The Gauntlet

Ilya Muromets aka The Sword and the Dragon (1956) / Laserblast (1978) This week we’re taking a spin on the Satellite of Love as we do our own riffs on MST3K, Charles Band’s laser cannon, and the epic fantasy of Aleksandr Ptushko

How The West Was Won (1962) / Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024) This week we’re hitching our wagons to the epic visions of MGM and Kevin Costner as we explore two sprawling takes on westward expansion

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) / Documentarian (2012) This week Arlin Golden joins us for a doc swap as we confront a hostile subject with Ivars Zviedris & Inese Klava and journey to Lithuania with Jonas Mekas

Who Am I This Time? (1982) / The Second Civil War (1997) This week we’re channel surfing as we tune in to Jonathan Demme’s public television romance and Joe Dante’s war time broadcast

Crazy Thunder Road (1980) / His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) This week we get our motors running and head out on the highway as we terrorize Tokyo with Sogo Ishii’s biker gangs and fall in love with Nobuhiko Obayashi’s romantic riders

This week we’re crosschecking polite society and battling beer barons as Vikram Murthi joins us for a drinking session with Paul Newman and the Mackenzie Brothers, listen up hosers!

Paint Your Wagon (1969) / Play Dirty (1969) This week we’re closing out careers as we play dirty with Joshua Logan’s gold rush ménage à trois and paint the desert red with Andre de Toth

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) / Late Autumn (1960) This week we’ll do anything for love as we crossdress with Howard Hawks and try to arrange a marriage with Yasujirō Ozu

Runaway (1984) / Class of 1999 (1990) This week we’re fighting the future as we chase down busted bots with Michael Crichton and dodge killer teachers with Mark L. Lester

Up in Smoke (1978) / Withnail & I (1986) This week we’re giving the middle finger to polite society as we smoke a giant joint and hit the road with Cheech & Chong and end up on holiday by mistake with Withnail & I

I Am Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) / Queimada aka Burn! (1969) This week villainous schemes go according to plan as we’re shackled to a chain gang by Mervyn Leroy and Gillo Pontecorvo feeds us to the bloody revolution

Requiescant (1967) / Attenberg (2010) This week the directors are on the screen as we wander into a spaghetti western to preach liberation with Pier Paolo Pasolini and get naked and listen to Suicide with Yorgos Lanthimos

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) / To Live (1994) This week we’re capturing a whole life as we tour a time-bending sanatorium with Wojciech Has and try to survive the people’s republic with Zhang Yimou

House of Bamboo (1955) / Tempting Heart (1999) This week we’re center framing cinematographers as we take a trip to Japan with Joe MacDonald and interrogate love through time and space with Mark Lee Ping-Bing

Filibus (1915) / Hudson Hawk (1991) This week we’re stealing with style as we play a game of cat and mouse with Mario Roncoroni’s genderbending sky pirate and try to crack the Da Vinci code with Bruce Willis’ singing burglar

133 - Duvidha (1973) / Anantaram (1987) This week we explore parallel cinema as we are hypnotized by Mani Kaul’s mythopoetic ghost story and deconstruct storytelling with Adoor Gopalkrishnan’s unreliable monologue

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME 6 A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From The Truth is Out There to Gettin’ Animated Music and Sounds from Episodes 51-60 Thunder Birds (1942) | Come Back, Africa (1959) | Lancelot du Lac (1974) | Ici et Ailleurs (1974) | Simone Barbès or Virtue (1980) | Times Square (1980) | Night Witches in the Sky (1981) | Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) | Der Fan (1982) | Vampires in Havana (1985) | The Hidden (1987) | The Taking of Beverly Hills (1991) | Love and Death on Long Island (1997) | The Apple (1998) | The 13th Warrior (1999) | Fat Choi Spirit (2002) | Anatomy of Hell (2004) | Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs (2005) | How I Ended This Summer (2010) | The Grand Bizarre (2018)

Little Buddha (1993) / I Come with the Rain (2009) This week we’re getting outside of our comfort zones as we seek enlightenment in Nepal with Keanu Reeves and try to find a missing person in Hong Kong with Josh Hartnett

131 - Metal Detector Maniac (2021) / Earth Mama (2023) This week it’s out with the old and in with the new as we take a suspicious sabbatical with Matt Farley and fight for our children’s future with Savanah Leaf PLUS! Year-end favorites with special guest Ryland Walker Knight

Tough Guys (1986) / Children of Nature (1991) This week we’re making way for tomorrow as we saunter out of prison and into the 80s with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and break out of the retirement home with Friðrik Þór Friðriksson

La Guerre des Tuques (1984) / Tenement (1985) This week we’re under attack as we defend a Quebecois snow fort with André Melançon’s little soldiers and try to fight off a murderous gang in the South Bronx with Roberta Findlay

Duel of the Titans (1961) / Sebastiane (1976) This week all roads lead to Rome as we fight to found a city with Sergio Corbucci’s beefcakes and lounge in exile with St. Derek Jarman’s shimmering soldiers

Invention for Destruction (1958) / Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970) This week we’re getting a Czech stamp in our cinema passports as we sail through the fantastical world of Karel Zeman and stumble through the looking glass with Pavel Juráček

Vai~E~Vem aka Come and Go (2003) / The New World (2006) This week we’re giving thanks as we feast on the mythopoetics of Terrence Malick and stuff ourselves with the perverse philosophies of João César Monteiro

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) / Passing Strangers (1974) This week we’re embracing male relationships as we dance through the ups and downs of friendship with Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen and fly kites in the bay with Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s young lovers

Hell Drivers (1957) / High-Ballin’ (1978) This week we’re joining the great big convoy as we drive dangerously with Cy Endfield’s working class haulers and fight off hijackers with Peter Carter’s easy riders

Eyes of Fire (1983) / Phantom Town (1998) This week we’re facing fear on the frontier as we settle on cursed land with Avery Crounse and get lost in Jeff Burr’s wild west phantasmagoria

Lewat Djam Malam (1954) / Sambizanga (1972) This week we’re saluting Scorsese and the World Cinema Project as we join Sarah Maldoror in the fight for Angolan independence and struggle to adapt to post-revolutionary Indonesia with Usmar Ismail

A Cat in the Brain (1990) / Coffin Homes (2021) This week we’re wallowing in gore as we paw our way into the twisted mind of Lucio Fulci and hack each other to bits over real estate with Fruit Chan

Pit Stop (1969) / The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975) This week we’re revving our engines and peeling out as we speed through the world of Figure 8 racing with Jack Hill while Ivo Caprino shows us how to animate a grand prix winner

The Passion of the Christ (2004) / Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) This week we’re plunging neck deep into the dark heart of the Bush years as we go in whips blazing with Mel Gibson and preach the gospel of guns with Clive Owen

Ministry of Fear (1944) / The Hitcher (1986) This week we’re pissing our pants and going into survival mode as we get trapped in Fritz Lang’s nest of spies while Rutger Hauer stalks us on the open road

Attica (1974) / Life (1999) This week we’re headed to the slammer as we do life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence and lose our Firestone fortune documenting the Attica uprising

116 - The Dream Lady (1918) / Macbeth (1948) This week we’re spinning the wheel of fortune as we tempt fate with Orson Welles and pitch a soothsaying tent with Elsie Jane Wilson

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) / Some Call it Loving (1973) Once upon a time we woke up sleeping beauty with James B. Harris and set sail for the island of Colossa with Ray Harryhausen…

The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981) / Six O’Clock News (1996) This week we’re broadcasting live from the martian invasion with Piotr Szulkin while Ross McElwee takes us beyond the confines of the nightly news

Điện Biên Phủ (1992) / I Am a Sex Addict (2005) This week we’re taking the L as we parachute into Dien Bien Phu with Pierre Schoendoerffer and crash land on Caveh Zahedi’s minefield of memories

Zig-Zag aka Snakes and Ladders (1980) / Avalon (2001) This week we’re playing games as we roll the dice with Raúl Ruiz’s cartographic nightmare and try to level up in Mamoru Oshii’s drab dystopia

The Ghost & Mrs Muir (1947) / La Maldición de la Llorona (1963) This week we’re renting a pair of drafty houses as we try to reverse the curse in Rafael Baledón’s haunted hacienda and unexpectedly fall in love with Joe Mankiewicz’s seaside cottage

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME 5 A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From Double Dooley to Nostalgia Music and Sounds from Episodes 41-50 Stage Door (1937) | Entranced Earth (1967) | The Family Jewels (1967) | Hell in the Pacific (1968) | The Mattei Affair (1972) | The Dion Brothers aka The Gravy Train (1974) | The Stranger and the Gunfighter (1974) | Take a Hard Ride (1975) | News From Home (1977) | A Perfect Couple (1979) | Gas Pump Girls (1979) | The Five Heartbeats (1991) | Miami Blues (1991) | The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) | Serial Mom (1994) | Death and the Compass (1996) | Escape From L.A. (1996) | Platform (2000) | Men and Chicken (2015)

Batwoman (1968) / Flash Gordon (1980) This week we’re going from strip to screen as we head to Acapulco to solve some very fishy crimes with Batwoman and try to save the universe with Flash Gordon

109 - The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979) / The Commitments (1991) This week we’re looking on the bright side as we form a soul band in Dublin with Alan Parker and save Pittsburgh with dunks, disco and Dr. J

Insiang (1976) / Out of the Blue (1980) This week we’re mad as hell and out for revenge as we claw our way through the slums of Manila with Lino Brocka and rebel against everything with Dennis Hopper

The Silent World (1956) / The Rift (1990) This week we’re taking a dive down to the great depths as we descend into the not-so-silent world of Jacques Cousteau and battle mutants on a salvage mission with JP Simon

106 - The Sergeant (1968) / The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998) This week we’re drafting a thesis on novelist screenplays as we take the sergeants uniform out of the closet with Rod Steiger and pick up Ray Bradury’s $100 ice cream suit from the shop

105 - Letter Never Sent (1960) / Quest for Fire (1981) This week we're searching for the eternal flame with Jean-Jacques Annand’s questing cavemen while Mikhail Kalatozov’s dizzying forest fire has us running for our lives

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) / Edge of Sanity (1989) This week we’re smoking on that shit that made Anthony Perkins turn into Jack “The Ripper” Hyde and seeing double [07] as Roger Moore haunts himself

Comrades (1986) / Patty Hearst (1988) This week we form a union of friendship with Bill Douglas and the Torpuddle Martyrs and get kidnapped by Paul Schrader’s visions of St. Patty Hearst

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) / Mississippi Masala (1991) with special guest Alex Sherman This week it’s ladies night in the deep south as we lose our minds in Louisiana with Bette Davis and fall in love in Mississippi with Mira Nair

The Man Without a Past (2002) / Kannathil Muthamittal (2002) This week we’re starting fresh as we get amnesia and move into a shipping container with Aki Kaurismaki while Mani Ratnam takes us to Sri Lanka on an adoption odyssey

GAUNTLET 100: A CELEBRATION & RETROSPECTIVE This week we celebrate ourselves by taking a look back at the first 2 years, 99 episodes, 196 movies, and 177 hours of The Gauntlet with special guest MC Alex Sherman

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME #4 A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From Rivalry Week to Sick Day Movies Music and Sounds from Episodes #31-40 Ganga Bruta (1933) | Road House (1948) | Some Came Running (1958) | A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) | All the Colors of the Dark (1972) | Breaking Away (1979) | Continental Divide (1981) | Sugar Cane Alley (1983) | The Sisterhood (1988) | Mountains of the Moon (1990) | Vacas (1992) | Archipiélago (1992) | Good Burger (1997) | Futuresport (1998) | Smoke Signals (1998) | Shottas (2002) | Terribly Happy (2008) | The House that Jack Built (2018) | Avengement (2019)

Belly (1998) / Bringing Out the Dead (1999) with special guest Ryland Walker Knight This week: apocalyptic visions at the fin de siècle as we hustle through NYC’s underbelly with Hype Williams and cruise its haunted streets in Martin Scorsese’s ambulance

In the White City (1983) / O Fantasma (2000) This week we’re heading to Lisbon in search of unstructured time as we wander the white city with Alain Tanner and dig through the trash with João Pedro Rodrigues

Bamako (2006) / Life Without Principle (2011) This week: globalization and its discontents as we put the financial system on trial with Abderrahmane Sissako and crash the market with Johnnie To’s recession thriller

7-Man Army (1976) / Odd Couple (1979) This week everybody’s kung-fu fighting as we defend the great wall with Chang Cheh and duel with a double dose of Lau Kar-wing and Sammo Hung

95 – Playing with Fire (1975) / Emanuelle in America (1977) This week things are getting steamy at the arthouse and grindhouse as we are kidnapped into a labyrinth of pleasure by Alain Robbe-Grillet and shoved into Joe D’Amato’s videodrome

Dossier 51 (1978) / Pacifiction (2022) This week we’re grappling with forces beyond our control as we join Michel Deville’s shady surveillance operation and grab a cocktail on Albert Serra’s island of torment

Deathrow Gameshow (1987) / Stay Tuned (1992) This week we’re ready at the buzzer because slow reaction time will lead to execution on Mark Pirro’s diabolical game show and a lifetime of hell with Peter Hyams

Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica (1975) / No, or the Vainglory of Command (1990) This week we hitch a ride on the Trans-Amazonian Highway with Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna and truck through Portuguese military history with Manoel de Oliveira

The Big Parade (1925) / La Grande Guerra (1959) This week we’re off to the trenches as we march towards love and death with King Vidor’s parade of doughboys while Mario Monicelli’s comic cowards show us that war is no joke

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) / Saving Face (2004) This week we’re trying to fall in love but are too busy caring for our pregnant mother with Alice Wu and worrying about serial killers with Michael Myers

Brannigan (1975) / Routine Pleasures (1986) This week we’re in search of relaxation as we join a model railroaders club with Jean-Pierre Gorin and explore the dull rhythms of late John Wayne as he saunters through London

Visiting Hours (1982) / Syndromes and a Century (2006) This week we’re checking in and stalking the corridors of death with Michael Ironside while Apichatpong Weerasethakul prescribes a space of healing

Train in the Snow (1976) / Unstoppable (2010) This week we’re celebrating the kinetic majesty of the iron horse as we try to dislodge a snow-trapped Yugoslavian children’s cooperative with Tony Scott’s propulsive runaway, choo choo motherfuckers

I’m No Angel (1933) / Wild Boys of the Road (1933) This week we’re joining the pre-code circus as we tame lions and men with Mae West and hit the road with Wild Bill’s wild boys (and girls) of the great depression

The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962) / This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967) God is dead this week as we get swept up in a whirlwind of sin and join the vainglorious crusades of Timothy Carey and José Mojica Marins

The Last Wagon (1956) / The Gauntlet (1977) This week we fight our way through the grand canyon state as we hitch a ride on the last wagon with Delmer Daves’ and run the gauntlet with Clint Eastwood

Young Einstein (1988) / C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) This week we’re rewriting history as Yahoo Serious has Tasmanian apple farmer Albert Einstein split the beer atom and Kevin Willmott’s mock doc asks how different America would be had the Confederates won the civil war

Potop aka The Deluge (1974) This week we don our fuzzy hats, load up on pierogies, and charge forward in our polar bear sleigh as we join Jerzy Hoffman in defending the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against short movies and Swedish invaders

On the Silver Globe (1988) / Highlander II (1991) This week we’re sifting through the wreckage of troubled productions as we crash land on the silver globe with Andrzej Żuławski and battle insurance companies for immortality with Russell Mulcahey

The White Reindeer (1952) / The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) This week we summon some fresh powder from the Finnish stone gods, unearthing our inner assassin with Renny Harlin and using our new antlers to gore hunters with Erik Blomberg

Body and Soul (1925) / Elmer Gantry (1960) This week we’re being led astray by opportunistic preachers as we put our faith in Oscar Micheaux’s melodrama and hit the revival tour to repent with Burt Lancaster’s traveling salesman

Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) / Timestalkers (1987) This week we zap through time like a bolt of lightning, landing in a plague-ravaged future with Edgar G. Ulmer while a tintype zips us back to the Wild West with Michael Schultz

24 Hour Party People (2002) / The Forest for the Trees (2003) This week we’re rolling the tape back to the MiniDV era as we get lost in the proverbial forest with Maren Ade and fly high in Madchester with Michael Winterbottom

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME 3 A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From A Date with Doris to The Long Cinema Club Music and Sounds from Episodes 21-30 Barabbas (1961) – Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) – Marat/Sade (1967) – Dirkie (1969) – White Sun of the Desert (1970) – Deadly Weapons (1974) – Summerfield (1977) – Missing (1982) – Suspicion (1982) – Quicksilver (1986) – The Beast of War (1988) – The Cyclist (1989) – Color of Night (1994) – Waiting to Exhale (1995) – Now and Then (1995) – The Island of St. Matthews (2013) – Court (2014) – I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) – The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)(2020)

Weather Diary 1 (1986) / White Squall (1996) This week we’ve got some severe weather on the forecast as we batten down the hatches in Tornado Alley with George Kuchar and set sail on the high seas with Sir Ridley

Fear Over The City (1975) / The Hunter Will Get You (1976) This week we’re savoring the post-new wave star vehicles of Jean-Paul Belmondo, with death defying stunt work arranged by Henri Verneuil and a fake mustache provided by Philippe Labro

Cruel Tale of Bushido (1963) / The Quince Tree Sun (1992) This week we’re going for gold and exploring past winners of CIFF as we try to paint a tree with Victor Erice and traverse generations of cursed samurai with Tadashi Imai

EO (2022) / Dead for a Dollar (2022) This week we’re taking a look at new works from octogenarians as we saddle up once more with Walter Hill and go inside the mind of a donkey with Jerzy Skolimowski

Three Seconds (2017) / AK-47 (2020) This week we go inside the twisted mind of Russian state cinema as we go for gold with the 1972 Soviet Men’s Olympic basketball team and pull a shift at the weapons factory with Mikhail Kalashnikov

Assassination (1987) / Bulworth (1998) This week we’re dodging bullets in the halls of power as we join Senator Jay Bulworth’s doomed campaign and try to protect the first lady with Charles Bronson

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) / The Witches of Eastwick (1987) This week we’re casting deadly spells as we conjure the perfect man with George Miller’s coven and take a psychedelic joyride thru WW2 on Angela Lansbury’s bed

A Very Curious Girl (1969) / The Unfaithful Wife (1969) This week we’re tripping on a double dose of 1969 as we explore the sexual revolution and its consequences with Nelly Kaplan and Claude Chabrol

2010 (1984) / Videograms of a Revolution (1992) This week we’re calibrating our monitors as we probe a space odyssey with Peter Hyams and sift through images of revolution with Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică

Southern Comfort (1981) / In the Electric Mist (2009) This week we’re trudging through the bayou with The National Guard and Dave Robicheaux as we try to solve murders with Bertrand Tavernier and hope to survive with Walter Hill

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME TWO A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From No Escape to All Creatures Great and Small Music and Sounds from Episodes 11-20 La fin du monde (1930) – No Greater Glory (1934) – The Lusty Men (1957) – The Incredible Journey (1963) – Salto (1965) – My Little Loves (1974) – McQ (1974) – First Graders (1984) – Three O’Clock High (1987) – Exorcist II: Heretic (1977) – Knightriders (1981) – An Autumn’s Tale (1987) – Clearcut (1991) – Stalin (1992) – Most Valuable Primate 2 (2001) – Police Beat (2005) – Far From Heaven (2002) – Halloween: Resurrection (2002) – Stemple Pass (2012) – Yakuza Apocalypse (2015)

Gentleman Jim (1942) / Kid Galahad (1962) This week we’re rolling with the punches as we bob and weave through the origins of boxing with Raoul Walsh and take one on the chin with Elvis in Phil Karlson’s gruff musical

New Jersey Drive (1995) / Snow on Tha Bluff (2011) This week we’re just trying to survive as we get carjacked in Atlanta by Curtis Snow and go joyriding in Newark with Nick Gomez

Night and Day (2008) / Moffie (2019) This week the summer breeze has us feeling so fine as we get drunk and confused in Paris with Hong Sang-soo and find a sliver of humanity in a South African barracks with Oliver Hermanus

The Private Eyes (1976) / They All Laughed (1981) This week we investigate two private detective agencies and get swept up in the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong with the Hui brothers and look for love on the streets of NYC with Peter Bogdanovich

The Passionate Friends (1949) / The Great Outdoors (1988) This week we’re kicking it lakeside as David Lean takes us on an emotional speedboat ride through time and we invade Wisconsin’s Northwoods with Howard Deutch’s Chicago jagoffs

Ta'ang (2016) / Rambo: Last Blood (2019) This week we cross a border into cursed territory, as Adrian Grünberg's hackwork reveals the inherent cowardice of John Rambo while Wang Bing bears witness to the endurance and strength of refugees from Myanmar.

Vampires in Havana (1985) / The Grand Bizarre (2018) This week we’re getting animated as we stop-motion around the world in Jodie Mack’s intricately woven textile tapestry travelog and get bitten in Havana by Juan Padrón’s revolutionary vampire comedy

The Fan (1982) / Love and Death on Long Island (1997) This week we’re feverishly writing fan mail as we fall into a trance with Eckhart Schmidt and Richard Kwietniowski shows us it’s never too late to fall in love with a hot C-list actor

58 - Anatomy of Hell (2004) / How I Ended This Summer (2010) This week we locked ourselves in for a two-hander, as Catherine Breillat helps us get under each other's skin and Alexei Popogrebski cools us down with a bucket of Russian Arctic water.

57 - Times Square (1980) / The Apple (1998) This week, mom and dad are out of town and we’re throwing a house party with Allan Moyle's punk anthems, Samira Makhmalbaf's stolen ice cream, and a six-pack of self-discovery.

56 - Come Back, Africa (1959) / Ici et Ailleurs (1974) This week we explore hybrid documentaries, as Lionel Rogosin secretly captures South Africa under apartheid and Anne-Marie Miéville helps Jean-Luc Godard confront ghosts of past and present.

Thunder Birds (1942) / Night Witches in the Sky (1981) This week we soar through the clouds alongside two real life aviators, as Wild Bill Wellman helps us get our wings while Yevgeniya Zhigulenko leads us on night bombing raids

Simone Barbes or Virtue (1980) / The Taking of Beverly Hills (1991) This week we're pulling an all-nighter as we take tickets in a porno theater with Marie-Claude Treilhou and stage an explosive coup in Beverly Hills with Sidney J. Furie

Lancelot du Lac (1974) / The 13th Warrior (1999) This week we explore Medieval tomes of spiritual agony, listening carefully to Robert Bresson’s clanking armor and filling in the gaps of John McTiernan’s massacred Viking epic

Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) / Fat Choi Spirit (2002) This week we’re testing our luck, risking it all in blackjack and mahjongg as we hit the tables with Hal Ashby and Johnnie To

The Hidden (1987) / Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs (2005) This week we’re putting on our tinfoil hats as we try to track down materialistic and murderous aliens with Jack Sholder while a sweaty Dan Aykroyd tells us the damage is already done

The Five Heartbeats (1991) / Platform (2000) This week we’re getting sentimental as we hit the road with Robert Townsend and The Five Heartbeats and tour the countryside with Jia Zhangke and the Fenyang Peasant Cultural Group

Entranced Earth (1967) / Escape from L.A. (1996) This week we’re raging against the machine as we hit the campaign trail with Glauber Rocha and try to escape from John Carpenter’s theocratic nightmare

Stage Door (1937) / Hell in the Pacific (1968) This week we’re moving in together, shacking up with the aspiring actresses of Gregory La Cava’s Footlights club and staking out a claim on John Boorman’s contested island beach

THE GAUNTLET MOVIE MIXTAPE – VOLUME ONE A SONIC JOURNEY through THE GAUNTLET From Chicago Guys to Take Me Out to the Ballgame Music and Sounds from Episodes 1-10 Stormy Weather (1943) – Black Book aka Reign of Terror (1949) – Caught (1949) – Calamity Jane (1953) – The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961) – Martha (1974) – 92 in the Shade (1975) – Orca (1977) – Maa Bhoomi (1979) – The Hunter (1980) – A Question of Silence (1982) – The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) – Haunted Honeymoon (1986) – Eight Men Out (1988) – Above the Law (1988) – Rhapsody in August (1991) – Independence Day (1996) – Honeymoon (1998) – Finding Buck McHenry (2000) – Land of the Dead (2005)

News From Home (1977) / Serial Mom (1994) This week we’re giving our moms a ring after we bear witness to motherly love through Chantal Akerman’s foreign correspondence and John Waters’ display of murderous affection

The Penalty (1920) / Miami Blues (1990) This week we’re wreaking havoc with charismatic villains as Lon Chaney unleashes a blizzard of crimes on San Francisco and George Armitage shows us how to embrace the criminal-entrepreneurial spirit in Miami

The Family Jewels (1965) / Men & Chicken (2015) This week we’re sanctioning buffoonery and focusing on fools as we discuss the many jewels of Jerry Lewis and ponder our animal nature with Anders Thomas Jensen

The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) / Death and the Compass (1996) This week we annotate a pair of short story adaptations and get lost in a Borgesian labyrinth with Alex Cox and try to survive Stuart Gordon’s inquisition

Blood Money (1974) / Take a Hard Ride (1975) This week we’re wasting away in Margheriti-ville, gorging on spaghetti with a global twist as we search for butts & treasure with Lee Van Cleef & Lo Lieh and take a hard ride with Jim Brown & Fred Williamson

The Mattei Affair (1972) / Gas Pump Girls (1979) This week we get a crash course on oil from Francesco Rosi, who teaches us how to erect out of Italy’s postwar rubble, while Joel Bender’s Gas Pump Girls show us how to squeeze it for all it’s worth

The Gravy Train (1974) / A Perfect Couple (1979) This week we’re doubling down on Dooley in roles big and small as we search for the perfect couple with Robert Altman and romp and stomp through D.C. with Jack Starrett and the Dion Brothers

Breaking Away (1979) / Good Burger (1997) This week we’re taking a sick day and prescribing some cinematic medicine: burger flipping and strawberry jacuzzis with Kenan & Kel and a long bike ride through Indiana with Peter Yates

Archipiélago (1992) / The House that Jack Built (2018) This week we’re taking a seat at the drafting table as we construct a house of corpses with Lars von Trier and try to restore a church – and Chile’s collective memory – with Pablo Perelman Watch Archipiélago for FREE via Cineteca Nacional de Chile: https://www.cclm.cl/cineteca-online/archipielago/

Road House (1948) / Terribly Happy (2008) This week we’re taking the crime out of the city as we go bowling at the road house with Jean Negulesco and get reassigned to oblivion in the boggy lowlands with Henrik Ruben Genz

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) / All the Colors of the Dark (1972) This week we’re having bad dreams with Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino as we attend black mass and trip with debauched hippies in swinging London

Sugar Cane Alley (1983) / Shottas (2002) This week we’re island hopping in the Caribbean as Euzhan Palcy transports us to the sugar cane fields of 1930s Martinique and we get blazed from Kingston to Miami with Cess Silveira’s shottas

Waxworks (1924) / Ganga Bruta (1933) This week we explore the universal language of silent cinema and love triangles as we tour Paul Leni’s nightmarish waxworks and flee to the Brazilian countryside to erect a factory with Humberto Mauro

Continental Divide (1981) / Smoke Signals (1998) This week venture into the Dream Life with two films screened by US presidents: first we help Michael Apted lug Belushi up the rockies then we hit the road with Chris Eyre’s indigenous buddy comedy

The Sisterhood (1988) / Futuresport (1998) This week the future is now as we hoverboard through a geopolitical crisis with Ernest R. Dickerson and try to survive Cirio H. Santiago’s post-apocalyptic wasteland with a band of women warriors

Some Came Running (1958) / Avengement (2019) Join us this week for two fraught homecomings as Frank Sinatra drinks his troubles away in a Minnelli-drama and Scott Adkins guzzles pints and holds court in a Jesse V. Johnson beat-em-up

Mountains of the Moon (1990) / Vacas (1992) It’s rivalry week as we head to Basque country with Julio Medem for some log cutting and generational conflict and then set out to find the source of the Nile with Bob Rafelson’s adventurous duo Burton & Speke

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (2020) This week we’re going long in our shortest episode yet as we depart from our normal format to toil in the fields of C.W. Winter & Anders Edström’s 480-minute poem of life and loss in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture

Waiting to Exhale (1995) / Now and Then (1995) This week our pal Alex Sherman joins us as we wait to exhale with the ladies of Forest Whitaker’s sensual melodrama and raise the dead with the BFFs of Lesli Linka Glatter’s nostalgic flashback

Color of Night (1994) / The Island of St. Matthews (2013) This week we’re getting dangerously wet as we go skinny dipping with Richard Rush and water ski down memory lane with Kevin Jerome Everson

Barabbas (1961) / The Beast of War (1988) This week the chosen ones lead us down dangerous paths as we chase tanks with Kevin Reynolds and the Mujahideen and get tossed into the gladiator arena in Richard Fleischer’s biblical epic

Giwaku aka Suspicion (1982) / Court (2014) This week we’re going to court and cross examining Yoshitaro Nomura’s fiery legal procedural and Chaitanya Tamhane’s understated indictment of judicial injustice and class conflict

Dirkie (1969) / White Sun of the Desert (1970) This week we’re getting lost in the dunes with Comrade Sukhov and Dirkie as we wander through the unforgiving sandscapes of the Karakum and Kalahari deserts

Marat/Sade (1967) / I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) This week we’re going into production as we join the crew of Radu Jude’s Romanian historical reenactment and get caught in the madhouse of Peter Brook’s play-within-a-play

Summerfield (1977) / Missing (1982) This week we join the search party for a missing Australian schoolteacher and a vanished American abroad in an enigmatic slow burn by Ken Hannam and confrontational thriller by Costa-Gavras

Quicksilver (1986) / The Cyclist (1989) This week we’re celebrating Spoketober as we pedal our way through Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s satirical circus and bunny hop from Wall Street to the mean streets with Kevin Bacon

Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) / Deadly Weapons (1974) This week we’re going on a date with the grand dame of the grindhouse as we discuss Doris Wishman’s bad girls and deadly weapons

The Incredible Journey (1963) / MVP2: Most Vertical Primate (2001) This week we’re going beast mode as we discuss the homeward bound trio of Fletcher Markle’s kids classic and Robert Vince’s skateboarding chimpsploitation

An Autumn’s Tale (1987) / Far From Heaven (2002) This week autumn leaves are falling as we discuss two tales of love and transition in Todd Haynes’ modernist melodrama and Mabel Cheung’s immigration romantic comedy

The Lusty Men (1952) / Knightriders (1981) This week we’re hitting the rodeo circuit and traveling with a troupe of jousting motorcyclists as we discuss Nicholas Ray’s sensitive cowboys and George Romero’s chivalrous knights

First Graders (1984) / Three O’Clock High (1987) This week we’re getting schooled by Abbas Kiarostami and Phil Joanou as they take us on a ride through the ups and downs of the educational experience

McQ (1974) / Police Beat (2005) This week we're investigating two Emerald City policiers: one with an unlicensed Duke wielding a MAC-10 and another with a lovesick beat cop wielding a green card and the American Dream

No Greater Glory (1934) / My Little Loves (1974) This week we’re storming the trenches of childhood as we discuss Jean Eustache’s little loves and the little rascals of Frank Borzage’s turf war

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) / Halloween Resurrection (2002) This week we take the stand to defend a pair of maligned sequels as we discuss the heresies of John Boorman’s arthouse exorcism & Rick Rosenthal’s dangertainment for a new millennium

La Fin Du Monde (1931) / Yakuza Apocalypse (2015) This week it’s the end of the world as we discuss the excessive and apocalyptic visions of Abel Gance and Takashi Miike

Stalin (1992) / Stemple Pass (2012) This week we’re looking for love in all the wrong places as we confront two notorious bad boys in Ivan Passer’s sweeping HBO biopic of Stalin and James Benning’s durational landscape portrait of the Unabomber

Salto (1965) / Clearcut (1991) This week we got kidnapped by Graham Greene and led astray by Zbigniew Cybulski as we discuss two confrontational films by Polish directors in which there is no escaping the past

10 - Eight Men Out (1988) / Finding Buck McHenry (2000) This week we’re talkin’ baseball as we discuss John Sayles’ historical investigation of the 1919 Black Sox scandal and Charles Burnett’s children’s book adaptation about a Negro Leagues legend hiding in plain sight

9 - Haunted Honeymoon (1986) / Honeymoon (1998) This week wedding bells are in the air as we send Ryan off on his honeymoon by discussing a comedy chiller by Gene Wilder and a chaste marriage cringefest by Dan Sallitt

8 - Stormy Weather (1943) / Calamity Jane (1953) This week’s episode is 100% all talking! all singing! all dancing! as we tap our way through two golden age musicals: an all-black wartime musical revue and biopic from 20th Century Fox and a postwar western musical with a woman’s touch from Warner Bros.

7 - A Question of Silence (1982) / The Slumberparty Massacre (1982) It’s murder she wrote this week with a dastardly pairing not even Jessica Fletcher could have dreamt up as we discuss Marleen Gorris’ riveting crime deconstruction and Amy Jones’ slasher classic

6 - The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961) / Land of the Dead (2005) This week we go beyond the trilogy to find out what happens when a series reaches its 4th installment as we discuss George Romero’s 21st century return to the Dead series and how producer Artur Brauner jazzed up Dr. Mabuse after Fritz Lang left the arena

5 - Caught (1949) / Martha (1974) This week we got caught up in a couple of bad romances as we discuss two melodramas with sadistic marriages from our German friends that love tracking shots, Max Ophüls and Rainer Werner Fassbinder

4 - Independence Day (1996) / Rhapsody in August (1991) Summertime is here and we’re going nuclear as we discuss Roland Emmerich’s blustering end of history sci-fi blockbuster and Akira Kurosawa’s multigenerational family drama and elegy to the bomb

92 in the Shade (1975) / Orca (1977) This week we packed up our rods and harpoons and cast off for Key West and Newfoundland to discuss man’s favorite sport in Thomas McGuane’s sun-baked bummer and Dino De Laurentiis’ whale revenge epic

Reign of Terror aka The Black Book (1949) / Maa Bhoomi (1979) The forces of revolution are unleashed as we discuss Anthony Mann’s (counter) revolutionary film noir and Ghotam Ghose’s rousing tale of the Telangana peasant rebellion

The Hunter (1980) / Above the Law (1988) It’s Steve vs. Steve on the very first episode of The Gauntlet as we discuss Chicago movies and the birth and death of two action stars