Eavesdropping At The Movies

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, who loses everything. There's a familiar tone to much of the film, Scorsese getting the gang back together - Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel are wonderful to see, but perhaps the most enjoyable performance comes from Joe Pesci, his Russ a calm, knowing presence, a characterisation that feels like a deliberate defiance of the volatility we remember so vividly from Tommy in Goodfellas. The film weaves a tapestry of power structures throughout 20th century New York, incorporating the mob, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and politicians, all tied together by the wild, paranoid, braggadocious figure of Jimmy Hoffa, played by a brilliant Al Pacino in his first ever collaboration with Scorsese. Scorsese's use of digital technology to take years off his cast is a matter of debate between us. José thinks that the use of younger actors would have been be

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil isn't very good. Recorded on 15th November 2019.

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 Colombian mountaintop, whose relationships and leadership break down during a descent into the jungle. We think about its central imagery, Mike arguing that one image above all speaks for the film as a whole, and its allegorical qualities, José considering the character of the American hostage and the impact of American foreign policy and cultural influence on these kids' mentalities and environment. Mike suggests that the engrossing experience of watching the film may outshine its thematic substance, but nonetheless we highly recommend it and urge you to see it at a cinema if you can. Recorded on 13th November 2019.

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 economy and the exploitation of workers in Sorry We Missed You. A struggling dad and husband gets a job as a delivery driver, coerced into handling unfair responsibility and meeting impossible targets, with the stability of his family bearing the brunt of the stress. José argues that Sorry We Missed You only tells us what we already know; Mike contends that its dramatisation makes it scarily real. We're in agreement that it's not especially interesting filmmaking, though, José suggesting that Loach doesn't trust images to convey what he wants. And José has never enjoyed his depiction of the working class, finding it unrealistic at best, with no joy or love available to his films' victims, though he agrees - with some relief! - that there is love in the central family here. Although there's a lot to criticise in his often mechanical filmmaking, we agree

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 Japanese title. It's been beautifully restored in 4K and we were keen to see what all the fuss was about. And, truthfully, we're left still asking that. Its influence is obvious, Mike suggesting that alongside 1999's The Blair Witch Project it defined a new generation of horror cinema, but we don't find it all that creepy, let alone scary. We suggest a number of factors in its iconic status: its place in the West as a foreign curio, an oddity; its brilliant conceit, a videotape that gives you seven days to live after you watch it, giving it an urban myth quality, rather like the found footage form of The Blair Witch Project convincing people of that film's reality. And perhaps what was different and interesting about Ring at the time of its release has become commonplace enough to no longer appear so. However, none of this is to say that we disliked the

Shot in black and white on a clockwork camera from the 1970s, the hand-development of its 16mm film resulting in scratches and unpredictable changes in exposure, and its soundtrack entirely post-synchronised, Mark Jenkin's Bait is audiovisually suffused with atmosphere and texture, and not a little dreamlike and weird to boot. It tells the story of Martin, a Cornish fisherman struggling to cope with the upheaval of both his region and his life specifically that results from an influx of middle-class settlers. He's sold his family's cottage to a family of outsiders, his brother now uses his fishing boat to take tourists on drunken stag parties, and Martin snarls and growls his way through dealing with these changes. It's clear that we're meant to see Martin as a hero, but he's tilting at windmills - though perhaps that's WHY he's a hero - and José argues that the film is deeply conservative, asking, for instance, why it's so bad that Martin's brother adapts to his changing environment by taking tourists on tr

Gemini Man lacks charm, wit, originality, intelligence, any real sense of understanding how to shoot action... but it's a technological showcase, and with 3D glasses on, sat in a cinema with a 60fps projector (120fps screenings, the film's native frame rate, are nigh-on impossible to come by), it provides a certain pleasure. We agree that the high frame rate, so widely criticised in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy - and along with the rest of the world, neither of us liked it at all - works surprisingly well here in Ang Lee's hands, and Mike argues that it's not only visually enjoyable but genuinely aesthetically valuable, picking up on shots that it noticeably contributes to and considering the way Lee uses stillness early on to help the audience adjust to its look and feel. We can't see eye to eye on the film's other technological showpiece, a fully CGI Will Smith, motion captured but rendered as his 20-something-year-old self. Mike thinks it's remarkably convincing, truly evocative of the Fresh Prince-era

It's enormously disappointing that Neither Wolf Nor Dog is as bad as it is, because its subject - Native American life in a society built upon a land that was taken from them, and the pain, grievances and stories that the displaced people carry with them - is massively, conspicuously underrepresented in US cinema and demands to be explored. Unfortunately, although the story on which it is based is true, the hackneyed device of a white man, Kent, who learns about someone different and with whom we're supposed to emotionally identify falls on its face, and the filmmaking is awful. When the film visits Wounded Knee and we hear Dan, the Lakota elder, expose his history of pain and loss, Kent's unearned tears destroy the scene. Mike argues for the film's first act, suggesting that it sets up promising questions and themes, and has a slowness that invites the audience to contemplate these. Dan's interactions with Kent, knowingly using him to tell his stories, conflicts with his friend Grover's reaction, suspicious

Neither of us has ever seen classic British thriller Don't Look Now before, though we're keenly aware of the esteem in which it is held. And it's fair to say that we're blown away by the expressive visual design and editing style, though Mike at first admits to a certain degree of nonplussedness - a film's reputation for greatness can often result in a dampened experience when it is finally encountered - but finds that the film quickly opens up as we discuss it. Don't Look Now is about grief, and expresses it at a formal level. Donald Sutherland's character is unable to save his daughter from drowning at a young age, and thereafter, Mike argues, cannot prevent images of her death from flashing into his mind, just as they flash into the film with no warning. His wife, played by Julie Christie, handles her grief differently, and we discuss whether she does so more successfully than her husband - but if there's something on which we agree, it's that the film primarily conveys his point of view and experience of

José reminisces about Judy Garland as a feature of his childhood, a constant presence on his family's television, and as a person who took on different significance to him as he grew up. Whether he admits it or not, he's been keen to see Judy since the trailers first appeared. Mike, predictably, neither knows much about her nor cares, although he has seen The Wizard of Oz about a thousand times. The film's greatest pleasure is Renée Zellweger's performance, a pleasant surprise to José as he's never liked her very much. We agree that the stage numbers leave something to be desired - the production seems to create a disconnect between Zellweger's performance and singing, sounding artificial - but swoon at moments when it all comes together, particularly in the climactic rendition of Over the Rainbow. José suggests that this is when Zellweger most deviates from any of Garland's true performances, and perhaps that relative freedom from imitation is what gives her the space to connect to the song here. In genera

A captivating performance from Matthias Schoenaerts as a long-time inmate in a Nevada prison gives The Mustang its heart and emotional centre. The story of an isolated man finding the ability to open up through a relationship he develops with a wild horse isn't going to win any awards for originality and is pretty one-note, but has its pleasures, and is an easy watch. Writer-director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre calmly avoids asking obvious and important questions of the American prison system in favour of depicting the benefits of the horse training initiative - based on a real-life scheme that operates in a number of US states - and José suggests that her nationality has a part to play in this apparent lack of knowledge about the deep institutional issues involved, or at least her lack of interest in challenging them. The film indulges in cliché after cliché, but, for all its flaws and lack of imagination, Mike liked it, because that's what he's like, and we really can't emphasise enough how good Schoenaerts

In the mid-Seventies, Argentina was terrorised by the Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance), a far-right death squad that disappeared countless people, and it is under this regime of fear and death that Rojo is set - with 1976's military coup on the horizon. Disappearance is one of the film's major themes and gives it its central structure: Dario Grandinetti's Claudio, a lawyer, has an altercation with a rude young man in a restaurant and, though what follows is partially accidental, ends up leaving the man for dead in Argentina's vast desert. It's the first act of disappearance in a film draped with them, disappearances that nobody speaks of, but everybody takes advantage of. Overt signals of the Triple A are absent here - the film shows us how daily life is affected, in a chilling atmosphere not of fear, but of acceptance. Friends are spoken of as having moved away. A house vacated by a family we never see is ransacked by otherwise well-to-do, middle-class neighbours, and presents a money-making oppo

The Birmingham chapter of the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society shows a few of their films every year at the mac, and this year sees them screen two shorts, Twice Two (1933) and County Hospital (1932), followed by their classic Western feature, Way Out West (1937). We discuss Laurel and Hardy's style, Mike comparing it favourably to cartoons and less favourably to the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and José remarks upon the joys of seeing a full audience of people aged 4 to 90 all laughing at these everlasting films. Recorded on 6th October 2019.

It's as though we've seen two different films, with José bowled over by Joker's social commentary, Mike bored and annoyed by its perceived self-satisfaction - not to mention an audience that applauded at the end. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is explored to be a product of an uncaring, broken society that reaps in him what it sows, in a 1981 Gotham City that is the New York City of the era in all but name. José argues that the film will become a bellwether of the time, depicting the anger of the oppressed and downtrodden - Mike suggests, though, that in demonising them and aligning them to villainy, it gives the right-wing what it wants, in a vision of antifa, the enemy it believes it faces. We discuss issues of race and representation, Mike seeing similarities between some of the film's scenes and real-life historical crimes to which they may refer, and in observing racial components and changes to them, asks what the purpose may be, though, struggles to work towards an answer. And José remarks favourably upon ev

Donald Trump's vision of Mexico as America's terrifying, criminal neighbour to the south finds a home in Rambo: Last Blood, a film in which a journey to Mexico is no less than a descent into Hell, and the comfort of the USA means a ranch, horses, sunsets, and a subterranean network of tunnels in which to viciously trap and slaughter Mexican rapists. You may be surprised to hear that we weren't that keen on it. Considering Sylvester Stallone's age - a mighty 73 years old - Last Blood's action can't ask as much of him physically as did the Rambo films of old, but through the use of traps and ambushes, Stallone's limitations are smartly made irrelevant. But that's about as positive as we can get. This is a film that cost $50m, if the production budget figure on Box Office Mojo is to be believed, and if Stallone hasn't taken $40m of that for himself it's impossible to tell where it's been spent. This is cheap, nasty, acrid cinema, and it spurs José to look back on Stallone's career and decry it for not simply ha

Ideologically hideous and cinematically not even trying... we hate Downton Abbey. Hate it. But José especially so. Recorded on 29th and 30th September 2019.

Francis Ford Coppola's classic 1979 war epic, once renovated already in 2001's Redux, now sees a second altered version, restored in 4K from the original negative, 40 years since it first came out - Apocalypse Now: Final Cut. And what an extraordinary film it remains. José has endless praise for the genius work of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro - this film defines painting with light - and in the cinema it visually dazzles, iconic, bold imagery in every frame. The scale of Coppola's production still amazes, particularly in those early scenes with Robert Duvall's manaical Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore orchestrating helicopters, napalm, infantry, smoke, music and surfers to insane, theatrical effect. And in its long fades between images, superimposing almost abstract compositions over one another, José feels the influence of the avant garde and marvels at what was possible in that era. Marlon Brando's famous role as Kurtz at the end is shorter than José recalls, in part because the French plantation segment, no

A film that jogs memories for Mike, as in the process of revisiting Fight Club he realises what an impact it had on him as a teenager. David Fincher's outrageously stylish and visceral story of a generation of dispossessed men finding purpose in violence has only increased in relevance in the twenty years since its release, drawing comparisons to incels and school shooters, but it also leads Mike to recall how it affected his interests and attitudes in his youth. José, who saw it on its release, was on the positive side of its mixed response and recalls trying to convince his friends of its greatness - and is proud to have been proven right in the years since, in which it rapidly became perhaps the defining cult hit. Mike is surprised to discover a sexual dimension to it that he hadn't quite realised was there - obviously, Tyler and Marla's ceiling-shaking lovemaking sessions hadn't escaped his attention, but it wasn't until this screening that he saw Marla as desirable and human, rather than simply present

The film that introduced Marlene Dietrich to America, Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel tells the tragic story of a man who gives up everything for love. Emil Jannings is delightfully pompous and uptight as Professor Rath, a schoolteacher charmingly disarmed by Dietrich's seductive cabaret star Lola Lola. The two marry, but unable to change and consumed by jealousy, Rath loses his status, dignity and the woman he loves. Dietrich is captivating as Lola, wearing a seemingly permanent smirk of knowingness - much of the film's action takes place backstage, an environment she controls effortlessly, in which the fewer items of clothing she wears the more uncomfortable Rath grows. José notes a moment in which she ungraciously adjusts her underwear, and who cares who's watching - Mike remarks upon her legs, which at times are posed and filmed to take on a character all of their own. José considers the greatness of Dietrich's collaborations with von Sternberg, of which this was the first, and in particular the way

We love Lulu Wang's comedy-drama The Farewell, about a Chinese family that knows their grandmother, Nai Nai, has cancer, but keeps it a secret from her. Awkwafina brings humour and sensitivity to the American-raised granddaughter who argues that her family is in the wrong, and although the film opens up questions of cultural differences, it's remarkably even-handed, refusing to judge or criticise any opinion. Zhao Shuzhen, playing Nai Nai, is delightfully warm and snappy, and shares wonderful chemistry with Awkwafina. The Farewell is a gentle film that tells an engrossing story, and it's simply a pleasure to be in its world. Recorded on 20th September 2019.