Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #204: The Two Stevens-Steven Spielberg & Stephen King

Yes, they're connected by name. Yes, they're connected by being born within 9 months of each other. Yes, they're connected by their crazy talent to bring the best out of the sci-fi, horror, fantasy genres. But filmmaker Steven Spielberg and best-selling writer Stephen King are most connected by being in the rarefied extremely small subset of creative artists who have both climbed to the top peak of commercial AND artistic success. Spielberg movies like Duel, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. and King works like Carrie, The Shining, It, The Stand, Wizard and Glass have had blockbuster success while also being genuine explorations and expressions of their creators' obsessions. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill devotes the last podcast of 2025 to a deep dive into what traits and characteristics unite the two artists and what we might learn from them. (We'll be back with our next new pod, SMC Podcast #205-The Movies of 2025 on Friday, January 9, 2026). Happy holidays and happy new year.

SMC Pod #203: Classic Hollywood Christmas

Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves. And Classic Hollywood Christmas movies are a special part of that genre. Holiday movies made in Hollywood's heyday of the 1930's-1940's. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at five favorites-Frank Capra's 1946 It's A Wonderful Life, Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 The Shop Around the Corner, Preston Struges' 1944 The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Vincente Minnelli's 1944 Meet Me In St. Louis, and W.S.Van Dyke's 1934 The Thin Man. Interestingly, all these classic use dark subject matter-contemplated suicide, financial stress, murder, small town scandal-to contrast and thus emphasize Christmas themes of redemption, family, second chances. We also take a look at two modern classics-Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa and how they share much the same DNA as their classic Hollywood counterparts. 

SMC Pod #202: The Italian Stylists

What is it about the Italians? The rich food. Thousands of years of incredible art and sculpture and music. Something's in the blood over there that produces a high concentration of moviemakers with incredible lush styles: Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, and Dario Argento to name just a few. This week, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill riffs on what it means to be a "stylist". And why Italian masters like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica don't quite feel like part of that category because other traits of their moviemaking dominate.  Craig also tries explores why, even if your aesthetic is different, studying stylists is key to the craft. 

SMC Pod #201: Blade Runner & dystopian sci-fi movies

Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi dystopian noir Blade Runner where a disillusionedd private eye/cop/robot hunter Harrison Ford tracks down and falls in love with "Replicants" or robot cyborgs made to look like humans is a pinnacle of the sci-fi dystopian genre. Blade Runner presents a disturbing, overpopulated, megalopolis Los Angeles and explores sci-fi questions of what it means to be human, to exist, to live.  Dystopia movies like Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Mike Judge's Idiocracy, show humanity and society hanging on but everything falling apart. These are movies just before the apocalypse. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at many of these movies and how years like 1971 and 2006 when the US was at war both internally and internationally produced dystopia sci-fi classics that mirrored our own anxiety and worry. 

SMC Podcast #200: Lightning Bottle Movie Masterpieces

To celebrate our 200th podcast, we take a look at some of the less screened and spoken about movie masterpieces that give us "that feel". Movies like Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning, Forman's The Fireman's Ball, the Coens' Barton Fink, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire among many others are what Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill calls "lightning bottle movie masterpieces". Movies that give you "that feel" of electric, exciting "I want to do this" moviemaking. We discuss 15 movies in all, including asserting that Citizen Kane, as discussed as it is, is taken for granted and underrated now. Our hope here is that you'll go check out or re-watch a few of these movies and seek out cinema that gives you "that feel" to make amazing movies. 

SMC Pod #199: The Toronto Film Festival 2025 1st Person POV-Blake Winston Rice & his short DISC

Filmmaker Blake Winston Rice returns to the pod to talk about his most recent short, DISC, starring Victoria Ratermanis & indie phenom Jim Cummings and how it premiered at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). Blake joined us on SMC Pod #182 to talk about how his short TEA got into the Cannes Film Festival and what it was like to actually attend the world's greatest film fest in person. Now Blake returns to talk about Toronto which is in the Top 5 world film fests and often viewed as the springboard for moviemakers ahead of awards season. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill and Blake talk about what a moviemaker needs to do these days to keep the needle moving forward towards feature work, financing, and career-building. 

SMC Pod #198: 10 horror movie discoveries

October is Halloween season. And Halloween season is always a good time to discover (or re-discover) some of the more hidden yet just as brilliant horror gems in the genre. From Carl Theodor Dryer's 1932 dreamlike VAMPYR to Lucio Fulci's 1971 blunt yet Hitchcockian LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN to Zach Cregger's 2022 breakthrough comedy-horror freakout BARBARIAN to Don Siegel's & Clint Eastwood's 1971 slice of Southern Gothic fever revenge THE BEGUILED to Bill Gunn's 1973 black politics, power, and sexuality art horror GANJA & HESS, these are the movies that will blow your mind. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes you on a spooky tour through the shadow galleries of the vast crypt of horror movie masterpieces. 

SMC Pod #197: Is this Cinema Part Three: A Serbian Film

In the final part of our three part 2025 series, Is This Cinema?, we look at the 2010 boundary pushing shocking controversial A SERBIAN FILM co-wri & directed by Srdjan Spasojevic which has its advocates like moviemaker Eli Roth and its detractors (many many others). Actor, moviemaker, musician Andras Jones (who did NOT see the movie) and Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill (who did) use the movie (which did play big festivals around the world) as the launching point for the third part of their conversation about what actually defines cinema. Andras and Craig work to dig down on what the basic elements are that define cinema. Citizen Kane and Pink Flamingos both come up. And surprisingly Andras and Craig do ultimately come to a definition that works for both of them. 

SMC Pod #196: The Godfather trilogy & why it's a true trilogy

One of the greatest American movie trilogies has been right under our eyes for decades. Francis Ford Coppola's & team's The Godfather Parts 1, 2, and 3 form one of the most impressive three part movie projects ever attempted. It's easy to overlook this since The Godfather 3 came out 16 years after The Godfather 2 and is not considered at the same level as the first two movies. And yet, despite its definite shortcomings, The Godfather 3 is still one of the best movies of the 1990's and a fascinating and FITTING conclusion to the tragedy of Michael Corleone. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at what it took to make the three movies (it was always a fight) and how they fit together to form one of the few great Shakespearean level tragedies of American cinema. 

SMC Pod #195: Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER & the 2025 theater experience

Sometimes you have to go see a movie in a theater no matter what. That's a great thing. Auteur moviemaker Paul Thomas Anderson's just released One Battle After Another, shot on the 35mm Vistavision format, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn about a stoner Dad ex-revolutionary trying to save his daughter is just such a movie. What's illuminating, for better and worse, is realizing even with a dynamite movie like this one, the 2025 theater experience needs work. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks his theater experience, his admiration for Anderson's movie, and his thoughts-good, bad, ugly-about what where theater going is at in 2025.