Like the Documentary Now! spoof, we’re really more interested in our protagonist Nanook (Allakariallak) than the admittedly-groundbreaking documentarian Robert J. Flaherty.  And sure, it’s obviously staged.  But our survivalist hero sure knows how to use the hell out of a walrus tusk knife.  It’s mesmerizing.

*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 John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991).

Uh oh. It’s a movie based on a play. Can the screen presences of Hollywood legends Sydney Poitier and Ruby Dee possibly transcend this stage-to-screen adaptation that only adds a couple of quick cut-away scenes of a single alternative setting to an otherwise one-room story? Well… yes. Pretty easily, it turns out.   If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922).

Special guest Max Rieger joins us this week as we dive into the volatile and fascinating world of 1938 Mexico in order to follow the last day in the life of… an alcoholic English misanthrope played by hunky 1980s dreamboat Albert Finney.  Director John Huston’s adaptation of Malcolm Lowry’s so-called “unfilmable,” semi-autobiographical novel is a raging, Joycian, stagger through a world on the precipice of war.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing A Raisin in the Sun (1961).

Look, of course we want to just talk about Kevin Kostner’s 1991 masterpiece (the one they got right).  But it’s just not in the collection.  So I guess we’ll just watch this “Prince of Thieves” adaptation starring some guy named Errol Flynn in a pointy hat and tights.  Maybe it’s good?

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing John Huston Under the Volcano (1984).

Want to listen to a couple of dummies realize that there are such things as era-jumping supernatural romance films that are set in Hong Kong?  And that everyone else already knew this? No?  Well, at least they’re happy to report that it was a delightful surprise when they finally got around to seeing Stanley Kwan’s beloved film.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Michael Kurtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

Arousing action/drama by legendary director Robert Aldrich? Starring Jimmy Stewart?! Yes, please! Add to this some tense survival stakes, and a real man’s-man ensemble cast, and a dusty Sahara-meets-Lifeboat-meets-The-Great-Escape plot contrivances, and you know you’re in for a good time.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1987). 

Just in time for the spookiest day of the year, we take a look at Nicolas Roeg’s classic meditation on death and loss set in perhaps the most melancholic and atmospheric place in the world.  Ah, Venice… Venice in the Winter, that is.  Things get sad and steamy for Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie who play a married couple mourning the death of a child try to move on while on a business trip amongst the canals and labyrinthine alleyways of the island city.  And then people start seeing ghosts…

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Robert Aldrich’s The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).

It’s Fellini-time!  Somehow it took our random number generator 4 seasons to finally pick a film in the Criterion Collection by this legendary Italian director.  But is all of the glamour and allure only ephemeral vanity in the acrid meaningless of it all?  Hmmm, someone should make a movie about that…

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973).

A “forgotten man” named Godfrey (played by the charming William Powell) finds a path to redemption when he’s hired on as the butler to the rich, bored, and otherwise useless Bullock family… for some reason?  And he sure shows them a thing or two about their vapid existence as they all inevitably fall in love with him… for some reason?  Regardless, this is a top-form Depression-era Hollywood wish-fulfillment fantasy.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).

Perhaps the most Finnish way to make a love letter to Finland is to make a movie that emphasizes a kind of remote inhabitability of a place and its people.  No really: this movie about a deadpan population, their apathetic bureaucracy, an undercurrent of white nationalism in the streets of Helsinki, frigid weather, and truly unappetizing-looking food.  And somehow under the direction of Aki Kaurismäki, the viewer - along with the lead character of a Syrian refugee struggling to survive in a cold, seemingly lifeless nation that doesn’t want him there - is inevitably charmed by a nation we slowly learn to be more accurately characterized as emotionally reserved, but earnest.  Distrustful, but generous.  Suspicious and guarded, but maybe ultimately welcoming.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936).