The Latecomers

Show Notes Free Palestine   Spencer Tracy gets off the train and walks into immediate danger in Bad Day at Black Rock from 1955. Looking for his savior’s father, he finds murderous racists instead. Anne Francis is more bloodthirsty than you’ve seen her and, along with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, is worshipping at the shrine of Robert Ryan. Last we saw him, he was a washed up boxer, this time h...

Free Palestine   This week, the film Lemuel has been referencing for two years is finally here Wages of Fear from 1953. It couldn’t go on the AFI list because of the A, but for thrills, it’s certainly packed. Four men, including a Mario AND a Luigi, several tons of nitroglycerin, 40s era trucks and 300 miles of unforgiving terrain. What could possibly go wrong?   Recommendations: Taskmaster (Youtu...

Free Palestine   This week, the fix is in, or it would be if only someone told the fighter – it’s 1949’s The Set-Up directed by Robert Wise. In near real-time, we watch the rise and fall of over-the-hill boxer Stoker Thompson whose dreams of a big payday are dashed by his managers dreams of a medium payday. But is the real villain a woman? Maybe…   Recommendations: True Detective: Night Country (M...

Notes Free Palestine   We are starting off strong (and brief) with the first iteration of The Most Dangerous Game from 1932 – spoiler alert: it’s people, just like Soylent Green (spoiler #2). Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong stuck around and filmed another film on the King Kong set while postproduction was building a gorilla and some dinosaurs. It’s short and tense and there is no mistaking the vill...

Show Notes It's time to make our own list of the thrilling movies that the AFI overlooked. We have films from the US, Hong Kong, Japan, and France - and that's just the first half. This week, we discuss the beginning of our list - those films that overlap the time period that the AFI covered, the first one hundred years of film from 1900 to 2000. Here we offer a brief introduction to those twenty-...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We’ve reached the top, the pinnacle, the film that the AFI has lionized as the MOST THRILLING FILM of all time – from 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Etched deep in the public consciousness and the cultural zeitgeist, no one over 30 doesn’t know the twist reveal, but watching Gen Z reactions, they still get pulled into the story and are shocked by the places that Hitch...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week, we watched the first summer blockbuster: Jaws from 1975. Early Spielberg, unfortunate practical effects, and some excellent performances all lead to a thrill ride that won silver in the AFI thrills list. A conscientious police chief who loves his family teams up with a rich, egghead thrillseeker and a salty dog out for revenge and hijinks ensue. It’s a remark...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Lemuel has been dreading this week since the beginning of our countdown and we are finally here - #3 on the list, 1973’s The Exorcist. And he liked it! Kinda… We discuss the need or lack thereof for old age makeup, who the title is referring to, how Karen’s have existed forever, and what’s the point of the prologue? We have a good time with a bad time this week.   Recom...

Show Notes Free Palestine This week Amity gets frustrated with the self-inflicted trials that Cary Grant goes through in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Never has someone tried so hard to get themselves in trouble and never has someone had so little care for their own life without being actively seeking death. We have an excellent villain and a compelling leading lady and some very cool – a...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We watched one of our collective favorite movies this week with Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. There’s new things to notice, even when you’ve seen it a dozen times. Parallels between statues and body positioning? Check. Book titles specific to the moment? Check. Lecter never blinking, except when deliberate? Check. Starling’s conscious covering of her freckles i...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Once again, a group of people in space don’t follow a quarantine procedure and all hell breaks loose in Ridley Scott’s Alien.  A smart woman not listened to – the beginning of so many horror stories. Does the cat live? Does anyone else? Why is there so much imagery that looks like sexual organs? And why is everything wet? Listen up as we talk about this creepy trailblaz...

Show Notes Free Palestine   It’s a trip to the coast this week as we watch Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedrin fight our fine feathered friends in Hitchcock’s classic: The Birds. Since there is more character development than actual bird attacks, we get to really care if these people get their eyed pecked out of their skulls. Do the effects still hold up? Kinda. Is this one of the best child performances...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Get ready for some terrible policing this week as we discuss 1971’s The French Connection, directed by William Friedkin and starring a sweaty Gene Hackman whose character definitely smelled like gin in every frame of this film. These cops may not be dirty but they aren’t clean. We visit a time when cops weren’t assigned cases but rather made them up as they went, and wh...

Show Notes It’s our 300th episode and we’re talk babies – how they’re made, how they’re gestated, and how they’re raised – especially when dad’s the devil with Rosemary’s Baby from 1968. The casual spousal rape, the not so casual demonic rape, Mia Farrow is asked to go through so much in this film and may not get enough credit for any of it. Also, is John Cassavetes a monster? Is Ruth Gordon? And...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We watched the last adventure movie of the thrills list and the first of an enduring franchise – Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, and directed by Stephen Spielberg. A desert shoot in 130 degree temperatures and an epidemic of amoebic dysentery along with just the barest bones of a script still couldn’t stop this movie being made. Camp at...

Show Notes Free Palestine We stand with SAG-AFTRA   It’s our last revisit of the series – we talk about the inclusion of and placement in the AFI thrills list of The Godfather. Is it thrilling? Listen to see what we think and then listen to one of our very early episodes – can you believe we’ve been doing this for 5 years? Us either. Take a listen as Amity talks about a movie she didn’t see until...

Show Notes Free Palestine We stand with SAG-AFTRA   Once upon a time there was a big ape who just wanted to be alone on his island to fight with dinosaurs. But people came and built a big wall. It was okay because they gave him delicious women. But one day a new type of people came and their woman was a curious new kind. As he is trying to understand his new friend, the ape is attacked and capture...

Show Notes Free Palestine We stand with SAG-AFTRA   Modern gangsters Bonnie and Clyde are brought to life (and death) by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway this week in the eponymous Bonnie and Clyde from 1967. Not Amity’s favorite – thanks to the French New Wave influence and a dislike for Faye Dunaway generally – we dig into the hows and whys of the making of this film and all of the concessions mad...

Show Notes We stand with SAG-AFTRA   Let’s go a peeping – we watched 1954’s Rear Window directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart is redeemed – moving from deeply creepy to mildly and situationally creepy, but also clearly a good man as Grace Kelly loves him. We meet the cast of characters – even more than our protagonists ever do, discuss Edith Head’s genius costuming, Raymond Burr’s canned hai...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with SAG-AFTRA Content warning: Sexual Assault We revisit our episode on Deliverance from 1972 – a prime example of 70’s grit, when the men were tough but the movies were tougher. Buckle into your canoes because we’re going where no one wants us – right into a men’s getaway from hell. But we’ll make it fun, we swear. Next up: Rear Window (1958) Email us...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with SAG-AFTRA Content warning: We do speak about the Polanski of it all. We have indicated with time stamps when that occurs. There is also incestual sexual assault referred to in this film so if you want to skip this one, we get it and we’ll see you next week. This week we’re discussing a masterpiece of neo noir, 1974’s Chinatown. The lighting, the pac...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA   This week, we get to Lemuel’s favorite (if we go by number of times he has mentioned it this series), 1962 John Frankenheimer mind-freak The Manchurian Candidate. We try to make it make sense without getting too lost in the twists and turns. We talk about the surprising performances, the fascinating directorial choices and th...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA   Hold on to something because we’ve got Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 thriller. We have seen a number of Hitchcock films up to this point and have quite a few left, but this feels like a pivot point. Amity comes to this fresh with a sixty year head start and really has some hang ups – largely around a tarnished lov...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA   It’s a war movie AND a prison break movie – what’s not to love – we watched The Great Escape from 1963. We get our third and final Steve McQueen film and he doesn’t disappoint from his baseball to his motorcycle riding. We also have one of the largest and most talented casts we are going to see in this list. Do they get out?...

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA   It’s a whole different vibe this week as we move from a film with no heroes to a film with one of the prototypical heroes of Hollywood with Gary Cooper starring in 1952’s High Noon. Unable to walk away for multiple reasons and surrounded by surprising and remarkably well-drawn women, Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane is faced with t...