ACFmovie podcast

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ACF Middlebrow #19 A Quiet Place Apr 20, 2018

Show notes

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.

ACF Critic #9 Matt Zoller Seitz, Annihilation Apr 17, 2018

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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.

ACF Critic #8 Mud Apr 03, 2018

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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.

ACF Middlebrow #18 Spielberg Mar 30, 2018

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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!

ACF #14 Body Double Mar 23, 2018

Show notes

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.

ACF #13 Taxi Driver Mar 16, 2018

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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.

ACF Middlebrow #17 Jaws Mar 09, 2018

Show notes

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...

ACF Middlebrow #16 Roman J. Israel, Esq. Mar 02, 2018

Show notes

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!

ACF Critic #7 Ex Machina Feb 23, 2018

Show notes

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!

ACF Middlebrow #15 Blade Feb 16, 2018

Show notes

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.

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