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Secret Movie Club Podcast

secretmovieclub

Movie theaters by movie makers for movie lovers.

tv & film

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41:41

SMC Pod #215: Soviet Sci‑Fi: Hidden Masterpieces from...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/04/24

Soviet Sci fi is an undiscovered ocean of incredible cinema for folks here in the west who may not know many of these masterpieces exist. While Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker are frequently screened, amazing sci-fi works like Dead Man's Letters, Kin Dza-Dza, and On The Silver Globe are just as powerful. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill also takes a survey look at other works from the Soviet Union's first sci-fi, the silent film Aelita-Queen of Mars all the way to a crazy

60:47

SMC Pod #214: Casablanca: A case study of how a...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/04/17

1942's Best Picture winner CASABLANCA, made at Warner Brothers, is ultimately the best evidence one could produce for how the old studio system of the 1920's through the 1940's was set up to occasionally produce a masterpiece that could not have been made any other way. Defying the auteur-centered way we often appraise movies, CASABLANCA really was a team effort with critical contributions from writers, the producer, the composer, the cast, the director, the production designer, the

36:52

SMC Pod #213: Ken Loach & his 1969 masterpiece KES

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/03/20

British filmmaker Ken Loach has been committed to socially minded cinema for over six decades. From early 1960's TV work to his most recent (and possibly last feature) in 2023, Ken Loach has been one of world cinema's most reliable productive practitioners. So why did it take Secret Movie Club programmer.founder Craig Hammill so long to finally see Loach's 1969 masterpiece Kes? An incredible film that follows working class British teen Billy who suddenly discovers his passion when he trains a baby

48:00

SMC Pod #212: Luis Buñuel, L'Age d'Or

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/03/12

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

35:51

SMC Pod #211: Movies & AI

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/03/06

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

34:48

SMC Pod #210: Frederick Wiseman-Master Documentarian

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/02/20

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

45:37

SMC Pod #209: The movie repertory theater, the video...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/02/13

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.

59:34

SMC Pod #208: Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton-the...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/02/06

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

40:53

SMC Pod #207: The Character Actor

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/01/23

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

60:36

SMC Pod #206: Movies that capture what it means to be...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/01/15

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

42:49

SMC Pod #205: The movies of 2025

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2026/01/09

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

67:54

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

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/12/19

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

49:18

SMC Pod #203: Classic Hollywood Christmas

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/12/12

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

42:31

SMC Pod #202: The Italian Stylists

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/12/05

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

56:00

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

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/11/21

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

66:05

SMC Podcast #200: Lightning Bottle Movie Masterpieces

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/11/14

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

37:44

SMC Pod #199: The Toronto Film Festival 2025 1st...

Secret Movie Club Podcast ·

2025/11/07

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

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

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