Eavesdropping at the Movies

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda shot to fame in the mid-2010s with Hamilton, he had already enjoyed success with his 2005 musical, In the Heights, with a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, winning four Tonys for its Broadway production in 2008. Set in Washington Heights, a largely Dominican neighbourhood in Upper Manhattan, it now comes to cinemas, following the lives, struggles and dreams of its inhabitants...

We explore Come and See, a 1985 Soviet film whose reputation precedes it - it's regarded as one of the greatest war films of all time. In 1943 Belarus, a young teenager, Flyora, joins the resistance, but as he travels from village to village across Nazi-occupied Belarus, experiencing worsening horrors and atrocities brought upon the locals, the extent to which he is out of his depth gradually beco...

A Quiet Place Part II picks up moments after its 2018 predecessor ends, its characters desperate for refuge from the terrifying predators hunting them. Seeking survivors, they encounter a family friend, now a recluse, having lost his wife and children. Emboldened by her discovery of a way to combat the aliens, the family's deaf daughter makes a beeline for a radio station she believes can help, an...

Disney's latest update of its back catalogue sees Emma Stone bring punk rock to Sixties London in Cruella, a beautiful, stylish, but clunky affair. Like Maleficent before it, Cruella offers an origin story to a key Disney villain: Estella, as she's named when we meet her, takes a circuitous route to her destiny as a star fashion designer, grifting with friends to make ends meet, and waging war on...

Billy Wilder directs this adaptation of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, a courtroom drama concerning a man on trial for the murder of an old woman - did he do it? What's up with his wife? Will his lawyer's nurse catch him smoking? As with Christie's stageplay, The Mousetrap, upon the film's conclusion, the audience is kindly asked to refrain from revealing its twists and revelations...

Cinema is back! And to celebrate, we see the new spin-off of the Saw series, Spiral, which... is not a good film. But it gives us much to think on, especially the surprisingly big names of its cast, which includes Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson, and Max Minghella. Slasher series don't traditionally accommodate stars, but, beyond the fact that they're typically too expensive, Spiral offers a warning...

We explore René Clair's adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel of - in the US - the same name, And Then There Were None. In terms of quality, it's nothing to write home about, sadly, but is interesting nonetheless. Recorded on 13th May 2021.

We explore Dario Argento's Suspiria, his 1977 horror classic, and its loose remake by Luca Guadagnino, from 2018. We've never seen either, although Argento's film casts a long shadow - those who've seen it never forget it, and it's easy to see why. Its visual design is bold, imaginative and beautiful, the images it creates extraordinary, its violence heightened and wild. José loves it, literally w...

Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce star as the previous and current Popes respectively, in The Two Popes, an imagined biopic that uses their personas and public profiles as jumping off points to explore a range of ideas. We discuss the success with which the film has been adapted from the original stage play, but the lack of visual artistry it nonetheless exhibits; the ways in which it uses - and...

We're joined by returning guest Celia, on the phone from Canada, to discuss writer-director Emerald Fennell's unusual revenge thriller, Promising Young Woman. Following the rape and - implied - suicide of her friend Nina, which goes unpunished, Carey Mulligan's Cassie drops out of medical school, and now spends her nights feigning drunkenness, allowing men to pick her up and take her home, alarmin...

Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford star in Gild- sorry, Affair in Trinidad, Hayworth's first film upon her return to Hollywood after four years away, and a blatant rip-off of a certain classic film noir from 1946. (There's also a chunk of Notorious thrown in for good measure.) Expensively cobbled together at Columbia boss Harry Cohn's instruction, its production was rushed, with its script barely presen...

A film that offers a beautiful evocation of community, as Riz Ahmed's drummer suddenly loses most of his hearing and joins a retreat for the deaf, Sound of Metal also feels regrettably, and unforgivably, dishonest in some of the ways it engineers its story. In this respect, we disagree over one of the film's key scenes, but agree about what it goes on to depict in the final act. Despite the severe...

The fourth entry in Legendary's MonsterVerse, the first crossover in the series, sees a journey to the center of the Earth and Hong Kong made the playground of its titular colossi. In this cinematic universe seeking to challenge Marvel et al., Mike finds visual splendour and an ambition to reach for something a little more meaningful than your usual blockbusters. Indeed, the character of Godzilla,...

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, riots erupted when thousands of anti-Vietnam War protestors clashed with police. Seeking to crush the energetic counterculture, the US government put on trial a group of eight defendants, some political organisers, some cultural radicals, some with hardly any influence, a pacifist, and a Black Panther, hoping to convict them for conspiracy...

Anthony Hopkins is magnificent as The Father's title character, an old man losing his grip on reality to dementia, in debut director Florian Zeller's adaptation of his own stage play. We discuss the techniques the film uses to situate the audience within the mind of a dementia sufferer, and whether they lose their potency as the film develops. The Father's origins on stage are obvious in its spars...

A gentle drama about Korean immigrants making a life for themselves in 1980s Arkansas, Minari's tone is consistently light, despite some of the upsetting events that occur. Mike argues that it reflects a child's perspective of life, protected by their parents from the worst of life, or simply not understanding the darkness in what they experience - writer-director Lee Isaac Chung based the film on...

In 2017, Justice League, DC's answer to Marvel's continuing Avengers crossovers, flopped. Director Zack Snyder had left the film several months before release, his role taken over by MCU regular Joss Whedon, and significant changes were made in an attempt to lighten the tone of what had so far been a rather bleak series. Immediately, talk erupted of a director's cut - the so-called Snyder Cut - th...

Frances McDormand and a cast of non-professional, real-life nomads unite to explore the life of the modern American itinerant in Nomadland. We consider the line between fiction and reality, the non-professionals who appear bringing their real experiences and stories with them, and discuss what drives a person to their way of life. Like director Chloé Zhao's previous feature, The Rider, Nomadland i...

The story of a civil rights activist who deserved a biopic long before now, told from the perspective of the man who killed him. Fred Hampton chaired the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and using his oratorical skills and powers of persuasion formed the Rainbow Coalition, a political movement in which black, white and Puerto Rican organisations combined and worked together. Hampton wa...

Ethics and truth in the land of documentary come under the microscope in our discussion of Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne's love letter to his childhood friend, Andrew Bagby, is a sensational and moving film that you should know as little as possible about before watching. It's exceptionally effective, built out of a combination of interviews, home footage,...

First-time writer-director Noah Hutton imagines, in Lapsis, a near-future gig economy dystopia that isn't that different from our own. Unable to pay for his brother's healthcare, Dean Imperial's Ray takes on contracting work for a Google-esque tech giant, hiking through forests laying cables. Imperial's performance is a standout, his Ray always sympathetic and legible, and Hutton's sketchy, piecem...

An expensive flop in its day, The Day of the Locust maintains a cult intrigue for its critique of Hollywood and descent into madness. It's new for both of us, and we discuss the qualities its cast brings, what could be better about its industry commentary, its moments of surprisingly graphic violence, and who, or what, its titular locusts are. Recorded on 28th February 2021.

We explore a wonderful Taiwanese film that Netflix forgot it had, A Sun. An intimate yet epic drama about the effects of a single mistake that reverberate through a family and down the years, it's gorgeously lit and shot, and although it feels as long as it is, every moment is earned and valuable. It asks fundamental questions of its characters and of us, the most important of which is: What does...

Our two-part discussion of Rocky concludes with a look at the entire series of eight films, including the two Creed movies. It's a series that's deeply interested in its own history, regularly referring to it in montages of characters' memories, journeys back to iconic locations, and the reintroduction of one particular character in Creed II. The series rewards its audience for its investment, alt...

In this first of our two-part discussion of the Rocky films, we look at the film that began the series almost 50 years ago. There's a lot about 1976's Rocky that... isn't that good. John G. Avildsen's direction is drab, the story basic, the themes rudimentary - but with that comes a roughness and a sincerity to the whole affair that might be just what makes it work after all. Sylvester Stallone's...