Random Acts of Cinema

We've scoured our movies this season from Lost in America (1985) to Playtime (1967) and everything in between for the best of the best. That's right: it's time again to find out who will go home with the coveted Randy and who will forever suffer the indignity of being snubbed by the hosts of Random Acts of Cinema.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Orson Welles' F is for Fake (1973).

It's time again for the whimsical wanderings of a man lost in the urban sea of late 1960s Paris. Kind of a modern Odyssey if you think about it… Jacques Tati returns to the podcast, directing himself once more as Monsieur Heulot.

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Please join us next week for the 8th Annual Rando Awards!

It's a podcast double doozer! Renoir and Kurosawa both adapt the same play, over 2 decades apart. Mifune and Gabin play the same roll. One is set in the source's original Russia and the other in Edo-period Japan. Both are about hope and despair at the limit of human poverty. Is there more to this comparison than… the comparison?

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967).

Hitch is back! His/England's/Europe's first commercial talkie sets the tone and themes for a lifetime of adult-themed psycho-sexual thrillers. Complicated protagonists, with questionable values, make questionable choices (all in good fun) until evil men force them to come to terms with their own sense of self-worth. Sounds like a recipe for… blackmail!

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing BOTH Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (1936) and Akira Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (1957).

Krzysztof Kieslowski returns to the podcast with his 1981 break-out smash hit (or at least it would have been if Polish censors hadn't suppressed it for 6 years and only then to release a heavily cut version). It's almost as if there is one narrative where the film got released as planed, another where Kieslowski couldn't release it, and yet another where Randy didn't pick it for this podcast.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Aflred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929).

1. One. Un. Eins. Welcome to the first episode of the Spirit Guides… is what I would say if we watched the films of the Criterion Collection in numerical order. It took us nearly seven seasons, but we've finally been assigned spine number one: Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion. Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and (scene-stealing) Erich von Stroheim, trace the lives of prisoners-of-war and their captors during World War I. Escapes, indignities, and unexpected friendships mark the scenes, but it's really an exploration of how humanity must compete with national duty. A powerful, but unheard message, in the prelude to the second World War.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blind Chance (1981).

This week we are joined by special guest Max to (sub in for Mike and) discuss one of the great concert films of all time. Music. Death. Controversy. The Rolling Stones and the directing trio of the Maysle brothers and Catherine Zwerin find themselves in the middle of a decade-defining disaster: 1969's free concert at Altamont.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blind Chance (1981).

Huh… Apparently Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made a few movies together. Wonder if this one is any good?

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937).

Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. These are the things that you come to Random Acts of Cinema for. Paul Thomas Anderson almost manages to reach our podcastly levels of hedonism and vice in his late 90s indie apogee covering the late 70s porn apogee.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961).

Imagine a world where, whenever you think you are alone, there are always a bunch of dudes in trench coats quietly standing behind you and resting their hands on your shoulder. And they can read your mind. And they talk about you to their friends. And sometimes they sneak into your dreams.

Now imagine that there is nothing creepy about that and it's actually very reassuring. And that maybe we can find world peace through understanding and a new kind of politically-informed spirituality. Thanks to these trench coat guys.

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If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997).