Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
This week’s episode explores the only horror film to win an Oscar for best picture, The Silence of the Lambs! It took some work to find someone who hadn’t seen the film but Chelsea Okey was good enough to join us even though she really doesn’t like horror. We spend a lot of time talking about the acting work of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, which is superb. But we also look at how well constructed this film is as a thriller and we observe that perhaps we should not have recorded the podcast in a basement for this particular episode.
For our next podcast, we’ll follow Jodie Foster to Taxi Driver!
| The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | |
|---|---|
![]() |
Rating: 8.6/10 (1,667,162 votes) Director: Jonathan Demme Writer: Thomas Harris, Ted Tally Stars: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn Runtime: 118 min Rated: R Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror Released: 14 Feb 1991 |
| Plot: A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims. | |

This week’s episode features another guest host from our sister podcast: A Reel Education – Noir. Alee Elingsburg joins us to talk about 
We are sad to say goodbye to Jena as a regular co-host and movie non-expert but that means we will have rotating cast of non-experts instead! This episode, Tonya Wershow from our sister podcast, 
We remain in the jungle for a third straight episode as we watch 
This episode, we return to the jungle with a look back at the quintessential Tarzan film – 
We continue down the Werner Herzog rabbit hole this week to watch Fitzcarraldo! A movie that was years in the making, this is one of those films where the story of the making of the movie is possibly more interesting than the film itself. Don’t let that statement fool you, though, the movie is a spectacular journey into the Amazon jungle and one man’s madness. Or, if you include Werner Herzog, possibly two men. If you want to move a boat over a mountain, sometimes you have to make a movie.
It is time to dive into the works of Werner Herzog with the documentary film Grizzly Man! Herzog tells the story of naturalist Timothy Treadwell who researched grizzly bears up until one of them decided he looked like a tasty morsel. Using mostly Treadwell’s old footage, the film is less about his death than it is about the effect his obsession had on himself and those around him. Pat Wick joins us as stunt Jena even though she has seen the film and Tim has not!
After watching Spotlight on our last episode, we decided to take a look at another “Newspaper Journalist Thriller” so we watched All the President’s Men! The film stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the reporters who broke the Watergate story. If you aren’t familiar with Watergate, it is the scandal that ensured every succeeding scandal ended in the word “gate.” This film is a true classic about two guys digging until they finally found the truth. Definitely worth the watch!
As has become an annual tradition, we are watching this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner. For 2016, most people assumed the award would go to Revenant. However, Oscar voters surprised everyone by selecting Spotlight instead. The film is representative of a dying genre as newspaper journalism is a dying medium. Fine performances anchor this movie that is disturbing not so much because of how the story is told but because so much of the story is true.
We take a trip down Western lane with the John Wayne/John Ford classic, Stagecoach! This film basically made a superstar out of Wayne and defined the western genre for the next several decades. It features Ford’s favorite location – monument valley – as well as his favorite actor. In addition to Wayne, the movie also stars a lot of very well known character actors including Andy Devine and John Carradine. Interesting trivia: Wayne was not the first billed actor in this film. That was Claire Trevor!


Recent Comments