Shows / Eavesdropping at the Movies
Eavesdropping at the Movies
"I have this romantic idea of the movies as a conjunction of place, people and experiences, all different for each of us, a context in which individual and separate beings try to commune, where the individual experience overlaps with the communal and where that overlapping is demarcated by how we measure the differing responses between ourselves and the rest of the audience: do they laugh when we don’t (and what does that mean?); are they moved when we feel like laughing (and what does that say…
Episodes
Eavesdropping at the Movies368 - Psycho (1960)
We visit the MAC for a screening of the new 4k restoration of Psycho, one of the most analysed films of all time, and arguably director Alfred Hitchcock's most…
Eavesdropping at the Movies367 - Elvis
Baz Luhrmann's Elvis is here: a colourful, expressive telling of the story of Elvis Presley, through the eyes of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who opens the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies366 - Thor: Love and Thunder
We're into the land of diminishing returns with Marvel, it seems, with the novelty of a shared cinematic universe having worn off and the big storyline…
Eavesdropping at the Movies365 - The Afterlight
A one-off experience visits Birmingham's Electric Cinema: The Afterlight, an 82-minute collage assembled from footage in which every person in frame is now…
Eavesdropping at the Movies364 - Men
Alex Garland's Men is as blunt as its title, with nothing of the profundity it would like to think it possesses. It's slow and boring, too. Very pretty though…
Eavesdropping at the Movies363 - Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun is back after a mere 36 years away. We talk Tom Cruise's unusual longevity as a star, the ways in which this sequel uses and develops its predecessor's…
Eavesdropping at the Movies362 - Dressed to Kill
Problematic and protested against upon its release in 1980, and remaining so today, Dressed to Kill is nonetheless stylish and engrossing, showing off some…
Eavesdropping at the Movies361 - The Italian Job (1969)
The Italian Job is a classic British caper familiar to everyone who's grown up in the UK, so often has it been shown on telly and so embedded in British…
Eavesdropping at the Movies360 - Get Carter
Returning guest Celia joins us from Canada to discuss the 1970s Tyneside noir of Get Carter, a moody story of a man's investigation into his brother's death…
Eavesdropping at the Movies359 - Wonderland: Birmingham's Cinema Stories
Flatpack Festival and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery are running a marvellous exhibition until 30th October 2022: Wonderland tells stories of filmgoing and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies358 - Vortex
Gaspar Noé dials down his typical cinematic spectacle to bring us a slow and moving exploration of dementia and how it drives a loving couple apart. He still…
Eavesdropping at the Movies357 - Everything Everywhere All at Once
We've seen a lot of the multiverse lately, and Everything Everywhere All at Once brings to it a combination of Gen Z existential angst and mid-life…
Eavesdropping at the Movies356 - Neil Brand Presents Laurel and Hardy
Composer and musician Neil Brand brings a live show to the Electric Cinema as part of Flatpack Festival - Neil Brand Presents Laurel and Hardy is touring…
Eavesdropping at the Movies355 - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Marvel's invasion of the multiverse is now well under way, and in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this dense network of alternate realities sets…
Eavesdropping at the Movies354 - CODA
If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is to be believed, CODA, a comedy-drama about the tension caused in a deaf family when the one child who can…
Eavesdropping at the Movies353 - The Northman
Writer-director Robert Eggers, who previously wowed us with The Lighthouse, returns in style with a brutal, bloody Viking epic, based on Amleth, the figure in…
Eavesdropping at the Movies352 - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Upon revisiting our podcast on the previous entry in the Harry Potter-adjacent Fantastic Beasts series, The Crimes of Grindelwald, we find that we could…
Eavesdropping at the Movies351 - Morbius
Sony's Spider-Man Universe has given us a charming Venom origin story, a rather less charming Venom sequel, and now another film about a well-intentioned man…
Eavesdropping at the Movies350 - Deep Water
Director Adrian Lyne, who made the Eighties his erotic, thrilling playground with Flashdance, 9½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction, returns with the erotic thriller…
Eavesdropping at the Movies349 - The Worst Person in the World
A Palme d'Or-nominated millennial comic drama from Norway, whose lead, Renate Reinsve, won Best Actress at Cannes last year, The Worst Person in the World…
Eavesdropping at the Movies348 - X (2022)
Referential and reverential of classic slashers from decades past, Ti West's X is likely just the sort of thing the dedicated horror fan wants to see - but to…
Eavesdropping at the Movies347 - Ambulance
In the high-concept mould of Speed and Unstoppable, Michael Bay's Ambulance gives us an ambulance, hijacked by bank robbers, that isn't allowed to stop moving…
Eavesdropping at the Movies346 - The Batman
The latest in a long line of Batman reboots, The Batman claims the definite article for itself - and deserves to. Richly shot, dark, romantic expressiveness…
Eavesdropping at the Movies345 - Death on the Nile (2022)
The latest in a long line of star-studded adaptations of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries, Death on the Nile sinks without trace under the weight of Kenneth…
Eavesdropping at the Movies344 - Uncharted
Having gone through fourteen years of development hell, the first of Sony's planned videogame adaptations arrives - Uncharted, starring Tom Holland, turns the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies343 - The Apartment
As Birmingham's Electric reopens following a protracted period of uncertainty as to whether it was gone for good, it turns to a programme of classics to…
Eavesdropping at the Movies342 - Belfast
Kenneth Branagh writes and directs a drama based on his own childhood in Belfast, at the time the Troubles began. We discuss the portrayal of a happy family…
Eavesdropping at the Movies341 - Nightmare Alley (1947)
We explore 1947's Nightmare Alley, directed by Edmund Goulding, and compare it to Guillermo del Toro's new adaptation of the material, which we find superior…
Eavesdropping at the Movies340 - Nightmare Alley (2021)
We talk swoony visuals, alcoholism, a femme fatale pastiche, moral descent, Bradley Cooper's sexual presence and more in our discussion of Nightmare Alley…
Eavesdropping at the Movies339 - Parallel Mothers
José gives Mike a history lesson on the Spanish Civil War, the scars it left on Spanish culture and society, and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar's own relationship…
Eavesdropping at the Movies338 - Titane
We talk feminism, body horror, monsters, trans tropes, masculinity and more in our discussion of writer-director Julia Ducournau's shocking, transgressive, and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies337 - Licorice Pizza
We're remotely joined by filmmaker, previous guest, and, crucially, Mike's brother, Stephen Glass, for a discussion of Paul Thomas Anderson's period romance…
Eavesdropping at the Movies336 - The Lost Daughter
Maggie Gyllenhaal's debut feature as a director, The Lost Daughter, paints a powerful portrait of Leda, a middle-aged woman for whom motherhood never came…
Eavesdropping at the Movies335 - The Power of the Dog
We talk subverted expectations, how an artificial performance makes sense on a character who's pretending to be something he's not, the way in which forty…
Eavesdropping at the Movies334 - Don't Look Up
We've enjoyed Adam McKay's previous couple of films, The Big Short and Vice, in which he dramatises real events in a pointed, opinionated, satirical manner. He…
Eavesdropping at the Movies333 - The Hand of God
Paolo Sorrentino reaches into his childhood to tell a story that's in equal parts comic and tragic, with access to the off-kilter and fabulistic, in The Hand…
Eavesdropping at the Movies332 - The Matrix Resurrections
After eighteen years away and vast changes in the blockbuster landscape in which it once broke incredible new ground, the Matrix series is back with a fourth…
Eavesdropping at the Movies331 - West Side Story (2021)
Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story is here at last. The obvious question it raises is just why such a well-regarded film needs a remake - and the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies330 - Daguerréotypes
In 1975, caring for her infant son and unable to spend much time away from home, Agnès Varda turned her camera on her neighbours on her street, Rue Daguerre in…
Eavesdropping at the Movies329 - House of Gucci
A true story of love, ambition, passion, betrayal, and retribution, House of Gucci is entertaining, interesting, and beautifully played... so why isn't it good…
Eavesdropping at the Movies328 - Spencer
As he did with 2016's Jackie, director Pablo Larraín explores the life, image, and legacy of a woman publicly struck by tragedy in Spencer, a fabulistic biopic…
Eavesdropping at the Movies327 - Mothering Sunday
A film of surprising delights - certainly for Mike, who hates anything that looks like it could appear on ITV - Mothering Sunday tells the story of one key…
Eavesdropping at the Movies326 - The French Dispatch
The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson's love letter to The New Yorker, is, as you might expect, a charming way to pass a couple of hours - but not as funny or as…
Eavesdropping at the Movies325 - Last Night in Soho
Edgar Wright's highly anticipated psychological horror, Last Night in Soho, reaches cinemas, and we dive into its themes, its visual magnificence, its…
Eavesdropping at the Movies324 - Nosferatu (1922)
In a chilly outdoor screening at the Coffin Works in Birmingham, we indulge in Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist classic. José's seen it many…
Eavesdropping at the Movies323 - The Last Duel
Don't believe the trailer, which gives a poor impression of what's in store: Ridley Scott's latest historical epic is lighter on the action than you'd expect…
Eavesdropping at the Movies322 - Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Venom returns after his surprisingly enjoyable, if trashy, 2018 solo debut, but we don't find much of a way to have fun with this sequel. Its cast is…
Eavesdropping at the Movies321 - No Time to Die
Daniel Craig's Bond bids us goodbye in No Time to Die, the culmination of his fifteen-year tenure as the gentleman's spy - but is it really Bond? The…
Eavesdropping at the Movies320 - The Many Saints of Newark
We're joined by Dr. Ben Lamb of Teesside University, television scholar and Sopranos megafan, to discuss The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel to The…
Eavesdropping at the Movies319 - Respect
Aretha Franklin, an icon of American music, receives a dispiritingly by-the-numbers biopic in Respect, which takes this perfect subject for such a film and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies318 - Undine
The fairytale figure of the undine has been used and developed in the arts for two hundred years, and Christian Petzold, whose Transit we loved, brings his…
Eavesdropping at the Movies317 - The Night House
Based on the trailer, Mike was interested in The Night House, a horror film about a recently bereaved woman and the secrets she discovers her husband was…
Eavesdropping at the Movies316 - Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
A new day, a new entry in the MCU, and on this occasion we're introduced to an entirely new set of characters and mythos: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten…
Eavesdropping at the Movies315 - The Courier
Benedict Cumberbatch gets himself embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis in The Courier, a dramatisation of the true story of Greville Wynne, a British…
Eavesdropping at the Movies314 - Free Guy
Ryan Reynolds' schtick, so irritating for so long, is winning us back, and Free Guy is built around his entire star persona, the self-effacing originality of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies313 - Stillwater
Matt Damon gives arguably a career best performance in Stillwater, as a tightly-wound, reserved, Oklahoma roughneck doing his best to support his daughter, who…
Eavesdropping at the Movies311 - Jungle Cruise
Disney has already turned one of its theme park rides into a box office colossus - is it time for another? They seem to think so, bringing us Jungle Cruise, an…
Eavesdropping at the Movies310 - The Human Voice
Freely based, as the closing credits tell us, on Jean Cocteau's 1930 play of the same name, The Human Voice sees Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar working in the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies312 - Shiva Baby
A chamber piece that asks what happens when your life of carefully constructed lies is exposed, Shiva Baby is a smart, tense comedy set in that most…
Eavesdropping at the Movies309 - The Suicide Squad
Apparently dissatisfied with the dismal reception of 2016's Suicide Squad, DC has bravely decided to vaguely reboot the property with a spot-the-difference…