It turns out that well-regarded film preservationist and historian Martin Scorsese also makes movies!  And you know what? Some of them are surprisingly good.  And he made this one with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci (of all people) about the troubled life of boxer Jake La Matta.  It’s a sports movie!

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).

Hee haw!  It’s time to cash in with a guaranteed shot at commercial appeal with a Christmas classic!  But can Frank Capra and James Stewart’s heartstring-tugging piece of nostalgia-driven  Americana break through our icy-cold critical defenses?  This holiday-feast-sized episode might just surprise you.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull (1980).

Come to think of it, we actually did watch an unofficial “snowy mining trilogy” with last week’s McCabe & Mrs. Millerand Gold Rush. Because we ended up watching both the original 1925 version of Charles Chaplin’s groundbreaking silent adventure AND the 1942 talkie re-release. Thank goodness.   If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

… [mumble]… [murmur]… robert… [murmur]… altman… [mumble]… [glasses clinking]… [distant laughter]… brothel… [fiddle tuning] western… beatty… [mumble]… christie… [door creaking]… snowy mining town…

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Charles Chaplin’s Gold Rush (1925 and 1942).

This movie is about so much more than a rad futuristic red motorcycle ridden by a guy in a rad futuristic red leather jacket.  But don’t worry, Katsuhiro Otomo’s all-time classic cyberpunk anime is still about those two essential elements.  And I guess it’s also about the struggle to find dignity and purpose in the face of the cruel militarized totalitarian dystopian future of 2019.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

Ten years after having abandoned a incomplete film, associates of director Jean Renoir gathered the footage and put together this less-than-feature-length film about a two young men who decide to spice up an afternoon by seducing the naive, Parisienne daughter and mother who have come to the country to enjoy a bit of nature.  And one of these characters has an AMAZING mustache.  Listen to this episode to find out who!

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1989).

Gus, River, and Keanu.  Barns falling from the sky, narcolepsy, and Shakespeare.  We know what you’re thinking: it sounds like we’re describing a movie about young male sex workers struggling to get by in the Pacific Northwest.  Pretty obvious stuff.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country (1936).

This film, and consequently this episode and our discussion, demands a disclaimer up top about its troubling content.  As designed, Lars von Trier’s Antichrist stoked controversy at its release with its graphic depiction of sex, violence, sadism, misogyny, and death.  If any listeners are sensitive to the discussion of these topics, they are encouraged to skip this episode.  

Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a grieving couple who retreat to a cabin in the woods as they attempt to cope with the tragic death of their young child.  Their failure escalates through psychosis, sex, delusion, magic, torture, and murder as a proposed source of human suffering is slowly exposed.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Gus van Saint’s My Own Private Idaho (1991).

It’s a Halloween miracle!  The kind where one of your favorite podcasts decides to release an episode about a spooky movie a day early so it comes out on the day in question.  Wow.  Good job, us.  We’re watching the monster movie cult classic Equinox, which incorporates a sort of talent-reel of up-and-coming special effects maestro Dennis Muren into a mashed together series of narrative scenes directed by Jack Woods that pad it out to a feature length.  More importantly though, we talk a lot about WKRP in Cincinnati.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009).

A movie AND the book that it’s based on?  What is this, an episode of Random Acts of Cinema or an episode of Chapter One: Take Two, amiright?  Well, it’s actually both.  This week we’ve teamed up with Briana and Maddy to do what they do with Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s classic literary science fiction masterpiece Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tartovsky’s classic cinematic science fiction masterpiece Stalker.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jack Woods and Dennis Muren’s Equinox (1970).