Film School

Ah, Remy.

Josh kicks us off with a raucous, violent, hilarious, and shockingly disturbing Belgian indie from the early nineties. It's easily one of the more controversial films we've watched thus far on the podcast--mostly for one particular scene--and one of the most innovative. It really is a must-see that Ira had never seen before today. What did he think? Listen and find out!

Dude, you gotta see this!

Next up on the podcast, Josh and Ira have accumulated a list of films they know the other hasn't seen yet that they MUST see...and now, they're going to show each other those movies on the podcast. Ten movies apiece (plus maybe one or two extra...we'll see). We start that in two weeks from today. They also give personal updates on what they've been up to the past couple months. Enjoy!

We decided to end the AFI Top 100 Starter Pack with some old school "class"...

Old movies feel like Disneyland. This, and many, many epiphanies are brought to you by the black and white classic romance Swing Time with the lanky, debonaire Fred Astaire and the drop dead gorgeous smokeshow Ginger Rogers. It's all about The Way You Look Tonight, Cinema with a capital C, and never gonna dance, never gonna dance, only gonna love, never gonna dance.

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me . . . aren't you?

It's the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a star, and rightly so. He plays the naive, uptight and awkward Benjamin Braddock who masks a disenchanted with his parents' rich, vacuous, meaningless lives, with a frozen mask for a face that says 'I'm screaming on the inside.' But, then the wife of one of his father's friends propositions him with an affair . . . and he proceeds to fall in love with her daughter. It's a scathing portrayal of the upper class, a brutally cynical take on whether or not 'love' even exists, and most importantly . . . it's hilarious. We're in the final stretch of the AFI Top 100 Starter Pack. Enjoy!

If any of them move, kill 'em!

It was our first Western on the AFI list, and it's a bloody, gritty, corker of a bandit heist flick. It stars William Holden, whose star power was waning at the time, along with Ernest Borgnine and his iconic gap-toothed smile, and some truly EPIC action sequences that forever changed movies. It's also one the very first R-rated films in history. There are no heroes in this one. Mount up.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

Jaws: the genesis of the summer blockbuster, and the film that launched Steven Spielberg into the stratosphere. Dude was 26 when he made this move. TWENTY. SIX. And it defined an entire genre of films. We still make Shark Movies to this day. So, let's go back to the original "don't go in the water" scary movie, and probably our TOP favorite watch on the entire AFI list. This week on the Starter Pack!

War is hell.

Any sample of the AFI Top 100 wouldn't be complete without Francis Ford Coppola, and he is the real star of this ambitious, disturbing, madness-inducing look into the horrors of the Vietnam War based on the novella "Heart of Darkness." Starring Martin Sheen and a veritable cavalcade of other recognizable actors, this film might just be the best representation ever made of how war feels. Like Sheen's Willard, it nearly cost Coppola his own sanity to make . . . and that might just be perfect. Let's head down the river, kids. Everything will (not) be fine. It's number 6 on our AFI Starter Pack.

Orson Welles, by all accounts, was a Hollywood outsider. He knew nothing about filmmaking coming in to make Citizen Kane, and yet it's on the tippy top of the AFI's "best" list. So, how exactly did he do that? And why is this film so beloved, so venerated? Is it a fitting pick as the #1 film in American history? We break it down!

Chaplin makes an entry on the Starter Pack, and his *second* appearance on The List as the hapless Klondike Gold Rush prospector…and he does not disappoint. We weren't too hot on Chaplin's previous film Modern Times. This time around, the gags are fresher, the story is tighter, and the music is absolutely breathtaking. It's epic, funny, poignant, and romantic. Even to this day, some of the visuals Chaplin employs are confounding. How did he do that?!

James Cagney is a song and dance man!

Music is in the air. Vaudeville. Romance. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's the 1942 classic Yankee Doodle Dandy this time around, a movie neither Josh nor Ira had ever even HEARD of…so what put this movie on the map? Why is it on the list? Listen and find out!