Talking Movies With Ty and Theresa

Happy New Year's, everyone! In honor of 2021 coming to a close, we're discussing George Cukor's appropriately named Holiday (1938). Cary Grant plays Johnny, a self-made man who is engaged to Julia, the daughter of a wealthy man of business. Johnny is an independent spirit who sees business only as a means to an end, and has no interest in accumulating wealth. He hopes to amass enough money to "retire" young, giving him time to go on adventures and discover more about himself, and then return to the workforce later in life once his money has run out. He finds the family he is poised to marry into less-than-accommodating to this plan, however, as his fiancee and her father begin trying to disabuse him of such ideas. He finds an accomplice, however, in Julia's sister Linda (Katharine Hepburn), a kindred spirit who feels constrained and unhappy within the confines of her family. It isn't long before Johnny begins to wonder if he picked the wrong daughter to marry. Holiday is one of four films Grant and Hepburn made, all of which are classics. The Philadelphia Story, which reunited them with this film's director and writers, is probably the more famous film, but Holiday is just as urbane, witty, and moving. It's a complicated and bittersweet film, but ultimately uplifting and life-affirming in spite of that, and is one of the few truly quintessential New Year's films.

Merry Christmas, everyone! We hope you're having a lovely holiday. On that note, we're continuing our series on holiday movies with arguably the biggest one of all, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey (James Stewart) is a would-be adventurer and entrepreneur who has, throughout his life, continually postponed and sacrificed his ambitions for the betterment of the people around him. He has suffered for years from bitterness over those sacrifices, as well as insecurity over his perceived failure to make an impact on the world. Then, one night he's driven to suicidal thoughts over misplaced company funds and the prospect of scandal, financial ruin, and prison. But through the prayers and intervention of the people whose lives he has touched over the years, an angel comes to Earth to show him just how big of an impact he has in fact made on the world, and what it would actually look like without him. But, of course, you already knew all of that. It's a Wonderful Life is one of the most beloved and iconic films in the history of Hollywood cinema, a staple on television every Christmas season. Capra's trademark brand of hard-earned sentimentality and wholesome Americana finds its purest distillation here, and in George Bailey, the film gives us one of the most interesting and complex characters of Classic Hollywood - a flawed and at times unattractive protagonist who is nevertheless a Great Man, despite the modesty of his position, and one whose greatness is directly tied to the sacrifices he thinks have made him a failure. The film's emotional impact becomes overwhelming by the film's end, when the audience is invited to see themselves in George, and to perhaps reassess how success in life is actually determined. It's a monumental film, a classic in every sense of the word, and the only possible choice for our official Christmas episode.

Sorry about the delay! Today, we're beginning our series on holiday films with everyone's favorite sorta kinda Christmas movie, Die Hard, directed by John McTiernan. We all know the story - a group of well-heeled European terrorists-turned-thieves take over an LA skyscraper during a Christmas party, and it's up to one good cop on the loose in the building to muck up their plans. The story itself is well-trodden territory, but there's novelty in the protagonist, a fallible and vulnerable everyday cop who finds himself in an extraordinary situation, during an era in which action movie heroes were more commonly super-human killing machines. Everything about Die Hard just works. It's every action movie cliche working in perfect synchronicity. It's the film that would be shown if aliens landed on Earth and inexplicably asked what a Hollywood action movie is. It turned Bruce Willis into a bonafide movie star out of nowhere, gave us one of Hollywood's most indelible villains in Hans Gruber (an incomparable Alan Rickman), and spawned a whole genre of copycat movies over the next couple decades (including four direct sequels). And at the center of it all is Nakatomi Plaza itself, the building becoming a central character in the film. Nearly the entire movie takes place within its walls, and the audience becomes intimately familiar with the building's layout throughout the film's runtime. It's one of the most memorable locations in recently Hollywood cinema, and appropriately took center stage in the film's marketing campaign.

We're finishing up our series on Audrey Hepburn with one of her last roles, in Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed (1981). Hepburn plays Angela, the wife of a wealthy European businessman who has hired John Russo (Ben Gazarra) to spy on her out of suspicion of infidelity. Russo and Angela wind up becoming involved, however, which parallels Russo's colleague Charles (John Ritter) falling in love with the woman he is tailing, Dolores (Dorothy Stratten). All manner of other hijinks ensue, in a film that mixes screwball comedy with hardboiled noir and brings the trappings of Classic Hollywood to the 1980s. They All Laughed marked the tail end of Bogdanovich's most creative run, which began in the 1960s, and also coincided with the end of the 1970s halcyon period in which filmmakers were afforded an unprecedented level of freedom. It buckled under the burden of the tragedy that befell Stratten prior to the film's release, but in recent years and has been rediscovered as a minor classic. It's a key film for Bogdanovich, and Hepburn, despite not having a lot of screen time, brings a huge amount of gravitas and understated melancholy to her role.

Happy belated Thanksgiving! We apologize about the delay in getting this episode up. For our penultimate Audrey Hepburn film, we're talking about Charade (1963). Hepburn plays Regina Lampert, who returns home from vacation to find her husband has been murdered and her house has stripped clean. She soon becomes harassed by a trio of thugs who claim she has $250,000 that belongs to them, and is told by the CIA that they want the money, as well. To make matters worse, her one supposed accomplice throughout this order (played by Cary Grant in one of his last, great roles) keeps changing his identity, to the point where she can't tell who he is or if he can be trusted. Charade is directed with a light touch and loads of style by Stanley Donen, best known for the musicals he made in the 50s. Despite the suspenseful subject matter, the film is immensely easy to watch, overflowing with witty banter, exotic locations, and wonderful music. It's a world class Hollywood entertainment, and one of the most sheerly enjoyable movies Audrey Hepburn was ever in.

In our second episode on Audrey Hepburn, we're taking a look at 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, a young, quirky "cafe society" girl in New York City in the early 60s. She catches the eye and fascination of a young writer who has just moved into the same apartment building as her. The two form a friendship over the course of the film that begins to build to romantic feelings, which jeopardizes her pursuit of a wealthy husband - as well as her preference to keep her emotions and her vulnerability at arm's length from everyone around her. Breakfast at Tiffany's was directed by Blake Edwards (arguably best known for the Pink Panther films), adapted from Truman Capote's novella. It became one of Audrey Hepburn's most successful movies, earning her an Oscar nomination, and creating the enduring image of her as the embodiment of chic elegance and glamour. 

Hello, listeners! Today, we're kicking off a series on the iconic Audrey Hepburn, and we're starting with her Hollywood debut: Roman Holiday. Hepburn plays a princess who feels trapped by the pressures and responsibilities of her status. While on a tour of Europe, she decides to abscond in the middle of the night, to at least briefly leave her responsibilities behind and experience Rome the way common people are able to. In the process, she meets Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), a reporter who realizes who she is and decides to manipulate the situation in order to get an explosive article. Soon, however, genuine feelings develop between the two, and they are forced to confront her status and what it means for the future of their relationship. Roman Holiday was an immediate hit when it was released in 1953, and turned Audrey Hepburn into a star overnight. She wound up winning an Oscar for her performance. The film was directed by the legendary William Wyler, who would go on to work with Hepburn on two subsequent films. Both of those films are well regarded, but it is Roman Holiday that the duo are remembered for. It's one of Hepburn's most enduring films, and was instrumental in establishing the persona that continues to reach fans all over the world.   Looks like we made the cut! Check out our placement on Feedspot's recent film history blog! https://blog.feedspot.com/film_history_podcasts/ Sources cited: Snider, Eric C. “12 Royal Facts about Roman Holiday.” Www.mentalfloss.com, 8 Feb. 2016, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/75062/12-royal-facts-about-roman-holiday. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.

We hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! To cap our series on Universal Monster Movies, we're taking a look at the last really iconic horror creation the studio produced, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. After partial, fossilized remains of a strange, human-like amphibious creature are found in a remote Amazonian location, a small team of researchers is dispatched to try and find the rest of the remains in hopes of it leading to a scientific breakthrough. Shortly after their arrival, however, they begin to be terrorized by a still-living creature that appears to be from the same species as the remains. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was released in 1954, blurring the line between the iconic monster movies of the 30s and 40s, and the sci-fi horror pictures that were in vogue throughout the 50s. Regardless of the semantic debate on whether this is a monster movie or sci-fi, there's no doubting that the creature itself is absolutely one of the signature Universal Monsters, a pop culture icon that remains immediately recognizable more than six decades after its release. The film was directed by Jack Arnold, one of that era's finest genre filmmakers, and perhaps the single most important figure in 1950s sci-fi cinema.   Please send letters and get well cards to Riccou Browning (the underwater Gill-man/creature) at: Riccou Browning 5221 SW 196 Lane Southwest Ranches, FL 33332

For part 3 of our series on classic Universal Monster movies (and the last to actually post before Halloween!), we're taking a look at The Wolf Man (1941), directed by genre-filmmaking stalwart George Waggner. Lon Cheney Jr. (following in his famous father's footsteps) plays Larry Talbot, who has returned home following his brother's death in a hunting accident. Shortly after doing so, he's bitten by a werewolf, and subsequently becomes one himself (but only when the moon is full and the wolf's bane is in bloom, of course). He then finds himself in the position of trying to convince his father he's not crazy, and protecting his romantic interest from himself. The Wolf Man comes as part of the second cycle of Universal Monster movies, after a hiatus following the change in ownership at the studio. Most of the movies in this second cycle are charming but silly B-movies; typically, they were gimmicky cross-over films trying to cash in on the fading memories of the original 1930s films. The Wolf Man, then, is perhaps the last hurrah for the sort of elegant and more serious horror films that were the legacy of the pre-code Universal horrors. It is also a masterclass in the use of photography and set design to create atmosphere, with beautifully tactile and spine-tingling imagery that's as iconic as the titular monster itself.

Welcome back, listeners! For the second installment in our Halloween series, we're looking at another James Whale: The Invisible Man (1933). Claude Rains plays Dr. Jack Griffin, a scientist whose research has resulted in him becoming invisible. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to turn himself back. Additionally, the experiment has had the unfortunate side effect of turning him completely insane. This drives him to ever-escalating displays of his power, starting with childish pranks but soon moving to murder and acts of destruction, while both the police and his former colleagues try to figure out how to apprehend a man they can't see. The Invisible Man comes around halfway through the initial Universal Horror cycle, and is Whale's third entry in the genre. By this point, he had moved beyond the somber, tragic tone of Frankenstein, instead mashing several different registers together at once. The Invisible Man, perhaps taking its cue from the madness of its lead character, is inspired lunacy, constantly jumping back and forth between the macabre and the absurd. It's horror laced with dark comedy, a singular work within the genre. It is also the first significant film role for Claude Rains (even though we barely see him!), who soon becomes one of the greatest actors in all of Hollywood. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law. Clips: The Invisible Man. Universal Studios, 1933

Happy Halloween, everybody! In honor of this spookiest of months, we're doing a series on classic Universal monster movies. And to kick things off, we're discussing the James Whale adaptation of Frankenstein (1931). Earlier in 1931, Universal had released the original Dracula to massive box office success. They decided to capitalize on that success by commissioning more films in the same vein. Frankenstein released to even large acclaim, and cemented horror as one of the most popular genres in the new era of talkies. It led to years of Universal monster movies, which, as a full cycle, was extremely important in defining the iconography and imagery we now associate with Halloween. It also launched the filmmaking career of James Whale, who was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood throughout the 1930s. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law. Clips 1 and 2: Frankenstein. Universal Studios, 1931 Clip 3: Young Frankenstein. Twentieth Century Fox, 1974  

We're finishing our series on the Coen Brothers with the film that made them household names: Fargo. Jerry Lundergard, desperate for money to pay off an unspecified debt, hires two goons to kidnap his wife and demand a ransom from his wealthy father-in-law, part of which Lundergard will keep for himself. But, as is usually the case in the world of the Coens, the scheme does not go according to plan, as the hired guns leave a pile of dead bodies in their wake and Frances McDormand's pregnant police chief is soon on their trail. The Coens had enjoyed a career of critical acclaim and cult cachet among cinephiles up to this point, but Fargo is what brought them into the mainstream. A darkly comic neo noir, as well as a kind of treatise on contentment and domestic bliss, the film was immediately hailed as a masterpiece, with the character of Marge Gunderson becoming instantly iconic. The Coens have made better films, but they have never again captured the zeitgeist in quite the same way as with this cold, melancholy little crime classic.

We're onto part 3 of our series on the work of the Coen Brothers, and we've decided to discuss their 2000 screwball classic, O Brother, Where Art Thou? George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson play fugitives from a chain gain in the Depression-era South, running from the law and pursuing treasure. On the way, they rob banks with Baby Face Nelson, upend a Klan rally, and become recording superstars. O Brother is arguably the most sheerly enjoyable movie the Coens have ever made, a film the elicits a smile from viewers for basically its entire runtime. A kind of folksy, utopian fairy tale of early 20th century Americana, it invites audiences into a warm, irresistible world, populated with big-hearted characters and an ever-present feeling that things will all work out in the end. The Coens' cynicism and sense of irony pops up periodically, but this nevertheless winds up being the gentlest film of their career to date.

Welcome back, everyone. Today, we're continuing our series on the Coen Brothers with a big one: their 1990 gangster masterpiece, Miller's Crossing. I'll dispense with any pretense of a summary this time, as the plot's complexity makes such a task basically impossible. Instead, I'll just say that this happens to be my (Ty's) favorite movie of all-time. I first discovered it nearly 20 years ago and have probably seen it north of 25 times now, with every viewing yielding even more richness than the last. It's an intricately plotted gangland noir, a love letter to crime fiction of the 20s-40s (Dashiell Hammett, most explicitly), and a grudgingly moving meditation on loyalty, ethics, and friendship. It's also the fullest expression of the Coens' love of language, overflowing with the poetry of urban slang, with essentially every line of dialogue worthy of quotation. That loving artistry also extends to every other facet of the film: the lush, elegiac score by Carter Burwell, the elegant photography by Barry Sonnenfeld, the Coens own editing, and the performances by every member of the cast (with Gabriel Byrne, in particular, doing amazing and understated work as Tom Reagan, the most enduringly fascinating and enigmatic protagonist the Coens have ever given us). It is, in every way, a flawless jewel of a movie, and I hope our discussion is able to provide some small insight into what makes it so endlessly rewarding and magical.

Welcome back, everyone! This week's episode as pulling double-duty as a postscript to our series on the Western and the opener for our series on the Coen Brothers: True Grit. As we discuss in the episode, this film finds the Coens in an atypically traditionalist mode, making a relatively straightforward and even sentimental Western. One of the rare instances of the duo adapting someone else's writing, the film tells an earnest story of Mattie Ross, a 14 year old girl, as she partners with a slovenly US Marshall and a Texas Ranger in her quest to avenge her father's murder. While the film is more conventional than one might expect from the Coens, it is nevertheless filled with their typical craftsmanship, along with their penchant for stylized regional dialogue and character eccentricity. And by the end, it achieves an understated melancholy and wistfulness that lingers in the memory long after the credits have rolled.

Hello, listeners! Today, we're wrapping up our series on the Western genre with Robert Altman's elegiac classic, McCabe & Mrs. Miller. In the late 1960s, what's now known as the Revisionist Western become the dominant trend within the genre, with films self-consciously offering correctives to the myths propagated by the Classical Western. Altman's film nominally falls within that sub-genre/movement, but also stands somewhat apart from it. It isn't especially interested in subversively upending the conventions of the genre, or gleefully wallowing in gratuitous violence and unpleasantness like so many other Westerns from this era. Instead, it largely ignores the conventions in favor of a low key and realistic portrait of frontier life. It rejects the romanticized vision of the West seen in movies throughout the preceding decades, showing instead a world of harsh living, filled with mud and grime, with people eking out lives anyway they can. But it's also filled with understated poetry, finding a spare, austere beauty in the natural world, and of the people who are able to carve out a civilization within it.

Welcome back, listeners! For the third installment in our series on the Western genre, we're talking about Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Leone made this film after completing his Dollars trilogy, and it feels like his grand summation of the genre, and to some degree the culmination of the classical Western genre as a whole. The Western as American foundation myth, but elevated to a kind of operatic grandeur and grandiosity. The traditional archetypes and conventions of the genre are in place, but the characters and landscapes are all larger than life. Around this time, the genre was beginning to move in a more cynical and realistic direction, taking a critical look at the romanticized myths found in the Westerns that had come earlier. Once Upon a Time in the West possessed some cynicism, to be sure, but more than anything it was a celebration of those romanticized myths, a vision of the West built from the scattered images and ideas that pervaded the genre through its history up to that point.

Hi there, listeners! For part 2 of our series on the evolution of the Western, we're taking a look at Howard Hawks 1959 classic, Rio Bravo. In the 1950s, the Western genre increasingly began to enter darker, less romanticized territory, with the nerve-jangling violence and psychological complexity of films by Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, and others. Even John Ford's work began to grow darker and more cynical. At the same time, though, the genre was becoming popular on television, with the low key charms and genial nature one associates with the small screen in full effect. Rio Bravo, despite its big screen pedigree and a world class filmmaker at the helm, is rooted firmly in the latter group. John Wayne, at his most John Wayne, plays a no-nonsense small-town sheriff tasked with a seemingly suicidal mission, aided only by a “drunk and a crippled old man” Asked if that's all he's got, Wayne corrects his friend - “That's… what I got.” And so proceeds a typically Hawksian study of professionalism and personal responsibility. But despite the gravity of the setup, the film's tone is largely light throughout, with the humor and warmth of the characters lingering in the mind much more strongly than the suspense of their predicament. Robin Wood, the celebrated film critic and academic, once said that if he had to pick a single film that justified the existence of Hollywood, he'd choose Rio Bravo. It's a film of enormous complexity, as he explicated in his book analyzing the film. But it's also a film of intense surface level charm, one that with every viewing evokes the joy of leisurely spending time in the company of old friends. 

Welcome back, listeners! We've decided our first series back from our break will be on the Western genre. More specifically, we're looking at how the genre evolved over the years. To kick things off, we're discussing John Ford's 1946 masterpiece, My Darling Clementine. One of the most archetypal of all Classical Westerns, My Darling Clementine covers one of the enduring legends of the old West: the gunfight at the OK Corral, and the conflict leading up to it. While later depictions of the event and characters would hew closer to the historical record, Ford took as his focus the myth itself, and conjured up a film of peerless beauty, a kind of utopian dream of the Old West. Ford was more responsible than anyone in establishing the basic conventions of the Western genre, and My Darling Clementine was, perhaps alongside Stagecoach, the film most instrumental in that process. He later began exploring the West with a more skeptical eye, but this is the Western in its foundational moment, where larger-than-life heroes befit the legends told about them, and where frontier life is depicted with boundless poetry.

Once again, our apologies on the lateness of this episode, due to some technical difficulties we were unable to release this episode Monday. However, we hope you enjoy our discussion as this is our final episode for this season. Stay tuned in August when we return for season 2! Today, we're closing out our series on Hayao Miyazaki with his 2008 classic, Ponyo. A loose adaptation of The Little Mermaid, the film follows the titular character, a goldfish (well, sort of...) whose father is a former human-turned-underwater-wizard and whose mother is the Goddess of Mercy, as she runs (er, swims) away from home, falls in love with a 5-year old human, and becomes determined to become human herself so she can stay with him. Ponyo feels at times like a Greatest Hits for Miyazaki, as everything one typically associates with him can be found here. It's a celebration both of children (their boundless imagination and the purity of their emotions), and of traditional, hand-drawn animation. It's a film that pulsates with life and beauty in every frame, a staggering testament to the richness of the world around us and Miyazaki's uncanny ability to capture all of it. It's one of the greatest accomplishments of his career, and a fitting closer for our season here.

Welcome back, listeners! We've returned from our vacation and are discussing Hayao Miyazaki's modern classic, Spirited Away. 10 year old Chihiro is leaving her friends behind to move with her family to a new town. On the drive there, they stumble onto a gateway to a spirit world, where her parents are turned into pigs and captured. Chihiro begins working in a bathhouse owned by the evil sorceress, Yubaba, and is forced to navigate the dangers and challenges of this mysterious world while remaining true to herself and her moral compass. Spirited Away was the first major release for Miyazaki after the world outside of Japan had really discovered his genius, and it immediately put an exclamation point on his legacy and cemented his legend. It won the first ever Best Animated Feature Academy Award, and has been a constant fixture on lists both of the greatest films of the 21st century and of all-time. It's also a film immensely important personally to both of us, one that - despite its somewhat grim setup and dark-ish undercurrent - has enriched our lives with so much beauty and warmth and humor. So it is our great privilege to discuss this wonderful, magical movie with you.

Our deepest apologies on the delay this week. Before diving into this masterpiece we do want to give you all a heads up that our next episode will be postponed until June 7th due to our first vacation in over a year (YAY!) and Memorial Day the following Monday.  With that out of the way, join us this week as we explore the magical, imaginative world of Hayao Miyazaki in this classic film about childhood wonder, sibling relationships, and the power of community. In My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Mei and Satskuki are two young sisters moving with their father to a rural town in Japan to be closer to their mother, who has been staying in the hospital while being treated for an undisclosed illness. Soon after moving into their new home, they discover a world of spirits - including Totoro, the king of the forest - around them that are visible only to children. They soon form a relationship with these spirits, introducing them to the beauty in the mundane, such as the patter of rain on an umbrella. In return, Totoro and the other forest spirits take the sisters on a number of magical experiences, and help them deal with the stress of their mother's situation. My Neighbor Totoro was an immediate hit in Japan, and gradually became one of the most beloved children films of all-time throughout the world, with Totoro himself becoming the official Studio Ghibli mascot and spawning a merchandizing empire. It's also the the first major film Miyazaki made that moved away from any sort of adventure tropes or genre elements. Instead, the endlessly fertile imagination visible in every frame, the rich pastoral beauty, and the keenly observed human interactions were all foregrounded here, without need of a dense plot to keep the audience engaged. So please join us, as we discuss one of the most genuinely magical movies ever made.

Hello, listeners! Today, we're kicking off a new series on the work of Hayao Miyazaki with his 1986 classic, Castle in the Sky. This is the inaugural film from the legendary Studio Ghibli, two years after the success of Nausicaa led to the studio's founding. The film follows a young girl with a mysterious amulet, who is on the run from two separate groups chasing her for reasons unknown both to her and the audience. She's aided by a young boy she meets along the way, and the two of them soon discover she and her amulet are both linked to a vanished kingdom in the sky, which is fabled to contain both extravagant riches and technology that could pose immense danger to the world should it fall into the wrong hands. Castle in the Sky immediately established the studio's signature visual style, along with Miyazaki's own specific preoccupations - in particular, his unique balancing act between large scale magical-realist spectacle and low-key, introspective character moments, all of which is suffused with the ever-present beauty and splendor of the natural world.

We're wrapping up our Francis Ford Coppola series with 1979's Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen plays Capt. Willard, a soldier in the Vietnam War given a classified assignment to assassinate Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz, who has supposedly gone insane and is waging a guerilla war in enemy territory. Willard hitches a ride with a Navy patrol boat and sails deep into the heart of the jungle toward Kurtz's secluded compound, his physical journey along the river an allegory for a journey into the depths of his soul. A horrifying fever dream of a movie and one of the most overwhelming sensory experiences of the decade, Apocalypse Now was immediately regarded as a masterpiece upon release, and remains one of the most acclaimed and iconic films of the last 50 years. It was a fitting end to one of the most startlingly brilliant decades an American filmmaker has ever had.

Welcome back, listeners. In the third part of our series on Francis Ford Coppola, we revisit the Corleone family in The Godfather Part II. In this acclaimed sequel, we jump back and forth in time as we chart young Vito Corleone's initial rise to power alongside his son Michael's expansion of power. Even more sprawling and ambitious than its predecessor, this is where the series really enters the arena of high drama, its story of moral decay and family betrayal feeling explicitly Shakespearean at times. Initially met with a polarized response, the film has since come to be regarded as a worthy successor to the first film, and one of the greatest American films in its own right.  

Today we're discussing the second movie in Francis Ford Coppola's legendary 1970s string of masterpieces, The Conversation (1974). Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert hired to record a conversation between a man and woman in a busy San Francisco plaza. He soon begins to fear the recording might put their lives at risk, a suspicion founded in part by a gruesome incident from his past. Overshadowed somewhat by the twin monuments in Coppola's filmography that surround it - The Godfather and The Godfather Part II - The Conversation is nonetheless one of the great achievements of Coppola's career, and of 1970s American cinema. Nominally a part of the wave of conspiracy thrillers that released in the mid-70s as the country roiled from political turmoil, it was unique in how deeply personal it was. At its heart, it's a lonely, tormented character study; a death-haunted masterpiece about a man who's spent years building walls around himself as he observes the world from afar, only to have the walls ripped down and the looking glass turned on him.

We've got a big one today, folks. To kick off our new series on the films of Francis Ford Coppola, we're discussing his seminal 1972 film, The Godfather. Widely regarded as one of the Great American Films, it is also, much like Citizen Kane, a film specifically about America - signaled immediately with its famous opening line, "I believe in America." It's a story about capitalism, the pursuit of power, and the attendant loss of innocence and ethics. A foundational immigrant story, the dark side of the American Dream. It is also one of the most perfectly crafted films of the last 50 years, overflowing with artistry in every frame, the product of a superlative visionary who has been given his first real opportunity to make a major artistic statement. Aiding him in making said statement are what Stanley Kubrick referred to as the greatest cast ever assembled, an iconic score by the incomparable Nino Rota, and wonderfully expressive photography by Gordon Willis. Please join us as we discuss one of the true treasures of film history.

We're wrapping up our series on Bill Murray with arguably the key performance of his 21st century career - as aging movie star Bob Harris in Sofia Coppola's 2003 hit, Lost in Translation. Unhappy in both his career and his marriage, Murray finds himself adrift in Tokyo while shooting a local whiskey commercial. He winds up meeting and forging a bond with a fellow isolated American at his hotel (played by Scarlett Johannsen in her star-making role), who, despite her difference in age, seems to be at a similar emotional crossroads in her own life. Building on the deadpan melancholy he introduced in Rushmore, Murray earned some of the most effusive praise of his career for his role here, culminating in an Academy Award nomination. It's the film in which his transformation into a major dramatic actor was completed.

Welcome back listeners! This week we delve into a more sentimental role for Bill Murray as he depicts the titular character Vincent in Theodore Melfi's 2014 film St. Vincent. The movie is a lesson in not judging a book by it's cover or a cranky neighbor by his vices. Join us as we discuss everything from Murray's accent to Melissa McCarthy's heart-touching performance to Naomi Watt's in a more comical role than what she's typically known. And always remember to love thy neighbor even if they are a cranky, old man. 

For the second part in our Bill Murray season, we’re discussing Wes Anderson’s 1998 breakthrough, Rushmore. After two decades of being Hollywood’s king of comedy, this film marked a shift into somewhat more dramatic territory for Murray, and signaled the beginning of his tenure as a mainstay of offbeat independent cinema. It is also the beginning of his long-running collaboration with Wes Anderson, who’s trademark visual style became fully established with this, his sophomore feature.

Welcome back, listeners! Theresa's birthday is this month, and so in honor of that, she wanted to cover one of her favorite actors in our next series. After much deliberation, she settled on Bill Murray, and we're kicking off the season with the blockbuster smash, Ghostbusters (1984). One of the defining Hollywood entertainments of its era, it is also the film that really solidified the cooler than thou Bill Murray persona, and defined what audiences expected from the actor for the next 20 years - before he upended that persona by introducing a middle-aged melancholy into it (but more on that later!). So join us as we begin our investigation into the career of a national treasure.

Hello listeners! We're wrapping up our season on romantic films with a movie about a couple who have been together for decades and remain happily in love. In Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010), a group of lonely and unhappy people take refuge in the company of Tom and Gerri, a couple who has known each other most of their lives and radiates warmth to everyone around them. Their happiness, apparent throughout in the smallest of gestures, makes a striking contrast with the melancholy permeating the lives of those around them, and Mike Leigh captures all of it in his trademark observational, naturalistic style.

For the third part of our season on romantic films, we wanted to explore the concept of unfulfilled love. And since nobody captures the spirit of romantic longing better than Wong Kar-wai, we're discussing his breakthrough film, 1990's Days of Being Wild. Against a sultry, humid backdrop of 1960 Hong Kong, a network of love-starved people all orbit around one enigmatic playboy, who is by equal turns heartless and deeply sensitive. The first of what became an informal trilogy, Days of Being Wild is regarded as one of the greatest Hong Kong films ever made, and it immediately established Wong's career-long thematic obsessions, along with his idiosyncratic, evocative style.

In the second installment of our season on love in the movies, we wanted to cover a film that explores themes of "First Love" and sexual identity. We decided on Lukas Moodysson's debut feature film, Show Me Love (1998), which captures the pangs of first love and sexual confusion with aching tenderness. Agnes, a 14-year old social outsider, has an intense crush on Elin, the prettiest girl in school. Elin is only faintly aware of Agnes' existence at the beginning of the film, and seems blindly assured of her own heterosexuality. But both of those details soon change, and she suddenly finds herself grappling with how to navigate her new feelings and the reactions she expects from the friends and family surrounding her. A sharply observed coming of age drama and a portrait of youth that permeates with authenticity, this film immediately announced Moodysson as a major presence in world cinema, and remains beloved nearly a quarter-century after its original release. So please join us as we discuss Show Me Love and try to tease out just what makes the film so special.

Today we're kicking off our season of romantic themed films with Richard Linklater's 1995 Before Sunrise, the first installment of the Before trilogy. Both an ambling romantic reverie and a celebration of the art of conversation, this film finds Linklater capturing budding romance with a naturalism one does not typically associate with Hollywood.   So take a stroll with us as we discuss the birth of Jesse and Celine's relationship.

We've arrived at the end of our Humphrey Bogart season, and we're using the opportunity to take a look at a different side of the famed actor. In John Huston's 1948 classic, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogie plays Fred C. Dobbs, a down on his luck drifter who's found himself bumming for lunch money in Mexico. He happens upon a grizzled prospector who affords him the opportunity to go mining for gold, which leads to a tense adventure in which our heroes battle the elements, violent bandits, and their own creeping paranoia. A caustic rumination on the corrosive effects of greed, Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the towering Hollywood films of its era, and a fitting end to our month-long celebration of this larger-than-life actor. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law.

You have read an intro before haven't you, hmmmmm? For the penultimate episode of our Humphrey Bogart season, we're discussing arguably the best and most iconic of the "Bogie and Bacall" pairings. Bogart, at the height of his effortless cool, plays the unflappable Philip Marlowe, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle that don't seem to fit. So pour yourself a brandy and join us as we try to figure out who killed who and what the hell happened in Howard Hawks' 1946 masterpiece, The Big Sleep. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law. 1st Clip: The Big Sleep. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1946

This week, we're continuing our season of Humphrey Bogart films with the immortal first meeting of "Bogie and Bacall" in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law. Clip 1: To Have and Have Not. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1944 Clip 2: Bacall to Arms. Merrie Melodies. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1946

Join us as we dive into a brief history of one of the transcendent Hollywood films, along with our personal feelings about it. This is a film with special significance to us, as we named our daughter after the leading lady, Ilsa. This podcast is intended to be educational any audio clips are utilized with gratitude under the fair use copyright law. 1st Clip: Casablanca. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, 1942 2nd Clip:  The Simpsons. Season 4, Episode 15, Fox, 1996