We were delighted to be invited to the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Warwick for a conversation with James MacDowell about Eavesdropping at the Movies: how it began, why we do it, what we get out of it, how we make it. We hope you enjoy what was an enormously satisfying hour and a bit in which we had the privilege to discuss our practice of film criticism with an audience keen to ask questions. Thank you to James for chairing, to Julie Lobalzo Wright for inviting us and to all those who attended and asked such interesting questions.
Michael J. Glass joins me for a discussion of Gus Van Sant’s GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997), a blockbuster success in its day; a film that won Robin Williams an Oscar, made stars of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and left a big cultural imprint. It’s since been much parodied (in COMMUNITY, THE SIMPSONS, all over youtube) and a dominant critical perspective is slightly sniffy on the film: filmmaking by numbers and committees on a ‘we need a job’ script. We found it an extremely easy watch that holds up and is even more interesting on second viewing. GOOD WILL HUNTING is an effective piece that is surprising in all kinds of ways and still works. We discuss its critique of the US, its focus on class, on abuse, on the fragility of young men. Its rare to see a film that dramatizes how American foreign policy is one of extraction and exploitation and how social mobility in the US is available only to geniuses with sponsorship. We also discuss whether how Van Sant films and what he focuses on might be connected to sexual identity.
The latest episode of the Fantasy/Animation podcast on Coco is also our first crossover instalment. Many thanks to Christopher Holliday and Alex Sergeant for including Michael Glass and myself. Coco´s great and this was great fun to do:
Jurassic World returns. J.A. Bayona, the director of The Orphanage and A Monster Calls, is in charge, transforming the colourful knockabout thrills of the previous instalment into a volcano disaster-cum-Gothic horror film. We both love the heightened drama of the mansion half of the film and how Bayona finds new life in what has, over the last 25 years, somehow become somewhat stale imagery of reanimated dinosaurs. José adores the casting of Geraldine Chaplin and Mike finds the reduced importance of love stories a positive thing. And seeing businessmen get killed is always fun. Cracking movie. Hugely enjoyable.
The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.
Phantom Thread offered us so much to think about that we decided to revisit it, this time with Stephen Glass, who is both a filmmaker and Mike’s brother: very handy. This is our second viewing, Stephen’s fourth. We note how little time these great films now remain onscreen in Birmingham but focus on various aspects of mise-en-scène and performance: are the dresses meant to be not quite right? How fantastic is the Chelsea Arts Ball scene and the wonderful superimposition from the Alps? We discuss the power struggle between Alma and Cyril; the connection between Alma and Reynolds’ mother; the changes of lighting in relation to the characters from the beginning of the film to the end; the narrative deployment of the Barbara Rose character and the use of music. A film that’s endlessly interesting.
The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.
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Mike and I discuss scandinoir, why Tomas Alfredson — who is not Thomas Anderson — is such a great director, how some shots in this film made me swoon, why Chloë Sevigny’s performance is so great and Michael Fassbender’s, gloriously handsome as he is in this movie, is not. Was Val Kilmer dubbed? Why does a film that has so many extraordinary elements not quite add up to the sum of its parts? Is Snowman a Europudding? Spoilers abound
