Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Everything Everywhere All at Once, Gaspar Noé, The Essex Serpent

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

In this week's episode of Kermode and Mayo’s Take, Mark and Simon are joined in the studio by Argentinian screenwriter, director, and auteur Gaspar Noé to discuss his latest film Vortex. Mark reviews Apple TV+’s new series ‘The Essex Serpent’, Sci-fi/Action film ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ staring Michelle Yeoh, new drama starring Mark Wahlberg - ‘Father Stu’, ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘The Quiet Girl’ about a 9-year-old girl who discovers a new way of life when she moves in with a middle-aged farm couple for the summer. Plus, Mark and Simon recommend the essential week’s viewing in a brand-new feature: Take It or Leave It (previously +/-) You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or find us on our social channels. Show timings: 7.15 - Father Stu Review 15.04 The Drover’s Wife Review 20.05 The Quiet Girl Review 25.25 Physical Product of the Week 27.53 Gaspar Noé Interview 40.03 Vortex Review 47.04 The Essex Serpent Review 55.29 Take It Or Leave It (previously +/-) 59.10 Everything Everywhere All At Once 01.18.10 Box Office Top 10 A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-daycare  money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something else. Hello, it's us again. I'm Simon. No, you don't laugh when I'm about to say I'm Simon Mayer. Hello Mark. Okay. Anyway, what's coming up on the show today? We've got reviews of Father Stu, the quiet girl Vortex, everything everywhere all at once, the drovers wife and the Essex serpent, which we were talking about last week. And we have a special guest. He is Gaspanoë,

directed seven feature films, including Yerev Asimil, Yerev Asimil, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, different films, three years apart. Good clarification. Thank you. And now Vortex, which will be chatting to him

about later on in the program. And as if that wasn't enough. On Monday, there'll be another take to we'll be spoiling licorice pizza and we'll have some extra gasp or stuff doing a one frame back on mythical sea creatures. And in the meantime. You've brought the gong along. Wow. It's a gong along. Simon on take. It's an MBE live.

What does the little thing say? Oh, it just says non-returnable. No, it says when you're allowed to wear it. Oh, there's literally rules about when you can wear the gong. Of course though, it says if you get another one, you have to give that one back. This is Simon's MBE. What if you get a higher on it?

Yes, you've got a higher on it. You can't wear the two of them too. But then how do you get to do the general Zookoff thing with the entire chest with the medals? maybe Jason was just hamming it up. Are you allowed to wear it now? I'm going to wear it during the show. It says, a miniature badge. A miniature badge to wear with evening dress.

Maybe purchase one, that's not the most excellent one. Can you imagine wearing this going out for the evening and wearing a small one? When decorations are to be worn with evening dress, the badge should be worn in miniature. Yeah. Well, it's... Yeah, so you have to get a little one. Yeah, but I'm going to do it. When you're doing the show, you can wear the big one in your honour. What do I have to address you as Oak Queen? Yeah, that'll do. Anyway, so we proceed a little word on the extra takes, by the way, Mark. Mark, why was that? That's all right, go on.

It was a very, and this is going. And that's where this is going. Thank you to everyone who's joined us so far. We know about a take one, so that's this. Take two, we've just talked about. But there's a very special treat coming. Yes, this is a new use of the word treat. We are going to do previously encountered.

Our first take three very soon. It's endless. There are infinite number of takes. And it's called the doctor's commentary. And the apostrophe is after the S, it is possessive, but it's also plural. It means that you can watch along with us some cinematic grates. The first one will be Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl. Some cinematic grates on Disney grates. The first one will be Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl. Which person thought those two phrases belong together in the same paragraph? Huge number one movie. So sign up and you can listen to Mark being tortured for two hours

and 23 minutes. Oh, good Lord. And drop us a line on your thoughts on that film to Correspondence at KermaderMail.com. That's Correspondence at KermaderMail.com. Subscribe to Extra Takes on Apple Podcasts to get all of that or if you prefer a different platform, head to ExtraTakes.com. Anyway, here's some Correspondence at KermaderMail.com. Simon Mark. Thanks very much for everyone who's got in touch, by the way. Thank you very much for the very nice things you've said.

Also, hello to our listeners around the globe, including Paraguayan Bolivia. Wow. We have subscribers. Wow. Anyway, Simon Mark, as if it was meant to be, I'm listening to your brand new podcast, just hours after it's launched,

while I'm waiting for keyhole robotic surgery to remove my bad kidney. Your witty banter, though, witty has been excised from this, is helping me worry less about what's going to happen, and he's been to it like settling into a warm bath. May I ask a serious question? Keyhole robotic surgery, meaning that, sorry, I'm not, this isn't a joke, this is a serious question. So the surgery is performed robotically?

Yes. All the information I have is here. All of the emailer is a robot. Now, I imagine it's keyhole, which we understand. Yeah, it means go through a small space. And then it's robotic, so maybe a little device. Wow, which is operated externally over here. Science is amazing, it's amazing.

Steve, we're very pleased to have assisted you and I hope your recovery is proceeding. Yeah. This is from Chris Foster, aka Foggy. Dear baby spice and posh spice. Actually, scary spice was also getting an MB. Really? Did she have a long chat with Will's

about banging club tunes as well almost certainly? I, uh, Foggy says, I've been waiting patiently now for your new venture and was relieved to hear it kick off. I didn't kick off. I'm not sure if proposals are really your thing, but I'm hoping that you will make an exception as I don't really have a plan B. So here goes.

To fish stand. Yeah, okay, well why not? Okay, I'm going to have to lift up my microphone like I'm on top of the pops. Victoria Grete, you are quite comfortably the best thing that has ever happened to me and I would love to be able to call you my wife. Love foggy. Okay, then we can sit down. Okay, sorry about the mic rattle.

I'm not sure what of the above you will choose to read out if any at all, but I guess that makes the whole thing rather exciting, which the answer is everything. All of it, yes. So Victoria, over to you, you can email us for next week. Finally. Just for the technically, you actually should have got down on one knee rather than standing up. I'm not going to ask you to do that. I'm not.

That's really how you should have done it. But I'm not pro-putting. Then having to realign all the cameras and everything completely messed up. That would mean we are proposing to Victoria Greet. And we don't. Oh, yes, that would be right there. So the show went to three people.

That would be very complicated. Finally says Foggy. If it's not too much to ask, Mark, and don't want to feel like you're a performing monkey. But if Mark could do his famous hot fuzz impression. Oh, which one? Which one's you? Well, there's a scripted bit here.

You can have any of them. Yarp. Narp. Morning. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't even have to read that. Point break. Point break, or bed boys too.

You know, you never seen Point Break. You never said, no, I mean, which one you want to do first? Have you ever, have you ever fired two guns in the air? We're going, ah! Okay, now we know. Judge Judy in executioner, he's my dad. Go, go back to London. It's just so much fun.

Funny in the film. Less funny when Mark does it. Obviously. Foggy, thanks very much. Anyway, over to you Victoria, let us know if indeed you want to be the. Obviously. Foggy, thanks very much. Anyway, over to you Victoria, let us know if indeed you want to be the other half of Foggy. Mrs. Foggy, or maybe he'll be Foggy Greed. Anyway, let us know you can email the program

and get in touch correspondence at kermitamau.com. Yeah, I got very confused in whatever you were doing then. Yarp. Give us a fabulous review of anything. A Father's Stew, Biographical Drama, written and directed by Rosin Ross, based on the true life story of Father Stu at Long. Are you aware of the true life story of Father Stu at Long?

I don't believe so, no, me neither. So the title role, is only a father at the end. The title is played by Mark and Mark Walberg. I know we'd not allow to refer to him as that name, but Mark Walberg. The Reverend Mark Walberg? No, you'd be, yes, but only later on. When we first meet him, he's a boxer,

punching his way through several kind of brutal bouts, very kind of bouncing and charismatic, and then his body tells him that he can't be doing this anymore. He's in search of a new career. He goes to Hollywood believing that he's got so much charisma and so many stories inside, and he will automatically become an actor become a star He ends up working in a meat counter in a supermarket

Well see that's the thing about you know, I'm an actor really which restaurant And while serving on the meat counter He his eyes fall upon the girl of his dreams Who happens to be a divot Catholic? So he then follows her to a church where he's told you just stay away you You are really, you are not the kind of person that she's going to be interested in. And then falls into training as a priest initially, I think, in order to impress her. Meanwhile, his mom, played by Jackie Weaver, is skeptical about the whole thing. His dad, played by Mel Gibson, is guess what?

Warmly supportive. Drunken cantanker, he's a good no. Put your case in the joint. I've come to see you ain't killed yourself. Left my mind dry. You think you're the only one that can keep a bow? Don't get all high in mighty with me son. I'm still your father don't you forget that. It's lucky you have that one down on me, huh? I'm praying for you Bill. Don't you dare!

You're violating my rights as a man, as an American. Yeah, so Mel Gibson doing the thing that Mel Gibson does. He's the thing, this is Mark Wahlberg's project. He put his own money into it. Apparently at some point he was in conversation with David O'Rossel about doing it, which would have made a very, very different movie. As it is, this is fairly kind of bland Hollywood story about, you know, it's made with the cooperation of Father Stewart's friends and family, the blessing largely of the church. And it's one of those stories about, you know,

a punchy outsider who goes through a life trauma and comes out the other side as a changed and inspirational character. I mean, that is, you know, an inspirational story, but there are ways of telling it, that might be inventive and exciting, there are ways of telling it that feel like it's kind of, it's by numbers.

I was talking to um Father Peter Malone who is a Catholic film critic and film writer who I admire very much just recently about the subject of faith-based movies. And he was saying that the problem with a lot of faith-based movies is that they firstly they're preaching to the choir. They're you know they're preaching to the converted and they tend preaching to the converted. And they tend to put the dramatic stuff kind of secondary to the message, which is clear front and center. And I think that that is actually one of the problems is, although this looks like it might be a different thing,

like it's a kind of scrappy story about a boxer whose life is earthy and he's a very, very different kind of beast that you would normally imagine going into clerical orders. It does end up feeling like a, and I mean this in the, in all the problematic sense, it's a faith-based film. It's a film that, that for all its kind of appearance of being something different, of being a bit more streetwise,

a bit more gritty, it isn't. I mean, I, I did struggle with Woolberg's performance. I mean, I'm a fan of Mark Wallberg. I think Mark Wallberg's performance in Boogie Knight is great. It's a shame that he's apologized for being in Boogie Knight's home, because I still think it's one of his best roles. I have, you know, often enjoyed him on screen. This feels like it's his project. It's the thing he wants to do, and not least because it gives him a chance to do some proper dramatic

grandstanding as the things that life throws at the central character are dealt with with an increasing sort of slowicism. If plays fastenies with some of the facts, apparently there's been some criticism about the way in which Gibson plays the father figure. But the story is remarkable. It's a shame that the movie isn't more remarkable. The movie just felt very, very much kind of TV movie. Does the casting of Mel Gibson, which obviously is box office, still, I suppose, but does that mean you kind of already think this is going to be a Catholic film because Mel's in it? Well, Mel's made films which aren't Catholic films,

but his presence in the movie is significant, because the interesting thing about a film is that people talk all the time about cancel culture. You go, yeah, if cancel culture exists, how come Mel Gibson's still working? I mean, I still think Mel Gibson's best film is a pock-alipto, which I think is a really sinewy and slightly insane and unhinged film, which obviously came, you know, passion of the Christ is the film that was, you know, that was the great project that everyone said wouldn't work, everyone was, you know, was kind of comparing it to, you know, heaven's gate and a folly, and then of course it became one of, if not the biggest selling,

non-English language movies of all time. But I think, you know, Gibson's presence in any movie now is always a kind of strange contradiction, But as I said, he does definitely prove cancer. People get also anti-wo, anti-cancer. Yeah, if cancel culture or woke culture existed, Mel Gibson wouldn't be working. Can I just ask a question about the plot then? Mm-hmm. Because if Marky Mark really fancied the girl,

and the girl of his dreams, and then he dis... You would think, well, I would become a Catholic then. Yes, exactly. Rather would become a Catholic then. Yes, exactly. Rather than become a priest, then you have to be celibate. Yes, exactly. Of course, the point.

And then you can't be with the girl in the room. The film goes through, what happens is, on his journey of discovery, he discovers he's a celibate. He actually... What I love is your kind of reductio ad absurdum approach to this. Yeah, it's a story about somebody who is brought to the church for reasons other than spiritualism, who then finds meaning, meaning in that kind of, they discovered meaning in their lives and in the lives of those they touched.

They say Mark Walberg is father stew. He's not the man in entourage. From the boxing ring to the confessional booth. Just say no to lust. Later in the program, we'll be saying no to drugs, but they'll be more of that with gasp and no way. Still to come reviews of these films and film adjacent television. Can we ban that phrase?

Because nobody uses it. I think I used it. Well, don't. No, I won't use it again. I apologize for the fact that I did. Film a Jason television. I know. Anyway. I'm very sorry.

So we're going to have reviews of the drivers wife, the quiet girl, and everything everywhere all at once, which is a film which does exactly what it says on the tin. which is a film which does exactly what it says on the tin. Happy Nord Christmas! Protect yourself whilst Christmas shopping online and access all the Christmas films from around the globe. Plus, when you shop online, you'll have to give websites

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description box. Hi, esteemed podcast listeners, Simon Mayo. I'm Mark Kermot here. I'm excited to let you know that the new season of the Crown and the Crown, the official podcast, returns on 16th of November to accompany the sixth and final season of the Netflix Epic Royal Drama series. Very exciting, especially because SuperSub and Friend

of the show Edith Bowman hosts this one. Indeed, Edith will take you behind the scenes, dive into conversation with the talented cast and crew, from writer and creator Peter Morgan to the crowns Queen Elizabeth in Melda Staunton. Other guests on the new series include the Crowns research team, the directors, executive producers Suzanne Mackie, and specialists such as Voice Coach William Connaker and propsmaster Owen Harrison. Cast members, including Jonathan Price, Selim Doar, Khalid Abdullah, Dominic West and Elizabeth DeBickey. You can also catch up with the story so far by searching the Crown, the official podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe now and get the new series of the Crown,

the official podcast first on November 16th. Available wherever you get your podcasts. on November 16th. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Film adjacent television. Yeah, I'm not saying it again. Correspondence at Curbinamo.com if you can come up with a better way of describing the sort of television which we'll be dealing with, which might be difficult because you're not in our production meetings, but it's stuff like the Essex Serpent. Actually, we have nothing to be perfectly honest. We've just been given a lot of stats.

On the correspondence, Kevin Matthews says, Simon and Mark, did my ears deceive me? Or did I not hear any actual hello offered to Jason Isaacs yet? Oh, yikes. We did get in it. We got a text from him. Yes, which was very nice.

Anyway, so hello to Jason. Hello, so Kevin, thank you for the reminder. Anyway, what else is out? A couple of new films, The Drowvers' Wife, which is an Australian film, The Drowvers' Wife, the Legend of Molly Johnson to give it its full title. Do you know the story of The Drowvers' Wife? And I haven't heard of Molly Johnson either, no? Okay, so it's a Henry Lawson story from the late 19th century about a white woman defending her homestead while her husband is away driving, which is apparently something of a set text in Australia I confess that I didn't know about it.

Leopold Seil, who is a Gaugongari Wakawaka-Murray woman, is an actress, playwright, novelist, and filmmaker and has been reworking the text of the driver's wife in several mediums on stage and in print. And now, as her featured debut as writer, director, co-producer and star, she also points out that she does all her own stunts. She plays Molly Johnson, who we meet on her farm, telling San Reed Sergeant Quintoff that a husband is a way droving, but he will be home soon.

And when he comes home, she looks forward to him coming over, thing waving at the children because they're always so pleased to see him. You immediately get the sense that something is off. She is an indomitable figure who stands her ground as you'll hear in this scene in which Yaddaqar shows up on her doorstep with a shackle around his neck.

My joby home soon. He's a drover, bringing sheep down from the high country. Your children? What do you know of my children? I noticed the little stretch of beds by the wall, Mrs. Then none of your business. Yes, boss. He's the boss. I'm just a drover's wife.

Across me and I'll kill you. Or should you where you stand and I'll bury you where you fall? Yes, Mrs. Thank you, Mrs. Barry, that deep. When she says she's not the boss, you know, she absolutely is the boss. So, but she says this story is part of popular culture and what she wanted to do by retelling it was to take something that was almost a set text that anybody from teenage onwards would know,

and then redefine it and use the story as, and this is the phrase to use, as a Trojan horse. So everybody's familiar with the story of the drovers wife. So you tell the story of the drovers wife, but you tell it in a very, very different way with a completely different emphasis. And you tell it in a way that, from her point of view, tells the story of her indigenous heritage,

which has been sidelined. And in this version, that character that you heard there, Yadako is a heroic figure. A father figure actually based on Leopold Selle's grandfather, who is somebody who was greatly respected and clearly amount of great stature and character. And she also incorporates several elements from her own history and her cultural heritage into this framework of a story that everybody already thinks they know. So it's, you know, it's a very

specifically interest bit of filmmaking. Here's a thing that you think you know, here is a revisionist telling of it that you'll come into because you know that other story. Now I didn't know the story because obviously, you know, I'm not Australian as you may have noticed. I knew you weren't from somewhere. But what I liked about this, well, number of things. Firstly, I mean, it is a Western. It has that kind of Western widescreen sweep. It's about the relationship between the characters and the land. And obviously since heritage is so much to do with that, cultural heritage is so much to do with land. And that's one of the things that Westerns always deal with. It has a great score by Sallieana 7 Campbell,

which really captures both the expanse and the melancholy of the story. It can be brutal. I mean, there is a lot of, you know, hardship and toughness and stuff which is, you know, I mean, I think it's all very sensibly handled, but it is a tough story. But it's a tough story told in kind of culturally occupied territory. So it sort of needs to be, I mean, it is, you know, what does that mean? It means that it doesn't pull its punches, it's forthright, it leads on the front foot. It's not a deeply subtle film, but it is a film which is kind of engrossing on a melodramatic level. And actually, when you say culturally occupied territory,

I mean that everyone knows one version of the story, and they're in order to tell another version, sorry, thank you for getting me to clarify this, in order to tell another version of the story, you kind of, you have to do it in a way which is dramatically engaging. And, you know, and as I said, very, very much leading on the front foot. But I thought it was, it was, you know, haunting

and evocative and powerful and at times distressing and disturbing, but as it should be. And I thought it was a, it was just a really interesting way of using something which is familiar to a certain audience and using that as, use that phrase, as's a Trojan horse to tell a different story. I liked it very much. I wrote it down wrong, just so I would remember the name. What I wrote down was the Jovaz Wife, the story of Holly Johnson, which would be a slightly different tape on 80s pop culture,

ZTT, and all that. Okay, so that's, that's Joe's wife. What else is, what else is out? The Quiet Girl, which is an Irish drama, adapted from a 2010 novella by Clay King which I haven't read, set in Ireland in the early 80s, played in, Galic Irish with English subtitles, written and directed by Columnarade.

Catherine Clench is caught who is a young, somewhat withdrawn girl who lives with her borrowerously aggressive father and her siblings and her mother who is pregnant again and is expecting another child. With a baby on the way, there are too many mouths to feed and she is taken to a relative's house, Evelyn, who lives with her husband, Sean.

And they're very pleased if slightly, initially kind of slightly cold to take her in. They said, that's fine, we will take her in, we will look after her, and she's welcome here for as long as she needs to be here. And she's told very early on, there are no secrets in this house, but they clearly are. There is clearly some shadow that's hanging over their relationship. And at first, the husband is very standoffish, particularly when the young girl is given a boy's clothes to wear and he sort of seems to be disapproving of

this, and you're not quite sure why. Gradually, however, things begin to thaw and the young girl starts to discover what it's like to be loved, what it's like to be, to be given care. One point she's told, you were there all the time, you just needed to be cared for, you just needed to be tended to. And she says very little, I mean, the title is the quiet girl, but her face speaks volumes. And it is such a brilliant performance by this young actor. It's shot by Kate McCollough and both the shape and the texture of the image

has got, firstly, it's got that feeling of a memory. It feels like it's something from the past. But also, it does a very good job of capturing the way in which when you're young, your horizons haven't yet expanded. You're looking very much at what's in front of you. And the film somehow, and I struggle to explain how this works, it shows us the world through the eyes of somebody who is still very much looking right in front of them, but there is a sense that the world is expanding around them. It reminded me at times and you won't understand what a compliment this is of the work of Sin Seymour, who I think is the most brilliant teller of stories in general, also teller of stories about children. No higher praise. No higher praise. This is lovely. It's heartbreaking and poignant

and it deals with very, very profound subject matter grief, death, loss, family, coming of age. But it does it with a lightness of touch that is just sublime. And you would love this film. You would absolutely love it. It has a great soundtrack by Stephen Renekton, a big fan of any way. You'll be featuring some of that music on your show. Oh, no, I will. So it seems like I can get hold of it

because it doesn't seem to be available commercially at the moment. But I can say this, I know this to be true. You would love this film, because it's in the same way, we've talked before about movies being humanist, movies that actually that speak to the person. You know, it's just, it is an absolutely beautiful film, and it's so low-key, but so beautifully done, so profoundly moving. And it's called the Quiet Girl and I would advise everybody to rush out and see it.

And so cinematic release. That's it. That's it. And that's general release, I see that in the cinema. You can see that in the cinema and I, and please do go and see it. Because you know, it's not a film with a big advertising budget and big exploding worldly copters. Needs help.

Needs help. Needs help. But it's a word amount. Really, really worth seeing. All right. Sounds fantastic. Still to come reviews of these films and shows formally referred to as film adjacent television, but not anymore.

So we will be reviewing the Essex Serpent, which is a film adjacent piece of television. There is a fire bar, not. And Vortex, which is a new film by Gaspon Noe. Yes, and vortex, which is new film by gasp and no way Yes, we're gonna have our chat with gasper. It's the always excellent ads in a moment Mark, but I just wanted to tell you about my week. Okay. Yeah Yeah, hey What a week what a week

Where do I know about this? I read yesterday a horrifying statistic about the decline of educational standards in this country. Apparently, 85% British people can't do basic maths. Thank heavens, I'm part of the other 25%. Yeah, you can see it coming. You can see it coming. But when we got there, it was rewarding. Things not going too well at home, Mark, despite the jaunty music, things.

So the music is now working against my story. This is it, this is it. Things not going too well at home, Mark. When the good lady's ceramicist, Aaron Doors, told me to stop impersonating a flamingo, I really had to put my foot down. I mean... Okay. It's better. Second gag was better than the first one.

Going for the big finnish. Okay, big fin than the first one. Going for the big finish. Okay, big finish, right. I was washing my car. You're washing your car. I was washing my car with a good lady's ceramicist, Herodos last Sunday. When she suddenly shouted, would you mind using a sponge instead? This episode is brought to you by Mooby,

a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe. From myConnect directors to emerging otters, there's always something new to discover, for example. Well, for example, the new Aki Karri's Mackey film Fallen Leaves, which won the jury prize at CAN, that's in cinemas at the moment. If you see that and think I want to know more about Aki Karri's Mackey, you can go to Mooby the streaming Service and there is a retrospective of his films called How to Be a Human. They are also going to be theatrically releasing In January Priscilla, which is a new Sophia couple of film, which I am really looking forward to since I have an Elvis obsession.

You could try movie free for 30 days at movie.com slash kermedon mayo. That's mubi.com slash kerm and Mayo. For a whole month of great cinema for free. Okay, it's time now for physical product of the week, Mark. Yes, here we go. It's stuff. Options this week include Marry Me, Julia Caesar, the battle at Lake, is it Shangjin? Go for it. Revolver and pirates. I have to... This is very Norse London at me, but when I read that first time, I did think it was Pirates.

LAUGHTER Also, you missed one out there between Shangjin and Revolver. What does it say? Oh, dog. Thank you. But also, Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, that's very good. Hugh says, hey, Mark,, Hey Simon, love episode one. Can't wait to see the Essex Serpent.

Incidentally, my pick for physical product of the week is Mary Me on Blu-ray. A film Mark hated, but one I really liked. And that done really well all considered. Did that make sense? Yeah, it did really well. It was really silly. All things considered.

But for anybody that does love the film, the Blu-ray is packed with some great bonus features, including how the Madison Square Garden performance was captured. Great, I can't wait to find that out. Because I definitely came out of that film thinking, I wonder how the Madison Square Garden performance was captured. The live audience. John Lish says, assuming this is Regiates Pirates film, that's my choice. Wack the sound bar up, haven't got one.

And annoy the neighbours. Oh, and it's a charming film as well. It is. You did like that, didn't you? Yeah, I did, yeah, it was very good. And we could parts of the Caribbean, no, but Pirates Regiates film, yeah, I liked it very much. A little bit of everything says,

a dog is nothing groundbreaking, but is better and more ambitious than you might expect, while still very clearly hitting the beats of an animal antics movie. Nothing groundbreaking, but worth looking at, if you like animal movies, but a sick, of Sappy, Marley and me clones. Which is our physical product of the week.

Well, I do very much like Pirates, but I am gonna go for dog because I went into it with such low expectations, and Janet Channing Tatum is the star and also the co-director. And it is Channing Tatum and a dog for most of the film. And it's really, really good fun and really charming and really enjoyable in a way that it absolutely shouldn't be. Excellent. Full marks to dog.

Our guest today is the Argentinian filmmaker, screenwriter Anota Gaspa Noe. You might know him as the director of I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, and of course his latest film, Vortex, about what she's here to talk today. We're not going to play a clip in, as we normally do, because this film is in French, with subtitles, so we'll get straight into the chat. Here's us with Gaspon. A Gaspon Noé joins us in the studio. Hello Gaspa, how are you?

Fine, how are you? Good. Welcome to the take. That's the name of our new podcast. Although it does make sense. Gaspa sounds like he's on the take. Which makes him sound disarmed. I didn't think that through, did you? Anyway, Gaspa has written and directed Vortex.

It's his new movie. Take us into the world of Vortex, Gaspard, introduces to this film. It's the story of an all-loving, full couple who is going through a heavy situation. The woman in the couple, she's 80 years old, played by François Vraubra. She starts having dementia. So she starts getting disconnected from her life and from her husband. And then the husband who's a film critic in the movie played by W. Argento is trying to save the situation.

But those kind of situations can only get worse. And they also have a son who's 40 years old who's an ex-junkie, but a very cool guy, but a bit useless who's trying to help them out in that the king situation. And the whole movie is about the end of the life of a couple. You have a quote that comes up at the beginning of the movie, which says, to all those who lose their minds before their hearts. Can you? It happens very often.

You never know what the newspaper says is true or not true, but I read both that the like one person out of six is going to have Alzheimer before the end of his life or her life. And also that one person out of three would have dementia before, before the end of his life or her life and also that one person out of three would have dementia before because there are many kinds of dementia Alzheimer is just one of them before the end of their lives and I've seen it very closely with my grandmother, the mother of my mother and then ages ago with my mother and those situations are very very complex and rarely portrayed on a movie screen but yeah, all the ages everywhere, I guess you're on your 50s, I'm on my late 50s but most of the audience that comes to see the movie

when it's a young audience, they enjoy the movie and they learn about what the future is gonna be for them, but for people who are on their 50s, it reminds you of all the struggles you're going through in your personal life and the mensch is everywhere. It's an interesting question because we all have to deal with our parents like the King and not become nagging us. Yeah, I mean, like you, I have first-hand experience of a very close relative having had dementia.

And it's obviously a very difficult subject to approach in terms of cinema, because it's a hard sell, you know, come and see a movie about the sort of the disaster of the end of life. Tell us about filming it in split screen, because it seemed to me that the split screen was used to show two people existing in the same space but separated. And that's it, yeah. Oh, there we are.

I think we have the program guys. I was doing it. You explained very well. Which contains the answer. I know. But it feels like when a graphic speaking is very evident. It doesn't feel like a gimmick, because you see like there are two lives in separate bubbles, a bit like in a comic book. And you understand that they're going through tunnels that are connected and disconnected. It's very weird, but you really feel that when you're with someone who's losing her mind or his mind, sometimes they don't recognize you. For example, my mother, at the end of her life, wouldn't know who I was or also she wouldn't recognize her own room, her own apartment.

And then you are trying to see what the person is perceiving, but you can tell that the person is another dimension. The person is being nice to you and you are being nice to the person, but like the movie inside the person's head is so different from what you see. And were you always going to do the whole movie in split screen, or was it going to be just parts of it in split screen? Initially I thought it would be parts of it in split screen and parts not also because when the, when the the their son's character comes into the scene I saw yeah probably for those scenes I would use one

large format with the three characters inside but I Ended up deciding that no it was better to keep on having a split screen because on the first day of shooting I shot one scene with one camera and another scene with two cameras. And the following morning when we were checking the material in the editing room with my editor, we thought all the split screen scene is so much stronger than the one with just one camera. So I reshot the same scene the following day with two cameras. So I could keep the split screen for the whole movie.

You use split screen on Luxe Turner, which is also getting released at the same time, yeah? Yeah, it looks eternal. It's going to be released on Blue Rade soon. It's going to be shown on the BFI next week, but it's being released now in the States. It's, theoretically, it's 52 minutes movie, but originally that other project that I shot two years ago wasn't meant to be in the split screen. It's just that I was so unprepared for the shooting that I ended up shooting with two three cameras. To make sure I had the footage, no I would cover the same properly and I had

footage to edit during the post production and I ended up putting all the different shots all together and I enjoyed using multiple screen in that movie. So when I started this new production during the confinement, I saw that in the case of this movie, it makes sense to even more than the previous one to use the screen. Can you tell us about something about the apartment, where an awful lot of the film is set? Because the English word clutter works very well here.

Desolder maybe. And we are all defined increasingly by our stuff and the things that we have, the books that we have and the DVDs that we have and the blu-rays that we have, and can't find. But this is who we are and this apartment has got more clutter in it than almost any apartment I've ever seen. You haven't seen my own apartment. I'm obsessed with collections. My grandfather had a huge collection of books. I'm obsessed with books. I'm obsessed with movie posters DVDs.

For me, it comes with the fact of being an artist or some critic or an intellectual of any kind to have books everywhere. I'm surprised nowadays when they tell you that in New York the bookstores are disappearing. I say, what do people do? It's not the same to buy the books on Amazon or eBay. And two years ago I had a brain hemorrhage accidentally one afternoon. I was sent to the hospital and the hospital said, oh, hopefully you arrive soon enough to survive to the first danger,

but probably you'll die in four days from now. And then for doing four days, I was on morphine, so you help a lot. But my main issue was, what are my beloved ones going to do with all my collection of books, posters? They don't know the prize. And probably having a collection saved me because I didn't want to give all that to my family. But yet, many people decide to get rid of their stuff before dying,

because otherwise it's like having an elephant that's much heavier than yourself. No, but it's your stuff. I think that's a realization that you think it's great, and I think my stuff is great, and nobody else wants it. It's a terrible collection. What's your collection? Oh, books, films, whatever. CDs, vinyl, all that kind of stuff. But actually, you know, my kids might want two or three. Then the rest of it goes to a shop and it goes for like 50 pens. I have an entire loft full of VHSs because I can't throw them away because I remember

buying every single one and they feel like part of me and I know that when I've gone somebody would just look at this pile and just trash the whole lot because what would you do with it? Did that experience of that hemorrhage change you profoundly? Yeah, of course, but also I had like three very close people dying of COVID the same year, so I had to, what's part of their funeral? So yeah, we were surrounded with the COVID, with my brain hemorrhage and all this there. So there was this and all around. And that's it, okay. Can you explain why you asked Daria Gento to be the man? Because all the characters, I think as we mentioned, they're not named.

What was it that you saw in him? Because I think it's his biggest acting. No, the first time he really acted, usually he was just playing the hands of the killer, the hands of the Strangler. In all of his movies, he wouldn't let any other actor use his hands to strangle the women. But I met him three years ago when I was showing my first short at the Toronto Film Festival. And we became friends and I started hanging out a lot with his daughter, and then his daughter was like, oh, my dad is going to Paris. So I would see him almost twice a year

in Paris in Rome in Film Festival. And we became friends, and even proposed to help me with the production of my first feature. And so it's someone who's company I really enjoy, and I always thought he was extremely charismatic. And for example, when he was going to introduce a movie in a different simitech, he would talk about the movie for one hour. He would start a monologue and wouldn't stop for one hour. Everybody was applauding and laughing. So, I say, I envy him.

I say, that's a real showman. For me, he was more, he had even more charisma than any actor I could sing of. So he was my very first idea for the movie. Also because he's Italian accent. His French is very fluent, but he's Italian accent. And so when I tried to convince Darío to be in my movie, we started by talking of Omer today. I said, oh yeah, understand what you want to do. And he subsets with that same movie that was in which the main character was not played by an actor, but just by a random guy and I said, he was great. And there you

would say, yeah, he was great, but you'll be better because you're even more charismatic and so it's high, but I look too young for your part. I said, oh, but we can make you look older. Actually, this is 81, But he feels like a young kid. Still nowadays. I was a bit in the film where I think it is son that says, dad is Italian and shouts. LAUGHTER Also, I mean, the character seems very close to Dario,

because he talks about Garamon Poe, who Dario is obviously obsessed with. You know, he talks about movies and dreaming. And, you know, these are things that concerned area and Dario before being a Director he was a screenwriter before being a screenwriter. He started as a film critic and one of the first Interviews he ever did was an interview of Fritz Lang so he was obsessed by by Fritz Lang and we we put all these posters on the world of the character in the movie

Fritz, of Metropolis, and Mabus, all those movies. I didn't write any lines for him, he provides all his dialogues and that's also one of the reasons why he accepted his another actor so he cannot remember the lines especially. I think if he had written the lines, the wouldn't be as funny and lively as the ones that he created. A Gaspon-Hose New Film is called Vortex. We will talk more with Gaspon in Take 2, but for the moment Gaspon, thank you very much. Now, I know you've met Gaspon before.

I have. And I hadn't met him until today. And I know he's Argentinian because he is Argentinian and I've read all of this. That's it. But for all the world, that's that interview was full of Gallic charm, I thought. If he'd rolled up a Goul Waz or a Gitan, I would not have been surprised. It's interesting because it's perfectly possible to get the impression that if you look at Gasmino, he's back catalog, which is extreme cinema and then some, you know, if you're looking at films like Into the Void and Love 3D and Irreversible, as I've, which I carried somebody, those are really full on experiential films. And I've

seen Gaspur introducing his films, but he's bouncing around and it's very interesting to see him as thoughtful as he is, but not least because Vortex is a very, very totally different film to his previous world. I know that he says that they're a comparison with somebody. It is very, very different. So at the risk of repeating some of the things he said. So it's a couple played by Francois Le Bon and Dario Argento. Argento, who will be known to most people as the director of films like Susperia, the original Susperia, Profondo Rosso opera, is writing a book about films and memory and dreams and he's quoting

Edgar Allan Poe and clearly his character is very very close to Argento it is you know it's an Argento-esque character. His wife who still writes prescriptions is in the process of succumbing to dementia to Alzheimer's and becoming lost to her husband and son. And the way the film is shot is that it's a split screen, so there's two screens that you see side by side that again as we just discussed then gives you the impression of people living in the same physical space but separated. And even though occasionally the frames cross over, I mean there are moments when there's two cameras looking at the same thing and the frames do cross over,

some people reach from one frame into another at one point, one of the characters has two heads because of the way that it's framed. And I think, and gradually during the course of it, the separation between them widens and the gulf between them gets worse. But also the film is keen to remind us that everyone's life is more complicated than you would think and characters who you're introduced to, you know, as one thing, as the drama expands you realize that everybody's got all these alternate lives, these other lives, these hidden lives going on at the same time. So obviously the whole thing feels

very naturalistic, you do feel that you are watching these things play out for real. I think that anybody, I mean obviously we've talked about films addressing Alzheimer's before, you know there was the Anthony Hopkins film just recently. One of the reasons Vortex works well is because I believe in the characters because the characters are very, very close to home. Secondly, anyone who has had any experience of relatives or loved ones dealing with Alzheimer's or dementia will recognize the strange sort of flow

of, like at some points, the central character seems to know nothing, but at other points seems to be coherent. And that thing about drifting in and out, coming in and out of the frame as it were. And the sense of the gulf between people widening, but then suddenly the water's closing up again.

The analogy that I'm reaching for is, you know, there's that causeway. There's an island somewhere in the Thames, I think where they shot the woman in black and the causeway opens up and then the causeway clothe, you know, and then the waters come across it. And it's kind of like that. It's, there's a weird tidal thing to it.

I do think the film captures that well. It is a long film. It's two hours, 20 minutes long. And I read about that. And I think it's necessarily a difficult ask for, you know, for distributors, because it's not a film with a, you know, great, happy, it's not a film which ends with Hugh Grant doing a song and dance number like at the end of Paddington, too. This drum is going only one way. But I think it's

sincere, and I think the split screen works a lot better than I thought because I have to confess that when I heard that that was how it was done, I slightly flinched and thought, oh, okay, is that going to work for me? It did work for you. I think it did, actually. I think that whole, I mean, you mentioned it in the interview, but that that whole idea of living separate lives, which is what they do, which is what they are doing increasingly. It did accentuate that. And I thought, I mean, I don't want to watch it again, but I can imagine if I do watch it again, I might see a different film because he doesn't know which screen we're mainly watching.

In fact, are we watching them both at the same time? Can you actually take that in? I think you probably can. So I thought it worked. That's fascinating. That idea that you're not actually sure which of the two screens the audience. Because you do. As you watch it, you definitely do. So you both? No, I think you choose one or the other. Because there are scenes in which, for example, he's in the apartment and she goes out and she goes to the supermarket and gets, and then he goes out after. And there is, you were absolutely invited to concentrate on, I mean, you're watching

both of them, but you are actually focusing on one of them. And I found that I instinctively focused on him. I focused on what he was in partly, I think, because he's a film critic and he's a film writer and he's male and it's Daria or Gentile. No, but you know what I mean? It's like, I know that's a crass thing, but that was where my eye was led. So yes, it is fascinating. You watch it again. You might see a different film.

That's why, yes, I think there's a whole bunch of things which it would repay going back to. Yeah, and I think it is more than a gimmick. I think it does work. It does make sense. It does, you know, it does actually tell the story. You mentioned Amor, and the father, wasn't it, the Anthony Hopkins movie. And I wonder if, as this becomes increasingly a problem, which filmmakers are aware of, because their parents and their grandparents have these stories to tell,

that it will feature more and more in mainstream moviemaking. Well, of course, it's a real fact for so many people. And it was fascinating when Gaspers said that people are now more scared of Alzheimer's and dementia than they are of World War Three. And then he said, well, people of our age, it was also nice that he said, you know, you both obviously in your 50s. Yeah, I noticed you didn't correct him. I absolutely noticed you didn't.

I thought about saying something, but I thought, I just let it lie. I thought, I just let it lie. I thought, I just let it be. Well, going back to the title of one of his other films, Irreversible, that you know that as soon as you're talking about dementia, this is not going to, this is going in one way. Yeah, and of course the interesting, the problem of a film make.

The interesting thing about Irreversible is that one of the arguments about it, is it is a film that demonstrates that a revenge movie can only have a happy ending if you played in reverse. Yes, I'm going to have to think about that. Maybe I'll come back to it and take two. That's the whole point of it. Anyway, Vortex is Gaspanoi's current movie, they'll be more with Gaspar in Take Two. We had Tom Hiddleston on the show. We did last week. He was a splendid guest as well as he? He had great hair. And also, I wanted to ask him about his hair products,

but I understood that we didn't have time. No, we could get some extra sponsorship. That would have been quite good. You know how the most unflattering image of everybody is that one on a Zoom call, or when you see your reflection in your iPad or in your phone. Except not in your phone. Unless to your Tom Hiddleston.

In which case, he just looked very casually. Very casually fabulous. Anyway, he just looked, frankly. Ray Kishley Fabulous. Anyway, he was with us last week to talk about the Essex Serpent. It's out today on Apple TV Plus. What do you make of it? So six parts, of which I've watched all six,

but the thing I have to learn is, let's only talk about the sort of first week, because I don't, I now want to spoil it for you, although it's, but I'm sort of first, because I don't want to spoil it for you, but I'm not going to, because you're... I'm only four episodes in, so I still have two to go. Okay, so I haven't read the source novel. Had you read... No, I haven't.

I've had it recommended to me. Okay. A lot. Yes. But I have ignored those recommendations. So this is the first time I'm coming to it. Okay, so the story basically is Clare Danes' chorus seabound, who is a... She comes to a point in her life when suddenly New Horizons open up.

She is a... Naturally, who goes to Essex in search of a legendary C-dragon, C-creature, which has been cited, and it turns out, is the subject of, you know, local mythology, images of serpents are carved into the local church ornaments. Tom Hiddleston is the vicar, whose flock believe in the serpent. They believe that the serpent is not only real, but is also some kind of divine vengeance. A child goes missing, the local children are terrified, and I think it's in episode three. the local children are terrified, and I think it's in episode three. There is this scene which very much recalls Carol Mollie's film The Falling, in which

there is a classroom in which it seems like some kind of communal possession or hallucination or whatever, fainting fits is taking place. And the film kind of almost tips over into being a full on gothic supernatural ghost story. And meanwhile, central character, or play by Claire Daines, is not being taken seriously by the scientific establishment. Me like Kate Winslet in Amonite, you know that thing about she discovered all this stuff but still not kind of able to find out that. Everybody's fussed about it. Fossils exactly. find it, they're really hostile. They're really hostile, yes. They're hostile, yes. Exactly. Meanwhile, Hiddleston's vicar is having problems with people losing the faith. I mean, people believing in serpents and devils and demons and turning to the church

line. So at the center of it all, you said this thing about, it's not about a serpent. Okay. And I just thought it was worth picking that up and running with it for a while. The question is, what is the serpent? And there are many things in the drama that could be the serpent. So it's about faith versus rash of science versus rationalism. It's about religion versus psychiatry because we see emergent

psychiatric processes. We also, you know, hypnosis. We also see the birth of heart surgery and dealing with corporeal matters in a scientific fashion rather than dealing with them in a kind of mythical fashion. So it's happening at a time when everything is in flux, when established systems are breaking down. There's a whole underlying story about socialism and housing and you know and the rising movement for workers right. So everything is in flux, the old systems are breaking down, the new systems are emerging, but they're not yet accepted. And all of those things can be interpreted in some way as the

serpent. I mean, is the serpent, the river that snakes through the marshes, is the serpent, the branding that somebody bears on their body as a part of their own personal backstory, is the serpent, the hysteria that seems to be in goal thing, the children, the thing that people believe in because when you take away the thing that they believe in, they need to believe in something else. Interestingly, when I started watching the series,

I found the first episode quite hard to get on with them. It's directed by Clio Barnard, and partly I think I found it hard to get on with because the tone of it is very different to Clio Barnard's films. So if you look at something like Alien Aver or Selfish Giant, they have a kind of an almost documentary verite feel to them that is what I associate with Clio Barnard. This is much more theatrical. It's much more, it's obviously an episodic drama based on a literary source. So of course that's going to be the case. And I've particularly found Claire Dane's performance

brittle in the lead. And I confessed I never fully relaxed into her performance throughout the whole series. Tom Hiddleston, fine, corner pocket, absolutely believed him entirely. I mean, you and I spoke to each other after having watched a couple of episodes. And he said, well, he's basically playing Tom Hiddleston, isn't corner pocket, absolutely believed him in Tyle. I mean, you and I spoke to each other after having watched a couple of episodes and he said, well, he's basically playing Tom Hiddleston, isn't he? He's the character who's... He's very... He's very Tom.

He's very Tom. And he's very good at doing that. And that's in no way to diminish the performance because it's a very good bit of casting. And did you tell me, was Claire Daines... Did she stand in for somebody else who was cast? Is that... I can never remember the things that we can talk about in the things that we can't talk about. I do remember that Claire, it's the first TV series

that she's done since Homeland, in which she's great. Yes, and I don't know whether I can... All I would say was I never fully relaxed into her casting in that role. I don't know why it just never kind of quite sat with me. And that was emphasized by the fact that I think Tom Hiddleston literally just put those clothes on

and walked into the role and felt like he was walking through the thing. But having had a slightly sticky start with the first episode and thinking, I can't, why is this not, it's when we get to the falling, suddenly it was like the whole thing, supercharged. And from then on, I was gripped. And from then on, I was swept up in the story of what is the serpent and why do people believe

in the serpent? The Essex serpent. It is about the serpent. The Apple. The TV. Plus the serpent and the Apple. See, it's kind of, it's all underneath. And there we are.

That's why you got an MBE. That's why you got an MBE. Right, so what's on now, this is where you send us a short voice note about your special screening or independent film festival or you just got an event. You attach it to an email and you send it to correspondence at Kermit and Mayo. Do you have to say it like that every time? Well, in case people think it's correspondence. I think it's true when you set up that email address, did you, Simon Pull? You didn't think through, oh, you can just

click on it in the app apparently. But if you're spelling it, it's Correspondents at Kermitamo.com. This week, it's Peter Blunden and Alice Democray, here we are. Hello, Simon and Mark. Long time listening to Peter Blunden here, and I'd like to tell everyone about the Rumpford Film Festival, which takes place from the 19th to the 25th of May at the Premier Cinema in Rumpford. We have 120 independent films from around the world, including the whole day dedicated to horror. For the full line-up and ticket info, go to rumpfordfilmfestival.com. Hi Mark, hi Simon, I'm Alistair and I'm a fan of panic, a new horror club in the Scottish Islands. Right now we're kicking off our inaugural

season, taking vampires as our theme at Eden Court Theatre in cinema. This Friday Friday the 13th at 830 is our first one of the season, Thomas L. Fritzons let the right one in. Following that, we're showing the hunger on Friday the 17th of June. Anyone wanting to get in touch, we are at Panic underscore HIT H on Twitter. Okay, as Peter Blunden, who you heard from first, then may seem like London. Yeah, may seem people are amazing. We're going to London. They sounded like pretty good first.

They do, after. And you know, the 31st panacea, that's brilliant. We've lindered and I programmed that version when we did the history of horror season at the NFT, which is nearly 20 years ago now, and let the right one in is a great film as well. And the 22nd of May is when they're doing the horror day in Rommford, if you find yourself in Rommford, by the way.

And if you'd like to send us a short note for our next show, correspondent at kermetermayo.com. Still to come, we have reviews of these films. Well, the big one is everything everywhere, all at once, okay? And we're gonna be doing our ad slash remove feature. Does that work for you?

I have no idea. Ad slash remove. Ad remove. Ad remove. Remove the ads. Remove the ads. No, no, yes, yes. Yes.

No, we love the ads. Yes. Take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. Okay, we're going to be doing the recently renamed feature. Take it or leave it. Plus we'll do the top 10. OK, so now we're back with our recently re-naked,

was until seconds ago, it was called plus and minus. Now it's called Take It or Leave It. Could be, love it or leave it. Love them or what do you think on the one hand and also on the other? It'll probably be renamed by next week. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, this is the stuff that you're recommending.

Add take or the stuff that you don't like and you want to give a thumbs down to. Take it or leave it. Remove Paul in Clapham Common in London. He lives on Clapham Common. That's literally in Clapham Common in London. Well, he lives on Clapham Common. That's literally in Clapham Common. No, he lives in Clapham Common. It's a Wommel.

No, that's Wommel. Metal lords on Netflix. An enjoyable high school and coming of age story about two best friends starting a postmodern metal band rather than another wannabe Ed Sheeran Formula school band. Rather than a Harshal area. Rather than an intense whiplash story, metal lords delights with a young drummer's first band, his first love and best friend challenges. At times more risky business, but set in a quiet town, and no sting allowed.

Okay, that's a thumbs up just for that. Flip ever it. You've got sting shirt. No, I'm not wearing sting shirt. No, you've got sting shirt. I should wear sting shirt next week, shouldn't I? Go ahead. I don't think I'll get away with it, by the way. You wouldn't look very good on our very lovely studio cameras. And then underneath... Oh, Nuri Bill Shalong. Say again? Nuri Bill Shalong.

That. A director I know Mark appreciates and knows how to pronounce. And Ben Wheatley's happy new year. Colin Burst. I think it might be Nuri Billga. Colin Burst, BBC Eye Player of the UK and not available in the US. Another director I know Mark likes.

Okay, and an email from Brian, dear Laurel and Hardy Hanchig. Now, if you're going to correspond with us, I really, really love to know what you think about this email from Brian, dear Laurel and Hardy Handshake. Now, if you're gonna correspond with us, I really, really love to know what you think about this email from Brian, because this is something that we won't have faced before. But some people will be facing it now. I'm after a bit of help.

We're in the lucky position of having a couple of Ukrainians staying with us for the next few months. And we're having a fantastic time, learning about each other's cultures and more importantly sampling new food, having already sampled Ukrainian soup and confectionery. I highly recommend anybody who has the space

and is considering hosting a family to go for it. Anyway, the reason for this correspondence, I am looking for any movie recommendations available on mainstream streaming. Maybe BFI player, we can do that, in Ukrainian or Russian, so that we can share some movie-going experiences and make them feel a bit closer to home. Obviously, I want to avoid anything too harrowing or war-related and it also should be teen-friendly. So, it says Brian, I hope you can help. I'm sure there are a number of people in the same situation. So I'm going to, let's say that movies, but also maybe if they're not in Ukrainian or Russian, but maybe have those as subtitle options. Yes. And maybe we can expand that very good.

So this is a very specific request. And obviously that second bit is very important. Nothing harrowing. Yes. Nothing more related. It has to be team-friendly. Yes. Either in Ukraine in Russian or with those are subtitle-up options. Yeah. Okay. So I'm not asking you specifically because this is not strange. But if you can help us for the next take, that would be fantastic. Correspondence at Kermitome.com if you can help. Just like so. I just checked this out. I was right. Neurie build sell on yeah There you go. I did knew when it comes to you

All quit no pronunciation Yes, my favorite subjects my favorite subjects. We know where to go I can do a patch up on a rassetical Yeah, what else is out? Oh everything everywhere all at once is like that as a title It's brilliant isn't it although I have to say for ages It was being referred to a friend of mine seen it, isn't it? Although I have to say for ages, it was being referred to a friend of mine, I've seen it and really liked it.

And they kept calling it everything, everything everywhere all at the same time. And so every single time I say the movie title now, I have to kind of correct myself everything everywhere all at once. So this is a really inventive movie that's been in the, it's been a bit of press recently

because Jamie Lee Curtis took to social media to say that their movie was kicking Dr. Strange in the multiverse of madness, both, because it was doing well at the box office and it cost 25 million. I think Dr. Strange cost around about 200 million. And so Jamie Lee Curtis said, competitive,

golly, yes, although she didn't say golly. She was very, she was very, you met Jamie Lee Curtis. You interviewed her for the Delayne Halloween movie. So it's a multiverse movie that does something interesting with the idea of the multiverse. Remember when we were talking about Dr. Strange, the multiverse of madness last week. And I said, well, it doesn't really advance the idea of the multiverse. Remember when we were talking about Dr. Strange, the multiverse of madness last week? And I said, well, it doesn't really advance

the idea of the multiverse, although it does have some intro, and I think Elizabeth Olson is the kind of heart and soul of that, maybe actually, although Dr. Strange is in the title. In the case of this, Michelle Yo is a Chinese American woman who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond, who is smiling and happy,

but their marriage seems to have gone south. They don't appear to have the spark that they once had. And she is ground down. They are facing an audit by the IRS, character played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who tells them looking at their accounts. This does not look good. And they have to get through the audit

and she also is facing a problem with her father who's visiting and she's always felt that she disappointed her father. And their daughter is somebody with whom she seems to have lost contact, she can't say the thing that she really needs to say, which she needs to say, I love you. Instead, she says, Oh, you're getting fat because she can't think of the right thing to say. The daughter is in a long-term relationship with a girlfriend that she can't tell her father

that his granddaughter is gay because she somehow embarrased it. Everything has kind of reached this point of stasis. She gets into a lift in the tax office and suddenly, Wayman who is usually very placid turns to her and says, right, I'm not your husband, I'm another version of your husband from a multiverse, there are infinite numbers of multiverses and we've been searching for somebody to fight this rising threat which is going to wipe out or and you are the only person that can do, we know that you're the person and you have a choice, you're going to wipe out or, and you are the only person that can do. We know that you're the person and you have a choice.

You're going to get out of this lifting. You can either go right to the jams because you're all you can go left into the tax audit office. First, she, obviously she thinks this is not why you behaving like this very rapidly. It becomes apparent that actually she is living in a completely different reality. The production team in their hilarious way have chosen a clip that is absolutely dialogue free. Oh, good.

Because when stuff starts to happen, suddenly the film starts to leap through different genres. You're going to talk us through it like you did with Dr. Stone. Shall I do that? Shall I talk us with a guy? Okay, so I'm going to talk you through the clip. This, so essentially, once the multiverse thing starts to happen, the film starts to genre hop, often like in a really kind of, you know,

bafflingly kaleidoscopic way. As our central character discovers that there is more to life than laundry and taxes. Here's the clip. So, they're in the tax office. That's a truncion being battered against a part of office furniture. Michelle Yo is about to engage in a full-on martial arts fight sequence. She's good. With a wooden spoon and a trail, which is, the wooden spoon's just been destroyed. She's now throwing a laptop,

which has just been struck into two pieces. Rubbish laptop, use the top. Marshal-Lard's action happening in the tax office. She's hitting him with a computer keyboard, which nearly took her eye out. Yes. Aerial, nearly took her eye out. Yes. Ariel, they took a wirework. Oh, she hit him on the head.

She hit him on the head. I don't think we're doing full justice to what's happening here. Well, what can you do? You can't just play it with any of that. I know, okay, there are two people having it, and now slapping it at us. You see that?

Slapping each other. Well, that was a whole new genre where Mark actually talks you through an action scene. Well, I thought you did very well last week. And basically when, so, yeah, so they're in an office. He's got all the kit to have a fight. And she's just got a keyboard and a slappy hand. Yes.

And yet somehow she manages to hold her own. Because it turns out that in any given circumstance she can leap into another part of the multiverse. If so she can find somebody in another multiverse who has the skills that she needs in that particular way, she can then adopt those skills. So on the one hand, the film obviously owes a debt to matrix. It's, you know, somebody is suddenly given a, is it red pill, blue, blue pill in matrix? Yes, you know, a choice. Look, you can stay in this world or you can accept the fact that there are lots of other worlds going on and we've decided that you are the one.

There's a lovely minute in which he's told, we know that you can do anything because you're so rubbish at everything. You are, you know, you've failed at so many things that actually that is one of the reasons why you're going to be the savior that we think you are. So the film is then littered with sinny literate references to films like there's a joke about 2001. There's a whole section which is kind of in the mood for love world. There is, there's nods to, well, fight club to some extent. Actually, the filmmakers said that they started doing this

after seeing a double bill of Matrix and Fight Club together and realizing how much they loved those 90s movies. There's a long extended sequence which is inspired by Pixar's Ratter-Toey. This is directed by, they call themselves Daniels. You know their work because it's Daniel Kwan and Daniel Shunut who made Swiss Army man, which is a very, very odd movie. I think a movie that was, you know, kind of overwhelmed with its own quirkiness.

I mean, there was something else going on in there, but it didn't entirely work for me. This does entirely work for me. And it works for two reasons. The first one is, it's actually doing something interesting with the concept of a multi-wast something that's funny. So it keeps throwing these increasingly absurd worlds in front of us, a world in which people have hot dogs for fingers. Really? Yeah. A world in which a world which brilliantly life was unable to be sustained. So all these different thing multiverses are at there because every time you make any decision it kind of creates another multi-verse. So it does expand upon that idea of the infinite,

the myriad possibilities of the multiverse. But at the center of it, it's not about that at all. At the center of it, what it's about is a really, really recognizable human story about mothers and daughters, about dreams and disappointments, about coming out and coming of age, about understanding that there is a difference between hobbies and professions, but not letting that crush your dreams. It's all the things that it's actually about, are things that anybody would recognize as completely normal, tangible, real things, and get it's told in a way that is, you know, kind of really overcranked, cinematically inventive, as if what you're doing is you're jumping

between genres. As if what you're doing is you're flicking through a flick of a number of different films, a bit of this genre, a bit of a little bit of Mexican wrestling movies. There's a little bit of Jackie Chan-Mosh, a lot of movies. There's a little bit of, you know, said there's a joke about the beginning of 2001. But it only works if you're emotionally engaged. And I think what the reason that this has found the audience that it has is because, like the matrix in a strange way,

the matrix is, you know, we were talking about this before, that the matrix is all about that feeling that everyone has, that the world is out of whack, something is wrong, and then suddenly this guy turns up and goes, yeah, you're right, and this is why. And there's a lovely thing in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Douglas Adams does a similar thing about, oh no, that's just paranoia, everybody's got that.

Everybody lives with the knowledge of their own disappointments, their own shortcomings, the things they should have done that they didn't do. The path that their lives could have taken and what this does is take that very, very simple central idea and then have expand this like a kernel of popcorn going, you know, turning into this big fluffy thing, but at the centre of it is something that you know and recognize. I guess that we have theoretical physicists listening to this. And who's shaking their heads in disbelief.

And people who know about astrophysics, my challenge for next week, can you describe the multiverse idea in one paragraph? Okay, that's it, and a short paragraph. Because the multiverse is clearly coming up an awful lot. Yeah, it is. And I remember doing interviews with theoretical physicists in which essentially They go the multiverse is useful because it helps to explain the way everything is However, there is not a shred of evidence that proves that it's there So it's a very useful tool. So that case. It's basically a religion

So there's no evidence very good very useful tool. So that case is basically a religion. So there's no evidence. Very good. So but if you understand this stuff, explain it to Mark and I, assume we know nothing in a very, very short paragraph. I think people do always assume that. They do. Andrew Davis, Mark and Simon, last night I attended a preview screening of everything everywhere all at once. The fantastic cinema city in Norwich, which is a lovely cinema. For obvious reasons, it had been a long time since I'd been to a screening and a packed out auditorium, however.

The reaction to this movie wasn't quite like anything I've experienced before. At the end of the film, the sound of what felt like a hundred completely contrasting responses to what had just been seen bubbled up from right across the auditorium. The only consistency was an extraordinary sense of release expressed in a myriad of different ways, which was a reaction quite

unlike anything I've experienced before in a faulty, odd year cinema going career. This was a quite extraordinary experience and is probably the greatest testament to the wild ride the film takes an audience on. As well as a timely timely reminder how much more some films offer as a communal experience in a theatre. Lovely to have you back in our ears, Andrew Davis, Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listener. Heritage listeneridomeo.com and we'll discuss that on next week's program.

The box of his top 10 is just into us now. We're doing this at the end of the program, are we? Like top of the pops, right? Number 21, Wild Men, which I liked. I mean, it's not without shortcomings, but I do think the idea of somebody going off into the Norwegian forest to live amongst nature

and then discovering that you can't live on fried frog, and then going to knock over a petrol station because you can't teach yourself. It's inherently funny. A cabaret is at number 15. Which we talked about last weekend. I hope people went to see it on the big screen because it is really worth seeing projected. That film has lost none of its power to amaze. Okay, into the 10, that's Mar at number 10, MAAA. Richard, I haven't seen that. That's the Hindi film. If you've seen it, we'd like your review

for next week. Please correspond at curbadermare.com. Nine is the unbearable weight of massive talent. Which I want to be better than it is. I mean, there is a standee for it in the Curzon Soho, in which it's essentially, it's Nick Cage standing there, doing that thing and it says, the unbearable weight of massive talent

and I want it to be great and it isn't. Okay, that's at number nine, number eight is Operation Mint's Meat. Which I liked, I mean, it's an old fashioned kind of movie, but it's a story that's been told, before it's been told before in the cinematicly. Yes, it's automatically, but I still, it's a story that's been told before, it's been told before in the cinematic, yes, cinematically. But I still think the title is not great, isn't it?

It makes you go, er, I don't think so. Number seven is the Northman, it's number six in America, number seven in the UK. I wish I liked the Northman more than I do because part of me just advised the fact that the studio was willing to spend $90 million allowing Robert Eggers to make a Viking movie. But it's no surprise that it's not gonna wash its face and it does have, there are great things in it, but overall it is a mess.

Number six is bad guys. It's a number two in America, but it's number six here. Which is an entertaining, a cine-literate cartoon, which weirdly enough starts off with a, but it's number six here, which is you know an entertaining Sinny Literate cartoon which weirdly enough starts off with a long quentin Tarantino riff, which is old Number five is fantastic beasts the secrets of Dumbledore's I'm afraid I haven't because that came out and during the interregnum And I haven't been to see it yet. It's been too much air this week number four is the lost city which you've seen But I haven't. Yes. Brief review.

Well, well. It's perfectly decent because Sandra Bullock is funny and Channing Tatum is funny. And Daniel Redcliffe can be the third person in that story, and it's perfectly fine. You know, without being remarkable. Okay. Number three in America, number three in the UK as well as Sonic the Hedgehog two I like Sonic the Hedgehog two Enough but not enough to justify its existence

I mean the you know Sonic the Hedgehog one it was what it was Sonic the Hedgehog two It is what it is but and I know that pick I know that people are taking their kids long to see it and they've enjoyed it But it's it's not for me and two, this week is Downton Abbey. Chris Kay says, how did he, Bonneville's character, get such a deep tan before he's trip to France? Dom says very much straight to the heart of the periphery. Gosphered Park light, but of the two films, I much prefer Downton for its pacing, comedy moments,

and overall camp nonsense. I thought it was a big improvement on Downton 1. Anyway, that's Downton Abbey, a new era. Is it number two? Well, it's not a big improvement on Downton 1. It's more of the same. Only this one sends half the cast abroad because it's that movie. And then they are the half of the cast does an English remake of singing in the rain.

But it's got Dominic Weston, who's great. And the UK number one, same as in America, is Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Although, as we've just discussed, if you want to see a Multiverse movie this week, you're probably better off seeing everything everywhere, all at once. Yes, don't forget a very simple paragraph for very simple people on explaining the Multiverse.

Thank you very much. Correspondence at kermodeAmeo.com. That is it for Take One. On Monday, Take Two will be out. And you can subscribe to our Extra Takes on Apple podcasts to get episodes of Take Two and more fantastic subscriber-only content, which still sounds a little bit dodged, but isn't in his little bit dodged. But if you're not a fruit based person or if you prefer a different platform, head to extratakes.com where you can find details about access, all the extra stuff. Studio Engineer was Josh Gibbs, production manager and general all-round stuff was Lily Hamley.

Videos on our tip-top and brand, Spanking New YouTube channel, was Ryan O'Meara, makeup and costume Kevin Phillips-Bong, the producer was Hannah Tulbert and now we break for a mid-credits scene. Mark, as Jared Leto, will say something intriguing. Hey, I'm a nominate! I'm a nominate! And the showrunner Jack Boot of oppression and redactor with Simon Pull. Mark, what is your film of the week? I'm gonna to go for a double bill. Okay. Everything everywhere are all at once.

Yes. And a quiet girl. They both sound absolute rip-roaring heels. Yes, they are. Thanks for listening.