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 Movies128 - Colette
Gender-bending in turn-of-the-century France, with the true story of Colette, probably the most famous female writer in French history and author, although…
Eavesdropping at the Movies127 - Häxan
A 1922 Swedish-Danish silent film in the form of a semi-dramatised lecture, we had absolutely no idea what to expect of Häxan, written and directed by…
Eavesdropping at the Movies126 - The Passenger
A remarkably lean Jack Nicholson steals a man's identity in an attempt to leave his life behind in The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni's existentialist…
Eavesdropping at the Movies125 - The Clock
Something a little different for us today, as we visit the Tate Modern to view Christian Marclay's 24 hour long video art installation, The Clock. It's a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies124 - The Favourite
Greek weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos, whose off-kilter thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer divided and provoked us a year ago, brings us The Favourite, a wild…
Eavesdropping at the Movies123 - Roma
Much to Mike's disdain - he throws tantrums about Netflix films - we settled in with a KFC to discuss Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, a semi-autobiographical film about…
Eavesdropping at the Movies122 - Aquaman
DC's search for a cinematic tone continues to lurch between monochrome gravity and Technicolor frivolity, James Wan's Aquaman firmly occupying the latter end…
Eavesdropping at the Movies121 - Mary Poppins Returns
Mary Poppins is back after a mere 54 years since the first film. The kids have grown up, life has grown difficult, and a magical undying supernatural flying…
Eavesdropping at the Movies120 - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
It's colourful, friendly, packed full of visual energy and wit. It's also light and just a little forgettable, like a straight-to-video movie that's made it…
Eavesdropping at the Movies119 - Disobedience
Rachels Weisz and McAdams soar in this delicate, passionate, complex drama of social pressures and forbidden love. Set in the North London Jewish community…
Eavesdropping at the Movies118 - Three Identical Strangers
A documentary in the hard-hitting, extraordinary revelations, true-story-you've-never-heard mode, Three Identical Strangers follows three identical triplets…
Eavesdropping at the Movies117 - Sorry to Bother You
A surprising, imaginative comedy full of dark twists and scathing observations, Sorry to Bother You fires us up. There's so much going on in it that we love…
Eavesdropping at the Movies116 - The Marvellous Mabel Normand
Flatpack's Silent Night series continues with a screening, at Birmingham Cathedral, of The Marvellous Mabel Normand, a programme of four silent comedy shorts…
Eavesdropping at the Movies115 - Shoplifters
Intriguing, calm, witty, touching. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters, winner of the 2018 Palme d'Or, is a modern-day Oliver Twist with real depth of feeling and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies114 - Robin Hood (2018)
We argue about a film that neither of us can possibly claim is good, but in which one of us found things to like. Hot on the heels of watching Errol Flynn's…
Eavesdropping at the Movies113 - Mildred Pierce
We're joined by Birmingham blogger Laura Creaven (www.constantlycurious.co.uk) for a discussion of our fourth Michael Curtiz film, the film noir Mildred…
Eavesdropping at the Movies112 - Widows - Second Screening
José drags a somewhat recalcitrant Mike to the cinema for a second go at Widows, joined by Lee Kemp (@leekemp), a Birmingham-based filmmaker and founder of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies111 - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
The second Fantastic Beasts film, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter spin-off series, has numerous pleasures, but makes it hard to appreciate them thanks to a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies110 - Angels with Dirty Faces
We continue our Michael Curtiz kick with Angels with Dirty Faces, a James Cagney gangster film with surprising subtleties. We consider Cagney's stardom and how…
Eavesdropping at the Movies109 - The Adventures of Robin Hood
One of the first three-strip Technicolor films, and an action adventure classic, we visit 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, featuring Errol Flynn at his…
Eavesdropping at the Movies108 - Bohemian Rhapsody
The road to banal and disappointingly homophobic biopics of rock legends is, as they say, paved with good intentions. The Queen story/Freddie Mercury biopic…
Eavesdropping at the Movies107 - Widows
José falls in love with Widows, a portrait of life and survival in modern America in the skin of a heist film. Mike can see exactly why he should love it, but…
Eavesdropping at the Movies106 - Casablanca
One of us has seen it countless times. The other has never seen it. Fortunately for José, Mike instantly falls in love with Casablanca. In a way, the pressure…
Eavesdropping at the Movies105 - They Shall Not Grow Old
Commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Peter Jackson was approached by 14-18 NOW and the Imperial War Museum to make use of their extensive…
Eavesdropping at the Movies104 - Bad Times at the El Royale
We pick at flaw after flaw in a film we sincerely enjoyed! Drew Goddard's post-noir, post-Tarantino, post-Hitchcock thriller is an oddball, a delightfully…
Eavesdropping at the Movies103 - First Man
A weird failure, as Mike puts it, we struggle a little bit to get a read on First Man, Damien Chazelle's biopic of Neil Armstrong. Not content to adopt a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies102 - A Star Is Born
Hyped up, already very successful, and widely well-received, A Star Is Born earns strong reactions from us. To Mike it's at points truly reprehensible, to José…
Eavesdropping at the Movies101 - The Little Stranger
You find us in contemplative mood, picking apart a film described by José as "genuinely puzzling" and Mike as "The House with a Doc in Its Walls". The Little…
Eavesdropping at the Movies100th Anniversary Extra - Eavesdropping on Ourselves
With 99 podcasts under our belt at time of recording, we take the opportunity to look back and reflect. At Eavesdropping at the Movies we try to speak honestly…
Eavesdropping at the Movies100 - Venom
Venom utterly charms the pants off us, its bizarre knockabout body horror surprising us with a great sense of humour and unexpected variations on the idea of a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies99 - Climax
A group of dancers parties the night away, but someone has spiked the sangria with LSD. There are extraordinarily long takes, sex, drugs, violence, and horror…
Eavesdropping at the Movies98 - A Simple Favor
"From the darker side of director Paul Feig", as the ubiquitous advertising has it, and the film doesn't disappoint. A Simple Favor pairs Anna Kendrick with…
Eavesdropping at the Movies97 - The House with a Clock in Its Walls
We're disappointed with The House with a Clock in Its Walls, a children's horror fantasy that insults its audience's intelligence by assuming that this is the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies96 - Skate Kitchen
First of all, huge thanks to the Electric Cinema in Birmingham for not only screening a preview of irresistible hangout flick Skate Kitchen, but for hosting a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies95 - King of Thieves
A heist movie for the twinkly wrinklies, with a nostalgic and homophobic angle we disliked. Based on the true story of the 2015 Hatton Garden burglary, King of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies94 - The Rider
A contemporary Western played by non-professional actors and based closely on their real lives, The Rider is both heartfelt and riddled with cliché. Brady is…
Eavesdropping at the Movies93 - Cold War
Cold War is Paweł Pawlikowski's follow up to the Academy Award winning Ida. We delighted in the Midlands Arts Centre’s fabulous projection system, which Mike…
Eavesdropping at the Movies92 - Crazy Rich Asians
An utterly charming, friendly rom-com set in and amongst the very wealthiest of the Singaporean elite, Crazy Rich Asians is also full of odd tensions and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies91 - American Animals
An imperfect combination of documentary and dramatisation, American Animals gives us a lot to talk about. Its story of four college students embarking on a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies90 - The Nun
Jump scares, a spooky castle, ghosts, nuns, and a demon. What a recipe. José decries the lack of internal logic. Mike embraces it. There's artistry in the…
Eavesdropping at the Movies89 - Searching
You wait all day for a new type of film and then two turn up at once. Hot on the heels of Unfriended: Dark Web, which we discussed a few weeks ago, is…
Eavesdropping at the Movies88 - Red Sparrow
We catch up on home media with an erotic thriller that, while it fails to titillate, offers a fascinating portrayal of totalitarianism, sexuality, control and…
Eavesdropping at the Movies87 - The Happytime Murders
Raunchy, vulgar, adult puppet comedy. You'd think it'd be right up our street. But The Happytime Murders is incompetent, embarrassing and infantile, with…
Eavesdropping at the Movies86 - The Equalizer 2
Quiet, meditative, sensitive, gradual. Not the first words that come to mind when considering 2014's vigilante thriller The Equalizer - though they do apply at…
Eavesdropping at the Movies85 - Dial M For Murder 3D
It's Eavesdropping's first anniversary and we celebrate with a film Mike's been looking forward to seeing for almost a decade. Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for…
Eavesdropping at the Movies84 - BlacKkKlansman
We breathlessly debate BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee's comic drama based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux…
Eavesdropping at the Movies83 - Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
It's been out for four weeks and finally we decide to grapple with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Mike has just recently caught up with the first film, a jukebox…
Eavesdropping at the Movies82 - The Darkest Minds
José finds a lot to remark upon in The Darkest Minds that Mike didn't see, helping him appreciate it more. It's a story of a society broken down by fear of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies81 - Unfriended: Dark Web
Designed entirely to simulate the desktop interface of a Macbook, Unfriended: Dark Web enthusiastically adapts modern fears of surveillance and digital…
Eavesdropping at the Movies80 - The Meg
Big shark, big Cockney, big fun. We dive into The Meg, a film we can all agree should have been called Chomp. It's definitely trashy, though precisely how…
Eavesdropping at the Movies79 - The First Purge
Low-budget, unexceptionally made, and absolutely vital. The First Purge takes the story of the Purge series back to the beginning, with a poor community…
Eavesdropping at the Movies78 - Ant-Man and the Wasp
The sequel to 2015's Ant-Man maintains that film's lightness of tone, happily comic sensibility, and fabulously enjoyable visual effects. So often today we…
Eavesdropping at the Movies77 - Mission: Impossible - Fallout
A mega bumper double podcast today, as we see Mission: Impossible - Fallout twice and incorporate both discussions into one episode. Long story short, we had…
Eavesdropping at the Movies76 - First Reformed
We are joined by Celia Nicholls, another former Warwick student, for a discussion of Paul Schrader's First Reformed, a careful drama following a Protestant…
Eavesdropping at the Movies75 - Hotel Artemis
A tight yet sprawling high-concept thriller, Hotel Artemis features glorious performances from Jodie Foster and the wonderful cast that surrounds her…
Eavesdropping at the Movies74 - Skyscraper
The Rock is the action star of the moment and despite Skyscraper's lacklustre title, we enjoy his latest vehicle a lot. It's mechanical, predictable…
Eavesdropping at the Movies73 - Incredibles 2
After a fourteen-year wait, the Incredibles are back! We discuss how well the comedy is directed, how full of ideas the action is, and our love of Edna Mode…
Eavesdropping at the Movies72 - Sicario 2: Soldado
We only thought of it in this way after we finished the podcast, but Sicario 2 is the best movie for watching on a plane we've ever seen. It's pacey…
Eavesdropping at the Movies71 - Hereditary - Second Screening
We go deep on Hereditary, occult/folk horror, and indeed horror in a wider perspective with guest contributor and horror guru (Mike's words) Dr. Matt Denny…
Eavesdropping at the Movies70 - Hereditary
Perhaps we lack the specific horror fundamentals that would open Hereditary up to us, but we find it a muddled, almost adolescent film - a particular…