Eavesdropping At The Movies

For our 400th episode we indulge in a pair of horror sequels, both heavy on faith, possession, and Christianity. One is part of a modern universe of interconnected stories, characters, and demons, the other represents the reignition of a series whose sequels have been produced intermittently for fifty years without receiving anything like the acclaim of the film that spawned them. The Nun II is the eighth film in the ten-year-old Conjuring Universe; The Exorcist: Believer is only the sixth Exorcist film in half a century. Truly, they don't make them like they used to. Neither film in this double bill is very good in totality, but The Nun II contains imaginative and effective set pieces and visual ideas, while The Exorcist: Believer is content to discard a reasonably interesting first act in favour of useless and charmless reference to, and pathetic reenactment of, William Friedkin's 1973 original. We discuss what we think the films are about, wittingly or otherwise - horror is commonly understood to often al

We heartily disagree on The Creator, a sci-fi film directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards, who made his name with Monsters in 2010, which he made largely by himself for half a million dollars, and quickly graduated to tentpole cinema with Godzilla and Rogue One. José had a wonderful time, finding it marvellous to look at and emotionally effective, though leaving room to criticise cinema's continued insistence that John David Washington is a star. Mike finds it dull, brim-full of clichés, and even a little ugly at times, although Edwards' sense of how to convey scale, already shown off in his monster movies, remains intact here. Also featured: ChatGPT and how AI will kill us all. Recorded on 1st October 2023.

The Old Oak, possibly Ken Loach's final film, is his least challenging for some time, and that's perhaps why it's an easier watch than normal. A northern English town sees the arrival of several Syrian families made refugees by the Assad regime; TJ, the owner of the local pub, begins a friendship with Yara, a daughter of one family. The film draws a connection between the displaced Syrians and British former mining communities, both of which groups have had their ways of life taken from them, and sees communal dining as a means to embrace other peoples and practise solidarity. We find it easy to see its cogs turning, and simplistic in its attitudes and characters, but although The Old Oak shows its share of misery and loss, it also conveys a hopeful feeling at times. An interesting film that will generate conversation, and worth seeing. Recorded on 1st October 2023.

One of the great concert films, if not the greatest, receives a 4K restoration four decades after its release, and comes to our local IMAX Digital screen. Talking Heads were huge at the time that 1984's Stop Making Sense was released, and José loved their music, but something about the film didn't appeal to him, and he never saw it. Though Mike is familiar with the band, he only knows a couple of Talking Heads songs and didn't expect to ever get around to seeing the film, so what a way to experience it. The restoration is beautiful and the huge IMAX screen shows it off spectacularly. We discuss the ability of celluloid to capture rich, textured imagery that digital acquisition formats have never matched; David Byrne's captivating presence, handsomeness, and exuberant movement; the film's cinematic style and what puts it above other concert films; the racial composition of the band, both the core members and additional musicians, and what it may or may not reflect about American culture of the time; and more.

Denzel Washington returns for the third and final instalment of the Equalizer trilogy, in which former government assassin Robert McCall devotes his time and skills to avenging for the little guy. This time, he finds himself in Mediterranean Europe, embroiled in a fight to protect a coastal town from terrorisation by the Camorra, the Mafia of southern Italy. The Equalizer 3 shares the contemplative tone and pervasive sense of loss of its predecessors. Here, there's a focus on physical infirmity and vulnerability, a gunshot McCall receives early on forcing a long recuperation, slow, careful approaches to walking down stairs, and the use of a cane. Action erupts quickly and violently, emphasised by director Antoine Fuqua's camera and editing - McCall is wounded, but maintains his ruthlessness and murderous efficiency. We compare the action and Washington to Rambo: Last Blood and its star, Sylvester Stallone, which took a similarly staccato approach to its action, clearly informed by Stallone's age and inabili

José enjoys the examination of contemporary relationships in Ira Sachs' Passages, a Paris-set romantic drama in which a marriage is disrupted when one partner begins an affair with a friend. Mike thinks that the characters' problems aren't real problems and that if the unfaithful partner just grew up then everything would be fine. Recorded on 5th September 2023.

The second half of our Barbenheimer double bill takes us to the BFI IMAX in London to see Oppenheimer, the complex story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's infamous role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, the creation and use of which changed history. Writer-director Christopher Nolan, as he has done increasingly over his career, makes extensive use of IMAX 70mm film to tell the story, but as well the spectacle and landscape we're used to it showing off, here it's devoted to the intimate. We're joined by Mike's brother and previous guest Stephen to discuss the film, and consider the use of IMAX for close-ups and portraiture, as well as the story's structure and how the editing and music create pace, the film's implicit attitude towards Communism, whether Florence Pugh is treated unfairly, the way in which black-and-white footage is used to convey a shift in perspective, how the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are handled, the Stan Brakhage-esque imagery that conveys the radical sense that a

After a few months off, during which Mike has forgotten how to record podcasts - sorry about the audio early on - we're back for Barbenheimer weekend. Never mind your Infinity Wars, this is the crossover they said would never happen, and the clash of tone between joy-of-pink Barbie and sin-of-man Oppenheimer, coincidentally released during the same weekend, has unexpectedly and charmingly reignited the public's interest in going to the pictures. The question isn't, "which one will you see?", it's, "which one will you see first?" And we picked Barbie. Our screening was packed with young girls typically unaddressed by the biggest releases, and this film does a great job of correcting that. José describes its treatment of patriarchy as a fact as one of the most radical things he's seen, and it's a sign of where we are culturally that it can be, and that every joke and piece of commentary the film builds upon it is implicitly understood by an audience the film treats as intelligent. Yes, Barbie's a toy advert.

Rye Lane follows two new friends, both reeling from breakups, as they spend a day together walking the streets of London and getting into scrapes. It's a well-intentioned romcom with some things to like, but it suffers from the implausible writing and poor performance of the male half of its romantic pairing, and a lack of cinematic nous. Recorded on 20th March 2023.

Michael B. Jordan makes his first feature as director in his third Creed film as star. Creed III sees a retired Adonis Creed living comfortably with his wife and daughter, the walls of their mansion coated with trophies achieved during successful careers... until a figure from Adonis' past comes back to haunt him. If that language sounds clichéd, then good, because the film is nothing but. 2015's Creed was a powerful reinvigoration of the Rocky series, so perhaps it's fitting that this third instalment is reminiscent of those Roman numeralled sequels, all soap opera and surface. What could have been rich and dramatic is instead thin and uninterested in complexity. But the fights are nice and punchy and Jonathan Majors' Damian is a bright spark, so there's that. Creed III isn't a dreadful film, but it falls terribly short of its obvious potential and of the standard set by its predecessor. Recorded on 7th March 2023.

Like his previous film, Old, M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin is an intriguing, self-contained, efficient thriller - although not nearly as satisfying as it could be. The setup: A family staying at that classic American horror location, the cabin in the woods, is taken hostage by four invaders who've had visions of the apocalypse. To say more would rob the film of some of its surprise, and its ability to keep you questioning what will happen is one of its pleasures - so think twice about listening to the podcast before you see it, because we spoil everything! There's a lot to like, including its portrayal of a same-sex couple so unremarkable that the characters' sexuality barely needs addressing (although more affection shown between them would have been welcome) and Dave Bautista's calm but imposing presence as the leader of the intruders. But it's so keen to have its sceptical protagonists arguing with what their opponents tell them that it doesn't explore the dramatic and moral questions it has the

We look at another supposed love letter to cinema, Empire of Light, which stars the beautiful Dreamland Cinema in Margate as the titular Empire, the best-developed character in an otherwise lacklustre film. Its themes of racism, patriarchy, mental illness and cinema as escapism form more of a patchwork quilt than a tapestry, and the film is thin throughout. Still, it did the job of activating our memories of cinemagoing and working in cinemas, which we discuss, and despite his knowing it shouldn't have, the story worked emotionally on Mike. It's really not good though. Recorded on 1st February 2023.

Steven Spielberg's long-awaited semi-autobiographical reminiscence of his childhood is here, and it's perfect. Too perfect. José swoons over the way The Fabelmans transports him to its place and time and shows love and understanding to everybody it depicts, but has to admit that a few rougher edges here and there would have done it a favour. There's only so much drama in the life of Spielberg's young avatar, Sammy Fabelman, and that which there is is on the tame side. But Spielberg's love for his parents is obvious and appealing, as is his love for cinema, which he's unafraid to get specific about - the sequences that show Sammy making and screening films convey an interest in the aesthetics, technicalities, and effects of film, rather than giving it the far vaguer "magic of the movies" treatment such "love letters to cinema" often offer. The Fabelmans is as unwilling to explore the dark side of humanity as we're used to Spielberg being, but it avoids his proclivity for schmaltz, and José loved it. So there.

A film Mike was doing his damndest to avoid seeing but eventually agreed to, Babylon is an epic period comedy-drama about the excess and industrialisation of Hollywood in the '20s and '30s, and an epic bomb at the box office. Its aesthetics, characterisations, use of race and class, vulgarity, set pieces, bizarre ending and more are up for discussion. Did Mike have as terrible a time as he anticipated? Recorded on 29th January 2023.

Cate Blanchett's performance as the title character is the highlight of the otherwise unutterably deflating Tár. What begins as an unexpectedly captivating profile of a world-class musical conductor and promises to develop into a story of sexual and psychological intrigue ultimately fails to satisfy when it refuses to offer thrills and drama - not to mention plot resolution. We pick through our problems with it, including what we find implausible, its reactionary attitudes and low opinion of young people, and its embrace of ambiguity and lack of interest in developing the story of Tár's downfall. Recorded on 15th January 2023.

We disagree on Till, which dramatises the events surrounding the infamous lynching of Emmett Till, a black fourteen-year-old boy abducted, tortured, and shot in Mississippi in 1955, and his mother's decisive actions following the crime, which included having his mutilated body shown in a public funeral service with an open casket, and having brutal photographs of it published in the press. Emmett's murder and Mamie's activism forced the USA to confront the reality of its racism and catalysed the civil rights movement - of course, progress made subsequently was not instant and vast racial inequality and injustice is present in the country to this day, but the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 might not have happened if not for the events of nine years prior. While Till's story has often been told and referenced in music, documentary and other media, it's surprising to say the least that it's taken this long to be the subject of a major feature film. Perhaps it's the visceral nature of the case, the impo

We take a trip to London to see Avatar: The Way of Water again, this time on the biggest screen in the country at the BFI IMAX, in high frame rate and 3D. We discuss the difference in experience between seeing it here and at the IMAX Digital cinema at Cineworld Broad Street, where we saw it previously. Mike questions why the film switches between 24fps and 48fps, rather than sticking with the high frame rate throughout - director James Cameron describes how HFR assists in making 3D imagery less difficult to resolve, and implies that he limits its use to avoid the so-called "soap opera effect" that made the Hobbit films and Gemini Man look so cheap, but Mike doesn't buy that it's necessary to keep returning to 24fps, and thinks Cameron's a big scaredy-cat. José, on the other hand, can't seem to tell the difference between the frame rates at all. We also discuss what a second viewing of the film brings into focus that we hadn't put our finger on before, Mike comparing it to the nature documentaries that IMAX h

The stage musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1988 novel, Matilda, about a young girl with hyperintelligence, telekinetic powers, uncaring parents and a terrifying headmistress, premiered in 2010 and has gone on to achieve enormous popularity, as well as seven Olivier Awards and five Tonys. This cinematic adaptation features the same music and the same director as the stage version, but does it have the same magic? Recorded on 29th December 2022.

An icon across continental Europe though barely known in the UK, the life of Sisi, or Sissi - Empress Elisabeth of Austria to you - has been dramatised often, including in a famous trilogy of films depicting her youth that made Romy Schneider a star. In Corsage, the role is played by Vicky Krieps, and the perspective we're given is of a woman whose societal purpose it is to bear children and look beautiful reaching the age of 40, a milestone that focuses her mind. It's a film made by women about the particular effect that ageing has on women under patriarchy, but is it complex and insightful or predictable and obvious? Recorded on 28th December 2022.

A mere thirteen years after the release of the highest-grossing film of all time, its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, arrives to a cinematic landscape that has changed significantly. James Cameron's epic sci-fi franchise Avatar began life in 2009, when Marvel had released only two of its (at present) 30 films which would make universes, crossovers, and interconnected stories de rigueur for blockbuster cinema - and one of which would, briefly, overtake Avatar's record for worldwide gross. That's how long it's taken to create just one sequel to Avatar, with no indication that anything more complex than a linear progression of further sequels is planned. And there was no question that this sequel would, like its predecessor, make use of stereoscopic 3D - but while the 2009 film catalysed a new wave of interest in the technology, it has since fallen out of favour, as it always has over the years. As 2023 approaches, is The Way of Water out of date? Recorded on 26th December 2022.