Eavesdropping At The Movies

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 two-hander between Willem Dafoe's irascible boss and Robert Pattinson's secretive youngster, it invokes myth, gods, folk tales, the clash of male egos, compulsive psychosexuality, if not much, much more besides. If its plot is simple, its story is complex, and we think our way through its characters' personalities, wants, needs, and psychologies. José asks if the film is gothic, and we discuss the boss's treatment of his assistant: is it just controlling, or abusive? Extraordinary imagery of mermaids, monsters, and gods suffuses the film with inescapable surreality and the turbulent minds of men overburdened with ego and sexual need. Eggers has an assured, confident sense of tone, layering the film with mood and atmosphere, making its remote island a pressure cooker. The Lighthouse is a spectacular film, an audiovisual treat that you should not miss at

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 cons its way into working for an upper-class family. We pick our way through the film's structure; its motif of staircases that delineate status and power relations; the way poverty carries with it an inescapable smell, intolerable to the upper class; the two families' experiences of nature and the desire for sunshine. It builds on some aspects of horror, but cannot at all be considered one, either in genre or affect - though the fact that its trailers sold it as such might have something to do with Mike's frosty response. It's an allegorical thriller, every character standing in place of a class or group of people, and its construction is intelligent, thoughtful and tight. For José, it works on a visceral level, the mood and tone emphasising and combining with the structure and metaphor; for Mike, it's a flat experience, a clever essay with definite in

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 it abysmally, lacking visual style, coherent storytelling, and really any imagination. It's the worst time José's endured at the cinema in a year; Mike heroically offers a couple of examples of moments he enjoyed - the flying sandwich - but there's no rescuing these damsels in distress. Recorded on 7th February 2020.

Independent filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie team up with Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems, an energetic, evolving crime thriller set in Manhattan's Diamond District. By the time we meet Sandler's Jewish jeweller, Howard, he's already embedded within a web of competing interests, desires and debts, as well as a gambling addiction - and the tension only mounts as problems grow worse. The Safdie brothers and Sandler are all Jewish New York natives, the writer-directors in particular growing up, in part, around the Diamond District, where their father worked. There's a specificity to the location and culture that the film captures beautifully, a richness to Howard's characterisation, and the world he inhabits, that feels authentically observed. Howard's need to take risks never allows the tension to settle - he can't help but invite further trouble upon himself, so neither does the film let us calm down for a second. Uncut Gems is a complex, character-oriented, engrossing work of edge-of-your-seat genre entertainme

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 the revolting, crude, institutional sexism of their former place of work. It refuses to do so with any complexity, any suggestion that they were anything but victims - that they had all the opportunity to say no to the hideous deal they were offered, and that they were, too, key players in a propaganda machine, pumping poison into the world. It's a view of the world that, at best, has been simplified for popular consumption, relegating criticism of Fox News' politics, operations, and output to a laughably basic subplot involving a lesbian Democrat employee who explains the machinery of Fox's messaging. Mike suggests that it sits alongside the work of Adam McKay, who, like Bombshell director Jay Roach, made his name in comedy, offering the term "satire-adjacent" in an attempt to understand this breed of film - McKay's Vice and The Big Short have a simila

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 experiential fluidity of an overnight mission in World War I France, wherein two soldiers must hand deliver a message to the British front line to call off an offensive that will play into a German ambush. Mike is suspicious of films that market their filmmaking; José dislikes the work of director Sam Mendes. So it's with some relief that 1917 really rather impresses us. It's a beautiful film, evocative of both the human cost of war and pastoral serenity of the landscape in which it takes place. Its symbolism, something José derides as overly simple and obvious in Mendes' work, here functions quite well (if similarly unsubtly); its supporting cast of British and Irish stars is used well, Mark Strong and Richard Madden in particular shining during their brief scenes. And we consider the film's similarities to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, a similarly expensive

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 Journey into Night, unrelated to Eugene O'Neill's play, tells a story that flashes between memories of a love lost long ago and present day reality, culminating in an hour-long single take that moves through an entire mining village. It's a film that oozes feelings of loss and nostalgia, the protagonist's return to his hometown seeing him wander through dereliction and abandonment, where his life was once vital and exciting. The noirish flashbacks are sumptuously composed and lit, romantic and evocative; one sinks into those gorgeous images. The long take that comprises the film's second half is less successful, an exercise in form that leaves longueurs and attracts too much attention to itself. But its relationship to the first half is intriguing, its symbolism readily apparent if difficult to interpret, and its technical accomplishment unquestioned. (We

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 direction, ability to work with actors, the audiences that adore his work, how the film functions as fantasy, and its issues with being casually offensive. Recorded on 1st January 2020.

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 Youth, who discovers a Jewish girl being given safe harbour by his mother. Our reservations stem from the state of the world and culture in which the film has been made, in which fascism is resurgent and increasingly worth taking seriously. We discuss comedy's ability to puncture that at which it takes aim, Mike arguing that we like to overstate its power, José lamenting cinema's unwillingness to take today's fascist figureheads on directly - by comparison, satirising Hitler and the Nazis is a safe choice. Mike criticises the film's superficiality, finding that its depiction of the Nazi regime is skin deep, merely built on signifiers with which we're familiar - there's no attempt here to explore Jojo's psychology, or how and why he's been taught what he has. José argues that the film makes its Nazis too likeable, too goofy; the film wants to offer us a mess

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 the book, coming to the story entirely fresh. And so we get to grips with Greta Gerwig's wonderful, open-hearted, energetic version of Little Women. José finds much to contrast between the versions, picking up in particular on the unusual dimensionality given to the male supporting characters here, whose roles have previously been thankless. Timothée Chalamet and Chris Cooper particularly impress, the former capturing Laurie's playful, generous spirit; the latter touchingly evoking Mr. Laurence's grief. Less successful is Meryl Streep's Aunt March, who slightly too mechanically reaches for the laughs for which she's designed. The girls, though, are a triumph of energetic wildness, ambitions and realism. The scenes they share in their childhood home are well observed, wisely mixing all-American sentimentality you might expect with a disarming sororal

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 dramatic work in The Last Jedi. Disney and Abrams have clearly taken the vocal response of the franchise's self-appointed guardians seriously, overwriting everything we liked about Johnson's film, offering us mild, defanged plot developments and characterisations, but once we accept that, we find a lot of fun in this closing chapter's sense of adventure and melodrama. It's clear from five minutes in, having been told three times that Rey's parents, revealed to be nobodies in The Last Jedi, are actually hiding a secret that makes them very important indeed, that The Rise of Skywalker intends to do away with everything that made the last film so interesting and challenging. It's a disappointment, but in declaring its intention to simply continue the soap opera and gallivant around the galaxy, the film needs to at least do a good job of that. And it does, Jos

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 design. It has to be seen to be believed. It can only be Cats. Recorded on 20th December 2019.

A beautifully observed, intelligently written and transparently played drama, Marriage Story shows the separation of two people with deep and ongoing love for each other, and how they change under the stress of their marriage breakup. Mike argues that it's an advert for therapy, the unread notes in which each partner describes what they love about the other, with which the film opens, returning structurally despite the descent into legal hell and gamesmanship. José remarks upon the generosity the film has towards its characters and the magic that Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver bring, and Mike picks up on the length of some scenes, scenes that move smoothly and in real time through evolving conversations. Marriage Story is on Netflix now and worth your time. Recorded on 4th December 2019.

Adam Driver and Annette Bening shine in writer-director Scott Z. Burns' historical drama The Report, about Senate staffer Daniel Jones and Senator Dianne Feinstein's work to investigate the CIA's use of torture after 9/11. Mike's been filling up on this stuff lately, quite by coincidence, watching old episodes of The Daily Show; José didn't even know what the film was about, and the difference in our responses is perhaps quite telling, the film not going out of its way to help its audience into its murky waters, leaving it up to them to pick up on what it's on about. In that respect, it's a film that requires and respects its audience's attention and intelligence, though it could do more in dramatic terms to earn it. It's rather a dry affair, though not without its charms - in particular those of its lead actors, who captivate every second they're on screen. The story is told partially in flashback, depicting the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and the main plot

A truly deserved biopic, Harriet tells the story of the escaped slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who served as part of the Underground Railroad, undertaking several journeys to liberate around 70 slaves, and later serving as in the Union Army during the American Civil War (this latter part of her life forming the film's coda, as its focus is her escape to Philadelphia and rescue missions). Despite its obvious value, though, it's poorly told story, with a depiction of Tubman's devout religiousness and prophetic visions that serves to confuse more than express or inspire, and too little tension in what are really action scenes, too little sense of hardship in Tubman's escape, work, and life. We try to keep in mind that our relationship to Tubman's story is distanced, that its importance as a black narrative and feminist narrative is easy for us to be blind to when all we can see are flaws, but ultimately we find the film a let-down. Recorded on 2nd December 2019.

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. Mike is one of them, and he's never been harder to pick out of a lineup, laughing like a drain at the fan service and antics. José isn't, and he was already a bit too old for Kevin Smith when he emerged in the 90s, but he has almost as good a time as everyone else there. The film is huge fun and creates a palpable sense of community, filled with friends and family, incorporating in-jokes and characters from throughout Smith's work - it's pure comfort food for its fans. We think about Smith as a figure, his reputation as a writer who can barely direct, and what he takes pride in. And we look over his filmography, José thinking back on what made Chasing Amy radical in its day, and Mike suggesting that with Jersey Girl and Cop Out, Smith's reputation, and perhaps an external factor or two (remember Bennifer?) played a part in the hostile reception for two

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 three of his films: Agarrando pueblo/The Vampires of Poverty (1977, co-directed by Carlos Mayolo), Un tigre de papel/A Paper Tiger (2008), and his final feature documentary, Todo comenzó por el fin/It All Started at the End (2015), and we're grateful to them for making these works available to us with subtitles. We begin by considering how such an influential filmmaker, not only in Colombia but across Latin America, remains so little known in Anglo-American film cultures. We talk about the 'Caliwood' group and how we're so used to talking about structures that we forget how individuals make a difference. A group of young friends with shared interests get together and share a house, turning it into studios, an art gallery, a publishing house and a cinema. This group happens to include, amongst others, Luis Ospina, Andrés Caicedo and Carlos Mayolo. We're sh

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 isn't much to look at either - but it's a lark, and one that carries some unexpected sociopolitical commentary. José argues that Johnson doesn't learn enough from the films upon which his pastiche is based, making too little of both the wonderful cast he's assembled and the wonderful sets he's had assembled for him, though the film isn't devoid of flair or structural neatness. Mike was with the film more or less all the way, though suggests that it won't play as well in the distracted environment of the home, the minutiae of the countless plot details easy to lose track of as one tries to make sense of them. So it's worth a watch, but it's neither as elegant nor as charming as we'd like. Recorded on 1st December 2019.

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 Le Mans endurance race, in a film that has not one but two boring titles: Ford v Ferrari in the USA, and Le Mans '66 in the UK. Mike had a good enough time to see it twice, even though it's directed by James Mangold, for whom he has little love; José, incredibly, even welled up at the end. Although one might expect clashes between the egos of our heroes, the Texan car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Brummie racer Ken Miles (Christian Bale), their relationship is really one of friendship, common goals, and coping with the management at Ford, for whom Le Mans is about business opportunity and making their way into the increasingly deep pockets of the American teenager. José finds Ken's family life of particular emotional interest, the support he receives from his wife a pleasure and their arguments complex, though Mike isn't as complimentary, see

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 story of Niloufar Ardalan, the captain of the Iranian women's futsal team whose husband barred her from leaving the country to play in an international final. After the film, José led a discussion with Riham Sheble and Dr. Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad in which the entire audience got involved. It's an enormously interesting film and despite its severe subject matter, a lively, enjoyable watch. Baran Kosari is captivating as Afrooz, the captain, fighting as best she can the system that allows her husband, Yaser, to restrict her movement - which is made scarier by his absence for several scenes. The film cannot possibly be mistaken for suggesting that Yaser's actions can be justified, but gives him space to express his reasons for them, revealing the danger of a bruised male ego, especially one with the support of unjust laws that can be weaponised. We also d