ACFmovie podcast

Titus & Miles Smith IV discuss Visconti's adaptation of the most famous 20th c. Italian novel, Lampedusa's Gattopardo. The end of the aristocracy, the beginning of the bourgeoisie, the problem beauty poses for art.

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni talk about The Young Pope, Paolo Sorrentino's HBO comic miniseries about a reactionary American pope calling the modern world to account before the mystery of God!

Titus & Joshua Steinman discuss the Coen Bros.' Hail Caesar, a vision of the American mid-century, the post-war moment when glamour & technology competed in Los Angeles, when the beautiful visions of the past held sway & science had not yet replaced them.

Titus & Chris Rufo discuss the last remarkable Peter Sellers film, Hal Ashby's Being There, a satire on Washington, D.C., but also an existential drama with a philosophical interest in the problem of nihilism. We touch on everything from the zombie Biden presidency to Heidegger's Dasein!

Titus & Lafayette Lee talk Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath Of God -- conquistadors in the Amazon, El Dorado & terror, a journey into the heart of darkness, a return to the origins of monsters & heroes. Manly nihilism, the indifference & hostility of nature, incest.

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni talk Italian politics & Paolo Sorrentino's artistic vision of the Italian republic in Il Divo, the secrets of the politicians & the transformation brought about by democracy...

Titus & David Polasnky discuss dystopia & the transformation of elite opinion in the 50 years since Soylent Green came out--a movie whose horrors of poverty are now offered as policy proposals for a progressive future.

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni talk about Paolo Sorrentino's second movie, his first romantic story, or at least novelistic character study, starring the greatest Italian actor of the 21st c., Toni Servillo. Sorrentino comes up with a beautiful story about the secret power of love & morality over the heart of modern man, & a striking admiration for the past.

Titus & Steve Sailer discuss his upcoming anthology of articles, columns, speeches, & essays -- the first volume of a lifetime of noticing important facts about American society that respectable institutions don't want to talk about. This time around, we talk about the Sailer Law of Female Journalism.

Titus & Peachy Keenan discuss her new book Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War, a funny but spirited battlecry, to rouse the moms of America, for family & also for faith.

Titus Techera & Lafayette Lee discuss No Country For Old Men, the Coen Bros. novel & the Cormac McCarthy novel it's based on. We talk about manliness & war, confrontations with evil, & the transformations of America, North & South in their influence on the West, the 60s, & our world now...

Titus & David Polansky discuss the wonderful war-time movie The Life & Death of Col. Blimp, a Powell-Pressburger combination of propaganda & art, & a rare opportunity to reflect on British character through the Imperial wars & the World Wars, as well as on America & its wars in the comparison.

Titus & Jack Fowler talk about Battleground, the first major cinematic depiction of the Battle of the Bulge, the end of WW2, & the conflict that revealed American character. Happy Memorial Day!

Titus & Ryan Shinkel discuss David Lynch's Blue velvet, a movie about suburbia & the city, a boy growing up to be a man by facing evil, & the predicament of American freedom, which might mean ignoring evil or embracing it...

Titus & L0m3z discuss David Fincher's Fight Club & its relation to right-wing Twitter anons -- the age of agonizing men looking for causes, who attack capitalism & matriarchy but find it difficult to associate or be productive.

Titus & David Polansky discuss Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a dark comedy, a tale of future tyranny, also a Romantic fantasy--we talk about the ways in which it describes our troubles, & more adequately than the more famous entries in dystopian science fiction.

Titus & Steve Sailer discuss the unpleasant facts of political life in America & the study of those facts through the use of statistics. Steve talks about how he studies patterns of behavior and what conclusions this leads him to about the two major political coalitions & the ways of life they make possible, as opposed to the rhetoric & the ideology peddled by pundits in the mass-media.

Titus & Sohrab Ahmari discuss Mulholland Dr., David Lynch's story of Hollywood, love of the beautiful leading to murder--the glamour that sustains FantasyLand & the misery that leads to corruption--dreams & morality!

Titus & Flagg Taylor discuss Paul Newman's Thanksgiving movie, Nobody's fool, a story about a man returning to family & learning what he might have that he should give thanks for. We talk about upstate New York, a rural setting, post-industrial, becoming impoverished, & how people have to deal with aging & mortality. I compare this setting, full of quarrels & tinged by despair, with social media!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the working class buddy cop action comedy, the relationship between friendship & justice for men, & the succsess of the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the most famous buddy cop action comedy--justice for Christmas, Los Angeles summoning heroic men to do daring deeds, the superiority of noble sacrifice to therapy when it comes to men grieving.

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni discuss the elections in Italy & the new gov't of Giorgia Meloni, a right-wing politician dedicated to the Italian nation & who quotes the conservative sages of our times--Roger Scruton. We talk about the economic, immigration, & foreign affairs problems facing Italy.

Titus & Aaron Kheriaty discuss Aaron's new book, The New Abnormal, a report on the biomedical security state & a warning about the threats to civil liberties rising in response to the pandemic.

Titus & John Presnall talk about Brian De Palma's transsexual thriller, a poetic attack on psychiatry & a look at the transformation of society after the sexual revolution, as marriage, love, & even individual identity become fragile & threaten to collapse.

Titus & John Presnall talk about Brian De Palma's most famous horror movie, Carrie, 1976, adapting Stephen King's debut novel. We're in important ways rehearsing the '70s as a society, so it's worth thinking about the stories that were intended as warnings at the time about the great changes in society, especially in the '60s. Carrie, especially in its conclusion, is a remarkably clever view of American society & the future, the children.

Titus & Scot Bertram talk about Dirty Harry, whose 50th an. in 2021 went largely unnoticed--the virtues of the character & of the story are now embarrassing to elites & perhaps to many other people--the criticism of society offered by the artists, however, is more timely than we could possibly wish & deserves attention!

Titus & Flagg Taylor talk about the Oscar-nominated Czech movie Divided we fall, a somewhat comic drama about survival & salvation in Bohemia in WWII, or the character of a people caught between Nazis & Soviets.

Titus & John Presnall talk about Brian De Palma's The Fury, a horror about the deep state, about the idealism of education (brain powers) & globalization (the UN) turning into espionage, experiments on people, & terrifying violence. At the point America runs the world, the family is most endangered.

Titus & Sebastian discuss Paolo Sorrentino's most famous movie, Oscar-winner La Grande Bellezza, a worthy heir to Fellini as an examination of European decadence & the problem of nihilism in the midst of the most celebrated civilization, in Rome.

Titus is interviewed by Scot Bertram of Hillsdale--the subject is Bruce Willis's career, the blue collar action movie, the citizen-hero, & all the ways in which these movies were prescient about political problems, the vulnerability of American society, & the corruption of moral virtue by glamour or celebrity worship or entertainment.

Titus & Flagg Taylor discuss The Teacher, a Czech movie set in Slovakia in the last years of communism, the true story of the moral corruption of a small community where ideology & privilege blight the possibility of a decent life & of the parents' hope of restoring morality through the school, for the sake of the children.

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni praise Sorrentino's The Hand Of God (E Stata La Mano Di Dio), the only Oscar-nominated movie that can plausibly be compared to great cinema, as Sorrentino is the only director who can be compared to a master, & who continues the tradition of Italian cinema. We talk about Naples & Italy, the ages of Rome & the future of art, the nation, & faith. We also talk about Sorrentino's autobiography & the attempt to make suffering into art.

Titus & Eric Cook continue our series on D.W. Griffith & the origins of cinema as the democratic form of art with Intolerance, an attempt to give a visual history of humanity that can inspire people to turn away from cruelty & make the democratic age unlike the previous splendid, but catastrophic ages. A fond hope, at the outset of the World Wars.

Titus & Aaron Sibarium discuss his reporting on the practice for dictatorship now thriving in elite institutions & educating a next generation of elites, while America is busy with other matters--woke censorship & epidemic demands on college campuses, by both students & administrators, in hospitals, in NGOs, &c.

Titus & Flagg Taylor talk The Courier, the true story Cold War spy thriller set during the Cuban Missile Crisis--a study in the friendship of two men, British gentleman Greville Wynne & Russian spymaster Oleg Penkovsky, who embody civilization even as they help save it. It's a fine movie, see it!

Titus & Ben Sixsmith discuss Ben's new volume of short stories, Noughties: Eleven echoes of a dismal decade. These are scenes from the decadence of British culture, contemporary recollections of the various ideas of celebrity, influence, soft power, political transformation that thrived in that deluded decade, the beginning of the 21st c.

Titus & Hannah Long talk about Terrence Malick's The New World for Thanksgiving! The origins of America, love & war, pirates & Puritans, England & the quest for the Indies. Happy Thanksgiving!

Titus & Hannah Long talk about Capra's dark Halloween comedy, his satire on WASP America & his comic hopefulness about democratic America, the horror-comedy as America's pride & how to have a Halloween without the sordid.

Titus & Eric Cook continue our discussion of Griffith's Birth of a nation, we talk about the amazing achievements of the movie & the way they're connected with its damning fault--the strange way in which Progressive pacifism & racism all the way to white supremacy could go together in art. We also talk about the difficulty of giving an account of the Civil War that takes seriously both justice & honor. We've moved on from the old romance that did injustice to blacks to a dark new one that does injustice to everyone starting with Lincoln...

Titus & Eric Cook of SPEAKING ABOUT SILENTS begin a series on the great achievements of D.W. Griffith, America's first visionary director, a self-made artist, entrepreneur, & aspiring prophet. We talk about The Birth of a Nation, a wonderful picture that's also morally repellant--from the beginning, cinema was powerful & dangerous! Artistic genius in the cause of injustice, animated by a philanthropic desire to bring everyone together! History & lost cause propaganda. Progressive racism, pacifist cruelty! Paradoxes & drama!

Titus & Paul Seaton & Carl Eric Scott complete our overview of the work of the greatest living French thinker, Pierre Manent,.with special attention to his book, The Metamorphoses Of The City. We talk political philosophy & history, & what it means to be a post-modern conservative.

Titus & Telly Davidson talk about the effect of 9/11 on cinema & TV: The darkening of the mood of 21st c. cinema, fantasy as 9/11 reenactment, the absence of great directors in the national memory of 9/11, the difficulty of dramatizing the event & the demeaning ways it's treated out of sentimentality, & finally the madness of the post 9/11 espionage & war shows.

Titus talks about Oliver Stone's most unexpected, most patriotic movie, WTC< a true story that reveals American character at its best--citizenship, public service, nobility, faith, as well as its basis in the middle class family way of life.

Titus & Justin Lee & Dave Woods talk about David Lowery's Arthurian tale, The Green Knight, a reflection on mythical decadence & what it might mean for the young to become men. The movie gives you the confrontation of pagan heroism & Christian faith, of ancient & modern ideas, of fear of death & fear of life.

Titus & Peter Robinson & John Yoo talk about Master & Commander, the Peter Weir seafaring adventure movie, about the Aubrey-Maturin novels on which it was based, about the charm of military adventures & the series we've been reading, as well as about the detective & lawyer shows--Bosch, Lincoln Lawyer--that fascinate us & which will be our next podcast. We pass through many subjects of interest to conservatism in the arts in a broad sense.

Titus & Noah Millman talk about Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's novels--The Remains Of The Day, Never Let Me Go, Klara & The Sun. All three are about transformations in society & in the soul, the outsourcing of humanity from masters to servants or from humans to robots, the jeopardizing of human longing or love, both through technology & in other ways.

Titus, Carl Eric Scott, and Paul Seaton introduce a series of podcasts on the greatest living French thinker, Pierre Manent, a Catholic Straussian, a critic of liberalism & defender of the democratic nation-state, a political theorist. We will acquaint you with the man's thought, his questions in political philosophy, & some of his books.

Titus & Sam Goldman talk about Whit Stillman's Barcelona, a story of Americans & Europeans, of two young men looking for love, as well as for manliness, responsibility, adulthood, service, at the point where a vibrant & lawless democracy sweeps such ideals from society! A romantic comedy about how to be an American!

Titus & Mike Anton talk about Machiavelli's republicanism, his fighting spirit, his education for rash young men, & the attempt to educate the very online right away from extremism, toward political success.

Titus & Telly Davidson talk Wag The Dog, David Mamet & Barry Levinson's satire on media & politics in the 90s, the merger of Hollywood & D.C., of news & entertainment, the collapse of politics into rhetoric, & the corruption of elites.

Titus & Sam Goldman talk Ripley, the novel & 1999 movie adaptation, the 50s, the strange transformations of the WASP elite & the middle class, America & Europe, bourgeoisie & aristocracy, art & therapy, evil & the desire for acceptance.