Words and Movies

Sean Gallagher & Claude Call
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Film History
  • Updated Biweekly

Sean Gallagher and Claude Call find two seemingly different movies and find the common thread between them.

  1. 4d ago

    Reel 95b: Careers Cut Short, Part 4 (River Phoenix)

    Running on Empty is an interesting film by Sidney Lumet that, in our opinion, doesn't get enough love. Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti play a married couple forced to go underground when their activist ways take an unfortunate turn and someone is accidentally killed. Now, that event took place nearly twenty years earlier, so it's mostly relevant as the setup to the film. In the present day, they have two boys: one is a tween and the other (Phoenix) is nearing the end of his high school career. Because of the parents' situation, they're forced to move frequently, take odd jobs and depend on old friends to cover for them. It's a cool take on the "sins of the fathers" argument, as their lives are having an effect on their oldest son, who is a talented musician and could conceivably miss out on getting a Juilliard education. Further complicating matters is his rapidly developing relationship with a girl at his school, played by Martha Plimpton. How does the entire family navigate these complications? COMING ATTRACTIONS: We're going to spend the next five episodes dealing with limited series, what the kids used to call miniseries. Our next episode will be the series version of Fanny and Alexander by Ingmar Bergman, which was eventually cut down into a feature-length film. We're going though all 312 minutes, though! Join us, won't you?:

    Reel 95b: Careers Cut Short, Part 4 (River Phoenix)

  2. 4d ago

    Reel 95a: Careers Cut Short, Pt.3 (River Phoenix)

    In our last episode we looked at Grace Kelly, whose career was cut short by her own choice. She was given the option to be treated like a princess, or to go out and actually be an honest-to-god Princess. She chose both love and duty, since you can't really Princess and be a movie star at the same time. Fair. In today's episode, we look at a career that was cut short because the actor, who was otherwise very bright and talented, couldn't reel in his demons. River Phoenix died at the age of 23, of an overdose on Halloween night in 1993, collapsing outside a club he'd just left. The first film we'll be reviewing is the second film in his filmography, Stand By Me, directed by Rob Reiner. (Please note that Sean and I recorded this episode before Reiner's untimely death, which is why it's not addressed here.) Stand By Me is an adaptation of a Stephen King novella called The Body, and manages to improve on the original, possibly because King wasn't obviously writing for an eventual movie audience (a reason I mostly quit reading his stuff). The story follows four boys over a couple of days during the summer before they got to high school, on a journey to recover the body of someone who'd gone missing. They find the body, but they also find a lot of insights in each other. In Part 4 we'll look at Running on Empty, a film Phoenix made two years later.

    Reel 95a: Careers Cut Short, Pt.3 (River Phoenix)

  3. Jul 12

    Reel 94b: Careers Cut Short, Pt.2 (Grace Kelly)

    In 1955, Kelly paired up with Alfred Hitchcock again, to make To Catch a Thief, co-starring Cary Grant. Grant plays a retired cat burglar who is suspected of committing a new series of robberies, so he sets up a big job as a kind of sting operation to nab the person who's making him look like he's returned to a life of crime. Grace Kelly plays one of his potential victims in this scheme, and there are all kinds of interesting twists that, when viewed through a modern lens, you may see coming, but then again you may not. COMING ATTRACTIONS: In our next episode we continue the series with a career cut short by tragedy. River Phoenix was an actor with a great deal of promise who unfortunately couldn't control his demons. We begin with Stand By Me from 1986 (which has a second tragedy attached to it by now, but we recorded this long before Rob Reiner's death), and then peek at one of his lesser-known—but of similar quality—films, Running On Empty, from 1988. Join us, won't you?

    Reel 94b: Careers Cut Short, Pt.2 (Grace Kelly)

  4. Jul 12

    Reel 94a: Careers Cut Short, Pt.1 (Grace Kelly)

    Sean and I originally came up with something like a half-dozen subjects for this miniseries, including a few actors from Saturday Night Live who made the jump into films. But ultimately it became kind of unwieldy, so we limited ourselves to two full episodes. Hollywood and show business fame in general can be a brutal place, and careers can end for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes actors just fall out of favor (Uma Thurman or Orlando Bloom, perhaps). Sometimes they say/do something controversial (Will Smith, Wesley Snipes). Sometimes—often the case with child actors—they decide they just want to do something else and leave the industry (Peter Ostrum, Mara Wilson). And some actors leave for more noble reasons. Rick Moranis retired for several years to raise his children after his wife died. Phoebe Cates married Kevin Kline and chose not to return to acting even though the opportunities were still coming. Then there was Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly got involved with an honest-to-god prince, Rainier of Monaco, and simply walked away from the industry. She made eleven films (not counting documentaries), and about a month after finishing her last film, High Society, she married Rainier and that was pretty much that. So in today's episode we'll be looking at two of Kelly's films. We begin with 1954's Rear Window, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and co-starring James Stewart. It's a taut thriller that maybe had the unfortunate side effect of making voyeurism look attractive. In Part 2 of today's episode we'll be talking about To Catch a Thief from 1955.

    Reel 94a: Careers Cut Short, Pt.1 (Grace Kelly)

  5. Jun 28

    Reel 93b: Searching For God, Pt.2

    Terrence Malik has written and directed The Tree of Life, a sprawling story that starts in the 1960s, jumps to present-day and then goes back to the birth of the universe. And that's just in the first few minutes of the film. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are the O'Briens, a couple that learns their teenage son has died. Over the years it appears that they still haven't quite gotten over the loss. We go back and forth through their lives and see how their divergent philosophies shaped their son. We're making it sound complex, but it's actually not and you'll come away from the film with a good feeling. COMING ATTRACTIONS: In our next episode we look at the first of a couple of careers cut short; one by choice and the other, not. Reel 94 will feature Grace Kelly and her performances in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Join us, won't you?

    Reel 93b: Searching For God, Pt.2

  6. Jun 28

    Reel 93a: Searching For God, Pt.1

    Whether we choose to admit it or not, we're driven by some level of faith that something lies beyond our current plane of existence. Some of us simply hope so, some profess not to care, others will go wholeheartedly into some form of religion. And the search for God--however you view that particular concept--is a compelling one, especially when you tell a story about someone whose faith is being tested. To that end the Coen Brothers have come up with A Serious Man, the first of two films we'll be looking at in this episode. The Coens are known for cribbing from other stories to create their own tales, and in this case the Coens have come up with a story that will give you echoes of the Biblical story of Job. It's not as direct a pull as their using Homer's Odyssey as the germ of O Brother, Where Art Thou? but you'll still recognize the broader pieces of the tale. In the second half of the episode we'll look at a less-linear story in The Tree of Life.

    Reel 93a: Searching For God, Pt.1

  7. May 3

    Reel 92B: Critical Response, Pt.2

    In Part 2 of our episode we look at Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, from 1999. This was the fourth time that Levinson went to the well of life in Baltimore, and the second we've looked at (we still need to get to Tin Men and Avalon). The film is not a response to any of his Baltimore films, but was a response to his portrayal of Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Sphere, which got him thinking about his youth and led to the story seen here. COMING ATTRACTIONS: In our next episode we'll be looking at some men who are searching for God in their own way. We start with A Serious Man (2009), directed by the Coen Brothers, and move on to The Tree of Life (2011), directed by Michael McCracken. Join us, won't you?

    Reel 92B: Critical Response, Pt.2

  8. May 3

    Reel 92A: Critical Response, Pt.1

    FIlm directors have to have a thick skin when it comes to criticism. But once in awhile, it gets to them and they let it show. More often than not, they say that the critics are out of touch with audience tastes. Others will own their failures: Roland Emmerich, for example, admitted that Independence Day: Resurgence didn't work and that he probably shouldn't have been the director. And some directors respond by making another movie that takes the criticism head-on. That's the topic of this episode. We open with Intolerance (1916), directed by D.W. Griffith. It's a three-and-a-half hour movie intercutting four different-but-parallel storylines. It's specifically a response to Griffith's glorification of the Ku Klux Klan in his earlier Birth of a Nation. Griffith invariably framed it as a response to the critics and not an apology. In Part Two, we go to the Baltimore neighborhood of Liberty Heights.

    Reel 92A: Critical Response, Pt.1
See All (162)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Sean Gallagher and Claude Call find two seemingly different movies and find the common thread between them.

Information

  • Creator
    Sean Gallagher & Claude Call
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    162
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sean Gallagher & Claude Call