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 Movies69 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World returns with The Orphanage and A Monster Calls director J. A. Bayona in charge, transforming the colourful knockabout thrills of the previous…
Eavesdropping at the Movies68 - Ocean's 8
The all-female reboot of the Ocean's franchise sees Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett leading a team of women to infiltrate and rob the Met Gala. We discuss…
Eavesdropping at the Movies67 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
A classic returns to cinemas for its 50th anniversary and we receive it in rather a muted fashion. José's never seen it on the big screen and Mike's never seen…
Eavesdropping at the Movies66 - Solo: A Star Wars Story
We find much to mull over in Solo, which José finds the best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back and Mike finds overlong and depressingly dull. Our…
Eavesdropping at the Movies65 - Tully
Charlize Theron stars in Tully, Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's fourth collaboration as director and screenwriter, as a mother of two with a third on the way…
Eavesdropping at the Movies64 - In the Intense Now
We turn once again to curated streaming service MUBI for João Moreira Salles' essay film, In the Intense Now, which combines archival news footage with home…
Eavesdropping at the Movies63 - Custody
This week we go arthouse and discuss Xavier Legrand’s first feature, Custody (Jusqu’à la garde), though 'arthouse' perhaps only in the sense that it’s…
Eavesdropping at the Movies62 - 120 BPM
Jose has been obsessed with 120 BPM and was very keen to hear what Mike, who is much younger and not gay, thought of it. Is his obsession due to purely…
Eavesdropping at the Movies61 - Avengers: Infinity War
The first part of Marvel's ending to the unendable story wallops us with two and a half hours of punching and planets. Mike is even more gullible than usual…
Eavesdropping at the Movies60 - Rampage
One of the stupidest films we've seen for a long time, but was it fun? We discuss its lazy and crass writing, the treatment of its female star, its lack of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies59 - Journeyman
A boxing film that opens with its climactic fight and develops drama in its aftermath. We find Journeyman disappointingly contradictory - a showcase of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies58 - Love, Simon
A young adult romance with a twist, Love, Simon gives gay teens a high school movie with a decent budget and aimed at a wide audience. We both have mixed…
Eavesdropping at the Movies57 - A Wrinkle In Time
Jose can't handle the bad costumes, pap morality, and smug tone. Mike considers the age of the intended audience a mitigating factor but largely agrees. A…
Eavesdropping at the Movies56 - A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place is a deceptively simple horror film that finds a surprising degree of variety in its premise: the planet is overrun with monsters that cannot see…
Eavesdropping at the Movies55 - Unsane
A low-budget psychological thriller, Unsane is a less involving film than its subject matter and star deserve. Claire Foy is extraordinarily powerful as a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies54 - Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs is a stop-motion story of the utmost beauty and wit. We discuss its cinematography, compositions, lightness of touch, allegorical…
Eavesdropping at the Movies53 - Ready Player One
Ready Player One is a strange beast, crammed full of energy and references on the one hand, amounting to nothing on the other. Jose dislikes it. Mike kind of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies52 - Annihilation
Alex Garland's curious sci-fi adventure comes to UK cinemas - for one single evening. A theatrical release in the US that Paramount feared wouldn't make money…
Eavesdropping at the Movies51 - You Were Never Really Here
Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here tells a story of vigilante justice with a tapestry of elliptical editing and interwoven flashbacks. We consider its…
Eavesdropping at the Movies50 - Lady Bird
We finally get around to seeing the one Best Picture nominee we were missing, Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird. It's been highly praised, but has the hype hurt it? We…
Eavesdropping at the Movies49 - Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
We try out Mubi, a curated streaming service that gives you 30 films at any one time, and only 30 days in which to watch them. Our choice is Investigation of a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies48 - I, Tonya
The story of Tonya Harding raises all manner of issues for us to delve into. I, Tonya is a film about class, domestic abuse, celebrity, opportunity…
Eavesdropping at the Movies47 - Phantom Thread - Second Screening
Mike's brother Stephen joins us to discuss Phantom Thread in further detail. We look at the power struggle between Alma and Cyril, the visual verticality that…
Eavesdropping at the Movies46 - The Shape of Water
Guillermo del Toro's gorgeous, bizarre monster romance is one of the films dominating the awards conversation, but what do we make of it? We discuss its…
Eavesdropping at the Movies45 - Black Panther
Jose's been away for a week, and while we've been apart we've each seen Black Panther. You join us after our second screening, in the midst of an already…
Eavesdropping at the Movies44 - 2018 Oscar nominations
Eavesdropping takes a look at the nominations for the upcoming Oscars and chews the fat on what we like, what we don't like, what's been left out, and what…
Eavesdropping at the Movies43 - Phantom Thread
Finally, we sink our teeth into Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson's highly-anticipated romantic period drama. The performances, aesthetics, direction and so…
Eavesdropping at the Movies42 - The Commuter
Mike doesn't believe that Liam Neeson is a normal person with real problems, and wants him to do proper acting again. Jose admires the film's social conscience…
Eavesdropping at the Movies41 - Downsizing
Mike is in a tailspin of grief. José likes Matt Damon and little else. It's Downsizing, a film that looked good in the trailers. Ostensibly a light satire on…
Eavesdropping at the Movies40 - Call Me by Your Name
José revisits Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's romantic Bildungsroman, and re-evaluates it, both seeing some flaws where he initially hadn't and also…
Eavesdropping at the Movies39 - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Second Screening
Feeling he gave it short shrift the first time, Mike's keen to revisit Three Billboards, and drags José along for the ride. With the clumsy handling of race…
Eavesdropping at the Movies38 - Coco
(Mind out for spoilers, we don't do a good job of warning of them here. After the plot synopsis at the beginning, expect spoilers throughout.) Pixar's…
Eavesdropping at the Movies37 - The Post
Spielberg. Streep. Hanks. Nixon. A political thriller that adopts some clichés and slightly sidesteps some expectations, The Post is a historical drama that…
Eavesdropping at the Movies36 - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
An extraordinary, near-Shakespearian meditation on misdirected rage, guilt and grief, deeply marred by clumsy lunging into a loud theme of racism and a strong…
Eavesdropping at the Movies35 - Darkest Hour
A chamber piece about history which evokes a combination of Rembrandt and an old photograph. We discuss how Joe Wright might be getting short shrift as a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies34 - Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Boy oh boy, there's a lot to talk about, and the word of the day is denial. Specifically, Mike's unspoken, subcutaneous, existential denial that 1995's Jumanji…
Eavesdropping at the Movies33 - Z
We visit a French-Algerian political thriller from 1969. It also happens to be a bona fide classic that won a ton of awards, enjoyed great popularity, and even…
Eavesdropping at the Movies32 - Mountains May Depart
Mike's brother corrects our pronunciation of director Jia Zhangke's name, helping us settle into a discussion of his ambitious, deeply moving tale of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies31 - Human Flow
Ai Weiwei brings displaced peoples from across the world together in his documentary on the global refugee crisis. We discuss their plight, the film's use of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies30 - Happy End
Michael Haneke's precise, layered Happy End takes on - what else? - the bourgeoisie, and sees Eavesdropping welcome 2018 and iTunes availability at last!…
Eavesdropping at the Movies29 - Molly's Game
Eavesdropping celebrates the New Year with a snappy, sharp crime flick about the world of underground, high-stakes poker. We discuss the material's weakness…
Eavesdropping at the Movies28 - The Greatest Showman
José likes Zac Efron for once, but little else. Mike is an ITV snob and just wants the film to be more Communist. Listen in to find out how The Greatest…
Eavesdropping at the Movies27 - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi - Second Screening
José and Mike return to a galaxy far, far away, in search of new perspectives and thoughts on The Last Jedi. Mike in particular has been itching to talk more…
Eavesdropping at the Movies26 - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
It's beautiful to look at. It's populated with rich characters. Adam Driver is filmed as a Byronic hero, desperately romantic and at his sexiest. Matt Moore…
Eavesdropping at the Movies25 - The Red Turtle
Our patient, deliberate conversation closely mirrors the feeling of The Red Turtle, Studio Ghibli's wordless, Oscar-nominated fable. We consider aesthetics…
Eavesdropping at the Movies24 - The Disaster Artist
Cinema's biggest in-joke is dramatised in James Franco's fan project about the worst film ever made. We discuss the mean-spirited nature of finding films so…
Eavesdropping at the Movies23 - Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
We begin with an embarrassing admission from Mike and some reminiscences of stars past from José before discussing Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, a biopic…
Eavesdropping at the Movies22 - Paddington 2
Paddington returns to cinemas with a whimsical puff of upper middle class smoke from a lovely old warm cosy steam train. How nice. Mike wasn't really looking…
Eavesdropping at the Movies21 - The Florida Project
Sean Baker's The Florida Project incites ruminations on the representation of underclasses in cinema; the emergence of a new American neorealism; clichés of…
Eavesdropping at the Movies20 - Justice League
Some days you just can't help but mock a bad movie. Recorded on 18th November 2017.
Eavesdropping at the Movies19 - Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
We visit Sidney Lumet's classic version of Murder on the Orient Express to compare and contrast with Kenneth Branagh's. Which performances do we prefer, what…
Eavesdropping at the Movies18 - Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Innocence meets experience. Mike doesn't know whodunnit; José remembers the 1974 adaptation fondly. Mike wants to talk plot; José wants to talk cast. Mike is…
Eavesdropping at the Movies17 - The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The Killing of a Sacred Deer becomes a kind of litmus test for our morality. Mike finds Barry Keoghan's vengeful teen hateful; to José, he's a hero. This is a…
Eavesdropping at the Movies16 - Jigsaw
Jigsaw's back after a seven year absence, with new traps and twists and torture. One of us is very excited about this. The other has never seen a Saw film…
Eavesdropping at the Movies15 - Thor: Ragnarok
A new thing from Marvel. Is it better than the average thing from Marvel? The seats certainly moved, we can say that much, and that is an acceptable substitute…
Eavesdropping at the Movies14 - The Party
Sally Potter's all-too-brief comedy drama polarises us, which makes a nice change to the agreements we've been having recently. Is it smug or knowing? Is its…
Eavesdropping at the Movies13 - The Death of Stalin
How does Armando Iannucci's newest political satire fit in to his work over the last decade? Isn't it a joy to see Michael Palin? How did we ignore how…
Eavesdropping at the Movies12 - The Snowman
A film one of us was looking forward to enormously. A Scandinoir thriller coated with dense snow. But did it leave us cold? Recorded on 17th October 2017.
Eavesdropping at the Movies11 - Blade Runner 2049 - Second Screening
We couldn't stay away. And with a second viewing, time to percolate, and responses from friends informing us, Eavesdropping once again delves into Blade Runner…
Eavesdropping at the Movies10 - Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 is something else. You simply must see it on the biggest screen you can find. Do not listen to us if you care about the film because we go…