The Stereoactive Movie Club is discussing some of the greatest movies ever made. Who says? Sight and Sound magazine says. Every ten years, since 1952, Sight and Sound has surveyed critics and directors to determine which films, according to those surveyed, might be considered the best. The five film-loving friends take turns picking movies that have appeared on the list and then dig into them with an eye on their cultural impact, how they stand up today, and just whether they’re actually as good as all those critics and directors say they are. Listen at stereoactivemovieclub.com or anywhere yo ..read more

It’s Jeremiah’s Round 6 Pick: Beau Travail, the 1999 film directed by Clair Denis. Beau Travail, which is something of a loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, was commissioned by a European culture channel Arte as a film about foreignness. It updates the classic novella to feature French Legionnaires stationed in the East African nation of Djibouti, which at the time of the film’s production had only recently, relatively speaking, ceased to be ruled by France after nearly a century of occupation. The film received good reviews when it was released in the United States, even topping ..read more

It’s Alicia’s Round 6 Pick: Wild Strawberries, the 1957 film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Wild Strawberries was Ingmar Bergman’s 18th feature film in eleven years. It was written while he was in a hospital for stress and gastric issues, then quickly produced as his personal life was in disarray. Critics in Sweden pretty much loved the film, while its reception in the United States was more mixed. But its influence has been strong over the years and directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky have listed it among their favorite films.  The film was honored at vario ..read more

It’s Mia’s Round 6 Pick: Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Divided into 5 acts, Battleship Potemkin, in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of what is known as the First Russian Revolution of 1905, tells the story of a mutiny aboard the titular Russian naval vessel In the film’s telling, the crew’s refusal to eat borscht made from maggot-infested meat is the first domino in a series of events that leads to a sort of mini-revolution in the port city of Odessa. And in the reality of the time when the film was made and released, it effectively helps to connect ..read more

In our next batch of movies, we'll be traveling from the Soviet Union to Florida with stops in Sweden, Hollywood, and Djibouti along the way... So, listen up as we reveal our picks for what we’ll be watching in Round 6 of the podcast!  Also, we introduce a special guest who’ll be joining us for all of Round 6! Produced by Stereoactive Media ..read more

It’s Lora’s 5th pick: Raging Bull, the 1980 film directed by Martin Scorsese. The film is a character study of boxer Jake LaMotta, who himself is presented as questionable in character but pure in talent. It is considered one of the best films of its decade and quickly became legendary for DeNiro’s feat of gaining weight for the later scenes. It also basically introduced Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty to the world in star-making turns and was, in more ways than one, something of a saving grace for Scorsese. As for our purposes, Raging Bill has never been in the top 10 of Sight & Sound’s crit ..read more

It’s Stephen’s 5th pick: Pierrot le Fou, the 1965 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Godard himself said the film was "connected with the violence and loneliness that lie so close to happiness today. It's very much a film about France." And with its fourth wall breaks, often jarring editing style, and tendency to internally jump among mass culture and/or pop art references in both extremely metatextual and self-referential ways, the film is at once recognizable as a Godard film, a French New Wave film, and in a broader way, a certain type of arthouse film that is at once exciting for many and p ..read more

It’s Lora’s 3rd pick: ‘Vertigo,’ the 1958 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Considered by an increasing number of people to be the director’s masterpiece, the film relies on an against-type performance by Jimmy Stewart and a complex, multi-faceted performance by Kim Novak. It first appeared on the Sight & Sound magazine poll of the greatest films ever made in 1972, as a runner up. It’s then appeared on the decennial list every time since, moving up to number 7, then number 4, then number 2, before in 2012 being named the greatest film of all time, overtaking Citizen Kane from the spot it ..read more

It’s Mia’s 2nd pick: 'The Godfather,’ the 1972 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Foundational to modern cinema that’s followed in its footsteps and culturally influential beyond the scope of most movies, it’s often cited as one of the greatest films ever made. In the 2002 Sight & Sound magazine poll – in tandem with its sequel, Part 2 – it was named the 4th greatest movie of all time by critics while the 2 films together were named the 2nd greatest film of all time by directors. And on its own, it was named the 6th greatest film of all time by directors in 1992, then the 7th greatest ..read more

It’s Jeremiah’s 5th pick: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, the 1927 film directed by F.W. Murnau. Based on a 1917 short story called “The Excursion to Tilsit,’ written by Hermann Sudermann, the film was Murnau’s first in the United States, after he was brought over from Germany by William Fox to make something for Fox Film Corporation like the expressionist work he’d produced in his home country – Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, and Faust among those. As with his previous work, the art design is exaggerated or even distorted to represent the emotional and symbolic tone being strived for. Add in innov ..read more