Jun 5, 2026

For the final episode of our Isabelle Huppert Spotlight, we watched two movies with a colonial setting: Rithy Panh's The Sea Wall (2008), based on the novel by Marguerite Duras, and Claire Denis' White Material (2009). Disturbing eroticism as a lens on colonial class and racial dynamics is something the films share,...

May 29, 2026

Our text for this 1934 RKO Studios Year by Year episode is a William A. Seiter double feature distinguished by ultra-manipulative heroines and a simultaneous fascination with and unsubtle criticism of the rich: the comedy We're Rich Again, which earns a comparison to Preston Sturges for its innovative use of comedy...

May 22, 2026

Our Family Freak-Outs series continues to go from strength to strength as we examine Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956) and Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea (2016), a couple of masterpieces of American cinema in radically different modes: Technicolor melodrama and micro-realism. We discuss the...

May 15, 2026

For our second Isabelle Huppert Acteurist Spotlight we have another first encounter with an auteur, Claude Chabrol, with the unfortunately translated Story of Women (1988), and take on Huppert's iconic performance in the also inaccurately translated The Piano Teacher (2001). Be prepared for harrowing subject matter...

May 8, 2026

For this round of Fox Studios 1934 we watched Change of Heart (directed by John G. Blystone), Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell's final pairing, co-starring with James Dunn and a brink-of-stardom Ginger Rogers as college friends in unrequited love configurations; and Marie Galante (directed by Henry King), from source...