The Gauntlet

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (2020)

This week we’re going long in our shortest episode yet as we depart from our normal format to toil in the fields of C.W. Winter & Anders Edström’s 480-minute poem of life and loss in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture

Waiting to Exhale (1995) / Now and Then (1995)

This week our pal Alex Sherman joins us as we wait to exhale with the ladies of Forest Whitaker’s sensual melodrama and raise the dead with the BFFs of Lesli Linka Glatter’s nostalgic flashback

Color of Night (1994) / The Island of St. Matthews (2013)

This week we’re getting dangerously wet as we go skinny dipping with Richard Rush and water ski down memory lane with Kevin Jerome Everson

Barabbas (1961) / The Beast of War (1988)

This week the chosen ones lead us down dangerous paths as we chase tanks with Kevin Reynolds and the Mujahideen and get tossed into the gladiator arena in Richard Fleischer’s biblical epic

Giwaku aka Suspicion (1982) / Court (2014)

This week we’re going to court and cross examining Yoshitaro Nomura’s fiery legal procedural and Chaitanya Tamhane’s understated indictment of judicial injustice and class conflict

Dirkie (1969) / White Sun of the Desert (1970)

This week we’re getting lost in the dunes with Comrade Sukhov and Dirkie as we wander through the unforgiving sandscapes of the Karakum and Kalahari deserts

Marat/Sade (1967) / I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018)

This week we’re going into production as we join the crew of Radu Jude’s Romanian historical reenactment and get caught in the madhouse of Peter Brook’s play-within-a-play

Summerfield (1977) / Missing (1982)

This week we join the search party for a missing Australian schoolteacher and a vanished American abroad in an enigmatic slow burn by Ken Hannam and confrontational thriller by Costa-Gavras

Quicksilver (1986) / The Cyclist (1989)

This week we’re celebrating Spoketober as we pedal our way through Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s satirical circus and bunny hop from Wall Street to the mean streets with Kevin Bacon

Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) / Deadly Weapons (1974)

This week we’re going on a date with the grand dame of the grindhouse as we discuss Doris Wishman’s bad girls and deadly weapons