Desperately Seeking Cinema

A talented actor, writer, producer, and director, many call Ida Lupino the most significant female figure of the golden days of the Hollywood studio system. Inspired by the real-life psychopathic murderer Billy Cook, with elements adapted from a novel by blacklisted screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring, The Hitch-hiker is generally accepted to be the first American noir directed by a woman. Posing as a hitchhiker, Billy Cook murdered six people on a 22-day rampage between Missouri and California between 1950 and 1951. Lupino interviewed two survivors that Cook had held hostage, and got releases from both – as well as a release from Cook himself – so as to incorporate actual events into the script. The film does a masterful job of building and sustaining tension, and the stark desert wilderness of the south-western United States provides a bleak backdrop for this claustrophobic rumination on a senseless American nightmare.

Nicole Holofcener’s comedy-drama Enough Said is a film that plainly displays her unique gifts in bringing pathos, humour, and realism to her writing and direction. The New York Times said that "Line for line, scene for scene, it is one of the best-written American film comedies in recent memory." The Boston Globe called it a “work of deceptively informal mastery”, and The New Yorker claimed it “approaches novelistic richness.” The second to last project James Gandolfini completed before his passing in 2013, he posthumously won the Best Supporting Actor awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Chicago Film Critics Association, and received multiple other nominations for his incredibly grounded and sensitive portrayal of a middle aged divorcee. Julia-Louis Dreyfus’ debut as a lead actress in a feature film, her vulnerable performance only serves to reinforce her incredible acting ability and stunning comedic instincts.

The first and last feature film by vivacious French director Jean Vigo before his untimely death at the age of twenty-nine, L'Atalante was poorly received upon its release in 1934, but now appears in the top ten of every recent critics' poll of the greatest films ever made. Initially a commercial and critical failure, (one prominent critic called it "amateurish, self-indulgent and morbid"), the film was largely forgotten by the late thirties, but after being re-released in New York in 1947, it received rave reviews. In the years since, restored versions and screenings the world over have perpetuated the mythology surrounding the film and its director, whose influence continues to reverberate today.

An unprecedented success in Turkey upon it's release in 1996, Yavuz Turgul's quasi-mythic crime drama The Bandit is credited with kick-starting the Turkish film industry after domestic fare had failed to gain box office traction for years. Turkish film critic and historian Rekin Teksoy suggested the movie "brought Turkish audiences back into their seats". About an old mountain outlaw who searches for revenge and his long-lost love after spending thirty-five years in prison, the film winds through colorful yet sordid sections of old Istanbul, and examines a clash between modernity and traditionalism in the Turkish underworld. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

Andrei Tarkovsky, still in his late twenties, was quoted as saying that his debut feature would establish whether or not he was capable of being a film director. Upon it's release in 1962, Ivan’s Childhood quickly gained Tarkovsky international recognition, eventually winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Ethereal landscapes, poetic imagery, and hallucinatory dream sequences powerfully capture a child's loss of innocence and the harrowing consequences of war. Ingmar Bergman said that his “discovery of Tarkovsky’s first film was like a miracle", and when Italian newspaper L'Unita ran a highly critical review of the film, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an article defending it as one of the most beautiful movies he'd ever seen. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

Based on the 1951 novel by Alberto Moravia, Italian master Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist is the story of a member of the Fascist Italian secret police who is dispatched to Paris to assassinate his mentor, all the while dealing with his past, his obsessions, and his repressed homosexuality. The lighting, design and camerawork are still inspiring filmmakers and discussion. The movie was deemed an instant classic upon it's release. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

On Christmas Eve, 1985, 140 priceless pre-Hispanic pieces were stolen from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. A national shock, authorities searched relentlessly for years before details emerged about what's considered to be the biggest heist in Mexican history. Winner of the Silver Bear for best script at the Berlin International Film Festival, directed by Mexican auteur Alonso Ruizpalacios (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Manuel Alcalá), and starring Gael Garcia Bernal, the film explores the relationship between myth and fiction, and the lore behind the uncanny crime that's irrevocably tied to Mexican history. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

In episode 3, Jimmy and Andy watch 1954's "Johnny Guitar", directed by Nicholas Ray (best known for directing "Rebel Without a Cause"). Joan Crawford is butch and dazzling as a gun-toting, strong willed saloonkeeper in this underappreciated classic that Francois Truffaut called a "hallucinatory" western. Roger Ebert felt the film contained a hidden commentary on the McCarthy witch-hunts, and The New Yorker called it a "proto-feminist masterwork". Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

On episode 2 we watch Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 film "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", hailed by many as a masterpiece and a touchstone of German New Wave cinema of the 1970s. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes

Andy Rankin and Jimmy Barnes watch Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 film, "Ugetsu", considered to be one of the greatest Japanese movies of all time, and then immediately discuss. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta: @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter: @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes Twitter @jimmydbarnes