エピソード

  • 439 - The Brutalist

    439 - The Brutalist
    2025/01/29
    We visit BFI Southbank for a 70mm screening of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet's epic period drama. It's a super-sized film - 215 minutes, not including the intermission - and it deserves a super-sized podcast, for which we're joined, as we occasionally are, by Mike's brother, Stephen, who's already seen the film once. It's an extraordinarily complex, subtle and absorbing film that draws on countless themes and parts of history in telling its story of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and architect who escapes to America and finds a wealthy client enamoured with him. We dig in to the film's themes with breathless enthusiasm, and talk sex, racism, the immigrant experience, long takes, rape, capitalism, doing things for effect, art, aspiration, jealousy, the value of 70mm, and much more. José describes The Brutalist as his film of the year; Mike ponders whether he likes it more than the Robbie Williams monkey movie. Recorded on 28th January 2025.
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    1 時間 54 分
  • 438 - Presence

    438 - Presence
    2025/01/25
    "Steven Soderbergh's making a horror film from the perspective of the ghost" turns out to be a sentence specifically designed to appeal to Mike, who has been looking forward to Presence for ages. (José struggles to remember the film's title, even moments after having seen it.) But part of that pitch is deeply misleading. Presence's trailers were loaded with quotes from overeager horror publications that praised the film's fear factor, which leads to a little confusion when the final product is revealed to be a family drama that, despite the ghost whose eyes we see everything through, isn't even trying to scare us. And that's great! We just didn't realise that's what we were in for. What Presence gives us is a compelling exercise in film form and storytelling that constantly maintains our interest and which we thoroughly enjoy, but which sadly disappoints us in a variety of ways - though only a few of which we agree on. What interests Mike about the film's camerawork and handling of its invisible, point-of-view character leaves José unimpressed; Mike doesn't get what José does out of the critique of modern masculinity. But despite our disagreements and disappointments, we enthusiastically recommend Presence as an experiment worth experiencing. It's intriguing, efficient, and original - and there's very little like it. Recorded on 24th January 2025.
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    25 分
  • 437 - Babygirl

    437 - Babygirl
    2025/01/24
    Nicole Kidman gives a compelling, vulnerable performance in Babygirl, as a woman for whom sexual satisfaction requires her to relinquish the power she otherwise projects throughout her life, and who begins an affair with a much younger man she finds herself unable to resist. Unfortunately, that's the only significant thing to recommend about the film, which we find superficial, badly thought out, and most crucially of all for Mike, nowhere near steamy enough. It's good fun to discuss, though, and gives us opportunity to reminisce about sneaking into films we weren't allowed to see when we were kids. Stick around to learn José's Looney Tunes technique for fooling the ticket guy. Recorded on 23rd January 2025.
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    41 分
  • 436 - Maria

    436 - Maria
    2025/01/23
    The third film in Pablo Larraín's trilogy of iconic women, following 2016's Jackie and 2021's Spencer, Maria shows us the final week of the life of opera singer Maria Callas, who at the age of 53 is experiencing delusions, hallucinations, and the fear that her once-perfect singing voice has abandoned her. Mike isn't familiar with Maria Callas; José is (despite worrying before we started recording that he wouldn't have much to say when expected to explain who she is). No familiarity with her is required, however, to enjoy the film. Larraín's elegant direction, Steven Knight's intelligent screenplay, and Angelina Jolie's extraordinary, subtle performance combine beautifully to explore Maria's ego, fears, and passion. Maria's delusions, in which choirs fill town squares, orchestras back her in her apartment, and a fascinated journalist follows her around Paris chronicling her memories, are evident throughout the film... everywhere but in song. She knows all too well that her voice is leaving her, she hopes for and needs its return, and ultimately, the film renders her struggle with it a fight to hold on to life itself. It's sympathetic, understandable, and beautiful. Maria is the best film of Larraín's impressive body of work, and features perhaps the best performance of Jolie's. See it. (We also discuss Robbie Williams, because Mike saw Better Man, the Robbie Williams monkey movie, and is desperate to talk about it.) Recorded on 21st January 2025.
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    56 分
  • 435 - Nosferatu (2024)

    435 - Nosferatu (2024)
    2025/01/06
    Writer-director Robert Eggers, whose reputation for aesthetically rich, deeply-researched and idiosyncratic horror precedes him, has long been working on a remake of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the 1922 German Expressionist classic whose influence has been felt in the horror genre for a century. It's a big fish to try to take down, but it's source material that feels like it exists especially for him - how does he do? Very well, as it turns out... although, in classic fashion, we manage to talk around what a fantastic time we had by concentrating on our criticisms. Ignore them until you've taken yourself to the biggest cinema you can to see it - it's an experience you should have. Then come back and listen to us discuss the debt Eggers' Nosferatu owes to the colour tinting processes of the silent era, how the second half gets bogged down in tropes and plot, the delineation between sex and love, the pressure to be accessible, whether horror needs to be scary, and the important lesson we learned from Shrek Forever After. Recorded on 2nd January 2025.
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    55 分
  • 434 - Conclave

    434 - Conclave
    2024/12/04
    You wait for ages for a film about a group of people sequestered in a room, questioning each other, keeping secrets, and repeatedly voting, and two come along at once. But while Juror #2's protagonist wrestled with his conscience, Conclave's Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes, has little trouble consistently acting out of principle - sadly, many of his colleagues vying for the Catholic Church's vacant papacy don't share his clarity. Conclave is a marvellously entertaining mystery and thriller, a chamber play in which Fiennes' performance is a complex and deeply felt standout amongst a number of engaging, if less rich, star turns from Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. We discuss whether the film is an advert for the Church, how it engages with religion, the striking visual design, liberalism vs. conservatism, representations of gender and nationality... and that magnificent twist. Spoilers within! Recorded on 1st December 2024.
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    35 分
  • 433 - Juror #2

    433 - Juror #2
    2024/12/02
    A film whose brilliant conceit is so simple and compelling we can't believe we've never seen it before, Juror #2 tells the story of a juror whose responsibility it is to assess the guilt of a defendant who he knows is innocent of murder - because it was the juror who did it. Summoned to serve on a jury and quickly recognising the details of the case, Nicholas Hoult's Justin realises that the deer he hit with his car one dark, stormy night was in fact the defendant's girlfriend, for whose supposed murder he is on trial. So begins a morality play of sorts, Justin wanting to do the right thing and keep an innocent person from prison, but unwilling to expose himself as the real, if accidental, killer. It's a film that sets two institutions, the family and the court, at war. Justin's wife has a baby on the way, and is there any wrong that can't be justified by the protection of the family? We discuss this in the particular light of director Clint Eastwood's reputation as a lifelong conservative, Mike suggesting that the distrust the film shows towards the legal system, a government institution, has precedent in Eastwood's other work, but its critique of the sanctity of the family is surprising and invigorating. Juror #2 is a thoroughly engrossing exploration of a terrific idea, and you'll take its questions home with you long after it ends. What would you do? Are you sure? Recorded on 18th November 2024.
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    32 分
  • 432 - Heretic

    432 - Heretic
    2024/11/28
    Hugh Grant brings his idiosyncratic brand of English charm to the world of horror in Heretic, in which he isolates and tests the faith of two young Mormon missionaries. It's a film that leaves you asking all sorts of questions, such as, "did anything he was up to actually make any sense?", but for a horror film so heavy on the dialogue and relatively light on the scares, it's fabulously enertaining throughout - a real achievement of direction and writing. See it! Recorded on 17th November 2024.
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    36 分