PODCAST

Secret Movie Club Podcast

secretmovieclub

Movie theaters by movie makers for movie lovers.

tv & film

All Episodes

49:57

SMC Pod #198: 10 horror movie discoveries

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/10/23

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

50:39

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

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/10/17

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

52:57

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

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/10/10

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

41:17

SMC Pod #195: Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/10/03

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

27:38

SMC Pod #194: Pixote, Come and See, and the real...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/09/05

It's one thing to be scared by a ghost story, vampires, or masked killers menacing horny teens in summer camps. It's another thing when you see a movie that forces you to confront horrors that happen everyday around the world. Movies like Hector Babenco's 1981 Brazillian neorealist Pixote about a 10 year old juvenile delinquent struggling in the corrupt reform schools and even more brutal streets. Movies like Elem Klimov's 1985 Come & See which follows wide-eyed Florya as he joins Belurusian

39:28

SMC Pod #193: Star Persona vs. Great Actors and...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/08/29

A movie star has "it". You can't learn it. You can't fake it. The camera loves you. The audience wants you. Great actors may never be movie stars but they often have long, rewarding careers filled with powerful work even if they never get that huge paycheck. What's interesting though is how often big stars are determined to be recognized as great actors or vice versa. And it's that grain of sand that often makes a dynamic career. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at movie

41:09

SMC Pod #192: Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, & movies...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/08/21

One of the fascinating ironies about Los Angeles is that it is often movies in heightened genres like noir that best capture what the city really feels like to those born and raised in it (like this podcaster). Movies like Billy Wilder's acidic Hollywood takedown classic Sunset Boulevard and Roman Polanski's & Robert Towne's 70's new cinema classic Chinatown show sides of the city with a denizen's inside baseball knowledge. But there's also a neorealist strain in the films of John Cassavettes,

52:03

SMC Pod #191: Lorne Michaels & The Movie Impressario

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/08/08

The Impressario is an archetype the movie industry sorely needs right now. Lorne Michaels, co-creator and longtime producer of Saturday Night Live offers a template and some surprising subtle lessons in what characteristics are needed to thrive in the long game. Michaels is one of the last of a breed that started at the very beginning with boy genius MGM studio head Irving Thalberg and includes folks like agent Sue Mengers, producer Kathleen Kennedy, manager Bernie Brillstein among others. Folks who

45:56

SMC Pod #190: The Children of Caligari-Persona, 3...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/08/01

1920's German expressionist The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari did more than inspire a whole kind of cinema-it also became the great-grandparent of a genre. The mind-bending dive into the psyche genre that saw three of its greatest examples all influence each other: Ingmar Bergman's 1966 Persona which begat in many ways Robert Altman's 1977 3 Women. And all those movies consciously or unconsciously begat David Lynch's 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill

35:47

SMC Pod #189: The Val Lewton RKO horror unit of the...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/07/25

RKO needed money fast in 1943 and they brought on David O Selznick protege Val Lewton to head a unit devoted to cheapie horror movies. The rules-use their titles like Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man-then figure out the rest. Lewton miraculously created a cycle of incredible atmospheric literate horror movies, several masterfully directed by genre master Jacques Tourneur, that helped revive the career of Boris Karloff, introduce subtexts like repressed sexuality, acceptance of

52:02

SMC Pod #188: Marlon Brando's ONE EYED JACKS (1961) &...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/07/18

The Western genre is a home grown art form like jazz and rock and roll. And it occasionally produces really strange and wild movies. Marlon Brando's incredible 1961 One Eyed Jacks is a western that takes place on California beaches with a psycho-sexual Oedipal focus on a rebel, a father figure, and a step-daughter. Other eccentric westerns like Budd Boetticher's minimalist 1956 Seven Men From Now, John Huston's & John Milius's counter-culture The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean, Clint

57:29

SMC Pod #187: The complex American character through...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/07/04

On any given day, you could pick 20 American movies that would show a different cross section of the complex contradictory conflicting aspects of the American character. Today, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill picks 20 including 1928's King Vidor directed The Crowd, the biting 50's satire Ace in the Hole, 70's masterworks like Husbands, Girlfriends, Nashville, Killer of Sheep, Black Caesar, and more recent works that wrestle with American identity like He Got Game, Better Luck

38:20

SMC Pod #186: Rossellini's 1940's War trilogy: Rome...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/06/27

Thematic trilogies are fascinating and exciting. Though characters may reappear, they are really trilogies around a theme or fascination or concern. Italian master Roberto Rossellini rose to the top of world cinema in the 1940's with his trilogy of movies focused on World War II and its immediate after effects: Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1948). The first two movies deal with the war and the occupation of Italy first by Nazis then by American soldiers. The last

53:52

SMC Pod#185: Steven Spielberg's JAWS & Why it's the...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/06/19

As everyone and their cousin is telling you these days, it's the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's classic monster movie blockbuster Jaws (1975). Directed by wunderkind Spielberg when he was only 28 years old (yet had already been a professional director in the TV & movie game at least 8 years), Jaws set the template Hollywood is still chasing: promising young director, huge recognition with a pre-existing IP (intellectual property), massive opening weekend on the most amount of screens,

35:50

SMC Pod #184: The Fantasy, Sci-Fi, & Horror genres...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/06/06

That's a mouthful! Today, Secret Movie Club programmer talks about the wonders and possibilities of the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres and how those wonders/possibilities are beautifully realized in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. To narrow it down, Craig explores 1939's The Wizard of Oz (fantasy), 1972's Solaris (sci-fi), and 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Then Craig takes an element from each genre and how it affected or was expressed through Peter Jackson's genius

25:12

SMC Pod #183: Francesco Rosi's SALVATORE GIULIANO...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/05/30

Every now and then, you have to deep dive an amazing movie to celebrate it. Today, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill sings the praises of journalist turned moviemaker Francesco Rosi's 1962 Italian masterpiece Salvatore Giuliano. It tells the story of famed Sicilian outlaw Giuliano not from his POV but from the POV's of everyone around him-townspeople, police, the Italian government. Shot by master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo (Fellini's 8 1/2), Giuliano is a cubist Citizen

43:16

SMC Pod #182: The Cannes Film Festival with someone...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/05/16

Blake Winston Rice @blakewrice had his life turned inside out when he found out his short film Tea had been accepted for competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Suddenly after years of shorts submissions and rejections, he had less than a month to get ready for the biggest opportunity of his life. Blake talks with Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill about the crazy ride he had last year, what Cannes is really like for those who experience it, and advice he has for everyone

30:17

SMC Pod #181: Recent movies that give me hope

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/05/09

Recent movies like the Latvian animated instant masterpiece Flow, the hilarious and well thought out parody.satire.personal journey indie The People's Joker, the formally daring subjective POV two-hander Nickel Boys, the Romanian dark comedy of the moment Do Not Expect Too Much From the End Of the World, and the musical political horror of the documentary Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat among many others show that cinema still has new frontiers to cross, new voices to regenerate the medium, a new

01:06:50

SMC Pod #180: Is This Cinema Part 2 Part 2!...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/05/03

A movie podcast so expansive, so intense, it took several weeks to edit! Actor.musician.cinephile Andras Jones (Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama, https://previouslyyours.com) and Secret Movie Club founder Craig Hammill have part 2 of their conversation about what exactly defines cinema? Andras challenges Craig on Craig's definitions of simulation, artifice, consent since many great movies, documentaries ignore those things. Craig puts forward that trust and

46:53

SMC Pod #179: Is this Cinema Pt II: The Human Centipede

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/04/11

We return to our Is this Cinema series to look at one of the 2000's most divisive horror movies: Tom Six's The Human Centipede (2009). The concept was so shocking (three humans sewed together by a mad doctor to make a...well you guessed it...) it became a pop culture phenomenon. Comedy shows like South Park devoted whole episodes to it. But was it cinema or just an edgelord eyeball grab for money? Actor, musician, artist Andras Jones (Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball

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