the icy heart of Teinosuke Kinugasa's sweeping Shakespearean action-drama set in the aftermath of the bloody Heiji Rebellion. 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 like to watch ahead for ne...

Ol Blue Eyes is back!  Back from the Korean War and brainwashed by sinister communist agents, that is.  Director John Frankenheimer bends minds and our expectations in his stylishly paranoid thriller set in an era of Cold War paranoia, McCarthyism, and presidential assassination. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server  here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a...

Director Les Blank turns his unsparing eye on obsessive visionary director Werner Herzog as he trudges through a years-long journey to film Fitzcarraldo  in the South American rainforest.  Everything that can go wrong does, and Herzog, the film, and the viewers are left to ponder: is all this worth it?  Maybe it is, but since this is the only Herzog-related film in the Collection, we're thrilled f...

A uproarious takedown of English class and gender constructions… or a staunch defender of them?  At least one of us thinks that this very ambiguity is the whole fun of Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's adaptation of Bernard Shaw's classic stage comedy. 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 s...

Agnès Varda returns to the podcast with her charming little love story about a happy guy, his happy wife, and his happy mistress.  It's all very nice and sweet.  No problems at all.  Nope.  It's all good. 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...

David Cronenberg just might be the only director capable of adapting William S. Burroughs' drug-fueled descent into paranoia, isolation, murder, conspiracy, hallucination, depravity, and… self-actualization?  The director's visionary deadpan perfectly places a stoney-faced Peter Weller into a world of beetle-like typewriters and narcotic-secreting, tough-talking mugwumps without it coming off as,...

Things get dark this week, noir and otherwise in Nicholas Rey's brooding and prescient look into a doomed and toxic relationship. Humphrey Bogart makes his first appearance on the podcast with one of his best. 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, an...

Our first Cannon Group movie!!  And it's the sequel to Godfrey Reggio's 1983 art house documentary that cuts artfully shot footage to the pace of a rhythmic Philip Glass score.  But Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson are still going to show up at some point, right?  Right?!? Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server  here ! *Come support the podcast and get yourself or someone you love a random g...