Random Acts of Cinema

A classic Bergman film. Well, a classic Martin Bergman film. About Temecula.  Where your favorite podcast hosts first met.  Anyway… two neurotic New Yorkers - with ulterior motives - take on a couple of quick gigs in the wine country of (southern) California. Perhaps romance is in the air for this strangely legit cast? *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Leo Sternberg's Underworld (1927).

Content warning: This episode addresses a film that explicitly addresses issues related to and depicts the actions of violent sexual assault. Director Martha Coolidge blends drama and documentary in an unflinching consideration of her rape as a younger woman.  Ostensibly a dramatic recreation of the events surrounding and during the assault, she breaks through the dramatic wall to discuss the project and personal recollections of herself an the actors in this daring and groundbreaking film. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Martin Bergman's A Weekend in the Country (1996).

Who's ready for an anthology movie about mostly Americans in France writing about mostly not Americans in France for an imagined audience of mostly Americans in America?  And sometimes everyone speaks French.  But mostly they don't.  Wes Anderson works with his ever-growing company of highest-profile players to construct this triptych of art and insanity, love and revolution, and food and crime.  And a deep admiration for the talents and obsessions of midcentury American magazine writers. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Martha Coolidge's Not A Pretty Picture (1976).

Dead or alive, you're listening to me.  Paul Verhoeven somehow achieves both badass copaganda action movie and cutting satire of American violence, consumerism, corporate greed, and bad TV. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021).

Seijun Suzuki dreams up yet another ever-so-slightly-surreal Yakuza picture.  Thank god. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1987).

That Pat Brennan… what a man!  Come listen to us face an ethical quandary when we stumble upon a real treasure of a western, that is still undeniably a 1950s western.  What am I talking about?  Let's just say that it can be summed up in two words: Henry Silva. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Seijun Suzuki's Youth of the Beast (1963).

The more you learn about this movie, the more clear it becomes that what you'd think to be the good parts are the bad parts, and that the bad parts are really the good parts. Making movies is hard.  Sidney Lumet directs a visually stunning reimagining of the Wizard of Oz and then some other stuff is in it too. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Budd Boetticher's The Tall T (1957).

We know y'all are some nasty freaks out there who have been waiting a long time for this one to drop.  Guy Madden comes back with an irreverently cinematic fake/real/fake documentary about his home town of Winnipeg.  It's black and white, it's out of focus, the cuts are fast and many.  It's psycho-sexual.  It's arty AF.  Is he going to vignette any shots?  Uh, yeah. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Sidney Lumet's The Wiz (1978).

Samuel Fuller turns a critical eye on the state of mental health treatment in the United States to, uh… well, not really.  Mostly he just uses a stage theater's idea of a mental hospital as a narrative device for exploring three major American anxieties in the 1960s.  Want to complain about nukes?  Have a patient do a one-man show for a while about how we went insane after building them.  And you know what, that's the tame one of the three.  For a B-movie about a reporter going undercover in a mental ward to solve a murder, things get wild. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Guy Maddon's My Winnipeg (12007).

Documentarian of the ages Errol Morris turns his gentle eye toward the old fellers of a small town in Florida and just sort of lets them do their thing.  Talking about gobblers, wigglers, growing sand, ambidexterity, fake (or maybe real) jewels, seeing the perfection of God in nature, and the magical definition of the word "therefore." *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963).

Gillo Pontecorvo directs a cast of unknowns in his big swing on the historical action/drama about a British agent sent to use all of his cynical wile to foment a slave revolt on Portuguese colony island. Keep careful eye out for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Marlon Brando at his understated best. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida (1981).

Roberto Rossellini travels length of the Italian peninsula in the immediate aftermath of WWII to share 6 stories about the lives of Italian civilians and partisans and their relationships with foreign Allied troops.  Love, tragedy, heroism, and sacrifice result from the difficulties of communicating purpose and need of individuals confronted with the inhumane machine of war. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! (1969).

What does it mean to die?  What does it mean to truly live… on a road trip across Spain with Terence Stamp, John Hurt, and Tim Roth in a giant white Mercedes Benz?  Director Stephen Frears grabbles with these enduring questions in his sun-soaked take-down of the neo noir.  Ten Years after snitching on his compatriots, a criminal in hiding is rousted from his dreamy Spanish village life by two hit men sent to exact retribution.  But he seems oddly cool about it all.  What gives? *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Roberto Rossellini's Paisan - War Trilogy (1946). 

One, two monks kneel before you That's what I said now Monks, monks who adore you Just go ahead now One has diamonds in his pockets And that's some bread now This one says he has tuberculosis It's in his lungs now… Juan Bustillo Oro takes us on a Rashomon-esque journey into nightmarish memory in this 1930s Mexican classic. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Stephen Frears' The Hit (1984). 

Kubrick is on the podcast!  Or at least one of his films was finally randomly selected for the first time.  And he gives us a self-produced, time-zagging, bracingly-funny, bloody, homage-satire of hard-boiled noir. *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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Whit Stillman's Metropolitan (1990). 

We return once more to the Godzilla Showa-era films with Jun Fukuda's 1974 introduction of some kind of a… Robo-Godzilla!  I think that's what they call it.  And some aliens.  Oh, and there's a new  surprise secret monster called King Caesar also.  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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956). 

Director Arthur Crabtree delves into the late 1950's world of atomic, Cold War, body-snatching paranoia except that he kind of… doesn't?  Honestly this Canada-set, B-movie, Sci-fi, creature flick feels more like a proto-Cronenberg film where it really counts. 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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974). 

Researchers at Stanford University conducted a decades-long experiment wherein Koko, a female gorilla, was taught American Sign Language.  The findings and the ethics of this experiment were then (and remain today) controversial.  Director Barbet Schroeder captures intimate footage of Koko, scholars, and her caretakers, leaving the viewer to be charmed by Koko and come to their own conclusions about whether a gorilla can and should be taught how to converse at a high level with humans. 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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Arthur Crabtree's Fiend Without A Face (1958). 

American masculinity is fully skewered.  Finally.  Actually, I guess everyone is skewered is Alexander Payne's black-hearted comedy about a Midwest American high School student… election. Opinions are divided on this one. 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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Barbet Schroeder's Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978). 

Wong Kar Wai brings us - way back - to lovelorn Hong Kong.  Upon discovering that their spouses are having an affair with with one another, two neighbors strike up a sad acquaintance that soon blossoms into an unrequited affair of their own.  Of course, this makes no sense because who would ever cheat on Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung?  But that's not really the point.  The point is cigarette smoke and silk dresses. 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 next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Alexander Payne's Election (1999).