Tag Archives: Riz Ahmed

484 – Digger

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Tom Cruise is great fun to watch as a boisterous Texan oil magnate in Digger, an ambitious satire from Alejandro González Iñárritu. It’s a risky film, which we respect, and easy to enjoy. It’s also a little too in love with its own conceit (a conceit kept from the trailers in order to spring a surprise on the audience, and which doesn’t add a whole lot) and deeply unsubtle; arguably not too significant a problem for a film partially working in a register of farce, but still, we’d have liked to have felt a little more had been going on beneath the surface.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

291 – Sound of Metal

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

A film that offers a beautiful evocation of community, as Riz Ahmed’s drummer suddenly loses most of his hearing and joins a retreat for the deaf, Sound of Metal also feels regrettably, and unforgivably, dishonest in some of the ways it engineers its story. In this respect, we disagree over one of the film’s key scenes, but agree about what it goes on to depict in the final act. Despite the severe problems we have with the film, it has pleasures to offer, including an outstanding central performance from Ahmed, whose wide-eyed, puppy-dog expressions transparently convey fear, anger, worry and determination, sometimes all at once. For Ahmed alone, it’s worth seeing Sound of Metal.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

100 – Venom

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Venom utterly charms the pants off us, its bizarre knockabout body horror surprising us with a great sense of humour and unexpected variations on the idea of a dweeb made more masculine. From the trailer, Mike was worried about the broadness of Tom Hardy’s accent – actually, it’s tonally perfect as broadness is exactly what the film is going for in every respect, in the very best way.

Hardy is superb, giving his all to a role that demands physical dexterity and comic ability; the CGI bowls José over; the sense of Hardy’s body being shared by another physical entity, rather than being merged with it, is tactile and interesting. Mike’s also been watching the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy recently, in which Venom appears, and holds court on a trend in the villains he sees Venom as adhering to. And the dog is so funny.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.