Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #212: Luis Buñuel, L'Age d'Or

Episode 212 of Secret Movie Club dives into the life and work of Luis Buñuel, tracing his surrealist beginnings with Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or, his powerful Mexican period (Los Olvidados, The Exterminating Angel), and his later French masterpieces (Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire).

Founder and programmer of Secret Movie Club, Craig Hammill, shares biographical context, thematic through-lines—religion, class, dream logic and satire—and personal memories of discovering Buñuel, while recommending key films to watch for newcomers and longtime fans alike.

SMC Pod #211: Movies & AI

The AI disruption for movies is here. Poor movies, battered on the choppy seas of digital, streaming, COVID, and now AI, have yet another challenge to contend with. But we've been here before with sound, color, television, home video. In fact, if anything, the history of movies and the history of technological innovation and disruption are forever intertwined. And movies, at least so far, have found a way to innovate and to endure. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at where AI is in 2026 and what that may mean for cinema, movie jobs, and the art form going forward. 

SMC Pod #210: Frederick Wiseman-Master Documentarian

Frederick Wiseman (1930-2026) is a master documentarian who across 60 years made doc masterpieces about systems and institutions like TITICUT FOLLIES, HIGH SCHOOL, HOSPITAL, ESSENE, WELFARE, MULTI HANDICAPPED, IN JACKSON HEIGHTS. Although not as widely known as some of his narrative feature contemporaries, Wiseman is one of the greatest moviemakers who ever practiced the craft. His ability to find profound, ironic, incisive stories within his material and then to edit the material into a novelistic experience is auteur level. Secret Movie Club founder and programmer Craig Hammill talks about Wiseman's movies, working methods, and impact. And he begs you to get a library card so you can watch Wiseman's masterpieces on kanopy.com.

SMC Pod #209: The movie repertory theater, the video store, and the streamer

Across the age of cinema, the way a movie lover has been able to consume movies has changed. The movie repertory theater, the video store, and now the streaming channel all have pros and cons on how they expose cinemagoers to great cinema and the cinema experience. Secret Movie Club programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at each, gets the Secret Movie Club community in on the conversation to share their thoughts, and suggests a hybrid of all three may be the wave of the future.

SMC Pod #208: Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton-the start of two cinematic traditions

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are now often universally viewed as the two great silent film movie comedians. And their personal biographies, even their physical characteristics (they were both 5'5), rhyme in a fascinating way.  They both made some of the towering comedies-The Kid, The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, Seven Chances, Sherlock Jr., The General. Most intriguingly, Chaplin can be viewed as the grandfather of the art film tradition and Keaton the grandpappy of the action film.  Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill offers an initial overview of these two movie giants' biographies, body of work, and legacies.

SMC Pod #207: The Character Actor

The character actor is one of the most important yet least discussed aspects of cinema. Whether it's Thelma Ritter as a no nonsense feisty nurse in Hitchcock's Rear Window, Eli Wallach as a captivating roguish bandit in Leone's The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly or Tilda Swinton in almost about anything, character actors provide a rhythm, contrast, opposite color that provides shape, dynamism, form to a film. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at why the character actor is so critical to a movie's success and some of the greatest practitioners of the craft. 

SMC Pod #206: Movies that capture what it means to be Jewish-American

Like all American tribes in the melting pot, Jewish-Americans express their identity in their art. Maybe nowhere as strongly as in cinema. Secret Movie Club founder Craig Hammill, who has a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, looks at just a few of the many great movies that get at being Jewish-American. Movies like the 1980's hit Dirty Dancing, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, Mike Nichol's The Graduate, and Claudia Weill's Girlfriends among many others. If you've ever had a heated debate at an engaged Jewish-American table, you know what it's like to dig into these things. This podcast can only be a prologue to the many complex issues that could be discussed. But hey. . .at least it's a start.

SMC Pod #205: The movies of 2025

Today we talk about 12 fascinating movies from 2025. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer starts with the movies he still needs to see (The Secret Agent, Marty Supreme), the movies he felt were essential (Sinners, Mission Impossible 8, Cover Up, Sentimental Value) and what other 2025 movies (Highest 2 Lowest, Train Dreams, One Battle After Another, Weapons) might say about our current cinematic moment. Craig is fighting the flu so he tries to keep everything mercifully to the point. Please let us know your thoughts and the 2025 movies you loved that you think we need to see by emailing us at: community@secretmovieclub.com

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.