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 Movies248 - Inception
Could we have found a Christopher Nolan film that José actually enjoys? We explore the brilliantly imagined and executed Inception, a heist movie set inside…
Eavesdropping at the Movies247 - The Dark Knight Rises
We finish off Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, the most entertaining and enjoyable of the three films. In a Gotham free of crime…
Eavesdropping at the Movies246 - The Dark Knight
Having established a muted tone in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's Batman series receives a welcome injection of flair in Heath Ledger's Joker, the villain…
Eavesdropping at the Movies245 - Interstellar
Planet Earth is dying, dust storms are wiping out crops, and all-American single dad, former NASA pilot and corn farmer Matthew McConaughey is our last hope…
Eavesdropping at the Movies244 - Batman Begins
Cineworld's reopening brings socially distanced screenings of past hits while the studios figure out their strategies for new releases, and with the highly…
Eavesdropping at the Movies243 - Killer Joe
Our exploration of William Friedkin ends almost where it began, with his second collaboration with Tracy Letts, who, following the adaptation of his second…
Eavesdropping at the Movies242 - The Exorcist
No exploration of William Friedkin would be complete without The Exorcist, 1973's iconic horror about a little girl possessed by a demon, and so watch it we…
Eavesdropping at the Movies241 - Jade
As likeable as it is incoherent, Jade oozes style and steaminess. David Caruso's assistant district attorney, searching for the killer of a businessman, finds…
Eavesdropping at the Movies240 - To Live and Die in L.A.
To Live and Die in L.A., William Friedkin's 1985 neo-noir, is kinky, colourful, offbeat and as much a Los Angeles film as The French Connection is a New York…
Eavesdropping at the Movies239 - Sorcerer
William Friedkin remakes Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear, telling four strangers' tale of their two-hundred-mile journey through the South American…
Eavesdropping at the Movies238 - The French Connection
A classic of Hollywood crime, The French Connection paints a bleak picture of life and justice in America, as Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle demonstrates that no…
Eavesdropping at the Movies237 - Bug
Adapted from Tracy Letts' 1996 play of the same name, 2006's Bug, directed by William Friedkin, sees two lonely people with traumatic histories connect and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies236 - Da 5 Bloods
Spike Lee's latest joint sees four US Army veterans, the Bloods, return to their former battlefields in Vietnam in search of two things: the body of their…
Eavesdropping at the Movies235 - Vitalina Varela
A slow, careful drama, Vitalina Varela - named for the non-professional actor at the centre, who plays a version of herself - tells a story of grief, anger…
Eavesdropping at the Movies234 - Hook
A film dear to Mike's heart since childhood, and a large blot on Steven Spielberg's career despite its financial success, Hook imagines a world in which Peter…
Eavesdropping at the Movies233 - Hoop Dreams
From a central focus on two aspiring young basketball hopefuls from Chicago, Hoop Dreams weaves an incredible tapestry of race and class in America, without…
Eavesdropping at the Movies232 - Ema
A somewhat elliptical family drama from Pablo Larraín, Ema tells the story of a young woman who returned a child she adopted, feels the loss deeply, and wants…
Eavesdropping at the Movies231 - Burt Lancaster
On a very special Eavesdropping at the Movies requested by our listeners, José takes us through the career of Burt Lancaster, every one of whose films he has…
Eavesdropping at the Movies230 - I vitelloni
Federico Fellini invites us to hang out with a group of unemployed, lazy twentysomethings in 1953's I vitelloni, one of his earliest films and an interesting…
Eavesdropping at the Movies229 - Fedora
Stardom, beauty, the machinery of Hollywood, madness, age - 1978's Fedora sees Billy Wilder occupying much of the same thematic territory of his 1950 classic…
Eavesdropping at the Movies228 - To Be or Not to Be
Carole Lombard and Jack Benny lead chaos in 1942's To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch's classic black comedy set amongst a group of actors turned resistors in…
Eavesdropping at the Movies227 - Southland Tales
A film many have heard of and few have seen, Southland Tales is writer-director Richard Kelly's infamous difficult second album. Six years after his eventual…
Eavesdropping at the Movies226 - Twentieth Century
A prototypical screwball comedy, 1934's Twentieth Century sees John Barrymore delightfully chewing the scenery as a pompous theatre impresario who discovers…
Eavesdropping at the Movies225 - Stranger on the Third Floor
A 62-minute-long, 1940 B-movie whose director you haven't heard of and whose top-billed star has barely ten minutes of screen time, you'd be forgiven for…
Eavesdropping at the Movies224 - Le Cercle rouge
We conclude our dalliance with Jean-Pierre Melville with 1970's Le Cercle rouge, a heist film with an impressive cast of Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volonté, and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies223 - Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville draws upon his experiences in the French Resistance for 1969's Army of Shadows, which depicts an ensemble including Lino Ventura, Simone…
Eavesdropping at the Movies222 - Le Doulos
We visit another Melville, 1963's Le Doulos, about a network of criminals searching for an informer in their midst. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays his thief with…
Eavesdropping at the Movies221 - Un flic
Jean-Pierre Melville's final film, Un flic (A Cop), has a bleak feel, its characters isolated amongst harsh architecture and the neverending business of cops…
Eavesdropping at the Movies220 - Commando and Predator
Hollywood action in the Eighties was a world unto itself, and we look back on two specimens of one of the genre's icons, Arnold Schwarzenegger. One a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies219 - Bacurau
A political parable, satire, thriller, high-concept actioner, horror, and Western all at once, 2019 Cannes Jury Prize winner Bacurau is a wild experience and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies218 - Contagion
We may be living under lockdown conditions, but no virus can stop us, and to prove it we're taking on Steven Soderbergh's 2011 thriller Contagion, about a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies217 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
A delicate, intelligent love story, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire undulates with complex, interlocking themes and emotions. It's a film about…
Eavesdropping at the Movies216 - Dark Waters
A legal drama about the biggest corruption scandal you've never heard of, Dark Waters tells the story of lawyer Robert Bilott's twenty year long fight to…
Eavesdropping at the Movies215 - Queen & Slim
An assured debut feature from director Melina Matsoukas, Queen & Slim is a romantic, fugitive road movie with a state-of-the-nation feel. After an awkward…
Eavesdropping at the Movies214 - American Factory
The latest winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar's American Factory is a complex and brilliant examination…
Eavesdropping at the Movies213 - The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, a tale of two lighthouse keepers stranded during a storm, is a visual treat in black and white that stuns and engrosses us. A…
Eavesdropping at the Movies212 - Parasite
It's one of José's films of the year; it leaves Mike cold. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite depicts social inequality in South Korea through a lower-class family that…
Eavesdropping at the Movies211 - Birds of Prey
Trying to build a portrait of patriarchal power and subjugation that shapes the lives of five women, Birds of Prey takes a solid enough foundation and executes…
Eavesdropping at the Movies210 - Uncut Gems
Independent filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie team up with Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems, an energetic, evolving crime thriller set in Manhattan's Diamond…
Eavesdropping at the Movies209 - Bombshell
The film that wants to make us feel bad for people who worked at Fox News, Bombshell casts former stars Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson as heroines fighting…
Eavesdropping at the Movies208 - 1917
An event movie sold as much on its behind-the-scenes technical challenges as its story and genre, 1917 uses invisibly stitched long takes to convey the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies207 - Long Day's Journey into Night
José's seen it once and returns to its depths for a second time, alongside Mike, who knows nothing about it. Chinese writer-director Bi Gan's Long Day's…
Eavesdropping at the Movies206 - The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie returns to the guns 'n' geezers mine with The Gentlemen, a caper with a beautifully dressed and enjoyably playful cast. We discuss his stylish…
Eavesdropping at the Movies205 - Jojo Rabbit
Its intentions are good, but we have trouble with Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi's comedy about a young boy in Nazi Germany, a fanatical member of the Hitler…
Eavesdropping at the Movies204 - Little Women (2019)
José has been brushing up, recently rewatching the 1933, 1959 and 1994 adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's novel. Mike has neither seen any adaptations nor read…
Eavesdropping at the Movies203 - Star Wars Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
The Star Wars saga ends - for the third time - with The Rise of Skywalker, a return to J. J. Abrams' whimsical ways, following Rian Johnson's creative and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies202 - Cats
It made Mike so physically uncomfortable that he had to go into hiding. It caught José up, to his surprise as much as anyone else's, in its wildness and visual…
Eavesdropping at the Movies201 - Marriage Story
A beautifully observed, intelligently written and transparently played drama, Marriage Story shows the separation of two people with deep and ongoing love for…
Eavesdropping at the Movies200 – Luis Ospina on MUBI – The Vampires of Poverty, A Paper Tiger, and It All Started at the End
Luis Ospina, the influential Colombian filmmaker who died very recently, was last month the subject of an mini retrospective of his work by MUBI, who showed…
Eavesdropping at the Movies199 - The Report
Adam Driver and Annette Bening shine in writer-director Scott Z. Burns' historical drama The Report, about Senate staffer Daniel Jones and Senator Dianne…
Eavesdropping at the Movies198 - Harriet
A truly deserved biopic, Harriet tells the story of the escaped slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who served as part of the Underground Railroad…
Eavesdropping at the Movies197 - Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
A trip to the Mockingbird Cinema in the Custard Factory yields a massively hyped up and receptive audience of fat white blokes for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot…
Eavesdropping at the Movies196 - Knives Out
Writer-director Rian Johnson's playful, knockabout whodunnit Knives Out has been receiving praise for its screenplay that we feel isn't quite warranted, and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies195 - Le Mans '66
Cars, business, and a big chummy Brummie combine in 1960s California as Ford sets itself the mission of beating the all-conquering Ferrari in the 24 Hours of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies194 - Permission
This year's Screening Rights Film Festival saw a great start with Permission, an Iranian film about women's rights, oppression, and male ego, based on the true…
Eavesdropping at the Movies193 - The Irishman
A three-and-a-half-hour epic in his signature genre, Martin Scorsese's The Irishman looks back on the life of a gangster, hitman, enforcer, and WWII veteran…
Eavesdropping at the Movies192 - Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil isn't very good. Recorded on 15th November 2019.
Eavesdropping at the Movies191 - Monos
Comparisons to Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies are inescapable in Alejandro Landes' captivating Monos, about a group of teenage soldiers, stationed on a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies190 - Sorry We Missed You
Returning to Newcastle after shining his coruscating lens on the inhumanity of the benefits system in I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach now casts his eye on the gig…
Eavesdropping at the Movies189 - Ring
A horror film that everyone knew about when Mike was a teenager, but nobody seemed to have seen, we finally see 1998's Ring - or Ringu, to transliterate the…