Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #166: 2024, the year in movies

Furiosa, Hundreds of Beavers, I Saw the TV Glow, Anora just to name a few showed that 2024 had lots of genius, fight, promise, vitality, relevancy still for cinema. And movies like Dune Pt II, Hit Man, Conclave, Juror #2 were worthwhile, stimulating additions to the annals of moviedom. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at the year in movies 2024...and finds there's mercifully, blessedly still a beating heart at the center of it all. 

SMC Pod #165: Stanley Kubrick, Director of 2020

Stanley Kubrick may be one of the key patron saints of all cinema (even if he himself was an ardent athiest). Born in the Bronx, New York, a mediocre student, Kubrick followed a monofocused drive to make movies. From making low budget features to cut his teeth in the mid 1950's to becoming one of the only true Auteur American moviemakers to work in the studio system yet be on a level with moviemakers like Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick created a cinema of ideas and iconography. And he never settled until he got it right. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at Kubrick's career and the rules he developed to make his wildly ambitious films. These rules allowed Kubrick to make masterpieces in almost every genre: sci-fi 2001, period drama BARRY LYNDON, horror THE SHINING, war PATHS OF GLORY, psychological interrogations of marriage EYES WIDE SHUT, and more. 

SMC Pod #164: Alfred Hitchcock, Director of 2023

Has any moviemaker made more out and out hits, influenced 20th century cinematic pop culture iconography, or so married the pop, commercial, and artistic into one as Alfred Hitchcock? Hitchcock directed 53 movies, 10 of which are arguably unqualified masterpieces (39 Steps, Lady Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds). Hitchcock is the rare director whose name alone could finance a picture, so synonymous was it with suspense and popcorn brilliance. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill gets into it-from the profound influence of German expressionism on Hitchcock, to Alma Reville, Hitch's lifelong wife and creative partner, to Hitch's techniques and understanding that suspense is an emotional state. And that's what makes it so powerful. 

SMC Pod #163: Roger Corman's Rules

With the passing of the "Pope of Pop Film" Roger Corman at 98 this year, a key era of American moviemaking left us. Producer/Director Roger Corman famously made hundreds of movies without "ever having lost a dime". He did this by shrewdly making very low budget genre pictures catered to what was hip at the time (monsters, drugs, motorcycles, sharks, aliens...) with super talented hungry young moviemakers. Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdonavich, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron just to name a few all come out of the unofficial "Roger Corman film school". And Corman himself directed or produced key indie genre movies including the Edgar Allen Poe series of the 1960's, Monte Hellman's COCKFIGHTER from the 1970's, etc. Secret Movie Club programmer Craig Hammill looks at some of the "rules" a moviemaker can still learn from the maverick master who made daring movies while also protecting the bottom line. 

SMC Pod #162: Thanksgiving special-Giving thanks for the Bravo Channel (early 1990's)

And. . .we're back. After almost a year of radio silence, the Secret Movie Club podcast returns with SMC Pod #162! Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill gives thanks (Thanksgiving 2024 weekend) for the Bravo Channel in the early 1990's. Way back then (Craig was 12-15 years old), the Bravo Channel was devoted to idiosynchratic world cinema and American indie movies. Sneaking to the tv room late at night, to watch these movies when his family was asleep, Craig saw Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990),  Ildikó Enyedi's Hungarian My Twentieth Century (1989), Aki Kaurismaki's Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Hal Hartley's Trust (1990), and (possibly) Jean Claude Luzhon's French Canadian Leolo (1992). Plus, some hints and reveals about the full reopening of the Secret Movie Club theater and programming...

SMC Pod #161: What is a masterpiece & masterpiece inflation

Secret Movie Club team members Edwin Gomez and Craig Hammill hash out what really IS the criteria that makes a movie a masterpiece? Although they easily agree on JAWS, they split when Edwin calls AIRPORT 77 and KING KONG 1976 masterpieces while Craig views Ingmar Bergman's WINTER LIGHT and PERSONA as masterpieces. Craig also is concerned that the term "masterpiece" gets used way too much these days. He fears the term is losing its important meaning as an indicator of a movie that truly rises above all others. Is there a fix? Is there a problem? Listen to see where Edwin and Craig ultimately land. We'd love to hear your thoughts. (You can always write us at: community@secretmovieclub.com. We might even read your comments in an upcoming pod!).

SMC Pod #160: CRUMB & The dark documentary (A deeper doc dive Part II)

Today, Secret Movie Club Team Members Edwin Gomez and Craig Hammill discuss Terry Zwigoff's breakout 1990's documentary CRUMB about underground comic book artist R. Crumb and his dysfunctional brothers. Both Edwin and Craig talk about how a second viewing really emphasizes how heavy Crumb's home life was. We nominate some other powerful "dark" documentaries. Edwin name checks the Maysles' 1960's key work SALESMAN and Errol Morris's 1980's THE THIN BLUE LINE. Craig talks about Claude Lanzmann's 1980's masterwork SHOAH and Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 THE ACT OF KILLING. Edwin talks the re-opening of the Vista and Craig mentions how much he likes David Fincher's new movie THE KILLER. (This Pod acts as a kind of Part II to SMC Pod #94 which looked at AMERICAN MOVIE and the documentary genre). 

SMC Pod #159: Communicating cinematically or ”An idea in every shot”

As part of our final season wrap up on Alfred Hitchcock director of the year, we look at Hitchcock's late career advice to film schools to make sure that young filmmakers knew how to tell their stories visually/cinematically without needing to rely on dialogue. SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about how this approach has come to mean for him the goal of "an idea in every shot". Today we talk about examples from Murnau's The Last Laugh, Renoir's La Chienne, Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, Coppola's The Godfather I baptism cross-cutting scene, Kurosawa's High and Low among other movies to show how production design, framing, editing, cross-cutting, "gags" can all become tools in the tool box to communicate cinematically. 

SMC Pod #158: Why PSYCHO is the 2001 of Horror movies

For as popular and perennial as Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is, 62 years after its initial release, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill feels it is still underrated. In many ways, Craig feels PSYCHO is the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY of horror movies. That is-a movie which changed the cinematic form, created new film language, and in many ways, has never been surpassed.  We take a look at the history of PSYCHO including Hitchcock's own doubts that it worked. We also look at how Hitchcock micromanaged brilliantly hiding the twist until its opening weekend and how Hitchcock used his five decades of film craft to take his "Subjective POV" style to its zenith. Finally, we discuss the unsettling and surprisingly complex world view of the movie which is neither optimistic nor cynical but stranger. A worldview that approximates the complexities of our own world. 

SMC Pod #157: Filmmaker Sensibilities: Blockbuster vs Art House

When you love cinema, it's fascinating how some of your favorite moviemakers are beloved by a small passionate group of "in the know" fans and other of your favorite moviemakers appeal to the entire world including your grandparents who know nothing about the film world. What defines the "art house" versus the "blockbuster" sensibility? If you're a moviemaker, where does your sensibility ultimately land? Does it help to be know? Is it even productive to think in these terms? Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at a number of filmmaker sensibilities including those of Peter Greenaway, James Cameron, Satyajit Ray, Kelly Reichhardt, and Francis Ford Coppola. All have achieved success and longevity to wildly different audiences.