Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Is ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER film of the year? With Paul Thomas Anderson

Episode Date: September 25, 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.  ‘One Battle After Another’ hits the big screen this week—and there’s already plenty of buzz, not least from Steven Spielberg, about this much anticipated new flick starring Leonardo DiCaprio and the dazzlingly named newcomer Chase Infiniti. Its director—and one of the most exciting directors working today—Paul Thomas Anderson is our very special guest this week. He and Simon unpack his decades-long writing process on the movie, his first ever car chase, and getting binned off by DiCaprio for ‘Titanic’. Could this be the year PTA finally gets his Oscar? Answers in an envelope now please...  Mark reviews ‘One Battle After Another’ too--along with two more of the week’s most popcorn-worthy cinema releases. First up, ‘The Dead Of Winter’--where we see Emma Thompson explore new territory in a frozen thriller set in chilly Minnesota. And yes, that means she does the accent. Plus, ‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’... let’s see if this unintentionally silly slasher can improve on its predecessor, which shouldn’t be difficult... one would hope.  All the usual tasty features too as Mark runs down the full Box Office Top 10 and Simon tries to wring some genuine humour out of the Laughter Lift. Tope correspondence from you as always--and don’t forget you can now watch the full show on YouTube!     Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):    The Dead of Winter Review: 09:16 (00:11:04 – 11:40:19)  Box Office Top Ten: 15:44  Paul Thomas Anderson Interview: 28:17  One Battle After Another Review: 42:04 (Clip: 00:28:34 – 00:29:16)  Laughter Lift: 56:11  The Strangers: Chapter 2 Review: 01:00:06 (Clip 01:01:23 – 01:02:06)        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

Now, Mark, if you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple, shop pay button you see at checkout, the one that makes buying so incredibly easy, that Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including names like Mattel and Jim Shark to brands just getting started. Shopify has hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-go templates to express your brand style. Tackle anything from inventory to payments to analytics and more, all in one place. And Shopify has built-in marketing and email tools to find and keep new customers. If you want to see fewer carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify.

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might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing. of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca slash yamex. Hello, film lovers and moviegoers. This is Simon Mayo. And this is Mark Kermode,

bringing you the best podcast for the latest film reviews. On the take this week. You can hear reviews of Opus, Blackbag and Sister Midnight, and our very special guests are Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters, talking about adolescence,

a new drama on Netflix. Plus, the inevitable conversation about Jason Isaacs and White Lotus. How low can you go? Very, very, very low. And if you're not following the pod already, what's wrong with you? Please do so wherever you get your podcast.

We hope you enjoy the show. Well, now everybody that I know of is concerned about your health, Mark, because last week you were clearly a croken because you've been smoking. When I say smoking, I mean, you've been, you know, selling your book. And you've been talking an awful lot, even more than normal. Yes. And so as soon as you open your mouth, everyone was going, oh, blind me, that's going to be a bit of a stronger.

And then your voice actually got better. But the key thing is, are you okay this week? Yes, I'm back to malifluous form. It was literally just because I was out schlepping myself around the country talking about the book surround sound available in all good bookshops now and uh and and then and then and then people say are you really ill i said no no i'm not really ill i've just i've just i've talked too much and i've lost my voice they went no but you sounded really ill but no no i just got my i even got a message from johnny greenwood god bless him saying i hope your voices back to its plummy

normality i thought plummy that's interesting so what does what does plum well i always thought plummy meant posh. Yes, it does. Plummy tones is definitely kind of RP, isn't it? Yeah, RP. But why? Why would plum? I don't know. Why would plum mean that you're posh? I don't know. Is it because you've got a plum in your mouth or something? I remember somebody saying that the way that you impersonated Elvis was that you imagined that you had like a, you know, hot potato in your mouth. Oh, I see. And then there's the thing about the reason that the royals say crying and dying is because it was

considered impolite to show your teeth. And so in posh circles, they don't move their top lip. And if you don't move your top lip, crying and dying and shy, they all come out the side of your mouth and they all become aye. That's very interesting. Okay, that could be true. It is the British stiff upper lip. It is the British stiff upper lip.

Just want to acknowledge everyone listening who, when you said hot potato, and this all depends on the age of your children, they just thought of the wiggles, because the wiggles have got a song called Hot Potato, which goes hot potato, hot potato. And it's one of their signature songs. And the Wiggles were like the biggest. I think they're still going.

They were a bunch of Australian teachers who realized they could make more money if they dressed up in crazy costumes and wrote silly songs. And they were very, very good at it. And they'd like sell out the Hammersmith Odion, you know, that kind of thing. We're getting a message.

It's now got a flashing thing. El Redactor has something to say. Oh, right. The related adjective Plummy blossomed in the early 18th century with the meaning, with the meaning full of plums and had branched out as an adjective for desirable things by the century's end.

By the 19th century, it was being used to describe rich mellow voices, my guitar just fell off the wall. Oh, wow, okay. That might be a sign. No, no, yeah, it's a sign from above. I'll just hang it back on again. I mean, it might just be that the glue or the string isn't strong enough. No, it's the piece of cellar tape.

but it also might be like an indicator that all is not well with the world I'll put it back again because as you know this room that I'm sitting in is an artificial construct later on in this show well imminently Mark is going to be talking animatedly

about a bunch of stuff well it's a really really interesting line up we've got a thriller the Dead of Winter starring the great Emma Thompson the Strangers Chapter 2 not to be confused with the stranger's prey at night too you know which was anyway

we'll come to that. And most brilliantly, one battle after another, scored by Johnny Greenwood, but with this week's fantastically special guest, who is Paul Thomas Anderson, who is going to be on the show very, very shortly. And extra reviews, what have we got there? In take two, we have Warren Ellis's Ellis Park, which, of course, we interviewed Warren on the show a few weeks ago. If you haven't watched that interview, go back, it's a right. And a night like this, which is a British indie pick. Plus all the extra stuff, including lots of tip-top suggestions for unusual double bills or films within films that have really lit up the take-two inbox this week and some further discussion on Thursday Murder Club,

and in particular, Pierce Brosnan's accent. Thank you, Pearce for that. Plus, let me remind you that full video episodes are now available on YouTube, like, rate, subscribe, comment on which pair of glasses Mark has chosen, or guess the 45s on the wall behind me. That will be a very interesting challenge. There's endless joy to be had from the visualised episodes. That's what I would say.

Don't forget to check out the visualised episodes. I think we should be asking for makeup now so that we don't look quite as horrendous as possible. Correspondence at cowermao.com is where you send your emails. Jen in Edinburgh goes first. Dear Gimley, son of Gloin, and Gloin, son of groin. In response to the comments last week in take two on accents in films, especially Lord of the Rings.

I mentioned that it followed that kind of standard policy, really, of making wizards speak plummy. They're all plummy, aren't they? That's right. They're all Christopher Lee and Amy McClellan. Whereas dwarves are always Irish and Scottish. There is literally no reason for that at all. Anyway, so Jen says, especially Lord of the Rings and the dwarves being Scottish, that is dead. definitely not based on the books.

Tolkien based much of dwarfish culture on both Norse and Judaism, their language being Semitic in foundation and foregrounded the concept of diaspora and cultural retention. So personally, I want all dwarves in the films and TV series to sound like

the question Schmestians lady. I think that would make for a brilliant movie. I mean, that's a really interesting idea, but I didn't know that. So Tolkien's dwarves are Norse and Judaic. So that's fantastic. So filmmakers try harder. TV makers, give us something else. They don't all have to be Irish and Scottish. There's no logic in that. Have you actually, have you actually

read Lord of the Rings? At school, we started and then I gave up, I think, to be honest. I haven't read it. I've just seen the films. No, no. I've been saying, but it's way too big of a book. Way too big of a book. Brian writes, Dear Florence and Dougal, I never thought I would have the opportunity to actually contribute to your show. And I really hope I wasn't paralytic when I listened to your show and thus got the wrong word completely. Assuming I haven't, the rekindling of my childhood ornithological interest as I reach retirement age may finally have paid its way. In the bird world, for that is the aforementioned ornithology, brood parasitism is practiced by 234 species. because we were talking about parasites and parasitism

probably the most commonly known is the adorable cuckoo which would be put away for life if it did what it manages to do with complete impunity in the bird world that's right given that your show is not 18 certificate I will leave your listeners to find out the gory details themselves down with dastily dictators and anything Trump related well let me um even though we're not 18 related the redactor has added the cuckoo's brood of

parasitism is a chilling act of biological sabotage. It invades a nest, lays its egg and vanishes. The cuckoo chick hatches first, blindly murders its foster siblings by shoving them out of the nest. The duped parents then slave away feeding a grotesque, ever-screaming parasite that devoured their legacy. And if that isn't a horror movie waiting to be told, I don't know what is. And then we all sing so, oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird. And it's sing so soft and sweet. It murders everybody in the nest. I mean, it's just, you know.

What's that song? Well, it's a couple that turns up in loads of things, including Fair and Tender Ladies, which, as I keep saying, when that turns up in Winter's Bone, you know that everything is going to go wrong. It's just like one of those British folk songs that travel to the Americas.

Sing any of them, and at some point there'll be a line which says, oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird. And it generally means, well it means yes but badness of all right i know the kookaburah sits on the old gum tree pretty little king of the bush is very different cookaburah love and it's not related at all it just as it starts with kukku has just got burrow at the end have you ever heard the john richmond richmond song kook and harkin no i will look it up later that's that's fantastic

that is absolutely brilliant correspondence at kobdomo dot com there's a film and it's out and maybe you should go and see it depending on what mark is about to explain well i should say at the beginning, you should go and see it. Dead of Winter, this is an action thriller mystery carried shoulder high by the great Emma Thompson, directed by Brian Kirk, who made 21 bridges. Now, you did an interview for 21 bridges. Can you remember who it was with? I'm not looking at up. As you can see, my hands are here. Should I come back to you? Was it Chadwick Boseman? Did I do it? Well, I thought it was, you see, I thought it was Chadwick Boseman, but then I was thinking, didn't you interview

Chadwick Boseman for Black Panther? But I think it might have been. Because he came in. Fine. Fine. So it was 21 bridges, for which you interviewed Chadwick Boseman. Well done. Well done. And you didn't look it up. I didn't because it came up on the screen in front of me.

Oh, fine. Because I think, well, if that's right, and I assume that our top team have done all the reset. I think it is, yeah. He was doing Black Panther and he was offered a producer role as well as acting in 21 bridges, which is why he actually came into the studio. That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, the director of that is the director of this. It's written by Nicholas, I think it must be Jakobs and Larsson and Dalton Lieb, set in Minnesota, but shot in Finland, at least partially shot in Finland, that Emma Thompson said how fabulous it was working in Finland, how great the Finnish crew were. And as a result, she's become a Finnish national hero, with people at the highest levels of government saying, that Emma Thompson, she's brilliant, she must come back and film here again. So she is Barb, a woman with an accent and demeanour not wildly similar to that of Marge Gunderson in Fargo.

She's on a pilgrimage to a frozen lake for reasons that are not initially clear. On route, trying to find the lake, she stumbles upon a house where she then stumbles upon a weird couple who appear to be holding a young girl hostage. The couple are Mark Manchaka, who is a lumbering presence, and the increasingly scary Judy Greer, and then the wheels come off. Here's a clip. Oh, hello, can you hear me? Here, what's your trouble? Oh, there's been a kidnapping. These two loonies, they took this girl.

I need help. I know, I'm wounded. And I... Slow down. What's your location? Uh, a cabin near Lake Hilda. Lake Waddenau? Hilda.

It's off of Route 11. It's just south a few miles, just outside Beltrami County. Okay, yeah. I think we might not be too far. So you see what I mean about the accents? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but something bad happened there. We're in that area.

So anyway, what follows is a dark, quirky and quite often nail-biting thriller, which has got enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, and a few properly satisfying payoffs. And at the center of it is Emma Thompson. Look, I'm a huge Emma Thompson fan anyway, But this is really something that I don't think we've seen before. She's the lightning rod at the center of it. She's very good at playing a character who is, you know, ordinary and down to earth.

But when put in extraordinary circumstances, proves weirdly resilient and resourceful. But crucially, in a manner that is completely believable. I mean, quite often you get films in which ordinary person put in extraordinary circumstances then does something which is very filmy, but you think, yes, but I don't actually believe that would happen. In the case of this, she's, she is, she's properly scared at the right. moments, but she's also properly resourceful in a way that you believe her character would be. Judy Greer is also complete dynamite. And I mean, between them, the kind of, you know, it's a great pairing. And it becomes clear very early on that she's the sort of driving force in whatever

weird relationship is going on. And it keeps cranking up the tension. And all the way through, you keep discovering different things about what's actually going on and who people are and what their motives are. There's a terrific score by Volcker-Bettelman, who you remember won the Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front. And that score just kind of keeps, it does a very good job of kind of alternating between, on the one-hand of stuff, which is really tense, but also getting into the stuff which is more emotional and eerie. The DP, who's Christopher Ross, makes the most of this amazing scenery, this kind of icy, snowy, frozen, chilly, unforgiving scenery. And then the whole drama plays out with these occasional flashbacks to an earlier version of the central

character who is played by Guy Wise, who I didn't realize until after I came out, a friend of mine said, oh, it's a really smart, wasn't it, casting Emma Thompson's daughter as the younger her? I said, oh, I didn't realize that was the case, but yes, that does make sense. So anyway, I had gone into this with knowing nothing about it at all other than the title and the fact that Emma Thompson was in. I didn't even know it was a thriller, except the title sounds like a thriller. And it was really good, really satisfying, really enjoyable, really kind of edge of your seat, and not, you know, not the movie that I expected it to be at all. And I think partly as a result of that, I enjoyed it even more because I didn't know where

it was going. And then when it started going into weird places, it was like, wow, I would say it was the most unexpected movie of the week, but this is also the week that one battle after another comes out. And that is a whole different league of unexpected. Well, the way you talk about Dead of Winter, you'd think, okay, well, that could be movie the week, except that there is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie on the way, so we'll find out. I've worked out the way my brain was working. When you mentioned 21 Bridges, I was thinking of Sienna Miller,

who is in that movie with Chadwick Boseman. She is, that's right. But I was confusing it because she came in for American woman, which was ran back the same time. So that, and I was thinking, was that is a Sienna Miller movie, but anyway, I've just put it all together, and that's anyway. But it was Chadwick, and that was, I think it's on YouTube, somewhere if we want to go back

it's certainly a very memorable interview apart from the fact that I'd forgotten that it was 21 bridges the whole thing of meeting Chadwick was fairly amazing so that's the dead of winter okay stand by to find out if that

is a surprise movie of the week anyway in the next bit after the ads unless you're a Vanguard Easter in which case it'll just seamlessly proceed what are you reviewing next well coming up next Simon one battle after another

without a very very special guest. Oh yes, that'll be Paul Thomas Anderson. Plus, of course, most importantly, the laughter lift and the box office top 10. Okay, it's our box office top 10. Hurrah for that. Which, surprisingly, is starting at number 10. This is slightly disconcerted because that's the second time recently. We've actually started at number 10. At number 10, Teschovia. Test Javier 3, which is a Polish comedy, wasn't press screened or FTA listed. So have anyone seen it, please do write in and let us know.

Freakier Friday is at number 9, number 10 in America and Canada. Yeah, 7th week in the chart. So it has done really well, and I really enjoyed it. So I'm very pleased about that. And number 8 in the UK, The Sound of Music, 60th anniversary. Here's a great email from Christine Armstrong, Dear Maria and Captain. It has always been my favourite film. for my daughter's ninth birthday, a sing-along version was showing at the Prince Charles

Theatre in London. And instead of a birthday party, I took my daughter and three friends to see the film in some costumes that I'd made. We went up to Central London on the train, and as we approached the station, a man sitting nearby asked me if we were going to see the sound of music and introduced himself as the projectionist. So he knew what was coming. He invited us to see the projection room before the film. I seem to enjoy that far more than the girl. During the intermission, there was a costume parade on the stage. So imagine this. Christine Armstrong says,

My Girls won, beating several nuns, some bees, a baroness, and a mountain. Truly magical memories. Imagine thinking, I'm going to go to the sound of music, and I'm going to wear a costume, and I'm going to go as a mountain. Which is extraordinary. Anyway, thanks for all the years of fun. And A-V-L-T-L-L. a very long term, is that, and now grey-haired feminist. Christine, thank you. I wish I'd gone to that.

That would have been incredible. Yeah, honestly. But the Prince Charles had been selling out Sound of Music sing-alongs for ages and ages. And what a wonderful institution that Prince Charles are and what a wonderful institution, Sound of Music, is. And I would remind you that we had a letter years and years ago from a listener who had gone to see the Sound of Music when they were a child, and they thought that the intermission was the end of the film. So they thought it was a film that ends with the Nazis invading, and that was the end of the film. It was only years later they discovered that there was a whole other half. You have a better memory than me. What role do the bees have in the sound of music? Yeah, the bees is, that was kind of evading me. Does somebody

I get the Baroness, I get the nuns, I get the mountain, obviously. No, no, I, yes, I, yeah, no, I could have gone as a goat turd. Everyone is shouting at, every, everyone is shouting at the screen telling us, incidentally, test jovia in-laws. It means in-laws, I just looked it up. Oh, right. Okay. Anyway, if anyone can explain the bees in the sound of music, that would be fun. Number seven in the UK, number 12 in America and Canada, is Bad Guys 2. Ninth week, big animated sequel hit, same as the first one, but a little bit more. Number six, here and there, a big, bold, beautiful journey.

Someone called Full Time Meow, Meow on YouTube. Genuinely enjoyed the movie throughout. I loved it. It's an incredibly well-made film, and Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell are both phenomenal. It made me smile and cry, and Joe Hissiyashi's music made it even more whimsical and touching. This movie definitely touched my heart. It felt like warm-hearted therapy. Everyone, please don't ignore or disrespect the feelings of those who truly enjoy and love this movie. Oscar Wheeler, Big Bob Beautiful Journey is technically a perfectly fine film.

It made me feel something even if it wasn't a lot. However, seeing as it's from Cogonada, this is the disappointment of the year for me. Yeah. I think after Yang is excellent, and Columbus is one of my all-time favorite films. And with him having not written this film, it becomes very clear that his skill for crafting naturalistic dialogue is a skill almost nobody has on that level besides a very select few like Charlotte Wells. Yeah. So just to answer the first email, of course I'm not disrespecting people enjoying it. As I said, when I reviewed it, I said some people will, some people will like it. Some people will absolutely hate it, because some people will find. that it doesn't work. I was disappointed by it, firstly because, as the second emailer said, in terms of Koganada's filmography, this isn't up to snuff. But you kind of, you've got to admire what the scale of its ambition. The problem is that the central fantastical conceit never feels natural enough and never relaxed into it to be engulfed in it, in the way that I was, for example,

in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I did say also, though, if you think the film keeps feeling like it's about to burst into dance, then do stay to the end because that does have a payoff to that thread. But I think it looks amazing and I admire the ambition, but it didn't work for me. But I'm glad that it has worked for somebody else. And of course I wouldn't disrespect that. That's fine. If you enjoy a film, that's a good thing. Because, you know, paying to see a film in a cinema and having a good experience, particularly in the current climate, is a very good thing. Philip Raby says, in your recent review of a Big Bowl, Beautiful Journey, starring Colin Farrell, Marker Robby, you didn't mention the age gap between Farrell and Robbie, which, among other things, adds to the implausibility of the story.

Farrell is 49, Robbie is 35. So a 14-year-old age gap. Now, he goes on, Philip, but I don't think 14 years is worth commenting on. But anyway, not quite as grotesque as Colin Firth and Emily Blunt in Arthur Newman, 23-year gap, let alone Firth and Emma Stone in Magic in the Moonlight, 28 years. Robert Redford was not immune to this discrepancy, 24 years older than Kristen Scott Thomas in the Horse Whisperer. I could go on. Clint Eastwood René Russo in the line of fire 24 years. And the most extreme, Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta Jones in entrapment, 39 years. Apart from Hal Ashby's 1971 film, The Reverse is Rarer Than Hens Teeth. I suggest we create a new gag category, G-A-G, to describe A, the gender age gap and be the correct response to this insidious form of sexism. Philip, you have some, you know, it's a fair point. Obviously, historically, that turns out to be true. I'm not sure that a 40, I think, look, my parents were 10 years, my dad was 10 years old

than my mother. So I'm not sure that 14 is worthy of comment, really, but what do you say? Well, you know, I'm younger than the good lady professor her indoors. I, it didn't, it didn't, in a world in which the whole idea of casting very old male stars against very young female stars, this did not seem like it was worthy of comment in this film because it just didn't feel like a significant gap. Number five is the roses, which I still haven't seen because I went to see Demon Slayer instead. So I was catching up from the week that we were away and I thought I'm going to go for Demon Slayer, which we'll get to.

Craig in Glasgow on the Long Walk, which is number five in Canada and number four here. Dear Mark and Simon, sorry, this is a long one, but bear with me. I saw the long walk before hearing Mark's review. And afterwards, I was struck by something you often say that cinema is shaped by what we bring to it. Three years ago, I moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow. It's been one of the best decisions I've made, but it also meant putting distance between me and my best friend of 32 years. During that time, he went through an unimaginable stretch of loss, including three close family members. Always upbeat, I could see he was struggling beneath the

surface. Last week, he stayed with me for three days, and I'm thrilled to say he seemed like himself again. The pain hasn't gone, but he's refusing to let it define him. We spent the time talking, laughing, and appreciating every second together, which brings me to the long walk. Many reviews focus on its bleakness. And yes, it's grim and graphic, a reminder of how he's. A reminder of how totalitarianism can take hold, but I found it deeply beautiful. It's a story about friendship, love and life itself. We all know where we start, but not where we'll end. Everyone we love will suffer and die, and one day we'll join them. But the relationships we build, the ones that carry us through make it all worthwhile. Ray and Pete's friendship felt like one of the

truest depictions of love I've ever seen on screen. With its layers and themes packed into a tight one hour 45, I think the long walk is a masterpiece. Maybe the best film I've seen in years, but maybe that's just because of what I brought to it. After the credits rolled, I messaged my friend to recommend it. That night, he sent me a video walking into a pub, greeted warmly by our mutual friends, and he wrote, friendship, isn't this a thing of beauty? And I couldn't have put it better myself. Love the show. Big up to the production team, unnecessary to put that at the end, Craig. But anyway, part of that, Craig and Glasgow, on the long walk at number four. Well, the thing I'd say to that is I do agree about it's what you bring to it.

if if when you see the long walk what you take away from it is a celebration of friendship and I think that speaks very highly of you for me the key thing is that those friendships are all couched within the fact that only one person will be alive at the end of this so all these friendships are necessarily doomed in the immediate and very near future and that's kind of that's something which also happens in the hunger games to do with any allegiances they are all in the end going only one way. But I think that's because I went into it, looking at it, well, thinking of it as it played out, as a political allegory that seemed horribly contemporary. But I think if you have taken in your feelings about friendship, and that has been reflected,

not just by you, but by other friends, by the sound of it, then I think that speaks very highly of you and your friends. And bravo. Number three, in the UK, number one, in Canada and America, Demon Slayer, Yeah, so I said I would go and see this, and you remember that I reviewed Mugentrain when it came out. And I said at the time, you know, it looked amazing. I didn't think that I was actually up to speed with all of it by any means at all, but I did enjoy watching it. So in the case of this, so it's Japanese anime based on, I'm going to read this because it's based on the Infinity Castle arc of the 2016-2020 manga series Demon Slayer Komitsuno Yaba. This is directed by Harrowo Sotazaki. and it is the sequel to the fourth season of the anime television series, as well as the manga, fourth, fifth, and sixth adaptations and following the film Mugentrain. Now, you can tell by the way that I'm saying that, even having seen the film, I'm not in any way fit to place it in context because the only thing I've seen of that for is Mugentrain.

But watching this, what I thought was pretty much the same as I thought with Mugentrain is it is visually spectacular, even when I wasn't up to speed with the plot. And there is a great deal of plot. I mean, there is some dizzyingly epic plot. It's not a short film. And it is the first in a trilogy that was announced in June 2024, immediately following the airing of the fourth season's finale. Apparently, it's grossed 55 million worldwide, highest grossing film of 2025 in Japan, highest grossing Japanese film worldwide, second highest grossing film in the country's history in ninth highest grossing film in 2025. So has done terrifically well. As I said, from my point of view, I thought as a piece of animation, it was exciting and there was so much stuff

going on, but I did feel the same way as I did with Mugentrain. I did then speak to somebody else about this who is much more well versed in it and said, is it just me or do you really have to be immersed in this to understand it? And what they said was, it's not where I would start if I was leaping in. Mugan Train is probably more accessible in terms of the plot, but it's not for me, but I enjoyed it as a piece of animation. And it's number one in America, but it's number three here. Number two here is the conjuring last rights.

And number one and number four in America, Downton Abbey, the grand finale. Plummy, plummy, plummy, plummy. Plummy, superplumns. Yeah, I mean, it's, Downton Abbey, the grand finale does exactly what it says on the tin. You know all those characters that you like? You know that building you like? You know that stuff you like?

Here it is. For the last time. Well, yeah, but do you actually believe that? We're going to be back very shortly, unless we're about good east to that, obviously. What are you doing next? Well, we will be reviewing The Strangers Chapter 2, but I will also be reviewing one battle after another, and you will be speaking too. PTA, the Parents, Teachers Association, also known as Paul Thomas Anderson on the way. When I'm this week's guest is the aforementioned Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the most unassuming people you could meet, especially for a man with 11 Academy Award nominations. You're going to hear our talk about his new film, one battle after another, after this clip from the movie.

Rise and shine. Add an eyelash. Good morning. There are no hints on the clock. Why? Because they're non-needed. What time is it? Uh, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't remember that part, all right?

Let's just not nitpick over the password stuff. Look, this is Bob Ferguson, all right? You just called my house. Let's, let's cut the, I need the rendezvous point. What time is it? Look, Steve Lockjaw just attacked my home. I lost my daughter. This is Bob Ferguson, you understand?

I don't remember any more of this, I don't remember any more of this code speaker, Right? Let's just get on with what is the rendezvous point? And that is a clip from one battle after another. Delighted to say I've been joined by its direct. Paul Thomas Anderson, how are you, Paul? I'm great. It's very nice to see you. Nice to see you.

Excited to talk about your movie after all these years? I kind of am, yeah. How long has it been from the original idea? Too long. It's embarrassing. I kind of wish I had never told the truth about how long I've been writing it because no one should ever write something for that long. Well, the figure I saw was two decades.

I remember writing pieces of it in 99 or 2000. sometime around then. Very little of it has survived since then, but enough, it's true, yeah. So is the spirit of the story the same? I think it is. I think I had the spirit of the story. I think that's a great question.

I think I had the spirit of the story and some specific trappings. Car chases, a desert, there was a bounty hunter, there was evil forces, there was a pursuit of some kind. You know, very broad, general way to think about something.

And I've just kind of dialogue written down. and some of it survived, but obviously has changed and moved. The origin being the Thomas Pynchon book, who you worked with before, and I have revised, but that's very loose, as I understand. I have read the book. Well, it's funny, because, you know, it's the classic definition of it is, but it isn't, you know, which is a really irritating thing to say. But the bounty hunter story that I had from 20 years ago is completely separate.

Vineland has a terrific, the center of our story in Vineland are very similar. What happens when a group of ex-revolutionaries kind of crumble in on them, themselves, or revolutionaries crumble in on themselves, and disband. Vineland kind of picks up with a character named Zoid Wheeler living in the woods with his daughter Prairie. And because of the 80s Reagan administration coming in, they've kind of decided to cancel all previous deals with anybody who had rented anybody out back in the old days, you know. And so significantly more complicated than our story, I think we sort of stole and ran with

the simplest premise of what happens when your past comes back to Hong Kong. It occurred to me in the first half out of the film that this is a kind of a politically fraught time to be introducing a movie which begins with an act of kind of leftist-inspired terrorism, for want of a better word. And I wonder if that's what Stephen Spielberg was addressing when he said this film is more relevant now than when you started writing it. Yeah, it's funny, though, isn't it? Because my feeling about it is the more things change, the more they stay the same. How could somebody start writing this movie 20 years ago, me? and how could Thomas Pinchon start writing a movie, him, you know, put it out in 1984, and still somehow these things all still make sense.

I mean, I think that leads to the very nice line in the film that Perfidia says, which is 16 years later, the world had changed very little. I think that the point is we may think that we're changing a lot, but we are still the same, seem to be acting as the same idiots that we always have. Okay, so this leftist group at the beginning of French 75. So are they like weather underground? In fact of the idea. Yeah, we stole all that from there, you know, that kind of idea.

What happened? They were incompetent, really. The only people they blew up with themselves, so. Hey, they did. They didn't get far, it's true. They did blow themselves up and a full, and a building in Greenwich Village, yeah, an entire building went down. I took the idea of the weather underground and just throwing them up into a contemporary situation, you know, what would happen. You don't need a weatherman to know.

which way the wind blows. That's right. And so on from there. So Leonardo DiCaprio is a main character. He's certainly on the side of the buses around London. He said he's wanted to work with you. He was close to doing boogey nights and then he couldn't do it because he was doing Titanic. Is that? Is that true? Well, it's not that, Greg. It's a bit more black and white than that. He decided to do Titanic instead of boogie nights. That's a choice. That's a very big choice that he made with his life. And he's had to learn to live with it. Yes. I think he said he regrets. I've made him suffer for 25 years. I think it was a very tough decision for him to make.

I think at the time, I was not a proven filmmaker at all, and I was kind of starting out. We really connected. We immediately kind of hit it off. I think that he'd been in enough films that no one had really seen at all, that he kind of felt like this is an interesting opportunity with James Cameron, and so he made that decision. And the funny thing that kind of gets looked over in this story, and this really speaks to his generosity. At the time, he had made the basketball diaries with Mark Wahlberg, which hadn't come out yet. He said, I can't do this movie, but you should really talk to Mark. I know you, because everybody thought of him as the underwear model at the time.

He was in his Calvin Klein's, and he was kind of a rapper and Marky Mark, you know. And Leo said, take him seriously, meet him, he's your guy. And he was so generous in handing that off to Mark. And like anything, you get the right person, you know. I know we got the right person. Mark was the right person for that part. Leo wasn't probably the right person at that time for that part. So these things always end up, you get the person you're supposed to get. Yeah.

You have a fantastic cast working throughout this film. And after about an hour, I did wonder if this is going to be the film of the year. And I kind of think that it probably is. That's where I told Mark anyway. So I don't know what he thinks. He's going to be seeing it very soon. So Leo plays Bob, and he's the father of Willer. That's right.

played by this extraordinary actor you have, who has the incredible name of Chase Infinity. Her presence on the camera is astonishing. Can you just explain how you came to work with Chase Infinity? Well, I'll tell you exactly how. I guess I prayed enough to the movie gods that they delivered me the promised child. Well, I don't know if it works like that.

I have to hope and think that it does work like that, you know, because I got lucky. I mean, I knew I knew I would try to get Leo for this. This would be great for Leo and Sean can play this part and Benicio can play this part. And oh my gosh, I've got Tiant. Now you go on down the list of all these terrific actors, but to find a girl to play a 17-year-old, very specific, she has to be mixed race. She has to have the physical abilities and martial arts, this kind of stuff. Finding that, you need to find somebody new, you know.

So you go through a search that you're prepared to take years or however long. And we did. We searched for years. And when she came our way, it was like, it was just meant to be. Terrific. The movie gods have clearly said, okay, we'll grant you this wish. Is it right that you filmed the ending first with her? Yeah.

The very first stuff that we shot was them and their house together, you know, to really understand the beginning of their relationship. So it's their breakfast table conversations. And the first time they're, I don't want to give too much away. But they're kind of nagging at each other a little bit. And then maybe they're reunited at the end. Maybe, maybe. He knows.

and the car chase is this your first car chase I mean it sure feels like it I might have absolutely in liquor's pizza we had a car chase that was a non-car chase it was just a car going backwards down a hill but it was I don't count that yeah it doesn't count so where do you where do you film that because that looked like a stretch of road

I hadn't seen in a film well thanks for saying that I don't think you have I think it's in the kind of eastern southern part of California desert between burago springs and the border of Arizona and it's a stretch of land I should really remember what the highway it is is called. I'm going to get that. But we just called it the river of hills because it was just like this kind of long river of rolling hills. And yeah, hopefully no one shot it before but

us, kind of virgin territory. I wonder if people are going to go to the river of hills in future and they're going to do the, they're going to do the ride. And that'd be cool. That would be cool. I suspect they will. Can I ask you about the music because you work with Johnny Greenwood again. I should say before I forget, Magnolia is one of my favorite films. And I was not really a student of Amy Mann until that film. And Great Tears Super Tramp all the way through a movie, and we lost with Davis course very recently. But anyway, so music is always very important to you.

You've worked with Johnny Green, but many times this is the fifth time you've worked with him. What did you ask him for? Okay, let's think. I mean, I think one of the nice things about collaborating for that long is that there is no beginning, middle or end. It just kind of keeps going. So the material that maybe we've had, he's presented to me that maybe didn't fit before, but maybe now has an opportunity to fit.

You have a little bit of that. We talked about something percussive in terms of energy and propulsion and percussion also including piano. I'd heard some... These I would noodle around with some piano stuff that I had heard before. So that came to life.

We got into a little Baden Powell obsession for a little while, so that leads to some beautiful guitar stuff. It was kind of all over the map and how to kind of make it seem cohesive because some of the direction was a bit all over the place. But he's the earliest collaborator. One of them, certainly, and has the script and gets dailies, and he gets to see the direction that the movie's going.

We are blessed by having some demo music that he has sent me and that we play while we watch dailies each night to see how things are lining up, and then I can send to him. So it's constantly emotion. There's kind of no beginning, middle, or an end. Like I said, it's just kind of always happening until we get to narrow it down. He's the first person that sees the movie, is it's being cut along. Every 10 minutes, we send him 10 minutes, 10 minutes. It's very intertwined, I guess, is a long-winded way to say we're stuck together. I came out of the movie wanting to see it again straight away, and then when I've seen it

twice, I shall then listen to the school, because I feel as though I need to, I want to see it again and see all these characters and the story that you've created all over again, because I think that's what people are going to want to do. You shot on VistaVision. Yeah. So 35-mill, high-resolution, why? Can you explain to a layman why you chose that? Well, VistaVision, obviously, maybe for those aficionados who remember, it was something that Hitchcock used a lot by Northwest, the searchers, John Ford, shot VistaVis. So terrific films that not only are large scale, there's a large format for beautiful, large vistas and things like this, but also can get right in there close, nice big close-ups,

and you can see everything that's happening in an actor's face. I really fell in love with the format. Well, at first really came to it in 2012 when we were testing things for the master before we got into that. But in 2019, Tom York and I made a short film called Anima and we shot with this format. And it became really clear to me like, this is really, we did these blowups to IMAX and showed Anima around town. And it became clear to me that this was kind of going to be a format that I love to work in because it could do big and it could do small at the same time. Really versatile format. I'm really nice to see it making a comeback.

And the thing that we've done that I think is very special is, you know, here at least in London, three cities in the state. We're going to have VistaVision prints, which is something unless you were around 61 years ago going to the movies, you won't have seen before. I didn't take a pen into the screening, so I didn't have anything to write it on. But I think Benicia del Toro's, is it freedom is no fear? I wanted to write it down and then forgot it almost straight away.

Is that the line that he has? That's right, yeah. I wonder if that's sort of almost at the heart of the whole film, really. I hope so. It's funny when you kind of look back at the film. When I look back, I see just how many people are talking about. freedom through the whole movie. And Bob says it kind of early on. He's kind of improvises that he's talking about freedom with this young suitor who's come to the door, who he's really

beaten the hell out of, right? But the freedom is no fear line comes from Nina Simone in the great documentary about her. An interviewer asks her, what does freedom mean to you? And she says, I have no idea. I have no idea. And then like a bolt of lightning, she says, hang on, hang on, hang on, I know what it is. It's no fear. That's what it is. It's no fear. That just sort of rang through my head so much. And it kind of, by the time we got to towards the end of the film, we were seeing that stuff with Sensei to put that in his mouth. But it has to become like Sensei would say it. So he kind of has his own version of it. Do you know what freedom is? No fear. Just like Tom fucking Cruz. You know, that's right. I should mention it's absurd. There are

many times in this film where you will laugh. That's a great line. But no, it is. But it's particularly the white supremacists. You can say, you have to laugh at this. You have to laugh at these people, even though they're terrifying and hideous, and appear to be back. But laughter is such a vicious tool. Yeah, it's, you know what I mean? It's a weapon, sure. You got it. If you're not laughing, you're going to be crying. So let's, you know, I think that's, that's, that's, that's my weapon choice right now for this film. It works well, no? It does. It absolutely works well. Would you say the moral of this film is, don't forget your password. No fear. Don't forget your. There should be a checklist. Don't forget your password. No fear just like Tom Cruise. Oh, I like that. That is the moral center of the movie. Don't forget your password.

Paul Thomas Anderson, thank you very much. Cheers. Thank you. And although the full context of don't forget your password, you won't understand until you see the film. It actually is hinted out by the clip that we played. It is right at the very beginning where he's saying what time is it. And the person on the other phone is saying he's being asked what the time is. That's the password. bit, and he can't remember, because he's an old, addled, stoned revolutionary, and he can't remember. So I was thinking, shall I mention this at the end? Because it's a bit of a giveaway, not realizing that it would be explained by the clip that we play. But it's always nice to make the director laugh at the end of the interview. I thought, can I just say, I mean, I've interviewed Paul Thomas Hansen a few times. That was a brilliant interview. That was absolutely brilliant. And I'm very, very jealous because you absolutely nailed that. Well, it was,

I thought it would be I wanted it to be nerdy enough because I knew because obviously he's made so many great films which you've liked that the the Johnny Greenwood stuff was important the VistaVision stuff was important

but also you know just the length of time it's taken him to write is amazing and the performances that he gets from his actors is astonishing anyway we haven't discussed this but

tell me what you think. Okay, so, well, obviously, new Paul Thomas Anderson, he's the guy behind Boogie Nights, master phantom thread, and of course, punch drunk love, which I love.

This was made, as you said in that interview, very much under the banner of the Nina Simone phrase, freedom is no fear, to which, you know, Panicio del Toro's character adds, you know, like Tom Cruise.

And I think this was a film that was made with the freedom of no fear. It is Paul Thomas Anderson's most brilliantly, you know, epic production. I mean, certainly since Magnolia, which is a small movie,

by comparison. I know it's one of your favourites. Johnny Greenwood's most out there score since there will be blood. Also, just in terms of how much the movie cost, I mean, it's an expensive movie for Paul Thomas Anderson, but bear in mind, Leonardo DiCaprio is bankable. So that's probably how it's all come about. More suggested by them based on Vineland, again, as was described in that interview by Thomas Pinchel, who, of course, Paul Thomas Anson, had previously adapted in inherent vice. Now, I have to say that Inherent Vice was my least favorite Paul Thomas Anderson film. This is right up there with my favorites shot on VistaVision, as you said, VistaVision puts it through the camera horizontally rather than vertically,

means you get a kind of clearer picture. It was really interesting that Paul Thomas Anderson said, what he liked about the VistaVision format was it can do big and it can do small. And he's talking about the clarity of the image in those circumstances. And the story, and there's no point in attempting to do a plot, Also, I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson would like the story to be explained because I think it needs to unfold. It is essentially, as he said in that interview, what happens when revolutionaries collapse in on themselves? And he described the film as a kind of collage

of deserts, car chase through that river of hills, wow, pursuit evil forces. So just as a setup, so Leo is Bob, who we first meet as a revolutionary, he was teamed up with Tiana Taylor's perfidia Beverly Hills, who's a revolutionary who both appalls and excites Sean Penn's Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw, who's a character and name who could have walked straight out of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or full metal jacket. So after Paphidia is captured, Bob and his daughter Willer, played by the brilliantly named, as you pointed out, Chase Infinity, who really is a discovery handed down by the movie Gods, goes into hiding. But years later, all you need to know is the past resurfaces and both find themselves fighting one battle after

another. And again, as Paul Thomas Hansen said, this is about what happens when the past comes back to haunt you. I remember reviewing there will be blood and saying that after about, you know, half an hour or something, I was thinking, this is redefining the grammar of cinema. And that's a phrase that I've stuck to in terms of that film. Half an hour, three quarters of an hour into this, I was thinking, what on earth is going on? Where is this going?

Where on earth is this all going to? It is a bewildering experience, a genuinely surprising movie made at a time that no movie that costs this much money should possibly be this experimental. I mean, I was reminded of watching Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and thinking, this is the biggest art house movie I've ever seen. The only way of describing this, well, let's have a go. So it's kind of like, imagine what it's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world would have been like if it hadn't been directed by, if it had been directed by Stanley Kubrick

and it was actually any good, sorry to Dave Norris. Or imagine if the Blues Brothers had been anything like as funny as it thought it was. Incidentally, a key element of the Blue brothers is laughing at the Nazis. And that whole thing that you brought up in the interview about the white supremacists who are laughably stupid, who are just, you know, the Christmas adventurers, who are laughable. And I think there is an element of that here. There are things in this movie that everyone will, you know, unless you don't like cinema, you want, it's, it's impossible to see this and not find stuff that you'll love. I think there's also things in it that some people will just reject and hate. But in a way, it's the combination of those two things that

makes it unmissible. It is a brilliant mix of chaos and order. And for me, and again, you brought this up in the interview, the thing that really holds it together is Johnny Greenwood's music. Paul Thomas Anderson, when he was talking to you, said, well, it's kind of all over the map, but that's what the movie is like. And he talks about the percussive energy and the percussion also being the piano and then the, you know, the bait and pal guitar and, you know, and ligity-like use of an, of an orchestra. And there is one extended sequence, which is just bananas, which is like 20 minutes long and he's held together by this piece of music by Johnny Greenwood. If you think about it, like in Spencer, Johnny Greenwood did this thing about taking a classical orchestra and then

replacing them one by one with free-form jazz players to kind of give the sense of order and authority collapsing. In the case of this, it's like it starts from a point of chaos and goes there from now. I remember in a recent interview, you asked somebody, how do you write chaos? Well, this is a how do you orchestrate? Paul Greengrass, exactly so. Here, how do you orchestrate chaos? And an interesting thing happened because I've just, this isn't just a plug. I have, you know, I've just finished writing this book about film music. And I'd interview Johnny Green with quite a lot about it because I love his scores. Anyway, he sent me this, I was asking him about how he, you know, how he'd done this amazing.

Because I think this, I think this score is made. This absolutely deserves to win the Oscar, whether it will or not, who knows, but it is clearly the most adventurous score of the year. And he sent me a message said, it's amazing what happens when you connect shonky, homemade software to a real mechanical piano and a drum kit. It's very old and new tech having unnatural issue. But if anyone asks, I played every note of that 20-minute cue. Then he sent me a little video of this machinery, this Heath Robinson-like machinery,

actually physically playing percussion and actually physically playing that mad piano thing. And I mean, I think Johnny Green was range is amazing. I think if you look at, you know, if you look at what he did with, there will be blood. If you listen to the beauty of fandom thread, If you listen to this, I mean, it's like Mika Levy, whose work goes from, you know, under the skin to Jackie to Monos, it's literate across the board.

But in the case of this, it's the most perfect distillation of what's going on on screen, and it manages to weld it altogether, this sense of organized chaos, this sense of old and new, of past and present, of acoustic, and, you know, I mean, it's genuinely breathtaking. I would say that I think Sean Penn is probably a deadlock for a supporting actor, Oscar, wouldn't you think? I mean, in any other film, the amount of time he's on screen would be the amount of time that the lead actor was on screen. Although actually Benicio del Toro has probably got a look in there. Leonardo DiCaprio gives it all, but never, let's never forget that his presence is probably the thing that made this able to happen. And he's very good. He's really good. You completely believe him as a stoner, useless, washed up, insecure,

revolutionary who's making a pretty bad job of bringing up his daughter. Yes, and also, in some performances in the past, he has leaned into being a Benicia del Toro caricature. There is none of that here. I think this is his most... This is like the antithesis, for example, of the performance that he gives in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So, and then, of course, you've got these brilliant performances by Tiana Taylor

and Chase Infinity. I mean, you know, the casting is great. the casting is perhaps, you know, a gift from the movie gods. But the thing I'd say about it is I knew when you sent me a message after you'd seen it saying, I think this might be the film of the year. And I was kind of terrified because whenever anyone says that, it's really worrying. But I did sit there thinking, I love cinema. I love cinema.

And I love the way that this is, I mean, there is so much going on. And it is so out there. and it is so far off the map in terms of what you're seeing. I mean, it was genuinely surprising, genuinely outrageous. I mean, genuinely outrageous. You were talking about the permission to laugh, and there is plenty of bits in it that are laugh out loud funny, but it does have a proper heart to it with those characters.

If Johnny Greenwood doesn't at least get nominated, and I think that win the Oscar, it will just remind us once again that the, you know, that the, well, the Oscars are nonsense, and the Oscar for Best Score is often particularly nonsense. But I just came out of it thinking, well, the same as you. It's not a short film, and I could quite happily go straight back in and watch that all over again, because it was blimey Charlie and then some.

The car chase in the River of Hills, which we don't have, which is, it felt really different because, well, you just have to see it, but you know, if you're actually in a car and you go over a bump and you haven't calculated it properly. You know that feeling in your stomach that when your insides feel as though they jump. I got that twice. As the camera is going with the cars going down the river of hills,

it was just like we were in it. And it's also worth saying as a sort of final point, and you did raise this in the interview. In the America of today, it is amazing that a story that was written back then And then the script that started 25 years ago, 26 years ago, it is amazing how much of this stuff, you know, you said yourself, white supremacists, they haven't gone away. On the contrary, one of them was having dinner at the White House not so long ago. And so there is something incredibly contemporary about its depiction of the modern. I saw it the day after Charlie Kirk was murdered. And when the backlash, when the backlash, was just starting and I did and that first half hour where they are left wing revolution who's committing acts of violence um I thought wow this I wonder if they're going to get in you know

wonder if this is going to have some kind of backlash against the film because of the way but then by the time you come out the other end of the film we go no no I think it's going to be I think it's going to be fine yeah no I loved it you loved it too right yeah I should say uh chase infinity that's her first and second name and the chase but she's named after uh character in Batman, and the infinity is to infinity and beyond. She's literally named after two bits of movie trivia. Wow. So it's out, and it's, they're her real names. Wow. Anyway, so whether it ends up being the movie of the year, we'll have to wait a little bit longer. Anyway, it's the ads in a minute mark, but first, it's your favorite part of the show

where we step with gay abandon into the laughter lift. And one of the jokes I don't get, but anyway, I'm just going to perform them. Also, I've had to, you will, this first one I've had to change. Okay, all right. Anyway, Mark, I've had quite a week. Have you told you? Yesterday evening at home, I put away the microscope, switched off the Bunsen burner, and carefully put the test tube back in the rack.

This is not what I meant when I said we should experiment in the bedroom, said the good lady ceramicist her indoors which as it's written here says the good lady professor her indoors and if that indeed had been the case the joke would have been an entirely different joke so anyway i really i did really used to enjoy chemistry at school though not as much as geography mark i knew a lad who knew what every single symbol on every single official ordnance survey map meant by heart and could tell you immediately on request what they were. He was a legend. He was a legend. Yeah, he was a legend. That's what you call. That's the kid. The legend is the, is the, um, the little box at the bottom of a map, which tells you what all

the symbols mean. Okay. That's the joke you should have rewritten. I didn't know. I never heard that. Okay. Well, he was a legend. Okay. Ha ha. For the purposes of this joke, Mark, I went to a psychic this week. Not a great experience. I can tell you. Very, very, very. unnerving. She said that in about 15 years I would experience unimaginable grief. This upset me so much I had to go and buy a little puppy. Yes. Okay, that works better because I could do the maths. At least legend had the media element. It's just written in the talk because the puppy is going to die. Yes, I know, Simon. I just thought it wasn't that kind of, I mean, also could you could you tell the good lady professor here indoors that I corrected the mistake before I actually

said it out loud. Well, that would have been funnier. Anyway, in the next bit of this show, what are you doing? The Strangers, Chapter 2, Part 2, Chapter 2, Chapter 2, I think, Chapter 2. Number 2, after this. Right, an email here from Helen Goodwin. Hi, L-TLs and FTEs, two-time attendee at the Union Apple live events. I'm a long-term listener, which began from a lifelong love of film and many years

of appreciating your work together and separately. But four years ago, it became so much more. My husband, Phil, was diagnosed with cancer in 2021. So at that time, your podcast became a weekly distraction and comfort during his treatment. It provided me with familiarity and normality in a very difficult period. It gave me an hour's respite. Whilst throughout Phil's treatment, we always took each set back as just a knock always trying to be glass half full, knowing that it would be all right in the end, but it wasn't. And after being given a terminal diagnosis at the start of February 2022, he lost his battle very quickly, and we lost him later that month. There aren't enough words to describe the devastation to me and all those who loved him, particularly our two children who

were 15 and 18 at the time. Every day since has been a daily management of grief and trying to retain a level of glass half full. I wanted to thank you both for continuing. to be a weekly distraction, comfort and respite. You don't just provide my weekly film reviews. Your friendship and talk of your families always makes me smile. My kids are my everything. They make me proud every day. From you both, I get to hear good people talking with such warmth and humour about their families alongside the film reviews. So thank you. Please don't ever stop. He's a bit of a commitment there, actually Helen. But anyway, thank you very much. From Helen Goodwin, actually Nottingham based, I timed the drive to return my daughter to Bath Spa University.

specifically so I could tend the book signing. I imagine this is another plug for your bookmark. So there you go. That's what she did. Well, thank you for that email, which is very moving to hear and, you know, send lots of love to you and your family. And we've got an email.

We were going to include this last week, but then we ran out of time. Ed Freshwater has been on with us. Dear Brodie and Hooper, which I hope makes the redactor, which I suppose makes the redactor quint, which I suppose it does. It was a real delight to meet Mark while he was shamelessly profiteering from his belated writing in Birmingham on Friday night.

A great night. I mean, you've been a tart, haven't you in the last? I have. That's why I lost my voice. It was a great night, and I'm already enjoying the book. I wanted to echo other listeners' messages of support for our fellow church member, Willow. This is a couple of weeks ago. Her own smelly pants wee time sounds very difficult, and I know the whole listenership are united in solidarity. If anyone knows the depths of stinky pantsness, it's me, and the best advice is to keep going. One small, step is still progress, and even when things go backwards, just keep going. Even if it's not all, even if it's not all right in the end, some things work out. The future, while not the one you imagined, will have good things worth waiting for. There might well be a shark in the water, but it's not about the shark. Might I also suggest cake as a very helpful coping strategy

and, of course, shouting stinky pants in an underpass, down with the idiots, up with fart noises, Ed, Millie, Arlo and Team Kip. Well, thank you. Ed, it was a privilege to see you there, and it was really made the evening, and thank you for that email, and thank you for being you. And there is something pleasing.

And Ed also has, always has done, gives you an excuse to shout something when you're in an underpass. Exactly. Other than, underpass. Underpass, underpass. Which is John Fox.

But to shout stinky pants just does feel like a release. It does. It really does. It's something to carry on. Ed, thank you, and Helen, thank you. The emails to correspondence at covenomero.com. Tell us about a movie that might be out. What is that? The Strangers, Chapter 2. Now, I know you'll remember this, Simon, but the Strangers series started in 2008 with Brian Bertino's film about three masked invaders and starring among others, live Tyler. Very mixed reception, but did well at the box office. Then, when Strangers 2 prey at night came out 10 years later, Um, all the reviews said, oh, well, Strangers 2, Pray at Night is nothing, uh, it's not a patch on the original, which we were now regarding as a, as a cult classic. Fast forward to this decade. And then Rennie Harlin, helming a new triology of Stranger's films, the first of which came out last, last year, felt pretty pointless.

Now we have this, which is part two of the new triology, as opposed to part two of the series of which it's actually part four. So, written by Alan R. Cohen, Alan Friedland, stars Madeline Petch Asmire, who is the survivor of Chapter 1, which you'll remember is not the first movie, but the third movie. So, we meet her in hospital, badly wounded, grieving for her boyfriend slash fiancé, which he becomes at the end of the film, who died at the end of the first film. She's having nightmares about her assailants. Of course, the assailants are scarecrow, dull face and pin-up girl, the last of whom told her that she was doing all this because you're here. Here's a sort of trailery clip. Come on, Sheriff. We all want to hear about who killed that young couple.

Why are you doing this, done? Because you're here. The girl didn't die. That's the way to hell. So you're the one everybody's talking about. The only one that survived. You're stabbed, right? What did feel like?

I felt like they liked it. It was some kind of ritual. So, anyway, so she's still here, so they're still doing it. And most of the movie consists of her running in various states of woundedness, through hospitals, through woods, through houses, a lot of it in the rain, all inevitably ending up with the reappearance of the three masked figures walking very slowly and yet somehow still outpacing her trying to kill her because she's here

and at one point in order to spice things up she is attacked by a giant bore and wasn't expecting that no and when this happens everyone in the cinema I guarantee you suddenly thought oh you know what that Leo fighting a giant CGI bear in the revenant wasn't actually was sort of weirdly shunky as it looked

And here we go, because it's unbelievable that they didn't think of this while they were doing this. She is very nearly bored to death, and she's not the only one. Thank you very much. That's the best gag. It was. Rennie Harlem was once a perfectly decent director. I mean, he made Diard 2 and Cliffhanger, and the wheels came off with Cutthroat Island. Then he got his mojo back with Long Kiss Good Night, which I liked.

And then he lost it again with Exorcist to the beginning, which incidentally had a bunch of shonky CGI wolves in it. And he hasn't really done anything of interest since then. So the idea that he's got a big horror franchise, well, you know, good for his career. I mean, Chapter 1 took $48 million against an $8 million spend. This cost $9 million. It'll may...

I actually, I don't think it'll do as well as Chapter 1 because it's not very good. So on the plus side, you could argue that he knows how to put a chase sequence together, and this is basically one long chase sequence. Also, you could argue that the whole... you hear thing. You know, it's like, oh, it's like Texas chainsaw or Halloween. You know, there's no rhyme. There's no reason. It's just, it's just terror. But then I remember interviewing Peter Straub, the writer Peter Straub once. And he was talking about Halloween 8 or whatever it was.

And he said, it's just a guy with a knife. It's literally there isn't anything else. It's just a guy with a knife. But in the case of this, the whole thing about the purity of it's just because you're here. In this one, you get a whole bunch of super hokey backstory, filling out how the strangers became the strangers. So even that idea about, well, it's just because you're here. No, actually, it's not because you're here. It's because this thing happened when we were kids, and we're going to see the thing that happened when we were kids.

So, fine. I mean, there are some things in it that are really dumb. There's one bit in it in which our heroine, she's in a morgue being chased by the scary people, and she climbs into one of the morgue drawers, you know, she's in there with a corpse, and she shuts the door, right? And then the scary people come in and they look around, they look around, they don't. Then she gets out.

And you go, how? She shut the door. It's got a handle on the outside. It's like a fridge. It's like one of those fridges that you were told in all those public information films when we were kids. Never go onto a dump to play, you know, a rubbish dump because there'll be a fridge. You will climb in the fridge and die because you can't open them from the inside. You actually see the inside of the door and it hasn't got a handle on it.

So firstly, how? What? She's like Jack Nicholson in the Shining, get stuck in the freezer, that Supernatural forces let her out. Also, note to writers, if somebody gets stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors, they're dead, right? Unless they're not dead in this particular case. A couple of evil dead shots in the woods reminded me that the evil dead was a very long time ago now, 40 years ago, something like that, and was much better. And every time the masked people turned up again, I didn't think yikes, I just thought, really, really? I mean, so at the end, there is a

trailer for chapter three, which suggests that this is all going the only way it can ever go. He said, or violence will beget violence. And I have a horrible feeling that we're seeing the birth of a next generation. But it was, I mean, look, I have a softness for a throwback 70 slash movies, or throw about 80 slash movies in the case of the actual, you know, the prey at night. But this, I just thought it was depressing. I just thought it was a depressing experience. And I was very nearly, and I'm going to do it again, bored. To death. To death.

Yeah. Also, when did, so presumably it's the old fridges that had handles on. Because now, if you got, obviously, don't do it. But now if you got stuck in a modern fridge, you just pushed the door open and it would be okay. Exactly. Obviously, at some stage, we all realise that having handles on these things is a dumb idea. Really dangerous. But in a hospital morgue, those doors only have handles on the outside because the people on the inside are dead.

Usually, you're never quite sure, though, are you? mistakes have been made so it should be a little button that you can press I'm not dead I'm feeling better I think I'll go for a walk could you come back in half an hour Ian Gale

finally dear man of the people the man of the world having listened to the tales you have recounted of various wasp adjacent encounters I thought I might add my own in 1981 I was a keen 21 year old pilot under training in the RAF having earned my wings

earlier in the year, I was undergoing a fast-jet tactical weapons training course, low-flying, bombing, strafing, the usual life skills you need, at a now closed R.A.F. Chivina in North Devon. On one weekend, the station Open Day was happening, the grand finale of which was a display by the Red Arrows. I was right at the front of the crowd, eagerly anticipating their arrival, and at six-foot-four tall, in full view of everyone. Just as the arrows arrived from behind, I felt a slight tickle in my nether

regions. And as a young man well versed in the art of pocket billiards, I casually reached down for a scratch. Imagine my surprise then when what can only have been a special forces trained stealth wasp, which had presumably crawled unnoticed up the inside of my trouser leg, promptly stung me on my Mr. Happy. Adopting the full tuck position, I collapsed in full view of the crowd, while grabbing the affected area with both hands. Once I had regained the power of independent motion, I limped to the nurse's station, emitting my own trail of red and blue smoke, where the on-duty nurse, apparently recently retired from the East German shot put team, invited me to drop my trousers, so see you could have a look. Having had my fill of foreign

bodies invading my underpants, I declined and popped into a toilet cubicle to inspect the damage, only to find that the now very angry wasp was still alive and ready for round two. No! A brief yet violent fight, worthy of Jason Bourne. then took place before I finally emerged victorious and insistent that all I needed was some TCP and a cotton bud because this was the 80s and everything was cured thus. Fortunately, no long-term damage occurred and while it may have not had the potential life-threatening potential of swallowing one, I still don't recommend it.

Up with a good, down with the bad, hello to Jeremy Irons and hooray for top production teams everywhere, Ian Gale. Well, can I just say as a sort of as a sign-off to that, which I think is some, that's a marvellous email. And actually, they should have made that the plot of Strangers Chapter 2. I did figure out the sound of music. And the bee, so from the wasp, stinging Mr. Happy, presumably making him Mr. Unhappy, it's when the dog bites, when the bee stings. When I'm feeling glad. I simply remember my favorite things. And then Mr. Happy doesn't feel so sad. I feel that's a bit of a stretch, really. If you're going in fancy dress to the sound of

music to go as a B, which is one throwaway line in a song. I'm not quite sure, but anyway, thank you very much indeed. 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 Jim Redactor, who was Paulie McPoolface. And if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcast. And a reminder that you can now watch every new episode on our YouTube channel.

So head on over. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, in any other week, it would have been dead of winter, but in this week, it's absolutely one battle after another. Thank you very much indeed for listening. Another podcast has landed adjacent to this one. It's called Take Two. See you then.