Random Acts of Cinema

Spoiler alert. In this movie Christopher Lee stabs Boris Karloff and Boris Karloff throws acid in Christopher Lee’s face. And there’s some stuff about 19th century medical experiments, but mostly that first part.  Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels (1963).

Neither a documentary on the films of David Lynch nor a film about the man we knew as David Lynch.  But an account of a young man who through circumstance and single-minded drive, would find himself in and construct just the sort of environment that could form a David Lynch.  Directors Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, and Rick Barnes put the camera on a man making art and a microphone on a man looking back at his early life.  And they leave it up to us to make connections between the two. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Robert Day’s Corridors of Blood (1959).

For one of us, this is where it all began.  You leave me breathless… ahhhhh….  That’s from a different movie though. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, and Rick Barnes’David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)

This week we return to the Shohei Imamura’s “Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes” collection with his “entomological study” of one woman’s lifelong struggle for survival and purpose in a cruel modern world.  Style, ambiguity, and shock mark this as a classic Imamura story. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960).

Legendary 1980s/90s Hong Kong/Hollywood action auteur John Woo sets an early pace for his legendary career with a period-kung fu movie about two swordsman-buddies caught in the midst of a bloody revenge plot between warring clans.  Spoiler alert: there's a martial arts master whose style is "asleep." Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman (1963).

From the clanky jangle of that first Tom Waits song to that jangly clank of the last Tom Waits song, you know you are in for a treat.  Jim Jarmusch pops back up on the show with his humanist anthology of five stories set in cabs, each taking place in a different city on the same night.  Winona, Gena, Giancarlo, Armin, Rosie, Isaach, uh.. Beatrice, Roberto, and … Matti?  Look he went truly international with his cast, so I can’t name them all off the top of my head. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Woo’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1991).

Cat, piano, well, watermelon, mirror, bananas.  You know, you're basic horror movie formula.  Director Nobuhiko Obayashi spins a eerily formulaic but wildly unanticipate-able story of teens.  And death. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Jim Jarmusch's Night On Earth (1991).

What says “Merry Christmas” more than a sexy tale of infidelity and alienation set against the backdrop of soviet invasion and oppression?  In the Criterion Collection?  Not much. Join us as we discuss Phillip Kaufman’s adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel of Prague Spring and its aftermath, starring some distractingly beautiful people. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (1977).

It’s Orson Welles! It’s Shakespeare! Everyone involved is at the top of their game! Filmed across continents on location! It was a labor of love 3 years in the making!  Yep. No problems here. None at all. No need to investigate further… Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Phillip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

Albert & Allen Hughes take a stab at the classic tale of the American twentieth century with a star-studded cast and a sweeping narrative starting in the Bronx of 1968, the bloody jungles of Vietnam, back to a changed America, and then… an iconic 90s heist scene? Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Orson Welles’ Othello (1952).

David Lynch’s follow-up to one of the most disturbing and lovingly crafted pieces of auteur cinema ever made is… an Oscar-bait biopic? Sure: he brazenly assaults Victorian (and maybe even a few modern) sensibilities by frankly visualizing the appearance and living conditions of a young man cast from polite society. And, yeah-yeah, who are the REAL monsters, amiright? But more that this, Lynch taps into is own dark dreamscape, to poke at the less obvious, but deeply felt, horrors of the industrial age. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Albert & Allen Hughes Dead Presidents (1995).

This week, it’s Moonstruck.  Thank God: it’s Moonstruck. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 David Lynch’s The Elephant Man(1980).

If you throw everything at the wall (romance, screwball comedy, noir thriller, globe-trotting action) you will ALMOST predict one of the great disasters of the twentieth century.  This coincidence is inevitably repeated a ton on the IMDb trivia page. But spare yourself from being spoiled and just watch Frank Borzage’s charming tale of star-crossed lovers set against a backdrop of 1930s Hollywood glamour. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck (1987).

Get ready for another action-packed…Yasuhiro Ozu movie?  Well, at least compared to his other masterpieces.  Buckle up for this bracingly gentle study of a middle-aged married couple as they lightly bicker and tell harmless lies to one another all in service of slowly coming to understand and maybe even love each other.  Hope you survive the experience! Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Frank Borzage’s History is Made at Night (1937).

Two unlikely kindred souls find purpose and companionship as they wander through the cross-continental 1970s in search of a sense of… just a little stability. Wim Wenders sets the tone for his career as a quiet student of humanity with a big ol heart. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Yasuhiro Ozu's The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952).

Is this the one where Keanu takes a bunch of future drugs?  I mean that DOES sound kind of like a Cronenberg movie…. No wait!  It’s the head exploding one.  Except that maybe, just maybe, this early 80s psychic thriller offers a whole lot more than just exploding heads.  But don’t worry: if you really like exploding heads, this film still has you covered. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Wim Wenders Alice in the Cities (1974).

Soviet cinema at its most… spiritual?  Iconoclast director Sergei Parajanov’s deeply personal exploration of the cultural echoes found in the life of 18th-century Armenian troubadour/monk Sayat-Nova uses manuscript-inspired tableaux vivants, exquisite staging, and a profoundly rich symbolic vocabulary to sneak this one past the censors.  Sort of. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981).

Content warning: this film contains depictions of suicide. Come check out Mike and Charlie realizing exactly what they’ve gotten themself into AFTER watching this movie and getting about halfway through our discussion about it.  Yukio Mishima and Domoto Masaki’s rich confrontation of Noh-style staging with richly visualized sensuality propels a short film about a married couple’s suicided following a failed coup-d’etat in 1936 Japan. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomogranates(1969).

Kansas.  The Great Salt Lake.  Peaches Christ.  Michael Varrati.  Abandoned carnival.  Am I listing the components of an unlikely-to-happen but likely-to-be-wild road trip?  Or is it the perfect formula for a really fun episode where two of our favorite guests return to discuss the weirdly atmospheric ultimate-indie horror film?   Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Yukio Mishima and Domoto Masaki’s Patriotism or The Right of Love and Death (1966).

Directing duo Arie and Chula Esiri tell two separate stories of would-be Nigerian emigrants navigating through a dehumanizing world that uses poverty and debt to perpetuate a cycle of exploitation that cares little for dignity and decency.  Beautifully shot on film on location in Lagos, Mofe and Rosa each strain towards a better life. Join the Random Acts of Cinema Discord server here! *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 Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962).