The Magic Lantern: Recent Episodes
Ericca Long and Cole Roulain
Watership Down (Rosen, 1978) is, without a doubt, one of the pivotal cinematic experiences in my life. It captivated me at a very young age with its danger and darkness. It also taught me a number of valuable lessons, things I have thought about ever since. Fortune favoring the bold…
The post Episode 172 – Watership Down appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954) is truly a foundational film, not just of Japanese cinema, but of world cinema. Because it is has become a touchstone for so many tropes and devices that we recognize today, you might think that it is a stuffy film, or a hard slog because of…
The post Episode 171 – Seven Samurai appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2021, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our…
The post Episode 170 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2021 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Cole-o-ween festivities roll on here at Lantern HQ! This time around we are discussing one of our favorite underappreciated zombie classics, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Grau, 1974). This one has it all – beautiful locations, social commentary, hideous reanimated dead, and genuine scares. It acts as a bit of…
The post Episode 169 – Let Sleeping Corpses Lie appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Is there anything you find impossible to watch? Or how about just very difficult? For me, The Invisible Man (Whannell, 2020) is that film. I do have some personal history that makes what Cecelia is going through exceptionally poignant, but even without that sort of connection, I suspect a lot…
The post Episode 168 – The Invisible Man appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Gray’s Anatomy (Soderbergh, 1996) is the last proper cinematic monologue we have from Spalding Gray. That’s a little ironic. Here, he navigates neuroses, a serious eye injury, and what he terms the Bermuda Triangle of health to come out the other side a little wiser, more experienced, and with his…
The post Episode 167 – Gray’s Anatomy appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Harlan County, USA (Kopple, 1976) is still a gut punch some fifty years later. Watching the violent and bloody events unfold as miners strike to be recognized for their union organization, for better wages and more safety measures, and simply to live by the end of their shift, their voices…
The post Episode 166 – Harlan County, USA appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943) was a turning point in the career of the master of suspense. It was reportedly Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite film he ever made. It is also what I consider to be his first truly American film. Once he looked into small town America’s heart of…
The post Episode 165 – Shadow of a Doubt appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill, 1969) is a delight to watch time and again, a true piece of entertainment that seems to hit all the right notes. Surprisingly, the film was not an immediate hit with some critics or with directors like John Boorman who were confounded by…
The post Episode 164 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971) will break your heart in a million different ways, all of them Texan. As an expatriate from a town very much like this, it hits me where I live. I’ve seen those fights on Main Street between guys who were best friends and will…
The post Episode 163 – The Last Picture Show appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When we first see Mona, she is already dead. In Vagabond (1985), Agnès Varda then sets about to reconstruct the last days and weeks of this young woman’s life, as witnessed and retold through the eyes of others. We learn that none of these people really seemed to know Mona,…
The post Episode 162 – Vagabond appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979) belongs to a special category of films in my personal canon. Sometimes a movie hits you like a bolt out of the blue and you know it is going to be a permanent fixture on your list of favorite films of all time. The…
The post Episode 161 – My Brilliant Career appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Is Rushmore (1998) your favorite Wes Anderson film? It is certainly mine. When I first saw it in the theater when I was about 22, it hit me where I lived. This rich vein of the blackest comedy combined with pathos of a young man’s singular saga delighted and moved…
The post Episode 160 – Rushmore appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Tremors (Underwood, 1990). Its arrival kicked off another boom cycle for one of our favorite subgenres – the creature feature! About every twenty years we get a new permutation of this subgenre and now it was the nineties’ turn. It was time for…
The post Episode 159 – Tremors appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Is Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955) a film noir or a thriller? We firmly assert that it is one of the most delectable, and yes, diabolical noir masterpieces to come out of the 1950s. That it manages to be thrilling as well is a testament to the deft hand of Henri-Georges Clouzot,…
The post Episode 158 – Diabolique appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s May again! And you know what that means around these parts – film noir. We are in our second year of the Noir City festival postponement in Austin due to COVID, but we are soldiering on with some of our favorite titles that fall under the broad heading of…
The post Episode 157 – The Square appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
By special invitation from Mira Nair, we are guests at the raucous, glorious, marigold-covered Monsoon Wedding (2001). Delhi, its sights and sounds, its people, its rains, and its power outages are the setting for the traditional wedding ceremony set to consecrate the arranged marriage of Aditi Verma to Hemant Rai.…
The post Episode 156 – Monsoon Wedding appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Much like the electric light, telegraph, and motion pictures it chronicles, My Twentieth Century (Enyedi, 1989) is a marvel of its age. Luminous to the point of transcendence, it is quite simply one of the most beautiful things ever committed to film. The divergent paths of our twin protagonists Dóra…
The post Episode 155 – My Twentieth Century appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Rapturous. This word perfectly describes my feelings about A Room with a View (Ivory, 1985). You could also use this word to describe my feelings about the scenery, the performances, the score, the costuming, and Italy itself. I have been saving this gem since we started the podcast, and it…
The post Episode 154 – A Room with a View appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I carry a particular impression with me about Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983). It strikes me as a stately and austere museum whose only exhibit is devoted to the artifacts of a tragic and deadly crime. As I wander its minimalist halls, I am met with object lessons and vivid displays…
The post Episode 153 – L’Argent appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) is a groundbreaking and timeless film. It was the first feature film directed by an African-American woman distributed theatrically in the United States. It was a visual and artistic triumph, earning a Best Cinematography award at Sundance for Director of Photography Arthur Jafa.…
The post Episode 152 – Daughters of the Dust appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I have been waiting to talk about Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) for a long time. I first recommended it all the way back in episode 005. In my estimation, it’s one of the most important American films ever made, independent or otherwise. It’s a moving document of a…
The post Episode 151 – Killer of Sheep appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Have you had anyone in your life like the title character from Toni Erdmann (Ade, 2016)? A family member, a friend’s dad, a work colleague? And are you still traumatized? All kidding aside, writer/director Maren Ade, along with her actors Sandra Hüller and Peter Simonischek, delves deeply into the complexities of…
The post Episode 150 – Toni Erdmann appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s our first show of 2021 and we want to wish everyone a happy new year! To get things off on the right foot, I wanted to choose something special for this first episode of the year. I hope you’ll agree that I’ve found it. In the spirit of magic,…
The post Episode 149 – Céline and Julie Go Boating appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Welcome to Ants In Your Pants of 2020! It’s our sixth annual episode in which we reflect on our favorite film discoveries of the past year. We are so glad you joined us for this episode, as it was certainly a very different year for cinema-watching adventures. As always, our…
The post Episode 148 – Ants In Your Pants of 2020 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) truly represents a vision of one person – its director, writer, producer, and animator Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki, the most prolific creator at Japan’s Studio Ghibli, was inspired by the 10-year-old daughter of a friend to bring to life a young heroine whom other young girls could…
The post Episode 147 – Spirited Away appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s been a long year. I know. So, with that in mind, we are spending the last couple of entries this year on beloved family favorites. We need to laugh and breathe a little easier. So, who better to help us with that than Jim Henson and company? The Great…
The post Episode 146 – The Great Muppet Caper appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
How much do your surroundings affect you? Do they bring out your latent desires, amplify them, or inspire them? In Black Narcissus (Powell, Pressburger, 1947), each character seems to be escaping from a difficult past that they are ultimately unable to outrun. Their own hearts and souls are undiscovered countries.…
The post Episode 145 – Black Narcissus appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s Día de Muertos today, The Day of the Dead, and we could think of no better way to observe the occasion than to sing the praises of Roberto Gavaldón’s otherworldly parable, Macario (1960). Set against the backdrop of one of Mexico’s most holy days, the titular character, Macario, wants…
The post Episode 144 – Macario appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2020, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our…
The post Episode 143 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2020 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In Halloween (Green, 2018), it is forty years after the 1978 babysitter murders that destroyed the peace of Haddonfield, Illinois, and shattered Laurie Strode’s life. In this “recalibration” of the original, Laurie is now a grandmother and a self-described basket case. She is also a mother who raised her only…
The post Episode 142 – Halloween appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s the best time of the year once again! Cole-o-ween 2020 is upon us and to kick off the proceedings I have chosen one of my favorite horror films from the last few years, A Dark Song (Gavin, 2016). This is a harrowing and incisive portrait of a woman consumed…
The post Episode 141 – A Dark Song appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Princess Bride (Reiner, 1987) is having a bit of a resurgence in the popular culture these days. In late 2020, the cast reunited for a fun, virtual table read as a benefit. In addition to that, various actors who are fans of the film produced their own favorite scenes…
The post Episode 140 – The Princess Bride appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Kazuo Hara’s The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987) is a documentary like few others. Watching Kenzo Okuzaki cut a swath through his old squad mates in search of the truth is unsettling, especially as the process intensifies. Is that because he will resort to violence and deception to get…
The post Episode 139 – The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) is a frothy, bubbly, and sumptuous perennial delight. With his famed “Lubitsch touch”, director Ernst Lubitsch brought a winking and earthy European sensibility to all his films. He reminded us to not be too serious about anything. Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall are lovers and…
The post Episode 138 – Trouble in Paradise appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since Todd Solondz blessed us with the hero we didn’t know we needed in Dawn Wiener as we meet her in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995). Simply put, this changed what I thought was possible with movies about being a kid. I…
The post Episode 137 – Welcome to the Dollhouse appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Watching Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) in the theater was an ineffably special experience. The film itself is an astounding accomplishment, following the life of not just a boy, but also that of his mother, father, and sister. Time unfolds before us. It meanders like a river that we and the characters…
The post Episode 136 – Boyhood appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
There have been very few films that blindsided me the way that Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989) did. I was just beginning to grasp how much there was out there to explore that fell outside the realm of multiplexes and the mainstream. Then this desperate missive from the fringes…
The post Episode 135 – Tetsuo: The Iron Man appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When Martha Coolidge was brought in to direct Valley Girl (1983), she knew there were some key elements she needed to bring to the film. Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford had written a teen comedy romp in about ten days to capitalize on the valley girl fad, and the producers…
The post Episode 134 – Valley Girl appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
There’s a strange alchemy at work in Rolling Thunder (Flynn, 1977). We start with two subgenres that really flourished in the seventies – the Vietnam homecoming and the revenge mission. William Devane turns up that tension by giving as tightly controlled a performance as we’ve seen from him. Tommy Lee…
The post Episode 133 – Rolling Thunder appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
What a treat it is to come back again and again to Raising Arizona (Coen, 1987). I have seen the film at least 20 times, and I laugh just as hard at each viewing. The Coen Brothers (Joel as director, along with Ethan as co-writer) have crafted a surreal, insane,…
The post Episode 132 – Raising Arizona appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
We are keeping the film noir train rolling this month, literally, with The Narrow Margin (Fleischer, 1952). This is one of my all time favorites, without a doubt. If they ever made a noir Mount Rushmore, this should be on it. It stars two fixtures of the genre, Charles McGraw…
The post Episode 131 – The Narrow Margin appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
We decided to continue our annual tradition of highlighting our favorite films noir during the month of May, even though this year’s Noir City Austin film festival is sadly postponed. I chose my very first film noir, Laura (Preminger, 1944), which weaves a magic, dreamy spell in its stylish, inimitable…
The post Episode 130 – Laura appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Losing Ground (Collins, 1982) should have been a lot of things. It should have been the foundation of a long career and important filmography. Instead, what it was was almost lost and mostly forgotten for three decades. It also turned out to be Kathleen Collins’ valediction, as we lost her…
The post Episode 129 – Losing Ground appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
There is a question I pose during the episode: if anyone who disparaged the French New Wave started with Cléo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962), might they feel differently about the movement? I think so. If you are looking for a place to begin pretty much any film journey,…
The post Episode 128 – Cléo from 5 to 7 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I had the pleasure of seeing Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s World on a Wire (1973) for the first time on the big screen. Being able to experience it in the theater as one whole, instead of on television in two parts, made for a much more immersive experience. It enveloped me…
The post Episode 127 – World on a Wire appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The day after I saw The Matrix (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999), I proclaimed to anyone within shouting distance that the film changed my life. I was 23, and I meant it. I felt energized, bowled over, and ready to deliver some flying kicks to the establishment. Certainly, the visual…
The post Episode 126 – The Matrix appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s taken 125 episodes and almost five years of doing the show, but I’m finally ready to talk about John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974). This film puts me through the ringer in a way that no other film comes close to. Gena Rowlands’ high wire act as…
The post Episode 125 – A Woman Under the Influence appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Whom do you trust? Mattie Do’s Dearest Sister (2016) plays on our expectations of trust and seeks to upend them at every turn. Just as Ana may not be able to trust her failing vision that seems to bring with it visitations from ghosts, we may not be able to…
The post Episode 124 – Dearest Sister appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966) has been called a lot of things – confrontational, subversive, empty-headed, wanton. The elusive nature of the film means you can call its protagonists, the Maries, a lot of things. Just don’t call them late for dinner. For what it’s worth, I call it magnificent. From…
The post Episode 123 – Daisies appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In A New Leaf (1971), Elaine May’s screenwriting and directorial debut, I think you will see the legacy of her indelible comedy partnership with Mike Nichols even though they had disbanded the act ten years before. It is in the daft sensibility, the timing, and what seems to be overall…
The post Episode 122 – A New Leaf appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Welcome to Ants In Your Pants of 2019! It’s our fifth annual episode in which we reflect on our favorite film discoveries of the past year. We are so glad you joined us for this episode, and hope that you also had great cinema-watching adventures. As always, our lists were…
The post Episode 121 – Ants In Your Pants of 2019 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
A few years back I was introduced to Mehmet Aslan’s Tarkan Versus the Vikings (1971) in the best way possible – at Fantastic Fest in an auditorium full of like minded genre film fans that were ready to have their minds blown. That is exactly what this movie did. The…
The post Episode 120 – Tarkan Versus the Vikings appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982) is a holiday film that fits every season. It captures so much about the highs and lows, and the beginnings and endings that we will all experience in our lives. Like the flowing water that is pictured at the start of each of the five…
The post Episode 119 – Fanny and Alexander appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
This year has been a journey of discovery for me with African cinema. Our Patreon listeners may remember that one of my resolutions this year was to become better acquainted with African films. To that end, I set myself a goal of fifty films from the continent in 2019 and…
The post Episode 118 – Hyenas appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Sometimes a film leaves an indelible impression on you because its ending is so buoyant that you feel uplifted, lighter than air. The Heiress (Wyler, 1949) leaves a bruise on your heart, and it is because the ending is so irrevocably painful and bitter. With a father like Dr. Austin…
The post Episode 117 – The Heiress appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2019, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our…
The post Episode 116 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2019 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When I selected Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Hancock, 1971) as my Cole-o-ween choice for this year, I didn’t intend it as a response to Ericca’s choice. Nor was I trying to establish any sort of “women on the verge” theme. It’s interesting how these things work out, though. Together…
The post Episode 115 – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Jennifer Kent, the writer and director of The Babadook (2014), crafted the story of an exhausted widowed mother and her demanding 6 year-old into a psychological horror film about facing up to the darkness within ourselves. Those of you who are parents, and even those of us who are not,…
The post Episode 114 – The Babadook appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Film noir simply doesn’t get darker than Fernando Ayala’s Los Tallos Amargos (1956). And when I say dark, I mean classical tragedy dark. Dostoevsky levels of wretched darkness. I have never seen a noir quite like this. It has all the normal chiaroscuro and double cross, but it goes much…
The post Episode 113 – Los Tallos Amargos appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Are you still afraid to go into the water? Does the specter of a killer shark still haunt you, 44 years after that monster first broke the water’s surface in Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)? It absolutely haunts me, though I love the water and still take every opportunity to get in…
The post Episode 112 – Jaws appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Upon my first viewing of it, Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution (2015) leapt to the top of the list of my favorite movies of this decade, perhaps of any decade. It’s a deft intermingling of modern body horror and much more ancient fears. Sometimes you’re not sure if you just saw an…
The post Episode 111 – Evolution appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits (2015) doesn’t reveal all its secrets. We as viewers don’t know the origin of the mysterious fits that one-by-one overtake the girls of the dance team any more than they do. That these fits seem to come with some greater understanding after they are over,…
The post Episode 110 – The Fits appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Johnnie To’s Drug War (2012) is one of those great cinematic cases of having your cake and eating it too. On one hand, you have To bringing his decades of experience making Hong Kong action films to bear on this project. On the other hand, we find ourselves on the…
The post Episode 109 – Drug War appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Would it surprise you to learn that The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966) is on the top ten lists of countless film critics and filmmakers, and was also the favorite film of Andreas Baader, leader of the left-wing militant organization the Baader-Meinhof Group? That the film was banned in France…
The post Episode 108 – The Battle of Algiers appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Devil and Daniel Webster (Dieterle, 1941) is truly one of my desert island films. You couldn’t have assembled a more perfect film for me in a laboratory. The cinematic and literary traditions it belongs to are among my favorites and it’s topped off with that unmistakably sulphurous scent of…
The post Episode 107 – The Devil and Daniel Webster appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Caring for children is sacred work, according to writer-director Anna Muylaert and her film The Second Mother (2015). It’s also very undervalued, under-discussed work. Decades ago, Muylaert envisioned a story about this work and the women who do it. At that time, she felt she wasn’t ready to bring the…
The post Episode 106 – The Second Mother appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
There is simply nothing like Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction (1958). Taken from the pages of some of Jules Verne’s greatest adventures, these images combine to form one of the greatest cinematic pop-up books ever committed to film. The amount of painstaking detail that must have been involved in bringing…
The post Episode 105 – Invention for Destruction appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this special episode, we discuss the films of Noir City Austin 2019 and its theme of “It’s a Bitter Little World”, featuring a program of ten stellar examples of the progression of film noir from the end of the 1940s through the start of the 1960s. Noir City Austin…
The post Episode 104 – Noir City Austin 2019 by Lantern Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1953) is not officially the first noir directed by a woman, but there is no doubt that director, producer, and screenwriter Ida Lupino was a pioneer. In adapting the true crime story of murderer Billy Cook, Lupino took the opportunity to get inside the mind of a…
The post Episode 103 – The Hitch-Hiker appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I first encountered David Jones’ adaptation of Harold Pinter’s play about his extramarital affair, Betrayal (1983), when I was thirteen years old. Those were the heady days of the early cable television boom and my afternoon ritual was to walk to Head’s Grocery, get a Dr Pepper and some Hot…
The post Episode 102 – Betrayal appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) was a revelatory filmgoing experience. So much so that as we were walking out of the theatre, I proclaimed that I would cover it in an episode as quickly as possible. I can’t think of another film in recent memory that I knew immediately was my new…
The post Episode 101 – Shoplifters appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Ok, grab yourself some treats from the concession stand and then we will get on to part two! If you just want to listen to us talk about Paris, Texas, please go back to Episode 100, Part One. If you would like to hear us answer listener questions, press on!…
The post Episode 100, Part Two – Listener Questions appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) is our first ever crowdsourced episode choice, and we’re so grateful to you, our listeners, for sticking with us for 100 episodes, and for choosing something so wonderful to discuss and celebrate! Wim Wenders originally envisioned this as more of a cross-country film, but Sam Shepard…
The post Episode 100, Part One – Paris, Texas appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Duke of Burgundy (Strickland, 2014) is a prime example of a film that you come to for one reason and love for another. I was drawn in by the lure of the sexploitation throwback and pleasantly surprised to find it was so much more than that. I found a…
The post Episode 099 – The Duke of Burgundy appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
This is a very special episode for us. For the first time, we are discussing a film that is a patron’s choice! Ian Buckley is our first Patreon supporter to pledge at our top tier. As a result, it was his prerogative to program an entire episode of The Magic…
The post Episode 098 – Andrei Rublev appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I purchased Antonia’s Line (Gorris, 1995) sight unseen from a bin at my local Blockbuster Video soon after it came out. My friends and I sat down to watch it, and were rewarded with a delightful experience. This film is full of joy, even though the joy comes from small…
The post Episode 097 – Antonia’s Line appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s something that I always remind myself of anytime I begin to lament the state of the artistic landscape – there’s always someone out there, hustling, making sacrifices, trying to make that next great film. If I am not aware of it, that’s on me. I am not working hard…
The post Episode 096 – Thunder Road appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Happy-Go-Lucky (Leigh, 2008) may be a bit of a litmus test. Do you fully embrace the character of Poppy and her sensibilities. Do you gradually warm to her, or does she make you want to run for the hills? Luckily for me, because he knows me, Cole told me in…
The post Episode 095 – Happy-Go-Lucky appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s our fourth annual Ants In Your Pants episode, as we close out 2018! As always, our lists were culled with much difficulty from all the wonderful films we saw this year, and we only talk about those we saw for the first time which made the biggest impressions on…
The post Episode 094 – Ants In Your Pants of 2018 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Female Trouble (Waters, 1974) is probably not for everyone, but I wish it was. The world would be a lot more fun if everyone could embrace their inner Divine. This towering achievement of trash cinema is my favorite of all of John Waters’ work. I think it’s the smartest, definitely…
The post Episode 093 – Female Trouble appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Desk Set (Lang, 1957) arrived on the cusp of the information age, when the American office was poised to be transformed by room-sized machines. In this “situation comedy” is the corporation run by the women answering the phones or by the men flying off to meetings? This question of agency…
The post Episode 092 – Desk Set appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In Cold Blood (Brooks, 1967) is one of the most aptly titled works in either cinema or literature. I think of the Clutter family basement in November at 2 a.m. and it chills me to my very marrow. It was a galvanizing experience the first time I saw it as…
The post Episode 091 – In Cold Blood appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
One Man Force (Trevillion, 1989) takes all the rogue cop movie tropes we have ever seen, turns them up to 11, blows out their back windows, shoots them in the face, ties a rope to them, throws them off a cliff, jumps off the cliff after them, douses them in…
The post Episode 090 – One Man Force appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that time again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2018, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our impressions on to you in…
The post Episode 089 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2018 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Wicker Man (1973) is an undisputed classic of folk horror, though some of its principals would dispute that. Director Robin Hardy thought he was making a musical as much as anything else and star Christopher Lee has emphatically said he does not consider it a horror film. Well, gentlemen,…
The post Episode 088 – The Wicker Man appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In the groundbreaking Get Out (2017), director and writer Jordan Peele wove together terror, horror, dark satire, and laugh out loud comedy to create something much larger than the sum of its very interesting parts. He has alternatively called the film a social thriller and a documentary. To understand that…
The post Episode 087 – Get Out appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2008) is a bit of a departure, both for Claire Denis and for me. It is still as incisive and poetic as her other work, but she has replaced the usual turbulent heart of her cinema with a tranquil one. Being a loving homage to…
The post Episode 086 – 35 Shots of Rum appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When they were first tasked with making a documentary about the Bouvier family and their reminiscences of East Hampton, Albert and David Maysles soon realized that they were dealing with some “staunch” characters in Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, and that these women would make much more interesting…
The post Episode 085 – Grey Gardens appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I only saw Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) for the first time a few years ago and immediately wondered where this movie had been all my life. I always love it when I discover something like this that blows my expectations into tiny pieces. This pioneering LGBTQ film…
The post Episode 084 – Funeral Parade of Roses appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It is a very great pleasure to revisit something you think you know well and find new facets and new dots to connect. That was certainly the case for both Cole and I when coming back to Chinatown (Polanski, 1974), though we have both seen it multiple times. There is…
The post Episode 083 – Chinatown appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
This episode celebrates the return of one of my favorite filmmakers, Lucrecia Martel. It’s been ten years since her last feature film and two years since we last discussed one of her films on the show. With the arrival of her new film, Zama (2017), the wait is over and…
The post Episode 082 – Zama appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
For some reason, whenever I think of They Live (Carpenter, 1988), I remember it as a rip-roaring, good-time kind of movie. Something perfect for summer, perfect for a late night. I probably have that idea because when I first saw it in my teens, I was enthralled by the famous…
The post Episode 081 – They Live appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Will I ever get tired of talking about or recommending Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin (2013)? Not likely. I think it is one of the best films of this millennium and I think Macon Blair’s performance as Dwight, our wounded protagonist, is the best. The film upends every revenge thriller cliché…
The post Episode 080 – Blue Ruin appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Every time I watch Wake in Fright (Kotcheff, 1971), I just want it to be over. Then I want to watch it again. It is just as terrifying each time, and I am just as much a prisoner to its landscape as John, played here by Gary Bond. I know…
The post Episode 079 – Wake in Fright appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this special episode we discuss the films and symposiums of the inaugural Toronto True Crime Film Festival, a two day festival devoted to true crime on the big screen, including both documentaries and fictionalized films based on true crimes. The program included five features, each paired with a thematically…
The post Episode 078 – The Toronto True Crime Film Festival 2018 by Lantern Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
“This view of the world, from this country where there aren’t filmmakers, is very important I think. So, I do it through solidarity and because I feel a responsibility not to leave this country invisible.”– Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, on his responsibility as a Chadian filmmaker. It was with extreme delight that…
The post Episode 077 – Daratt appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this special episode, we discuss the films of Noir City Austin 2018 and its theme of “Film Noir from A to B” featuring a program of five genuine “A” and “B” double bills. We were delighted to be at Noir City Austin again this year, hosted by The Czar…
The post Episode 076 – Noir City Austin 2018 by Lantern Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In preparing to watch In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) for this episode, I read the source novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, though source is a misnomer as this film adaptation kept only the main characters and modified the plot. The novel is absolutely stellar, and I highly recommend it.…
The post Episode 075 – In a Lonely Place appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Rope (1948) is Alfred Hitchcock’s almost perfect crime. Based loosely upon the real life case of Leopold and Loeb, it was Hitchcock at his most experimental, plumbing the chilly depths of the murderous impulse. It featured limited cuts and long, unbroken takes to approximate the appearance of the real time…
The post Episode 074 – Rope appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
With circumstances completely against it, but with the brightest imaginations around set alight by a poet and artist, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast or La Belle et la Bête (1946) is one of the most indelible creations ever committed to film. My connection to Jean Cocteau, like so many…
The post Episode 073 – Beauty and the Beast appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When the Creature from the Black Lagoon crawled from the sea onto cinema screens in 1954, Universal Studios found its last great monster. When I discovered it in 1976, I found my first great cinematic love. The Universal monster pantheon turned out to be one of the foundations of my…
The post Episode 072 – Creature from the Black Lagoon appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
A first among equals as a sports film, Hoosiers (Anspaugh, 1986) is an ideal choice for this time of year: March Madness and the coming of spring and fresh starts. With a lead and supporting cast of characters each battling their own frailties, potential, and failings, there’s no need for…
The post Episode 071 – Hoosiers appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s not often that a recent release strikes such an immediate chord with us that it makes its way into our show rotation so quickly, but I knew from the first few moments of Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) that I wanted to talk about it right away.…
The post Episode 070 – Dawson City: Frozen Time appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Episode 069. Nice. Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! We learn an awful lot of things from the movies, so I don’t know why the birds and the bees should be any different. In my adolescent world, the options were either the dubious news gathering of the schoolyard or less than reputable…
The post Episode 069 – The Birds and the Bees by Lantern Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
What happens when you take a preternatural talent and give him a gigantic crew, cast, resources, many stages, and let him loose to reimagine a work he created with his muse, another preternatural talent? In the case of Sweet Charity (1969), you get a young but experienced dynamo, Bob Fosse,…
The post Episode 068 – Sweet Charity appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When I first encountered Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), I had no idea how important to me he would become. His films mercifully allow me a window into another world. They are a method of escape, but not in the way you typically think…
The post Episode 067 – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Like so many of my favorite Billy Wilder films, The Apartment (1960) begins with a voiceover. Our very own buddy boy C.C. Baxter puts us firmly in the world of making a living, of rising up in the world, or being ground beneath its boot heel. He begins to show…
The post Episode 066 – The Apartment appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s our third annual Ants In Your Pants episode, as we close out 2017! As always, our lists were culled with much difficulty from all the wonderful films we saw this year, and we only talk about those we saw for the first time which made the biggest impressions on…
The post Episode 065 – Ants In Your Pants of 2017 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
A world of pure imagination. That’s what we’re promised by Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), and boy, does it ever deliver. This adaptation of Roald Dahl’s sweet satire is full to the brim with novelties and notions, some whimsical, some bittersweet. What it doesn’t advertise right…
The post Episode 064 – Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The moment Sandra wakes up from her sleep, I knew Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2014) had me. I knew what that sleep meant. I have also slept during the day, clothed, while others around me worked, lived, and thrived. Maybe you have too. I knew what…
The post Episode 063 – Two Days, One Night appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Barbara Loden is a unique figure in American independent cinema. Before directing her lone feature film, she was a Tony winner on Broadway and appeared in a couple of Hollywood productions. None of these endeavors seemed wholly satisfying, though. That was our good fortune, as she was driven to helm…
The post Episode 062 – Wanda appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that time again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2017, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our impressions on to you in…
The post Episode 061 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2017 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
“You have to embrace the darkness,” film editor Todd Ramsay told director John Carpenter. “That’s where this movie is. In the darkness.” The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) is bathed in darkness, even though it happens to be set in a landscape of blinding whiteness. Whether it’s the black and blue palate,…
The post Episode 060 – The Thing appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Terence Fisher and Hammer Films introduced the world to its first truly modern vampire with Horror of Dracula (1958). Known in its native UK as simply Dracula, it was a technicolor explosion of blood, sex, and fury the likes of which the world had not yet seen. It was shocking…
The post Episode 059 – Horror of Dracula appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
After repeated viewings, contemplation, and discussion, I don’t know what drives the main character of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975). And I’m not just talking about the ending. Even after feeling a deep kinship with what I see on the screen, I don’t know that…
The post Episode 058 – Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) came to me at a difficult time in my life, and I find myself returning to it during difficult times as well. This might seem odd, because it’s not what you might think of as a comforting film. In fact, I reckon…
The post Episode 057 – There Will Be Blood appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) has always been one of my favorites, and having too much time on one’s hands while the summer heat drives one crazy was really speaking to me. I’ve seen the film over a dozen times, and I can fall into the habit of watching it, but…
The post Episode 056 – Rear Window appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The dog days of summer are here! To celebrate, we thought we would devote a little time to my all time favorite cinematic canine, Carlos Sorín’s Bombón: El Perro (2004). I discovered this thanks to a series that Austin Film Society did back in 2008 called More Than Buenos Aires:…
The post Episode 055 – Bombón: El Perro appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Patricia Highsmith’s creation Tom Ripley has had an extensive life. In addition to her novels, many film iterations have been made, and Purple Noon (Clément, 1960) stands as my favorite (The American Friend comes in a very close apples-and-oranges second place). Purple Noon towers over the rest of the competition…
The post Episode 054 – Purple Noon appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Francis Ford Coppola has a soft spot for The Conversation (1974) and so do I. When you hear him talk about it, there is a melancholy undercurrent in his voice that almost makes it seem like he laments getting caught up in the cycle of turning out one big project…
The post Episode 053 – The Conversation appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
If you are over 30, you may have experienced something that is likely gone from this earth. You had to stand in line, outdoors, to get into a big, popular film, probably a blockbuster. You may have waited for hours, and you may not have gotten into the movie. Was…
The post Episode 052 – Raiders of the Lost Ark appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Little Murders (1971) is the most personal choice I have made for the show so far. Prior to discovering it, I don’t think I had ever seen anything that so accurately summed up how I felt about a lot of things and there might be no better delivery system for…
The post Episode 051 – Little Murders appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I saw Say Anything… (Crowe, 1989) when I was fourteen. It changed my life. I was a young person then. I felt the pulls of longing and desire and hope and excitement and anticipation and awkwardness and embarrassment keenly. It was wonderful to know that at least somewhere in the…
The post Episode 050 – Say Anything… appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this special episode, we discuss the films of Noir City Austin 2017 and its theme of The Big Knockover: Heists, Holdups, and Schemes Gone Awry. This is the second of two episodes devoted to covering the Noir City festival, and we hope you’ll check out the previous episode and…
The post Episode 049 – Noir City Austin 2017 by Lantern Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this special episode, we had the distinct honor to sit down with the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller. Eddie is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, as well as an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, creator and programmer of the Noir City film festival,…
The post Episode 048 – Noir City Austin 2017 with Eddie Muller appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It is fair to say that no movie has ever made as big a difference to me as The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). I was fourteen when it arrived and it became the conduit to cinema adulthood for me. I might not have been able to articulate it at…
The post Episode 047 – The Pope of Greenwich Village appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I usually seek out documentaries to find a fresh perspective or insight on the film’s subject. When the documentary is about a person, I want to try to understand, to know the person. Part performance, part rehearsal, part behind-the-scenes documentary, Michael Jackson’s This Is It (Ortega, 2009) chronicles the preparations…
The post Episode 046 – Michael Jackson’s This Is It appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Third Man (1949) is rightly hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. I thought so the very first time I saw it and I think so even more now. Carol Reed’s virtuosity and Graham Greene’s nimble and acerbic assessment of the post-war human condition (and possibly himself)…
The post Episode 045 – The Third Man appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I first saw The Enchanted Cottage (1945) very late at night, alone. I was entranced by the very singular tone and the quiet romance, and while the film stayed with me, it hasn’t necessarily been constantly on my mind. Since our episode on Desperately Seeking Susan (Seidelman, 1985), I’ve been…
The post Episode 044 – The Enchanted Cottage appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Andromeda Strain (1971) is one of the building blocks of my scifi cinema education. I was born as science fiction films really began to lean into realism and more serious subject matter. The fears of the atomic age were beginning to wane and anxieties about artificial intelligence and what…
The post Episode 043 – The Andromeda Strain appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) blew my nine year-old mind, coincidentally arriving at the time when Madonna was just beginning to blow my mind. I had never seen anything like the film or Madonna, the New York they presented, or the characters they created. I was immediately smitten. They…
The post Episode 042 – Desperately Seeking Susan appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) is an all time great. It bursts with life and joy while simultaneously chronicling one of the things that is worst about life in America: our racial discord. It’s a hard movie to watch in places, and those are the places we most…
The post Episode 041 – Do the Right Thing appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
If someone tells you not to love them, take them at their word. Who knows what may be lurking in their tower? So if we learned anything from I Walked with a Zombie (1943), producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur’s spare yet lush and dreamy film, it’s that not…
The post Episode 040 – I Walked with a Zombie appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
We talk a lot about the arthouse here at The Magic Lantern, but we have an unabashed love of the grindhouse as well, and this film is a stone classic in that regard. Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) is one of those all time great, you have to see…
The post Episode 039 – Master of the Flying Guillotine appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I first saw Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941) at least fifteen years ago and had not revisited it, though it left me with very strong impressions. It was those impressions that made it a clear choice for the new year and our new political landscape. As for the film…
The post Episode 038 – Meet John Doe appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s that time of year again! We bring you our year-in-review, but with a twist, in Ants In Your Pants of 2016. Our lists were culled from the tremendous number of quality films we saw this year, and we focused on those we saw for the first time which made…
The post Episode 037 – Ants In Your Pants of 2016 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
If ever there was an object lesson in not confusing the art with the artist, Daryl Duke’s Payday (1973) is just that lesson. Rip Torn stars as second-rate country singer Maury Dann and we spend 36 hours with him in which he leaves nothing but scorched earth in his wake.…
The post Episode 036 – Payday appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
We have a special episode for you guys this time! We are joined by our special guest Lars Nilsen, lead programmer at the Austin Film Society, to discuss his selection for the show, Smile Jenny, You’re Dead (1974). Directed by Jerry Thorpe, the choice is a bit of a departure…
The post Episode 035 – Smile Jenny, You’re Dead appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
“A little movie called Once gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year” – Steven Spielberg (USA Today) Me too, Steven! Once (Carney, 2007) came along just when I needed it most (to paraphrase Zelda Fitzgerald). Sometimes it is the quietest, most modest and unassuming work that…
The post Episode 034 – Once appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2016, we bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now pass the list and our impressions on to you in hopes that you might find some…
The post Episode 033 – The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2016 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I was eight years old when I saw the first television commercial for John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and it was galvanizing. At that age, my horror cinema experience centered mainly around the cadre of Universal monsters, and I loved them, but this was a shot across my bow that I…
The post Episode 032 – Halloween appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I resisted the pull of Black Christmas (Clark, 1974) for a very long time. Too long. I thought it was going to be too scary (it is), or too violent (it’s not), or too gory (not really). When I finally watched it several years ago, I was delighted that it…
The post Episode 031 – Black Christmas appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles (1961) was one of the first films to portray Native Americans as actual flesh and blood human beings with dreams, hopes, and flaws. For decades, Hollywood had perpetuated an array of stereotypes–the stoic noble savage, the princess and the squaw, and the bloodthirsty warrior among them–but…
The post Episode 030 – The Exiles appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935), and by extension Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, breezed into my life and introduced me to a dreamy world of class, romance, and farce wrapped in a froth of Art Deco detail and the most beautiful dancing I’d yet seen. Even though I’ve enjoyed Astaire’s pairings…
The post Episode 029 – Top Hat appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The first time I saw Jonathan auf der Heide’s Van Diemen’s Land (2009), it knocked me back in my seat. My head was already swirling that day seven years ago from everything else that Fantastic Fest had jammed into it. When you are trying to take in all that one…
The post Episode 028 – Van Diemen’s Land appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Ding dong! In 1996, a very special gift arrived for this theatre nerd. Waiting for Guffman (Guest, 1996) ticked many of my boxes: it was hilarious, well-acted, a musical, outrageously quotable, took place in a familiar milieu, and begged for repeated viewings. I was the loudest, most obnoxious moviegoer that…
The post Episode 027 – Waiting for Guffman appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Very high stakes, an intelligent but troubled preteen, a plucky sidekick, an imaginary super spy friend, and Atari–put them all together and you’ve got Richard Franklin’s Cloak & Dagger (1984). As a nine year-old, I was thrilled by the twisting plot, effective performances and very real danger at the core…
The post Episode 026 – Cloak & Dagger appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I first saw Lucrecia Martel’s debut feature, La Ciénaga (2001), in late 2008 and I have been thinking about it ever since. I was so thoroughly impressed with the clarity and completeness of her vision and her obvious self-possession that the images and, crucially, the sounds are never that far…
The post Episode 025 – La Ciénaga appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
You may think you know all there is to know about Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Watch it again. Right now. Joseph Stefano (from Robert Bloch’s novel) adapted a corker of a suspense tale centered around a deeply troubling, even Gothic, family history, and a false protagonist set to remedy a…
The post Episode 024 – Psycho appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Hear ye, hear ye! Court is now in session. All rise for our examination of Stanley Kramer’s sterling courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind (1960). This film, an excoriation of McCarthyism dressed up in the garb of the Scopes Monkey Trial, is a true cinematic building block of my adulthood. As…
The post Episode 023 – Inherit the Wind appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I first saw Robert Clouse’s Darker Than Amber (1970) two years ago, which was a full 44 years after its initial release. That year, I counted it among the very best of what I saw, and I saw a lot of wonderful films. Why did it make such an impression?…
The post Episode 022 – Darker Than Amber appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
It’s been a long time since I have been as immediately taken with a film the way I was with Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013). We don’t often feature films that are this new on the show. Typically, for a movie to make its way into…
The post Episode 021 – The Tale of the Princess Kaguya appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
How far are you willing to go? In George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1988), Rex makes the ultimate choice to follow the trail of the disappeared Saskia until the eternal uncertainty of her fate can be resolved. Few endings in modern memory can match that resolution. Skip the dumbed down (and…
The post Episode 020 – The Vanishing appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Blue Collar (1978) was Paul Schrader’s first foray into film direction after the notable success of his screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976), and it almost ended his directorial career before it even began. It was a tumultuous enterprise, with Richard Pryor providing fireworks ranging from thrown chairs to pulled pistols,…
The post Episode 019 – Blue Collar appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I’ve written and deleted a lot of opening statements for this post. First, I set out to simply state that Groundhog Day (1993) is universally beloved. I began to list its accolades, but it doesn’t feel quite fitting to take a comedy and explain its praise. That should be easy;…
The post Episode 018 – Groundhog Day appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Long Goodbye (1973) is my favorite Robert Altman film. For the longest time that was McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), but as soon as I saw this I knew I was home. It’s like it was tailor-made for me. Elliott Gould’s everyman detective brings noir, one of my favorite…
The post Episode 017 – The Long Goodbye appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! —Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” Dear Compañeros, I invite you to fall under the spell of Wings of Desire (1987), Wim Wenders’ visual poem of a scarred, haunted Berlin, of the mortals who inhabit it and the immortal…
The post Episode 016 – Wings of Desire appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Suspiria (1977) is Dario Argento’s lurid, unreal masterpiece. Its garish palette (it was one of the last films made in Technicolor), baleful sound design and stylized brutality force us through the looking glass in more ways than one. Little did I know when I discovered this that it would be…
The post Episode 015 – Suspiria appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
John Huston’s Let There Be Light (1946) was the final installment in a trilogy of wartime documentaries produced for the U.S. Army. He set about following a group of soldiers who had experienced severe battle fatigue and were undergoing treatment in a military psychiatric facility for a wide array of…
The post Episode 014 – Let There Be Light appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Eleven years ago, I was lured into the world of German Expressionism via the hypnotic gaze peering out at me from the cover of Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). It sat on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, beckoning me. Little did I know that my consumption…
The post Episode 013 – The Testament of Dr. Mabuse appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
With three bodies, a missing inventor, a host of suspects and hundreds of martinis, The Thin Man (1934) sparkled into life from the page to the screen. Much later, watching as a young kid, Nick and Nora Charles swanned away with my heart. The thorny mystery at the center of…
The post Episode 012 – The Thin Man appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
In this episode, Ants In Your Pants of 2015, we bring you our year-in-review, but with a twist. Rather than focus exclusively on new releases, we each chose ten of our favorite film finds. These are older films that we watched for the first time this year which made the…
The post Episode 011 – Ants In Your Pants of 2015 appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl (1981) is the best teen comedy ever made and I will stand on John Hughes’ coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. When I discovered it at age 12 it felt like it had been beamed across the Atlantic directly into my heart and…
The post Episode 010 – Gregory’s Girl appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The world changed in 1945. With the atomic bomb, a beast with unimaginable destructive power was unleashed. The world changed again in 1950 when Senator Joseph McCarthy became the face of the Red Scare. The Thing from Another World (1951) arrived shortly after, and captures a time of paranoia–both scientific…
The post Episode 009 – The Thing from Another World appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
There aren’t many films more personal to me than Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men (2007). I grew up at the foot of the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma, so I am intimately familiar with this scrub brush landscape and these hard-bitten, laconic plainsfolk. They are my people.…
The post Episode 008 – No Country for Old Men appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Why do I enjoy this film so much? In the simplest terms, The Uninvited (1944) features a big house by the sea I really want to live in. Put that together with a great puzzle to solve, and I think this is a corker of a film. A couple of…
The post Episode 007 – The Uninvited appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) ripped into my life on Thanksgiving 1984 and I have, gratefully, never fully recovered. It was spawned from the belly of a country that was sick and sad during my earliest formative years. As a nation, we were burdened with post-Watergate paranoia, the exhaustion…
The post Episode 006 – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
What does it mean to set out in an unknown world, independent and eager? What does it mean to set out in a world when you have never known independence and when eagerness is considered shameful? Satyajit Ray’s landmark work Mahanagar (1963), or The Big City, seeks to explore these…
The post Episode 005 – Mahanagar appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
I have an abiding fondness for a number of comedians from cinema’s infancy. Buster Keaton is a true daredevil and a genius, in my estimation. It never fails to make me laugh when Stan Laurel brings Oliver Hardy that bag of hard boiled eggs and nuts in the hospital. The…
The post Episode 004 – It’s a Gift appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) made me want to be a film director. Maybe it was that rosy glow the film cast over me as a young person, which we try to describe several times in the episode–the cast, the music, the poetry, the setting. Maybe it was the theme…
The post Episode 003 – Hannah and Her Sisters appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
When it came to deciding on my first selection for the show, it was simple. There was no other choice for me but the film I have seen more than any other, James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932). Whale is one of the primary architects of classic horror cinema,…
The post Episode 002 – The Old Dark House appeared first on The Magic Lantern.
The choice of Rebecca (1940) as not only the kick off episode but my kick off episode was an easy one. It was my first revival in a movie theatre setting; my first black and white on the big screen. An adult and heady choice for a kid. I felt…
The post Episode 001 – Rebecca appeared first on The Magic Lantern.