Random Acts of Cinema

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell.  3 months before this, in an act of desperate love, a sex-reassignment surgery was planned and subsequently botched.  And a punk/drag icon was born.  John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig croons, screams, and stage-banters her way into our hearts.  Don't let the fact that this is TECHNICALLY a rock opera (ugh) dissuade you from putting on your foam wig and experiencing this all-time indie classic.

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Frankenhiemer returns to podcast with a… weird art film?  Sort of.  All of the paranoia, threatened masculinity, mid-century gloss, and decaying middle-class domesticity of The Manchurian Candidate remain, but the potboiler-thriller plot is replaced with… vibes.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Director Lizzie Borden dares to imagine a world in which promised egalitarian reform is achieved, just not for women.  Women from all backgrounds, walks of life, and lifestyles debate, struggle, and eventually unite to fight against male repression in this documentary-style dystopian action/drama.  If that doesn’t sell this movie to you, then how about this? 1980s, queer, punk, radical feminist, New York City.

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Our odd run of road movies continues with a classic from an American master.  Terrence Mallick turns the couple-on-a-crime-spree sub genre into a deadpan fairy-tale with stirring visuals, iconic performances, and a meditative tone.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames (1983).

We return to Monte Hellman’s examination of American masculinity with a James Taylor and Dennis Wilson-starring road movie.  Two nearly silent racers ramble across the American southwest, acquiring a disreputable father-figure, a notably underage girl, and a supporting cast of American weirdos.  Vroom.

Also join us for a bonus follow-up discussion now that Mike has finally watched Highest To Lowest (2025)!

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In honor of Spike Lee’s… interesting… new adaptation, we return to the surprisingly satisfying sub genre of Akira-Kurosawa-crime-thriller with his two-movies-for-the-price-of-one kidnapping procedural. 

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971).

Bertrand Tavernier builds a lushly realized foundation around which to topple the poisonous heart of European colonialism.  Whether our hapless police chief chooses deliberate inaction, working towards everyone’s best interests, or succumbing to his own selfish impulses, everything and everyone around him rots due to the fundamental moral corruption of racism.  But, like, its a comedy.

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Edo Japan. A town swarming with warring yakuza. And one detached, unstoppable blind swordsman caught in the middle. And Tate. Don’t forget about Tate. The legend of Tate starts here.

Kenji Misumi brings Zatoichi to the screen, with beautiful staging, and soapy twists and turns. Long-time guest Max joins us to put it all into a historical perspective and to make an exciting podcast announcement!

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Hungarian director Marta Meszaros adds unprecedented depth, humanity, and a whole other meaning to the question asked in countless groan-worthy bumper stickers: “Who adopted who?”

A lonely middle-aged widow is picked by a teenage girl from a nearby state-run home for children as a kindred spirit and unlikely ally.  Identities like mother, daughter, friend, sister, confident, and advocate are intentionally and unintentionally tried on for size as both struggle against the constrictive demands of the well-meaning, but institutionally-bound men in their lives.

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Poverty.  Betrayal.  Heroin.  Death. But, like in a really funny and clever sort of way that’s just a real pleasure to watch.  Spend some time with some of your best Scottish friends!  Director Danny Boyle fully inhabits, then redefines 90s cinema, in this groundbreaking international phenomenon.

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Kon Ichikawa sumptuous remake of an Edo-period revenge tale is magnified by lush camerawork, stirring performances, a jazzy soundtrack, and a fascinatingly unexpected exploration of gender, sexuality, and identity.  The Kabuki actor Yukinojo performs and lives as a woman, breaks the hearts of all around him (men and women alike), and deftly schemes to enact vengeance on the men who destroyed her family.

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How Kate got her groove back… could be an alternate title to David Lean’s Katherine Hepburn-starring romance set in the canals of mid-century Venice.  An aging single American lady, looking for a little bit of culture and beauty, discovers far more than just a bit of Murano glass in this visual stunner… By which I mean that she finds no-strings-attached sex with hot Italian dudes.

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Feast your ears on a special release of the Patreon-only hit podcast Are You Friedkin Kidding Me? where your intrepid hosts (plus Alexandra!) watch the films of William Friedkin.  This episode…. The poster, wherein a lady is sitting upon the face of a gentleman, says it all. But you may as well also know that it features a thrillingly slow car chase through the city of San Francisco (which is kind of a character in this film, if you think about it.)

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Feast your ears on a special release of the Patreon-only hit podcast Are You Friedkin Kidding Me? where your intrepid hosts (plus Alexandra!) watch the films of William Friedkin.  This episode…. Well it’s only his timeless 1990s erotic/thriller/horror masterpiece The Guardian!  You’ll never look at Los Angeles architecture the same way ever again!

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Fresh off of his iconic career topping Dracula, director Tod Browning returns to his roots with a domestic drama/crime film cast almost entirely with side-show performers with little-to-no screen acting experience.  The viewers are asked - and very much confronted with the question of - who are the REAL freaks?

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Director/Writer/Star Albert Brooks reawakens an early shared film trauma of your two loyal hosts.  Can this Uber-Boomer satire of drop-out idealists living in Reagan's America be salvaged?  Might it even be... good?

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932).

Now that another season of Random Acts of Cinema has passed, Hollywood can finally take a moment to catch its breath before it must prepare another year of potential delights for us to mercilessly tear to shreds.  Well, not really.  It’s just Rando Awards season, where your hosts reflect on and recognize the greatest things we saw in the Criterion Collection this year.  Join us!

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We are joined this week by Dan Connell for a lively discussion as the thriving, dynamic 1980s New York Ball Room scene is revealed to an unsuspecting world in Jennie Livingston’s groundbreaking documentary.

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Next week you are cordially invited to attend next week’s 7th Annual Rando Awards!

Bergman takes us on a journey into the past, to revisit youthful summer love.  But don’t worry: this is all seen through the memory of an emotionally detached beauty left unable to find meaningful emotional attachments following a pointless tragedy.  But, maybe it does all of this in an uplifting way?

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Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul weaves a mind-bending 'exquisite corpse'-style tale with sequences narrated by documentary subjects, theatrical troupes, group interviews, cinematic recreations, talk show hosts and more all found within the context of modern Thai city and country life.  The trajectory and style of the story swings wildly between formats and genres limited only by the imaginations and tastes of these diverse contributors.

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Lions! Tightropes! Clowns!  Charlie Chaplin’s last true silent film brings the big top to the big screen.  Hijinks ensue.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Mysterious Objects at Noon (2000).

But is it an allegory? Made under Nazi occupation, French filmmaker Marcel Carné created magical medieval fantasy about the devil and his minions who invade a castle full of beautiful, disillusioned lovers and wreak havoc. Maybe they can… love the devil away?

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Ron “The C[l/r]own Prince of Sports Movies” Shelton brings us the ultimate sexy minor league baseball movie that strikes a surprising chord of division between your humble hosts.  Which of us is the seasoned podcaster who never really rose in the ranks and which is the young hotshot with a million dollar arm and a five cent brain?  Either way, we both agree that the Costner/Sarandon/Robbins trio is an all-star cast.

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We are Random Acts of Cinema.  You subscribed to our podcast.  Prepare to listen.  Fairy tales get that inimitable Reiner-treatment in this nostalgic classic picked for Mike's birthday enjoyment.  Prepare for the "leads" to take a back seat to a supporting casts that exceeds all reasonable expectations.

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French comedic powerhouse Jacques Tati finally makes his first appearance on the podcast with an introduction to his gentle homage to silent-era character Monsieur Hulot himself.  And this time, he’s at the beach.  And brother, I don’t have to tell you that there will be some… les shenanigans.

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Wait, so that Ozzie-Osborne-like-bad guy from G.I. Joe who could change the color of his skin made a prequel of that totally problematic Heath Ledger movie from the early 2000s?  Well, not quite.  Actually, you know what, that’s pretty much exactly what happened.  Join us as we discuss Zoltan Korda’s remake of a remake of a remake that was eventually remade, remade, remade, and remade again.  We are joined by our good friend Max to contemplate Victorian imperialism, sun blindness, and the real color of pineapple.

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Greg Mottola’s takes the viewer on a frantic ride through Manhattan… and into our hearts.  Sort of.  Really he just reaffirms our love for Parker Posey and somehow gets one of the hosts on the side of Leiv Schrieber for the first time.

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It’s number 4. It’s Fellini. It’s a beloved and highly influential 1970s nostalgia-infused takedown of everyday people living in and under fascist Italy. And yet for all of these things, it’s truly one of a kind.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers

There’s a reading of this movie as Jean Renoir’s exercise in delayed gratification. What’s a cancan? Is that a cancan? Will they cancan? Oh no they can’t cancan!! But maybe, just maybe… No they can’t! And then just when you’ve given up all hope: they can cancan! And by god, they do. (Spoiler alert.)

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Director Brad Silberling’s modern spiritual masterpiece dares to propose a world filled with unseen angels, who look upon humanity with a detached sense of whimsy.  Until a brash, brilliant, and beautiful heart surgeon dares to question a universe who steals the life of one of her patients, and one of these angels… falls for her.  In more ways than one.

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Come gather 'round children, it's high time ye learned. About a hero named Harlan County and a devil named Duke Power.  

The fight never stops.  And Barbara Kopple’s beautifully specific and devastatingly timeless documentary about a grueling coal miner’s strike won’t let us forget it.

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Bonus episode drop!  We recorded this a while ago, but we’re finally releasing the rankings of our 10 highest rated criterion movies.  Sure we each gave Rashomon 10 out of 10.  But we also gave The Seventh Seal 10 out of 10.  So… which is better?  All questions will be answered!

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Please come celebrate our 300th episode with spine number 300!  We grapple with our legacy, come to terms with our many failures, reaffirm old friendships, get matching outfits, mourn our losses, go on one last adventure, and have a few laughs. And because it’s Wes Anderson, we can’t help but fall for yet another flawed father figure.

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Your humble hosts stumble happily headlong into the world of avant-pop Moroccan folk music!  This week we watch what seems to be a proto-version of The Last Waltz (even though it’s not) with a documentary chronicling some of the past and and a lot of the present of the group Nass El Ghiwane.

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Bond is back! …to this podcast.  We swing back into the world of Ian Fleming with the second film adaptation of his books, and perhaps the most faithful to the original source material.  So does that mean the movie will be MORE or LESS racist/misogynist?  Pour yourself a martini and join us to find out.

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For this week’s episode your hosts intentionally try to make the WORST episode they’ve ever recorded.  No wait, that’s what this Mel Brooks movie is about.  Oh, now I remember: this is actually the BEST episode we’ve ever recorded.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Terenc...

One of us is prepared to insist that this Academy Award winning film is more than just “that fish-sex movie.”  

A little behind the scenes: in our recording schedule notes Mike keeps writing the title of this movie as “Shapes of Water”.  For those of you who know him to be a fully-committed listman and self-professed admirer of Guillermo del Toro, this is shocking.  This may is your first hint of his true feelings about this film.

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Director Jacques Demy returns to the podcast with a notably non-musical romance this time.  Gone are the songs and vibrant colors, instead we are given… crushing, co-dependent gambling addictions?  Can a platinum blonde Jean Moreau give us hope?  Maybe just one last spin…

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Gui...

Spoiler alert. In this movie Christopher Lee stabs Boris Karloff and Boris Karloff throws acid in Christopher Lee’s face. And there’s some stuff about 19th century medical experiments, but mostly that first part. 

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels (1963).

Neither a documentary on the films of David Lynch nor a film about the man we knew as David Lynch.  But an account of a young man who through circumstance and single-minded drive, would find himself in and construct just the sort of environment that could form a David Lynch.  Directors Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, and Rick Barnes put the camera on a man making art and a microphone on a man looking back at his early life.  And they leave it up to us to make connections between the two.

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For one of us, this is where it all began.  You leave me breathless… ahhhhh….  That’s from a different movie though.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, and Rick Barnes’David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)

This week we return to the Shohei Imamura’s “Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes” collection with his “entomological study” of one woman’s lifelong struggle for survival and purpose in a cruel modern world.  Style, ambiguity, and shock mark this as a classic Imamura story.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jean...

Legendary 1980s/90s Hong Kong/Hollywood action auteur John Woo sets an early pace for his legendary career with a period-kung fu movie about two swordsman-buddies caught in the midst of a bloody revenge plot between warring clans.  Spoiler alert: there's a martial arts master whose style is "asleep."

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From the clanky jangle of that first Tom Waits song to that jangly clank of the last Tom Waits song, you know you are in for a treat.  Jim Jarmusch pops back up on the show with his humanist anthology of five stories set in cabs, each taking place in a different city on the same night.  Winona, Gena, Giancarlo, Armin, Rosie, Isaach, uh.. Beatrice, Roberto, and … Matti?  Look he went truly international with his cast, so I can’t name them all off the top of my head.

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Cat, piano, well, watermelon, mirror, bananas.  You know, you're basic horror movie formula.  Director Nobuhiko Obayashi spins a eerily formulaic but wildly unanticipate-able story of teens.  And death.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jim Jarmusch's Night On Earth (1991).

What says “Merry Christmas” more than a sexy tale of infidelity and alienation set against the backdrop of soviet invasion and oppression?  In the Criterion Collection?  Not much. Join us as we discuss Phillip Kaufman’s adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel of Prague Spring and its aftermath, starring some distractingly beautiful people.

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It’s Orson Welles! It’s Shakespeare! Everyone involved is at the top of their game! Filmed across continents on location! It was a labor of love 3 years in the making!  Yep. No problems here. None at all. No need to investigate further…

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Albert & Allen Hughes take a stab at the classic tale of the American twentieth century with a star-studded cast and a sweeping narrative starting in the Bronx of 1968, the bloody jungles of Vietnam, back to a changed America, and then… an iconic 90s heist scene?

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David Lynch’s follow-up to one of the most disturbing and lovingly crafted pieces of auteur cinema ever made is… an Oscar-bait biopic? Sure: he brazenly assaults Victorian (and maybe even a few modern) sensibilities by frankly visualizing the appearance and living conditions of a young man cast from polite society. And, yeah-yeah, who are the REAL monsters, amiright? But more that this, Lynch taps into is own dark dreamscape, to poke at the less obvious, but deeply felt, horrors of the industrial age.

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This week, it’s Moonstruck.  Thank God: it’s Moonstruck.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing David Lynch’s The Elephant Man(1980).

If you throw everything at the wall (romance, screwball comedy, noir thriller, globe-trotting action) you will ALMOST predict one of the great disasters of the twentieth century.  This coincidence is inevitably repeated a ton on the IMDb trivia page. But spare yourself from being spoiled and just watch Frank Borzage’s charming tale of star-crossed lovers set against a backdrop of 1930s Hollywood glamour.

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Get ready for another action-packed…Yasuhiro Ozu movie?  Well, at least compared to his other masterpieces.  Buckle up for this bracingly gentle study of a middle-aged married couple as they lightly bicker and tell harmless lies to one another all in service of slowly coming to understand and maybe even love each other.  Hope you survive the experience!

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Two unlikely kindred souls find purpose and companionship as they wander through the cross-continental 1970s in search of a sense of… just a little stability. Wim Wenders sets the tone for his career as a quiet student of humanity with a big ol heart.

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Is this the one where Keanu takes a bunch of future drugs?  I mean that DOES sound kind of like a Cronenberg movie…. No wait!  It’s the head exploding one.  Except that maybe, just maybe, this early 80s psychic thriller offers a whole lot more than just exploding heads.  But don’t worry: if you really like exploding heads, this film still has you covered.

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Soviet cinema at its most… spiritual?  Iconoclast director Sergei Parajanov’s deeply personal exploration of the cultural echoes found in the life of 18th-century Armenian troubadour/monk Sayat-Nova uses manuscript-inspired tableaux vivants, exquisite staging, and a profoundly rich symbolic vocabulary to sneak this one past the censors.  Sort of.

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Content warning: this film contains depictions of suicide.

Come check out Mike and Charlie realizing exactly what they’ve gotten themself into AFTER watching this movie and getting about halfway through our discussion about it.  Yukio Mishima and Domoto Masaki’s rich confrontation of Noh-style staging with richly visualized sensuality propels a short film about a married couple’s suicided following a failed coup-d’etat in 1936 Japan.

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Kansas.  The Great Salt Lake.  Peaches Christ.  Michael Varrati.  Abandoned carnival.  Am I listing the components of an unlikely-to-happen but likely-to-be-wild road trip?  Or is it the perfect formula for a really fun episode where two of our favorite guests return to discuss the weirdly atmospheric ultimate-indie horror film?  

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Directing duo Arie and Chula Esiri tell two separate stories of would-be Nigerian emigrants navigating through a dehumanizing world that uses poverty and debt to perpetuate a cycle of exploitation that cares little for dignity and decency.  Beautifully shot on film on location in Lagos, Mofe and Rosa each strain towards a better life.

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Look: if for some reason you DON’T want to watch Richard E. Grant rant about the entrenched conspiracy between the wretchedly corrupt spheres of big business and government in the form of consumer advertising, then I guess this isn’t the movie and podcast episode for you.  And if you still aren’t interested once you learn that it’s a HandMade Films production reuniting Grant with director Bruce Robinson?  What if I were to say that there’s a mustachioed boil growing out of the side of Grant’s neck spouting late-stage capitalist drivel?  No?  Then there’s not hope for you...

Balancing on the razor-thin edge between the pedantic “what would REALLY happen if a guy kept slowly shrinking?” with “sure nerd, but let’s still make it a fun story”, Jack Arnold directs a domestic drama, a survivalist story, and everything in between as he questions foundational questions of existing in his classic science fiction tale.  Perceptions of safety, masculinity, and the infinite shift and fade in this allegory of manhood in the modern age.

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In celebration of Fred Olen Ray’s 70th birthday, we’re sharing an bonus episode of Going Over Our Freds (a podcast hosted by our past-guests Kennedy and Meridith) that Mike joined in on a while back.  Enjoy their discussion of Cyberzone (also known as Droid Gunner), starring… Marc Singer!

Kevin Allison (Risk! and The State) joins us to talk about Kyoshi Kurosawa’s hypno-thriller - a term I’ve invented which cheapens the film - and he directs the conversation toward Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow”, which thankfully re-elevates the film.

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This week the question is asked: does having had read The Deadly Percheron enhance the viewing experience of this grimy, English, 80s neo-noir about sex work, blackmail, and unrequited love?  It turns out that this doesn’t really matter, because… Bob Hoskins.

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Coming of age story?  Sexual awakening?  Road trip movie?  These all characterize Alfonso Cuarón’s tale of two young men and  one women whose lives intersect for a brief period one summer… kind of.  While this film displays a keen understanding of convention it constantly subverts expectations and values along and becomes something all the more charming, touching, challenging, and political at heart.  Two future superstars, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna alongside Maribel Verdu, propel this still iconoclastic film to a rare stature alongside the best of Mexican cinema.

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Certainly not the arty-ist neo-noir ever made, but it’s certainly the most Jean-Pierre Melville-ian neo-noir ever made.  And that’s more than enough to make this one of the most widely-beloved of all Criterion films.  Alain Delain (who sadly passed away between our record and the release date for this episode) brought Tokyo-cool, Parisian romanticism, and American grime to this epitome of the “cool assassin” film.

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Can Master Wong navigate China into the 20th-century and past the obstacles of modernity, invasive western culture, and a whole host of outside threats to tradition?  Of course he can.  But even he’s got to admit: he looks pretty good in a boater hat and sunglasses.  Tsui Hark’s epic kung fu period action/comedy pits western powers, local corruption, modern technology, and the stubborn refusal to adapt against a ragtag group centered around a fighting school and its stoic martial arts master played by Jet Li.

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When 20 or so upper class reveler’s end up at a post-opera gathering hosted by one of their peers, everything seems perfectly… polite.  But then director Luis Buñuel imparts upon them the one unbreakable rule of the film: no one can ever leave the well-appointed drawing room.  Ever.  What follows is a study in the logistics of human survival, depravity, and an allegory of the lies we tell ourselves as we sink into fascism.

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“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. 

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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 self-aware Parisian women coping with the surprisingly similar needs of lovers, pimps, johns, and… cattle.

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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 drama.

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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 to be suckered into doing it.

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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.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Luis Garcia Berlang...

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. 

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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.

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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.

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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 of films tackling the lives of high school students.  

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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 funny way, though.

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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.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Charles Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

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.

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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. 

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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 the most talented and definitely the most alcoholic and self-sabotaging of them all.

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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.

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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.

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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 Dillon, Willem Dafoe, and Dennis Hopper. They made 6 episodes.  Bravo never explored this format further.

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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 it's beautiful and the music is good.  Freak out!

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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"?

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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.

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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.

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Melvin van Peebles' Watermelon Man (1970).

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.

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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 and indignities of British school life with deft surrealist touches and a Malcom MacDowell-starring cast embracing nihilism and revenge.

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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 a lie.

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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  

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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 two hate each other!  Which is to say: they desperately love each other and just don't know it yet. 

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

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If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Frank Capra's It Happened Once Night (1934).

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.

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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.

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