Random Acts of Cinema

With Akira Kurosawa’s (ever heard of him?) seminal detective procedural, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune - ever heard of him?) and worldly but hardly hard-bitten senior detective Sato (Taka…

We're running from the law again with our boy Hitch(cock).  This time with an earlier film in his esteemed oeuvre as we join two equally young and equally innocent fugitives - Erica (Nova Pilbeam) an…

We've been dancing around this subject long enough.  And how could we not when the Criterion Collection is our subject of inquiry? But we've finally hit the nail on the head.  We've got ourselves a 1…

Our first Jean Gabin film!  He plays the eponymous thief, clever and charming, hiding out in the maze-like Casbah of Algiers - a hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one under the direction of…

Steven Soderbergh really surprised us with this 1993 coming-of-age story set on the mean streets of 1930s St. Louis.  Because we had never heard of it.  Hard to believe that this nostalgia-bomb was m…

Note: This episode’s discussion and the film we are discussing, explicitly recounts the brutal methods, unimaginable suffering, and lingering trauma of the Holocaust.  Sensitive listeners may want to…

Dissatisfied youth, repressed sexuality, and nihilism running rampant in the dysfunctional Italian family unit is the theme of the week on Random Acts of Cinema. Director Marco Bellocchio’s cruel, bi…

With his nearly 30-years-in-the-making thematic trilogy, director/poet Jean Cocteau uses innovative film techniques and diverse strategies steeped in personal and classical mythology to consider the …

We are joined by Michael Patrick Jann, film and television writer/director and member of The State to discuss his personal pick: Wong Kar-wai’s frenetic romantic masterpiece Chungking Express.  Two s…

Alfonso Cuarón's drama-behind-the-drama has all of the trappings of a semi-autobiographical period piece.  Meticulously recreated clothing, cars, furniture, street settings, and contemporaneous polit…

In the promotional material for Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (also known by a few other film titles) break-out star Bruce Lee is seen flying through the air, shirt half-torn from his body, contorted into a …

It's a miracle I even made it out of Longwood alive.  This town full of men with big mouths and no guts.  I mean if you can just picture it: Wim Wenders made a nearly 5 hour long, globetrotting movie…

Director Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters, based on the book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, catalogs the domestic dramas of the eponymous four women and their family circle in 1930s Japan.  Matchmaking, m…

Content Disclaimer: This episode examines a film with extremely challenging subject matter.  Exceptionally graphic depictions of violence, murder, racism, and brutal sexual assault are both celebrate…

After months of campaigning and hype, constant drama and re-selection of the hosts, and hours of red carpet interviews, it’s finally happening.  Looking back of the year of randomly chosen (and a few…

We are joined this week by the hosts of the podcast Chapter One: Take Two - Briana McZant and Maddy McZant - to look deep into the eyes of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This one has it…

This week we are joined by special-guest Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State) to talk about a powerful and hilarious film: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

So, you know when fed-up…

Following the random selection and then explicit demand of AJ from the Cult Popture podcast, we’re dipping back into the Showa-era Godzilla films, with Jun Fukuda’s Son of Godzilla.  We’re joined by …

Jane Campion’s filmed adaptation of the memoirs of celebrated New Zealand poet and author Janet Frame offers a desperately poignant and often devastating account of childhood and womanhood in the twe…

Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's acclaimed memoir is a diatribe against Nixonian America, account of a motorcycle race, drug travelogue, and only now the kind of advertisement that …