Secret Movie Club team members Edwin Gomez and Craig Hammill hash out what really IS the criteria that makes a movie a masterpiece? Although they easily agree on JAWS, they split when Edwin calls AIRPORT 77 and KING KONG 1976 masterpieces while Craig views Ingmar Bergman's WINTER LIGHT and PERSONA as masterpieces. Craig also is concerned that the term "masterpiece" gets used way too much these days. He fears the term is losing its important meaning as an indicator of a movie that truly rises above all others. Is there a fix? Is there a problem? Listen to see where Edwin and Craig ultimately land. We'd love to hear your thoughts. (You can always write us at: community@secretmovieclub.com. We might even read your comments in an upcoming pod!).

Today, Secret Movie Club Team Members Edwin Gomez and Craig Hammill discuss Terry Zwigoff's breakout 1990's documentary CRUMB about underground comic book artist R. Crumb and his dysfunctional brothers. Both Edwin and Craig talk about how a second viewing really emphasizes how heavy Crumb's home life was. We nominate some other powerful "dark" documentaries. Edwin name checks the Maysles' 1960's key work SALESMAN and Errol Morris's 1980's THE THIN BLUE LINE. Craig talks about Claude Lanzmann's 1980's masterwork SHOAH and Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 THE ACT OF KILLING. Edwin talks the re-opening of the Vista and Craig mentions how much he likes David Fincher's new movie THE KILLER. (This Pod acts as a kind of Part II to SMC Pod #94 which looked at AMERICAN MOVIE and the documentary genre).

As part of our final season wrap up on Alfred Hitchcock director of the year, we look at Hitchcock's late career advice to film schools to make sure that young filmmakers knew how to tell their stories visually/cinematically without needing to rely on dialogue. SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about how this approach has come to mean for him the goal of "an idea in every shot". Today we talk about examples from Murnau's The Last Laugh, Renoir's La Chienne, Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, Coppola's The Godfather I baptism cross-cutting scene, Kurosawa's High and Low among other movies to show how production design, framing, editing, cross-cutting, "gags" can all become tools in the tool box to communicate cinematically.

For as popular and perennial as Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is, 62 years after its initial release, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill feels it is still underrated. In many ways, Craig feels PSYCHO is the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY of horror movies. That is-a movie which changed the cinematic form, created new film language, and in many ways, has never been surpassed.  We take a look at the history of PSYCHO including Hitchcock's own doubts that it worked. We also look at how Hitchcock micromanaged brilliantly hiding the twist until its opening weekend and how Hitchcock used his five decades of film craft to take his "Subjective POV" style to its zenith. Finally, we discuss the unsettling and surprisingly complex world view of the movie which is neither optimistic nor cynical but stranger. A worldview that approximates the complexities of our own world.

When you love cinema, it's fascinating how some of your favorite moviemakers are beloved by a small passionate group of "in the know" fans and other of your favorite moviemakers appeal to the entire world including your grandparents who know nothing about the film world. What defines the "art house" versus the "blockbuster" sensibility? If you're a moviemaker, where does your sensibility ultimately land? Does it help to be know? Is it even productive to think in these terms? Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at a number of filmmaker sensibilities including those of Peter Greenaway, James Cameron, Satyajit Ray, Kelly Reichhardt, and Francis Ford Coppola. All have achieved success and longevity to wildly different audiences.

While the team re-assembles, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill goes solo to discuss the history of sex in American cinema and the X and NC-17 rating. Craig marvels that 50 years ago X-rated movies like MIDNIGHT COWBOY were winning Best Picture and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES were mainstream, making the equivalent of $100 million dollars, and getting 3 star ratings from Roger Ebert while now American studios, filmmakers, and films seem to have no idea how to deal with sex scenes (and so avoid them). For the societal health of the country, Craig advocates for the emergence of the "adult sex movie" as a mainstream genre like action, horror, fantasy & sci-fi, and the superhero. It would help bring conversations about sex and sexuality back into the light and mainstream.

And so, finally, we get to Summer 2023 Pod #10. The number of completion. We look at Parts 9-18 of Twin Peaks: The Return. We discuss how David Lynch managed the seemingly impossibly by matching Part 8 with the sheer brilliance of Part 18. And we discuss all the grace notes throughout. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer feels that TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN ultimately is the greatest movie of 2017, one of the greatest features of the 21st century, and that TWIN PEAKS as a whole is one of the key cinematic works of the last 50 years. We also re-post SMC Pod #115 where the team discusses the mystery and marvel that is Tom Cruise, one of the most interesting and complicated of America's movie stars.

Alfred Hitchcock is one of American cinema's most daring risk-takers and experimenters. His filmmography is filled with wild experiments from single location movies like LIFEBOAT, ROPE, REAR WINDOW to rule breaking near avant garde stunners like PSYCHO and THE BIRDS. Today, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at 1948's ROPE (comprised of only 11 shots and filmed to look like one continuous take) and 1963's THE BIRDS (in which seemingly docile everyday birds attack a small Northern Californian town with little to no explanation). Craig marvels at ROPE's technique and THE BIRDS secondary, less talked about subtext about the chaos of lust and desire. We also repost SMC Pod #108 about the wonderful Spanish time travel movie TIME CRIMES and the low budget high concept feature.

Today we continue our TWIN PEAKS masterwork series by looking at 2017's TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN Parts 1-8. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill talks about how David Lynch and Mark Frost telegraphed their ambition with the VERY FIRST Twin Peaks episode/pilot in 1989. Lynch's expanded vision which encompasses all of America married to Kyle Machlachlan's commitment to 5 different roles (!!) married to avant garde masterpiece parts like Part 8 make THE RETURN the greatest movie of 2017 and one of the great 21st century masterworks for Craig. We also repost SMC Pod #10000 recorded April 1, 2021 which was our first attempt at an April's Fool's episode where we wanted to make ya' laugh.

SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about his personal favorite movies of the 21st century including Catch Me If You Can, Zodiac, No Country For Old Men, Un Prophete, Boyhood, Lovers Rock among several others. He notes how watching recent masterpieces can help give a current moviemaker the faith and belief necessary to commit to cinema in the current strange moment. David Lynch's and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks: The Return (which Craig considers one of the great 21st century movies) will get talked about at length next week in SMC Summer Pod #8. We also repost SMC Pod #96 about the Wachowski's Speed Racer and the wonderful phenomenon of movies that get re-appraised, re-considered over time.

SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill continues the podcast summer mini-series deep dive into David Lynch's & Mark Frost's TWIN PEAKS. Today we talk about Lynch's 1992 feature film TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and the 90 minutes he cut out that he later released in 2014 as THE MISSING PIECES. Fire Walk With Me was initially met with near universal dislike. Now it is considered one of Lynch's greatest and most essential movies.  Craig also notes how strangely the changes Lynch had to make to get the movie across the finish line helped the movie get more focused and more intense. Then we repost SMC Podcast #86. In this pod, we get to hear the "lost podcasts" recorded in 2018-2019, with friends of SMC that include screenwriters Matt Olsen, Steve Grest, and fellow USC film school grad Brian Hatfield. They represent the kind of wide-ranging movie conversations that great movies can kindle. Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, and possibly the greatest of all Star Trek movies Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan get discussed. There's also lots of laughter.

As our Summer podcast series heads into the back stretch, founder.programmer Craig Hammill decides to devote the remaining 4 summer pods to a deep dive into each phase/cycle of David Lynch's magnum opus Twin Peaks which now comprises two tv seasons, a movie, and a limited series on cable. If last week was a kind of general prologue, this week Craig deep dives into television seasons #1 and #2 which aired on ABC 1990-1991. Craig specifically focuses on how the poorly received back half of season 2 when Lynch stepped away from the series set the gears in motion for Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost to re-focus/re-center the show with the Season #2 finale. This in turn set up the 1992 Lynch directed feature FIRE WALK WITH ME which in turn set up 2017's TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (all of which will get discussed in the next few episodes). Then we re-post SMC Pod #85. This was our first pod devoted to a long form conversation of a Secret Movie Club filmmaker of the year-here ultra prolific German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Editor Andrew Groves joins the conversation and adds deep rich detail.

Today in our ongoing August "summer break series" something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. . .Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about season one of David Lynch's and Mark Frost's revolutionary TWIN PEAKS. Arriving in 1990 on network television, TWIN PEAKS was like nothing anybody had ever seen. Disturbing, unsettling, cinematic. It's also a fascinating case study in what a movie director brings to TV versus how a show runner trained in television would handle a series. Craig talks Lynch's stylistic imprint on the episodes Lynch directed including the still shocking pilot. Then we re-post the very first "Defend This Movie" posted in June 2021 in which Craig defends his love of the 1969 James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" against the withering scorn heaped by Craig's friend Steve Grest who finds it one of the worst of the Bonds.

Today, we continue our SMC Summer Pod hybrid series of new material and a repost of one our favorite earlier pods by honoring 70's maverick moviemaker William Friedkin. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill talks about how he actually got to interview Friedkin for two hours in the 1990's. How very few moviemakers get a movie like THE EXORCIST that changes pop culture forever. And how Friedkin's passing really begins the passing of the guard in a way. We also re-post SMC Radio Hour #4 which is a fun (we hope) horror omnibus radio hour we did in our first year with great voice actors as a way to be creative at the height of COVID.

Craig riffs on the Barbie/Oppenheimer current pop culture juggernaut but also notes how strange it is that a movie like Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 which will gross at least $500 million worldwide is considered underperforming. Craig also celebrates a summer where movies are again driving the pop culture. Then we repost Secret Movie Club Podcast #15 where we talked about Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods, Malcolm X with special guests Ajarae Coleman and Kevin Johnson in the age of George Floyd and the horrific police brutality against black Americans in the summer of 2020.

As we work feverishly to prep our remaining Summer and Fall 2023 seasons, we're going to do a month of new-repost hybrid podcasts. The first 10 minutes or so will be new and on a short subject. This week, Craig talks about fascinating classics like Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove, Sexy Beast, and Annie Hall that had to be severely reworked in production and post production because some element didn't work. And how strangely the brainstorming that went into fixing the problem created classics. Then we'll repost a great podcast from our vaults so folks can hear topics they may never have realized the team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, other SMC Team Members, Craig Hammill) covered when we started way back when in 2020.  Today, we re-post our first ever podcast! SMC Podcast #1 (recorded just a few weeks into the pandemic in March/April 2020) focuses on the team's personal top 10 favorites lists. And the reexamination if such a list even makes sense when there are so many great movies.

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, and Craig Hammill) talk about David Lynch's 1999 G rated Disney movie The Straight Story. It is agreed that it is one of Lynch's greatest movies yet oddly one of his most underseen because it defies many folks' surface expectations of what is a David Lynch movie. The team also offers up their own oddball director movies. 1941, Gloria, Brewster's Millions, Spike Lee's Old Boy, among many others get discussed. Connor notes how some directors are allowed to branch out and others can get imprisoned in a certain genre. Edwin bristles and swears more than usual. Daniel brings up Francis Ford Coppola's Jack too late. Craig talks Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

The return of our side podcast Defend This Movie! Secret Movie Club team member Edwin Gomez has long loved William Friedkin's controversial 1980 police thriller Cruising about Al Pacino going undercover to find a serial killer in New York's underground gay S&M leather bar scene. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill has long felt uncomfortable about the movie for what he feels is a lurid, uncomfortable use of a gay sub-culture in a slasher/edgelord kind of way. But upon re-watching the movie, Craig's feelings have become more ambivalent. Head projectionist Alex Olivier feels the movie has incredible merit and is far less problematic then some of the other movies Craig has programmed for Secret Movie Club.  The three meet for an Oxford style debate about one of the 1980's most controversial movies.

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, and Craig Hammill) gets beach-ready with films for the summer! The Team agrees that Jaws is the quintessential Independence Day (the holiday) movie! Edwin salutes Patton as the greatest American movie ever made. Daniel reports on All the President’s Men and how much he likes watching people be good at their jobs. Connor half-heartedly endorses Mars Attacks! as an Independence Day (the movie) alternative. Craig celebrates “last day of school” movies, like American Graffiti, and camp films, like Wet Hot American Summer! Stay cool out there, Secret Movie Clubbers!

On the heels of Secret Movie Club’s biggest screening to date, SMC programmer and founder, Craig Hammill, sits down with Team member and head projectionist (AND samurai aficionado), Alex Olivier, to spend nearly an hour talking about one of the best films of all time, Craig’s desert island film, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai! Alex and Craig go into the movie’s themes, the legendary cast, the difficult production, and the enormous influence the film and Kurosawa has had over cinema since its release. Edwin makes a brief appearance.