Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Is CHRISTY a knockout? + Noah Baumbach on JAY KELLY

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Some exciting news—The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo.  Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member‑only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show—a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time.  American indie darling director Noah Baumbach joins Simon in the guest spot this week to talk ‘Jay Kelly’, his new film starring George Clooney as the titular aging movie star in crisis. On an unexpected European tour, he looks back on a life of stardom and its effects on those around him—not least the long serving entourage who trail after him. Noah sits down with Simon to unpack his writing process and more on this sweeping showbiz tale.   Jay Kelly is out on Netflix next week, so listen out for Mark’s review then. In the meantime, we’ve got this week’s biggest releases reviewed for you right now. First up, ‘Pillion’—whose star Alexander Skarsgård was our guest on last week’s show. It’s an unbashful BDSM biker drama, following the unconventional romance between Skarsgård’s Ray and Harry Melling’s Colin. Does Mark think it’s a pleasure or a pain? Either way—maybe not one to watch on family film night...  Plus, ‘Christy’--the boxing drama based on the true story of women's boxing trailblazer Christy Martin, played by Sydney Sweeney—and ‘Zootropolis 2’, the long-awaited sequel to the animated animal cop drama for all the family.   All the best of the Box Office Top 10, and top correspondence too, including some excellent ‘Pluribus’ discussion—keep the emergency-mails coming, folks!   AND Don’t miss our upcoming LIVE Christmas Extravaganza at London’s Prince Edward Theatre on 7th December—with special guests Nia DaCosta, Jason Isaacs beaming in from the USA, and more! Tickets here: fane.co.uk/kermode-mayo      Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free)  Pillion review: 12:33   BO10: 27:34  Noah Baumbach Interview: 47:45  Christy review: 01:01:38  Laughter Lift: 01:10:39  Zootropolis 2 review: 1:12:57       You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo  Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: https://www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey   EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!  A Sony Music Entertainment production.      Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts    To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail]     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Mooby, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema. Mubi is the place to discover ambitious films by visionary filmmakers, all carefully handpicked. So you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere. Mark, what have Mooby got up their sleeves for us this October? Well, Simon, is a very exciting new release, The Mastermind, which is now in UK Cinemas. It's the new film from Kelly Reichard, the brilliant director of Meeks Cutoff, Night Moves, and First Cow for which we interviewed Toby Jones. The film went down a storm in Cannes earlier this year.

It stars Josh O'Connor, of course, another Kermudemeyer favorite, alongside Alana Haim, Gabi Hoffman, Hope Davis and Bill Camp. Visit mooby.com slash mastermind for showtimes and tickets. And to stream great films at home, you can try Mooby-free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash Kermud and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I-D-Moe for a whole month of great cinema for free. Mark, are Black Friday and Cyber Monday stressful flashpoints that whip people into a spending frenzy or a good chance to get presents for Christmas at great prices?

A bit of both, I suppose. Either way, if you're an online shop experiencing your first festive rush this year, you want Shopify in and around your business this November. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From household names to entrepreneurs will be participating in their first. Black Friday slash Cyber Monday this year. Shopify's marketing tools will help push your brand to the forefront of the chaos and

helps them get the shop away. This Black Friday joined the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing Kaching for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at Shopify.co.com.uk slash take. That's Shopify.com.com. Go to Shopify.com.com.uk slash take and make this Black Friday on to remember. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter

and get an extra episode every Thursday. Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions. Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas. Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in questions, Schmestians. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit-related devices.

There's never been a better time to become a vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a vanguard Easter, we salute you. So I'm here in Shobie's North London and you're in Shobie's Cambridge, I'm guessing. Yeah, yes. looking at your prison wall, prison guitar, on the back there. And you hinted at this last week, but I think it was on take two. But now the evidence is there for everybody to see. What's this? That you, just you, are particularly trim.

I beg you pardon? You're trim. Oh, well, yeah, it's the book tour, which is now finished. But yeah. so if you were to write if there was a kermo diet book for next christmas oh yeah oh fine right fine yes so what so what would what would it what would it consist of because uh you know you clearly shed many pounds caffeine and anxiety and not eating okay but you're not going to make a lot of money selling that book oh i know i know um lee child the guy who writes the jack reacher books although he's kind of retired and his brother writes them. And I've interviewed Lee a couple of times.

He basically lives off cigarettes and caffeine. Well, that'll do it. That's essentially. I mean, and he is stick thin. There is nothing to Lee at all. So he's not going to make any money with that book. But I should just say, in terms of over the weekend, I came to your, the good lady professor, her indoors,

and I came to your house, as did Sanjeev. and Mira, and we all ate until food came out of our ears. And if you're a patroner, is it patroner? Patroniser. If you're a patronizer, there's a little video of us having an Elvis moment around your jukebox, which is very lovely. What was great about it was, I thought, okay, so Sanjimaire had never come to our house before.

What is the unifying factor, and that is Elvis, apart from this show, you know? and general stuff, it's Elvis. So I knew that there wasn't an Elvis track on the jukebox. So I thought, I know I've got a tray of singles, which I've been meaning to load in. But it's quite a laborious process, because sometimes you have to drill out the middle. So I went to the pile,

and lo and behold, there it was like the third record down, was I got stung with a very kind of flimsy middle, which only took me five minutes to pop out. I did think I was going to snap it. So when it went, I took out an old police record, I think, yeah, on green vinyl, and I popped in Elvis, so that when we did the patronising a little bit of film, it worked rather well.

It's just brilliant, because the record starts, and Sanjeev just literally goes into Elvis impersonator mode. He knows all the words. It's not just that he knows the words, he's got the moves, he's got the hand gestures. You started playing the bass, which kind of left me with nothing to do, because you were minding the base. playing. Or you could have mimed it as well, but then it's slightly better than me, because I didn't know what I was doing. It was a very lovely thing. And it was great. It was really, it was a lovely evening. And I ate so much food. It was fantastic. Yeah, but it was all healthy vegan kind of so, you know, anyway. So that's a very good thing. And that makes it sound as though we really

do live in showbiz Northland. I know, I know. But become a Patreon subscriber, because then you can enjoy that video of Sange, because it's one of, it's a, it's just a little bit of joy. Because Seeing Sange do his Elvis impersonation to I Got Stung is just fantastic. Okay, so what we're doing on this particular take? I can't remember what you're doing. We have reviews of Pillion. You spoke to Alexander Scarsguard, not to be confused with the SARS gods last week. Zootropolis 2, which, as the title suggests, is the sequel to Zootropolis.

Christie, which is the boxing movie. And our special guest this week is... Who is Noah Boundback, who's talking about his new net. Netflix release Jay Kelly, which Mark will review on next week's show. Jay Kelly being a fictional character, therefore it is a film named after a fictional character. You know what I think about that. Anyway, so you can, I didn't actually say that to Noah. What on earth you doing?

I think I do ask him about why it's called Jay Kelly. Anyway, Jay Kelly being the name of the George Clooney character. Anyway, that's coming up. And then in take two? Blue Moon, which I'd say it's the new film by Richard Linklater, but he's had another new film since then as well, because he makes it. films so quickly. And also Primitive War, which is

Vietnam War and Dinosaurs. That sounds rather good, actually. Plus all the other extra stuff including details of all the best and worst films on TV over the weekend. Further discussion on the best boxing movies that aren't rocky in one frame back, and questions, Schmestians, in which we answer this particular question, at what age were we at our most

intelligent. Now, the only problem with that question is... There's an implied criticism in there, which is were. Yes, that's right. It's put in the past tense. So that will be engaged with in take two. Our extra show, Take Ultra, is also available as a video episode on Patreon or as an audio podcast on your usual fruit or non-fruit-based device, along with ad-free takes one and two. This week's Take Ultra includes discussion of all the streaming worth watching in Carpe Stream. And we once again, went below the line on our YouTube channel in our points of view style feature hot takes and cold comfort in which the most stridently expressed and sometimes

ridiculous opinions about me and Simon and sometimes actual films brought vividly to life once again by the production team yes in costume now apparently I've seen I've seen the suggestions and it should look fairly preposterous and we also announced our shortlist for induction into our new Hall of Fame the first category is UK independent cinema so head to patreon.com slash kerman of mayo and everything will be very very straightforward um before we get into uh the important matters of film reviewing and stuff don't forget that the christmas movie spectacular is imminent it's december the seventh at the prince edward theatre in the west end of london including tip-top guests including jason isaac's

not going to be there in person he's going to be wandering around a fan convention in new orleans and In person, near DeCosta, director of Candyman, The Marvels and Heather, and also 28 days later, the Bone Temple, full of Christmas joy, you know, in a post-apocalyptic Britain ravaged by the rage virus sort of way. Joy, just joy to the world, Sunday, 7th of December at 2pm. So head to feign.com.com.uk slash, it says here, take and grab, but that's not quite right. It's head to feign.com. UK slash take and grab your tickets now. That was very professionally done, wasn't it? You needed an extra comma.

I think it's that kind of ad reading that makes this show what it is. What, poor. Yes. Speaking of which, we've had an email from Joe Wollstone. Okay. Joe says, I think all he appears to have sent his one line, which says, when Simon Mayo is a quiz answer from, Fryen Lorry. So I do happen to know about this, but this clip is from the classic comedy

sketch show A Bit of Fryen Lurie back in the late 80s. It spoofs going for gold in a Fryen Lorry version entitled English people appear to be the most ignorant in Europe. Correct, Dita. Andrea, your question. Who am I am an underground station on London's northern line situated between Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road. Goode Street. Correct, Andrea. Colin, your question. Are you ready? Who am I? I'm a defluncarynged.

In a house in Finovian, Stim Hamburg, and Leibnichre, and Lerbyshire. And, Colin, have a guess. Simon Mayo? The answer I have on my card, Colin, I'm afraid,

is general agreement on tariff and trade. Never mind. I had never seen it before, and I saw it about two months ago, and thought, that's really weird. It's very funny.

that's very funny because it's a very young Hugh Lurie and it's a very young Stephen Frye. So I was doing breakfast show, I suppose. So that's why I was the think of a simple name from a simple person and put him in for comedic. And so at that point you didn't know Stephen Fry.

So it wasn't like an in-joke. It was... I think I had interviewed him once. But I was doing the breakfast show. So therefore I was, you know, I was a DJ name as such. But anyway, also a punchline. But it's nice to be a punchline.

It is. I quite like that. Josh in Glendale, dear Neo-A-Morphius, went to see the 26-year-old science fiction movie The Matrix. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, I'm imagining that you say this Cosm, C-O-SM, at Cosm in Los Angeles this week, a film two years older than me.

I apologize for that, says Josh. My brain is still buzzing. I have seen this movie a thousand times, but this was something else. Picture, a giant dome, 87 feet across, with insane 12k visuals and surround sound that makes you feel like you've stepped inside the film. No headsets, no gimmicks, just pure immersion with a crowd of people. When the green code started raining down across the dome, it was extraordinary. The fight seeds, wild.

You notice details you've never caught before because the scale is so huge and the sound wraps around you. Cosm isn't just a screening. It could be the future of cinema. It keeps that social vibe of going to the movies, but adds this mind-blowing depth and doesn't have 20% light loss, which is, of course, the thing that you with 3D often talk about. This is Josh in Glendale. So the research quickly provides this stat. Cosm is a tech company delivering immersive experiences for sports and entertainment, science and education, and parks and attractions. Currently, there is not one in the UK, but watchers of Welcome to Rexham on Disney Plus will know Cosm as the method by which Rexham co-owners, Rob McElheny and Ryan Reynolds, watch

some matches whilst in LA. The idea of watching your team being rubbish with that kind of 87-foot screen and 12K visuals is terrifying. But I can imagine. that the Matrix is exactly the kind of film that even though you've seen it many times on that kind of projection would be insane. I think in order to check this out, we should go there and have a experience of it, shouldn't we? Yes. So is this like the dome?

You know, because in LA where they light it up from the inside and the outsider, we've had, you know, YouTube opened it and it's supposed to be amazing. Is that the same kind of thing? I don't know. I think we need to go there and find out. I think we need to be able to offer first-hand responses, don't you think? First-hand and first-class floats. That's the way it goes.

With the whole family, I'm coming along as well. Yes, and maybe a week off at the other side. Except you know very well that you particularly wouldn't get in. Yeah, no, I know. You'd be there for five minutes and there'd be a knock on your door, and it would be a man, it would be Mr. Ice. And he'd be saying, are you Mark Kermode? come with us yeah remember if you're traveling to america take a burner phone

correspondence at kermanamaio.com that's what you need to do and if you've experienced cosom as i'm imagining we're supposed to be saying it then we would love to know more because also i mean you can't do it in the UK so we need to go abroad and we need to experience it and then we could do a whole show there so if you're mr cosom or mrs cosom or you're from the cosom family You know, Bob Cosm and Linda Cosm invite us, and then we can come over and experience it for ourselves. What do you think? I'm up for it. I'm absolutely up for it. Speaking of being up for it.

Nicely done. I'm sort of shaking in anticipation, really. I'm still traumatised. So Pillion, which is the debut feature from writer-director Harry Light and adapted from a novel by Adam Mars Jones. Weirdly enough, I was in a screening this week. and Adam Mars Jones, who I used to know from News Night Review, critic days, who's the novelist upon whose novel Pillion is based.

I said, Adam, can I just ask you, how close is Pillion to your book? And he said, if they change the character names, I wouldn't have recognized it as the book. And he said, and incidentally, I say that as a compliment. So I haven't read Box Hill, but I know that Pillion is very different from it. And when you interviewed Alexander Scarsgaard last week, he said, that the book is a lot, it's a lot crueler, is a lot, which I thought it was very interesting because I thought the movie's edging that way anyway. Well, the movie was described by Mr. Scarsgaard as a domcom, as in a sub and dom com.

This is a genre type that will sit along. Do you remember when Bill Nyey first described Sean of the Dead as a ROMZOMCOM? I do remember that now, yes. So the poster quotes for Piliand say, sexy, hilarious, brilliant, to which I think you would also add and squirm-inducingly awkward. Excruciating. So at times, it's like a kind of bizarre mashup of William Freakins cruising, which is set in the leather bars of New York, and carry-on camping.

We've got this kind of, on the one hand, this sort of explicit leather-clad sex, and on the other hand, these strangely quaint British locale. So Scars God is Ray, who is this ultra-butch biker, who catches the eye of Colin, played by Harry Melling, who's a Harry Potter alumni who's had a really, really impressive post-Hogworts career. We saw him quite recently in Harvest. And Ray is a long-term dominant partner in sub-dom relationships. And he sees in Colin, I think he calls it a talent for adoration.

And Colin, who previously has had no experience of the BDSM lifestyle, sort of takes to this new role like a, like, I'm going to say like a fish to water, but like a new fish to water, when Ray asks him, and you said this in the interview, what am I going to do with you? He says, anything you like, which means, okay, we're consenting in this relationship. And so they begin this odd couple relationship, Ray, who is this impenetrable, enigmatic pin-up with a cruel streak, who takes great pleasure in humiliating his new playmates, whilst apparently also repressing feelings, emotions that he has.

And then Colin, who is this retiring floppy-haired mummy's boy, who is still trying to sort of maintain a balance between, on the one hand, this new thing that he's discovered, which is that he's a sub. And on the other hand, a sense of normalcy with his nice suburban parents. Here is a clip. I was wondering if maybe you might want to come have dinner with my parents sometime. Uh, dinner with your parents? Yeah. And you'd like that? Yeah, no, I mean, you know, they would.

Yeah. I don't think that's a very good idea. Okay. No. Sorry. Yeah. And when he says it's not a very good idea, I think that's right. But also that moment when he starts humming along it, nope, which is a nice little detail about the way that the relationship is set up. So look, there have been loads of films about BDSM, many of which I have introduced on Film 4 Extreme Channel. So, you know,

There's Barbette Schroeder's matress, there's Frank Ripblow's Taxis on Clow, Kirby Dick's Sick, the Life and Death of Bob Flanagan's Supermasicist, Nick Brumfield's fetishes. And then most recently we had this really great Finnish sort of existential black comedy, Dogs Don't Wear Pants, which I really, really liked. And the best of those films understand two things about BDSM relationships. The first one is that they are fiercely consensual and, I mean, often more so than apparently in inverted commas normal relationships because it's decided this is what we do this is what we don't do this is what this is what the roles are the second thing is that the power in a in a sort of

sub and dom relationship often doesn't lie with the dominant partner the power actually resides with the sub who is sort of authoring the scene and the best movies about it understand that what makes pillion slightly different is that the roles haven't yet been clearly driven at least not for Colin, who is in the process of discovering them, meaning that he's not entirely sure whether he wants to be doing this in the same way that the audience is sort of slightly confused. So this is made, it's made explicit by the fact, and you and I talked about this after we saw the film, because we talked about it after we, I think we had different responses

to it. But there is a moment in which Colin says to Ray, I want days off, I want days in which we just behave normally. I want I want to be able to sleep in the bed, not on the floor. And, you know, the other normal thing is he wants them to go on a date and he wants them to kiss. And the scene that you referred to in the interview, if you haven't heard the interview that Simon did with, I was on Scott, go and listen to it because it's a really good interview and he's very, very eloquent about this. When he goes to the dinner, and they do go to see the mum and dad, and the mum basically says to Ray, you're, and she uses a very strong word, but the word is, you're horrible. What are you doing

with my son? And the thing that makes that scene so kind of uncomfortable is that because of the way the thing is set up, we're not yet sure whether this is what Colin wants, or I mean, yes, okay, he's adopted the clothes and he's adopted the neck chain and he's adopted the subposition, which he's obviously getting pleasure out of. But he also seems to want, you know, something else. So there is this whole thing going on that they have this consensual relationship, but one part of that consensual relationship still seems to be figuring out whether or not that is actually what they want. And I think this is what makes the film, for all it's, you know, the thing about hilarious and sexy and all that stuff, which it says on the poster, I also think

it's deeply uncomfortable. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's deeply uncomfortable because the uncertainty is there's this whole area of discovery which hasn't yet sort of become fully fledged consent. I mean, in terms of the sort of, there's obviously a lot of kind of comedic juxtaposition. You know all those things like that, that title, Last Tango and Halifax, and there was a documentary called Boogie Nights in Bromley, this idea about, you know, sort of exotic sex with British locations. There is a sort of thing of that going on all the way through this, which I think is one of the things that people are finding sort of, you know, most comedic, that kind of collision of those two worlds. I have to say the film is refreshingly unabashed

in its treatment of the mechanics of sex. I mean, the BBFC thing, it's 18 for strong sex and nudity. And I think you said after you'd seen it that you thought it was one of the most explicit films that you'd seen. Is that right? Certainly for this program, yes. Refreshingly, I would, it's unabashed. I'm not sure about the refreshingly. really, I could have done with less freshness. But I wonder whether, if you compare that to the way in which heterosexual sex is depicted on screen, I think, I mean, I wonder whether it's, is it any more explicit than what? It's because it was, I mean, I said to Mr. Scarsguard, how close does this get to an abusive

relationship? Yes. Because I thought it was an abusive relationship. Yes, which is kind of what I was sort of trying to talk about before. Yeah. And so I think when you see, when you see an abusive relationship, which is what the mother is kind of clearly experiencing. And the fact that she's dying, obviously, she's got absolutely no reservations about coming. She's got to have to come out and say this straight away. When she says, you're a C word, I'm thinking, yeah, you're right, because on the evidence available to the parents, he is abusing his relationship with their son. So I'm not sure it's the, it's the mechanics. It's just the fact that it is an abusive relationship, which is never comfortable to watch. Although during the course of it, Colin does come

to discover that he is a sub. That is what he is and that is what he wants. But that happens during the course of the movie. And I think, as I said, that's kind of why with any of these things, that's where the danger zone is. And that's what, that's what I think makes it interesting. I was funny, when I was watching it, I was reminded, did you ever see nine and a half weeks with Mickey Ralk and Kim Basinger? Yeah, a long time ago. Okay. So it's not a very good film. It's a very kind of Hollywood glossy, you know, blandification of a potentially interesting sort. But there's a exchange in that in which Kim Baysinger says to Mickey Rourke, how did you know I would respond to you the way I did? And Mickey Rourke says, because when I looked at you, I saw me.

And the film isn't any good. But that one line kind of sticks out as, okay, it's like one of the very few insightful moments. The whole sub-dom thing, it's an agreement. And it's two parts of the two sides of the same coin. And it's two people in a consensual agreed. situation. I think there is an echo of that here. The thing here is that, as in the case with nine and a half weeks, one of them knows it and the other one is still discovering it. I mean, in the end, how you feel about the film will kind of depend on how you feel about that tension. And I can imagine people at one minute laughing and finding it sort of absurdist, and then another minute recoiling and being sort of, and being shocked. I mean, I wish you said afterwards,

I never did like picnics. I mean, the thing about picnics is there's too much Tupperware anyway. And I would rather just have a sandwich at home. But I was in a screening, not the same screening that Adam Miles Jones was at, another screening. And a couple of critics were talking about it. A friend of mine, he's a, Linda, he's a very, very good critic. And so I thought it was really sweet. Just thought it was really sweet and really, you know, and your, and your, so what I think is,

in many ways it is it is what you bring to it and you know and how uncomfortable it makes you feel is kind of dependent on that but i also think that one of its strengths is that it does make you feel uncomfortable is that it does it does raise exactly the kind of question that we're having the discussion that we're having and if you're watching it on your laptop in the kitchen which is i i just thought i can't if someone walks in now i can't be watching this because There's no amount of explanation. It's for work that it's going to get me out. They should put that on the poster, hilarious, sexy, brilliant,

don't watch it on your laptop in the kitchen. But you're right. I mean, it is laugh out loud when this Viking god turns up and the initial reaction with the parents that they say, it sounds as though you're not from around here. He says, Chislehurst. That's funny. I wanted more of that.

To be perfectly honest. An email from Dr. Professor Tony Potts. Has he got the doctor and the professor around the wrong way? Isn't it Professor Doctor? I don't know. I know it's Professor Sir Christopher Fraling. So I'm just wondering if, anyway, he's Tony Potts. Okay.

Maybe he's invented those titles. Anyway, dear BR7 and B-flat, it's not often I find reason to write to you, but here I am again. The last time I wrote to you, you read out a letter. about my first year at college in choosing a Patrick Swayze film to get over heartbreak before, of course, leaving ghost utterly bereft. This time, with the benefit of your good selves, I am able to head out knowing what to expect. Driving my two little boys, eight and six, unusual names for boys, I know, from French school on Saturday, they were very mused to hear the first ever mention of their hometown on the radio in averted commas, as Peter Sars did,

to quote Tony, mentioned Chislehurst while discussing his new rom-com I mean, Peter Sarsed is such an obscure joke that's a very good callback They begged to be taken to see this film And what were them having loved, love actually? I agreed to make it a Christmas treat So we're off next Saturday to the View Cinema in Bromley

As a family to enjoy Pillion. They're not. Well, precisely. You say it's an 18? It's an 18. Yes, it's very much an 18. So good luck with your 8 and your 6-year-old. Even if you had their ages up, you're not going to get in.

I think Tony's being ironic. Yeah, very good. So it's, yes, once you've seen it, but everyone else will see it has an advantage of it, because I didn't see it in a cinema. I saw it on my laptop where it feels. So it shouldn't be seen on my lap. I have to say, I do love how uncomfortable it's made you.

I don't want to say. it again. Alexander, I still don't know why he agreed to do it, really. Because as he, well, if anyone wants the answer to that question, listen to your very good interview with him, in which he gives very good account of it. And you would like to be, as he talked about in the interview, at the family Christmas, which is clearly a huge Scars Guard Christmas with all of his brothers, and they all explain what they thought about it. Anyway, we're going to be back in just a moment with

what, as far as you're concerned? The animation sequels is Zootropolis 2 and Sydney Sweeney in Christie. Plus my chat with director of Jay Kelly, that's Noah Baumbach. We'll have UK and US box office top 10 and of course Mark's favourite, The Laughter Lift,

both chuckle at enticing prospect. I didn't believe that either. Well, now, I've been away, Mark, as I sometimes have to be. And did you know, whilst I've been caving in the Dolomites and kite surfing in the Adriatic, I was just missing great British television and movies all the time. Fair play to you because the heart wants what it wants. So I thought, this is the perfect time to get your friend and mine, NordVPN.

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Plus, with our link, you get an extra four months free on the two-year plan and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. Check the link in the description. Okay, box office top 10 at 13. Well, hang on, actually, before we get there, pluribus, which is on Apple TV. Oh, fantastic. Which obviously doesn't feature in the movie chart. But we got a very, very challenging and interesting email from listener Dan.

Okay. Dear Mark and Simon, I thought about trying to come up with a witty combination of your names for you, but because, as you would have gathered by the end of this email, we are all one. It seemed a rather pointless exercise. Loved hearing your take on Pluribus. I'm only one episode in, but there were no real spoilers, and there's so much to unpack. The show is sharp, a sharp, layered, satire, funny, gripping, and centred on a profound question. Mark suggested most viewers would side with Carol, and yes, that's the usual narrative, the lone heroine

against the system. But I suspect and hope that this is being flipped, because I'm firmly with the hive mind, which is basically if you haven't seen it, that's what happens to like everyone else in the world. Everyone except 11 people. To me, says Dan, the show asks, what would you choose, ego or universal consciousness, the self or the whole, individual suffering or collective bliss, the drop of water or the ocean? If universal consciousness is everything, then there's no other sending DNA codes, just us trying to connect with ourselves. it echoes the Eastern concept of non-duality. Reality as one interconnected whole where the separate self is an illusion and enlightenment comes from dissolving that illusion. So yes, I'm on the side of enlightenment. It's a bold argument for primetime TV with layers to explore. Western religion is rooted in duality, man and God as separate. Eastern thought says we are all God, we just don't know it yet. Politically, it feels like a choice between rampant capitalism, self-interest, greed, and true socialism, government of and by and for the people.

Heaven on earth, if you think about it. I hope the hive mind wins. I think a certain mango Mussolini would hate it. He's not even going to start it, is he? Say hi to Jason. I used to play football with him in a team called the old rums, motto, dignity at all times. Down with disgusting misogynistic Nazis, but remember, we are all one, we are the world, etc. That's Dan. who plays in a football team with a motto? No, to which the answer is only particularly educated people would play in a football team with a motto. So, you know, I think that's interesting

and I disagree completely because, yes, anyway, what do you think of that from that? Well, I think what's fascinating in this is what the email sort of struck is, we don't know where it's going to go. Because what I was saying about, you know, people will, The way in which it's set up, originally, you are set up to side with Carol. But we are now three episodes in, and the episode's terrific. Is it three or four so far?

It's how many we've watched, and they're really, really great. And the thing that keeps happening is that Carol's individuality keeps having disastrous consequences. And despite the fact that everyone talks like a telephone operator and, hi, we just want you to be happy, Carol. And it is very kind of, you know, come and play with us forever. The program is working because it's not closing any doors. It is all the time raising exactly that question. The question that you posed in that email about is it, you know, individual suffering or united, but I think it's brilliant.

I think it's absolutely brilliant. And there is a conversation in one of the episodes, I think the most recent episode, in which she realizes that she can ask somebody what her wife thought of her novel. It's the most recent one. And it's just from a piece of writing point of view, it is one of the best written, I mean, you're a writer

and I think you, I think it's one of the best written scenes I've seen in a long time. I think the whole hive mind thing is so fascinating because I find, so Dan obviously finds it quite attractive. Yeah. And for me, it's terrifying because even though

they're all smiley, everyone is the same. There is obviously no individuality. So therefore, it doesn't matter who you talk to, they all think the same, sound the same, think the same things. And so that means there are no wars, there's no fighting, no nastiness, but I'm still not that attracted to it. No, no, me neither. But I think the thing that I like about the programme is it keeps sort of prodding you

and going, but why? You know, what is the thing that you are attracted to when every single time Carol does something, she ends up throwing a hand grenade through a window? Yeah. I would say, Dan, move to Denmark. You'll find it. It's much better. Anyway, and speaking of Scandy, although this is Dan from Finland, and as we've established many times, Finland is not Scandinavia. Because at number 13, it's Sisu. Right, the new one, which is Sisu Road to Revenge. In America, it's number six, but it's 13 here. So, Dan in Finland says, Dear Sisu and Sissuio, which I quite like. Very good. L-TL and FTE, writing in regarding the politics in Sisu 2, which you were wondering about in last week's review. Yeah. I think that the real political story is not what's in the movie, but rather the movie itself.

Consider this. In 1986, Rennie Harlan made a movie called Born American. It was banned by the Finnish Film Classification Board for being anti-Soviet after the Soviet ambassador pressured the board. 40 years later, Yalmarie Hellander makes a movie where Soviet soldiers get a... killed left and right, including with a missile to the head, and nobody in Finland blinks an eye except when laughing. That is the political story right there. I like the first Sisu movie a bit more than the follow-up, but it was still great fun. Rennie Harlan continues making bad movies in Hollywood, but I'll be a Harlan apologist till the end. Thanks to him,

we now have better directors like Yalmari Helander. Tiggity-tong, down with the presses, wherever they oppress, down in Finland. I love for having correspondence from Finland about a finished movie. That's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. My only correspondence about Sisu Road to Revenge, which I really enjoyed, was I got an email from the film company saying, can we quote this on the poster, insane slapstick violence. You absolutely can. Make sure to watch this week's Take Ultra for some of the more forcefully expressed views on Sisu 2, who disagree with Dan, I think. Oh, really? Yeah, apparently the film is Russophobic. Anyway, these opinions and others to be expressed in. Russophobic. Do he have a hit with atmosphere? I think that was him.

No, that was Joy Division, wasn't it? Okay. At number 10 is Borgonia. Yeah. Which I like, although it is my least favorite Yorgos-Lant in Osphil. The next four movies are in R-10, but not in America. Number nine, Jiu-Jitsu-Ka-Zan execution. As we explained last week, I haven't seen it. It is a dark fantasy feature compilation about which I know nothing at all.

number eight a poor patrol christmas does what it says on the tin uh number seven is christmas karma so this is the um the gyrinda chada film there was an interesting thing that um the films but had very very bad reviews um i saw it and i'm not a fan um but charles gant who is the kind of great box office expert that did a thing was talking about it and was talking about how the you know it's it's box office is interesting because clearly the sort of the audience is playing to audiences that don't do not are not in any way affected by critical responses and I think the comparison has been made with like the audience of nativity because the nativity movie's got really really terrible reviews but but took money so this is now in its second week in the church I think it was number six last week so it's you know it's holding

its place in there um so you know it'd be very interesting to see whether it holds its place in the weeks leading up to Christmas, because we are now officially in the kind of in the Christmas corridor, as it were, or whether it, whether this is it, whether it's a two-week wonder. Yeah, you reminded me then of when we will rock you opened in the West End, the musical, the musical based on all the Queen's songs in Ben Elton had worked on that. And the critics universally detested it. Hated it. Yeah. And it ran for years. Absolutely years because I know you talk about things being critic-proof, but that was clearly one of them. Maybe, you know, artistic, I haven't seen it, but, you know, it just absolutely packed out the houses and all the critics.

The thing I remember about We Will Rock You is the picture of Robert De Niro with Brian May's guitar, because Robert De Niro was one of the producers or investors, and it was him with the Red Special looking really weird. Number six is the choral, which I think is okay. I wasn't crazy about it, but I thought it was a decent. done. We had a really wonderful email from somebody who saw it on Remembrance Day and it really was made all the more powerful by that. Number three in Canada and America, it's Predator Badlands number five here. Just a disappointment for me because after Prey, which I thought was so good because it was so stripped down and so kind of, it's a very, very different kind of movie. I thought this is fine, but it's definitely sort of 12A certificate romp. I've got no problem incidentally with the thing about the predator is now the good guy. That's absolutely fine. You have a very different. You have

to do something with sequels that's interesting. I just, I, it wasn't really for me. Although, as I said, in the screening that I was in, a number of critics said, oh, that was great fun and really loved it. UK number four is Nuremberg? Who knew that Russell Crow, who on that poster of Russell Crow is Herman Goering, you go, no, absolutely not, not in a month of Sundays. And then he's actually good. I think it's one of his best performances. It's number eight in America. The running man is at number three? I'm still sore about the fact that the running man was kept off the top spot last week by less than a thousand pounds. Because now you see me, now you don't, literally just, just pipped it to the post. I think the running man is a very good adaptation of that

Stephen King story. I spoke to Kim Newman yesterday and somebody was asking Kim about it, because obviously Kim is kind of the authority and all this. And Kim said, yeah, the running man is definitely an example of a book that was written in a weekend. I think Stephen King said it was about a week. Yeah, he wrote quite astonishing. Wrote it really fast. I'm very, very jealous as I near the year and a half mark for my new book. Number two here, number two in America as well is, now you see me, now you don't.

But you'll wish you hadn't. And number one here. And number one over there is Wicked for Good. Which has had an absolute record-breaking opening. I think it's the biggest. musical's opening and despite the fact that it got quite lukewarm reviews from other good I liked it very much I was kind of on board and then afterwards somebody said to me I was in a screening somebody said oh god I was surprised that you were you know you were the person that

liked wicked wicked for good I went what do other people not like it well no the reviews have been kind of quite quite uh quite sniffy but no it's it's done it's done Titanic business but then again of course it would because it's the second half of a movie that was a huge hit. I think that it's being criticized as a sort of standalone feature, but it's not a standalone feature. It is part two of the part one that we had this time last year. And I believe that people are going to see the two movies back to back. And I think that's really what you need to do to appreciate it. Lucy from Ealing, I was so proud of my seven-year-old son for sitting through what felt like a very long, Wicked Part Two in a smart green shirt. Apart from a few audible slurps,

his Diet Coke right in the middle of the very poignant for good. He behaved far more admirably than the unlimited number of 10-year-old girls, who, when Fierro took his top off, defied gravity with their squeals for quite some time. Definitely not as OMG as the first, but it certainly didn't disappoint. I think there is more, musically speaking, than just no good deed. Both the duets were breathtakingly beautiful, and having an orchestral arrangement of defying gravity during the closing scenes was a lovely touch. Is there going to be a wicked three wonders? son. Well, if, is it, El Farber and Fierro were to procreate and Stephen Schwartz, what a genius, scribbles on the manuscript again, could we dare to dream? Did we ever find out what

happened to Dorothy and Toto? Love the show, Lucy from Ealing. We do find out what happened to Dorothy and Toto. They go back to Kansas and she wakes up. Corenza Stratton. I'm a two-time email. The last one was for Inside Out 2 and a long-term listener because of long drives with my parents and sister. I went to see Wicked for Good. on opening night, which happened to be my 15th birthday. I had a splendid time. I haven't seen the stage show and I've managed to keep away from all the big spoilers for a full year. So I've been waiting in anticipation for the film to come out since my previous birthday. I agree with you both that the film isn't two separate films. It is one whole wonderful thing. As a big fan of

musical theatre, I perform and attend regularly. I think that it's one of the most enjoyable musical movies that I've seen. The songs in both parts are incredible, extremely easy to remember, get hooked to. I love Ariana Grandi as Glinda. I feel that somehow her character changed from part one to part two, becoming more mature whilst keeping her childish glindaness. I have to admit, I cried profusely for the last 20 minutes of the film as I got increasingly angry and upset by the wizard, Madame Morrible and even Dorothy. Even after the film was over, the credits rolling, my dad asked me what I thought. I managed a few words and then I began to cry more. Sounds like your kind of person. Yeah, excellent. Well done. Previously I was known for having a heart of stone, says

Karenza, never crying at sad films, all books, but in recent years, I've been broken by truly emotional films. Corenza writing like a 60-year-old, whereas actually she's 15. But she signs off, Tiggity-Tonk, and down with a fascist wizard and up with Elfarber and the Animals. One more on this from Jordan in Johannesburg. Dear Wonderful Wizard and Wicked Witch, my partner, Lauren, has been a wicked mega fan since they were a child, and posted to social media videos of themselves making a hand-painted

dress themed around the landscape of Oz to wear to Wicked for Wicked for Good on its opening night. Some higher-ups saw the videos and invited Lauren and I to the South African premiere of the film. At Eastgate Sturkinikor last weekend, it was a phenomenal event full of glitz and glam and topped off with a joyous flash mob performed by the Johannesburg Queer Chorus. I found the second film to be a masterful resolution that left me in tears of all shades. That said, I do agree with Mark that it doesn't hit all the same musical heights as part one. Thinking on this, though, I realise that not many musicals do. Almost all hit musicals seem to have their best or perhaps more fairly their most popular musical moments in the first half.

Le Miz, Phantom, Hamilton, My Fair Lady, Chicago, Rock A-Hawry, do you agree that this seems to be a trend? Perhaps it just reveals how important it is for a timeless stage musical to stamp its oral identity early on. Down with the scapegoaters and up with the scapegoated, Jordan and Johannes. The only, I'm certainly not a musical's expert, but I did, the last one I went to see was Evita, cost a lot of money, but it was absolutely magnificent. And of course, the most famous song is, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, which opens the second act. Yes. Which famously, Ava Prawn went out on the balcony of the London Palladium, which was just a stroke of genius. So it obviously is not totally true, but anyway, Jordan, thank you for your email. What do you think? What do you see from the theatre if she's doing it on the balcony? A huge screen. So she leaves the stage and you see it on the screen and she walks out.

You see her walking out on the balcony and you see the crowd who have already gathered, who she's talking to. And then there's some cameras in the crowd looking up at the balcony scene. And the whole thing is astonishing. And you don't feel shortchanged at all. Some people thought they would be. Rachel Zegler Rachel Zegler

And she was amazing She is amazing Yeah So the whole thing Was astonishing But anyway So don't cry for me Argentina opens Act 2

So clearly The suggestion Isn't completely correct Yes absolutely But we appreciate the email Correspondence at codomail com We're going to be back

With what Mark We're going to be back With reviews of Christie Which is the boxing movie Anzutropolis 2 And we have

Our Special guest Who is Noah Boundback And you'll Experience All of that joy in just a moment. Very, very provocative comment from the redacto who says the definitive Evita is the one starring Marty Pello as Shea.

Excuse me, no, absolutely not. If you go and I apologize because I haven't prepped this, but one of our top team will find out the name of the actor who played Shea in this new version of Evita. He was astonishing. And I, you know, perfectly honest, I didn't see the Mardi Pello version. The David Essex was fantastic.

I love the David Essex version. Did you see it with David Essex as Chek? It was like one change afterwards, but I saw that production. But that's my favorite recording. I prefer it to the movie, but I really, really enjoyed the movie as well. Yeah.

But the guy who plays Shea, there you go, thank you, Diego, Rodriguez is going to be a superstar. He was astonishing. And he hits falsetto notes and everything with such consumat ease. You go, okay, you're so talented. I know you've taken your shirt off for no apparent reason,

but I thought it was absolutely. May I say just two things very quickly. Che, of course, rather than Shea. However, one of the best lines from the Ruttles is when the Rottles play Shea Stadium, named after the guerrilla leader, Shea Stadium. Shea Stadium. which is very very good

now this week's guest is now I'm back from Brooklyn the squid in the whale 2005 married to Greta Gowig since 2023 so he co-wrote Barbie so this guy knows what he's doing co-wrote the life aquatic with Steve Zizu and fantastic

Mr Fox with Wes Anderson also Greenberg Francis Haar while we're young marriage story mug at the wedding four Oscar nominations including for Marriage Story and Barbie. His new film is Jay Kelly about a movie star

played by George Clooney, who is Jay Kelly, and his devoted manager called Ron, played by Adam Sandler. They embark on a journey through Europe. Of course they do. And you can hear my chat with Noah

after this clip from the film. I wrapped this last one. I start the Lewis Brothers movie right here on the lots. I'll be around for the summer. I'm going to Europe with Rio and Moses and some friends. I told you that.

I thought that was in July. No, it was always June. I'm leaving on Saturday for Paris and making her way over Tuscany. Saturday? I mean, that's Saturday. That's... I mean, it's too soon. I got two weeks off. We won't have had time to hang out. This is your last summer.

That's why I want to see my friends. It'll be so lonely here without you. No, it won't. You're never alone. Really? I think I'm always alone. Thanks, everyone. And that is a clip from Jay Kelly. I'm delighted to say been joined by its direct and co-writer Noah Bamback. How are you, Noah?

Thank you for joining us. Good. Thanks for having me. Do you enjoy this bit of the process once you've come up with the idea, you've written the script, you've done the hard work, is this fun? Well, I mean, I would say what's the difficult part of it is having to talk about something that's so fresh you've just made. It's always easier to talk about things that you made a while ago.

than it is to talk about the thing you just made. But, you know, I do my best. Is that because you're not quite sure what you think or you're not quite sure what other people think? Well, I think you make the movie in a way to understand what you think. I mean, it's like you have all these things. Obviously, feelings, thoughts, ideas that go into making it.

But the meaning is not something that I'm really conscious of while I'm making it. The meaning kind of reveals itself maybe as the movie is made so I mean I can kind of scratch around try to come up oh well I think I meant this I think I meant that but it's really for other people to discover and to get to have their own experience of so yeah to have me then butt in and say well I thought it was this and someone says well actually I felt this and I think well the oh great you know what you felt is probably right okay so so tell us about Jay Kelly who is Jay Kelly and was that always going to be the title two questions in

one there. Jay Kelly is a movie actor who is also a famous movie actor, so I guess we call him a movie star, and he's played by George Clooney, and he's in the movie going through a crisis of sorts, maybe a crisis of an identity crisis of some kind, and he goes on a journey. The journey both takes him into Europe, but it also takes him into his past. And I think, in terms of the title, yes, I mean, essentially it was the title. fairly early on, but you never know for sure until you're totally done with it. But yes, it was the only title I've had. I didn't have an alternate title. And was it always going to be George Clooney? I think pretty early on. I mean, once Emily and I kind of had the character,

like once we knew who Jay Kelly was and what the movie was, then George, we're thinking, well, who could do this? And George was our ideal. Okay. And the challenging thing I would imagine never having acted myself. It's one thing to play yourself, maybe in a documentary. It's one thing to play another character, but to be a lot of yourself and then just move it slightly? Because it feels as though there's a lot of George in this character, but obviously he's not being him. He's being Jay Kelly. You're asking him, is that quite a difficult role for him to do? No, because that's the illusion. You know, I mean, that's, if you have a movie star, play a movie star, of course, it invites this point of identification from the audience as it should.

Oh, this is him. He's playing a version of him. But he's really not. He's playing a character that's quite different from him. So really, it's just he plays the character just as if you were playing a dentist or something. It's just that there's this built-in sort of mirroring that that is there for the audience. So I understand everybody sort of thinking. oh, well, oh, it's sort of George, and we did things I wrote in, you know, I wrote that he was

from Kentucky and things that are where George was from, to sort of bring this even closer to his persona. But that was all because George was playing somebody who was quite different from himself. I mentioned at the beginning. You're a co-writer of this, and you've mentioned Emily. This is Emily Mortimer, who's your co-writer. Can I ask you how that relationship happened and why you thought that Emily was the right person for this project? Yeah, it was really a feeling. I've admired Emily. I mean, I think she's a wonderful actress and also I loved a show she did called Dalin M for HBO years ago. And we got to know each other because I cast her kids in white noise and we got to know each other better. We'd known each other a little bit socially over the years. And I had sort of various strands of things for this movie. I mean, I had the sort of idea of the movie start going on this journey and I had some other things and I had Italy. And it was just, a feeling. I thought like, I sort of brought it to her and I said, what do you make of all of this? And she said, it's a movie I'd like to see. And so I called her the next day and said, do you want to

write it? I saw a line from you, Noah, where you said about writing with Emily or about being with Emily. You said, I liked myself with her. Yes. Which I thought was a very interesting thing to say. She clearly brings something to the relationship which makes you, I don't know, a good version of No Bamback. Yes. That's true. I mean, I think that's true. all the best collaborators that you not only are they bringing whatever brilliance they bring that you're also it triggers you know whatever it's like you find yourself being kind of more exploratory more inventive more inspired funnier more profound smarter we were talking about the art of co-writing recently daniel de lewis was on the show and he was talking about working

with his son ronan who's directed this film yeah an eminy and so most people will kind of will understand the father-son dynamic. You've written with your partner, Greta, obviously, famously in Barbie, and we get that kind of the partner dynamic. Right. Finding someone else who you can work with every day in a very intense way, that must be quite a difficult. I just think that that relationship with someone else must be something worth treasuring. You know, when you find it, you need to run with that. I think so too. I think, yeah, because it's, it's kind of impossible unless it isn't, you know, and it's like, I mean, I just like, seeing her every day. And, you know, and we would, we would argue about stuff. We would, she was,

she would really stand up for things that she believed strongly in, uh, argue with me. I, I, which was great, you know, but we really like each other. And I think, you know, we, we, we get a kick out of each other. And, you know, I think we, what, what you also want is the freedom to kind of go off course and be ridiculous or, you know, propose stuff that's out of bounds and then bring it back. And with this movie, too, because we didn't know, it didn't have a, like, oh, it has to go this way or there's a form we're fitting it into. We really didn't know where it would go. So there were a lot of strands journeys that we took Jay on that we ended up taking out. So it sort of needed that loose sense of play, I think, and, you know, so we could, you know, rain it in when we needed to.

One of the very entertaining things that you have here is this huge entourage, which George has, well, the character Jay Kelly, has, is like an entire ecosystem that moves with a star as they go to Italy and then seeing all the various people peel off as things sort of start to be increasingly difficult, which seems a good time to mention Adam Sandler, who plays his manager, Ron, they have a very, very close relationship. Why did you choose Adam Sandler? for this. Well, Adam, Adam and I worked together a few years ago on a movie I made called the Meyerwitz Stories, and we had a really wonderful time together, and I love what he did in the movie, and I wanted to find something since then, and we also became quite close off

of that movie, and our families are very close, and so I felt like Ron was away from me to write something that was quite close to Adam as a person, you know, something that honored his warmth and loyalty and generosity and, but masked in the manager role. And, you know, if it's appropriate, I'm interested in working with actors in ways that feel quite close to who they are, but in ways that are hidden to the audience, you know, in characters that would otherwise seem not like them. That was exciting for me, you know, to work with Adam that way. Jay Kelly, as played by George Clooney, has a very difficult relationship with his family, with his daughters, with his friends, and maybe that's part of the crisis that he faces.

But Adam Sandler, his manager, seems to have a very close relationship with his family. And he, when he's on the phone to his daughter, I think he's on the phone, he calls his daughter Poppy, and then later he calls Jay, is it Puppy, I think, anyway, you wrote it, so you can correct me. But he uses the same word for both of them. Is that just what he calls people, or does that tell us something about his relationship with Jay? Well, I guess, I mean, it's, yeah, it's something.

he calls people who are endeared to him, I think but of course, I mean, as Liz says to him, you know, she refers to Jay as their, what used to be their baby, you know, like that there is this sense of parenting that these, and he makes that

too, he says, we're like parents are imaginary friends, you know, that there is this sense of being a parent to this child movie star. Is it true that you had the final line of the movie in your head for many years? Yeah, I did. I felt like, I don't remember how I came to it, but I felt like, oh, if there was a movie about an actor and they said this line at the end, that that would be exciting.

Yeah, I find that difficult to talk about the end, but you've mentioned Italy quite a lot. I just think it feels as though you always knew the destination of this story, that it was only going to finish in one place. I knew it would go to Italy. I didn't know how we would get there and what would happen when we got there, but I did know that I wanted it to end up in Italy. in Tuscany in particular. Can I just ask you as a creator, really, to use the kind of the broadest term I can possibly come up with? As the co-creator of the Barbie movie,

one of the cultural events in cinematic history, it'll be in the history books, how that movie landed. Does that impact the way you make films after that? Is there always, does it ripple out into the way you make your other films? Not deliberately. I mean, the wonderful thing about that movie for Greta and me was that we really wrote what we wanted.

to write. We wrote it no differently than anything else we would have written. And we wrote it with a kind of abandon and playfulness and it had joy and anger and, you know, it was, the process was no different than Francis Ha or Mistress America or anything else that we'd written together. And for it to then connect and be the thing that it was, was wonderful, obviously, but also it didn't consciously change anything because it was no different than how we've been doing it before. hand. Yeah. But for it to get tagged in with Oppenheimer was, of course, brilliant marketing and an extraordinary coincidence. What are you working on next, Noah? What do we see you involved with after this particular movie, after Jay Kelly? I mean, I'm writing something now. And so, you know,

I'm sort of in that place. So I mentioned earlier with Jay where it's like I'm, you know, I have sort of the feeling of the movie and I have some things. But I have to, you know, go on the journey to find, find itself to figure out what I'm, what movie I'm making. And are you writing it yourself on your own? I'm writing it, I mean, well, I'm not going to say yet. Okay, all right. Well, we can speculate off the back of that. But for the moment, No Bamback, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. Yeah, thanks for having me. I guess if, I don't know, if he was writing Barbie too, then that might. might be how he answers that question. Do you think that's what it was? Well, I don't know. It was such a huge phenomenal success. The pressure to do another one must be pretty extraordinary, don't you think? Yeah. To be honest, it hadn't occurred to me, but yes, I mean, now you say it out loud, of course. I should say as far as Jay Kelly is concerned, and the thing about, was that always the title? Yes, that was always the title. We'll review Jay

Kelly next week when it comes to Netflix. So that's where everyone's going to see it. It is nominally on release in cinemas at the moment, but the screenings are just scattered hither and yon. I've been to see it. I had to go to Finsbury Park of 410 on a Tuesday afternoon to see it. And so although it is technically getting a theatrical release because Noah Boundback is a kind of, you know, a big name director,

it's one of these weird things with Netflix movies at the moment. You go, well, yeah, it's going to be seen by everyone by Netflix, but it's got a nominal theatrical release. And I mean, I don't want to preempt the review, but it was interesting here, and I'm bound back talking about going on a journey, going on a journey, going on a journey. And as you know, one of the things that puts my teeth on edge is films in which characters go on a journey.

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of that, there's a lot of that, to Jay Kelly. Yes, there are two films to be discussed in the near future. One is Jay Kelly and the other is Ella McKay, which is the new James L. Brooks comedy, both named after fictitious characters. And we can go back to my belief that you should never name a movie after a fictional character once we've discussed both of those films, I think. But I thought, what do you say about Jay Kelly? Well, your review is next week. Here's what I would say.

There's a lot of talent on the screen. that is absolutely beautifully put and i would to which i would add and aren't they pleased of it with it oh yes yes very pleased with it here the full review having been teased uh next week because it comes to netflix from uh december the fifth anyway here's something that you can review yeah christie which is um the was it was not to be confused with the irish film of the same name, which came out earlier this year, which is one of my favorite films of the year. You remember I reviewed that? I'd saw it at Berlin, and then, I think that's absolutely brilliant. So this is a sporting biopic of Women's Boxing Pioneer, Christy Martin,

played by Sidney Sweeney, who is also a producer, and this is very much a star vehicle for Sydney Sweeney. Films directed by, directing co-written by Australian filmmaker David Mischo, who's previously probably best known for writing and directing Animal Kingdom, screenplays co-written by Mira Fulks. So we meet Christy as a punchy young woman, then called Christy Salters in late 80s, West Virginia, who has done a fight, but has no sort of, that's not where she sees her career going. But she is having an affair with a friend, and her parents are absolutely appalled that her and her and a girlfriend, there are stories about, you know, you and that girl, there's stories about them. And so they're thinking about sending her to

a priest, presumably to do the pray away, the gay thing that they used to do conversion therapy, all that nonsense. Instead, she finds herself back in the boxing ring because she's sort of spied as a talent. And trainer and manager James Martin, who is played with a sort of a paunch and a comb over by Ben Foster, who does a really, really good job with the role, this kind of creepy controlling figure, decides that she can become a star. He also decides that she is his property and essentially says to her, look, if you want to be a success, first, So you've got to get rid of any rumors of queerness. Secondly, you have to cut all ties with your previous life.

You become my wife. You become my property. And I will make you a star. Here's a clip. Now, I'm serious when I say, I can make you the greatest female fighter in the world. Compared to who? Nobody's doing it. Nobody's getting paid to do it.

That's going to change. And when the time is right, I'll make the call to Donald King. Don't just move back to Miami. And when you're ready, I'll make the call. But you got to do the work. You got to want it. Now, if you want to stay here in West Virginia, I can't stop you. I don't think you do.

You can see it in your eyes. So, she agrees, and he then sets about molding, shaping, and more importantly, controlling, increasingly controlling her life as his protege and then wife. And somehow Don King's attention is caught, and he's got no time for James at all, but he thinks he can really get behind Christy and make assailable. She becomes famous as an aggressive fighter and out of the ring. she calls her opponents dikes because her husband told her to kind of distance herself from any sense of queerness at all. She's on television saying she's just a normal wife who cooks dinner

but just happens to knock people out for a living. And all the time, the husband is becoming more and more controlling what she does, what she eats, where she goes, who she sees, who she speaks to, and making quite clear to her, if you ever leave me, I will kill you. Now, I didn't know anything about the story. There will be people. listening to this who did and so therefore very much like with foxcatcher when i was watching foxcatcher i had no idea where it was going but it is clearly a story about an abusive relationship you were talking about this before in relation in terms of pillion and it's very much that it's not really to do with the way in which um christie martin affects the sport it's to do

with the with the with the domestic circumstance and it's kind of gripping because there's something really horrifying about seeing somebody being controlled and being essentially trapped. And it's got very solid performances, not least by Merit Weaver who plays Christy's mom, the mom who just basically thinks that she should just be a good wife and she should just stop having any contact with her old friends. Also, Katie O'Brien, who is in it is underused. Katie O'Brien was absolutely brilliant in Love Lies Bleeding. and she's very good in this, although she's not in it enough for my liking,

but she's very good in this as Christy's greatest opponent and then later advocate. So the main story around this, which you may know, is that the film basically opened in America to decent reviews, but horrible box office. Box Office Mojo said it was one of the top 12 worst openings for a new release that opened on over 2,000 screens. It opened a number 11, so it didn't even make the top 10, and then was in the 20s in its second week.

And there was all this stuff about why did it fail? And the, you know, I mean, I'm a fan of Sydney Sweeney as an actor. I thought she was great, white locust, she was brilliant in reality. But do you remember the whole news cycle that she became the center of this story that basically the MAGA crowd adopted her? Because she was a registered Republican. And then the MAGA crowd adopted her as a sort of poster girl for the anti-woke thing because she was in an advert for eagle jeans in which the tag was genes are passed down from

parents to offspring determining traits I had my genes are blue and so there was a whole thing about oh yeah fine you know this is one side of that debate said well this is terrible this is like talking about eugenic it became a big a big thing but it became really big when mango musselini trothed as I think the word is, Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the hottest ad out there. Go get them, Sweeney. So it's an unfortunate thing to happen to anybody. But anyway, of course, the weird thing is the MAGA crowd don't take very kindly to a story that says, you know, this woman who was gay and then was told not to be gay anymore and was told to just shut up and, you know, knuckle down with the abusive husband. Weirdly enough, they didn't have much interest in that.

So maybe that's what happened. Maybe it was at the base that she was then opinion to said, no, I'm sorry, we don't want you to make that movie. The other thing is the movie itself isn't great. I mean, it's a perfectly decent, solidly put together piece with a sort of stand-out performance by Sidney-Sweeney. I mean, obviously it's not the first female boxing movie. You think about things like Girl Fight from Wayway,

but actually there's two films called Girl Fight, Million Dollar Baby Fire. There's been quite a lot. And what this does is it doesn't really radically rewrite the template in any way. It is very much a performance vehicle for Sidney-Sweeney. But for my point of view, because I didn't know the story, but you know the first minute when you meet the comb over paunchy person who is going to become the abusive, you know from the minute you set eyes on him, he's bad news you want to stay away from him.

And then I think the film does quite a good job of showing you how, that pans out. So I think as a, as a, as a, as a film about an abusive relationship, that's probably its, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it is a bit of a, it's a bit of a slog, particularly in its sort of final third. But Sydney Sweeney is very good in it. And I think you, one shouldn't take the fact that it tanked in America very seriously, because, you know, it's America, right? The film isn't great, but the story is really kind of engrossing, and I think her performance is good. Strange thing about the My Jeans of Blue thing, which is interesting. I mean, I read all the who-haha, and I thought, really?

Because blue is, of course, Democrat, and red is Republican. So that's not a political line. No, no, it's... I just wonder if people were making far more of a thing. And actually it deserves. The fuss that people were making was because it was the thing about genes, determining traits and blah, I mean, hey, it was one of those things that just got out of hand, clearly. But one of the reasons it got out of hand was Trump, true thing.

Sidney, a registered Republican, has the hottest ad. Because he just, he doesn't have any other word for things other than hot. He keeps saying, America, it's so, it is like, you know, he's so hot right now. literally like he's behaving like a character out of Zoolander. Correspondence of codemode.com. It's the ads in a minute mark, but we all need a bit of laughter therapy. We're not going to get it because we're going to step once again into our laughter lift. I felt as though the music was played in somewhat reluctantly then.

I don't know if anyone else sensed that. Hey, Mark. Hey, Simon. Yeah, Cousin Barbara, the drummer, has had twin girls. I'm delighted to tell you. What are their names? I hear you ask. What are their names?

Anna one and a two. Hey! Which is actually, I like that. Mark, I got a new car this week for the purposes of the joke, which is expensive. I'll charge them. It's got all the latest gadgets. There's a button for just about everything.

It's unbelievable. There's even one that says rear wiper, but I've been slightly too afraid to try that one. Yay. I should tell you, by the way, when I was doing the interview, for Ella McKay, I think it was. You do them in these hotel suites, as you know.

And I went to the toilet in one of these executive suites. This isn't a joke, by the way, I'm just breaking off here. And it's my first ever experience with a heated toilet seat, which was very, very strange. It also offered a series of water jets for, you know, afterwards. Yeah. For afterwards. Yeah.

I mean, I thought it was slightly unnecessary. Anyway, that's neither here or there. But I was in my local Showbys, North London pub at the weekend, just a day after you visited. And a man walked in with a small salamander on his shoulder. The barman said, what an interesting pet. What's his name? Tiny, the man replied.

That's an odd name, says the barque. Why did you call him tiny? Because he's minute. What's the answer? You know, I first heard that joke in relation to Ken Livingstone. That also works, if you remember that far back into the 80s politics. Thank you very much. Correspondents at Kevin Omoe.com.

There is more in a moment. Okay, right, let's rock on with our bad selves. There is a Zootropolis movie, another one on the way. Yes. Zootropolis here, Zootopia, everywhere else. It's one of those weird things that they've changed the title over here. And so when you look it up, anyway, it comes up as Zootopia. Why could we not have Zootopia?

I don't know. That works perfectly well. Yeah, there was a reason, and I can't remember what it was. Because the first film was nearly a decade ago. It's like nine years ago. And if you remember, in the first film, the people, the creator of the first film said that they were inspired by Disney's Robin Hood, you know, with all the, so the key characters are animals. And the first one played out in this like metropolis-like world, so I suppose

Zootropolis, which is designed and populated entirely by animals. You got a country bunny, Judy Hopps, Jennifer Goodwin's voice, who wants to be the first bunny police officer, Idris Elber is the captain, teams up with Nick Foxwood voiced by Patrick Baitman. And I really like the original. I laughed all the way through. I didn't know anything about it beforehand. I didn't even know about the title change. And it was very, very colorful animation, but loads and loads of detail.

I really liked the architectural detail of the environment. But also, it did that thing about, it was a story that appeared to be about one thing, but actually it was about another thing. I mean, it looked like it was a film about kind of, you know, predators and paranoia and fear and everything. But really, it's this kind of extended message about tolerance and understanding.

and hey everyone why can't we all just get along and it was i think it's 2016 so it's that that period that it comes out in so now we have a sequel in which a lot of what you get in the first film is present and correct so the the first film had gags in it that were like winking at the older audience but not in a way that was in any way sort of cringy so this so it's written by jared bush you co-wrote the first film co-directed with Byron Howard, who co-directed the first film. I think that's right. People who were involved in the first film were involved in the second film. So the Bunny and the Fox are still partners. They're still being sidelined. They still want to break their own cases and save the

city all over again. This time, their efforts take them. Well, at one point to a to a buddy partner's counseling session, but more importantly, to a conspiracy at the heart of Zootropolis, a conspiracy which is attempting to demonize snakes. And, blame them for all the ills of the world, when in fact, they are responsible for building the very world that they are claimed to be poisoning. Sounds familiar. Here's a clip. Please, you don't have to hurt him. Hurt him? Snakes never hurt anyone. We aren't the bad guys. They are. And this journal, holds the secret that will prove it.

I have to prove it, please. This is our only chance to set things right. And when I do, my family will finally be able to come home. Woo! I am here. Pops and wild. Dream team. We got him.

There's a very funny. joke um which is uh kioi kuan voices this the character um gary de snake he says who are you he says i'm gary de snake says what's your surname de snake she's very good so as before you get lots of sprightly animation and slapstick humor um there's lots of cine literate jokes that are there what's that phrase politics must be must be dealt with but should not be dwelt in and in the case of this it's silly literate jokes you can have them there but don't make a big sort of wink at the thing. So there's a, there's a, there's a reference to babe, there's a that'll do pig thing. There's a, there's a silence of the lambs joke, which is

actually very funny. There's a, I think there was a Pulp Fiction reference. There's a, there's a thing about the shining in which they suddenly use a, dun, dun, dun, dun, music. And as before, you've got the kind of, you know, the absurdist animal metaphor, which you can, you can read, if you want to, as an Orwellian metaphor for things that are happening right now in the human world. I mean, this idea about let's demonize a whole group of people in order to other them and get rid of them. So it's got that thing about, on the one hand, it's a, you know, it's a jolly, lively animation. And on the other hand, it's got that message of, you know, little people, why can't we all get on together? And why is it that certain subsectors are being

demonized? So it does still have that contemporary edge. I have to say, I don't think it's as good as the first film. I think its narrative gets a little bit confused sometimes. And that says, as before, there's so much to look at, there's so much detailed. I mean, it's, it's, I was, there was no part of me that thought, I'm bothered about spending any more time in this world because I enjoyed being in the world the first time around and I kind of enjoyed coming back to it the second time round. So it's, once again, its heart is in the right place. Once again, I, you know, I like the, I like the, I like the, I like the, I like the nods because They don't feel too winky.

I don't think it's on a par with the original, but the original really surprised me by how much I enjoyed it. But it'll play very, very well to the core audience. And like I said, again, its heart is absolutely solidly in the right place. And I thought it did that thing about telling a story that seems to be about one thing, but it's actually about another thing rather well. That's a long time to wait for a follow-up. Yeah.

I mean, to the point that I had to go back and look at my original review, to remind myself of the first film because it was nearly a decade ago. So a whole bunch of people who saw that as a child, they're now an illegal grown-up, an adult, and they can vote and fight and everything. But there was sort of spin-off series and things. I mean, it's been existing in other worlds, but it's just in terms of, if you're talking purely in terms of cinema,

the gap between Zootropolis 1 and Zutropolis 2 is almost as long as the gap between Amorosanti's first feature and Amerisante's second feature. Richard was how long? 10 years. Wow. That is the end of take one. This has been a Sony music entertainment production.

This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh, Heather and Dom. But not in a sub-dom, kind of way just... Hey! The redactor with Simon Paul, and if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcast. The Christmas show is there. It's going to be live. We'd like to see you there.

We'll be personally disappointed if you're not. www. fain.com.uk. slash curmode hyphen-mao. Come and join us on Patreon for all the good stuff like a live show which we do every other week. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, I know it's my film of the week, Simon,

and I'm very certain that in many ways it's your film of the week too. You're not going to choose Pillion. I am. Oh, my God. I mean, where on earth? I'm going to choose

Cetropolis too and I haven't even seen it. I'm going to choose Christy as well. And and the Noah Baumbach film. And the Noah Baumbach film. And Jake Kelly. And Vera Drake. All of them.

Michael Collins. No, that was a real person. That's okay. Michael Collins gets a pass because that's a real person. Okay, Michael Clayton. Michael Clayton. He wasn't real.

all better anyway very controversial take two is landed adjacent to this one so we'll see you very shortly