Titus is interviewed by Scot Bertram of Hillsdale--the subject is Bruce Willis's career, the blue collar action movie, the citizen-hero, & all the ways in which these movies were prescient about political problems, the vulnerability of American society, & the corruption of moral virtue by glamour or celebrity worship or entertainment.

American Cinema Foundation Middlebrow Series

ACF Middlebrow #41 Bruce Willis

Titus & Sebastian discuss Paolo Sorrentino's most famous movie, Oscar-winner La Grande Bellezza, a worthy heir to Fellini as an examination of European decadence & the problem of nihilism in the midst of the most celebrated civilization, in Rome.

ACF Europe #18 La Grande Bellezza

Titus & John Presnall talk about Brian De Palma's most famous horror movie, Carrie, 1976, adapting Stephen King's debut novel. We're in important ways rehearsing the '70s as a society, so it's worth thinking about the stories that were intended as warnings at the time about the great changes in society, especially in the '60s. Carrie, especially in its conclusion, is a remarkably clever view of American society & the future, the children.

ACF #27 Carrie

Titus & David Polansky discuss Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a dark comedy, a tale of future tyranny, also a Romantic fantasy--we talk about the ways in which it describes our troubles, & more adequately than the more famous entries in dystopian science fiction.

ACF Critic Series

ACF Critic Series #50 Brazil

Titus & L0m3z discuss David Fincher's Fight Club & its relation to right-wing Twitter anons -- the age of agonizing men looking for causes, who attack capitalism & matriarchy but find it difficult to associate or be productive.

ACF Critic Series #51 Fight Club

Titus & Ryan Shinkel discuss David Lynch's Blue velvet, a movie about suburbia & the city, a boy growing up to be a man by facing evil, & the predicament of American freedom, which might mean ignoring evil or embracing it...

ACF Critic Series #52 Blue Velvet

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni talk about Paolo Sorrentino's second movie, his first romantic story, or at least novelistic character study, starring the greatest Italian actor of the 21st c., Toni Servillo. Sorrentino comes up with a beautiful story about the secret power of love & morality over the heart of modern man, & a striking admiration for the past.

ACF Europe #20 The Consequences of Love

Titus & Chris Rufo discuss the last remarkable Peter Sellers film, Hal Ashby's Being There, a satire on Washington, D.C., but also an existential drama with a philosophical interest in the problem of nihilism. We touch on everything from the zombie Biden presidency to Heidegger's Dasein!

ACF Critic Series #56 Being There

Titus & Joshua Steinman discuss the Coen Bros.' Hail Caesar, a vision of the American mid-century, the post-war moment when glamour & technology competed in Los Angeles, when the beautiful visions of the past  held sway & science had not yet replaced them.

ACF Critic Series #57 Hail Caesar

Titus & Sebastian Edoardo di Giovanni talk about The Young Pope, Paolo Sorrentino's HBO comic miniseries about a reactionary American pope calling the modern world to account before the mystery of God!

ACF Europe #23 Young Pope

Titus & Miles Smith IV discuss Visconti's adaptation of the most famous 20th c. Italian novel, Lampedusa's Gattopardo. The end of the aristocracy, the beginning of the bourgeoisie, the problem beauty poses for art.

ACF Europe #24 The Leopard

Titus & Prof. William Allen discuss his new translation of Montesquieu's The Spirit of The Laws.

PoMoCon #46 Montesquieu

Titus & Jeremy Carl talk about Carl's new book, The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart -- we discuss the changes in conservatism & America, the attack on equality before the law & what needs doing to restore it.

PoMoCon #47 The Unprotected Class

Titus & Ryan Shinkel discuss Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, science fiction & fantasy, modern rationalism & imperial history, mid-century America & the young men who made the story the greatest success in its genre for three generatons.

ACF Critic Series #58 Herbert's Dune

Titus & Ryan Shinkel continue their series on Dune with David Lynch's ambitous attempt to create out of Frank Herbert's galactic empire politics a moral fable about a young man coming of age.

Critic Series #59 Lynch Dune

Titus & Ryan Shinkel complete their discussion of Dune with the first very successful adaptation, Denis Villeneuve two movies. We look at the story to understand its success with audiences, especially young men, but also the director's interest, especially reviving the skepticism of manly heroism that defined Herbert's novel.

ACF Critic Series #60 Villeneuve's Dune

Titus & Oliver Traldi discuss the films of Whit Stillman & his thoughts on the problems of love, art, & society.

Critic Series 61 Whit Stillman

Titus & Heather Mac Donald discuss the bad conscience & despotic tendencies of liberalism in light of the elections. We also discuss the civilizational questions of crime & punishment, Enlightenment & irrationality.

Pomocon 48 Heather Mac Donald

Titus & Eric Cook discuss Dunkirk, the new Christopher Nolan movie--the  sources of heroism, patriotism, & prudence Nolan is working with. We talk about Churchill's speeches, the Homeric view of war, & the epic scope of movie-making. About sound design & the musical quotation from Elgar's Nimrod. About the range of forms of heroism on display in the story. About one of the strangely British heroes portrayed in the movie, Charles Lightoller, who had been second officer of the Titanic when she sank, before Dunkirk!

American Cinema Foundation Movie Podcast

ACF #6 Dunkirk

Titus & John Presnall discuss the most thoughtful gangster movie of our times, Carlito's Way. Brian de Palma manages to provide a kind of sequel & a kind of improvement over the much more famous Scarface. Like Scarface, this is also a running commentary on how America remembers the Bogart of Casablanca, but not the earlier gangster films. The movie is also a comparison with the famous Italian gangster movies of Coppola and especially Scorsese. It's New York setting, in the Seventies, revisits the glory & misery of lawlessness, but does so in order to bring out a version of the American dream.

ACF #7 Carlito's way

Titus & Armond White talk about the collapse of criticism & cultural journalism. The triumph of a shallow liberal ideology in several, maybe most, mass media has made both art & ideology invisible in ways that cause them to deteriorate.

ACF Critic #4 Armond White

Titus & Armond White discuss the Better Than list summarizing 2017 in movies, in counter-cultural terms. We talk about Lady Bird & A quiet passion (the Emily Dickinson biopic), Valerian (the Luc Besson galactic blockbuster), & finally about Theo & Hugo & Call me by your name. The Better Than list is the only counter-cultural idea for awards season! Listen & share!

ACF Critic #6 Armond White's Better Than list (2017)

Titus & Carl Eric Scott discuss Roman J. Israel, Esq., the movie that earned Denzel Washington his newest Oscar nomination, written & directed by Dan Gilroy (who was nominated as writer for Nightcrawler). This is the best film on civil rights & the question of justice in America's criminal defense law (plea bargaining is the central & symbolic issue)since at least Separate but equal (the Thurgood Marshall movie starring Sidney Poitier, writtern & directed by George Stevens Jr. in 1991). It is also an investigation in the sources of law & the yearning for divine justice. Critics have maligned the movie, misunderstanding it, but here's hoping the Oscars are going to give it a new life!

American Cinema Foundation movie podcast

ACF Middlebrow #16 Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Titus & Matt Zoller Seitz, famed critic, discuss Alex Garland's Annihilation. We go through the beautiful & the weird things en route to MZS's theory of the sci-fi as a cinema of ideas. I add a parallel theory of the horror movie. We talk Kubrick, Malick, Lynch, & Spielberg--on whom more in a future episode--to get at the grandeur of the director-poets who confront the crisis of our time.

ACF Critic #9 Matt Zoller Seitz, Annihilation

Titus & John Marini talk about John Ford's The Searchers--the best Western for the discussion of the sacred law of the family & the fundamental questions that emerge when law is as yet to be installed. We also talk about the Western & its place in American life, how Ford turned it into an art, & what Jorge Luis Borges called "our epic duties".

ACF Masters #1 The Searchers

Titus & Terry Teachout celebrate the ACF podcast's first anniversary! The celebrated critic, playwright, musician, joins Titus to discuss Vertigo, Hitchcock's most daring artistic endeavor. We talk about actors, studios, performances, music, the character of the tragedy & the darkness in Hitchcock himself.

ACF Critic #12 Teachout, Vertigo

Titus is joined by Richard Rushfield, newshound extraordinaire, author of the Ankler newslater, the favorite Hollywood commentary at the American Cinema Foundation. We talk Netflix, Amazon, Disney--the changes in our entertainment & technology--as well as how the conflict between them is shaping up in America's fight for a monopoly in the glamour business.

ACF Middlebrow #23 Netflx v. Disney

Titus & Paul Cantor, America's eminent Shakespearian, talk movies, TV shows, & tragedy. From Godfather to Breaking Bad, from Aristotle to Mark Twain, we talk about how to understand pop culture & how to understand America's great love affair with tragic heroes (now called anti-heroes).

ACF Critic #17 Paul Cantor

Titus & Terry Teachout talk about the pluperfect noir: Double Indemnity, written by Billy Wilder & Raymond Chandler. Every element of the all-American tragedy is present here, for the first time. We talk about the conflict between love & law, the different claims of eroticism & friendship, & also where insurance stands to the all-American future.

ACF Critic #18 Teachout, Double Indemnity

Titus & John Presnall continue their trilogy on liberalism in the age of total surveillance with Coppola's The Conversation. We go through the plot, what it means to want to hear the ugly truth, what it might mean to fear anyone learning your secrets, & how the invasion of secrecy was shamelessly advertised in American corporate capitalism. Listen to our conversation & be ready fora shock!

ACF #18 The Conversation

Titus & Terry Teachout turn to Out Of The Past, Bob Mitchum's best noir, his defining role as a chump, & a great variation on the femme fatale & the corrupted noble man. This is a rare story for juxtaposing the morality of the small town & the corruption of the city, the erotic lawlessness South of the border with the disheartening unhappiness of American life, & then showing how erotic tragedy grows out of this opposition between innocence & experience. The corruption of glamour is the them, & it's all-American.

American Cinema Foundation Critic Podcast

ACF Critic #20 Teachout, Out of the past

Titus & Armond White discuss the great movies of 1968, especially the Godard pictures then first brought to America, Les Carabiniers ('63), Weekend, & La Chinoise ('67), which form a sort of trilogy of the past, present, & future of Europe--from war to revolution. (We also talk about his latest, The Image Book.) We focus on Godard's ironic documentary style & prophecies about modern society, his criticism of left-wing terrorism & right-wing consumerism--both versions of materialism. We also point to one of his signs of the alternative: Goethe.

American Cinema Foundation Critic Series

ACF Critic #22 Armond White, Godard

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss Pitfall, the fine 1948 noir starring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt, & Raymond Burr as the heavy! It's a story about post-war America, men dissatisfied with suburban happiness, & the dangers middle-class life is facing. You get the insurance business & people whose lives are tied up with fraud. You get two attitudes to danger, risk, & getting what you want.

ACF Critic Series #25 Teachout, Pitfall

Titus & Terry Teachout discuss Chinatown, a story about the origins of Los Angeles & the doomed attempt to learn the ugly truth about these origins. John Huston plays the grand, corrupt aristocrat, Jack Nicholson the petty, corrupt democrat & they come to fight over the future of America.

ACF Critic #35 Teachout, Chinatown

Titus & Tyler Malone talk Kubrick--the erotic thriller, the possibility that love leads to horror, the strange education eros offers in its attack on morality & the stranger politics of elite corruption.

ACF #25 Eyes Wide Shut

Titus & Jody Bottum & Armond White discuss novels & cinema, adaptations, when & how the movies improve on literature, as well as the difficulties facing the translation of narration into performance.

American Cinema Foundation

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