Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Is Mark freaked out by FREAKIER FRIDAY? + Celine Song on THE MATERIALISTS

Episode Date: August 7, 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.  Simon is off on his holibobs this week, but fortunately the excellent Sanjeev Bhaskar is in town to sub in, and he does an excellent job if we may say so. He takes up the baton to interview this week’s guest—who is the ever-delightful Celine Song. They unpack ‘The Materialists,’ her new romcom about the mercenary modern dating scene, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. Fans of ‘Past Lives’ listen up—and listen out for Mark’s full review of this sophomore feature next week.   If you heard last week’s guest Guy Pearce on the show, you might have been waiting for Mark’s official verdict on the Aussie star’s new prison drama ‘Inside’--and we’ve got it right here or you this week. Plus two more fresh takes on the week’s new releases: first up ‘Freakier Friday’, the four-way body swap sequel to the 2003 original. And we’ve got the Good Doctor’s verdict on ‘Weapons’ too—a creepy horror-mystery from Barbarian director Zach Cregger.   Correspondence on celebrity curry house encounters continues this week too—so don’t miss your fellow Wittertainees tales of vindaloo with VIPS and Saag Aloo with the stars. And check out Take 2 for Sanjeev’s very own celeb curry anecdote...     Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):  Inside Review: 07:40  BO10: 14:14  Celine Song Interview: 27:42  Freakier Friday Review: 44:07  Weapons Review: 54:50    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

Well, hey everybody, it's Simon. And hey everybody, it's Mark. And now August comes around, and we're all thinking the same thing. How am I going to keep streaming, like I'm in the UK, is the Kerber de Mayo annual cruise docks in St. Martin, Easter Island, and the Outer Hebrides. Well, I've got a suggestion for you, Nord VPN. You know, I had a feeling you'd probably say that. Nord provides virtual private networks, VPNs in 118 countries,

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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, Schmestian. 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.

offer now available wherever you get your podcasts and if you're already a vanguard easter we salute you welcome to uh this week's take it's sanjiv bascar sitting in for simon mayo who's away eating pastries probably as we speak actually uh and mark hey mark sanjief how you doing I'm not too bad, thanks. I've got my Elvis t-shirt on. I'm also in a room which has guitars in it. Yes. Like you.

Well, I have my lemon heads t-shirt and a room which has a guitar in it. But you've got behind you, you've got, is that a bass? No, no, it's a guitar. There is a bass there. There is a base. And then what's the sort of long, thin thing that looks like a lute? It looks like a, like a thinned out lute. It is, in fact, it's a travel guitar.

Oh. Huh. So it's a big, it's not in tune. but as you can see, it's long and thin, so you can pack it away. It comes in case. Yeah. So, films that we might be able to see this week may include? Yeah, so there's a great line up this week.

We have We have a new horror film from the director of Barbarian. We have Freakier Friday, which is the latest in the Freaky Friday canon. And also inside, if you're a regular listener, you know that last week, Simon interviewed Guy Pearce, but the film is out this coming Monday. So we'll be reviewing that. And we'll have some bonus films for Take Two. In Take Two, The Kingdom, which is a strange family crime drama, and Sense and Sensibility's 30th anniversary reissue.

Plus all the other extra stuff you know about every Thursday and indeed the whole back catalogue of bonus joy. So to emails, last week we asked for celebrities you'd spotted in Curry Houses, Celeb Curry Corner, if you like. This is from Simon Roo. Rooney. Dear Zeus and Hades, long-time listener, first-time emailer, after hearing about a listener's Curry House Celebrity Encounter in last week's episode and your request for similar anecdotes, I was prompted to share an experience that happened to me a few years ago. My partner,

Lena and I decided to drop into a local curry house for lunch in 2011. It was fairly quiet inside with only a couple of other tables occupied. Whilst looking through the menu, I happen to notice two men sitting opposite one another at an adjacent table. To my surprise, it was Liam Neeson and Rayfe finds. Yes, Quig on gin and Voldemort were chowing down on a curry whilst sharing a bottle of red wine. Eventually, after finishing their meal, both Liam and Rafe quietly left the restaurant before us. We didn't get to see what they'd ordered, but they did leave about half of the bottle of wine on the table. I figured the reason for them both being in Cardiff at this time was to film the not-so-great sequel, Ruff of the

Titans in 2012. Despite the negative reviews of the sequel, when it was eventually released, it had been great to see both Zeus and the Hades together enjoying some downtime in Cardiff Bay. That's a top spot. That's good, isn't it? That's two people. That's very good. Ben Collie, Dear cauliflower bargy and chicken pecorah.

I think we know which one of us is which there. I'm afraid my random celebrity encounter wasn't in a curry house. However, it did occur while I was delivering food, which included a lambiriani, so I'm hoping this anecdote scraped through qualification. Back in 2008, 2009, when I just finished university, I had a job, carting sandwiches and fresh ready meals around Wimbledon on a push bike, selling them to people in local businesses. I used to listen to Radio 2 while I was pootling about. One sunny morning, Ken Bruce had just wrapped up Popmaster and put on suspicion spines by Elvis.

I was cycling down a quiet street, and I started singing along at the top of my lungs. In the opposite direction, I spotted a nice convertible approaching. It was too late to stop singing. Whoever was driving would have already seen me, so I committed myself to belting it out even louder. As the car drew level, I saw that Bob Hoskins was behind the wheel. He was laughing. Slap the wheel with both hands and gave me two thumbs up, then shouted something along the lines of, go on son there was nobody else around to witness it and now almost 20 years later i've started

to doubt the encounter did he ever own a convertible and wouldn't he have had a driver rather than drive himself and that's from tim well i mean you know it'd been more unnerving if he'd been in the back of a car yes exactly you guys either being driven he didn't say anything to you totally just looked very very intense as if he was just reliving the events that had led up to this point for quite a long time you must have done theatre stuff when you've seen people in the audience that are actors. That must have happened to you. The very first episode of the Kumar's at number 42 that we did, and we had Michael Parkinson and Ridgedy Grant as our first guests. My late dad had said, he said, can I bring somebody? And I said,

well, who do you want to bring? He said, I don't know. And I said, well, let me know who you're going to bring. He said, I don't know. I haven't asked anyone yet. And I said, look, all right, you can You can bring anyone except Uncle Surrender. And he said, why not Uncle Surrender? Because he's got, first of all, he takes over in social situations. And secondly, he's got the largest turban I've ever seen on a human being. It's like a kind of, it's like the mothership from Independence Day. I mean, it's absolutely huge.

So I said, don't bring him because it'll just be distracting. He said, okay, okay. So on the day, you know, I walk out to greet the audience before. we start the show. And on the third row, I see the biggest turban in the world has arrived. So throughout the entire show, when I look at the audience, I'm just drawn back because I can see people behind Uncle Surrender, straining, you know, left and right to kind of seek past his turban. So anyway, we finished the show and everything. And afterwards, we were in the kind of green room, and I was chatting to Michael Parkinson. And I suddenly see this shadow drop over

Michael Parkinson's face, slowly descending shadow. And I realize that Uncle Surinda is approaching from behind me and is blocking out the light. And then I heard this kind of, Mr. Parkinson. What a pleasure to meet you. And I thought, I just, you know, I knew this was going to happen. Anyway, so, who's this from? This is from Tim. Hello, Tim. Yeah, Slugworth and Ficklegruber. In 1996, I pulled into a petrol station and parked up alongside a limo with blacked-out windows. I filled my little mini and wandered in to peruse the confectionery. A familiar voice behind me asked, do you know which of these candy bars are good?

I recommended a star bar, turned around, and then realized that whilst the voice was one I knew, it was only from the screen. Panicked, I paid for two bars, handed one to Brad, and fled for. from the garage as he shouted, thanks, man, as I exited. Apparently, Brad Pitt was in Northern Ireland working on the devil's own. Does this count? Yes, that does. That absolutely counts.

I'll tell you what, I've got a Brad Pitt story that will trump that, and I'm going to save it for Take 2 because it is the best is that Brad Pitt story. I'll tell it to you in Take 2. Okay, brilliant. Well, we'll have more Curry House Corner stuff in Take 2. and where I will add my curry house celebrity encounter. Fantastic. Unexpected.

So that will all be in take to. Let's have a film. Yeah, so inside, this is an Australian prison drama starring Guy Pearce, who was Simon's guest on the show last week, alongside Cosmo Jarvis, who I think is brilliant in everything, and relative new-comer Vincent Miller. So this is the feature debut from writer-director Charles Williams, who apparently won the Cannes short film Palm Door in 2018.

So, young Mel is a newly arrived inmate in a prison. He's taken under the wing of Warren, played by Guy Pearce, who is a long-timer, who is apparently days away from parole. He is sharing a cell with Cosmo Jarvis's Mark, who is an inmate whose face appears on television as one of the country's most despised criminals. Mark has become religious and leads semi-evangelical prayer meetings in the prison. Here's a clip. In the olden times, they didn't have prisons. They take a goat, they put all the sins of the tribe on it, and then they'd send the goat off to die. So they could be free and be forgiven. The escape goat, they called it. They'd be sharing a soul with a new inmate, Mark Shepard. That new kid, Mel, keep him out of trouble.

What's your relationship like with him? are with him. He seemed very familiar to me. Very. There's a contract on him. You pull this out and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. So, as you heard, there's a contract on Mark's life. And this falls to the new young inmate, with whom Warren the Guy Pear's character basically says, you do it, we'll split the reward money.

here's the shiv. This is what you need to do it with. So when Simon was talking about this, and you've seen the film, haven't you, Sange? I have, yeah. Yeah. So when Simon was talking about it with Guy Pearce last week, one of the things they established very quickly is it is an Australian prison drama, but it's not an Australian prison drama in the tradition. I mean, Australian prison prison dramas range from prisoner cell block H and went with to, you know, that John Hilkut film goes to the civil dead. This is rated 18 for very strong language, strong violence, sexual violence references, all of which is true. And yet it is in some ways a weirdly tender film. So if it isn't a prison drama as such, what is it? And I would say, well,

firstly, and primarily I think it's a film about masculinity, it's a film about, you know, there's that film that's at the moment friendship and the tagline for it is men shouldn't have friends. And this is kind of on the same, on the same lines. It's also, it's a film about institutionalisation, because there's the whole thing about that the parole is coming up, but does Guy Pearce's character actually want to be paroled? And I was thinking of, if you think of Shawshank Redemption, one of the most moving things in Shawshank Redemption is when the long timer is finally let out. And he does not know how to cope with the world. And the whole thing is because he's been in prison all his life, he doesn't know how to cope

with the outside world. It's also about crime and punishment because there is this idea that that the crimes committed by Cosmo Jarvis' character are unforgivable, and yet he is preaching this evangelical, you know, come to Christ, Christ will forgive you of all your sins. He's that thing that you heard there about the scapegoat. And it's a coming of age tale in as much as the new young inmate at the beginning is sort of coming of age in the prison system, but there's also this idea that everything that's happening is cyclical.

There are lines that you hear quite near the beginning of the film that then end up being repeated at the end of the film as if what's happening is it's not a line of growth, it's a cycle. And I found it really gripping. I thought the performances were great. I thought the atmosphere of it was oppressive, but not so much so that you didn't want to know what happened next.

You felt like you were trapped there with them, but you did want to, you know, you wanted to see how this dynamic was going to play out. It's not opening cinemas, it's available digitally on Monday on streaming Blu-ray and DVD. Sange, what did you think? Because I thought it was really powerful. And I'm kind of surprised that we're not going to see it in cinemas.

I mean, do you know, it's an odd one? Because when I was watching it, there were a couple of times where I lost focus in the middle of it. And I kind of thought, I don't know where this is going. And, you know, there's a bit where Guy Pearce's character comes out for a day. He has a day release to spend with his son. And in a way, I thought, oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, should the film have started there? Should it be about that relationship as well, the relationship with the outside?

Because that became the only relationship for the two people who are going to get parole. That's the only time we see a relationship outside the prison. But actually, since watching it, it's really stayed with me. The performances, I think, are amazing. I mean, I've always liked Guy Pearce. I think he's always understated and everything he does. So I love him. Cosmo Jarvis, flipping.

I know. I didn't realize it was Cosmo Jarvis until the credits rolled. And having seen him do his Richard Burton voice in Shogun, in which he was brilliant as well, I had, I just didn't know it was him. And so I think that's a remarkable transformation in terms of his physicality, his voice. I mean, everything about that performance, I thought, was, you know, awards worthy. I think every time you see Cosmo Jarvis, it looks like a. different person. And in fact, when calm with horses was coming out, I was at the BFI

and they did a screening of calm with horses and the director was there. And I went into the green room and I talked to the director and the composer because I love the score for that film. And I was in that green room for 20 minutes and I had no idea that the other person in the room was Cosmo Jarvis. I mean, it's like every single film he does. He looks different. He does that thing that the actors do. Do you think there's more than one? there might be about five of them it might be like the prestige but there's loads of them

sort of wandering about if people see it and you know it's an interesting much definitely worth a watch but it would be worth I think re-listening to Guy Pearce's interview with Simon before you watch it

because I think he contextualised it really really well yeah absolutely smashing that's inside as Mark said streaming from Monday and now we have the box office top 10, in time on a tradition, at number 3 pi plus 2, pi plus square root of 2, the legend of, now is this Ochi?

Ochi. Ochi. And this is from Jason White and Barnsley. Dear Sirs, last Sunday, we went to see the legend of Ochi. It was a 12A, and as I had a 10, an 8-year-old in tow, I quickly checked the guidance. We decided to risk it, and 824 labels pretty much guarantees you an original film and unique film experience at least. We got an amazing film with gorgeous cinematography, fantastic cast, especially Helena Zengel,

brilliant the original score, especially for something that was likely to attract kids. Puppetry and practical effects to die for, and a story that felt like E.T. as directed by Ken Loach, specifically Kez, with even a bit of gentle body horror thrown in. My daughter, who is usually easily scared, was enthralled throughout. Good. And understood the story, while my old son said it was his third best film this year. as a family where suckers for puppets but this film was magic

if albeit sometimes a bit grim a lovely surprise also shout out to my own local parkway cinema one of the only cinemas outside of London to still be doing regular screenings of 70 and 35 mill films and where all new releases

and get this are five pounds a seat I mean it's worth travelling up to Barnsley for that isn't that's fantastic that's fantastic you know that It reminds me one of the most quotable lines in Doogl and the Blue Cat is when they arrive on the moon, Buxton gets out of the spaceship. And he says, I claim this moon for me. And then he goes, oh, what a place. It's worse than Barnsley.

He obviously didn't know about the Parkway Cinema. Fiver for a 70 or 35 million. Fantastic. And this week at number X squared minus X minus 1 equals zero. Swoages. From Calab, South London, dear savages, and the savages were us all along. I went to see savages, or savages, or as my brain insists on reading it, sausages, last night at the movie Go film of the week.

I thought it was a lovely little film that really grew on me as it went on, really coming into its own once she starts to reconnect with her family and made me tear up a little. The comparisons to my life as a corgette are inevitable. I was lucky enough to see this as part of the BFI's stop motion season last year, and don't think I've ever quite felt as kicked in the stomach by a film from the incredibly shocking opening onwards. Savages doesn't quite deliver in the same way, but perhaps just as the disadvantage of not being written by Celine, now is this schama? Well, I believe it's Shiamma. Selim Shama, who perhaps should just write everything from now on.

Tickety Tonk and up with original animations. P.S. Why is Claude Barras so against characters having a mother who survives the first five minutes of a film? Two dead mothers in this one, and a whole orphanage is worth in M, La C, as no one's calling it. Now, on to the top ten at number 10 this week. Now, this is going to be mildly controversial in that we were told from the powers that be, I mean the proper powers that be, that Jal Miraput 3 was at number 10. Jalmeraput 3 came out in 2021. Jalmeraput 4 is in cinemas at the moment.

I didn't even know they existed. Well, there we go. And now we're at number four. Yeah. Well, there we are. I mean, you know, I had a brief research into it. I mean, Punjabi films very rarely crack the top ten. I mean, it's mainly Hindi films and occasionally kind of South Indian films that will do that.

But Punjabi films very rarely. But it's about a group of Punjabi workers living illegally in Birmingham and how they survive. Okay. That's, you know, there are three sequels to the original. original now. Well, I wish it had been press screened, because I would like to see that. At UK number nine, US number nine is Smurfs. We've got something from Hugh Tip Lady. Dear Papa Smurf and Gargamel. As a child, my family had a friendship with another family in North East France. This was in the days of having pen pals as a way for kids to get to know about

other countries and cultures. We spent several happy summer days at their house visiting the numerous local attractions the area had to offer. One particularly memorable trip was to the city of Metz, where, to our collective delights, we discovered that the family planned to take us to a theme park. And not just any old French theme park, I'll have you know. Yes, we had the honor and privilege of visiting Big Bang Strumf, a.k.a. Big Bang Smurf. Yes, indeed, there was a theme park dedicated to the Smurfs. We spent several hours on the various rides and attractions that included a particular favorite, gargamel's castle, which was a large structure resembling the smurf baddies' home,

which shook, jerked and squirted water at you while you were strapped into the seeds provided. So that just sounds like sort of interrogation. Yes. Ultimately, we met some life-sized smurfs in costume, of course. Or was that a bad dream after eating too much brie and camembert with the lovely French family who hosted us? Tinkety-tong and down with the phantom menace. Well, that just sounds like hugely more fun than the movie, which on its side, third week is dropping like a stone. So it won't be troubling us next week. At UK number

eight this week, US number seven is F1. And may I just remind people I have a fab Brad Pitt anecdote that I will tell Sanjeev in take two. So if you're not subscribing already, you need to do that now. I mean, subscribe right now. Yes. UK number seven is Sayara. This is a Hindi language film. If you've seen it, let us know. UK number six, a film that I have seen actually is bring her back. Oh, please tell me you loved it. Well, let's have an email first. Okay, Sanj, I need to know what you thought. I mean, I thought it was brilliant. Oh, good. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I mean, Sally Hawkins, I've worked with Sally. Yeah. And I do think Sally is fantastic in everything she does. And one of the really interesting things about working with her is that off camera, she's, I mean, she's lovely. She's very warm and comes across as quite fragile.

She's kind of, you know, it comes across as a little bit underconfident, you know, if I said to her, that was such a great take, she'd go, what's it? Was it? I'm not sure. And then you see her, you know, be getting prepared for the scene and the director shouts action. And honestly, you see a transformation. You see this completely committed, present person who walks out in front of the camera to do the scene. And I mean, the kids in this, I thought, were absolutely brilliant. I mean, I believed all of them. It was kind of, it wasn't scary. It was horrifying. And terrifying in exactly how Cameron described it. We can see one step ahead of, you know, half a step ahead of the kids' protagonists.

And that is a terrifying place to be. Yeah. I mean, I just, it really profoundly affected me and, you know, gave me the shivers in a way, that I want horror cinema to do and I know it's upsetting and all the rest of it but it is as you say it's on the Stephen King scale you know the lowest is gross out above that

is horrifying and above that is terrifying and I think that it is it's it is that highest level of and I think Sally Hawkins is absolutely amazing in it I think it's one of her best performances UK number five US number four Superman I enjoyed more more than I thought I was going to. And it's, you know, and it's colourful and upbeat. And I'm

glad to see that it's done well. UK number four, US number five, Jurassic World Rebirth. Well, there's no other way of saying this, because I keep saying it, Gareth Edwards makes the very best of a very, very poor script. And the more I think about the script, the more I think it's one of the most badly written films I've ever seen. UK number three, US number two, the bad guys too. Yeah. You know the bad guys? It's that. Again, it's all right. At the UK number two, US number three, the naked gun. This is from Daniel Switzer from Romsey.

Hello, Mario and Luigi, long-time listener, first time email, etc. As a fan of the Lonely Island and Akiva Schaffer's other work, notably pop star and the criminally underrated hot rod, I was already confident that I would enjoy the naked gun and its sense of humor. I wasn't quite sure how others who fond memories of the originals would take to this reboot, rehash, reimagining, but the rest of my party were heard belly laughing throughout the run of the film. Liam and Pamela both played it wonderfully well. I think Mark is right in the sense that it's a different approach and a different style than the originals

when Nielsen played everything completely straight and never really acknowledged the gags. But for the modern audience, I think they've done well translating it all from more contemporary times. All in all, it surpassed any laugh test I could have set it and the snowman sequence actually left me and my partner with tears in our eyes. from laughter. That's man's laughter and woman's laughter too. I hope they follow up with more in the future, all the best. And now, Sange, I laughed once and then I stopped. That was at the very,

very beginning, and then I didn't laugh for the whole rest of it. In the screening that I was in, there were some people who were laughing like hyenas and really enjoying themselves. But I just thought it was lame. What did you think? I mean, you know, Daniel makes a good point, which is kind of, you know, we have memories of the original. Yes. seeing it when it came out, which means that that was the context of the time it came out. And so now when you go to see it, it is a reboot, rehash. I don't think it's a reimagining so much. But the problem is that so many of the jokes that were in the original were done in this version,

but not as well as they were done in the original. And one of the things that I did feel about it was, I mean, I did laugh a couple of times, was that these are basically a series of sketches, you know, airplane, top secret, you know, all of the things that the Abraham Zucker team did were effectively sketches that are strung into, you know, with a narrative of some kind. And the problem with that is if you then play those as sketch characters, I think for me, it gets tiresome quite quickly because the characters are too big. And also, you know, the original naked gun films, as you kind of mentioned, last week were based on police squad, the TV series. And those were send-ups of those kind of 60s, 50s, 60s and 70s type streets of San Francisco and, you know, those kind of cop shows. FBI was one with Ephraimus, Jr.

That's right, yes. And so, you know, it was sending up that. So even, you know, naked gun looks slightly retro deliberately. Whereas this was kind of, I'm not sure what it was parodying. It was parodying an earlier film. So I have only one question I need to ask you. How many times did you laugh? And there we are.

That's it. That sigh. Thank you very much. And that is from Sanjoubaskar, a man who, let's be honest, knows comedy. Okay. So we have UK, US number one, fantastic four first steps. And in brackets, it just says, F-F-F-F-F-F-S, which if I saw that on an email, I would be reading completely differently.

This is from Gerard in Portsmouth, Dear Silver Surfer and Galacticus. Jack Kirby was a creative genius, but Spider-Man was not one of his many creations. That was noted weirdo, Steve Ditko, I'm quoting, who only Stan Lee could ever work successfully with, and not for long. Steve had issues. That's correcting. Can I just say that that's correcting an email rather than anything that we said? Oh, good. Early days of Marvel comics would make for a cracking film.

I think Bob Odenkirk would be a perfect Stan Lee. Love the show, Steve, and see you in the funny papers. And that's from Gerard. So, Fantastic Four First Steps, which I have seen. Since you just mentioned Bob Odenkirk, hopefully on next week's show, there will be an interview with Bob Odenkirk for Nobody 2. Yeah, I really enjoyed Fantastic Four First Steps. I had gone in with fantastically low expectations,

and I came out with the spring in my step, And I liked it, not least because I absolutely loved the design and I loved the way it looked. And so, yeah, I'm glad it's done well. And I'm glad it's kept the naked gun off the number one spot. I'm sorry if that sounds petty. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I like the design of it. I like that 60s retro thing.

And I thought the chemistry within the fantastic thought it was really nice. I kind of like that. I won't remember much about it in a couple of months. No. You know, it was a bit like that. But anyway, there you go. So that's your top 10. we will be back soon with what films, Mark?

Well, we'll be back soon with an interview that you are going to do with Celine's song. We'll be back after this. Now, Mark, you just realised your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast.

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Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Welcome back. This week's guest is. Celine's song. One of our highlights of 2023 was Simon and Mark's talk with her about her first film, past lives. It proved to be a huge breakout success. And now I spoke with her about her new

film, materialists, about a matchmaker caught between two suitors. You'll hear a clip from that film and then our conversation. Love is easy. Is it? I find it to be the most difficult thing in the world. And that's because we can't help it. It just walks into our lives sometimes. Are you kidding on me? Definitely not. But I do think that you would be a great match for a lot of our clients. We need more straight men in New York City.

You look about six feet tall. How much money do you make? Just straight up like that. I make 80 grand a year before taxes. Do you make more or less than that? More. I know. Finance, right?

Private equity That was a clip from materialists And I'm delighted to be joined by its producer, writer And director, Celine Song Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Yeah, good, thanks. Could you introduce our listeners to the film?

Well, I think materialist is a film about This woman, Lucy, who is played by Dakota Johnson, who is a matchmaker in New York City. And everybody thinks that she is an expert in love, but actually she's only an expert in dating. And dating is just a game that you play to find love. And it's inspired by the time that I worked as a matchmaker in New York City in my 20s. And I did that job because it was a day job because I couldn't pay rent trying to be a playwright.

So I got this job and I remember thinking that I was learning more about people in the six months that I worked on this job as a matchmaker than I did in any other part of my life. And I always thought that as I was leaving that job, I was like, oh, I think one day I'm going to be. going to write something about it. And then I tried for about 10 years. And then I made Past Lives by first film. And after I finished post-production on that movie, there was a few months in there where before Past Lives was going to go to Sundance for the world premiere.

So knew that I was a filmmaker and I wanted to make movies for the rest of my life, but nobody else in the world knew. So I was like going a little bit crazy. And I was like, okay, why don't I just actually take this time to figure out what my next movie is? And I tried to crack the story that I always want to tell, which is the time I worked as a matchmaker. And here it is. Wow.

That's fascinating. I mean, what are the skills you need to be a good matchmaker? Well, I think that it depends on what kind of a matchmaker you want to be. I think that the way that I was trained, the way I was asked to think about it, it was actually very much like how a stockbroker might look at a stock exchange market, right? Where it's like I could kind of, I figured out how to walk into a room and to look at everybody in the room and to assess what everybody is, value is, on the marketplace. And of course, it would come down to a lot of numbers.

Yeah. High weight, income, age. And I think that I was becoming pretty good at that particular thing. But at the time, I had been married pretty fairly recently from when that I was happening. And I remember feeling like, I'm not sure if the way that we're talking about dating and the way that we're reducing ourselves into numbers is necessarily conducive to. finding love, this ancient mystery. Well, it's something you allude to in the film, isn't it? The elusive nature of defining love goes back to the beginning of time.

Of course. It certainly is across films and books and everything else. And also because in the film you mentioned that they are intangibles as well. And how do you assess the intangibles? So how do you assess the intangibles? Well, I think that that's the problem with it. It's the problem with it is that, and I think it's what makes it the most amazing problem ever, which is that it's not possible to assess it.

So I think the most important line in the whole film is, I'm not merchandise, I'm a person, right? And I think that in the movie what I want to talk about, first and foremost, is the way that we're being always asked to, and we do do this, objectify and commodify each other and ourselves. And the truth is that objectification and commodification of human beings is always going to result in dehumanization. And a piece of merchandise cannot love another piece of merchandise.

merchandise, but a person can love another person. So given that, why do we talk about feeling valuable? In my movie, the word valuable comes up over and over. The truth is like, well, why is it that we need to feel valuable? Is that the only way that we think that we can earn love or get love? Well, love is something that we just deserve because we're human beings and we exist. So why is it that we start to feel like, well, we want to feel valuable, all of those things? Well, it's because we started to treat ourselves as merchandise, as objects of value. And you're like, well, no, we're people. We actually do not have value in that way.

And I think that all of those things have been the centerpiece of this story. And I think that's why they really wanted to talk about more than anything in the movie. A couple of things that came up just when you were talking then as well about the commodification. I mean, I think that probably over the last 40 years maybe, we've become a much more quantitative. And so it's a quantitative measures rather than qualitative ones. Yes. I remember when my son was seven and he came back from seeing a movie and I said, how was it? And he said, six out of ten.

I said, you've told me nothing. Yeah. Nothing at all. They have no idea what that means. And so everything from, as I think you mentioned, somebody's salary or somebody's, you know, box office gross. All of those things become measures. And none of them can talk about quality. The other thing that I wanted to say

this was perhaps a personal trigger for me was one of the things that comes up a lot I think generally not just in your film or that you highlight it is height Now I remember when I was at college where there was a girl that I really liked She was artistic and she was smart And I think she really liked me

And I was making a laugh one day And apropos of nothing At the end of her laughter she said You should have been taller And that was when I was 18 So in your film you kind of talk about height surgery. Yes.

Is that a real thing? Yeah. And secondly, is it too late for me to... I think the movie is a pretty good argument against it, don't you think? I sure hope so. That's my intention. I think that the thing is, like, when I'm talking about the objectification and commodification, always leading to dehumanization,

we're seeing that dehumanization happened to the character of Sophie, one of Lucy's clients, played by Zoe Winters, but also we see it in this particular high surgery, and what Harry does to himself, right? Because what's happening is the end is always going to be violent, right? What he does to gain value, right? Because he doesn't believe that he's a human. He believes that he's a merchandise.

He wants to improve his own value. What he does is to he breaks his own legs. Yeah, yeah. So I think that it's like, and I think about the problem with the height, I mean, I think about all the time. I'm like, what is this obsession with it when given that, When we were 90, which we hope to be with the other person forever, so hopefully we're together when we're 90, what does it matter when we're all going to shrink? Yeah, but if you'll shrink together, right?

Yeah, if one of you doesn't shrink, there may be questions. Yeah, but I'm just, I'm like, what is this about the six feet or even salary? What if the global economy is so broken, right? You might lose your lucrative job. If you stop loving somebody because they lose their job, I promise you, you did not love. that person, right? You love the salary. So similarly with height, it's like what happens if something happens to that person and that person cannot walk, right? Well, now you no longer have that height that you're so excited about, right? And do you still love that person or did

you just like that height? The truth is that if you talk to anybody that love you, hey, why do you love me? The person who really love you, why do you love me? They're not going to say a single number. Right, right? And that's the truth. And I'm sorry that this person was so cruel about your height. I know it doesn't matter on some... It doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter. It's okay now. But I'm also hearing that you're suggesting I shouldn't have the surgery.

No. I mean, if I'm six foot now, it's just pointless in too many. I mean, I think more importantly, I think that it's like what I think the reason why there is an interest in an obsession with it, I think it's all coming from this idea that we want to be as valuable as possible as merchandise. Because I think that if I don't feel valuable on my own, If I feel like I'm questioning my own value, maybe if a valuable person desires me, then maybe I would feel more value. It's a shortcut, yeah. Well, I think that it's like it's more and more difficult to jump your class, right? Because the global, again, the economy is so broken globally that it's very difficult to through hard work, right, jump your class.

That dream has been long gone and we're learning every day how gone it is. the class gap is too huge for it to work. So if so, then, well, what is the one way that you could still jump your class? Maybe you can very rich, right? And I think that that is like a very real way that I think that all of us, you know, capitalism tries to colonize everything

and it's of course going to colonize our hearts and it's going to colonize love. And I see it all the time. Like sometimes I'm like, well, why is it so much easier to see a burgeoning? bag or a Ferrari and believe in its value when somebody tells you what a brokenback costs why is it easier to believe it's worth when and when it comes to love everybody's always

questioning its worth so often I hear the question like is it even worth it's even worth it's even worth the trouble and my answer is always like yes yes because it's free right and it's freedom right it's going to be the one thing that's going to be free from capitalism I think dating is not free from capitalism. But love is, amazingly, right? Love is still a holy miracle, and it always will be. I guess it's like art, isn't it? Yes. Yes. It's absolutely the point that I saw the Mona Lisa and somebody told me how much it was worth. Yeah. It didn't change how much I thought it didn't speak to me. Whereas something, you know, a cartoon. Yeah. You know, might do that to me. And that's, I guess that's a similar kind of. Well, I think, I think the truth is all human things.

are that, where they cannot be quantified into value. But I think that there's such a desire, like, to control everything, right? Because there's such a desire to control everything. And, of course, the wealthy and the powerful are going to be on the front line of trying to control that thing. And there is a very active efforts being made to control and gatekeep love, right? Because when you see media everywhere, there's a propaganda about how love is only for the wealthy, right?

Because when you think about, well, what's a romantic thing you saw on TV or film? Well, a man was gifting a woman a cardi A necklace, right? Or a man rented at the whole restaurant and hired a string quartet. These are things that only

the very, very, very wealthy, which are fewer and fewer people, are able to do. So what that means is that, well, does that mean that maybe I can't afford to have love in my life? But the truth is that what's amazing about love is that power, money, control.

Those things are education. Those are not going to necessarily make it better at love. It's really not, you know? Isn't that exacerbated also by social media? Absolutely. People are selling their lives. They're selling their lives. Well, my thing is, like, I think about this all the time.

There's such an intense over-representation of wealth. I think the wealth is a great drug of our time. And I think all we do is look at wealth. Think about the times that people feel inspired to post something on their Instagram. Well, it's because they're spending too much at dinner. Like, why do you go to that really expensive restaurant and take a photo of every dish? Well, because you're overspending. So what we're seeing online on our phones, which is increasingly and terrifyingly becoming our reality, what you see on your phones, every day you're looking at people's wealth. And there's an

overrepresentation, even though we know how few people are actually wealthy. And the number of people who are wealthy are shrinking always. So there are less and less wealthy people, but still, and more and more poor people. Yeah, the gap's bigger. The gap's bigger and bigger. But then still on the Internet, all you see are wealth. So part of it is that what I think about sometimes is like, well, this movie is about the marriage market or the dating market.

And of course, in like Pratt and Prejudice, right? Like, you know, the thing about Liz Bennett is that she's also arguing the same things that this movie is arguing, which is absolutely. I'm not merchandise, I'm a person, right? That's what it's been its whole journey is. She's saying, like, in this marriage market, I'm not merchandise, I'm a person. And the thing about that is that, well, at those times, it was still like garden parties and balls. It still was a community.

And you were just competing with other boys and girls in your ton, right? But now, I think the garden parties that the marriage market has now migrated to our phones. And on there, it's a global market. And everybody's representing themselves as the wealthiest, most spectacular version of themselves. And you feel like you're being compared up against all these people, right? And then, of course, dating as an industry is encouraging you to treat each other like merchandise. Yeah, algorithms, yeah. Right, like, exactly.

After you shop for something on Amazon, you can also, you know, not go very far to start swiping on people in your talent, right? Yeah. And it feels like there are endless number of people that you can swipe on. So I think that there is the way that Liz Bennett felt in Pride and Prejudice, I think that that feeling is still here of like, well, how am I going to be not treated like cattle in this world? But on the other hand, I think this dehumanization, objectification, commodification, dehumanization has gotten faster because these apps have gotten easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's easier and more convenient, it's only going to happen faster. I was just going to say that one of the things that's interesting in the film about Lucy's journey

is where she places that sense of worth in herself. Yes. And that's that kind of journey. And it's that thing of being able to take it away from the algorithms and into a person. Into a person. Well, I think that the journey that you see is that Lucy from the beginning of the film would look at the Lucy at the end of the film and say, what a fool. Right. And of course, Lucy at the end of the film is going to look at Lucy in the beginning of the film.

film and say, what a fool, right? So it's about her journey, and I think it's about her discovery about what she actually values. Yeah. And at first, I think that it seems like she doesn't like herself in the beginning of the film in a way that she's learning to accept who she is by the end of the film. And she's able to do that by saying deal to a deal that in the beginning of the film, she would never have taken.

Celine Song, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. We could talk for another hour. This is great. And that was my conversation with Celine. song. So let me just repeat once again, Sange, that when you say that was, it's in the past tense, in the present tense, I haven't heard that interview because we are recording this at the moment at 10.30 and you are doing the interview this afternoon. Is that right? That is the

interview that I'm about to do. This is playing with the space time continuum, isn't it? I love it. Yes. But it's just a little teaser. I liked it. Neat. There we go. I want to another new film that's coming out this week. Yeah, okay, so now, Freaky a Friday, and you have to try and keep up with this. So this is the sequel to 2003's Freaky Friday in which Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohen were mother and daughter

who found themselves body swap. That film was based on a 1972 novel by Mary Rogers that was first filmed in 76 with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris as the tagline. A daughter and mother become each other, I think that was the original tagline. And then that was then followed in 84

by the gender swapped summer switch, which is father and son. And then in the same year, there was a thing which I know nothing about other than the title, which is a billion for Boris, aka billions for Boris, which was not a film about a former prime minister, but was part of that series, although I'm not entirely sure how. So technically fifth series installment, first sequel to the first remake. Have you kept up with that? Just about. Good. Okay. So this is directed by Nishkinatra, whose directing credits include Late Night, which was the one with

Emma Thompson as the late night TV host, and that was with Mindy Carling. There'll be more Emma Thompson and take two instantly because we're doing sense and sensibility. She also made, well, the high note, which I wasn't crazy about, with Dakota Johnson, who is in Materialist. So the screenplay for Freaky Fridays is Jordan Weiss, who created the Hulu series

Dollface, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lowen reprising their roles as Tess and Anna. Anna is now a mum. Julie Butters is her daughter Harper. Harper is at school with an annoying arrival Lily, Sophie Hammonds, who she considers to be the chemistry classmate from hell. After a particularly unruly chemistry class, they're called in to see the principal and their respective single parents are called in and immediately sparks fly. So this now leads to a situation in which they may end up being step-sisters, which they don't want to happen. Wedding bells are in the air until an encounter with a fortune teller. Again, you're keeping up, fortune teller, Vanessa Bayer, who's fantastic, switches, mom and daughter, Anna Richard, and more confusingly, friend and grandmother to be.

Here's a clip. What is happening? It's me. It's mom. What are you saying? So if you're me and I'm you then, then who is that? I'm Grandma, sweetheart. Ah!

Oh my gosh. I've died. I killed myself! She just has crevices all over her face. Look at the crevices. My hands look like doll hands. My butt feels so high. I think I just peed a little.

Oh. So, I know, I'm sorry there. It's if you're not watching. visuals with that and you haven't seen them. Believe me, I just tried to do the plot set up, but it's quite complicated. So if it didn't make any sense, it's not just you. Here's what you need to know. I went into this with super low expectations. Not sure why, but I just thought, oh, okay, another legacy reboot. Do we really, really need to? I was sort of thinking this is going to be naked gun all over again. This has its flaws. Not least the fact that the

setup of the original is very simple. It's mother-daughter, you know, daughter-mother-mother become each other. This, because it's a four-way thing, I did find myself quite a lot of the time in the film thinking, hang on, sorry, who's in whose body? But once the gag start coming thick and fast, Jamie Lee Curtis is really good as the body swapped, the grandmother who then becomes a stroppy teenager, who is in and is shocked by the grandmother's body. Lindsay Lowen, who I last saw in Paul Schrader's terrible grown-up film, The Canyons, kind of reminded me why it was that we all liked Lindsay Lowen the first time round when she was doing like, you know, parent trap and freaky Friday. There are loads and loads of age gap gags

about phones and schools and boomers and pickleball. And there's a particularly funny joke about when the youngies as the oldies find Facebook. And one of them says, what's that? And he says, Facebook, it's brilliant. It's like a database of old people, which is a very funny gag. And I realized about half an hour into it that I had laughed many more times than I laughed in naked, well, I laughed once in naked gun. But I was laughing at a lot of the gags. And what's even more surprising is that as we moved into the third act, because obviously the whole thing has to find a kind of, you know, there has to be a resolution. Everyone has to discover life truth. Because the whole point of the Freaky Friday body swap thing is you need to realize and

learn life lessons and then things will go back to write again. As we move towards the third act, I teared up a little bit. And then as we got fully into the third act, I found myself actually crying. And so I laughed a lot. And then I cried. And then at the end of the film, there's an outtakes thing. And generally, funny outtakes tend to mean that the film itself wasn't funny. So they'll just show you a bunch of outtakes to make up for the gags that you haven't had. but even the outtakes were funny and it's PG for mild bad language at no point did it feel like it was having to pull its punches to get a PG's to forget them this is incidentally a film which you've got a joke we well you heard in the trailer jokes about adult incontinence pants and enemas but all delivered in a completely PG friendly way that doesn't feel out of place so I had it was it was like a similar experience to the most recent karate kid film I came out of it thinking I I really enjoyed that and nobody was more surprised about it than I was. I might go and see it.

You should too. It's surprisingly entertaining and very sweet, very sweet natured. Well, it's the ads in a minute, Mark. But first, with possibly more laughs than a naked gun reboot, it's time once again to step into our laughter lift. Hey, Mark. Hey, Sanjee. You know that I love musicals. the Lion King. In fact, the impulse to sing in the jungle is never more than a whim away.

A whim away, a whim away, a whim away. Was doing some research the other day, finally discovered how celiac Germans say hi to one another. Gluten tag! Go on. Yeah, that sounds like more of a warning than a greeting, maybe. I've been experimenting in the kitchen. Family aren't too impressed. Cooked up an oxo cube and nitrous oxide soup yesterday.

It's made me a laughing stock. Yeah, this is kind of rivaling naked gun, isn't it, in terms of... I'm Frank Trebben Jr. Sanj, did you write these jokes, or did Simon Paul write them? I didn't write them. Okay, so can I suggest that... I'm not saying who did. For next week, I know who wrote them, Simon Paul.

For next week, can I suggest that you write the laughter lift, since you are a comedian of some renown? I'm not putting myself out there. Are you kidding? I'm not a chance. You could not do worse than that. That was, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was nil for three in terms of laughs. Yeah, but for me, it could be career ending.

So, Mark, what have we got coming up? Coming up, we have a review of, a horror film called Weapons, about which I have much to say. Excellent. We're back after this. And with our side still aching from the laughter lift, we're back. here's an email. We had some great correspondence last week about Justin Cozell's the narrow road to the deep north. And here's one. Dear History and Revisionist, it was interesting to hear the speculations from you and your listeners as to the reasons that post-second

World War Japan might not fully have come to terms with its guilt. You might want to consider, however, your own country's history before going too far down this route. I live in Cyprus and have friends whose parents and grandparents were beaten brutally by colonial British troops for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also see from the lucrative Iwitter app that you have more than one listener in Kenya, and they might be able to tell you a thing or two about systematic mistreatment of entire populations by an occupying force from the UK, including summary executions, sexual violence, and the creation of concentration camps for civilians.

Oh, and you also have listeners in India, Malaysia, Iraq. There is a reason that a liberation from Britain Day is celebrated in 65 countries around the world. Most of these countries don't have the money to make acclaimed dramas about these events, which might be why the Japanese failure to be appropriately guilty is discussed more than the very similar British habit of making excuses, rewriting history, or simply ignoring the darker parts of their own 20th century wrongdoings. Kind regards, James. Well, very good. yeah no very well point very well made um let's i mean i'm trying to think of what i have to say

about that because i mean i feel i do have something to say go ahead but i'm not sure if it's of any great value i mean i think that i mean within those countries uh you know their their own history is taught they define their own curriculum for all of that and in the same way i mean there's always a backlash here about doing Britain down when it comes to, you're talking about Britain's colonial history. I think until we can all step back and say that, you know, we at present don't hold each of us, individual citizens, don't hold direct responsibility for what happened 100 or 200, 300, 300 years ago. I think it's very difficult to kind of, to try to be objective about it. And I think a lot of people, certainly in Britain, feel attacked when people say

the British did this and the British did that. Really, any of those times, it was the government of the time. There weren't individuals. It wasn't somebody who worked in a mill or worked on a farm or something like that. It was, you know, the political decisions that governments made at the time. So I don't know if that necessarily helps people to say, look, this isn't an attack on you. This is a comment on, you know, people and decisions that were made at that time. Do you see what I mean? I do. Yes, absolutely and very eloquently put.

Let's move on to a film. So, weapons. Weapons is how to, so this is the new film from writer-director, Zach Greger, who made Barbarian. Did you see Barbarian, Sange? I'm afraid I didn't. Okay, Barbarian is a really, I thought it was a really, really interesting film. But one of the things about it was, was it was a very, very hard film to review because it was one of those things in which what you didn't want to do was give away any of the reveals.

And there is a reveal, like a very important reveal quite early on, which it's kind of hard to talk about the film without talking about it. But this, again, is difficult to talk about. and I will try my very best to talk about it without spoiling it, okay? Like Barbarian, it's, it has horror and satire intertwined. I watched it with no idea of where it was going. At the very beginning of the screening, one of the film distributors came out and said, you know, incidentally, you know, don't do any spoilers, although it's like, yeah, we do try not to.

Here's the setup. It begins with an image of Julia Garner, who I like very much, as a teacher, coming into a school and going into a classroom, which is almost entirely empty. And over that, we hear a child's voiceover telling us this. Here's a clip. This is a true story that happened in my town. So this one Wednesday is like a normal day for the whole school. But today was different. Every other class had all their kids. But Mrs. Gandy's room was totally empty.

And do you know why? Because the night before, at 2.17 in the morning, every kid woke up? got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark, and they never came back. Very much a kind of fairy tale set up, like a kind of, you know, the Brothers Grimm in America. So the town, Maybrook, Pennsylvania is in shock, and since all the children that disappeared came from the same class, except one who was remained, the teacher, played by Julia Garner, is sort of vilified. The townsfolk think that she must have done something, that it's her fault.

She must know why all these kids just walked out of their houses at 217 in the morning and disappeared into the dark. The only other person who may hold some clues is this lonely bullied boy, Alex, who is the only one to turn up in class, the next one. But he's not saying anything, and he's clearly traumatized. So the film is divided into character-named sections, which revisit a series of events in the aftermath of the disappearances. So we see these events from different perspectives. One of the perspectives is Josh Brolin's character, Archer, whose son Matthew has disappeared.

He's convinced that the police aren't doing their job and that the teacher knows something. One of the perspectives is the teacher, played by Julia Garner. She is harassed by the townsfolk. She tries to talk to this young boy, the one kid that turned up, but she's forbidden to. to approach him. Another point of view is from a local policeman, played by Alden-Eren Reich, who has an altercation with a drug addict, and then we see the point of view of the addict, and that shows us a different point of view in the story. And each time, like Rashomon, the story changes. The details may sort of be the same, but the emphasis changes. Apparently, the writer-director took

inspiration from Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, which is a film that I love, and that connection makes sense because it's a series of, you know, stories that may be intertwined, maybe intersect, but they're sort of, they just all happen to be taking place on the same street. The initial setup is really creepy. We see doorbell, you know, nowadays doorbells have videos on them. So we see doorbell video footage of these kids running out into the night. They've got their arms out, you know, like aeroplanes or something, and they just run. And it's really creepy. At one point, there is a sort of dreamy sequence in which Josh Brolin's character sees what appears to be, where he's looking up and at first you think he's seeing a spaceship,

But then what he's seeing is a giant assault rifle floating in the air with 217, which is the time that the kids ran away. And I thought, oh, okay, is this actually, is it going to be about a school shooting? The classroom, it's a classroom of kids have disappeared. Is it that the townsfolk are all in trauma? But then that sort of, that gets passed on and the film moves somewhere else, takes a completely different turn, never returned that image. Afterwards, Kim Newman, my great friend,

and the great horror critic of our time, I asked him about it, and I said, what do you think that was? He said, I think it might just have been because weapons, because the title of the thing is weapons. Elsewhere, there are themes of contemporary American nightmares. So this is a place there's conspiracy theories. There's decent people turning into lynch mobs. There's picket fences hiding foul deeds and secrets. There are god-fearing townsfolk, turning on their kids' teachers, screaming at their kids' teachers for brainwashing their kids. So, you know, it's a normal day in Trump's America. What I do know is that everything that follows, it's pretty head scrambling, it's tonally

very jarring. I mean, it mashes together elements of dread and horror with black humor and slapstick comedy and 18-rated violence. And incidentally, the 18-rated, the phrase peeling skin will never be the same again. also it nods its head at a number of different sources so you know there's some of Toby Hooper's poltergeist in there Amy Madigan has a role which has a touch of Zelda Rubinstein in it there's a bit of Nick Rogues the witches

there's actually someone scrolls the word witch on the side of a car very very early on there's quite a lot of the twin peaksy atmosphere of a small American hokey town with something really weird going on there's a lot of Stephen King I mean not just that there is a face character who you see in flashes, but there's a lot of Stephen King in general. There's a bit of the Neville-Nove's prisoners, and there's even, I mean, for the older of us, there are sort of echoes of that 1995 science fiction film screamers in which there are these killer robots that look like children. Now, personally, I thought it worked best when

things were unexplained, when you just, when that creepy voice over at the beginning, what happened to the kids? Where did the kids go? Once the explanations come, obviously it's, it narrows, It's, you know, its options become more solidified. And I find that slightly less interesting. But there are several laugh out loud moments. There are some really well-executed scares. And the overall mood veers from dread to mystery to blimey Charlie, often within a single sequence.

I'm not sure what it's ultimately about, except that it seemed to be very much about contemporary American nightmares. And I do think that that feeling I had about what does that image of the gun, what is that, you know, I think there is something about the, you know, the terror of American high schools in the current climate. I think that is there somewhere. But I was never bored, never, I mean, I was always looking, thinking what on earth is going to happen next. The performances were great, particular applauded to Julia Garner, who's never been less than fab. And Madigan, how I think, should, it was really funny because just after the screening, there was a thing on social media that Kim Newman put up, which said, Amy Madigan for Best Supporting Actress, please. And if you're right, if horror films did win Oscars, that is a very, very good call. So for me, when it was most Twin Peaksie, it was best, there is a thing at the beginning in that voiceover, which says the police and the top people in this town were not able to solve it. And I love that open-ended,

you know, not resolved. Music is really interesting. The writer-director is also contributing to the soundtrack. There are some great needle drops, including a brilliant use of George Harrison. And I thought it was, I mean, it's a smorgasbord. It is a full meal of stuff,

and it doesn't all work, but there is enough in there that is genuinely kind of, oh, gosh. And a couple of times, I was really genuinely creeped out. And then a couple of times when I thought was really funny and really tonally strange. So, yeah, not quite sure whether it all comes together, but there's enough stuff in there that does to make it work.

Sounds interesting. Sounds certainly worth trekking up to Barnsley to watch it for a fiver. It really is. This week's one frame back and take two is about twisted fairy tales. Listen and subscribe for that. Mark's recommendations. Now, we have an email. This is, I guess, right to reply for an ongoing discussions that you've had on the show.

And this is from John Perry, Head of Operations, Picture House Cinemas Limited. Hello, all. I managed 25 cinemas across the UK in addition to an outdoor cinema business. I wanted to share a comment regarding a recent show, specifically about cinemas using iPads to screen performances. At some of our sites, we use iPads to communicate with the projectors. This allows us to manually start programs when we need to remove a feature from the automated start sequence. It's important to clarify that this doesn't mean the feature is playing directly from the iPad. Instead, the iPad is simply communicating with the actual projector,

and the feature itself is ingested onto a server and plays from there. I hope this explanation is helpful. Keep on fighting the good fight and down with the orange turn. And it, kind regards John. Very good. Very good. Thank you for that. Very good.

And with that, we come to the end of Take One. This has been a Sony music entertainment production. This week's team was Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather. The producer was Jim. And if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, what's your film of the week? Weapons.

Definitely weapons. Okay. Thank you very much for that. And back next week. Thank you. You know,