Episodios

  • Eavesdropping at the Movies: In Conversation at the University of Warwick

    Eavesdropping at the Movies: In Conversation at the University of Warwick
    May 3 2025
    What a joy! We were invited to the University of Warwick Film and Television Studies department for a conversation with James MacDowell about Eavesdropping at the Movies: how it began, why we do it, what we get out of it, how we make it. We hope you enjoy what was an enormously satisfying hour and a bit in which we had the privilege to discuss our practice of film criticism with an audience keen to ask questions. Thank you to James for chairing and to Julie Lobalzo Wright for inviting us. Recorded on 29th April 2025.
    Más Menos
    1 h y 19 m
  • 441 - Ne Zha 2

    441 - Ne Zha 2
    Mar 26 2025
    Over the last couple of months, Chinese children's fantasy Ne Zha 2 has quickly, and arguably quietly, become the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the first animated film to gross over $2 billion. It's hard to keep up with the records it's been breaking - but can we keep up with the plot? No is the answer, but we readily accept that younger minds, and minds more in tune with Ne Zha 2's cultural context and mythological basis, won't feel as overwhelmed as we did. It did make us feel old, but this audiovisual whirlwind is beautiful and coherent - writer-director Jiaozi exhibits great control over the most energetic of action scenes, and has an eye for striking, colourful imagery. We discuss how closely some of the film's visual design and messaging might reflect the particular culture from which it comes, or whether it's so different from American cinema after all, and ask why this and last year's Inside Out 2 have been able to make so much money (the Pixar film grossing $1.7 billion and becoming the then-eighth-highest-grossing film of all time) with such little response from critics. Recorded on 24th March 2025.
    Más Menos
    34 m
  • 440 - Mickey 17

    440 - Mickey 17
    Mar 24 2025
    After a little time off, we're back at the cinema to see Bong Joon Ho's sci-fi comedy, Mickey 17, in which Robert Pattinson dies. Repeatedly. Leaving Earth on a spaceship seeking to colonise an icy planet, Pattinson's Mickey is an "Expendable": a disposable worker given lethal assignments, regenerated by a biological printer, and sent out to die again. But when the 17th version of Mickey fails to die at the mandibles of the local fauna, he finds his way back to the colony, only to find that he's already been reprinted as Mickey 18 - and clone coexistence is strictly prohibited. We're disappointed by what looked like a marvellously energetic, knockabout comedy and social satire from the trailer. Even considering the film's very broad tone, there's too little in the characterisation to really buy in to, a severe lack of pace, and an ending that betrays it. Nonetheless, as failures go, it's an interesting one, playing with plenty of ideas, and featuring more than enough good jokes to support it. Our recommendation of Mickey 17 is far from whole-hearted, but you ought to give it a whirl. Recorded on 23rd March 2025.
    Más Menos
    40 m
  • 439 - The Brutalist

    439 - The Brutalist
    Jan 29 2025
    We visit BFI Southbank for a 70mm screening of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet's epic period drama. It's a super-sized film - 215 minutes, not including the intermission - and it deserves a super-sized podcast, for which we're joined, as we occasionally are, by Mike's brother, Stephen, who's already seen the film once. It's an extraordinarily complex, subtle and absorbing film that draws on countless themes and parts of history in telling its story of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and architect who escapes to America and finds a wealthy client enamoured with him. We dig in to the film's themes with breathless enthusiasm, and talk sex, racism, the immigrant experience, long takes, rape, capitalism, doing things for effect, art, aspiration, jealousy, the value of 70mm, and much more. José describes The Brutalist as his film of the year; Mike ponders whether he likes it more than the Robbie Williams monkey movie. Recorded on 28th January 2025.
    Más Menos
    1 h y 54 m
  • 438 - Presence

    438 - Presence
    Jan 25 2025
    "Steven Soderbergh's making a horror film from the perspective of the ghost" turns out to be a sentence specifically designed to appeal to Mike, who has been looking forward to Presence for ages. (José struggles to remember the film's title, even moments after having seen it.) But part of that pitch is deeply misleading. Presence's trailers were loaded with quotes from overeager horror publications that praised the film's fear factor, which leads to a little confusion when the final product is revealed to be a family drama that, despite the ghost whose eyes we see everything through, isn't even trying to scare us. And that's great! We just didn't realise that's what we were in for. What Presence gives us is a compelling exercise in film form and storytelling that constantly maintains our interest and which we thoroughly enjoy, but which sadly disappoints us in a variety of ways - though only a few of which we agree on. What interests Mike about the film's camerawork and handling of its invisible, point-of-view character leaves José unimpressed; Mike doesn't get what José does out of the critique of modern masculinity. But despite our disagreements and disappointments, we enthusiastically recommend Presence as an experiment worth experiencing. It's intriguing, efficient, and original - and there's very little like it. Recorded on 24th January 2025.
    Más Menos
    25 m
  • 437 - Babygirl

    437 - Babygirl
    Jan 24 2025
    Nicole Kidman gives a compelling, vulnerable performance in Babygirl, as a woman for whom sexual satisfaction requires her to relinquish the power she otherwise projects throughout her life, and who begins an affair with a much younger man she finds herself unable to resist. Unfortunately, that's the only significant thing to recommend about the film, which we find superficial, badly thought out, and most crucially of all for Mike, nowhere near steamy enough. It's good fun to discuss, though, and gives us opportunity to reminisce about sneaking into films we weren't allowed to see when we were kids. Stick around to learn José's Looney Tunes technique for fooling the ticket guy. Recorded on 23rd January 2025.
    Más Menos
    41 m
  • 436 - Maria

    436 - Maria
    Jan 23 2025
    The third film in Pablo Larraín's trilogy of iconic women, following 2016's Jackie and 2021's Spencer, Maria shows us the final week of the life of opera singer Maria Callas, who at the age of 53 is experiencing delusions, hallucinations, and the fear that her once-perfect singing voice has abandoned her. Mike isn't familiar with Maria Callas; José is (despite worrying before we started recording that he wouldn't have much to say when expected to explain who she is). No familiarity with her is required, however, to enjoy the film. Larraín's elegant direction, Steven Knight's intelligent screenplay, and Angelina Jolie's extraordinary, subtle performance combine beautifully to explore Maria's ego, fears, and passion. Maria's delusions, in which choirs fill town squares, orchestras back her in her apartment, and a fascinated journalist follows her around Paris chronicling her memories, are evident throughout the film... everywhere but in song. She knows all too well that her voice is leaving her, she hopes for and needs its return, and ultimately, the film renders her struggle with it a fight to hold on to life itself. It's sympathetic, understandable, and beautiful. Maria is the best film of Larraín's impressive body of work, and features perhaps the best performance of Jolie's. See it. (We also discuss Robbie Williams, because Mike saw Better Man, the Robbie Williams monkey movie, and is desperate to talk about it.) Recorded on 21st January 2025.
    Más Menos
    56 m
  • 435 - Nosferatu (2024)

    435 - Nosferatu (2024)
    Jan 6 2025
    Writer-director Robert Eggers, whose reputation for aesthetically rich, deeply-researched and idiosyncratic horror precedes him, has long been working on a remake of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the 1922 German Expressionist classic whose influence has been felt in the horror genre for a century. It's a big fish to try to take down, but it's source material that feels like it exists especially for him - how does he do? Very well, as it turns out... although, in classic fashion, we manage to talk around what a fantastic time we had by concentrating on our criticisms. Ignore them until you've taken yourself to the biggest cinema you can to see it - it's an experience you should have. Then come back and listen to us discuss the debt Eggers' Nosferatu owes to the colour tinting processes of the silent era, how the second half gets bogged down in tropes and plot, the delineation between sex and love, the pressure to be accessible, whether horror needs to be scary, and the important lesson we learned from Shrek Forever After. Recorded on 2nd January 2025.
    Más Menos
    55 m
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_webcro805_stickypopup