I have a deep, unflagging love of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. I like to attribute this to seeing Lauren Bacall seduce Humphery Bogart over a match in To Have and Have Not when I was a teenager, although my countless viewings of a PBS broadcast of Singing in the Rain taped onto VHS is probably really to blame. Either way, I’ve recently been craving interesting, intelligent conversation about some of my favorite films.
If you are like me and enjoy taking apart the movies you love to see how they work, I cannot recommend the podcast Unspooled enough. Actor Paul Scheer and critic Amy Nicholson are working their way through the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies and both offer fun, funny, insightful commentary about some of my favorite films. I recommend starting at the beginning episode 1 on Citizen Kane and working your way through the list as you watch along, but I really wanted to shout out the fantastic conversation around Rear Window, a movie that feels particularly appropriate for our current self-isolation age.