Random Acts of Cinema
Episodes
453 - Chungking Express (1994)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are joined by Michael Patrick Jann, film and television writer/director and member of The State to discuss his personal pick: Wong Kar-wai's frenet...
1014 - Roma (2018)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alfonso Cuarón's drama-behind-the-drama has all of the trappings of a semi-autobiographical period piece. Meticulously recreated clothing, cars, fu...
1036 - The Big Boss (1971)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the promotional material for Lo Wei's The Big Boss (also known by a few other film titles) break-out star Bruce Lee is seen flying through the ai...
1007 - Until The End of the World (1991)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's a miracle I even made it out of Longwood alive. This town full of men with big mouths and no guts. I mean if you can just picture it: Wim Wen...
569 - The Makioka Sisters (1983)
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Director Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters, based on the book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, catalogs the domestic dramas of the eponymous four women and ...
165 - Man Bites Dog (1992) with Scott Sawitz
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Content Disclaimer: This episode examines a film with extremely challenging subject matter. Exceptionally graphic depictions of violence, murder, ra...
2nd Annual Rando Awards
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After months of campaigning and hype, constant drama and re-selection of the hosts, and hours of red carpet interviews, it's finally happening. Look...
1034 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) with Briana & Maddy of Chapter One: Take Two
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 Sci...
565 - The Great Dictator (1940) with Kevin Allison of Risk! and The State
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 Chapl...
1000 - Son of Godzilla (1967) with Angie
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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, wit...
301 - An Angel At My Table (1990) with AJ and Richard of Cult Popture
25 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Campion's filmed adaptation of the memoirs of celebrated New Zealand poet and author Janet Frame offers a desperately poignant and often devastat...
175 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's acclaimed memoir is a diatribe against Nixonian America, account of a motorcycle race, drug travelo...
806 - Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 act...
671 - La Cage Aux Folles (1978)
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
616 - Shallow Grave (1994)
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
012 - This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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-c...
555 - The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 st...
090 - Kwaidan (1965)
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Randy has been selecting a lot of spooky films for use recently, and the trend continues with Masaki Kobayashi's 1965 horror anthology Kwaidan. We'...
537 - C.H.U.D. (1984)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This movie is famous because of it's hilariously clunky acronym. And you only THINK you know what it stands for. That's just the first surprise th...
231 - The Last Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ein Fritz Lang Film! And its a nightmarish psychological crime thriller that was banned by the Nazis no less! It's also, strangely, a kind of sequel...
521 - Mystery Train (1989)
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have our first sample of Jim Jarmusch with this little gift that Mike chose for Charlie's extra-special birthday episode. Is this classic three-p...
544 - Head (1968)
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Rafelson's Head offers an acid-dipped, musical journey through the artistic and professional frustrations of the Monkees, post TV show and strug...
011 - The Seventh Seal (1957)
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a big one folks. We're starting our foray into the films of Ingmar Bergman with his (and maybe even the Criterion Collection's) most iconic fi...
654 - Repo Man (1984)
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Podcast Episode. If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Bob Rafelson's Head (1968).
727 - The Innocents (1961)
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A rambling old English manor. Maze-like hallways leading to shuttered, dusty rooms. Whisperings of derangement, obsession, and suicide. Music boxe...
673 - Stromboli (1950)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Famed Neo-realist Roberto Rossolini cast an unlikely Ingrid Bergman as the lead in his 1950 film Stromboli. She plays Karin Bjornsen, a displaced and ...
481 - Made In U.S.A. (1966)
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Made In U.S.A., Anna Karina plays a Philip Marlowe-inspired hard-boiled-but-in-a-A-line-dress detective scouring the underbelly of Atlantic-Cité f...
061 - Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We're taking a break from our normally scheduled podcast for a very special episode. In remembrance of director Terry Jones, who passed away just be...
504 - Hunger (2008)
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Director Steve McQueen's first feature film goes deep into the circumstances of a series of prisoner protests in Northern Ireland in 1981. With a cl...
075 - Chasing Amy (1997)
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are joined by podcast alums Shelley and Max for a viewing of celebrated and idiosyncratic auteur - hey, we're 90s kids - Kevin Smith's first foray ...
128 - Carl Th. Dreyer - My Metier (1995)
06 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a documentary about celebrated Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer that was released in the Criterion Collection in tandem with a collection ...
117 - Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Luis Bunuel joins illustrious list of directors to be featured on our podcast. What an honor! And in classic, Random-Acts-of-Cinema-fashion, we're...
359 - The Double Life Of Veronique (1991)
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Reflections, prisms, the dance of car lights across a rain sprinkled window to a Parisian cafe. It sure looks like we're reviewing some 1990s art ho...
511 - Colossal Youth (2006)
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Now we're talking. This is some serious Criterion Collection viewing right here. Pedro Costa's docufiction is a snail's-paced meditation on the li...
794 - Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ah, if only we could go back to the bohemian nexus of the American folk scene in 1960s Greenwich village. To be among the beatnicks and intellectual...
341 - A Canterbury Tale (1944)
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A plucky trio of young contributors to the Allied war effort find themselves caught up in a dastardly plot to poor glue in girls' hair in a small Engl...
434 - Classe Tous Risques (1960)
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We've gone from a man-on-the-run crime drama made in 1979 Japan, to another only made in 1960 Italy and France. Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques...
384 - Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Shohei Imamura's study of a killer on the run and the family members and victims that he leaves in his wake is presented as a fact-based accounting of...
566 - Insignificance (1985)
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One evening in 1954, Marylin Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Senator Joseph McCarthy gathered in Albert Einstein's New York City hotel room to excitedly mon...
594/1000 - Godzilla (1954)
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To celebrate the Collection's 1000th spine number, we're reviewing the film that started the kaiju-craze of the 20th century: Ishiro Honda's 1954 mast...
964 - The Kid Brother (1927)
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With our first random foray into the silent era, Harold Loyld's comic romance The Kid Brother - officially helmed by director Ted Wilde - has a plot. ...
366 - The Atomic Submarine (1959)
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The first true B-movie entry into our randomized journey through the Criterion Collection starts with a mushroom cloud of a bang. Spencer Gordon Ben...
095 - All That Heaven Allows (1955)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We follow up last week's selection with one of the Hollywood classics that inspired it. Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows melodrama challenges ...
995 - Polyester (1981)
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Holding onto the dream of bourgeois America has never seemed so impossible, stupid, crass, and funny as in Jon Waters' Polyester (1981). Divine head...
535 - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bowie! Sakamoto! Obsession! Uh, POW camp! And...war atrocities!? Torture? Ritual suicide? A subtle exploration of the despondency of an officer in cha...
776 - Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Stylistic pastiche. Symmetrical framing. Murray. Schwartzman. 1960s-centric jukebox soundtrack. It looks like this must be our first Wes Anderson movi...
315 - Shoot The Piano Player (1960)
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We're back into The Collection with another heavy-hitter. And it's our first foray into the French New Wave film's of Francois Truffaut. Paris! Kidnap...
1st Rando Awards
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is the 11th episode the right time for a podcast retrospective? It is if you need to hand out a bunch of prestigious Randies, the official awards of t...
136 - Spellbound (1945)
02 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hitchock. Bergman. Peck. And...Salvador Dali? Sounds about right. Let's see whether or not using psychoanalysis and the combined dream-logic o...
558 - Topsy-Turvy (1999)
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In our first break from format we're following up last week's movie - The Mikado (1939) - with a film exploring the men behind that comic opera: Gilbe...
559 - The Mikado (1939)
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine it's 1939. The world stands at the precipice of war. So why not make a film adaptation of a classic English comic opera set in Imperial Ja...
767 - My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This random number generator selection process that we're using seems to be doing the trick. For what better way to follow up a 1960s Czech medieval d...
661 - Marketa Lazarova (1967)
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Now we're getting into it. This is the real deep-level Criterion Collection stuff here. Legendary - but largely unknown in the U.S. - all-time Czech h...
446 - An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second of two iconic Japanese filmmakers in a row. Last week we went big with Kurosawa so that can only mean Yasujiro Ozu is next. His...
138 - Rashomon (1950)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This is a big one. If we were to compile our top 10 most "classic" Criterion titles, this film would be somewhere on that list. Probably. At least...
350 - Seduced And Abandoned (1964)
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What's the perfect follow-up to a gritty tale of crime in 1981 Chicago? Why, it could only be a 1964 Italian social satire of love, family, Sicilian c...
691 - Thief (1981)
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We jump forward 26 years to go on a caper with Michael Mann's Thief of 1981. It's got everything: perpetually wet city streets, magic hour danish, and...
213 - Richard III (1955)
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We're off to a truly grand start of our self-determined but entirely aimless journey through the Criterion Collection with Sir Laurence Olivier's 1955...
000 - Introduction & The Premise
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Quiet on the set! Before we start watching movies, come an meet your hosts: Mike and Charlie. We lay out the structure and rules of the podcast, discu...