Denzel Washington returns for the third and final instalment of the Equalizer trilogy, in which former government assassin Robert McCall devotes his time and skills to avenging for the little guy. This time, he finds himself in Mediterranean Europe, embroiled in a fight to protect a coastal town from terrorisation by the Camorra, the Mafia of southern Italy.

The Equalizer 3 shares the contemplative tone and pervasive sense of loss of its predecessors. Here, there's a focus on physical infirmity and vulnerability, a gunshot McCall receives early on forcing a long recuperation, slow, careful approaches to walking down stairs, and the use of a cane. Action erupts quickly and violently, emphasised by director Antoine Fuqua's camera and editing - McCall is wounded, but maintains his ruthlessness and murderous efficiency.

We compare the action and Washington to Rambo: Last Blood and its star, Sylvester Stallone, which took a similarly staccato approach to its action, clearly informed by Stallone's age and inability to move as gracefully as he used to - this film is doing something similar, but less thuggishly, if no less violently. We question the ease with which moral decisions are made in this world, in which right and wrong are easily distinguished and the involvement of a vigilante is sold as an obvious necessity and benefit; the film's look, which fails to show off its spectacular location; and some of its writing and contrivances, particularly concerning Dakota Fanning's character, a CIA analyst contacted by Robert, and the Camorra. And we discuss McCall as a neurodivergent superhero.

The Equalizer 3 is a flawed film with a fair bit of dumbness to overlook, but it is easy to do so when the portrait it paints of local life and close community is so absorbing and inviting, and its star has such presence, warmth, and intelligence. It's an easy film to recommend, bearing in mind that it's a work of vigilante fantasy. After all, if Batman's allowed to take the law into his own hands when the institutions around him fail, why shouldn't Denzel be? At least he doesn't pretend not to kill people.

Recorded on 10th September 2023.

396 - The Equalizer 3

Ridley Scott returns to Gladiator after more than twenty years, telling a story that's broadly the same, but neatly picks up from the original too. Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal in the central role, and we discuss whether he has the movie star charisma to match his indie film credentials; we also talk action, visual effects, Denzel Washington's Iago figure, the trope of the gay villain, and more.

Recorded on 15th November 2024.

430 - Gladiator II

We enjoyed the first. We didn't care for the second. Does the third bring back the fun?

No, not really.

Recorded on 17th November 2024.

431 - Venom: The Last Dance

Hugh Grant brings his idiosyncratic brand of English charm to the world of horror in Heretic, in which he isolates and tests the faith of two young Mormon missionaries. It's a film that leaves you asking all sorts of questions, such as, "did anything he was up to actually make any sense?", but for a horror film so heavy on the dialogue and relatively light on the scares, it's fabulously enertaining throughout - a real achievement of direction and writing. See it!

Recorded on 17th November 2024.

432 - Heretic

A film whose brilliant conceit is so simple and compelling we can't believe we've never seen it before, Juror #2 tells the story of a juror whose responsibility it is to assess the guilt of a defendant who he knows is innocent of murder - because it was the juror who did it.

Summoned to serve on a jury and quickly recognising the details of the case, Nicholas Hoult's Justin realises that the deer he hit with his car one dark, stormy night was in fact the defendant's girlfriend, for whose supposed murder he is on trial. So begins a morality play of sorts, Justin wanting to do the right thing and keep an innocent person from prison, but unwilling to expose himself as the real, if accidental, killer.

It's a film that sets two institutions, the family and the court, at war. Justin's wife has a baby on the way, and is there any wrong that can't be justified by the protection of the family? We discuss this in the particular light of director Clint Eastwood's reputation as a lifelong conservative, Mike suggesting that the distrust the film shows towards the legal system, a government institution, has precedent in Eastwood's other work, but its critique of the sanctity of the family is surprising and invigorating.

Juror #2 is a thoroughly engrossing exploration of a terrific idea, and you'll take its questions home with you long after it ends. What would you do? Are you sure?

Recorded on 18th November 2024.

433 - Juror #2

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/11/25/pofcrit-podcast-2024-madeleine-lear-on-one-hour-photo-mark-romanek-2002/
Starring Robin Williams in one of his most unsettling roles as Sy, the photo guy. One Hour Photo follows Sy, a photo technician, as he forms an obsession with the Yorkin family before taking it upon himself to avenge his shattered fantasy and lost childhood innocence. In the accompanying podcast, Madeleine West shows how Romanek skillfully extends this film's sense of unease into its cinematography and mise-en-scène, delving into the intricate depths of the human mind, exploring themes of obsession, isolation and voyeurism.
This podcast discusses portrayals of mental health within cinema while looking towards this film's visuals as a way of depicting isolation and loneliness.

POFCRIT PODCAST 2024: Madeleine Lear on One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek, 2002)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/11/29/thinking-aloud-about-film-volver-pedro-almodovar-2006/
Richard and I return to discuss VOLVER (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006), interesting to see always but particularly for Richard now having seen WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (1984) and his earlier films, which he hadn’t seen before, and thus more fully appreciating one of the ‘returns’ in VOVER, that of Carmen Maura. We discuss the recurring motifs: Strong women, dreadful men, female solidarity, rape, relationships between mother and child, cemeteries, a star entrance through a tombstone. We note the evidence of Almodóvar’s rural background, how his films always reference and often feature the rural as setting. Almodóvar is of the few directors to represent rural customs (the white shirts and dark trousers of the men at the funeral); the rural is also evident in his use of dialogue, which feels so true, and adds a particular texture to his films, phrases that are structures of feeling, modes of understanding. We note how this is in tension with the representation of Madrid, often a character of its own in his films, and in this instance, the particular, working-class Madrid neighbourhoods of this film. We discuss the narrative, and how the film creates a world in which death and violence hover, the work of a filmmaker who doesn’t believe in ghosts but is aware of the relevance of the spectral in people’s lives and people’s understandings. The film looks luminous with a depth and texture to the visuals. Flowers turn up significantly in the film, represented in the poster’s design. We can’t think of another director who features rape so recurringly, in this case there’s a parallell rhyming rape of a father/ daughter with significantly different responses from the mothers; we note too how fathers are often shown as abusive, absent, neglectful. We discuss how Almodóvar often structures his story telling around a history of cinema, a telling through allusions, quotations, references to film, here we note how the film evokes Magnani, Loren, MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, 1945), STELLA DALLAS (King Vidor 1937, the Magnani clip in the film is from Visconti’s BELLISSIMA (1951).  Lastly, we tie all of this to the film’s themes: the past, making amends, building bridges, making connections, various kinds of returns.

Thinking Aloud About Film: Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/11/29/pofcrit-podcast-2024-dylan-day-on-trainspotting-danny-boyle-1996/
Adapted from the 1993 novel by Irvine Welsh, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting is as whimsical as it is putrid. One of the most iconic and provocative films of the 1990s, it serves to examine the life of heroin addict Mark Renton and his addict friends as they endlessly search for the next hit. With an unrivalled energy and an unforgettable soundtrack, we seek to dig deeper into this film’s messages and influences of the film, its context within the “Britpop” movement, its allusions to Thatcher’s Britian, its representations of addiction beyond heroin and so on. We take a look at how effective the audio-visual style of Trainspotting is at conveying the visceral experience of drug addiction and how it is unique in its representation of addiction. Join us as we talk about all this and more.

POFCRIT PODCAST 2024: Dylan Day on Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)

Fiona Cox, PhD in Film Studies by day, and, under the name of Kitty Mazinksy, chanteuse extraordinaire by night, is the ideal person to talk to about WICKED (Jon M. Chu, 2024). She’s read the book, seen the musical four times and has even performed in it. She now talks to me about musicals, the politics of the film, the dancing, the singing, the numbers, the length. Are critics right about tonal problems in the film? About finding fault with the way it looks? What about the casting and the songs? What does the film convey about race, queerness, female solidarity? How does it speak to the current moment? We compare it to the stage version, find it an improvement, and look forward to part II. Like Fiona herself, this is an ebullient, enthusiastic conversation, full of smarts and laughter.

José Arroyo In Conversation With Fiona Cox On Wicked (Jon M. Chu, 2024)

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 Church's vacant papacy don't share his clarity.

Conclave is a marvellously entertaining mystery and thriller, a chamber play in which Fiennes' performance is a complex and deeply felt standout amongst a number of engaging, if less rich, star turns from Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. We discuss whether the film is an advert for the Church, how it engages with religion, the striking visual design, liberalism vs. conservatism, representations of gender and nationality... and that magnificent twist. Spoilers within!

Recorded on 1st December 2024.

434 - Conclave

"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.

396 - The Equalizer 3

Eavesdropping at the Movies

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