Author: ccradio
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Reel 31: Pacino and DeNiro Together
It’s not our worst title, but it does get to the point. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro appeared in four films together. And that’s if you count The Godfather Part II, in which they shared zero screen time because they appeared in separate timelines. So that really makes three, including a 2008 movie called Righteous…
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Reel 30: Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard started out as a Western novelist, but soon discovered a knack for suspense thrillers and crime fiction. Many of these—and several of his short stories—were turned into feature films or TV movies, and in a couple of cases they became TV series. In this episode we’re looking at two of the better examples…
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Reel 29: Pictures From a Revolution
There was a time, once, when movies had to have a certain look. They needed to be bright so they’d look good at the drive-in theater. They needed to have a specific sound because of technical limitations when presented. They needed to avoid certain topics. They needed to tone down the graphic violence. They needed…
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Reel 28: Miracle Movies
Merry Christmas to you! Assuming you celebrate, of course. In this episode we’re looking at a pair of films that have a Christmas component to them, and which have the word “Miracle” in the title. We open up with Preston Sturges and his 1944 screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, starring Betty Hutton and…
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Reel 27: Gangsters Fighting Nazis
Gather ’round while I tell a story. Once upon a time, there was a time when it was universally agreed that Nazis were Bad People. As the late Norm Macdonald said, “You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.” Those were the days, weren’t they! Anyway, Nazism was so unpopular…
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Reel 26: Life During Wartime
Oh, boy. What we have this episode is a couple of films where you don’t know whom to root for. Why? Because everybody is either compromised or just plain reprehensible. We start with Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, from 1967. This film opens with a married couple that’s fallen so far out of love with one another…
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Reel 25: 1970s Conspiracy Thrillers
It’s possible—perhaps even likely—that the whole Conspiracy Theory crowd was born from the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which happened on November 22, 1963. What’s certain is that these theories about JFK’s death certainly bled over into Hollywood. And as a result, films in the 1970s started to spring…
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Reel 24: Foreign Correspondents
It’s a fact. With some films, all you need to do to enjoy it is shut up and eat your popcorn. With other films you need to be able to buy into the story. And when you’re dealing with films that take place during real events, verisimilitude is where it’s at. If the viewer doesn’t…
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Reel 23: Little Womens
Little Women is a book that’s been adapted into some sort of visual medium, whether it’s a big-screen film, or a TV movie, or even a mini-series, many many times. Now, we have been making an effort to keep the episodes down to a more digestible length, but this time around we’ve got a righteously…
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Reel 22: Southern Stories
Typically, when a film is set in a southern state, we get a lot of rednecks and yahoos behaving badly. That’s not to say that there isn’t any bad behavior in the films reviewed in this episode, but it’s not the focus of the films. In fact, both Dazed and Confused (1993) and Ruby in…