274. Sacred Cows: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
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Since I contain multitudes, have run out of ideas, and since I aspire the podcast to embody Paul Krassner's iconic satirical magazine The Realist's motto of "Irreverrance is our only sacred cow", I am debuting the first in a series of occasional episodes where I revisit those films so firmly ensconced in our collective filmgoing conscience that we can be forgiven for forgetting if they're actually, you know...any good. So let's start with one of the odder films to achieve cinematic immortality: Frank Darabont's adaptation of a Stephen King short story (not that you'd know that from the films...
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273. 'My Cousin Vinny' (1992)
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Somehow, I've never seen this film before for reasons to do with "the 90's" as described in the episode. What a great experience to watch a ruthlessly efficient screenplay in the hands of such an excellent and fun cast. Plus, it turns out there's plenty of funny off-screen content surrounding this production, including casting drama, studio interference, and some deft machinations from both screenwriter Dale Launer and director Jonathan Lynn. The Rolling Stone The .
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272. Emergency Episode: The Bachman Twist Pretzel Crisis of 2026
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In this urgent plea for understanding in these troubled times, I veer off the normal charted waters of the podcast and into the knotty, twisted reality of a dawning awareness that all has not been as it seemed in the world of my most beloved snack food, Bachman Twist Pretzels. In this episode I will for the first time reveal the fruits of my investigative efforts uncovering the truth about Bachman Twist Pretzels no longer having a Twist. In all seriousness, my love for Bachman Twist Pretzels spans much of my entire life, and is connected to rare childhood memories of my Father, who loved...
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271. Abbas Kiarostami's 'Close-up' (1990)
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One of the greatest, most thought-provoking yet totally accessible films is this masterpiece of cinema from Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. It's the true story of a Tehran man who impersonates a famous filmmaker and convinces a family that he's going to cast them in a movie. Kiarostami then reconstructs the events that occurred using the real people involved, including the imposter. Part documentary, part fiction, and entirely about what we think about what we see on-screen, truth, lies, and cinema. I recommend the Criterion Channel's streaming page about this film as it contains...
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270. Robert Duvall in 'The Godfather Part II'
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From Senator Geary to Frankie Five Angels, Duvall's Tom Hagen navigated a twisty and often dirty road in the second Godfather film. Watching the movie through the lens of Tom Hagen, it's clear tha the film in its own way really focusses on Tom and Michael and how the changing times and Michael's increasing paranoia have removed the family so far from "The Good Old Days". The last two brothers left standing at the end of II are Tom and Michael. One of the great mysteries of Godfather III is if the presence of Tom Hagen would have salvaged that film from being the blight upon the memory of the...
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269. 'Night of the Juggler' (1980)
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'Night of the Juggler' is either one of the best 70's film titles or one of the worst. Honestly I enjoy it, for it's uniqueness and complete (well...near complete) relevence to the film's plot. It's certainly memorable, if not directly speaking to the film's setting...which is mostly in the daytime of a VERY 1978 NYC. 'Night of the Juggler' had long been sort of like that Jerry Lewis Holocaust film; never-seen, long-rumored to be secretly great...elusive. But KinoLorber has finally rescued the film from obscurity with a new 4K transfer, available now on YouTube and other streaming...
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268. Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen in 'The Godfather'
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Robert Duvall passed away at the age of 95 after more than 60 years as a working actor at the highest levels. One quick way to pay tribute to him is to revisit perhaps his most iconic and substantive role, that of Tom Hagen in The Godfather. Quietly the most important character linking the people and events in the film, Duvall's portrayal navigated complex internal issues like: when is a son not a son, and what is the reward for completing a lifetime of thankless tasks. All of these complicated things rest on Duvall's ability to read to us onscreen a whole host of emotions and thoughts. So in...
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267. 'Hooper' (1978)
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Choosing 'Hooper' out of a combination of desperation and momentary podcast apathy, and seeking a distraction and light entertainment, I discover instead a beautifully realized love letter to Hollywood stunt performers inside an impressive movie-about-making-movies.
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266. American Movie (1999)
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Chris Smith and Sarah Price's Sundance-winning first documentary feature, 'American Movie,' remains an iconic and thoroughly modern film to revisit or to experience for the first time. Like all truly great documentaries, it's ostensibly about a finite thing: hardscrabble, complicated Midwestern working-class 30-year-old lives at home, delivers newspapers, works at a local cemetery, and has big dreams of writing, producing, directing, and acting in films... but it's also about so much more: friendship, alcoholism, Midwestern blue-collar life, filmmaking, and nothing less than the pursuit of the...
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265. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
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The sequel to Denis Villeneuve's 'Sicaro' is an impressive off-ramp from the first film's focus on drug cartels trafficking narcotics and stacking bodies. Italian director Stefano Sollima (Gomorra, ZeroZeroZero) focuses more intently on Josh Brolin's Matt Graver and Benicio Del Toro's Alejandro Gillick characters, as they face a (final?) confrontation with the outer limit of their own moral codes. For me, Day of the Soldado is the rare sequel that gets better the more I watch it, and that doean't merely rehash the best-known sequences from the original (although it does that, too) but instead...
info_outlineI'm joined by Charles Fleming, LA-based writer, author and returning FCAC guest to talk about todays news of the death of Robert Redford. We discuss Redford's extraordinary career and difference-making life, including his environmental activism and the Sundance Film Festival and Institute.
Redford was born in Santa Monica and after a peripatetic youth marked by extreme religious pressure, hooliganism, college expulsion, found himself in New York City planning to be a set designer. He stumbled into acting and paid his dues in the emerging TV world of the 50's before breaking out as a film star in the 1970's. His interesting combination of extraordinary good looks and inner turmoil lent his characters a similarity even as he was never just playing himself. His is one of the more interesting acting careers to contemplate, and Charles I try and do justice to the decency and morality with which Redford seemed to conduct his life and his work.