Latest / Secret Movie Club Podcast / SMC Pod #216: Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Russian Sci Fi Hard to be a God, and our family field report

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SMC Pod #216: Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Russian Sci Fi Hard to be a God, and our family field report · Secret Movie Club Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, Secret Movie Clubbers, and welcome to Secret Movie Club Podcast 216.
• 0:07
  Get ready for it. My family's reaction going to the movie theaters for the Super
• 0:13
  Mario Galaxy movie and the Soviet sci-fi classic I forgot to talk about last time,
• 0:22
  Alexei German's Hard to Be a God.
• 0:30
  Yeah, I'm putting them together. I'm a little loopy. It's late.
• 0:34
  My name is Craig Hamill. I am the founder, programmer of Secret Movie Club.
• 0:38
  It is awesome to have you here.
• 0:41
  The most important thing other than talking movies, celebrating movies,
• 0:46
  is when you hear this, we will be launching our May to July 2026 season.
• 0:54
  And I can announce the events right here, right now.
• 0:58
  Saturday, May 16th, 2026, at the Million Dollar Theater Movie Palace,
• 1:03
  LA's first movie palace in downtown LA, we are doing an anime plus speed triple feature.
• 1:09
  What that means, 11 a.m., we are showing the Animatrix, the anthology series
• 1:16
  of nine short anime movies that the Wachowskis made with great anime directors.
• 1:20
  2 p.m., we are showing the 21st century anime classic.
• 1:25
  Red line, 2009's red line that people have been talking to me about forever
• 1:29
  that almost never gets played in a big movie theater.
• 1:33
  We're doing it. And then we are 5 p.m. We are doing the Wachowski Speed Racer.
• 1:38
  They're 2008 at the time, totally misunderstood.
• 1:42
  I love it. And so many people love it now.
• 1:45
  It's now a cult hit, which basically was based on a 1960s Japanese anime TV series.
• 1:53
  Our June event will be an Indiana Jones Father's Day 35 millimeter triple.
• 1:59
  Yes, Sunday, June 21st at the Million Dollar Theater, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
• 2:05
  11 a.m., 35 millimeter Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 2 p.m.
• 2:11
  And 5 p.m. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It's Father's Day.
• 2:16
  Bring your dad. I love these films.
• 2:19
  Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first movie Secret Movie Club ever showed.
• 2:22
  We showed it on 35mm at midnight, April 2016, 10 years ago at the Vista Theater.
• 2:29
  And for our 10th year anniversary, I thought, what better way than to do these
• 2:35
  movies, remind ourselves what great action filmmaking is, action adventure filmmaking.
• 2:41
  And I thought Father's Day is a perfect time to do it. And then July,
• 2:45
  we are doing a movie twist double feature. we are still determining the date.
• 2:50
  It will be at the Million Dollar Theater. We're just locking in the date, but it's going to be
• 2:54
  The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable on 35mm film prints.
• 3:02
  You can get tickets to the entire season, as well as our May and June events
• 3:07
  for individual movies, but we won't sell the M.
• 3:10
  Night Shyamalan's Sixth Sense and Unbreakable tickets until we lock the date, just to be safe.
• 3:15
  But if you want to get a season pass, May to July, go for it.
• 3:18
  It's going to be the best deal. It's $72.
• 3:21
  You're going to get eight movies, So that's $9 a movie.
• 3:26
  And any events that we add, if we do add events, you're in.
• 3:30
  You get the pass from May to July. And any event we announce,
• 3:35
  May, June, or July, beyond the eight movies we've already programmed,
• 3:39
  you've already got tickets. You don't have to pay any more.
• 3:42
  So there you go. Go to secretmovieclub.com.
• 3:45
  Remember, we now sell tickets straight from our website. We get a free account.
• 3:50
  You can pre-order concessions. You can get perks.
• 3:54
  We're very shortly going to be launching a social network there for movie lovers.
• 3:58
  We're going to be doing events before and after the movies, in real life events
• 4:03
  around the Million Dollar Theater downtown LA, so that you can just hang out
• 4:07
  with people and talk movies.
• 4:09
  Also, we are still selling tickets on Eventbrite.
• 4:12
  So you can Google Secret Movie Club and Eventbrite. Get your tickets there if
• 4:15
  you like and go to our socials.
• 4:18
  At Secret Movie Club. You can write us a community at secretmovieclub.com and
• 4:24
  Secret Movie Club podcast 217 in honor of Indiana Jones and the Indiana Jones
• 4:30
  trilogy is going to be directing action movies.
• 4:33
  We've already done a few podcasts on the Indiana Jones movies.
• 4:37
  So rather than just talking about those again, although I could,
• 4:42
  I want to take the indie trilogy that we're screening as a springboard to talk
• 4:48
  about how hard it is to direct action movies.
• 4:51
  Okay, let's get to the main event.
• 4:56
  So in a moment, I am going to play for you.
• 5:00
  We're going to listen to the podcast I did with my family. I did do it around
• 5:04
  the breakfast table. It is not long.
• 5:06
  It's about 10 minutes, and we'll see how short it is when I edit it.
• 5:11
  But I did it, and I hope you enjoy it.
• 5:15
  The audio is going to be a little wonky, but you are going to hear from our
• 5:18
  kids and Martha, my wife, or I am Martha's husband.
• 5:23
  And you're going to hear from our kids, Craigie, Carmen, Pammy, and Mabel.
• 5:29
  And we are talking about the Super Mario Galaxy movie, which we all went to
• 5:33
  go see a few weeks ago here in Pasadena, California at the Paseo,
• 5:38
  Colorado. It was a very nice theater.
• 5:41
  The sound, the projection was all really good. We got a big tub of popcorn and
• 5:46
  Sour Patch Kids and a huge, like you could bathe in it, Coca-Cola,
• 5:52
  which we just passed around.
• 5:54
  And it easily took care of a family of six.
• 5:56
  And we saw it with some family friends. We are going to talk about that experience.
• 6:00
  And I just talked to my kids about what they thought about seeing a movie at the movie theater.
• 6:04
  And I hope you enjoy it. What I want to talk about right now is last week's
• 6:10
  podcast, Secret Movie Club Podcast 215, Soviet Sci-Fi.
• 6:15
  When I finished and posted it, a day later in horror, in horror,
• 6:20
  I realized I did not talk about the Soviet Sci-Fi movie Hard to Be a God by Alexei German.
• 6:28
  I had listed that movie as one of the movies I wanted to talk about.
• 6:32
  But when I finally came time to talk about Soviet sci-fi, I made the mistake
• 6:37
  of going to my letterboxd and looking at the movies I had seen recently because
• 6:41
  I really went on a Soviet sci-fi deep dive.
• 6:44
  And I forgot to mention Hard to Be a God, which was a huge oversight because
• 6:49
  along with Solaris and Dead Man's Letters and probably Ken Zadza,
• 6:57
  I would say that Hard to Be a God is right up there.
• 7:00
  And I'm not like putting it even a millimeter beneath those movies.
• 7:05
  And so I just want to talk about it briefly today, encourage you to go see it.
• 7:09
  Hard to Be a God, directed by Alexei German, came out in 2013,
• 7:13
  is based on a 1960s Soviet sci-fi novel.
• 7:17
  It took German years and years to complete the movie, and it was such an ordeal,
• 7:23
  in fact, that he died and his son had to finish the post-production of the movie.
• 7:29
  So German had shot the movie and he had edited the movie, but he didn't get to finish the post.
• 7:35
  And his son had to finish the post. You would never know it, though.
• 7:39
  It does not feel like it passed from one hand to another. It feels like a unified vision.
• 7:45
  The Hard to Be a God is almost three hours. It's 177 minutes.
• 7:49
  It's a black and white film.
• 7:51
  And the premise in the movie is that.
• 7:55
  These astronauts have come to a different planet that is in the middle of its own Middle Ages.
• 8:04
  And because of certain elements on the planet, never got beyond the Middle Ages,
• 8:09
  never had a renaissance, never had an enlightenment, just got worse and worse
• 8:14
  in the worst aspects of what the Middle Ages would be.
• 8:17
  It's a crazy movie. So we follow our astronaut scientist who basically has to
• 8:24
  masquerade as a nobleman.
• 8:27
  And if you're a Star Trek fan, basically he and his fellow scientists who are
• 8:32
  hiding and observing, they're observing the prime directive.
• 8:36
  They're just not getting involved or they're trying not to get involved with the planet.
• 8:40
  So even though everything they see around them horrifies them,
• 8:44
  they're trying not to take an active hand in it.
• 8:48
  The movie is shot in a series, mostly in a series of master shots, on long lenses.
• 8:56
  It's almost an impossible movie to describe.
• 8:59
  Every shot is filled with incredible production design, actors.
• 9:05
  It's very claustrophobic.
• 9:07
  And you really feel that you're in a Middle Ages, medieval sci-fi planet like you're on it.
• 9:14
  There's a lot of violence, as there was in the Middle Ages, a lot of brutality,
• 9:20
  a lot of stupidity, a lot of ignorance.
• 9:23
  And our character just wanders, interacts with the clergy of this planet, the religious clergy.
• 9:31
  There's some kind of atmospheric
• 9:35
  climate difference that makes everybody just
• 9:38
  full of mucus all the time there are little
• 9:41
  innovations they have that we wouldn't have seen on our planet that really interesting
• 9:46
  things they put on their nose things they put on their fingers but over time
• 9:50
  in the movie our our hero our scientist gets more and more outraged more and
• 9:56
  more enraged at the violence the superstition,
• 10:01
  the ignorance of this planet, and it builds to a climax.
• 10:06
  I don't want to say more than that.
• 10:09
  Now, what's interesting about Hard to Be a God is—.
• 10:16
  Even by the rubric and metric of Soviet sci-fi, which can tend to be very psychological
• 10:22
  and slower paced and art housey,
• 10:27
  Hard to Be a God is the most art housey, the slowest paced, the most methodical,
• 10:33
  the most tortured psychologically.
• 10:35
  I remember seeing this movie with a friend of mine, Brian Kramer,
• 10:39
  who recommended it. He and I worked together and we went to my apartment.
• 10:43
  We said, I'm cracked some beers. We're like, let's do it. Hard to be a God.
• 10:46
  And I think about an hour and a half into the movie, Brian was like,
• 10:48
  I'm out. I can't, I can't do another hour and a half of this.
• 10:52
  And I was, I was so into, I was like mesmerized. I was like, okay.
• 10:56
  We hugged it out. He went home to his wife, my friend, Ash Kramer as well.
• 11:00
  And I just, I watched the whole thing. I watched all three hours of that MF-er and I was there for it.
• 11:06
  I was like, I'd never seen anything like it. It was, you felt like you were on a different planet.
• 11:11
  That's how the movie plays to me, is you're just there for three hours on a
• 11:15
  different planet, which is so hard to do. And I loved it.
• 11:19
  I realized in recommending it that it is a very acquired taste.
• 11:24
  Like I said, black and white, one-ers, very claustrophobic.
• 11:29
  There's, a lot is going on in the mise-en-scene.
• 11:33
  That's a lot of what the movie is, is just looking at the world.
• 11:37
  I think that's probably why Garamond shot the whole thing on these crazy wide
• 11:40
  lenses, because he really wants your eye to kind of rove away from sometimes
• 11:45
  even the dialogue that's happening or the scene that's happening to just like,
• 11:49
  what's going on? Who's that little kid?
• 11:51
  What are these things hanging from the wall? Like, what's this? What's that?
• 11:55
  It is so immersive and so atmospheric, so visionary and so sui generis.
• 12:02
  There is no other movie like Hard to Be a God.
• 12:04
  So I just want to put in a plug here. This is a postscript to Secret Movie Club podcast 215.
• 12:11
  Hard to Be a God. Check it out. Okay.
• 12:14
  Now, for a hard left, we are going to talk about the Super Mario Galaxy movie,
• 12:19
  and we're going to be with my family. So here we go.
• 12:22
  Okay. Testing. One, two, three. All right, guys, we're recording now.
• 12:27
  So we're going to do the podcast.
• 12:29
  I'm here with my family at the breakfast table.
• 12:32
  Yes, Mabel, you're going to do it. We only have one mic. I'm going to kind of
• 12:36
  move it around. So wait, Craigie, come sit down, buddy. This is the podcast.
• 12:40
  All right, guys. So I wanted to do a podcast with you guys because we all went
• 12:45
  about a week and a half ago or two weeks to go see the Mario Galaxy movie,
• 12:50
  Super Mario Galaxy movie at the Paseo, Colorado here in Pasadena.
• 12:55
  And it was the whole family, all six of us, plus our friends,
• 13:01
  Julissa, Miles, and Summer Hernandez.
• 13:04
  And let's talk about it. So here
• 13:07
  at the table, why don't you introduce yourselves? Okay, say who you are.
• 13:11
  My name is Craig. And how old are you? Eight years old. Okay,
• 13:17
  your little sister wants to get in on this action.
• 13:20
  Okay, what's your name? Craig.
• 13:23
  Mabel. And how old are you, Mabel?
• 13:27
  I'm Mabel. You are Mabel. Can you say, I'm two years old? I'm two years old. Okay.
• 13:34
  And then tell us who you are.
• 13:37
  I'm Pammy. And how old are you? Four. Okay. I'm something else.
• 13:42
  The part that I liked in the Marvel Galaxy movie was the one where Princess
• 13:50
  Peach said... Wait, wait, there's someone talking about it.
• 13:54
  Princess Peach, Dave, Rosalina.
• 14:00
  Rosalina. Okay, well, that's there. You jumped right to it, Pam.
• 14:03
  You knew what my question was going to be. Okay, and then what's your name?
• 14:08
  I'm Tushy. Carmen, your name is not Tushy.
• 14:12
  Carmen, can you say my name is Carmen? Tushy.
• 14:17
  Carmen, that's our daughter, Carmen, whose favorite joke right now is Tushy.
• 14:21
  All right so we all went to the movie theater and pammy told us her favorite
• 14:26
  part craiggy would you yeah just a second mabel craiggy what did you think of
• 14:30
  the movie uh get right up to the mic.
• 14:34
  I thought it was great it was really good and my favorite part was when uh they
• 14:41
  turned a dinosaur into a baby dinosaur that was funny they all became babies
• 14:46
  and that baby mario and baby luigi,
• 14:49
  Mabel, I know you want to say it. Wait.
• 14:52
  And Baby Toad. Okay. Mabel, what was your favorite part of the Super Mario Galaxy movie?
• 15:02
  Okay, Mabel, you're just more fascinated with the microphone.
• 15:06
  Mabel, do you remember seeing the movie?
• 15:09
  There's it. Wow!
• 15:12
  You're just singing into the mic, Mabel. Okay, so.
• 15:19
  I'm named Mabel. Yes, your name is Mabel. Okay.
• 15:25
  Pammy, what did you think about going to the movie theater? That was the first
• 15:29
  time you ever sat through a whole movie. What did you think about the movie theater? Good.
• 15:33
  I like both of the parts. It's like the one where Princess Peaks,
• 15:39
  they've rolled a lean in the head,
• 15:41
  the part where the eyes are turned into a baby and all let out.
• 15:49
  And what did you think of the movie theater? It was good.
• 15:54
  What was your favorite part about seeing a movie in a movie theater instead
• 15:58
  of seeing a movie in your living room? I already saw that.
• 16:04
  I'm a cutie. I'm cute. Yes, you are cute, Pam.
• 16:09
  Okay. Yeah, Pam, he's saying it to the microphone, too. Okay.
• 16:13
  Let's go to Carmen again.
• 16:16
  Carmen, you've been in the movie theater a few times, but this was the first
• 16:19
  time, Carmen, you actually sat through a whole movie.
• 16:21
  I was really proud of you. What did you think of the movie theater? I'm proud of you.
• 16:25
  Tushy.
• 16:28
  Carmen, your tushy joke kills with everybody. But can you tell us,
• 16:34
  what did you think of the movie theater?
• 16:37
  Tushy. Tushy, okay. Our daughter Carmen has Down syndrome and she can speak.
• 16:42
  But whenever she realizes that it's work, like right now, or that I want something
• 16:47
  from her, her joke is tushy.
• 16:50
  Yeah. Okay, Mabel, what did you think of the movie theater?
• 16:55
  I mean yes you're mabel
• 16:58
  okay craig what did you think
• 17:01
  about going to the movie theater you've been to the movie theater a few times now
• 17:04
  so i thought it was really good i
• 17:07
  really liked eating stuff and i
• 17:10
  really liked the movie uh i had
• 17:13
  to go to the bathroom a few times we also
• 17:16
  went through the cdn credit scene yeah
• 17:20
  where daisy showed up okay and
• 17:24
  then final question here guys and this is good what
• 17:28
  i'm gonna ask you a few questions you ready craiggy okay what's
• 17:31
  your what's your favorite movie probably spider-man
• 17:39
  into the spider-verse probably that one that one's
• 17:43
  great and that's one of my favorites of the last 20 years and
• 17:46
  what do you do you prefer seeing movies at home or at the movie theater at the
• 17:52
  movie theater and why is that because you can eat stuff in and and it and it's
• 17:59
  louder okay mabel you're only two years old what's mabel what's your favorite movie.
• 18:07
  My name is Mabel. You keep saying your name is Mabel.
• 18:11
  Mabel can talk a lot, but Jesus, you're doing the tushy thing. Mabel. Mabel. Okay.
• 18:17
  Pammy, what's your favorite movie? The Galaxy and the Gabby movie.
• 18:23
  The Gabby movie. And do you like seeing movies at home or in the movie theater?
• 18:28
  What do you like better? Both of them.
• 18:31
  That's both of them. That's a fair answer. Okay, here we go.
• 18:34
  Carmen, I think I know what you're going to say, But what's your favorite movie?
• 18:39
  Tushy. Tushy is your favorite movie. And do you like seeing the movies in the
• 18:45
  movie theater, Carmen, or at home?
• 18:49
  Okay, Tushy again. All right, guys. Well, this has been your field reporter,
• 18:58
  Craig Hamill, in the field with his family. An apple?
• 19:01
  What about an apple? You had an
• 19:03
  apple. Okay, does anybody else want to say anything before I stop the pod?
• 19:08
  What, Pammy? I love me, my dad. I love my dad so much in terms of me.
• 19:17
  I love my family So guys, I'm going to end this podcast Whenever I do my podcasts
• 19:25
  for Secret Movie Club I always end them by saying, I love you,
• 19:28
  family Who am I talking to?
• 19:31
  You did, I'm talking to you guys I love you guys with all my heart Alright guys,
• 19:36
  thank you for doing this In the field podcast with your father Pammy wants to
• 19:40
  keep saying more things I love you, daddy,
• 19:43
  I love you, Pammy And I love my family and even mom and even Craig and even
• 19:47
  Carmen and even daddy. Okay.
• 19:52
  Say it again. Why? Just so we get it. Say I love mama. I love mom. Okay.
• 19:58
  All right. I love you guys.
• 20:02
  Craigie's spanking his tushy and itching his tushy. Craigie,
• 20:05
  sit up, buddy. All right. Man.
• 20:10
  Tushies are killing. Then Pammy's spanking her tushy. This is descending into
• 20:14
  tushy jokes. All right. I love you guys.
• 20:18
  So wait, here's Mama. You got to talk right into the mic.
• 20:24
  Good morning. Okay. So Mama, we were talking about the Super Mario Galaxy movie
• 20:30
  and going to the movie theater.
• 20:32
  What did you think of the Super Mario Galaxy movie? It was good.
• 20:36
  I like it. But I got to say, I felt like the first one was more excited,
• 20:42
  but it was a really good movie. It was nice to be with the kids.
• 20:45
  What did you think of the going to see a movie in a movie theater?
• 20:49
  Oh, I think that's great. I think the kids were very excited.
• 20:54
  It is definitely something different because there's no interactions.
• 20:59
  It's not like when we're in the house.
• 21:02
  I think that, you know, we grew up like that, right, going to the movie theater. So it was very nice.
• 21:08
  Okay. What's your favorite movie of all time? Or not of all time,
• 21:11
  but what's one of your favorite movies?
• 21:16
  I like Forrest Gump. That was one of my favorite movies.
• 21:20
  Forrest Gump. And do you prefer to see movies at home or in the theater?
• 21:23
  I think it depends. I think that the theater is very nice. It depends on the movie, too.
• 21:30
  Some movies are meant to be in the theater. That's true. And then anything else you want to say?
• 21:37
  Martha, my wife, mother of our children.
• 21:40
  I love you. I love our kids. Thank you for taking us to the movies.
• 21:44
  It was a lot with four kids and a two-year-old, you know, but thank you.
• 21:52
  Well, thank you. I love you. I love you, Martha. I love you,
• 21:56
  Craig. Okay. I love you guys.
• 22:00
  Yeah, so I'm going to edit the podcast now. Here we go.
• 22:08
  All right, guys, there you go. That was the podcast with my family.
• 22:13
  I will be playing it for my children tomorrow morning, driving them to school
• 22:16
  because they wanted to hear it.
• 22:18
  And I had to explain to them that I could not immediately play it for them after
• 22:21
  I recorded it at breakfast.
• 22:23
  So we will be listening to it in the car.
• 22:25
  Thank you for listening. Secret Movie Club podcast Just 217 will be directing
• 22:31
  action movies and just getting into a whole, we'll look at a whole buffet of
• 22:36
  action films from really, really early on in cinema.
• 22:41
  Like, you know, silent films, the Douglas Fairbanks movies like Zorro or The Thief of Baghdad.
• 22:49
  And we will look at Michael Curtiz movies, Adventures of Robin Hood,
• 22:53
  Captain Blood, The Seahawk.
• 22:55
  And we will look at others. We will talk about the Indiana Jones movies and Steven Spielberg.
• 23:00
  He is one of the best to ever practice the craft. But we're just we'll talk
• 23:05
  about George Miller. We'll talk about James Cameron.
• 23:07
  We'll talk about Peter Jackson. But we'll also talk about other action directors
• 23:11
  whose work I really love.
• 23:13
  They may not be my favorite action directors, but I admire it.
• 23:17
  We'll talk about the James Bond movies.
• 23:19
  We'll we'll look at a whole bunch of stuff and just get into directing.
• 23:22
  It'll be a very movie making centric pod.
• 23:25
  Again, we have now launched our 2026 season.
• 23:29
  So please go to secretmovieclub.com or Google secret movie club and Eventbrite.
• 23:33
  You can get tickets. We have May, June and July events.
• 23:37
  We can't wait to see you. Five of the eight movies are on 35 millimeter film.
• 23:40
  It took a lot to get here. It's going to take a lot more to.
• 23:45
  You know, go further and faster and up and climb, but we are doing it. We are back.
• 23:51
  We are showing movies. We want to see you at the movies. We are at the Million
• 23:55
  Dollar Theater, LA's very first movie palace. It is incredible space.
• 23:59
  And right next door is Grand Central Market, 20 to 30 stalls.
• 24:04
  You can bring in food from the market to the theater. You can bring in drinks.
• 24:08
  Let's go back to the movies. You can write us a community at secretmovieclub.com.
• 24:13
  Go to our socials at secretmovieclub.
• 24:16
  And there you go. I wish you a great few weeks.
• 24:20
  When we come back, it'll be a day before our first event, which is Saturday,
• 24:25
  May 16th, our anime plus speed triple feature.
• 24:29
  In the meantime, the world continues to be crazy. So I'm sure in the next week,
• 24:34
  two weeks, A lot of crazy things are going to happen, but keep the faith,
• 24:39
  run the race, fight the good fight. Don't give up.
• 24:44
  It's nuts, man. I'm sure you're, I heard someone say on a pod about politics
• 24:49
  that people are just tired of being tired.
• 24:52
  I related to that. Maybe you relate to that, but let's keep fighting.
• 24:57
  Keep fighting. I'll keep fighting.
• 24:58
  You keep fighting and let's make and celebrate great movies. Okay.
• 25:04
  Have a good few weeks. I'll see you soon.
• 25:07
  We're doing it. We're back. Secret Movie Club.
• 25:11
  May 16th. Be there. Okay. Thank you, guys. I love you, family.