For our 400th episode we indulge in a pair of horror sequels, both heavy on faith, possession, and Christianity. One is part of a modern universe of interconnected stories, characters, and demons, the other represents the reignition of a series whose sequels have been produced intermittently for fifty years without receiving anything like the acclaim of the film that spawned them. The Nun II is the eighth film in the ten-year-old Conjuring Universe; The Exorcist: Believer is only the sixth Exorcist film in half a century. Truly, they don't make them like they used to.

Neither film in this double bill is very good in totality, but The Nun II contains imaginative and effective set pieces and visual ideas, while The Exorcist: Believer is content to discard a reasonably interesting first act in favour of useless and charmless reference to, and pathetic reenactment of, William Friedkin's 1973 original. We discuss what we think the films are about, wittingly or otherwise - horror is commonly understood to often allegorise and express the ills and worries of the societies that produce them, and we consider the ways in which these films might be doing so. And there's much to compare and contrast between them, including their characters' attitudes to the supernatural; the ways in which religion, be it Catholicism specifically or Christianity more generally, plays into their stories and atmospheres; and the kinds of imagery through which they attempt to instil fear in their audiences. And we take time to criticise many, many examples of the weakness of the storytelling in Believer.

The Nun II, like its 2018 predecessor, is not very good, but it is fun. The Exorcist: Believer is neither good nor fun. Happy 400th episode!

Recorded on 9th October 2023.

400 - The Nun II and The Exorcist: Believer

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 Rewinding the Welfare State: A Social History of the North East on Film and In the Veins: Coalming Communities In his new book on the series – THE WIRE -- Ben Lamb discusses the history of the production, how and why it was made, and  he also provides vital context to each season to better understand what happened as well as to enhance the appreciation of the show. We talk on all of this as well as how it was groundbreaking, why its influence persists, how it laid the groundwork for the rise of a whole generation of black stars, how it can be seen to have predicted the rise of populism….and much more.

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

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 that announces its fluency from the opening shots; its relation to neo-realism through on-location shooting and the use of non-professional actors; Anna Magnani’s tour de force performance, drawing particular attention to the scene where she gets the neighbours involved in the beating by her husband; we note how it’s an unusual film for Visconti in that it’s central role is a woman’s role, a vehicle for Magnani; we discuss the elements of camp, something not usually associated with Visconti; a very entertaining film of great depth; a critique of cinema by one of its greatest exponents; a film one can’t imagine bettered; a film worth seeing

Thinking Aloud About Film: Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)

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 note how rare it is to see a look designed purely to please instead of to evoke, convey and signify in contemporary cinema. Might this also be a limitation? The film feels like a quickly executed trifle. It’s very broad and the execution feels a bit clunky. We were nonetheless both charmed by it though Richard rated it a bit higher than I did. Where we intersect and where we diverge is the subject of the podcast. 

Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984)

The BFI’s screenings of JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 COMMERCE QUAY, 1080 BRUXELLES were all sold out. Luckily, we were both able to see it on a big screen elsewhere. In this podcast we discuss why this is a film to see on a big screen, how it remains a radical film, how the first scene sets a context, how Jeanne Dielman lives in a pimped world where the very same money she gets from men she gives to men. We discuss how the bare bones of the story could have been done as melodrama or noir and the significance of rendering it as ‘slow cinema’, including all that’s been left out of cinema previously (the various kinds of women’s work). We admire the three-day structure as well as the formal rigour and precision which creates Dielman’s world and Ackerman’s point-of-view on it; how the film puts into play elements that are never rendered explicit (is the son gay?). We also discuss Delphine Seyrig, the muse insoumise, in the light of her art-house and activist careers (the program for the Queen Sofia exhibition on her work and career is in the blogpost); the film itself in the context of Second Wave Feminism; how the film remains radical in that it is simultaneously a depiction of what Tate brothers bros think women should be, a refutation of those ideas,  and women’s frustration/ explosion/ revenge in response. A film that is almost half a century old and feels continuously relevant

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

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 die at the mandibles of the local fauna, he finds his way back to the colony, only to find that he's already been reprinted as Mickey 18 - and clone coexistence is strictly prohibited.

We're disappointed by what looked like a marvellously energetic, knockabout comedy and social satire from the trailer. Even considering the film's very broad tone, there's too little in the characterisation to really buy in to, a severe lack of pace, and an ending that betrays it. Nonetheless, as failures go, it's an interesting one, playing with plenty of ideas, and featuring more than enough good jokes to support it. Our recommendation of Mickey 17 is far from whole-hearted, but you ought to give it a whirl.

Recorded on 23rd March 2025.

440 - Mickey 17

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 2's cultural context and mythological basis, won't feel as overwhelmed as we did. It did make us feel old, but this audiovisual whirlwind is beautiful and coherent - writer-director Jiaozi exhibits great control over the most energetic of action scenes, and has an eye for striking, colourful imagery. We discuss how closely some of the film's visual design and messaging might reflect the particular culture from which it comes, or whether it's so different from American cinema after all, and ask why this and last year's Inside Out 2 have been able to make so much money (the Pixar film grossing $1.7 billion and becoming the then-eighth-highest-grossing film of all time) with such little response from critics.

Recorded on 24th March 2025.

441 - Ne Zha 2

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 achievements. Here we discuss it in relation to D’Annunzzio’s original novel (The Intruder is the literal translation of the novel’s Italian title); the lushness of décor and costuming, which sometimes seem a John Singer Sargent painting come to life; how the mise-en-scène vividly and complexly conveys character feeling, often without dialogue, and with such skill it can make a viewer swoony with admiration; we talk of how Alain Delon and Romy Schneider were originally cast and admire the performances of Giancarlo Giannini, Jennifer O’Neill, Laura Antonelli and Rina Morelli. It was also lovely to (barely) recognise Massimo Girotti, so beautiful in OSSESSIONE, as one of Giannini’s rivals for Jennifer O’Neill’s favours. We discuss the auction scene,and the fencing scene between husband lover in some detail; how the film reminds us of the 19th century novel in its narrative sweep, melodramatic accents and its dramatization of complex ideas (faith vs science, moral actions in a world without God, marriage vs free love, equality between the sexes, etc.). A world of feeling and desire, fuelled by melodrama; a beautiful film slightly marred by its ending. We discuss all of this and more here: 





Thinking Aloud About Film: l'innocente (Luchino Visconti, 1976)

Such a pleasure to talk to Paul Cuff on Robert Egger’s version of NOSFERATU. He knos so much that the discussion of the film 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 (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011), which Paul loathes. We were entertained by, enjoyed -- with reservations -- the rich visual world of Egger’s version, the thick and dense sound, and we praise Nicholas Hoult as the emotional anchor of the film. But Paul articulates his uncertainty about whether the film was a parody of itself or the genre or Nosferatu in its various incarnations. The film seems to be drawing on Murnau, Herzog, Caspar Friedrich’s paintings. But it seems to create a world in which God ostensibly exists but no one seems to believe in the ideology that would sustain this. Paul notes with interest on how Eggers credits the screenplay of the original Nosferatu but not Murnau, the director. Paul highlights how Nosferatu was itself a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s work and the significance of the titles of the most prominent version (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (Murnau) and the German title of Herzog’s version, 
Nosferatu, Phantom of the Night.) What all versions have in common is that they’re all about sex and death, all about sex and the maiden; all versions have 
Nosferatu as a  sexual figure as well as a figure of death and pestilence, How does Egger’s version sit on the shoulder of previous versions and what does it add to them? We discuss our love of the performances of Max Schrek and Klaus Kinski and much more in the podcast below: 




In Conversation with...Paul Cuff on Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/04/18/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-diego-cepeda-on-outskirts/
I recently discovered the existence of a new and exciting film magazine: OUTSKIRTS. It’s in English, though mostly written by people for whom English is a second language or who don’t speak English at all: translation, in multiple senses, is an integral part of the magazine.  It’s a handsome physical object, originating in the Locarno Critics Academy but speaking a different film culture, off-centre, from the margins or the periphery. In this podcast I talk to one of the editors, Diego Cepeda (the others are Nathan Latoré, Sofie Cato Maas, Raymond Shik and Christopher small), with filmmaker/critic Felix Cordero Bello contributing illuminating contexts and asides.   
Near the beginning of the podcast Diego cites a poem by Farid Ud-din Attar,
‘The birds had departed towards a distant luminosity that attracted them.
Those who did not perish on the way would understand upon arrival that they had been transformed into that light that now attracted others’. 
OUTSKIRTS is a magazine that is itself, embodies, a romance of movies, film culture, film history, woven through with friendship. It aims to put at the centre marginalised filmmakers and film cultures; and asks its readers to slow down, look back, look deeply, and think. The launch of each issue is accompanied by live events, often including readings and screenings. Diego cites Abraham Polonsky at the end, ‘The only fights worth fighting are for lost causes’.
Speaking to Diego and Felix, in English, a second language for them,  a whole cinema culture comes alive. They cite LA VIDA UTIL and Lucía Salas as an inspiration: a spirit of sharing knowledge, friendship and dialogue, enthusiasm for cinema, a similar way of thinking about film history. Diego and Felix both also write for Simulacro magazine edited by Julia Scrive-Loyer (https://www.simulacromag.com/) participate in its weekly cine-club and are connected to the Chavón School of Film and Design, itself associated with Parsons, with Diego as one of its key lecturers. ‘How can we approach the history of images and sounds from a place that maybe didn’t have (a film industry) but we have to create tools for understanding those elements that did exist (newsreels, home movies, a rich culture of filmgoing)’, says Diego.

The conversation ranges from the origins of the magazine, it’s aims (to defend cinema from this place, that is on the margins), it’s focus (to shine a light on the overlooked), how each issues tries to create a thread of thought. We detour through a brief account of a history of cinema in the Dominican Republic, where the conversation took place. All this and much more can be listened to in the podcast below:

The new issue comes out in June and can be purchased at: https://outskirtsmag.com/

José Arroyo in Conversation with Diego Cepeda on OUTSKIRTS

What a joy! We were delighted to be invited to the University of Warwick Film and Television Studies department 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 and to Julie Lobalzo Wright for inviting us.

Recorded on 29th April 2025.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: In Conversation at the University of Warwick

"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.