The Frances Farmer Show

Taking a look back at the older films they saw for the first time in 2013, Mike and Sean revisit Neveldine/Taylor's 2006 Crank and Sammo Hung's 1980 The Victim (aka Lightning Kung-Fu). They also count down their top five movies discoveries of 2013 and listen to some of their favorite songs of the year. And for some reason they spend five minutes arguing about Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

Unable to catch their latest film, Mike and Sean take a look at the Coen Brothers' 1994 movie The Hudsucker Proxy and one of its screwball antecedents, Frank Capra's 1933 Lady for a Day. They also discuss the Coens and screwball comedies in general, the nature of critical fogeyism and the sorry state of the Seattle Mariners. 

Sure sure.

This week Sean and Mike shut out the rest of the world and get lost in their own infinite loops as they tackle Andrew Bujalski's 2013 film Computer Chess and Satyajit Ray's 1977 The Chess Players. They also run-down their plans for list-making season, make fun of the Independent Spirit Awards and talk about how great Terrence Malick is on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

Celebrating Thanksgiving with a couple of Turkeys this week, Mike and Sean take a look at two films that flopped on their initial release: Charlie Chaplin's 1947 Monsieur Verdoux and Brian DePalma's Bonfire of the Vanities, from 1990. They also discuss the career of Charlie Chaplin, get the inevitable onslaught of award-talk rolling and make their picks for Essential Cinema Feast.

This week, Mike and Sean celebrate the Doctor Who 50th anniversary with a look at a pair of timey-wimey movies, the late 80s classic Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Buster Keaton's 1923 triptych Three Ages. They'll also discuss the best undistributed films of 2013, their essential Time Travel movies and cover a small fraction of what Mike has to say about The Doctor.

This week, we celebrate Armistice Day with a pair of World War I movies (more or less) with King Vidor's 1925 smash hit The Big Parade and Miklós Jancsó's The Red and The White, from 1967. We'll also make our picks for Essential WWI movies and discuss the great actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr, who would have turned 99 years old this week. Also: more on the state of video stores with news from Blockbuster and TCM, a look at some upcoming Yasujiro Ozu retrospectives and the European Film Award nominations featuring a few George Sanders favorites.

This week, Mike and Sean celebrate a number of milestones: the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Victor Sjöström's seminal realist feature Ingeborg Holm, the 40th anniversary of Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist masterpiece The Holy Mountain and the 100th birthday of actor Burt Lancaster. They also pick their essential Social Problem films, take a look at new directions for a pair of former Chicago Reader film critics and listen to a lot of Lou Reed music.

Celebrating a Feline Halloween, this week we take a look at Paul Schrader's 1982 film Cat People, starring Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell and Edgar G. Ulmer's 1934 The Black Cat, with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. We'll also talk about Lugosi in general and pick our Cinemessential Cats. And, of course, we talk about Johnnie To, specifically in unhappy response to the recent Grantland article about the Hong Kong director.

This week, in honor of the 70th birthday of iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve, Mike and Sean take a look at one of her classic films, 1967's Belle de jour, directed by Luis Buñuel, along with Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira's 2006 sequel/homage to that film, Belle toujours. They'll also talk about Deneuve's career as a whole, name their essential movies wherein a housewife becomes a prostitute and discuss the impact of Instant Netflix on canon formation on the eve of Video Store Day.

This week, tying in with the high-profile release of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, Mike and Sean take a look at one of that film's star's earlier sci-fi films, George Clooney in Solaris, directed by Sean's directorial Kryptonite Steven Soderbergh, along with an earlier adaptation of that same material by Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky. They also recap Sean's trip to the Vancouver International Film Festival, discuss George Clooney's career and make their picks for the Essential Film Wherein People See Dead People.