Eavesdropping at the Movies

One of the most hotly-anticipated horror films in recent memory, Weapons begins with seventeen third-grade children in a Pennsylvania town mysteriously waking up at 2:17am one Wednesday and running from their homes into the darkness. The shocking, unexplained disappearance and imagery of an empty classroom alone suggest an allegory of school shootings, and we ask what else can be read into the film, and discuss the depth with which it handles its themes. We have our issues with Weapons but enjoy it very much all the same, and find a lot to like. It's probably just a little overpraised. Two weeks later, with the film still on his mind, Mike opens up further discussion and proposes that maybe there's more to it than he gave it credit for - or that you have to be American to properly get it. Recorded on 10th and 24th August 2025.

A psychosexual thriller that's neither psychosexual nor thrilling enough, The Shrouds is a disappointment. There's great promise to businessman Vincent Cassel's invention of a technologically advanced shroud that creates a 3D model of the decaying body it houses, when we're shown the lust with which he observes his deceased wife's corpse. The film is peppered with recurrent imagery of her disfigured body, and its importance to Cassel's character is constantly reinforced, but the film is too talky, its imagery too bland, and its plot too convoluted to make the most of it. A shame. Recorded on 6th August 2025.

Mike loves Tim Key. This much has been true for some time, and he's thrilled to discover that the comic poet's unique approach to wordplay and social interactions finds a natural place on the cinema screen, in the character of an eccentric lottery winner who lures his favourite folk duo, long since broken-up, to the lonely island on which he lives for a private gig. Tom Basden's singer-songwriter finds the forced reunion an unwelcome intrusion from his past, and so begins a comedy about grief, loss, loneliness, and rice. The plot is easily predicted, the visual nous close to absent, but it has a good heart and, in Key, an irresistably energetic, unusual central performance. It filled the Mockingbird with laughter and left us all feeling warm and cuddly and sad and happy. The Ballad of Wallis Island is a charming film, well worth watching. Recorded on 5th August 2025.

We talk adult male friendships, stress and surreality in our discussion of Friendship, in which oddball everyman Tim Robinson finds himself enamoured with effortlessly cool new neighbour Paul Rudd, but lacks any of the social nous to naturally bond with him. The film gets huge laughs from meaningful subject matter, a far cry from our experience with The Naked Gun. Its tone is idiosyncratic, its observations on human nature ring true in their exaggerated way, and Robinson is a fascinating and hilarious presence on the cinema screen. Friendship won't be for everyone, but we highly recommend it. Recorded on 4th August 2025.

The Naked Gun is rebooted with Liam Neeson in the part that was once Leslie Nielsen's, and he shows just how hard comedy can be. We discuss everything the film gets wrong. If only they'd asked us for help. Recorded on 4th August 2025.