One of the first long-form reviews I sent to friends and family in the email list that would become Sonic Cinema was for Stanley Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut”. Along with “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”, it was the most anticipated film of the summer of 1999, even before Kubrick’s untimely passing shortly after presenting his final cut to Warner Bros in early March of that year. Production had […]
Typically with this section of my retrospective, I’ve tried to reflect on what the year gave us, and what it means for Hollywood moving forward. This year, I’m going to go in a different direction, and look at some of the people we lost over the year. I’ll never forget the first time I watched a David Lynch film. It was 1997’s “Lost Highway”, and boy was I not prepared […]
A few months ago, we discussed three films about the press speaking truth to power. What happens when the powerful pervert media for profits? As it enters The Criterion Collection this week, Sidney Lumet’s satirical look at television news- 1976’s “Network”– feels like a documentary of the times we live in now. Joining me to discuss the legacy of this film is Jason from Binge Movies and The Slashers and […]
What could be more romantic than two Gen X white guys talking about Alfred Hitchcock’s most romantic film before Valentine’s Day? I’m sure plenty of things, but this is what you get from the Sonic Cinema Podcast this year. My frequent guest, Phil Fasso, returns for the third time in five months to discuss Cary Grant and Grace Kelly being two of the most drop-dead gorgeous people in movie history […]
If you love film, you likely have been to a repertory screening at some point in your life. The chance to watch an older movie, on the big screen, with a crowd as in love with the opportunity to watch a movie in theatres, maybe for the first time, or maybe to recapture that sense of wonder of when you first saw it. The idea of repertory showings of movies […]
For the most part, I did- indeed- get “Repertory Revue” back on track in 2025. Yes, in February and March I didn’t do a single review for this, but considering that that time period I was dealing with a hectic work schedule, season tickets for pro volleyball, a film festival, and personal situations- including my mother passing- the fact that every other month I was able to get two movies […]
One of my favorite things in movies is when they show why a piece of music matters to a character. While a great soundtrack can help us figure out who a character is, when we see characters actively engage with music onscreen, that is a special thing for me. There are plenty of great examples of this- Max Cherry discovering The Delfonics in “Jackie Brown”; “As Time Goes By” being […]
**Author’s Note: The following essay includes scenes from “Touch of Evil” to illustrate my words. These scenes not only include spoilers to the film, but one involves implied sexual assault. Orson Welles never stopped pushing cinema form forward after “Citizen Kane”– the problem was his resources got more and more scant, and his freedom more and more bowled over by studio interference as he went along. But watch films like […]
Sonic Cinema Podcast RSS
