Eavesdropping at the Movies: 475 – Exit 8

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Most videogames that receive cinematic adaptations are big – the likes of Uncharted, Minecraft, Sonic the Hedgehog and Resident Evil, all of which have been adapted, some several times, are among the biggest games in history, and their cinematic versions are typically intended to be blockbusters. Exit 8 is not. It is an independent Japanese game made by one person, turned into a low-budget, high-concept, Japanese horror film. And most cinematic adaptations of videogames are not very good. The medium has a long history of failing to translate well to film. Exit 8 makes a success of the transition, finding plenty of space in the slight source material to tell a story about routine, fear of change, and personal improvement.

We discuss what makes the adaptation work and where it might not, think through the story’s internal logic, and, as we did with Godzilla Minus One, remark upon the film’s visual quality given its small budget, asking where all that money goes when Hollywood spends ten times the amount to achieve the same results. Exit 8 is a welcome surprise, particularly to Mike, who really thought it’d be rubbish.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (David Franel, 2026)

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I finally got around to seeing THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 yesterday. It has a script that could sink any ship and direction that never rises above pedestrian but I did like it more than my friends did. It has Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, who wear fabulous clothes and make every joke work, and I did laugh quite a bit. The mystery in all of this is Anne Hathaway. It’s her vehicle. Like everyone else I fell in love with her in The Princess Diaries (2001). So she’s been an above-the-title star for over a quarter of a century now, with four films coming out this year; and I hope she’s more interesting in them then she is in this one. She is very beautiful of course; she’s very good – she’s always emotionally legible; and she’s got the most thankless part in the film. But even so, she could have brought more zing, a wink or two, some passion. I’d say her earnestness kills her, except of course, here she is, 25 years later, in her own starring vehicle, keeping the thing together while Streep and Blunt buzz, sparkle, and sting around her.

The original Devil Wears Prada ignited Streep’s career as a popular box-office star after an already long career as the prestige star/actress of her generation, admired and awarded but rarely loved until then. The 2006 film is also what brought Emily Blunt to everyone’s attention. Both are delicious here, salty and unafraid. I didn’t mind Stanley Tucci now as much as I did then, when he seemed to have cornered the market with a particularly narrow conception of ‘gayness’, though I did note all the protagonists in this film are given partners and a sex life except him, and it does somehow seem particularly egregious that a film whose filmmakers know is aimed to a considerable extent at a gay audience should think so narrowly and so little of it. But then this is a film about fashion – Streep memorable noted that the clothes in this film are like expensive special effects in Marvel movies – but so badly directed and edited, that it packs it with events and personalities in the fashion world (Law Roch, Donatella, Dolce and Gabbana) yet rarely allows the audience to register who they are. And yet….after all that, there is Streep, Blunt, the clothes, a few good one-liners. There are worst ways to spend an afternoon.

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 474 – Rose of Nevada

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Seven years ago, we disagreed with the thrust of what Mark Jenkin’s Bait had to say about the world as it is and as it ought to be, but appreciated its expressive strength. It was a film with substance. You could grapple with it. Rose of Nevada broadly conveys the same messages, but, as they derive primarily from the film’s setting and less so its plot, is less forceful and argumentative about them, requiring us to accept them in shorthand and take them as read.

Fair enough, perhaps – why make the same film twice? – but the story to which Jenkin’s perspective is here allied is of little interest, and told with insufficient clarity, populated by dull, flat characters whose developments are poorly motivated – if at all. Jenkin is certainly a visual stylist, but he shows little instinct for effective storytelling or direction of actors here, and we question the response Rose of Nevada has received from other critics, which seems inexplicably universal in its positivity.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 473 – Project Hail Mary

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In 2015, Matt Damon found himself stranded on Mars in The Martian, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, and had to improvise unlikely solutions in order to survive and get home. In 2026, Ryan Gosling finds himself stranded in outer space in Project Hail Mary, an adapation of Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, and has to improvise unlikely solutions in order to save Earth and get home. It’s fair to say that we’re on familiar territory here, but who cares when it’s this entertaining?

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, known for gloriously imaginative and daft comedy, manage the competing tones in Project Hail Mary beautifully, moving easily between wacky discovery, dramatic reveals, and earned sentimentality, and never failing to show care and an instinct for the value of the image – some shots are breathtaking. Like Weir, they’re unafraid to cannibalise their previous work in search of useful ideas, reworking the monkey thought translator from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs into a computer that allows Gosling’s reluctant hero to communicate with Rocky, the alien he meets. In this and elsewhere throughout, Project Hail Mary shows the same reverence for scientific inquiry and application of intelligence to problem-solving that The Martian did, which is a pleasure in itself.

There’s a huge amount to like here, at least until the long and excessively detailed ending, which sadly drags things down a little. We urge you to see Project Hail Mary while it’s in cinemas – it’s a massive crowd pleaser and one of the most satisfying experiences we’ve had at the pictures in a while.

Amidst all this, we also discuss Gosling’s particular brand of stardom and place in the Hollywood hierarchy in comparison with Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet, between whose names José feels Gosling gets smothered
Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

Viva Maria (Louis Malle, 1965)

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VIVA MARIA (Louis Malle, 1965) is the only film I’ve been able to see from The Garden’s Cinema JEANNE MOREAU SEASON, and what bliss it was: buoyant, witty, cuttingly anti-clerical. The audience leaned middle-aged/ elderly and laughed out loud throughout. Conceived as a subversion of the male buddy film and inspired by Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper in VERA CRUZ. Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau are showgirls making a living strip-teasing through the colonies and end up leading a revolution that succeeds in liberating San Miguel, a fictional country. Bardot plays the daughter of an Irish revolutionary and is an expert in anything to do with gun-powder. Moreau had been a legitimate actress and mines the classics for speeches declaimed to inspire the masses. Bardot is particularly charming in this kind of farce. She reminds me of Cher in her TV series days: She’s no Carole Lombard but she’s game, up for anything, and extremely charming with it. This light- as-air musical farce is backed up by some heavy-weight talents: producer Oscar Dancingers (VIRIDIANA), Jean-Claude Carrière (who wrote so many Buñuel classics such as THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE; THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE), the great Henri Decoin as dop, Pierre Cardin did the clothes, even Volker Schlöndorff is in the credits as an assistant. It’s the kind of film in which George Hamilton is perfectly passable as a revolutionary; Moreau and Bardot become worshipped by the masses as two virgin Marys and clerical torture devices fall apart mid-way because they haven’t been used since the Inquisition. The slogans of the era crop up everywhere and there’s something delightful about Bardot’s warning that ‘property is theft’. Indeed, it was all delightful and, of course, banned in Texas for the sex and the anti-clericalism.

THE DRAMA (Kristoffer Borgli, 2025)

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In the last week I’ve seen five trailers for forthcoming attractions starring Zendaya: four films (Dune 3, The Odyssey, the new Spider-Man film, The Drama) and the newet season of Euphoria. I’ve never seen it’s like. And if THE DRAMA is anything to go, by it’s going to be her year. She’s glorious in it: beautiful, funny, emotionally transparent, doing everything, and with the luminosity of a true star. Rob Patterson is very good in it also. It’s a romance that starts being charming and glamorous before going into quite dark, socially relevant areas without ever losing sight of it being a romance. A quite original film whose narration weaves in the past, the imaginary and the film’s present whilst keeping control of the tone and the story. I thought I hadn’t heard of its Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli until I remember I had admired DREAM SCENARIO, where Nicholas Cage appears in millions of people’s dreams. THE DRAMA is a funny, spikey film that will lead to much discussion. I recommend.

José Arroyo

Orwell 2+2=5 (Raoul Peck, 2025)

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I enjoyed watching ‘Orwell 2+2= 5’ even though I felt that the point its trying to make is one we already know: that we now live in a 1984-esque world of constant surveillance where we are taught to mistrust the evidence of our own eyes and believe the opposite of what we see as true. All those terms Orwell introduced in his novel – newspeak, doublethink, sex crimes, unpersons, people disappeared or vaporised — are now all familiar to us from the news. Thus, we are led to think that ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength’ etc. One just has to see Karoline Levitt’s press briefings to see to what extent Orwell’s dystopia has become our reality. This is now not brought about through Stalinist torture and purges but through billionaires’ concentration of the media internationally to serve their own private interests.

The film is superb at gathering extraordinary footage from every Orwell-related work you can think of. The filmmakers have had access to Sonia Orwell’s archive so there are all kinds of photograph and letters (read beautifully by Damien Lewis) that are textured into the film. What I liked best was the beginning, demonstrating how Orwell was a child of Empire, born in India, educated at Eton, later serving in the Burmese Police Force.  Ther’s a wonderful description of his class, which he describes as lower upper: one or two live-in servants at most; knows how to ride but can’t afford to keep horses; knows how to shoot but doesn’t own grounds in which to do so; conscious of the cut of a suit but can’t afford the best tailors; knows how to order in restaurants but can rarely afford to eat in them; won’t go into trade so it’s church, navy or the civil service; they make up the class that goes work in the far corners are the empire because that’s what permits them to live like the upper upper class these gentlemen are conscious of not belonging to.

The rest of the film weaves Orwell’s political thinking as an explanatory framework for what we’ve recently seen in Myanmar, El Salvador, Honduras, Gaza etc. as well as the rise of Modi, Orban, and Trump. Aside from the early passages showing what made Orwell Orwell I didn’t feel I learnt anything though I enjoyed watching it all. I was particularly moved by the footage of Milan Kundera explaining how he’d criticised Orwell in his youth but how he’d been wrong and why the work is of continued relevance. The film lays its hopes for the world on common decency and collective action. A textured, informative and entertaining film but perhaps lacking in original insight.

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 471 – The Secret Agent

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We’ve previously seen Bacurau, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s last film, which we loved, and find The Secret Agent a similarly fascinating depiction of political corruption and persecution in Brazil, though much more grounded and fleshed out, particularly given the historical setting in 1977, at which time Brazil was subject to a military dictatorship. To José, who grew up in Franco’s Spain, The Secret Agent‘s depiction of life under fascism richly, and scarily, evokes the dynamics at play in such a society. As Wagner Moura’s protagonist discovers, simply upsetting the wrong person can be enough to have hitmen sent after you.

Mike argues that the film takes too long to get going – in developing its picture of the lawless world in which Moura joins other political refugees and a dissident network, it makes us wait to find out who he is and why he’s among that group. José doesn’t share that assessment, finding the time well spent and trusting the film’s pacing. We discuss the flights of fancy, including an animated segment which dramatises news reports of a supposedly supernatural severed leg killing people (in fact, the police and media are all too happy to make use of the nonsensical urban legend to cover up their extrajudicial murders); Moura’s performance, which earned him an Oscar nomination; the generations’ differing attitudes to maintaining historical records and keeping the past alive; and the hereditary aspect of positions of power, in which such figures as the police chief, wealthy industrialists, and even contract killers are always accompanied and assisted by their sons.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 470 – Wuthering Heights (2026)

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hose to whom Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, is important, have approached Emerald Fennell’s adaptation warily. It’s a book that a lot of women have grown up on, and the trailers raised questions. Would it be too steamy? Too modernised? Would it miss the point? We, however, residing outside that demographic and never having read the novel, can’t meaningfully consider the issue of adaptation, and are more interested in the film taken on its own terms. Is it good?

The answer is yes. Fennell’s direction is visually expressive and inventive, and tonally confident. We disagree on aspects of Cathy and Heathcliff’s dynamic, José arguing that theirs is as deep as a romance gets despite – or perhaps because of – how toxic they are for one another; Mike questioning Cathy’s commitment and suggesting that the film doesn’t sell the idea that social status and financial obligation requires her to forgo Heathcliff. We also consider the blind casting, sexual dynamics and depiction of BDSM (or BDSM-like) activities, and the female gaze that’s built in to everything – this is a film about a woman, based on a novel by a woman, screenwritten, directed and produced by women, and aimed at a female audience.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 469 – Send Help

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Send Help sees Rachel McAdams marooned on a desert island with her asshole boss in a cartoonishly gory comic adventure the likes of which made director Sam Raimi’s name. We discuss how feminist it really is – at the very least, it’s a bloke’s idea of female empowerment – and praise McAdams’ and Dylan O’Brien’s performances, upon which the entire film relies.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Thinking Aloud About Film: Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)

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Richard and I went to see the Royal Opera’s production of Oliver Leith’s and Matt Copson’s LAST DAYS, directed by Copson and Anna Morrissey, with superb set designs by Grace Smart. It’s inspired by Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film and so were inspired to podcast on it. The film is part of what’s been called Van Sant’s ‘Death Trilogy’ (alongside GERRY (2002) and ELEPHANT (2003)).

 

In the podcast we discuss how, in spite of it being a ‘slow’ film, time flew by; how we were hypnotized by images and entranced by the originality of its story-telling. It made those last days intelligible.  The film seems to run entirely on mood — loneliness, frailty, vulnerability, alienation in a cold climate.  A  fluid dexterity of original story-telling and tone. Blake is the source of money, power, creativity … but no one is looking after him.

 

We talk about how we don’t see Blake’s full face until close to the end, though re-visiting the film proves this to be inaccurate. It’s nonetheless interesting that this is a dominant impression. It’s a film where interiority is expressed through externals. We also discuss the film in relation to Bella Tarr’s Sátántango and to Grey Gardens (1975).

 

LAST DAYS  is about a young man, outwardly rich and successful but  feeling he’s got nothing to live for and with no one – even those physically in the room with him — to help him break through his isolation and alienation. A great film, propulsed by mood.

 

The podcast may be listened to below:

 

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

Blake Leaving his Body

 

We discuss wether Cobain also performed in a negligée and find he has:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/kurt-cobain-nirvana-perform-in-lingerie/

The Kiing’s Singers can be seen here:

The interview with van Sant from the Last Days programme is on the Royal Opera’s site:

https://www.rbo.org.uk/gus-van-sant-interview-last-days

The programme for the opera may be seen below (though the pages may not be in order):

A brief tribute to Brigitte Bardot

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One can’t be sad at the death of someone who lived to 91. But I love Bardot on film. I love her autobiography, and I love Ginette Vincendeau’s wonderful book on her; so I took a moment to make a little tribute from the scraps I could find.

 

The video may be accessed below;

or here:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1150063126

 

……and no, I am not celebrating her racism, homophobia and her support of Le Pen, a regrettable development, well documented.

From the early 50s to the early 70s she embodied and represented a model of sexual freedom and personal liberty, France’s Marianne, the face of French modernity, the woman on trial for being a woman that Simone de Beauvoir wrote about. And those extraordinary films. Then she stopped making films and came to represent the antithesis of what she once did, propelled by the same libertarianism but this time into a racist, homophobic and right-wing destination. A sad development and sadder still that she is not the only one to have been afflicted so.

 

Ginette Vincendeau’s obituary for the BFI may be accessed here:

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 468 – Pillion

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Possibly the sweetest and lightest gay BDSM biker film ever made, Pillion opens up conversations on power dynamics, consent and boundaries, and made Mike cry. Everything about it is so assured, particularly Harry Melling’s understated protagonist, meek and new to BDSM; Alexander Skarsgård’s commanding, mysterious lover; and Harry Lighton’s direction, the control of tone he exhibits a remarkable achievement for a first feature. We explore the film’s themes, offer different interpretations of events, and ask what’s good and bad about the relationship depicted.

Pillion is a wonderful film, with, given the subject matter, a surprisingly funny and wholesome spirit. An extraordinary achievement of tone. Highly recommended.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 467 – It Was Just an Accident

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One of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, has spent the last quarter of a century in conflict with the Iranian government, which objects to his films’ criticisms of their actions and the wider social conditions in the country, and has both arrested him several times and banned him from making films for twenty years – which hasn’t stopped him. His latest, It Was Just an Accident, won the 2025 Palme d’Or, and tells the story of former political prisoners who capture a man they suspect was their torturer.

It’s a brilliant thriller which, despite the gravity and darkness of its subject matter, is energetic and entertaining. It effortlessly raises both moral and practical questions – What’s the right thing to do with their captive? Have they become the torturers? If they let him live, won’t he just come after them again? – without entering morality play territory, neither pretending to have the answers nor admonishing its characters for their choices and emotional responses. It’s a vivid expression of the lasting effect the actions of the Iranian regime have had on its people, for whom merely the suggestion that they might be able to exact revenge on their torturer causes instant emotional outbursts.

We discuss all this and more, including the depiction of a lawless culture in which you’re constantly expected to give bribes to get by; the filmmaking, in which no filming permits were provided and Panahi had to once again violate his filmmaking ban; the question of how ambiguous the end might be and what that means; and a comparison with American cinema in Trump’s America and the question of what might be happening under ICE, the immigration enforcement agency that’s expanded into a neo-paramilitary force over the last year.

It Was Just an Accident is a magnificent film. See it.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

 

José Arroyo in Conversation With Glyn Davis on Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

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A treat to talk to the marvellous Glyn Davis on his handsome new book, the ‘BFI Classic’ on Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). In the podcast we discuss how we were both surprised that the film hadn’t yet been covered in the series and why the book is the fulfilment of a long-standing wish of his. We discuss how the film established an iconic template for adolescent dissent and how James Dean became the embodiment of youthful American dissatisfaction and rebellion; Glyn compares Rebel to other films of the period such as The Wild One (Lázló Benedek, 1953) and Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955). We discuss the pros and cons of auteurist approaches; Glyn’s findings in the LA Archives, Ray’s concerns of filling the CinemaScope frame; his uses of colour (the film was originally designed for black and white); the film’s unusual structure, how the film became a template for the teen film that extends to television (Dawson’s Creek was named after the High School in Rebel); how Dean’s extraordinary performance helped popularise and disseminate ‘The Method’, how the figure of Plato has become central to subsequent queer cultures; and how Natalie Wood is often marginalised in discussions of the film…and much more. Glyn generously praises previous work on Ray and the film, particularly Bernard Eisenschitz’ monumental Nicholas Ray: An American Journey and the extraordinarily detailed Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without A Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel. A generous and articulate conversation on a book worth reading and discussing.

 

The Podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

Glyn Davies will be introducing all James Dean films at the Edinburgh Filmhouse from the 8-13th of December.

 

José Arroyo

James Cullen on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: The Gus Van Sant Podcast No. 7

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I wanted to talk to James Cullen on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues because of his untrammelled love for the film, his enthusiasm, and the wide array of references he brings to this very intelligent appreciation of the film: Tim Burton, Bergman, Araki, Godard, Tarantino, Erika Tremblay, New Queer Cinema, A24 films, Brokeback Mountain (2005), Indigenous Cinema, New French Extremity, and more, .

In the podcast below we discuss why James sees the film as part of an unofficial trilogy alongside Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991); how the film may be seen as a thesis on the queer American road movie; What does it mean to do a queer female-focused road movie? A queer Western? What are the problems of finding a visual grammar for beat novels, acknowledging that ‘beat’ itself is a very masculinist concept? James sees the film as laudably unserious, a story about finding freedom that destroys all sense of coherence; comedic, silly, with a touch of magical realism; a film that destroys all sense of heteronormative experience, throws it in Hollywood’s face, and might give you tonal whiplash in the process; a film in which Van Sant tries to reinvent himself and fails, yet in the process creates his new style.

Amongst many other reasons, James loves the film because it is  ‘Against all the heteronormative expectations we have from cinema as a medium. None of these A24 Neon filmmakers could make anything like this. There’s an audience for this film, it’s going to come from somewhere, sometime; and I want to be part of that audience’

And I want to be in the audience listening to James speak about it.

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

A previous podcast with Lisa Purse may be listened to here:

 

The Gus Van Sant Podcast No. 4: Lisa Purse on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 466 – Nuremberg

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Russell Crowe shines in Nuremberg as Hermann Göring, who became the face of the Nazi Party following Hitler’s suicide and the end of the war, as he’s held in custody and probed by a psychiatrist as the titular trials approach. Indeed, while a mediocre film, its actors performances are a pleasure – with the exception of Rami Malek, whose psychiatrist is twitchy, busy, and a failure. A shame that he’s the protagonist, then.

We discuss the film’s structure and intentions: José contends that Malek’s character is not just badly played but an irrelevance, and the drama would be much better served by focusing on Michael Shannon’s prosecutor; Mike criticises what he claims is a stupid person’s idea of clever writing.

And there’s more to think about: how Nuremberg compares to Bridge of Spies, which similarly depicted a novel trial that had obvious implications beyond the courtroom, and Judgment at Nuremberg, the other major dramatisation of the trials; the film’s tone, which is able to handle moments of humour but sometimes veers into the overly glib and kitsch; the present-day rise of fascism and the genocide in Gaza to which it speaks; the use of real footage of Holocaust victims and the purpose to which it’s put; and whether we think that its critique of the Catholic Church for its support of the Nazis, and suggestion that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was an unjustifiable atrocity, are surprising and bold things for a mainstream American film to do… or not particularly impressive, and shouldn’t people just know this stuff anyway?

 

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 465 – Die My Love

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Jennifer Lawrence gives a career-best performance as a new mother struggling with depression and a rocky relationship in Die My Love, directed by Lynne Ramsay, whose remarkable instinct for tone and atmosphere shouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s a character study whose artistry is all in the filmmaking and performances, which bring out great richness of feeling in material that, on the page, might seem to lack complexity. One could suggest that those who’ve experienced similar struggles to the film’s characters hold the key to unlocking its depths, but that’s a temptation to avoid – one of the film’s achievements is the ease with which it gets you to feel what its characters are feeling. See it at the cinema, where you’ll be able to properly submit yourself to it.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 464 – Bugonia

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Yorgos Lanthimos’ fourth collaboration with Emma Stone yields a darkly comedic thriller about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a CEO, determined to reveal the truth that she’s an alien from Andromeda. We’ve all at least considered it.

While funny and absurd, Bugonia is also tragic and misanthropic, and we’re unconvinced that its ending is either earned or fitting, despite Mike’s insistence that he’s seen it coming for weeks. We consider the film’s messaging, aesthetics, and tone; what its stars bring to it and how they differ; what the title might mean; and how a comparison with Alex Garland’s Ex Machina reveals the lacks in the storytelling here. We pick at Bugonia left, right and centre, but despite our complaints, it showed us a very entertaining time, and there’s a lot about it to recommend.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 463 – Frankenstein (2025)

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Another classic Gothic horror is remade for the modern age: first we saw Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, and now Guillermo del Toro brings us his adaptation of Frankenstein. Like Nosferatu, Frankenstein is astonishing to look at, and, like Nosferatu, also written by its director, it probably would have benefitted from the attention of a professional screenwriter. Still, it’s a pleasure to spend time in the word del Toro envisions, and we talk wide angle lenses, the range of performances – Oscar Isaac’s busy, Jacob Elordi’s brooding, Mia Goth’s underwhelming – the difficulty of understanding dialogue in screen two at the Mockingbird, and what this Frankenstein thematically shares with One Battle After Another.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.