Eavesdropping at the Movies

Pickings are slim at the cinema at the moment, so it's MUBI to the rescue. We chose Border almost at random, our criteria being only something that looked interesting and would still be on rotation by the time we released the podcast. And what a fascinating film we picked. Border is a Swedish art film that reeks of mud, pain and isolation, but with a sense of fantasy and irony that render it a cur...

Following a break during which José has been exploring Argentina and Mike has been exploring John Grisham films, we reconvene with Toy Story 4, the latest in Pixar's iconic animated children's series. Mike's seen it once already and is keen to revisit it. José asks questions of the film's messages, seeing the toys as faithful slaves, desperate for owners, and discarded once their value is exhauste...

José returns from a week at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, just in time to see Venice crumble in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the latest injection of plot development to the Marvel series. It hits him in the gut and the film doesn't recover, José seeing a lack of respect and intelligence that colours the entire experience for him. Mike, on the other hand, doesn't particularly care for buildings, an...

Following his critically acclaimed documentaries about Formula One legend Aryton Senna and troubled jazz singer Amy Winehouse, Asif Kapadia turns his inquisitive lens to Diego Maradona, arguably the greatest footballer of all time, and a man who moved rapidly from the slums of Buenos Aires to worldwide fame, winning the World Cup with Argentina and leading declining Italian club Napoli to two leag...

A horror movie that cleverly inverts one or two tropes of the genre, we ultimately feel Ma is less than the sum of its parts, but worth a look nonetheless. Director Tate Taylor is clearly very good with actors, and every performance here is pitched well, but he doesn't have such an aptitude for building tension or developing psychological creepiness. The writing doesn't help him - while Mike insis...

But for its astonishing visuals, we don't have much time for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a rather boring, incoherent film with an aspect that is at best lazy and at worst offensive. But it does look pretty! Wait, as Mike says, for its home media release, and capture yourself some lovely screenshots. Mike's review of 2014's Godzilla: https://writingaboutfilm.com/2014/05/20/godzilla/ José's revi...

A musical biopic that understands its own music, that uses its songs not necessarily when they’re chronologically appropriate but when they fit emotionally and thematically, Rocketman beautifully and energetically tells the story of Elton John’s rise to and struggles with fame. Taron Egerton is notable for his work in the Kingsman films, but here he is given a true star role, imbuing his Elton wit...

Ridiculously, relentlessly, laugh-out-loud funny, we had a brilliant time in Booksmart. It's a last-day-before-graduation high school comedy about two girls determined to finally have some fun having been bookworms their entire lives. José loves the central relationship between the straight and lesbian best friends, Mike loves the empathy and openness the film shows towards every one of its charac...

First they killed Keanu Reeves' dog, and in revenge, he killed everyone, and it was brilliant. Then they had to make two sequels, and they couldn't come up with a very interesting story. But the action was still world class. Or was it? Recorded on 19th May 2019.

For the first time, Eavesdropping at the Movies is talking about television... or is it? Game of Thrones spent eight years and countless millions of dollars in pursuit of cinematic production values, visual spectacle, and the world's unquestioning fealty and attention. Is it television? Is it film? Is it something in between? How can we even talk about it if we can't define our terms? Well, after...

A big one. The Marvel Cinematic Universe closes a chapter - kind of - with Endgame, a three-hour behemoth that concludes stories that have been told over 21 films in 11 years. It's elegiac, both of its characters' fates following the end of Infinity War, and of itself, offering a good deal of fan service to its vast, devoted audience, some members of which have grown up knowing nothing other than...

Despite a wonderful central performance from Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh, one that earned him an Oscar nomination, and some beautiful imagery, At Eternity's Gate leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It's a film with a contemptible view of the rural folk it depicts, some overly distracting visual design (particularly an effect that renders the bottom third of the frame out of focus for long perio...

Todos somos marineros (in English, We’re All Sailors) was partly inspired by a workshop in which a group of students spent eight hours discussing the opening line of The Merchant of Venice, and a news story about three Russian sailors left stranded in a Peruvian port due to the sudden bankruptcy of the company they worked for. Writer-director Miguel Ángel Moulet developed a story about just that p...

The latest of Disney's CGI-driven remakes of its classic hand-drawn films, Dumbo features a rather cute elephant with too little screen time and two abysmal child actors with far too much. Tim Burton is on paper the ideal director to mine the circus setting for visual and situational surreality, splendour, and threat, and to a degree he does, but in comparison to the work that gave him his signatu...

Mirrors and doppelgangers and dual meanings and symmetries abound in Jordan Peele's Us, in which a family of four is terrorised one evening by a family of four identical copies. Like Get Out, Peele's 2017 debut, Us is hyper-aware of its genre's ability to make use of bold metaphor to offer coded commentary on social issues. We find more room for a variety of interpretations in Us than in Get Out,...

Jonah Hill's directorial debut is a small, charming hangout movie about LA skater culture in, as the title suggests, the mid-90s. For Mike - who sees comparisons with This is England and Skate Kitchen - it's somewhat unoriginal, if entertaining and engrossing, but José completely falls in love with it. It's certainly worth your time. Links to things mentioned in the podcast: Mike's piece on vertic...

José’s enjoyed three weeks in Cuba and the Dominican Republic and wants to return with a nice easy watch. Shazam! obliges. The latest DC movie follows a teenage orphan given the ability to transform into a thirty-something Action Man at the shout of a single word. It's light, colourful, a little corporate but what can you do? It's just what a jetlagged man needs. Recorded on 7th April 2019.

We visit 1949's romantic drama The Passionate Friends, a favourite of previous podcast guest Celia, who describes it as "what would have happened if they'd had the affair in Brief Encounter". It offers a complex story of love and relationships, characters who want different things from their relationships and a love triangle that gradually shifts and changes over many years. Mary (Ann Todd) loves...

A young girl from a tight-knit family in Norwich gets a shot at her dream, joining the WWE, the glamorous home of professional wrestling. Parental pride, sibling rivalry, and a lot of hard work ensues, as do great performances generating a lot of laughs. We're not that keen on some of the clichés - very little happens that you wouldn't expect, and some of the scenes take a long time to get there -...

A tweeny sci-fi based on a manga, Alita: Battle Angel tells the story of a young cyborg found on a scrapheap and given a new lease of life by a kindly doctor. She doesn't remember who is she or where she came from, but takes to the dystopian world around her, finding excitement and energy in it, quickly realising an aptitude for combat and inclination to explore, and developing a relationship with...

It's taken ten years but Marvel has finally branched out into films about heroes who aren't white guys. Following last year's Black Panther, Captain Marvel introduces Marvel's first female protagonist, Carol Danvers, a young woman caught up in conflicts between worlds and the mystery of who she is. José is enraptured by the film's visual beauty, Mike by its cat. Its mid-90s setting is mined for to...

Remaking his own film, Hans Petter Moland brings us a revenge thriller, starring - who else? - Liam Neeson as a model citizen turned remorseless killer on the trail of those responsible for his son's murder. Sounds like typical Neeson fare, but Cold Pursuit leaps between dramatic and blackly comic tones with verve, and offers something much more interesting and original than you're likely to expec...

In response to José's excursion into the world of Michael Curtiz a few months ago, Mike has picked four films of his own to discuss, the first being writer-director Dennis Gansel's 2008 high school drama Die Welle (The Wave). Based on the true story of a 1967 social experiment, Die Welle follows one week in a high school in which, as an exercise intended to teach his pupils about the methods and d...

The film noir to end films noir, Billy Wilder's classic crime drama Double Indemnity made its way to The Electric in Birmingham for a one-off screening, where a packed cinema ensured a great atmosphere. Mike, as usual, hadn't seen it, while José is very familiar with it, even having taught it before. Mike didn't entirely click with it, though he's able to appreciate much of what makes it a classic...

We return to Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk, his sumptuous romantic drama set in 1970s New York, for a deep dive, and take the opportunity to revisit his previous film, 2016's Best Picture winner Moonlight. It's an enriching conversation and we're glad we took the time to engage in it. We begin with Moonlight, working through our responses to what we experienced differently since having...