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Eavesdropping at the Movies

Eavesdropping at the Movies

By: Jose Arroyo and Michael Glass
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 "I have this romantic idea of the movies as a conjunction of place, people and experiences, all different for each of us, a context in which individual and separate beings try to commune, where the individual experience overlaps with the communal and where that overlapping is demarcated by how we measure the differing responses between ourselves and the rest of the audience: do they laugh when we don’t (and what does that mean?); are they moved when we feel like laughing (and what does that say about me or the others) etc. The idea behind this podcast is to satiate the urge I sometimes have when I see a movie alone – to eavesdrop on what others say. What do they think? How does their experience compare to mine? Snippets are overhead as one leaves the cinema and are often food for thought. A longer snippet of such an experience is what I hope to provide: it’s two friends chatting immediately after a movie. It’s unrehearsed, meandering, slightly convoluted, certainly enthusiastic, and well informed, if not necessarily on all aspects a particular work gives rise to, certainly in terms of knowledge of cinema in general and considerable experience of watching different types of movies and watching movies in different types of ways. It’s not a review. It’s a conversation." - José Arroyo. "I just like the sound of my own voice." - Michael Glass.All rights reserved Art
Episodes
  • 446 - F1

    446 - F1
    Jul 22 2025
    Hollywood collaborates with the FIA, the motorsport governing body, to try to convince us that Formula One is not, in fact, televised Microsoft Excel, but actually very exciting indeed. To this end, it brings in accomplished genre action director Joseph Kosinski, star Brad Pitt, and every cliché under the sun. And it's great fun. There's hardly anything realistic about this story of a sixtysomething hasbeen given an unexpected shot at glory in racing's most prestigious competition, despite the extraordinary effort that's been made to evoke the world of F1, including shooting during real races and race events, with real drivers filling the scenes and even the real commentary team of Crofty and Brundle talking us through the action. The ironic curse of such detail is that he audience most attuned to recognising them is precisely that which will find issue with the film's inaccuracies; José, on the other hand, doesn't know F1 from a hole in the ground, and has no such problem. We also discuss the incredibly intense action and praise the cinematography that captures it; Pitt's perfect fit for the role of a veteran driver who once had promise, made a series of mistakes, but nonetheless carries himself with a casual, appealing ease; whether the film is a corporate biopic, a term Mike is pretty sure he invented and is desperate to catch on; how you can't call yourself an artist when you're just selling a product; and whether Kosinski can make a film that depicts complex human interactions. F1 is far from a great film, but it pretends to be nothing other than what it is: a deeply derivative, expensively-made, fabulously shot and entertaining advert for Formula One. It's easy to recommend. See it! Recorded on 13th July 2025.
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    42 mins
  • 445 - Riefenstahl

    445 - Riefenstahl
    Jun 11 2025
    In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl infamously directed two propaganda films, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, for the Nazi Party. For the rest of her life, which ended in 2003, she denied knowledge of the regime's crimes, including the Holocaust. In 2016, her heirs gave her estate, which included a vast collection of personal documents, correspondence, and film and tape recordings, to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which itself gave permission to Sandra Maischberger and Andres Veiel, a journalist and filmmaker respectively, to use the material as the basis of a documentary. Riefenstahl, comprising countless elements of the archive, along with documents from other sources, builds a biography of a person who never came clean about what she knew about Nazi Germany, and never took responsibility for her part in it. It's a complex and layered examination of a life led between pride and denial, and has resonances today: take Riefenstahl's television appearance in 1976 alongside Elfriede Kretschmer, an anti-Nazi activist and contemporary who refuses to believe her claims of ignorance during wartime, which is followed by recordings of phone calls to Riefenstahl in support of her stance and contempt for Kretschmer. The line between those calls and the metastasising popularity of extreme right-wing, "anti-woke" and similar ideologies today is self-evident, as is the difference between ideas expressed publicly and privately. Riefenstahl is more outspoken off the record than on it, demanding interviewers' cameras be turned off to prevent them from capturing candid revelations. In this sense and others, her life provides a window into fascism - what drives it - her initial response to seeing and hearing Adolf Hitler speak is almost sexual - what it represents and offers to its adherents, and how it shrinks and cowers when it doesn't get everything it wants. It's a problem for Mike that the film doesn't seem to think that the artistic and cultural impact of Riefenstahl's work is worth exploring, where to him it's the most interesting thing about her. Not only were her films technically and artictically innovative - something claimed by subjects in the film but not explained or examined - but her work arguably gives the Nazis their key, and enduring, victory. As thuggish and vile as the regime was, and despite its collapse, through Triumph of the Will and Olympia it created an image of itself as glorious and powerful with which we continue to associate it, and to which neo-Nazis today aspire to emulate. Few filmmakers have left a cultural legacy of such significance and duration, but the documentary isn't interested in the work - only the person. Quibbles apart, Riefenstahl is an excellent example of how to tell a complex tale with intention, clarity, and concision, while allowing for interpretation of the material presented, and it'll be the basis of endless conversations. Highly recommended. Recorded on 2nd June 2025.
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    40 mins
  • 444 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

    444 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
    Jun 6 2025
    A wide-ranging discussion follows the release of the final Mission: Impossible film... perhaps. José doesn't believe that they'll stop making them, nor does he want them to, but he is glad that Tom Cruise appears to be hanging up his boots - he's just too old now. While he reflects on Cruise's career and stardom, Mike's watched every Mission: Impossible film in anticipation of The Final Reckoning, and tracks changes in their aesthetics, sexuality, and comic tone, as the series worked its way towards finding the formula that's become its signature. Recorded on 27th May 2025.
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    1 hr and 8 mins

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