Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Is F1 in pole position for film of the week?

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you.  ‘F1’, or ffffwan, as nobody is calling it—is racing onto cinema screens this week, so listen up for Mark’s verdict on this high-speed blockbuster. And we’ve got a review of ‘M3GAN 2.0’—the first of what could be many sequels to the dollfaced genre-mashing horror hit. Can they keep shoehorning numbers into their titles? Looks like we might be about to find out.  Our special guest this week is Maxine Peake, who stars in ‘Words of War’--a bold biopic of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose work was critical of the Kremlin and the Russian army. She talks to Simon about telling Anna’s powerful story, why the film ditched the fake Russian accents, and being married to Jason Isaacs—onscreen only! You can catch Mark’s review straight after their chat too.   Top takes in the Box Office Top 10 this week—and fans of 80s radio nostalgia are in for a treat from Simon, so listen out. Plus, 28 Years Later fans, don’t miss Take 2 for yet more spoiler-tastic chat unpacking the film everyone’s talking about—including lots of you in your top correspondence. Keep it coming!     Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):  M3GAN 2.0 Review: 09:16  Box Office Top Ten: 14:55  Maxine Peake Interview: 25:10  Words of War review: 40:45  F1 Review: 51:52  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

Oh hey, this is Simon. This is Mark. I'll give you a pretty penny, Mark, if you can name any film festivals that are on the horizon in June. Transylvania Film Festival, Film on Film with the BFI, Tribeca, that's three pretty pennies, you know me? An esteemed critic like yourself cannot be in all those places at once, but you can get pretty darn close to it with NordVPN. Saving on travel and jet lag to unlock the best films from around the world sounds pretty good. But it's not only that, Mark. No, you can log on to public Wi-Fi anonymously, leaving no

way for hackers to get your data even when you're streaming. And even better, you can get it across multiple devices. So whatever you're using to stream the best of this year's new films from around the world, you're covered and you are protected. With NordVPN, you can travel the world faster than a private jet minus the carbon footprint. you are protected. 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 Shmessions.

You can get all that extra stuff via Apple podcasts or head to ExtraTakes.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. Now I'm slightly confused because normally I'm gazing at Mark and he's clearly in Cornwall and he's got a guitar and a sheet behind him and a Tom Robinson poster and a few bits of ephemera. And now you're in a travelodge.

No, I'm not in a travel lodge. I'm in a really, really, I'm at the Pontelopud Film Festival, this island just off Croatia. And we arrived last night at like two o'clock in the morning because I was doing screenings of Monday to Monday, then flew and then, you know, anyway, there was a fly and then a car and then a boat. And then I've only just saw it when I woke up this morning to look at it and it's very, very nice. So I'm here to visit this small film festival. So where are you?

Well, Croatia, basically. But an island of Croatia. What's the island called? Pont Lepud. So it's Pont Lepud Film Festival. In Pont Lepud. The island is called Pont Lepud. Yeah, is it or is it called Lepud?

I don't know. I mean, look, there's the thing. Look, there's a picture of me. And the island is called Ponta Laputa. Yeah, is it or is it called the pun? I don't know. I mean, look, there's the, there's the thing. Look, there's a picture of me, but I'm here to do, I'm doing, I'm doing it. It's like a, it's a, it's a small, it's a small film festival and it's like a bunch of master classes, but I'm doing a master class with Sean Baker, who of

course just became record breaking Oscar winner for an aura and, but I'd interviewed him sometimes before and this was sort of all arranged. So anyway, so it's very nice. And, but I'd interviewed him sometimes before, and this was all arranged. So anyway, so it's very nice. So yes, I'm here and it's not, this is, this is, this makes a change from my usual, my usual low rent, uh, stop. This is very nice. This has got air conditioning. Oh, wow.

Okay. I think that's where I am and you're in showbiz North London. I am in showbiz North London. Absolutely. Where I've discovered what we need if we're going to jump to the next level. Yes. And Sony are going to have to pay some money for this. Yeah. But I was sent this by Mike Tulin, who's a colleague's jingle package from 1988. So, so this is what we need.

We need, we need a sophisticated jingle package mentioning the name of the show. Um, your name, my name, you name, with some great LA singers. I think that would be the thing. I love the fact that when they do those jingles, they get a whole bunch of people to sing a name that those people have presumably never heard of. Not saying that you're not internationally famous, but when they went out to Los Angeles to get the people to sing, it's the Simon Mayo Breakfast Show, these people would have driven in from the Hollywood Hills and they're going, who are we singing about?

Yeah. And then they'll be singing an identical package for, you know, Bob Jobbins from Sydney FM. Simon Mayo, nine till 12, followed by Bob Jobbins. Anyway, in the absence of it, in the absence of a sophisticated and very expensive jingle package, which are very, I don't think anyone does those kinds of things anymore. What they do now is it has become quite the thing to play your up because Whispering Bob,

his show, they play his old jingle passages and packages. Jingle passages. You have to go to the doctor, your jingle passage is causing you trouble. Do you remember for ages, Johnny Walker had that old jingle that I think must have come from the days of pirate radio, which was Johnny Walker. It was like kind of a vocoder thing. It was very hip. I think I've already told you that I have been told medically that my jingle passage

is one of the best that they'd seen in the year. Yeah, well, there's also some very important work to attend to, obviously, once all the medical humour has been put to one side. Because you live from your… It is Lopud. I just checked it. It's the Pont Lopud Festival, but the island is called Lopud. That's it. I was right the first time. Okay. All right. I need to check if we've got any listeners there. I need to go to the IWITR app to find out where it is in the first place. But anyway, excite me with what you're going to be reviewing for us. So we have F1 Formula One movie starring Brad Pitt, M3 GAN 2.0, which

I think we need to start calling M3 2 GGN, and Words of War with our very special guest, Maxime Pic, who for the purposes of the movie is married to Jason Isaacs, which is lots of scandal to come when we talk to Maxime Pic later. And in our bonus fumes for the Vanguard Easter. What are you offering? Road to Patagonia, which is a documentary, and also it is an anniversary re-release of Clueless. Plus there's lots of extra excited bits and pieces. There are some reviews of 28 years later in this here part of the programme, which is spoiler-free. And then because we did a spoiler-tastic edition in take two, there are also some emails in take two in our second spoiler

edition, which will pick up on some of the points that we were making in last week. Will we be klaxoning it so people know when we get into the spoiler bit? Apparently we've got a jingle klaxon. So people know when we get into the spoiler bit? Apparently, we've got a jingle klaxon. Yes, a special. Apparently, we had a jingle klaxon last week and it was just like the Harpo Marks honking horn. It wasn't a klaxon at all.

Have they actually got a klaxon now? Well, we'll find out. Last week, we had some correspondence from… We were talking about cinema prices, basically, and Robert had emailed to tell us about how much it cost to take a family of four to the cinema, which was basically a few quid under a hundred quid. We didn't actually talk about the cinema in question, but we've got all the receipts and everything so we can fill in some of the blanks.

I attached below the response from the ODI, you'll see that it does not address the core matter of relative location pricing or the absence of child tickets. As a father of a six and a seven-year-old, they cannot get unlimited. That's for the over 18. And if it's not practical to take schoolchildren of that age to a five o'clock cinema screening because they're normally in bed before it would finish, referring to the response from the Odeon, I don't particularly want to sit in the cheapest seats with the poorest sound and vision. Anyway, so the bill was £97.96. Blimey, Charlie. So this is Saturday, 12th of July, mid-afternoon for a family of four, nice seats, middle of

the cinema. In comparison, Odeon Lux in Birmingham, £66.00 Odeon Lux in Leeds, 66 quid. Empire Leicester Square IMAX, the UK's largest screen for this film, row H, 84 pounds. So it's cheaper in the IMAX. Odeon Lux Leicester Square Atmos Dolby Recliner, 90 pounds. Odeon Lux Alesbury Atmos Recliner, row F, no children tickets, there's 97 quid. So, it does all check out. Daddy Robert and Daddy 2 Noah and Isaac. So, I believe Odian Alesbury is the most expensive place in the UK to see Superman, unless someone knows differently. The Odian Leicester Square, the home of premieres, is the same price as Milton Keynes. You can see it better and cheaper in London. So, the Odian did get back to Daddy Robert,

although they obviously didn't call him Daddy Robert. They're just saying, sorry that you're unhappy. With an Odeon membership, you can still get good pricing for these screens with our Saver Monday tickets. Odeon Milton Keynes tickets start from 12 quid for a standard seat in the iSense screen or 13 quid and so on. But they say, yes, the prices have gone up. And I do hope that you choose one of these screens again on a future visit to the only, but basically that's what it costs. And maybe it's the future. Maybe it isn't, but it's a whopping lease.

That's going to be over a hundred quid, certainly plus transport, you know, even a bag of Spangles is going to put it over a bag of Spangles, which just a refreshment option, which is almost certainly not available anymore. Some acid drops. Spangles didn't even come in bags, they came in packets. You know, they came in tubes. Bag of Spangles. I'm free really, because Bag of Spangles sounds like either a band or a movie.

This is the new track by Bag of Spangles from their eponymous debut album. This is called Bag of Spangles. See, Spangles is a good word. I think Bag of Spangles, I'm going to copyright that as soon as we finish. We've got a poster in our house, which is an old poster from the 90s, whatever it is. It's a man and a woman sitting on a beach towel. And the guy's holding, the woman's holding a camera and the guy's holding a towel. And the woman is saying, got the film? And the guy's saying, got the spangles.

There you go. That's all you need. Bag of spangles. Here we go. All right. But so M3 2.0 is, what did you say we have to call it? Well, I think we're going to call it M3 2.0 again. Okay. So just explain. So this is M and then the number three, M3GAN. M3GAN 2.0. I mean, pronounced Megan 2.0 basically. Okay. Yeah. Taken away, yes. Okay. So this is the sequel to M. Threegun, which was this satirical horror thriller from writer-director Jared Johnson,

who he directed the original from a script with somebody else. So now he's co-written this. So the first movie, he's written this one, the first movie was about the development of this must-have toy, which was M. Threegun, which was model three generative Android. If you remember, the story is that the Android is developed by somebody who then takes it home to try out on their niece, Katie, who becomes a crash test dummy. M3GN then winds up murdering several people and, if I remember rightly, a dog. It was kind of a sly consumer satire about outsourcing childcare in the nature of attachment to screens and AI. Anyway, short version is cost 12 million, took 182 or something.

So expect sequels, which we now have in the shape of M3 two-point Norton. So in the mold of the original, essentially, do you remember Terminator and Terminator 2? The whole thing in Terminator was Terminator and he's there to destroy… He's come from the future to destroy the past, to destroy the future, or the future to destroy the past. And then when we get to T2, he's become the good guy. So in the course of this, there is a T2 character development for M3GN. There's a lot of numbers involved in this course of this, there is a sort of T2 character development for M3GN. There's a lot of numbers involved in this. So this is two years after M3GN.

Gemma, who invented the stuff, is now a hit author and an advocate for regulation for artificial intelligence. But M3GN's tech has been stolen and has been used to create Amelia, which stands for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android. Yeah, right. Which is a military robot which then becomes sentient and turns on its creators. Meanwhile, M3GN herself is far from gone. Here's a clip. You've been here this whole time. Well, I've been many places.

But yes, I've been keeping an eye on you. You're behind all this, aren't you? You're Amelia. Oh no, I can't take credit for that. That one has your greasy prints all over it. You should have upgraded your file security. Why are you still here? What do you want? Did you ever stop to think about what we could have achieved together? Which is kind of tonally the film.

So inevitably, M3GN has to be kind be rebuilt with advanced upgrades in order to battle Amelia. So she's now taller, she's now meaner, she's now more fightier. So the original film was satirical rather than horror, although it did sort of skirt with horror. This leans much more heavily into the comedic elements. And so there was that iconic iconic M3 gun dance that was all over the internet. In this thing, there's a full blown sort of karaoke song sequence. Plot makes less sense than ever. In as much as it looks like what they've done with the plot is they've just thrown everything at the kitchen sink at it and just thought, let's see what sticks.

What's interesting, if you look at the cast, along with the returning cast, now we have the addition of Jermaine Clement, who of course is probably best known for comedy, which tells you a lot about the way in which they've leaned into the comedy elements of the sequel. It's a lot more messy than the original because the original did, I mean, it was surprising.

I enjoyed the original much more than I thought I was going to because I was thinking, oh, it's going to be like another devil doll movie. And it wasn't. It was kind of smarter than that. But this is much more like let's play it broader. Let's play it more garishly. I mean, I enjoyed it whilst it was going on. It did seem to be 58 different movies at the same time. And it did look like they thought, I'm not quite sure which genre of movie we're going to be in, so let's just be in all genres. But the key thing is, it's never scary or creepy. It's much more knockabout, action-adventure, slapstick, satire. Like I said, it has none of the clean line simplicity of the original. It's a complete mess. But it was an enjoyable mess. And whilst I was watching it, I did think it's… For the first half an hour, I did think, what on earth is the tone of this? But by the time I kind of settled down into going,

oh, okay, that's what it is, it's sort of knockabout slapstick fun, then I thought it was fine whilst it was on. Almost immediately afterwards, I found it quite hard to repeat the plot, as I think I demonstrated just then. So it's a mess, but it's an entertaining mess. And it's not as good as the original, but it's kind of fun. But you imagine there'll be another one. Well, there was an interview with the director who said, I can imagine there being another five of these.

And there is already, there's another one in the pipeline which is SolM8T. SolM8T. SolM8T. SolM8T. SolM8T. I'm getting very confused. Yeah, exactly. So too many numbers. But so that's already in there. And as I said, there was an interview with me, you said, yeah, I can imagine there being another five and maybe I'll come back at number six or whatever. Because the thing is, it's now in the same way as any of these things, because M3GN has now been established as a thing that people know and like,

you can do it as many times as you want. Box office top 10 this week, surprisingly, starting at number 10, but it's still where the ballad of Wallace Island. Which is back in, it's back in the 10. Yeah, it's doing really well in little cinemas. I've spoken to two different cinema managers who run small independent cinemas who have both said they could basically run for the next two months showing Saltpath and Ballad of Wallace Island back to back. Because for certain types of cinema, those films are absolutely packing the audiences in. We'll come to Saltpath in a moment. Karate Kid Legends is at nine.

Enjoyed it very much. It cheered me up when I had gone in in a very bad mood. From the world of John Wick colon, Ballerina at number eight. Another movie which is a total mess, which didn't mean that I didn't enjoy it whilst I was watching it. But in the case of Ballerina, unlike in the case of M3 2.0 gun, that's just like they just threw everything at it. In the case of Ballerina, as we know, it had this sort of torture production history and somebody wrote an email saying, you can't get cross to the film because it had a

torture production history. It's not that. It's because it really, really is all over the place, but it has sections in it that I enjoyed and I like watching Anand Yama's Kick People in the Head. And it's got about seven minutes of Kanana Nanu, which I always enjoy. Eight, that's number eight is number seven in America. Our number seven is Sitar Zamin Par. So this is a Hindi language sports comedy drama film, which wasn't press screened. If anybody has seen it, let us know. And here we go. Salt Path is at number six, which must be Jason's best performing film other than Harry Potter for a long time. Well, Jason is back in a new film that opens this week, which we can talk about later on. But Salt Path has done really well. I was reading in the trade press about the international

sales because there was always the question with Salt Path as to whether or not it would travel, whether it was a very particularly British film. But apparently not. No, it has done very well. And I think an awful lot of that is down to the performances. It's down to Gillian Anderson and Jason being completely convincing as those characters. And of course, it is a pretty indestructible story.

Five here and five in the States, Mission Impossible, the final reckoning. Yes. All you need to know is do all your toilet breaks in the first hour. Once he gets into the submarine, things really, really pick up. But for that first hour, it's just talky stuff. Lilo and Stitches at number four? Let's remake all our favorite animations as live actions continues and it continues to make money, which means we're going to see more of it. But there we go.

Will Barron That's also number four in Canada and threes here and there. Elio, which is the new animated Pixar, which I thought it had problems, but I enjoyed it. I saw a couple of articles saying that it was underperforming hugely at the box office. I quite liked it. It doesn't have the classic storylines of all the best animations. Again, there are some narrative issues with it. I kind of liked it. I thought its heart was in the right place and I thought it was genuinely mad. I mean, there were sections, as I said before, I've never taken hallucinogenic drugs, but I was watching Elio thinking, well, I imagine this is what it must be like. Murray Rogers on an email, Mark and Simon,

growing up, I was a weird kid. I never quite felt at home and I never thought I fitted in even amongst my friends. That loneliness and deep need to feel connected to others and things bigger than oneself is something I've experienced and is beautifully displayed in this film. I am very lucky that I did have supportive people in my life who were there to reassure me that being me was okay and that I was enough. Seeing a young boy go through something similar on screen spoke to memories and insecurities from my own childhood

that I didn't even know was still there. Going into this film, I would not have thought that I would find cathartic healing in a film with a squishy worm alien as one of the two leads. And as we approach the final moments of the film, my four year old daughter lent over to my wife and asked, why is daddy crying? This is a film I wish I had seen when I was younger and I'm so glad that my kids will grow up with it. It is a celebration of weird kids and the creative, compassionate adults that they can become. I have seen that this film set the box off as a light upon its opening, but I think there's a not missing from there.

Anyway, but I would recommend everyone, weird kid or not, to check it out. That's from Murray Ross. Well, I think the weird kid thing, I absolutely understand. Like I said, I think it's hearts in the right place because I think that it is a story about somebody trying to find someone that they fit in and discovering that the only place is in space with a weird space alien worm. Number two here and number one in America is How to Train Your Dragon. Once again, it's the live action remake of the animation. It was perfectly fine the first time round. It's nice to see Gerald Butler doing Gerald Butler because that's what he does.

No one does Gerald Butler like Gerald Butler, but other than that, there is nothing in the new How to Train Your Dragon that for me improves on the original. Number one in the UK, number two in the States and Canada is 28 years later. Just some correspondence here. Let me go through this. This is our first batch. There'll be some spoilery stuff later. Christian Plumb, long time listener, first time commentator. But I had mixed feelings coming out of my Sunday night screening, so I thought I would share. This was an exciting, at times nail biting, fantastically acted film, most notably Jodie Comer and Alfie Williams.

However, throughout the film I did always have the bothersome thought that this was only the first of a currently planned three film section and in certain aspects you can tell. The way they've evolved the infected is really interesting, but they never become more than ideas, with the assumption we will see more full force in later instalments. Additionally, multiple characters and side stories are picked and dropped sporadically. Thankfully, the film does execute and deliver a satisfying through-line story, which was my major concern going in.

This is a film that had every potential in its behind-the-camera team, the cast, the IP to be its own thing or idea, even offering a poignant and emotional ending before tacking on a tonally whiplashing ending that serves as an additional setup for the future. Lee Medcalf, all of it is wrapped up in a non-too-subtle jab at Brexit, isolationism and a collective desire to fall on nostalgia and memory about the good old days which never existed. To me, this is an interesting point. I think to me the whole film plays like the antithesis of Boyle's own Olympics 2012 opening ceremony, which lauded all these things. Britain, pop culture, Queen and country, jingoistic pride, it was all there and illuminated as

a positive. But now in 28 years later, culture has stagnated. Britain is insular, overwhelmed by rage and alpha male masculinity. It is looking backwards to the past glories but ignoring the horrors of those times as illustrated by the use of Kipling's poem Boots, while juxtaposing that with technicolour shots of bright British heroic imagery of Laurence Olivier as Henry V. Ultimately, the film doesn't engage your thrill as much as the original, which felt lean and streamlined compared to this, which feels more unfocused. Here's hoping 28 years later, The Bone Temple, released next January, might recontextualise everything and help me reassess this odd mishmash of a movie.

That's lots more, but anyway, Mark. Well, I mean, I really enjoyed 28 Days Later. We're going to, as you said before, we're going to have a further discussion about the end. We had a spoiler discussion last time and then we've now got your comments in, so we'll do that at the end of take two. The more I think about it, the more I am now really looking forward to the next film, which as Danny Boyle said is already in the bag. And I am hoping that we do get the third part because there's a part of me that sort of feels if we only get the next part, it will feel unfinished. But whilst I was watching, I think I felt the same as you, that whilst I was watching

it, I was just thinking, here's an interesting thing. I came out of the film and I saw, I think it was Robbie, and he said something like, you know, it's just great to see a film, isn't it? And what he meant was, you know, it was, it felt like you were watching something that was really sort of grabbing your attention and was exciting and was, you know, making use of the cinematic space. And I know this's been a lot of this stuff talked about, well, he was shot on iPhones, I mean, partly shot on iPhones, but the whole thing about the digital aesthetic of the very first film, that kind of slightly punky, slightly homemade DIY aesthetic, but here on a sort of much broader canvas, I liked it. I liked it very much. And actually, I'd like to go and see it again. And Charles too went and saw it and really, really enjoyed it. And then we had a very,

very heated discussion about the end, which was terrific. Stephen in Belfast, I adored the exploration of the themes of how life would continue yet culture would cease. Radios, online, doctors, for example, a concept bringing the dramatic irony to the end scene and the next film, where we in 2025 know something that is not known by the characters 28 years after the early 2000s bringing a whole new dynamic. Lots of this picked up in T2. Lewis Gibson says, what truly surprised me was the evocation of Derek Jarman's The Last of England. The entire film feels like a requiem to a dying idea of what England is and was, perhaps most emblemised by the burning of a shredded St George's Cross.

Images of typical English suburbs of the past are quickly juxtaposed to their current decayed state. Clips of patriotic knights and World War II soldiers off to defend their homeland all prove to be nought when we jump back to Spikes present day. Anyway, so there's a spoilery discussion of 28 years Later, which continues in take two. What a very good reason to subscribe. Mark, excite me for our next bit, please. Coming up next, we have Words of War with our very special guest. Oh, that'll be Maxine Peake on the way. This is an advert for Shopify. Mark, do you remember when we started this podcast?

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Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFrails.ca. I guess this week is Maxine Peake from Twinkle in Dinner Ladies to Veronica in Shameless. She has range. Film-wise, you can't overlook her role in Mike Lee's Peter Lu. I spoke to her about her new project, which is called Words of War, where she plays Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist murdered by Vladimir Putin for investigating war crimes in Chechnya. You can hear our conversation after this clip. Well, I personally think our whole approach to Chechnya, it's, well, it's wrong.

I'm listening. Well, maybe we should vary our point of view. I mean right now it's the Russian armies. What if it was the Chechens? Look, I don't mean the rebels. I've tried. The few civilians I've met won't talk to me because I'm Russian. What am I supposed to do?

Pretend I'm from Bolivia? How's your Spanish? All right, that's it. Thank you. That's a clip from Words of War. I'm delighted to say that its star Maxine Peake has joined us, I think from Australia. Is that right, Maxine? Yes. I'm in a little town in Victoria called Hamilton. I'm just filming out here. I've been out here about four months now. Is there anything you can tell us about what you're filming there? Oh, it's a new TV series for Apple called The Dispatcher starring Patrick Bramall,

who I'm sure everyone will know from Calling From Accounts, fabulous Patrick Bramall. Yeah, yeah. That's very good, just a little flavour of what you've been involved with. Just a little flavour of what you've been involved with. Okay, so what I imagine is very warm to the extreme cold of Words of War, where you play Anna Politkovskaya. Just introduce us to Anna and introduce us to where we are with this film, Maxine. Some people will be familiar with her and with the story, but just take us into the area that we have here.

Yeah, so the film starts, well, I wouldn't say it's a straight biography, a biop, but it's about Anna Poliskaya, who was a Russian journalist who was murdered in the early 2000s. She didn't start out as a war correspondent, but she was sort of picked. She worked for Navaja Gazetta and Dimitri, her editor, thought she'd be a fabulous sort of spokesperson, journalist to go into Chechnya. And she's sort of, she became the voice of the Chechen people really, of the citizens out there.

She had a really, you know, a really strong bond and a strong sense of giving voice to the voiceless during the conflict. And she was hounded for it. And eventually it was killed for her involvement in trying to tell the truth to the rest of the world what was happening in Putin's regime. Yeah. And that clip that we heard is at this newspaper, which we learn is, it was kind of Gorbachev's newspaper.

He set it up and there's a photograph of Gorbachev on. So Kieran Hines plays the editor, Dmitri Muratov. And there's a lot of very interesting conversation that takes place because you, I think you're called the people correspondent. So that your job is not to go and report on the battles, but to report on the people, which must have occurred to Anna, maybe this is exactly what she wanted, was a fiercely dangerous job. I think she was always well aware. I mean, she wasn't the first journalist to have been killed in the line of duty as a journalist. I mean, it's never been completely clarified

who was responsible for her death. But yeah, she knew it was dangerous. And the film sort of tells a story that there's a point where she decides to sort of try and pull away from it. And that's the point when, unfortunately, her life gets taken. But yeah, she was always very aware, very, she understood the risks, but she, you know, the truth was more important. I mean, I don't think she was fearless or reckless, but she felt that the truth had to be told and that she was there. It became an obsession with her. Mason- During the early 2000s, I was doing an afternoon show on Five Live. I remember covering the Beslan siege, the school siege which comes up in your film,

and the aftermath of that. And in the opinion of the foreign reporters that I spoke to, I remember them saying that the most terrifying and horrific war that they had covered was Chechnya. That there was a brutality that happened in that state, in that breakaway state, that they hadn't seen before and clearly the horrors of what they saw there had stayed with them. As you were preparing for the role and as you filmed the role, what did you learn about what the Chechens went through? Kate Higgins It was devastating. It was a genocide. And it felt, reading, especially Anna's Russian Diaries, doing research, it was hell on earth for these people.

But yeah, that's what really struck me was the brutality and the devastation that I'd not, up to that point. I knew there'd been a conflict, but I had no idea. I think that's the trouble. We don't realize do it till we take that deep dive. So obviously up until now, we've talked very much about the real life story and the politics of the real life story.

But let's just concentrate on the film for a second. Tell me something about Eric Poppins' script, because obviously what we're doing here is telling a very complex story in a way which has to be dramatically understandable. So what attracted you to that script? I think, you know, I have to say first and foremost, it was obviously the story. It was Anna. You know, but for me, even though it's not a deep dive biop, for me, this is a story

about, it feels very global and overreaching in the way that it's about a journalist life. I think it's so very current for me, it felt so very current about what's happening today, what constantly happens, you know, around the world, you know, the danger that journalists put themselves in. And I don't think we realize a lot of the time. I don't think, you know, on our soil, it hasn't come here yet. But yeah, so for me, it was about one person's fight to tell the truth, to give a voice to the voiceless just felt so, it really struck a chord with me. And in terms of the voice, there's an interesting decision taken obviously very, very early on is that people will speak with...

There's no point in which anybody starts doing a slightly card accent. And it feels like a kind of... Did you ever have that discussion about everyone is going to use these voices, that's how it's going to work? We're not going to have people doing a slightly Russian-inflected voice. You know, we always... I think in England, when we make films, or we make TV, and that's about other parts of the world, we instil our class values on it. You know what I mean?

And I just thought for me, it was about keeping an earth in us too. But yeah, we did have that discussion. Can I ask you about being married to Jason in here? Because he and Anna's family are important parts of this story, because your husband, Anna Polikovskaya's husband, was a big TV star, big journalist in his own right. Yeah, so he was the star, you know,

in the relationship, he was the star. He was for many years. And yeah, so I mean, it is about, you know, it's obviously, I mean, I think the beauty of the script is it is about this journalist, this fearless journalist who puts a life on the line and ultimately pays the ultimate price. But it's also a very domestic story about that impact. So how that impacts on a relationship, a husband and wife, how that impacts on a family. a husband and wife, how that impacts on a family. Yeah. And especially the relationship, I think the sort of professional jealousy

that maybe, you know, mixed in with absolute fear that his wife is putting his, you know, she's putting herself and the family in danger. So it's a complex relationship that they've got and ultimately it sort of doesn't weather the storm, you know, which is completely understandable. Tell us a little bit about the scenes with Ian Hart because Ian plays a really sort of key, mysterious, threatening role in it. And in terms of drama, in terms of dramatic exposition,

a lot happens in key conversations that you have with him, whether it's in the coffee bar or whether it's meeting at a lot. Explain what's happening with you and Ian Hart and what were those scenes like to film? Again, what Eric had written and then what Ian brought to the character. I think in Bute, again, it was a complexity. This was a guy who was an old guard who worked for the establishment, you know, and basically his job was to keep

an eye on Anna and to warn her that, you know, things were heating up and that, you know, there was an eye on her and that her life was in danger. But they struck up this really, you know, I felt quite a sort of oddly touching relationship in many ways. I mean, there was a scene where we meet in a gallery. Yes. And he's talking, you know, and he says about, I am not married. You said before you asked, no, I'm not married, no, I've not got any children. And there was a bit where, and it wasn't scripted, but I remember just feeling I wanted, you know, that Anna had compassion. They had an odd understanding and a respect for each other.

I think it's a really interesting relationship because it could have been very on the nose and the way Ian brought an odd warmth to it and a complexity to it. And so, because they're really sort of on paper arch enemies, but I think they did make a connection. Sean Penn, I think is the executive producer, an executive producer on here, and he's called

this film a call to arms. And I want to ask you about that, but also in the context of the way we pay for journalism. I have kids who are grown up now. I don't think they will have bought a newspaper in their entire lives. They'll have read a newspaper or magazine in my house, but they will not pay for journalism. And the journalism that you represent in this film costs money. And I just wonder if it's a call to arms, I just wonder who's going to be paying for it. But I think as well now, I mean, we have so many journalists, you know, who, okay, we're saying they're maybe not working for a specific publication, but it is, I don't know. I mean, our journalism now comes from a very different source, doesn't it? I mean, this is the problem that they have now, is picking through what is the truth and what is not the truth. I mean, and how

does that impact on people? I mean, we've got, you know, basically genocides being live streamed at the moment and what are we doing about it? Are we engaging? You know what I mean? But our page publications, are they covering it as they should be when we're now looking to other new sources? I just think that the challenge always when you're dealing with a complex true story is for the film to tell the story in a way that, I mean, as Simon said, people may well know the basic outlines of the story, but there will be people coming to this movie who have simply never heard of any of this. And there's always that, the complex thing about how do you tell a very intricate story

in a manner which is dramatically engaging? And then what we have here is that we begin with the collapse, with the poisoning, and then we go back to see how all that works. But the thing that I think keeps you rooted in it is because we keep going back to the domestic situation. And the domestic situation not just with the family, but also with the relationships within the newspaper in which they're having conversations which are, and I don't mean this as a criticism, which are brilliantly mundane. It's like ordinary people discussing ordinary stuff in the middle of everything else. I just wonder whether you think that that's crucial

to engaging an audience who might not know this story. Absolutely. I think that is the beauty of the film, is the domestic. And maybe in some ways, I think Anna was a very complex woman and this is a short film and we have to, it's a film, I'm not saying it's not a short film, but you know what I mean? And that's the whole thing when I started, I was told this isn't about, this isn't about, this isn't I think a character study of Anna Polikovskaya. This is a character, you know what I mean? This is about what it meant to be a journalist, the. This is a character, you know what I mean? This is about, you know,

what it meant to be a journalist, the cost of being a journalist now. But I do think to draw people into go, well, why would I be interested in this woman? What has she got to do with me is the fact, like you said, the domestic, the mundane. You know, it's what we, yeah, It's the sacrifices that we all make, whatever, whether noble or not, within navigating a family, navigating a workspace, but also looking at the situation that was in Russia that, yeah, like you said, talking about things become so every day that we expect not to be, you know what I mean? How quickly people acclimatize to what's happening, the events. And then at the end, we learned 1500 journalists have died since Anna Polokhovskaya in 2008.

And some of them, and we see names and photographs, some of which we know and recognize Marie Colvin, Jamal Khashoggi, but the sheer scale of it is shocking, which is presumably why it makes it so topical for you. Absolutely. And like I said, since, you know, I think we lost 214 journalists last year alone. I mean, this film was made nearly three years ago now. So that number has gone up and is continuing to go up. You know, we're talking about in Pakistan, in Russia, in Yemen, you know, all around the world, journalists lives are in danger.

How long are you in Australia for? Are you nearly done on your TV show? Nearly done. I've done three and a bit months now, so I've got another sort of three weeks left and then I'm back to England. But yeah, it's been great, but it is winter here. So I'm very cold. It's not as winter as Words of War, where some of those scenes that everyone's huge clouds of smoke coming out of your mouth, thinking, wow, it does look as though you are suffering. Yeah, we're in Latvia, we're in Riga in January, February, we filmed. Words of War is the movie, stars Maxine Peake. Maxine, we appreciate your time. Thank you very

much indeed. Thank you. So Words of War out this week, what do you think? Well, I mean, I don't want to repeat stuff that we've just sort of talked about in that interview. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. So, words of war out this week. What do you think? Well, I mean, I don't want to repeat stuff that we've just sort of talked about in that interview. I think that the, as I was saying, I think that the most complicated ask in any of these things is firstly, there's two issues. Firstly, that some people will know the story and you were talking about, you know, broadcasting

when some of that story was actually playing out in real life and other people are coming to it completely fresh. So the first thing you have to do is you have to negotiate the thing between enough detail and too much detail. And the other thing is what you have to do is you have to tell that story, which is a very, on the one hand, it's a proud and brave and strong story that needs to be told, but it's also a very, very dark story and you need to tell it in a way that will bring people in so that there will be people that will go and see it and think, oh, I need to find out more about that. What I was saying was the dramatic construction of telling the story by starting with what happens on the plane, with the poisoning of anaphylactic sclerapologist on the plane and then going back to

How did we get here and then finding out how you got there both by balancing the domestic stuff in her family and also the domestic stuff in the newspaper of her sort of transformation from one form of journalist into a much more sort of overtly campaigning journalist. And you have to tie those two things together because otherwise what happens is that you lose the audience. And I think that's why, I mean, you were talking about the scenes, the domestic scenes of her and Jason Isaacs as her husband and everything that's going on in his life, which starts to fall apart because as you said, the family also pays this heavy toll.

There's something that families say to you, you need to stop doing this. You need to stop doing this because if you don't, it's going to impact all of us. I think actually that was rather well done. I think that the scenes with Ian Hart are particularly interesting to me because the scenes with Ian Hart feel more overtly dramatic than some of the other material. Because what's happening in the Ian Hart stuff is you're sort of allowing the film to have the discussion out loud about what's really going on. And what happens is that Ian Hart's character, who's this sort of secret policeman, meets her in a coffee bar and is apparently just talking to her about nothing, but then ends up

very quietly threatening her. And then he reoccurs throughout the drama in which she sort of has these conversations which are effectively conversations with the state. And yet as she was saying, as Maxine Peake was saying in that interview, there's this other thing going on underneath it. And I think all of that is really important because it's a way of making the story personal and human, which is the thing that then draws you into the wider picture. I was thinking of Kate Winslet's Labour of Love project, Lee. Again, it's that same thing about telling the story of a journalist and everything that that journalist went through, but the way into it has to be from getting to know that person as a person.

So, okay, no, it's not a character study. No, it's not a... But what it is doing is it's drawing you in through being not just an account of the journalism and of the details, which as you yourself said in that interview, the details of the material that was uncovered are just absolutely horrifying. Yeah. And we only got half of that. The horrors of Chechnya are a separate film.

We only see a little bit from Maxine's point of view. But I'm a sucker for a good journalist film and I thought this was great. I do think it begs the question though where the next generation of journalists come from because this kind of journalism costs money. I agree. And I will say- Do your kids buy papers and magazines? I suspect not. Actually, yes, but then that is a very long story. Yes, they do, but kind of because they were told to. The other thing that I just say, just to sort of restress if people are just listening to the

interview, I do think the thing about, you talked about the slightly softened accents, yeah? But I think that thing about talking in a way which is natural rather than doing something which is a kind of cod theatrical thing is really, really important because it allows, because one of the things about this movie is it is, I think you used this phrase, it is underplayed. It is dialed down, not just in the accents,

but all the way through. It isn't histrionic at all. Jason certainly doesn't repeat his death of Stalin accent, for example. That would not have been appropriate. Anyway, if you see words of what we'd like to know what you think, correspondence at curvidamow.com. Well, it's the ads in a minute, Mark. But first it's time once again by popular demand to step into our laughter

lift. Fantastic. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Hey. I got news from Scandinavia. The chief exec of IKEA has just become the prime minister of Sweden and is currently assembling his cabinet. Hey! He might be a while. You've started well. Did I ever tell you about great-grandpa Mayo's incredible foresight and ability as a soothsayer?

No. For example, he knew the Titanic was going to sink as soon as he saw the ship. According to family legend, he started screaming at the top of his lungs, running around, grabbing people by the lapels and shouting, do not get on the ship, it's going to sink, I tell you. Unfortunately, nobody listened. They just called security and had him thrown out the cinema. Pauses for the comedy to reach Croatia.

No, no, no, it's fine. The comedy reached me very, very fast. And Mark, you know, I apologize and I'm sorry mean the same thing. Okay. Except when you're at a funeral. Oh, I see. Fine. I see. There the comedy went around the world twice and then landed in Croatia and then was analyzed

and experts decided it actually wasn't comedy. Mark, sell me on your review of the last film that you're going to be reviewing in this EarPod. The last film we're going to be reviewing in this year pod is Brad Pitt Goes Fast in F1. We're going to be back after this with a truly remarkable occurrence at a boutique cinema. The GMC employee pricing event is on now. Get a big cash purchase discount of up to $12,300 on the 2025 GMC Sierra

1500 and the 2025 Sierra HD. With Sierra 1500's premium interior and advanced tech, or Sierra HD's impressive power and capability, you'll have everything you need to get from work to play with confidence this season. Hurry in, Employee pricing is on for a limited time. Visit your local GMC dealer for details. This episode is brought to you by MUBI, 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. And Simon, I'm just going to put down this damn fine coffee, get straight to it. Twin Peaks is

streaming on Mubi from June the 13th onwards to celebrate its 35th anniversary. I have just watched all of series one and series two back to back. I am about to embark on the return. I was knocked out once again by just how fantastic Twin Peaks is. Brilliant central forwards by Karl McClacklen. Superbly created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Brilliant groundbreaking television. Watch an episode every day once a day and give yourself a present. By signing up to MUBI you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash Kermode and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash Kermode and Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free. Okay, so here's an interesting email from

Mark Ramey. The redactor found this extraordinary. I'm interested to see what you make of this. Dear Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, imagine my excitement when I heard my favourite film of all time, Apocalypse Now, Final Cut, was returning to the big screen at my local boutique cinema. The £17 ticket, including a free beer and popcorn, seemed good value for what promised to be a spectacular and immersive three-hour plus screening. The personable Usher who introduced the film even made a jovial allusion to the bum numbing length of the film and at no time did I hear them say, suckers, under their breath. Unfortunately, three hours later, I was less sure. Why? Well, from early in the screening, I felt the clarity of the image was lacking

and the audio underwhelming. I teach film at a local college and have often shown my students Blu-ray versions of Apocalypse Now, so I felt somewhat justified in my observations. But I was also tired after a hard day at work and so forgiving. Any fault with the film was surely mine, I concluded. Three hours later then, as the film ended and I was looking forward to a lengthy credit crawl, two very disconcerting things happened. Firstly, a little box appeared in the lower portion of the screen, suggesting that the next curated film to appear

would be The Killing Fields. That's odd, I thought. Then the credits ended abruptly with a holding screen announcing that this had been a prime video presentation. Realization suddenly dawned on all of us in attendance. Some muttered with disgust, some laughed in disbelief. We had been watching a prime video stream. With all sense of wonderment, Coppola's outrageous genius gone, we trouped out, aghast at the fundamental cheek and dishonesty of what had happened. We'd paid £17 to watch a livestream

of a film which I, at least as a prime subscriber, could have had in the comfort of my own home. My colleague and I, shout out to Stuart Andrews, with whom I'd been attending the screening, were still coming to terms with what had just happened when we approached the manager with our still formative complaints. From him, from, from then we learned the distributor had not delivered the film and that a previous screening earlier in the week had also been a prime video stream. We left the cinema dumbstruck. A letter of complaint to the cinema chain's London-based head office resulted in a grovelling phone apology and some free tickets. But neither Stuart nor I have yet returned to the cinema.

That sacred circle of trust between exhibitor and viewer has been broken and it will take some time to heal. As I know you're both keen advocates of the sanctity of the cinematic space, I thought this woeful episode may strike a chord or even unearth similar tales from your listeners. Finally, please, a shout out to my lovely wife, Kate, who is an ardent fan of your show. Which does imply, Mark Ramey, that you're not. That's right.

Anyway, put that to one side. Anyway, okay. It has written to us, but not a fan of the show, but I did think I'd write to you and tell you this. But do you share the shock of Mark Raimi? I mean, no, I think that was, yes, absolutely astonishing. I mean, really genuinely, properly not good. What I'm really surprised by is the fact that they actually let it run that long, that they didn't just sort of invent some kind of technical error to cover up the fact that it said at the end, you've been watching a prime video presentation. I mean.

Yes, you would think there's probably a way of fiddling with the settings, which means that the Yes, you would think there's probably a way of fiddling with the settings, which means that the credits will play out and it'll get to the very end. But okay, so if you put yourself in the situation that you're the manager of this place and you haven't been sent what you've got, what you're supposed to be, you can either just cancel everything. You can't reduce the prices, I imagine, because that's not in your gift. Did he do the wrong thing? Will Barron I mean, I can't imagine another scenario under which that would happen. It does sound. If I had sat there and said, I would have similarly

written, I would have similarly been so astonished that I would have written a letter to a show I don't like. Mason Hickman Yeah, that's true. And so I think, yes, if you're going to pay £17, you don't want it to be worse than your Blu-ray edition, do you? No. That's very true. Correspondence at cobenamaya.com. Okay, next, let's indulge in some Formula One. I like the fact that you've already used the word indulge. The automatic assumption is

that, are we calling it F1? Is that the title that you went for? I don't know, F1? F1 is fine. When I was a kid, my dad took me to see Le Mans at the cinema. I have a really clear memory of it, personally because I didn't really understand how any of the 24-hour thing worked. Ever since then, I've had this sort of thing that motor racing movies are inherently exciting because I was taken by my dad to see Le Mans. Back in the 60s, we had Grand Prix, which included real-life racing footage and movie stars, and then cameo appearances

by drivers, including Formula One champions. Then in the 90s, Top Gun director Tony Scott gave us Days of Thunder starring Tom Cruise, which featured race footage and appearances by real-life NASCAR racers. Now we have F1, movie directed by Joseph Kozinski who helmed the recent Top Gun sequel that we all enjoyed so much starring Brad Pitt and featuring real life race footage and cameos by more Formula One champions. So this is essentially top days of Grand Prix with a smidgen of post-Center and post-rush rivalry and a whole lot, and I mean a whole lot of Brad Pitt superstar sparkle. I mean, basically they could have called it Brad Pitt in a fast car or Brad Pitt in cars. So Brad Pitt is Sonny Hayes. He's a former top

racer, now turned gambler and drifter who lives in his van. He travels from one low rent racing event to the next. You know, he's very much off the grid sort of. He's, I'm struggling for the word. He's a bit of a maverick, Simon. He's a man who feels the need, the need for speed, but who's haunted by dreams of a terrible thing that happened, a crash that derailed his budding career. Then there's Rubin, owner of the Formula One team, who comes looking for Sonny to bail him out because his team is in the doldrums and he's going to be out if he doesn't win soon. He's got a young rookie driver, Joshua played by Damson and Driss, who is a, he's a rising star, but he's, he's the antithesis.

He's the antithesis of, of Sonny. So they're like chalk and cheese, Simon, like it's one of the old school, new schools, they clash on and off the track and they both get a bit of a, better get a bit of a rush from the conflict. You want to hear a clip? Oh, I'd love to hear it. Some people look at Sonny Hayes They see a guy who lives in a van a gambling junkie who missed his shot

The best that never was But I see Possibility but I see possibility my rook is a phenomenal talent but he's young you plus him boom I got a team when was the last time you won a race Sunday Oh, I'm sorry. Then same as you. Oh, boom. Hard burn. So look, basically, as you can see, it's grand days of top thunder pre-rush gun maverick. And that is what it is. And the question of whether or not that's a problem is up to you. So I saw it in IMAX.

Wow, that would have been a big thing. Exactly. Grand days of top thunder pre-rush gun maverick in IMAX. And the thing is, one of the things they've done with this is nowadays they're making smaller IMAX cameras. So they've got the IMAX cameras mounted on the cars. And they mounted it. It looks like the drivers are actually in the cars. Apparently, the drivers are in the cars. And then the cars are going really, really fast. And the IMAX cameras are catching the cars going really,

really fast at hair-raising speeds. And so you think, OK, this is really exciting. I mean, honestly, in terms of the excitement of some of the previous road racing movies. Watching this on a big screen, you think, okay, that is terrifyingly fast, really, really fast. I have a friend who is a sports insider and a big F1 fan. He texted me to ask, he said, you know, is F1 any good? Because he said they've been filming it for ages at all the races and they seem to get full access to the whole of F1, which apparently they have had. So lots and lots of stuff shot at real life

races, driver cameos, Lewis Hamilton, producer credit, all that stuff. Does it have the interpersonal depth and rivalry of films like Senna and Rush. No. The screenplay, which is by Joseph Kuzitzken, Aaron Kruger, is formulaic to the point that it's almost parodic. I mean, you could watch the first 10 minutes of the film, stop the film, give somebody a cigarette packet and say, right, write the back of the rest of the movie on that and they would do it. I mean, the characters are paper thin with the exception of Carrie Condon, who is very good as the team's technical director, and Sarah Niles, who is Bernadette Pierce, who is the mother of the young rival racer, who is very, very good. There's a very funny line when she first sets eyes on Brad

Pitt because she keeps getting told, he's this old guy, he's this keeps getting told, is this old guy, is this old guy, is this old guy, is this old guy. And he walks in and she goes, handsome man. And in a way that's the point because despite all the, the fast car stuff, and despite all the IMAX cameras mounted on the thing, the real star of the film is Brad Pitt's smile. Because the thing with Brad Pitt is, I was thinking about this while I was watching the film, Brad Pitt's major selling point is he doesn't look like he's trying. You know, when you watch Tom Cruise, whether it's Tom Cruise

in Top Gun Maverick or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise looks like he's trying really, really hard to entertain. It's one of Tom Cruise's most endearing qualities. He literally looks like he will do anything to entertain you. I'll throw myself off that building. I'll throw myself under that train. I'll drive a motorbike off the side of that. I'll do all of that stuff. Brad Pitt just looks like, Hey, I'm Brad Pitt. And he's got, particularly when you watch in IMAX, there is something about Brad Pitt's

face that, I mean, he's a proper movie star. He's a movie star in the manner of Steve McQueen. And in fact, there is a very direct reference to Steve McQueen in this, in a habit that his character has that's absolutely Steve McQueen. And I was trying when I was watching the film, you know, to think of something smart about Pitt stop and Pitt go and, you know, the plane lane, I know, pit lane. Very good. Very good. Very good. But in the end, it's, I mean, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. It is absolutely and I'll say this again, because I'm proud of it. Grand days of top Thunder pre-Rush gun maverick.

But it's got Brad Pitt doing the, hey, I'm Brad Pitt. And there's something about his screen presence, particularly on a massive, massive IMAX screen, that when you come out of a sequence, which is the camera hurtling along a racetrack. You and I once went to a Formula One thing because we did a broadcast from there in a previous incarnation of this show. Somebody said, do you want to go down and have a look? I said, okay, yeah, fine. We went down to the side of the track and Formula One looked like this. That was it. The cars went past it like a hundred and billion miles an hour and you couldn't say.

I think you've done true justice to the one thing that which you do not pick up on the television is the incredible volume that everything is conducted at because obviously they have to regulate the, you know, the levels and everything so you can hear the commentator, but the, the sound, the sheer level, the bone crushing sound from the cars was the thing that I was impressed with. But it is like a rocket going past. I mean, it goes past in a split second. You can't see anything and then they go, and then there we are. Anyway, so that's what it is. It's Brad Pitt goes fast and then smiles at you in a slightly cheeky way. It's Brad Pitt goes fast and then smiles at you in a slightly cheeky way.

And I sort of, and I, it's, it's, it's the very definition of a bucket of popcorn movie, see it on a huge big screen. Do not go in expecting complex storytelling or anything that you hadn't seen before, except you probably haven't seen it done this efficiently and with this much star wattage. As I said, the key thing for me is Tom Cruise looks like he's really trying to entertain you. Brad Pitt just looks at you and goes, I'm Brad Pitt. You go, yeah, you are, aren't you?

The correspondence at Kermit and Mary.com, unless you're nephew three, in which case you can text me, which he has done. He's a big Formula One fan. He says, despite being messy and unfocused as a Formula One fan, there's a lot to appreciate and it's great to see the sport at the great heights it has reached in popularity. Any Formula One fan should watch it in IMAX if you want to get as close to watching a race in real life. However, unfortunately for producer Jerry Brookheimer, Formula One as a sport does not easily fit into being the premise of a Hollywood blockbuster in the same way Top Gun films.

Well, I think that's absolutely right because in the end everything ends up being very, I mean, you've got things like, you've got Javier Bardem absolutely eating the scenery, which he's really enjoying incidentally. But yes, it's a difficult thing to turn into that kind of movie. But on the other hand, if you're going to do it, well, it's that and you do need Brad Pitt. I mean, it is a Brad Pitt movie with fast cars as opposed to the other way round. I did think you were going to say if you're going to do it, you have to B&Q it. We're not sponsored by them just yet. So that would have been...

Your cultural references this week from B&Qing it in a bag of spangles. Finally, Matt in London, speaking of a bag of spangles. Mark and Simon, I've experienced firsthand the excruciating embarrassment of failing to wear the correct swimming apparel in France. A few years ago on a family holiday, we thought it would be fun to go to one of those pools the kids like, you know, the ones with rapids, chutes, waves, and so on.

Upon walking out to the poolside wearing a tasteful pair of not overly baggy or garish swim shorts, I was promptly told by one of the staff that I couldn't wear them in the pool. Naturally, I tried to appeal to their better nature and assured them that the shorts were clean but to no avail. They then proceeded to present me with a lost property box containing a number of very definitely used, snug-fitting swimming trunks. Being British and not wanting to spoil the family's day out, I swallowed my pride and chose the pair that looked the least worn. Needless to say, though clearly they had previously carried someone else's bag of spangles. Needless to say, I re-entered the pool feeling slightly icky and very self-conscious. And the worst

thing is, my partner is French, so you'd think she would have pre-warned me or Matt, I think the word is just warned me. Or that was her plan all along maybe, to take Gallic delight in watching her long-suffering English partner squirm with embarrassment. There's one thing the French do get right about swimming pools though, you have to take your shoes off outside the changing rooms and wash your feet before you go in. Why British pools don't do that is beyond me. My, when I went swimming at school in the primary school, we, that's what you did have to do to get rid of your varucas and all that kind of stuff. We all used to jump over those pools. Yeah.

Because they were very nice. But it was also, there was the thing about the little pool of disinfectant was it was always tepid. And there was just something when you put your foot in it was just, it was like, it was like stepping in a pool of disinfectant was it was always tepid. When you put your foot in it, it was like stepping in a pool of wee. With a little bit of veruca juice in there as well. Anyway, thank you for that. Correspondence of Kodomo.com, that's the end of take one. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather, producer was Jen, the redactor was Simon

Paul. And if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, just because it's that time of year and it's a big screen entertainment, I'm going for grand days of top thunder pre-rush gun maverick F1. F1 is the film of the week. Thank you very much indeed. Take two has landed adjacent to this one. Should you be a subscriber and interested? Thank you, so we'll talk to you very soon.