ACFmovie podcast

Titus & George Dunn & Jason Eberl return in trio formation to discuss more Nolan movie-making--this time Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy's Westworld. They bring their academic expertise with them & we go through lots of philosophical ideas that are important to Westworld, to the story of American self-creation & its tech-empowered & tech-endangered future.

Titus & Pete Spiliakos talk about the great box office success A quiet place & its theme: Helicopter parenting. As all good horror movies do, it offers a moral teaching about the causes of fear & the path to moderation. The movie reflects on American society, suburbia, the loss of control & the fear of downward mobility, but it also restores birth-giving to its exalted place among the human experiences.

Titus & Matt Zoller Seitz, famed critic, discuss Alex Garland's Annihilation. We go through the beautiful & the weird things en route to MZS's theory of the sci-fi as a cinema of ideas. I add a parallel theory of the horror movie. We talk Kubrick, Malick, Lynch, & Spielberg--on whom more in a future episode--to get at the grandeur of the director-poets who confront the crisis of our time.

Titus & Carl Eric Scott & Flagg Taylor discuss Jeff Nichols's Mud (2012, nominated for the Palme D'or in Cannes). It's a coming of age story set in Nichols's native Arkansas, on the Mississippi, & owes a lot to both Mark Twain's Huck Finn & Flannery O'Connor's violence & religion storytelling. It's all-American in the best way, not least because it showcases the full humanity of the drama of rural communities that seem to have run out of future.

Titus & James Lileks discuss Steven Spielberg's magic-at-the-movies legacy before the release of Ready Player One, which might be his last attempt to win over a big audience. We talk about the darkness & manly danger in his movies, but also about the childish wonder & longing for beauty. We talk about Jaws & Close Encounters of the Third Kind, about Indiana Jones & Jurassic Park!

Titus & John Presnall discuss Brian De Palma's Body double, a movie we're both fascinated with, but which is obviously artful & obviously immoral. It's both vulgar & sophisticated. This combination hints at De Palma's touch of genius. He shows what sex & violence are in their interest to audiences, directors, & society. This is also De Palma's assertion of taking up the mantle from Hitchcock. Why is he Hitchcock's true heir? Because he knows horror is a moralistic genre.

Titus & John Presnall discuss another 70s movie about political crisis--Martin Scorsese & Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver. We talk about Travis Bickle's self-destruction & his insight into the corruption of the times, & how madness becomes the way to see clearly in a society where respectability means denying there is evil.

Titus & John Presnall discuss Steven Spielberg's career-making turn directing Jaws. We look at the New England township in light of Tocqueville, with all its failures of deliberation & association. We talk about the social crises of the 70s. We also then talk about the Western half of the movie, men trying their hand at heroism & the strange brotherhood that creates. We also talk about the ways in which Progress obviates the need for manliness, with good & bad effects...

Titus & Carl Eric Scott discuss Roman J. Israel, Esq., the movie that earned Denzel Washington his newest Oscar nomination, written & directed by Dan Gilroy (who was nominated as writer for Nightcrawler). This is the best film on civil rights & the question of justice in America's criminal defense law (plea bargaining is the central & symbolic issue)since at least Separate but equal (the Thurgood Marshall movie starring Sidney Poitier, writtern & directed by George Stevens Jr. in 1991). It is also an investigation in the sources of law & the yearning for divine justice. Critics have maligned the movie, misunderstanding it, but here's hoping the Oscars are going to give it a new life!

Titus & Peter Paik discuss Alex Garland's directorial debut, Ex Machina. Sci-fi is the last place for heroes, where movie-makers and audiences explore together human nature and confront the future. In this case, technological creation & the Biblical account of creation in Genesis are juxtaposed in order to bring out the complicated relationship between freedom & control. This movie is a morality play of sorts, a warning about the mistakes we're liable to make, but also an affirmation of the human desire for freedom. Listen & share!

Titus & Pete Spiliakos discuss Blade I & II, focusing on class conflict & David S. Goyer's great writing in a Marxian tradition, as well as the pinnacle of Wesley Snipes's career as a working class black hero. We also get to Goyer's Dark city, to other Marxian awakening stories like the Roddy Piper movie They live & the Wachawski's Matrix, We also get to look at Guillermo del Toro's work on Blade II, which takes visual ideas from John McTiernan's Predator, James Cameron's Aliens, & Murnau's Nosferatu.

Titus & Eric Cook talk about Hitchcock's Rope: 2018 is the movie's 70th anniversary! This should be a classic--it's Hitchcock's thematic examination of class aspirations in relation to Enlightenment & a certain view of meritocracy. Hitchcock marries his usual moral depth with an unusual idea--you know who done it in advance. It's all about what the catastrophe means about mid-century America.

Titus & Caitlin Peartree discuss the poetic art of Wallace Stevens: 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. In 13 brief poems, Stevens reveals the natural temptation to make metaphors; the imaginative element in which the intellect does its work; & the need for a new poetry that can reveal human nature at work by arousing it to do the work--by coming up with images & thoughts that recall us to our basic experiences as ensouled beings.

Titus & Robert Tracinski discuss Groundhog Day on its 25th anniversary. We bring out the comedic theme, the inescapability of character, & the confrontation between American restlessness & the limits necessary to relational being & intellectual development. We talk about the confrontation of the big city & the small town. We talk about Toqvueville. We talk about Hollywood doubles, movies that come out at about the same time with the same subject, from different studios. We talk about Deep Impact & Michael Bay's Armageddon; about Bill Murray in The man who knew too little & Michael Douglas in The game. We talk about comic actors turning to drama, like Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, & then Robin Williams and his movie What dreams may come.

Titus & Caitlin Peartree discuss Wallace Stevens's poem about the all-important role played by poets in making sense of being & being human, The Idea of Order at Key West. Listen & marvel at the poet's "blessed rage for order". This is a poem you should compare to Hemingway's Old man & the sea; or to Pindar's first Olympian ode.