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 all: portraits of ladies, ladies on fire, portraits of ladies on fire, portraits of ladies that are literally on fire, and even a painting titled Portrait of a Lady on Fire that really isn’t a portrait of a lady on fire.  And I’m not just being flip; this movie dives headfirst, with puzzle box precision, into themes of looking, being looked at, and looking like your being looked at with remarkable sophistication and emotional depth as a compelling study of sexuality and the female gaze.

Next week will be our year in review, with the 2nd Annual Rando Awards.  Print out your ballots and let the predictions commence!

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 people call fascists on their practices and they respond by saying they aren’t “technically” fascists?  So then they are pressured to walk back their language a little bit and the criticism gets all muddied on a point of semantics based on strict political definitions?  Like when a leader who clearly would have been pretty cool with Nazi tactics and ideology gets all butt-hurt because his political party is technically called something else?  So, fearing a populist backlash, studio films tend to hold back on that metaphor, coming at the subject from a more oblique angle? You know who didn’t placate to these pressures and just made a movie about Nazis and how much they sucked?  Who didn’t pull a single punch and made out Hitler and his cronies to be petulant, childish, narcissistic, and still incredibly dangerous?  The Little Tramp himself: Charlie Chaplin.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be watching Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) with special guests Briana McZant and Maddy McZant of Chapter One: Take Two.

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 longtime friend and Godzilla-expert Angie to help us make sense of this eighth(!) entry into the franchise.  

This time, there’s a baby Godzilla, a remote weather experiment station on a pacific island, a lady who has been hiding in a cave for some reason, and zero stakes.  So it’s a pretty distant echo of the original 1954 masterpiece.  Still, there’s something in it’s 60s color palette, modified environmental message, and Gilligan’s Island-like hijinks that make it a must-watch for the Godzilla completist. 

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) with Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State).

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 twentieth century.  Played by three different actors at three different periods of her life, Frame’s tender spirit and social anxieties make for a life of modestly monumental triumphs and gut-wrenching personal tragedies.  

We are joined by AJ and Richard of Cult Popture to help us understand the New-Zealand-of-it-all.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jun Fukuda’s Son of Godzilla (1967).

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 the Las Vegas chamber of commerce could get behind.  But it's really the story of Thompson's proxy Raoul Duke's (played by Johnny Depp channeling a sort of mumbly Jim Carrey) desperately trying to channel the destructive energy of his drug buddy/lawyer Dr. Gonzo (played by Benicio del Toro channeling some kind of potbellied, vomit soaked, sweat demon.)  So it's funny.

If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990) with special guest host's AJ and Richard of Cult Popture. 

Sometimes all you need is a little classic Hollywood glamour.  Jean Arthur and Cary Grant put on some saucy hats and deliver just that it is this action/adventure story about the daring lives of... uh... postal service pilots and the women who love them.  Don't worry: Howard Hawks figures out how to make this work with the combination of thrilling special effects, edge-of-your seat danger, and themes of courage, friendship, love, and self-sacrifice.  And did I mention Jean Arthur and Cary Grant?  And their hats?

If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1996).

You know what would just be wonderful right about now?  A delightful and beloved French farce.  Edouard Molinaro’s classic tale of two gay nightclub owners’ attempt to put on a show of conservative domesticity in order to trick a right-wing politician into allowing their son to marry his daughter isn’t exactly timeless - in that it is SO set in 1978 - but it’s charm and hilarious send-up of straight gender performance make it one for the ages.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939).

Danny Boyle is on the board!  And in uncharacteristic fashion, we’re actually taking a look at the earlier film of a celebrated director rather than some weird, later period film.  The randomness of our system was bound to get it right eventually.  And the result is a gripping 90s thriller about three Scottish flat mates descending into madness, paranoia, and betrayal after the discovery of a bag full of a cash and their decision to dispose of the corpse of its former owner.  And Ewan MacGregor’s floppy hair makes its debut just before it is shaved completely off for a more iconic role in a Danny Boyle film from a few years later. 

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Édouard Molinaro’s La Cage Aux Folles (1978).

On this week’s episode we turn the podcast up to eleve... Oh god.  What am I doing?  What have I become?  With all of these quotable lines, super-clever improv, bad accents, hilarious songs, and tight, tight pants, will we be able to manage even a half-coherent conversation about Rob Reiner’s groundbreaking “rockumentary” parody This Is Spinal Tap?  

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be discussing and reviewing Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (1994).

The seedy, hand-to-mouth, day-to-day scramble in the life of a press agent in New York City seems an unlikely setup for a cruel and bitter piece of star-studded film noir.  But Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster are up to the challenge in director Alexander Mackendrick’s take on the hustle and corruption here at the very heart of conservative America’s most nostalgic tent pole.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be reviewing and discussing Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (1984).