notesonfilm1

[notesonfilm1]

José Arroyo In Conversation with Diego Cepeda on OUTSKIRTS

[notesonfilm1]

La Venganza (Juan Antonio Bardem, Spain, 1958

  Saw LA VENGANZA on the plane back home yesterday and was bowled over by the mise-en-scène. I’ve never thought of Juan Antonio Bardem, Javier’s uncle, as a great visual stylist and I have to think on the film some more. There were some scenes – maybe the most daring to film in 1957, the reason the film eventually suffered censorship issues – that seem crude and by the ‘communist party’ handbook…

[notesonfilm1]

La Bachata del Biónico (Yoel Morales, Dominican Repubic, 2024)

I saw La Bachata del Biónico with a friend last night in a commercial theatre in Santo Domingo, with an audience that laughed out loud throughout. It’s a brilliantly funny film about l’amour fou as lived by a crackhead. El bionico (Manuel Raposo) is crazy in love with La Flaca (Ana Minier), also an addict but now getting clean in a detox centre. The film is shot as a mockumentary in which a film…

[notesonfilm1]

José Arroyo in Conversation with Paul Cuff on Robert Eggers' NOSFERATU (2024)

Such a pleasure to talk to Paul Cuff about Robert Egger’s version of NOSFERATU. He knows so much that the conversation unfurls into a discussion of the various other versions, Murnau’s original (1922), Herzog’s version (1979), David Lee Fisher’s version (2023), and onto the films of Guy Maddin, Pablo Berger’s BLANCA NIEVES (2012), various versions of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE and even THE ARTIST…

[notesonfilm1]

Michael Betancourt, 'Judy at Carnegie Hall'

I was unaware of this series, the album equivalent of the BFI classic series, and Manuel Betancourt’s Book on JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL is so good, I plan to try out more. Betancourt covers the so-called ‘greatest night in showbusiness’ from many perspectives, the audience, the songs, the performance, the performer, the recording, the liveness. And one gets a rich understanding of Garland’s career to…

[notesonfilm1]

Thinking Aloud About Film: L'innocente/ The Innocent (Luchino Visconti, 1976)

We discuss Visconti’s final film, currently available to see through the BFI streaming service, in conjunction with the Visconti season recently held at the Southbank, and in a lush and lovely print. Richard had to convince me to podcast on this and I’m glad we did. We both think it a great film, without being anywhere near Visconti’s greatest, a measure of the director’s extraordinary…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 441 – Ne Zha 2

Over the last couple of months, Chinese children’s fantasy Ne Zha 2 has quickly, and arguably quietly, become the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the first animated film to gross over $2 billion. It’s hard to keep up with the records it’s been breaking – but can we keep up with the plot? No is the answer, but we readily accept that younger minds, and minds more in tune with Ne Zha…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 440 – Mickey 17

After a little time off, we’re back at the cinema to see Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi comedy, Mickey 17, in which Robert Pattinson dies. Repeatedly. Leaving Earth on a spaceship seeking to colonise an icy planet, Pattinson’s Mickey is an “Expendable”: a disposable worker given lethal assignments, regenerated by a biological printer, and sent out to die again. But when the 17th version of Mickey fails to…

[notesonfilm1]

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Ackerman, 1975)

[notesonfilm1]

Thinking Aloud About Film: Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984)

Tsui Hark’s SHANGHAI BLUES (1984), starring Kenny Bee, Sylvia Chang and Sally Yeh, is currently playing on MUBI. A commercial romantic comedy with musical numbers galore and lots of screwball and slapstick, the film is easy to like. We discuss the pleasures in the performers, the interwar Shanghai setting, the beauty of its look and design, the inventiveness of its shot design and composition. We…

[notesonfilm1]

THINKING ALOUD ABOUT FILM: Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)

We didn’t manage to get to much of the recent Luchino Visconti retrospective at BFI South Bank but we somehow wanted to mark the moment, and how better than a discussion of BELLISSIMA (1951), particularly through the great Eureka/ Masters of Cinema blu-ray. We discuss its themes of obsession, mother love, fantasy, cinema, the effects of media on private and collective aspirations; how it’s a film…

[notesonfilm1]

José Arroyo in Conversation with Dr. Ben Lamb on THE WIRE

Wonderful to have an opportunity to discuss THE WIRE (David Simon, showrunner: 2002-2008) — a show which got mixed reviews and diminishing audiences but nonetheless survived to become a cultural touchstone — with Dr. Ben Lamb. Ben is the author of You’re Nicked: Investigating British Television Police Series, for Manchester University Press as well as the producer of award winning films such as…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 439 – The Brutalist

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…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 437 – Babygirl

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,…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 436 – Maria

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…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 435 – Nosferatu (2024)

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…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 434 – Conclave

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…