Sarah Polley’s new film Women Talking gives us plenty to discuss this episode, with shocking violence, sobering drama and a deep examination of patriarchy, all delivered through outstanding performances. But for all its excellence, we have one major criticism: is it really a film at all? Then after the break we compare it to Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 international hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Two different looks at the issues facing women, with wildly different presentation, but it turns out they have more in common than we expected. Plus some IMDB news, a viewing of 2011’s Jane Eyre adaptation, a look at this year’s Oscar short film nominees, a trip to watch live theatre group Manual Cinema, an ad about the future of food science and a brief interlude while we let the dog out. There’s always an animal connection, isn’t there?
Episode 50: Popcorn Counter: Frenemies
This time as we shoot the breeze at the Popcorn Counter, we have a confession about school punishments, make a trip through the Chambers English Dictionary and add some reminiscences about the UK stand-up comedy scene before we compare some of our favourite frenemies in cinema. Surely, any proper believable friendship on screen has an element of the frenemy about it, doesn’t it? It’s yin and yang. Butch and Sundance, Whiplash, the Avengers and more come up for discussion before we realise that we’ve already been down this road in one of our own scripts a few years ago…
Episode 49: The Banshees of Inisherin vs The Field: Donkey Redux
Welcome back to the Two Donkey Cinema Club, where we seem to exclusively discuss donkey based films from around the world. This episode, current Oscar favourite The Banshees of Inisherin grazes the pastures alongside 1990 Richard Harris classic The Field. These two films about rural Ireland have so much in common that one feels almost like a remix of the other. But their differences really underline the ways the world has changed in the last 32 years. Which film goes full Hamlet, and which one warns the audience: beware of the artist? Plus the Cliche Squad turns up to arrest some fiddlers, we discover we both want to be the same character but for very different reasons, there’s a quick look at Puss In Boots and Regle du Jeu, and we have a very, very brief word from our sponsor.
Episode 48: Popcorn Counter: Animal Boxing
This place is like a zoo! After a week of donkey pictures we’ve set up a short series of bestial fights at the popcorn counter, pitting some of our favourite animal movies against each other to see which will win. Just two rules: no anthropomorphism, and no mercy. Can Bambi defeat King Kong? Do bears dream? And who will reign supreme as the king of the Hollywood jungle?
Episode 47: Eo vs Au Hasard Balthsar: Donkey Kong Country
It’s on like Donkey Kong at the Two Reel Cinema Club this episode, as we watch new Polish donkey movie and best international feature Oscar contender Eo, and yoke it up to its direct ancestor, the 1966 Robert Bresson movie Au Hasard Balthasar. There’s plenty of uncomfortable watching here, with many scenes of cruelty to both animals and humans, but there is also hope, kindness and love on screen. Which film left us numb and which film made us literally shout, ‘No!’ at the screen? Which film makes best use of its religious imagery, and which film features some of the most beautiful cinematography we’ve seen in recent months? Plus a remarkable snippet of biographical background from Andres, our new VHS Video Library venture, a miniature snowed-in film festival, and our close personal identification with truck drivers and The Cubeman.
Episode 46: Popcorn Counter: Game of Death
Death stalks the halls of the Two Reel Cinema Club this episode, as we get stuck at the Popcorn Counter and kill time with a quiz about our favourite movie demises. How often do you hear Jeff Bridges, Stanley Kubrick and Public Enemy in the same show? Also, be prepared for plenty of dead air while our brains move at the speed of melted cheese. Plus one of us almost electrocutes themselves. Guess along with us, and place your bets on who will win or, more accurately, who will lose the least.
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000): Beachball Bingo
The Cruise-a-thon continues, with Mission Impossible 2, the John Woo-directed CinemaScope-explosion of action-idiocy.
I remember liking this film quite a lot when it first came out, but I spent the first half of this rewatch inwardly sneering at the ludicrousness of the story and the ridiculous, over the top melodrama of every scene. And then at about the midpoint, during the complicated lab break-in set-piece, I realised: oh yes, it’s SUPPOSED to be like this. That’s the whole idea. It’s a Hong Kong action film from top to toe.
Tom Cruise plays Chow Yun Fat, the greatest action hero of the 1990s. Thandie Newton plays a character called, I think, ‘Boobs’. And Dougray Scott plays a bad guy called Sean who ought to be called Scot Bad, as he is a bad guy and also he is a Scot. (Okay, perhaps ‘Scot Bad’ is a little too on the nose. But if you’d told me his name in the script was ‘Scot Badscott’ I would have believed you.) The plot about lab-made viruses and a pharmaceutical company’s plans to sell an antidote reads like the Facebook rant of an anti vax campaigner who ‘did their own research’. (In fact I suspect half-remembered fragments of Mission: Impossible 2 are responsible for more Covid conspiracy theories than Paramount would like to acknowledge…)
But the stunts and set pieces are tremendously entertaining once you let yourself settle into the crazy stupidity of it all. Absurd motorbike jousting, crazy back-flip-kick-box-fights, an evil lair full of bottles of inflammable liquid, it has them all. Get in. The film has made a conscious decision to tie up plausibility, gag it and throw it out of a helicopter over a waterfall. It’s murdered early on in the film and stays dead for the rest of the run time.
There are a few wrong notes, most notably the camera’s constant leering at Thandie Newton, staring at her chest or down her top at every opportunity. She’s largely treated as an object for the whole film, either a maguffin or a bargaining chip or a walking disease vector or just some boobs. Once again it’s a mild surprise to see what was considered perfectly acceptable just a few years ago.
And I was sure until this rewatch that there was a scene in the film that sees Tom take off a mask to reveal he is someone else, and then take off THAT mask to reveal he actually IS Tom after all. Disappointingly this scene never happens. No wonder I thought it did, though, as it would have fit the tone of the film perfectly. What a missed opportunity. I might pitch ‘Mission Impossible: Head Like a Beachball’ next time I get the chance…
Episode 45: The Menu vs Babette’s Feast: A Cinematic Smorgasbord
Man cannot live by popcorn alone (and God knows we’ve tried) so this episode sees us drinking deeply from the cup of culinary cinema. The Menu boasts a high concept story, a starry cast and a considerable body count, but is it a comedy or a horror movie? And how does it measure up against one of its primary influences, 1987’s beautiful Danish Oscar winner Babette’s Feast? The two form an incredible double bill that pits late stage capitalism against the foundations of liberal democracy, religion against sensuality, death against rebirth, champagne against Valpolicella, and turtle soup against some marshmallows, with bread on the side. Actually, no, there’s no bread. Can we get some bread here, please? No? Please? Plus a look at some new docs, a regrettable viewing of an 80s dud, a brand new sponsor and a revealing game of ‘Who Am I?’ Tuck in!
The One Scene Movie: Mission: Impossible (1996)
Welcome back to the Tom Cruise Cinema Club. I recently returned with the whole family to watch the Brian de Palma-helmed, curiously punctuated Mission: Impossible for the first time since seeing it on its theatrical release, and found a few surprises.
One: the internet. Wow, it’s easy to forget how recently the internet became omnipresent. 1996 doesn’t sound like very long ago, but the internet in this film is Triassic. Clunky big laptops. Such ostentatious use of ‘E-Mail’ it’s almost capitalised, with a little animation to illustrate a message being packaged up in an ‘envelope’ and ‘posted’. Tom even needs Usenet to contact the criminal underground. Usenet! Fantastic.
Two: there’s only one scene in the whole film. I know, that’s not exactly true, but there’s a reason why the overriding mental picture most people retain of the movie is Tom Cruise suspended in the air on a cable in a white vault. The film is built around a series of set pieces but the only one that really works is that CIA heist. Who can remember the others? Exploding chewing gum on a fish tank, a chase with a helicopter in a train tunnel, they’re all fine but they don’t stick in the memory like the highly contrived but entertaining ceiling-dangling-computer-hack. The film looks like that was the primary scene that anyone thought of and the rest of the picture was built around leading up to it or following the repercussions.
Three: that one scene is terrific. The stakes are clear, the obstacles obvious, the timing immaculate, the execution highly accomplished. De Palma is shooting his own mini Rififi here. There is very little dialogue because very little is needed. And because only a tiny amount of the plan has been explained beforehand there are plenty of surprises and reversals to maintain the tension. We cringed and held our breath and ooh’ed and ahh’ed as we watched, just like we should. Great fun.
So I guess the take home message is that you CAN build a multi-sequel, twenty-eight-year-spanning film series out of a single scene, as long as that scene is good enough. Maybe we writers should be putting more effort into single outstanding scenes and not worrying about the surrounding 110 minute stories after all…?
Episode 44: Popcorn Counter: Under the Sea
Ah, the water: clear, blue, enveloping. And also cold and airless and deadly. Do we have any favourite films set on or under the water? You bet we do. From Moana’s beautiful vistas to Jaqueline Bisset’s effect on an impressionable eight year old, we look back at half a lifetime at sea in the cinema. Plus we reveal the secret to successfully pitching an ocean-going picture, and contemplate the benefits of drowning in butter.