Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Jack O’Connell on 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Some exciting news—The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo. Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member‑only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show—a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. The chilling on screen (but charming IRL) Jack O’Connell joins us on the Take this week to talk 28 Years Later: the Bone Temple. Directed by Nia DaCosta, who loyal listeners may remember from our live Christmas Extravaganza, it’s the second installment in a sequel trilogy to Danny Boyle’s zombie smash hit. Jack talks tracksuits, tiaras and being the most villainous actor of the past year—plus lots more on-set insights from the horror-thriller that’s got you all talking. Don;t miss this one! Mark reviews Bone Temple too, plus more of this week’s fresh new films. First up, Rental Family—which sees Brendan Fraser’s Philip join a Japanese agency providing fake ‘family for hire’ for its clients’ social and companionship needs. Plus a tougher but important watch, The Voice of Hind Rajab, which replays the tragic death of six-year-old Hind Rajab—killed in Gaza in January 2024—based on real audio of her final recorded calls to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the efforts of its volunteers to save her life. Plus all the usual top quality nonsense on all things film-related and beyond, and your emergency mails of course. Thanks for listening! Timecodes with YT clip codes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free) Rental Family review 09:55 Box Office Top 10 - 17:23 Jack O’Connell interview - 44:30 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple review 59:15 Laughter Lift - 1:15:14 The Voice of Hind Rajab review 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

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Free offer, now available, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. Well, it's very nice to be a part of your life again. Here we go with another take. From your good friends at the take, he's Mark in a new t-shirt, and I'm Simon in an old shirt. I thought I do a traditional greeting. Yeah, but it was because last week, last week I had my Kurt Vonnegut t-shirt, which said, God damn it, you've got to be kind, which is one of my favorite quotes. And you said that because the way I was sitting or because the way the camera was positioned. All you can see was God damn it, which is a rather more aggressive quote. So I'm now wearing the other Kurt Vonnegut quote t-shirt that I got for Christmas from the Good Lady Press for her indoors, which is this one,

which is everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. But a lot of the time, it just, all I can see is everything was beautiful, which I thought to start with was like a Ray Stevens tribute t-shirt. Everything was beautiful. Everything is beautiful, so the tent was wrong. So I knew there was something else coming. But that's just overall a slightly more positive t-shirt. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. I love Kurt Vonnegut. Have you read Kurt Vonnegut at all? No. Child One is a big fan. That would make sense. Yeah. Because Child 1 generally kind of likes science fiction. Is that right? Yes, I would say that's right. He's a big consumer of that. In fact, I was talking to him

this morning. And so yes, and he was a big fan of Pluribus. And we were slightly put out by the fact that it sounds that it's going to be a long time before there's a second season, which is really, really frustrating. Yeah, but she did win an award. She's won everything. Yeah, she won everything, yeah. Good for her.

Speaking of literary matters, the room in which I'm speaking to you, which I've always done my, always done the show from, with all the discs in the background, was over Christmas the place, it became a bedroom. So this is where Oscar, grandson one, slept. Okay, so this is where all the bedtime reading took place, which is why this book is still knocking around, which is the cat in the hat comes back by Doctor's Use. Yes.

And I thought I'd read something to you from it. Excellent. With some help, we can do it, said Little Cat C. Then Pop on his head, we saw Little Cat D. Then Pop, Pop, Pop, Little Cats, E, F and G. We will clean up that snow if it takes us all day. If it takes us all night, we will clean it away, said Little Cats, G-F-E-D, C-B and A. And the reason that I'm reading that out is what Doctor's Use has done there is change the order of the letters that they should come in

to make the rhyme work. Yes. And when I read this out, my thought went back to you being rude about Billy Joel, about tonic and gin. Tonic and gin. Which works perfectly well. as a rhyme because this is what rhymessters do. They change the words around to make the rhyme work. So there you go. If it's good enough for doctor's use, then tonic and gin works perfectly well for the piano. I've just always imagined Billy Joel going up to a bar and going,

evening, I'll have a tonic and gin. I'm going, what's... It's poetry. It's a poetry mark, and then you can do that kind of thing. What are you doing later in this show? So loads of reviews, Rental Family, which is the new film with Brendan Fraser. when we say Brendan Fraser, we have to go,

George, George, George, George of the jungle. Watch out of that the tree. And then a very, very... I love that show. That's brilliant. Yeah, brilliant. Then a very harrowing, I'm extremely harrowing movie called The Voice of In Rajab, which, well, we'll come to it, but it's a very tough watch. And then 28 years later, the Bone Temple,

which brings us to our very, very special guest. Yes, it's the leader of the jibbies in that film. 28 years later, Bone Temple is Jack O'Connell, who has never been on the show before. Now, as I say to him in the interview, we have talked about him and the films that he's been in for a long time, and I completely forgotten that he was in the Jodie Foster film,

Money Monster. He's the guy who actually takes George Clooney hostage, and I completely forgotten that that was Jack O'Connell back in the day. Anyway, and reviews in take two. There's a reissue of the Lord of the Rings extended versions in cinemas, We'll have a quick look at that. And Miss Moxie, which is a cartoon for young people. Did you say we're going to have a quick look?

Yeah, I know. It was kind of... That's not possible, is it really? No, because the total running time is it, I think it's 12 hours. There you go. Plus all the extra other stuff, including details of all the best and worst films on TV over the weekend. More on Brendan Fraser rolls in one frame back. Plus questions, shmestians, in which we answer the excellent question.

What is the most overrated adult? goal that people chase. And don't forget our extra Ultra show Take Ultra, which is available as a cheeky lunchtime treat to stream every other Wednesday, so every by Wednesday, as a video episode on Patreon or as an audio podcast or on your usual fruit or non-fruit-based device. It includes hot takes and cold comforts in which we take the fervently expressed views from our YouTube channel and give them a proper airing as enacted by the production team. Yes. Every by Wednesday, I don't. think that's a phrase which has ever been used before.

Sorry. In fact, may well have other connotations. What are you celebrating? I'm celebrating by Wednesday. Anyway, go to patreon.com. You can vote in our latest Hall of Fame topic, which is the needle drop. It's a short list of 10 there, and you can vote for your favourite. We'll induct the winner on the next.

Take Ultra. Head to patreon.com slash Kermudemarmeo. and you can sign up from there. Correspondence at cobbidemeo.com is the traditional way to get in touch. Dear Anton Deck says Mark MacDonald in Alva, Clack Manningshire. I was sad to hear that Claire Foy's dad could not confirm that she will be on the show in 2026. Perhaps his sister should have been asked. I understand she is Claire Foyant. Very good.

Well done. Love the show, Steve. Actually, she has confirmed. She has confirmed. Is she coming on the show? Yeah, let's hear it for Claire Foy's. Dad. Fine.

So Claire Foy's dad has got Claire Foy on the show for H's for Hawke. That's right. Fantastic. So that's going to be very, very good. That's brilliant. Yeah. So thanks Claire Foy's dad who listens to the show. Ed says, is Ed Freshwater?

Dear pastel and bass guitar. Although it's pastel. It's written that way. Anyway, I do love you guys very much, but sometimes you're very silly sausages. Okay. Why don't Vocal Zone sponsor the show? Why doesn't the economist sponsor the show despite you mentioning them all the time?

Because you mention them all the time for absolutely nothing. If it helps you convince their makers, though, I will undertake not to buy any of their products until they sponsor the show. Yours, sadly, geopolitically uninformed and with a sore throat, Ed Freshwater. Thank you.

Kevin in Belfast, dear Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan, Thanks to your aggressive Gorilla Marketing of Vocal Zone on your previous podcast, I have now purchased some. I am a singer in a very loud prog rock band

and record my own audio books and expect this to be a prime investment. By my reckoning, they owe you at least a quid minus tax. Let us know about your very loud prog rock band because I think they sound very interesting. Thank you, Kevin.

And then in a staggering plot twist, Mark. Yes. Dear Simon and Mark, says another Mark, the marketing manager at Vocal Zone. I think we'll use some Vocal Zone. What would be the best address to send some to, please? Thank you very much for all your support. We really appreciate it. And indeed, here is there's some traditional ready to go.

But the point is, Mark, I'm not asking for a freebie. I want you to support the program with finance. Money. Yes, that's right. I want to be able to say this show is brought to you by... Vocal Zone. No, but okay, what I don't want to say is this show is brought to you by strepsels because Vocal Zone users laugh at Strepsils because of their weediness.

But the Vocal Zone people are cooler. So that's what I want to do. So, Mark, thank you very much indeed. I mean, you can send them in by all means, but it would be a sponsor, I think, is where you need to be. Yeah, it would be a very good way to begin the show. This show is brought to you by Vocal Zone. I'll never go anywhere with that one. We've just done the ad, haven't we?

We've just done them the ad for free. Oh! So Ed has proven his point. Okay, very good. Here's what we do. Just talk crokey, right? Talk rubbish. This show is brought to you by Vocal Zone,

and this is what it did to my voice. I need some strepsels instead. There you go, see Vocal Zone. We've got the upper hand now. Or I could just dip into my jar of Sherbert Lemons and see what happens. This show is brought you by Sherbert Lemons. imagine the joy that that would bring, I love Sherbert Lemons. I could live off them forever.

And they're apparently full of natural goodness and cover all the kind of food groups that you need to consume. Forget the balanced diet, just live off Sherbert Lemons. Okay, so correspondence at Cameronemaire.com, thank you very much indeed. You can sponsor the show, get in touch with Simon Paul. Talk about movies that we can go and see. Yes, rental family, which is a new film from Hikari, aka Mitsuo Miyazaki, who is not related to Hayao Miyazaki,

although she has joked that he is her father because she grew up watching his films. So her previous work includes, there's a feature film which you may call 37 seconds, which I like very much, which we reviewed here, had a great score by Aska Matsumia, who's one of my favorite composers. Also has done episodes of beef on TV. So rental family, it's a US-Japan co-produced comedy drama written by Akari and Stephen Blas. and starring Brendan Fraser, once George, George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree.

And then, of course, then became the first Canadian to win the best actor Oscar for the whale. Yeah, I didn't know that at the 95th Academy Awards. So here he is Philip. He's an American actor living in Japan, whose biggest hit so far has been a toothpaste commercial, a very popular toothpaste commercial. Then he gets an offer of work from a rental family company

a company that provides actors to play stand-in family members and friends for strangers at functions such as weddings and funerals. But why? Here's a clip. We play roles in the client's lives. Oh, thanks. But you can't just replace someone in your life. Yes, and no. But people are willing to take a leap, the actor, the surrogate.

You don't have to be that person. You just have to help clients connect to what's missing. Like what? Well, could be anybody from their life or feeling they once had. Parents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends, we played it all. Well, we could just get a therapist. It's not that easy here. Mental health issues are stigmatized in this country.

So, people have to turn to other things like us. What do you need me for? We need a talking to a white guy. Which sounds like a perfectly decent prospect. So his first gig is as a stand-in fiancé for a woman whose parents wanted to have a traditional wedding. And they don't know that actually she's already married to a woman. So there's a kind of performance of this traditional wedding. More troublesome is a gig when he is asked to play

the absent and now returning father of a young girl whose mother wants to enlist her at a posh private school and need somebody to be there to act the father. And then he has another assignment when the family of an old and largely forgotten filmmaker want him to play a magazine interviewer, interviewing the filmmaker about his career in order to make him feel relevant again. And the intentions are good, but the roles are kind of complex. And the problems arise because he starts to get involved. He starts to really care about the director and his work and what the director wants to do. And he starts to feel genuine paternal affection to this girl, who he is not her father, but he's been brought in to pretend to be. Now, I don't know whether

you remember, I think we interviewed Werner Herzog about that film that he made about rental families. Do you remember this? It was 2019 and it was called Family Romance L.A. I think it had a couple of different titles, but that was what it was. And that was the first time I'd heard about any of this at all. And before that, I mean, there's a sort of history of films from around the world in which actors, people have been brought in to play other roles. So there's a film, there's a Yorgos Lanthamos film called Alps, in which an agency provides performers to stand in for people who are recently deceased in order to help the family

through a grieving process. And it's kind of absurdist. black comedy. And then there's a film by Laura and Maloy called Helen, in which there's a young girl who plays someone in a police reconstruction, and then they then start to take on the role of that. And in both of those cases, there's a kind of, there's a darkness about it. In this case, it's much lighter. It's much fluffier. Indeed, I would go so far as to say it is positively whimsical. And that appears to be the heart of its charm, because obviously when it premiered in Toronto in September.

There was quite a lot of buzz about it. And there was quite a lot of buzz about Brendan Fraser being an Oscar contender because people love Brendan Fraser. And he's got that kind of sweet, natured, good-hearted, big-hearted thing. You know, you just see him. It's like what people, I suppose, would feel about Jimmy Stewart.

You know, you see him and you just, you buy into it. Even the film has a kind of melancholy undercurrent, but it is essentially whimsical. Now, the buzz around it, the awards buzz around, it seems largely to have evaporated. I just went on to the odds checker to see if he was still in the running for the Oscar nominations and it doesn't look like it, although, you know, I mean, I can understand why the thing is, the film is fine. It's got some nice, gentle insight into loneliness. At times, there was a film, there was a Hong Kong film a while ago called, was it called The Last Dance,

which was set in a funeral parlor and had a sort of, a sort of similar, feeling, but that had a much heavier air to it. It was about, you know, the ritual of loss and the way in which we deal with things through rituals and through artifice and through performance. I think the thing with this is, it is fluff. It's perfectly nice fluff, and its heart is in the right place, and its heart pretty much is that Brendan Fraser performance. But I think after the love that it received when it first premiered at festivals. I was kind of surprised that it was that it was just that. It didn't feel to me like it had much more depth than that. Okay. Well, we'll be looking more at his movies in Take 2. So that doesn't feel as though it's going to be a movie of the week

to me somehow. But anyway, stand by because you never know. We're going to be back very, I mean, unless you're a Van God Easter or a Patreon person, in which case this will all kind of zip on through. But if you're not, what are we doing after the next essential commercial ad break? Well, after the next essential commercial ad break, we will probably be looking at the UK box office top 10. And also, we will be talking about 28 days later, Bone Temple, with our very special guest. Yeah, 28 years later indeed. Oh, sorry, yes, yes, sorry. With our very, very special guest, Jack O'Connell, plus, as you mentioned, the box office top 10,

but you forgot to mention the laughter left, which is truly dreadful. No, I didn't forget. I just skirted round it. It's on the word. And it does say here, both chuckle, warmly at the exciting prospect. So, hmm.

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for up to eight hours. Tackle your tough pain two ways with Advil plus acetaminophen. Minifim. Atville, the official pain relief partner of the NFL. Ask your pharmacist at this product's rate for you. Always read and follow the label. This is not a drill. For the first time in lipstick on the room history, a real housewife has entered the studio. And not just any housewife, Rachel Zoe, the fashion legend herself. Did we expect styling stories, glam chaos, stories from the past decade, and a full cat eye at all times? Yes. Did we expect her to open up about divorce, rediscovering herself, joining Housewives as a zero prep,

and what it feels like to finally feel like her again? No. It is vulnerable, iconic, hilarious, and one of our favorite conversations ever. The Real Housewives have officially entered the chat. Listen now. And we're back with the box office top ten. And at number three,

becoming Victoria Wood, which obviously is not registering here, but you mentioned it last week with great affection. Yeah, I liked it very much. a warmth. Dawn Stillwell, one of our patron people, so therefore we love Dawn. Saw the Victoria Wood documentary at a packed out showing at the showroom in Sheffield. I've never been at a screening where the whole audience laughed hysterically all the way through and then applauded at the end. What a joyous film. Great. Absolutely loved it. So if you get a

chance to see it, if it is on at your local independent, probably then go see becoming Victoria Wood, not just because Mark says so, but because Dawn Stillwell on Patreon says so. I'm really glad to hear that it was a packed screening because, as I said, there is something about watching those things with a bunch of other people and how lovely that they were all laughing. And as I said, when I was watching the film, I just forgotten how much Victoria Wood had done. I mean, an extraordinary career.

Number 10 is Labyrinth, 40th anniversary. Well, you know, I kept doing my impression of David Bowie and you kept not recognising it. Well, let's get slightly closer to the action here with an email from Eleanor. Okay. Dear Goblin King and Babe with the Power, you were recently discussing how Bowie often sounded like a performance of himself. Yes. I was recently exploring the Carrie Grant back catalogue and landed on a peculiar film called Bachelor Night. A starry cast with Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple, who hasn't been mentioned on this podcast for a long time.

A long time. Alongside Carrie Grant. the premise of this screwball comedy is more than a little discomforting for modern-day viewers as the plot revolved around Carrie Grant needing to date the underage Shirley Temple in order to try and cure her of her crush for him. Don't expect to remake any time soon.

What I found most arresting, though, was when my ears was suddenly alerted to some familiar dialogue. As someone whose younger sister played labyrinth on repeat and was obsessed with Bowie's goblin king, I'd always thought this. was Bowie's invention, but clearly, another example of him being a cultural magpie. Maybe this means that Bowie doesn't sound like Bowie doing an impression of Bowie, but actually Bowie doing an

impression of Carrie Grant. Listen to this. You remind me of a man. What man? The man with a power. What power? The power of who do? Who do? You do what? Remind me of a man. Wow. How about that? So I did that. I know that. No? Well, we've learned something. courtesy of Eleanor. Thank you. So that was, so Bowie and Carrie Grant, the un... Can we hear that again? I think we need to hear that again, please.

Yeah. Remind me of a man. What man? The man with the power. What power? The power of who do? Who do? You do. Know what? Remind me of a man. Well, there we go. I'm ashamed that I did not know that. Bowie first, Carrie Grant, second. Wow. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that incredible?

But would only be spotted by someone whose younger sister played Labyrinth on repeat. Therefore, you knew absolutely. every single word. And that's, I mean, that's the impression that I kept doing when I was doing, you remind me of the paper. And I didn't realize the, in fact, I'm just looking this up on the interweb now. Yes, Bachelor Night, released in the United Kingdom, originally known as the Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. Terrible title. Yeah, yeah, but I, and I confess, I have not seen the Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. The film's screenplay won an Academy Award for Sidney Sheldon.

Blimey. So that's David Bowie quoting Carrey Grant. Excellent. That is the best bit of trivia I have heard in a really long time. I'm sure that loads of people knew it. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know it. But thank you for telling me because that is just fabulous. Number nine is in the UK is Giant.

Steve White on Patreon, Giant Start Strong, charting an ambitious rise and the personal cost that comes with it, but loses impact as it goes on. Key conflicts feel rushed. emotional payoffs are a little too neat and the big moments don't always hit as hard as they should well made with strong performances just more solid than more solid than towering

three stars says Steve dear Maccom and Clancy greetings from Dublin you were discussing Pierce Brosnan's IRA maybe I should have let you do a little summary Mark before I rushed into the no no that's fine it's the prince I've seen a boxing story but as I said it's actually seen much more from the point of view

of his trainer who is played by Pierce Brosnan and you and I raised the question of I said, Pierce Brosnan's accent, I don't know whether it's, because they said that you mentioned another television program that he had been in in which he was doing an Irish accent that didn't sound very convincing,

which is weird because he actually is Irish. And then we put out a call which is, let us know if you know whether his accent's any good. So Pat gets in touch, who says, greetings from Dublin. You were discussing Pierce Brosnan's Irish accent in the film Giant.

As an Irishman of 52 wonderful years, I can tell you that his accent is indeed all over the place. Maybe he was trying to add a Sheffield inflection and consequently tied himself up in knots. What happens certainly to me when I try and deliberately do an Irish accent is that it quickly becomes like something from Darby O' Gill and the Little People, which I had to look up in 1959 film. And this is Pat in quotes, Tura, sure, I wouldn't know anything about that sort of ting. So I'm doing that because I think that's the way Pat does it. He would have been better off just speaking normally because in his everyday speech you can hear the Irish accent, albeit in the background.

The Death of Stalin proves accents don't matter really anyway. And then he signs off, to be sure, Pat. And then further analysis from Neil In Fabysham. Chaps, I thought this was worth sharing from Guardian writer Sean Ingalls article about watching James Bond play his great uncle, Brendan Ingle on the big screen. It seems like Pierce has got it right.

Quote. So what was it like watching James Bond play a family member? In truth, a little surreal and sometimes downright spooky. Brosnan's Ingle was a little more pushy and unkempt than I remember, but his tone and twang, Dublin tinged with Sheffield and his mannerisms were uncanny. So it sounds as though Pierce got it right. Okay. Dublin tinged with Sheffield. Well, there we go, and that's why it is worth.

So the first emailer was saying it's not a great convincing Irish accent. The second emailer is saying he's not really doing that. What he's doing is a very specific Dublin-Sheffield hybrid, in which case, hats off to peers. Hats off to peers. And we discuss accents actually with Jack O'Connell, which is coming up very shortly because, and I say to me in the interview, he's a genius with accents.

But you would imagine, that are Dublin tinged with Sheffield, that's a tough ask for anybody, you would imagine. Yeah, no, I mean, I think he's doing it very, very specifically, and he appears to be doing it very, very specifically correctly, so well done. I mean, it's like the David Bowie accent when he's playing Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige, is that? Is that a lot of people going, what accent is that? And then you look at what Nikolai Tesla's accent would have been like, and it's that. Number eight here, number 10 in America is Song Sung Blue, which I really liked.

As I said, when I went in to see it, I actually thought that it was a Neil Diamond picture. I didn't know that it was about people who did Neil Diamond songs, and it's a true story. And I thought it was very moving. Kate Hudson is getting great reviews for it. I think huge action is terrific as well, and it's really moving. Anaconda is number seven. Now, I haven't caught up with either Anaconda or SpongeBob. I'm sorry, it's been a busy week.

Anaconda is at seven, SpongeBob is at six. Sorry. Number five in the UK, number two in America is Zutropolis two. Still holding on in there and still doing fun. I like the first one very much. This is very much like the first one. It is a very likable animation. Number four is Marty Supreme and number five in America.

So Timothy Shalameh is now being very, very heavily tipped for top prizes in the fourth coming awards. And I think he's, I think it is. one of his best performances. You noticed, incidentally, I was, there was, somebody emailed in some time ago and said, Mark, can you stop doing the stupid pronunciation of Timothy Shalameh's name?

And I have completely stopped doing it. And I'm very proud of that. Yes, both of those things are true. Last week we had someone writing in about the needle drops in, in Marty Supreme. And we'll, obviously, there's more needle drop stuff on Patreon. next week. But they was basically not impressed with the needle drops in Martin Supreme. And at the time when I read that out, I hadn't seen it. And I was thinking,

it doesn't matter that something is from a different era altogether if it works. But when the corgis, everyone's got to learn sometime. Sometimes. You go, no, what? I didn't think it worked at all. So our correspondence last week, I think was right. Why? No, it just felt I couldn't think of it. It feels like a placeholding track. Couldn't think of anything else and it's just stayed in there. I think that was the most bizarre choice.

Well, I disagree. I think that I think there is a logic to it. And I think, as I said, the logic to it is that the setting of the film is around the kind of the blossoming of electronica. And also, it is, the anachronism is consistent. And so I did buy into it. The only thing I said relevant to that was, if it starts to bug you, it is, that's the problem. So if you're going to do that stuff, I went with it. But if you don't go with it, I imagine it's incredibly distracting.

Which, you know, which it was. Now, Avatar, Fire and Ash, is America's number one, number three here. Now, we said before that we've done the pro and anti stuff. So if you have something different to contribute, then by all means, get in touch. I mean, but get in touch for whatever reason, you know, and if it's an exceptional email, we'll obviously go with it. But this email has asked to remain anonymous for what will be obvious reasons.

Okay. And here I'm reading, Kerbina Mayer's take does not condone the use of illicit substances. Under the misuse of drugs act 1971, both psilocybin and psilocybin are classified as class A controlled substances. This means that any mushroom, or material containing either compound is also controlled. Possession can result in up to seven years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.

I can't wait to hear this email now. Freddie the Fun Guy writes, Okay. Dear Wasup and Doc, over the holiday break, I went to see the new Avatar, arguably the only way it was meant to be seen. The full IMAX experience, stadium seating, vibrating chairs, dumb 3D glasses and all, whilst tripping balls on. magic mushrooms.

With every single sense heightened to 11thy stupid, I truly felt like I stepped into the world of Pandora and was flying high with the navvy. So interstellar was I that I thought the environment in the cinema was being manipulated to the point of making me hurt when they felt pain. This was just the vibrating chair playing tricks on my psychedelic mind. I was making weird noises, sobbing and mentally repeating, how beautiful it all seemed, but couldn't for the life of me tell you what the plot was. a little over halfway through, the effects wore off,

and I was left sober, bored and frustrated with the annoying glasses. Far be it from me to recommend anyone engaging questionable behavior, but seeing Avatar whilst tripping off your face on mushrooms might be the only way to truly experience it. A fun time for a fun guy, keep it real, Freddy the fun guy. So I would also like to say, Freddie, you must have been the most annoying person to sit next to in the cinema. They're not only the previous comments about it being illegal and all that kind of stuff,

but you were making weird noises sobbing and mentally repeating how beautiful it all seemed. You wouldn't want to have been sitting. Freddie might be having a fun time, but no one's sitting next to Freddy would have been having a fun time. Well, I mean, you know, my whole attitude to hallucinogens is they just terrify me. I mean, I find the world hard enough to keep a grip on as it is. But I, you know, so the whole idea of doing any hallucinogenic thing is just terrifying. However, the thing that I'm taking away from that email is, so you went into this film tripping off your face and it was so long that you sobered up. And that, I think, is the, is the, is you, does one sober up from, or does one, what does one do?

What does one come down? I don't know. Come round. That means you're unconscious. I came round a couple of times. In America number 16, in the UK number two, that's Hamnet. See last week for all the reviews, let me see, we've got a lot of correspondence on this. Matt says, I've been an avid listener to the podcast, radio show and so on for a significant percentage of my adult life. I'm over 50, with the world of Mark often recited as gospel in our household. The only times I've disagreed with you are when you give a film a poor review because it's not like another one or not the film you wanted it to be rather than judging it on its own merits.

A common thread among critics. That is a fair criticism. That is a fair criticism. A common thread among critics of which you are rarely guilty. But on Hamnet, your criticism seemed to be that the film was overtly playing to the tropes of being a sad and tragic film to manipulate the audience to shed a tear. Surely this is like criticizing a comedy for trying to, heaven forbid, make us laugh or a horror film daring us to be scared or uneasy. We went as a family to see Hamnet and, brackets, two young teen girls and not so young girls. parents loved it. Jesse Buckley has always been extraordinary and she surpassed even her own standards in her portrayal, love the show and all that, says Matt. Alex says, the film was exactly as described, beautifully shot, music and sound were perfection, exceptional acting from all the cast, but left me strangely unmoved, the wad of precautionary tissues in my pocket stayed there, am I extraordinarily hard-hearted, perhaps I was unduly influenced by Mark's review. perhaps I'm just resistant to feeling manipulated.

Thinking about Hamnet afterwards, I couldn't help but compare it to two of my favorite films of recent times, both featuring Paul Mescal and both about loss, all of us strangers and after sun, both of which move me to tears and stay with me for a long time, down with all the usual lunatics and up with Greenland. Alex, thank you. If we have any listeners in Greenland, by the way, I've gone on the Iwitter app, and I don't think so. Okay.

So if you are a Greenlandic listener, we would love to hear from you because we're going to be hearing a lot about your country in the next few. Well, hopefully we won't, but you know how it goes. Dr. James Wilson from Thames Ditton, dear pencil and not pencil, I was going to try a rubbish to be a not to be joke, but apologies. I hadn't read the book, but was aware that the story of Shakespeare's son and was so prepared for an emotional experience. Having welcomed our son into the world in July, however, this film hit me like a freight train, especially as his birth, was not dissimilar to that of Judith, which is Hamnet's sister, in this film. Although I went in with a certain amount of emotional baggage, that meant it was particularly affecting watching this at times. I think this will have a similar reaction.

I never think watching this at times, I think most will have a similar reaction. I never found it emotionally manipulative and didn't mind the on nature of daylight being at the film's climax, and was surprised that Mark did. The film is absolutely at its best and most effective when it combines Zhao's serene visual poetry, Buckley's acting, and Max Richter's score.

The beginning is sparse musically and weaker for it, but after a rich Richter composition at a wedding sequence, the film's tone materialises fully and the film works wonderfully from then on. And also, Ross Bauer.

greetings from ornithologists oratory. And here is a point that you didn't mention, Mark. Okay. Dear H is for Hawk and Kay is for Kestrel. Things did not get off to a good start, as the opening scene presented me not with a small hill, but an ornithological Mount Everest on which to die. Now, Agnes, who is Jesse Buckley,

they don't pronounce it Agnes, do they? No, it sounds... An yes. They say an yes, don't they? Yes. which is going back to my schooling in the early days of Scarlet Radio that it's not Agnes Day, it's Ania's Day. So that's how you're supposed to sing it. That's how you're supposed to pronounce it. And hence the Agnes-Annes thing being a lot closer. Yeah, okay, sure. Anas, played by the continually astonishing Jesse Buckley, appears with her tame hawk.

But to my utter dismay and horror, the bird in question was, a Harris Hawk, a species native to the Americas, and quite definitely not one that would ever have occurred in 16th century England. Mark, you didn't pick up on this. I actually gave a small audible gasp, hopefully not loud enough to trouble the code, and threw my hands up in horror. And while I'm well used to and have largely come to terms with hearing inappropriate bird songs backing in all manner of film and TV, this anachronism was so unnecessary. I remained baffled as to why such as basic error could have occurred. In the original book, which I read some time ago,

Aneas's bird was a castoral, which would have been readily available, which would be a readily available falconry species to the production, and in my view, much better suited to her character. What the clearly talented Chloe Zhao was thinking, I'm not quite sure, and while I appreciate that the majority of viewers

would be unaware, as far as I'm concerned, she may as well have stuck a satellite dish on each of the many beautiful Tudor buildings that appear in the film. Tigger-tonged down with almost everything these days. Ross Bauer, and if any film or TV producers want any advice on ornithological authenticity,

don't hesitate to get in touch. So let us assume that Ross is correct, that it's an inappropriate bird. Okay. What he makes of ages for Hawk, which we'll talk about next week, heaven only knows. But that's a very kind of specific criticism.

Yes. thank you very much indeed for the comments on on on hamnet which mark reviewed i mean i i finished it i hadn't finished it and when we did the show uh last week and me and the ceramicist uh thought it was terrific absolutely wonderful i did i was on because of your review i was sort of alert for being exploited i didn't feel i was exploited i do get your point about the nature of daylight which is again referring to the needle drop that we that we were talking about before the use of the corgis, it's a moment that you go, oh, oh, yeah,

I've heard this in half a dozen other shows. But I mean, but as I thought the final 30 minutes was breathtakingly brilliant. Sure. Well, just to be clear, and I did say this very clearly at the end of the thing, it is a very good film and it will make, it will work for a huge number of people. What's fascinating is that I have found in my conversations with people that it has proved very divisive, that either people have a very powerful emotional response to it or a significant number of people, one of them, a child two, another L&E Jones, a journalist that I know very well,

had exactly the same response that I did, which was, yeah, no. And it's, it's, so that was why I was trying very hard to say in the review, look, it is a good film, It is well-acted. It is, you know, it is well-made. But there is an issue with it for some people. Now, I absolutely think that for most people, they are going with it. I mean, one person I spoke to said it's the most chubby hum film they've ever seen, and they couldn't believe that during a moment of existence.

You're going to have to explain that. So chubby hum is a phrase that we've been using here in the show for a long time to refer to a moment in a movie, usually a musical biopic, in which somebody does the thing that they're famous for doing. And it was a joke that was originally, it was a John Ronson joke about a moment in a very, very bad TV movie called the Karen Carpenter story. And the moment when Paul Meskull's character,

Paul Meskills, William Shakespeare, is faced with existential despair and goes, to be or not? They said they literally threw their hands up and went, no, you know, absolutely not. Now, it is one. of those things, it's whichever way, you're going to go one way or the other. And I was trying to say very clearly in the review that I think more people will go with it than didn't, but

for me, it left me cold and I'm not alone in that. No, no, you're not. I just was astonished how often it was one of those films where our correspondent was talking about the visual poetry of Zhao. And it's one of those that you could do a freeze frame almost anywhere. I go, well, I'll print that and have that on the wall. hanging on the wall. Because some of those scenes are so amazingly composed. Yes. That you go, this is, it's beautiful.

I will watch it again. I do think that the final, the bit where the Richter, you know, your problematic bit, is look so incredible. And I don't know, I just thought it was something that I hadn't seen before. Anyway, so I thought it was beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And lovely. But like you say, other people will have gone.

My opinion of those chubby-hum moments has changed, as we mentioned before, because of the Beatles, Peter Jackson thing, where you go, but actually that's how it is. And he wrote this stuff. So why can he not say these lines? They're his. So, of course, he's going to say them. Anyway. And the number one is the housemaid, and it's number three in America. Yeah, which I'm surprised, actually.

But there we are. It's bringing in audiences. As I said, I mean, I thought it was ripe. anything. It reminded me somewhat of mummy dearest. And you know, it's got that kind of camp and the question is, is the

camp intentional or unintentional? I mean, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, but it was ripe and it's nonsense. Correspondence at cowerd-mail.com, thank you for chipping into the top ten because it's essential part of the program. We're going to be back in just a moment with Mark. What are you going to do?

Well, I'm going to be listening to you talking to Jack O'Connell about the film I'm then going to review, which is... 28 years later, colon, the Bone Temple. And the CEO... And yes, and the main guy in the gym is that's Jack O'Connell. He's going to be explaining everything. We'll be back either very quickly or not very quickly, but still very enjoyably after these informative messages, which we love so much.

So our guest today is Derby-Born English actor Jack O'Gone. Connell. And it's worth mentioning Derby Bourne because you very, I do think you very rarely hear Darby accents on this show and Jack O'Connell is a breath of fresh air in so many different ways. His breakout role was in Shane Meadows. This is England in 2006. Normally I don't go through everything that an artist has done, but it is worth it, I think, because Jack has been in so many TV shows and movies. So he was the skinhead, Puky Nichols, which I did, is worth repeat. in Shane Meadows movie. First gained major attention in skins playing James Cook.

He's then racked up almost 50 credits, including Startup in 2013, 71 in 2014. Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, which he played Olympic athlete and World War II Prisoner of War, Louis Zamferini. Money Monster, the Jody Foster film, which I mentioned, Godless, trial by fire, Little Fish and Ferrari,

playing racing driver Peter Collins. In 2024, he started in the Amy Winehouse biopic back to black as Blake Fielder Civil and sinners, which we're about to discuss. Well, we've got a bit of time to talk about sinners. In which he is very sinful. He is so sinful. Anyway, it's all because he's one of the main guys in Bone Temple.

You'll hear my conversation with Jack O'Connell after this clip from the film. Hello. Hello. Are you old neck? you say, old Nick. You mean Satan? Of course. And so why would you think that I was... Oh, you, my skin colour, the bones. Well, you can relax. I'm not Satan. I am Dr. Ian Kelson. I'm Jimmy. Jimmy. Actually, Sir Lord, Jimmy Crystal, but no, you're good. Uh, Jimmy's fine. I've got my

peeps waiting for me not too far away, but they can sit tight. No rush. Let's just talk a wee while. And that is a clip from 28 years later, Bone Temple. Jack O'Connell, welcome to the program. Thank you very much. How are you? Good, thank you. Yeah, how are you? Good. I was listening to the football at the weekend, and I was hoping that Derby would beat Leeds in the Cup, and they scored first, and I thought, this is going to be a good interview, because you're going to be in a good frame of mind. And then it kind of all went a bit wrong. Listen, you follow Derby long enough.

You develop a resilience to the outcome. Win, lose or draw, you know, is what it is. Does it affect your state of mind, though? I don't think it can. Can't do it more. You can't let it, you know. But hey, listen, when it's good, it's great at Derby, so it's never nice getting beat by Leeds.

Well, it's great to have you on the show. I feel like to have you on the show. We've been talking about you for quite a long time since Jody Foster came on, but anyway, we can get back to that, possibly. So you play Sir Jimmy Crystal. We've kind of talked around this character because obviously in the first movie,

when Danny Boyle came on the show, we couldn't really talk about the ending. Now you are kind of the main part of the film, essentially. Can you introduce us to who he is? And also, while you're at it, what he looks like. Yeah, okay. Sir Jimmy Crystal is flamboyant. He's sort of reveling in this post-apocalyptic climate and he's exploiting it with his gang of nomads.

And it was quite interesting to see that within a world of human suffering, we see this band that are almost excelling. Out of everyone in the film, Sir Jimmy is having the best time. Yeah. And it was, it was a kind of a vehicle through the dark and sordid breakdown of humanity. And to see this character sort of reveling in it, you know, flamboyantly, was an interesting take. So the thing was about the first film, which was a first film, which was a bit of,

one of my favorite films of the year, I thought it was magnificent, is that because you appear literally in the last few minutes, and you can't really talk about how a movie ends because it then spoils it for people. And when your character arrived, I was thinking, literally draw on the floor. I was completely blown away by the fact that your gang of Power Rangers essentially had turned up, but clearly you were inspired by the image of Jimmy Saville. And no one else had seen the movie at the time, so there was no one I could talk to about it. When you first saw the screenplay by Alex Garland, which Danny Boyle said is the best bit of screenwriting he's seen since train spotting, just to let you know where he thinks it sits.

What did you think about this character? Was the Jimmy Saville connection instant, obviously, straight away? Well, no, because he's formulated very richly on the page. It was just one of the multitude of elements about him. My take was that it deliberately invokes some unsettling, a feeling of unsettling. And it's one of many strands to him. Another explanation that struck me was the fact that the zeitgeist,

the popular culture just went kaput in an instant. And it's a hangover of that. Obviously Sir Jimmy and the world we're in doesn't know what we know. So it was a way of sort of realising this world 28 years later. You know, sort of on a grander scale, is it a comment on unchecked power? Possibly so. But I think that's what makes that. this script phenomenal and what Alex Garland has done,

the ability to kind of do that. And for us as an audience, I guess, is to attach our own meaning, therefore. So there's a mixture of telitubbies, the Savile stuff that you talked about, and religion, because we see at the beginning of the first film, how, what happens to your father? And so you have, are you like a cult leader essentially with a kind of a motley gang following you?

Is that slightly rough, crude? No, listen, I think that applies for sure. You know, they're just a gang of nomads who are thriving. And I think that was key in order to realize them, we have to feel like they are in some way at least efficient at what they do. Why are they thriving? They've managed to exploit this apocalyptic climate and they're the cats that are getting fat of it. You know, you see Sir Jimmy decked out in almost finery.

You see the way that they dispatch infected at ease. You know, they don't live in fear. They sort of orchestrate fear. And so for me, that was an interesting take. And we haven't seen it before within the franchise. A lot of it is set within homesteads within townships, whereas this one, we're in the wilderness. You know, we're in the weeds and sort of developing a deeper understanding of what has created this.

Did you have much say in the way you look because there's a tiara that appears it's a striking look that you have and when you're fully decked out you're absolutely terrifying not for the first time did you have any input into that I wanted the tracksuit to stand alone

so the original iterations on what that might look like Gareth and Carson are our set designers and our costume design They put forward something that was more in keeping with what the rest of the posse look like. And I had it in mind that he ought to be in purple, which is sort of synonymous with monarchy and royalty. And I wanted him to be pristine.

Just to sort of help suggest to the audience that he had a status. So yeah, that was an idea of mine, and I got to keep the track suit. Right. And the tiara? I have the tiara too, yeah, yeah. Near De Costa, the director came on our Christmas show, and she was talking about how good you were with the younger actors, and it was like an instinctive thing with you that you were just sort of shepherding.

That's probably too strong a word, but, you know, just helping them through. Is that something that you just did instinctively? I mean, probably out of starting out as a young actor, it's tough. The hours can be tough. Being on set can be tough. Despite being, you know, one of the best working atmospheres you can get. I feel incredibly thankful that I get to do this. It doesn't come without its challenges.

And so for me, I think it is crucial to have a good atmosphere on set. I think it leads to good work. And so, yeah, that is always the aim. Yeah. You have some key scenes with Ray Fynes without going into too much detail. He's been on the show number of times. He's an extraordinary actor. What is it like to be to work opposite him?

Oh, it's mind-blowing. Because? Well, what you get with Rafe is, a sort of, it's expertise, isn't it? So to be around that, the lessons are coming at you thick and fast. So yeah, you just sort of trained to be all eyes and all ears.

But I loved working with him, I loved that available. He was always in and out of a scene and investigative. So just, you know, as curious as yourself or, you know, however many times you'd shot the scene, we were still investigating. He said about working with you, and I'm quoting here, it seems like he's never acting, he's just being.

He's talking about you. He said you feel that he hasn't come prepared, he's just letting the part flow through him. And I think when people watch your performance, they'll understand exactly. It's like the part is flowing through you rather than you acting a role? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's, I'd argue it's the same for Rafe, you know.

It's a joy. That's the most fun part of the job, I feel, like, is when you feel like the character is showing you how to portray it. When the Financial Times wrote a piece about you, their headline was The Captivating Depravity of Jack O'Connell. Yeah. I'm not sure what that means. I guess it means you've had a very good year being bad people.

Right. And obviously tying it in with sinners, where you get to play Remick. I mean, what is it with you in Burning Barnes? I don't know. It just seems to be happening a lot this year. But you seem to have a mastery of accents. Your Paddy May and SAS Roga Heroes is sensational. Thank you.

Where is, so imagine that Remick is from Louisiana? North Carolina, so yeah, yeah. And do you have a fine ear for those accents? Because to my kind of London ears, it certainly sounds like it. Well, great if so. I think I take a lot of pleasure in listening to people's accents. And I guess it starts with an appreciation. A vocal coach can only take you so far, though, you know.

I guess so, but I feel like I have a great one. And it's one of the first sort of avenues in, is the voice informed by the text. And, yeah, I have a great coach who I love working with. And it does. It does help you crack the part open. So, yeah, a lot of preparation is needed. It's good to see you doing your jumping jack routine

when you got the old Irish dancing, which is great fun. Just as far as a Bone Temple is concerned, when Danny Boyle was on, he said that this film, particularly, is about the nature of evil, and that if there's a third one, it'll be about the nature of redemption. Does that chime with you? Is that how you feel about having been in the film? to me what the film's about

is the extent in which through the collapse of society as we know it the extent in which that evil is allowed to go but it's also harnessed by Dr. Kelson and the inquisitive mind the right finds character yeah and what makes us human and the advancement of that

and the urge or the instinct to understand enough to hope to find a cure. And I find that really profound within this film. And you're working with Danny Boyle again? Or maybe you've already finished ink, I don't know. Yeah, we shot that, yeah, shot that finished just before Christmas. You play Larry Lamb, I believe?

That's right, yeah. He can't be as evil as Remick or Crystal, or is he? I don't know if it's for me to say. but a fascinating time in British culture in the news media a bygone era in a lot of ways

so yeah and Danny's been one of my favourite since since so to get to work with him again he's like boyhood dream is it rogue heroes next that we see

I think it will be yeah yeah unless unless maybe Godzilla, I don't know. Yeah, let's say rogue heroes. Okay. Rogue heroes, then Godzilla, Con. All right. It's such a privilege to have you on the show, Jack.

Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you very much indeed. Jack O'Connell. It was one of those interviews. I mean, just listening back to that, the second half of it, I think we're getting somewhere. You know, I do think it was very interesting. I thought it was very revealing.

But to start, I don't know what you thought. Mark, I'm finding what you thought about the film in just a moment, but I think, and I thought this when Nia D'Costa was talking to us at our Christmas show, the Saville stuff is very evasive. I think they've come up with a line, they've come up with a way of just sort of batting it away, really. And listening back to Jack's answer about the Jimmy Saville stuff, that was the least convincing of the answers. But in general, I thought, I enjoyed the film and I enjoyed talking to him.

What did you make of that and what did you make of Bone Temple? Well, as I told you when we did the Christmas show, I mean, I am a big fan of this. So this is, it's the second installment in this section of the 28 days, years franchise. And the previous 28 years later, which was directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland, was set amidst the kind of the pop-com. culture rubble of a collapse society, and it kind of opened with kids watching a video of telitubbies. And then it ended with Alfie, who is the young kid, who was, you know, gone to the mainland with his dad, meeting a gang of people who appear in a very extraordinary final

sequence, which, as you said, when you came out of it, you couldn't talk to anyone about it because I hadn't seen it yet, and it was just like, what do I do with this? Who fight like Power Rangers and dressed like Jimmy Saville, which is where this picks up. So, again, script by Alex Garland, directed by Nia D'Costa, who came on our show. She did the rebooted Candyman and the really smart Ibsen update header, which is a version of Hedder Garblower, which is a film I like very much. And Alfie is taken in by The Jimies. And the Jimmies are a sort of clockwork orange-style gang of bizarrely attired thug,

led by Jack O'Connell. The word that he used was flamboyant Lord Sir, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal. And the first thing that happens is that to gain entry to the game, he doesn't have any choice, is that Althe, young Alfie, has to fight one of the jimmies. And it's clear that the fight has to be, you know, yes, only one of you is going to win this. So it's really, really brutal. Meanwhile, Dr. Kelson, it was the character played by Ray Fines, has been searching for signs of human consciousness in the infected, particularly in the alpha male who we met before, Samson, played by Chi Pirii, Chi Louis Parry, who he manages to sedate with a, he has darts which have sedatives in them, which makes Samson quiet and passive. And then he will sit with him. And he's longing for Samson to show some kind of awareness, which he appears to be doing. Maybe at some point he'll even speak. And as you said in that interview with Jack O'Connell,

Danny Boyle had said that this film is about the nature of evil. This was shot back to back with the first film. And I read now that the next one has indeed been greenlit. And that will... There's a surprise. Yeah, no, proof exactly. I mean, you said that at the beginning, didn't you? You said they know already that it's happening.

And that, as per Danny Boyle, will be about the nature of redemption. Well, the redemption hasn't happened yet. We are in the belly of the beast in this, okay? We are right in the heart of darkness. So the key thing is, whereas in the previous films, the scariest things, the creatures were the infected. Now, we are starting to see a more sympathetic side of them, which actually is something that you, if you're a zombie movie fan, I know there's a whole question about infected and zombies, but, you know, it is the zombie movie genre. If you look at the George Romero dead movie, there is this whole thing about starting to accept the, you know, the zombies as more than just

zombies. And of course, Sean of the Dead, at the end of Sean of the Dead, they sort of riff on that. They riff on that idea of the kind of civilized zombie, the civilizing aspect of it. So this time, the real horrors are man-made and they are once again a sort of product of a rancid cocktail of destroyed pop culture and false religion. And the jimmies, of course, take their name. their look from a real-life monster who, and we sort of arrived at this, we fumbled our way to it when we're talking about the thing before. In the timeline of the film, Jimmy Saville would never have been revealed as the monster that he was, because in the timeline of the film, at the point at which the outbreak happens, none of the revelations have happened, and then society collapses.

And so there's a whole thing about culture just took a break, and now there's this alternate timeline. So again, as Jack O'Connell said, they are excelling. They are reveling in the apocalypse, particularly he's Jimmy Crystal. Jack O'Connell said, of everyone, he's having the best time. They are thriving. They orchestrate fear. Horribly, the word that they use for what they do is charity. And the word charity has never seemed less charitable than here. And at one point, I was thinking, there was, there's a really harrowing film from a few years ago called Johnny Mad Dog, which is very different set in the Franco-Liberian War, but peopled with child soldiers,

children in fancy dress committing like appalling atrocities, like fairy wings. And you were talking about the tiara. And there is that kind of that real horror. And as with Alex in Clockwork Orange, Jimmy Crystal needs to maintain his place at the top of the pile. And part of this is this idea that he is the son of the devil. And, you know, which is very mansor.

clan, very Manson family. There's a lot of cult stuff going on in this, and you brought that up, I think quite correctly with Jack O'Connor. I think that is one of the things that the film is about. It is about cult leadership and the lies involved in cult leadership. And then when one of the followers stumbles upon the Bone Temple that we met in the first film, the Momentumori, created by the iodine orange Dr. Kelson, in that clip that we heard, there's the thing about, oh, you think I'm Satan because of the color of my skin, and because, of the bone temple. So as with, I mentioned Ken Russell's The Devil's talking about the previous film. This is to some extent a film about brainwashing. It is about the creation of a cult. It is

about a cult leader who demands total subservience of his followers, who sort of know that he's a liar and a charlatan, but have bought into the lie, which I think seems weirdly contemporary at the moment. And all this then comes to a head in a scene which we've talked about. out a little bit, and it's been sort of, you know, trailered, in which Ray Fines does a set piece, which, if you remember Ray Fines in a bigger splash, there's the thing when he does, he, he does the Mick Jagger routine, the emotional rescue routine, and that was like the most enjoyable scene in the film. The scene here involving Iron Maiden and Ray Fines is jaw-dropping. Incredible.

You genuinely go. Yeah. Wow. You know, I mean, you had the same feeling about it, right? It was just, it was pure cinema. Yes, and I was glad it was there because it's also very funny. There are a number of points where you will laugh out loud. And I think partly it's because you talked about Jack O'Connell and Charity.

This comes after a particularly grim sequence, which I found very difficult, if I did look away, a lot of Jack O'Connell stuff, I had to look away because it was so gut-churningly, awful to watch. So then coming to this pit was a bit of light relief. But it works. And Ray Fines gives it 100%, and I think it's a brilliant sequence. It goes for it. The stuff that you're talking about, about wincing, looking away, the film is rated 18 for strong, gory, violent, injury detail. And as we know, nowadays, to get an 18 from the BBFC, you really have to go the length. the BBFC says that the film includes

people have been tied up and gag being flayed alive stabbed impaled set on fire heads ripped off partially flayed characters seen in the aftermath that strong gory images throughout including stuff I mean it's all there right no one's going to come out of this and saying well I thought they soft-pedaled it a little bit on the thing but one of the things that's interesting is that an awful lot of the really horrible stuff is to do with

implication it's actually not to do with graphic viscera, it is to do with what you're imagining and also the themes that the film is dealing with. Because, yes, it is about evil. But it's also about two cultures moving in opposite directions, one of which seems to be going from rage-filled bestiality to something that's perhaps inflected with sympathy. And the other is this kind of cancerous sore of human avarice flourishing in this destroyed world, feeding upon the fact that people are desperately looking for something to believe in, no matter how vile. And what Jack O'Connell's character, Jimmy Crystal, Sir Lord, whatever it is, Jimmy Crystal, is giving them is exactly that. So I think

it's a film about the nature of human evil, about the evil that men do, about somebody seeing a destroyed society and exploiting it. And I think that that has a very very, very clear contemporary political edge, particularly when you consider that the film is about cult leadership. It is about somebody taking on a religion, you know, it happens to be a satanic religion, but taking on a religion and claiming themselves to be the son of, well, not God, the son of Satan and getting all their followers to believe in all this stuff, even though you know that that central character doesn't really believe any of this, but he's just exploiting the chaos around him by sowing more chaos. And I thought the thing moved like a bullet. I thought everyone gave

110%. And I thought Jack O'Connor was terrific. I think Ray Fines is terrific. I think the production design is great. Healded Goodenodagh does the score, which is very brooding. And there's a lot of menace and there's a lot of evil in there. And at the end of it, I did think, okay, I'd like some redemption now. Yes, which is exactly what part three is going to be about, obviously. And there's a hint of that at the end, but we'll have to reserve that maybe for future conversations. And thank you to Iron Maiden for allowing their track to get included. And, of course, you talk about contemporary. It would just say that the only difference being that here,

the person who's painted orange is a good guy. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, the orange guy is a good guy. But I said, and I said this to you when we were talking at this Christmas show, I said my immediate short review was blimey. And my next bit of it was, I can't wait for you to see it. And it sounds to me like it did hit you hard.

Yeah, I haven't seen an 18 for a while. And if I'd had longer with Jack, we would have talked about this. But I mean, I did the charity sequence that we're talking about. There's something about human-on-human cruelty, which is far, far worse than zombie on human cruelty. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the point.

That's the point. That's the point. Dr. Nick Hawkes, clinical psychologist. well, Klin Sci-D, I'm actually a clinical psychologist, a 2019 East London Foundation Trust Partnership Award anyway. He says, I'm excited for the next 28 years later release, especially after seeing the impressive Nia da Costa at our Christmas extravaganza. I like the way he's claiming it as his, but good.

Thank you. I'm glad you feel ownership, Nick. So I've been thinking again about the Saville-related issues. I love the first in this trilogy. The ending surprised me, but I didn't catch the Jimmy Sable reference until the podcast, despite its obviousness. I'd only registered a broader tonal shift from northern working class stereotypes of the 90s, like Harry Enfield Scouses, to a kill-bill vibe once the combat began.

The gang's menace was clear, foreshadowed earlier, but I was more shocked by the waving zombie Mr Men. As the son of a radical feminist professor and someone working in mental health, I am mindful that references to figures like Saville can trigger intrusive trauma memories, not only for his victims but for many others. This raises ethical questions for filmmakers. Abuse is sadly endemic, so traumatic associations are always a risk. It made me wonder about the line between a trigger warning and a spoiler.

The BBFC outlines broad content, but trauma often hinges on arbitrary, sensory and contextual details. I don't know the best approach, but I emphasize with those for whom ordinary life becomes, I empathize with those for whom ordinary life becomes a minefield. Over-emphasizing notorious case risks framing abuse as the work of, in quotes, monsters, rather than systemic harm. For me, the trilogy's theme, family, evil redemption, suggests this. Mainstream spaces often hide the deepest evils, while apparent darkness can hold acceptance and understanding.

Anyway, I hope yourselves in the wider church find this Tuppenceworth, and I thank yourselves. Production team included the whole Witter's sphere for thinking and conversations that you cultivate and extend my warmest New Year greetings and so on, so, Dr. Nick Hawks. I thought that was very interesting and insightful. Yeah, thank you very much. Once again, we have the best listeners, and the best things on our show are often the contributions,

from the best listeners. It's interesting. The difference between, as Nick says, the line between a trigger warning and a spoiler, which is obviously checked what the BBFC have said. You've just read out part of what they've said. I wonder what they would say to adding Jimmy Saville into that because maybe some people need, you know,

maybe that would be useful. I don't know what I'm talking about here, but maybe that would be useful as a trigger warning for people who have suffered from abuse. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And once again, I think it does remind you what a complicated job the BBFC are doing are. And I just remind you again that we now take for granted that the BBFC are brilliantly open and accountable and are trying to do their best. And a quarter of a century ago, before the turn of the 21st century, they were a completely different organization. throughout the 80s and 90s, they were a completely different organization, and they are a perfect

example of a body that got their house in order and started doing the job perfectly, or at least as well as it could be done, and being open to, how can we do this better? And in the same way, I mean, I think in the same way that we alluded at the end of the first 28 years film, that, you know, there's a tonal shift. There isn't a tonal shift at the end of this one, but the final two or three minutes is a, oh. Oh. Yes. And if there is a tonal shift,

it's a suggestion that there may be something brighter ahead. I mean, we know there is because we know already that Danny Boyle has said that the theme of the next one is redemption. And so, you know, so we're already looking for that. Yeah. So, Nick, please, Dr. Nick Hawkes, who sent that, hasn't seen 28 years later, Bone Temple, but when you have, please get back in touch. And when you've seen it, please email so we can carry on this conversation, because I do think

it's extraordinary correspondence at cavernamere.com. And you know what we need now, Mark, particularly. Let's have our own tonal shift. In fact, we should call the shift lift. It's a tone or shift lift is what we're going into. Play the music, please. This won't keep you long, Mark, by the way. Okay, that's fine.

Yeah. Thank you. I don't know if you've read the latest research on how many times a day the average dog barks. I haven't. It can be up to 350 times a day. Of course, that's just a rough estimate. Okay. Oh, I see it's a rough estimate.

I feel like I've got a rough estimate. That's kind of setting the tone. One of my New Year resolutions, Mark, is to reconnect with people. So I've logged back into Facebook. I have to do it. I've just had a friend request from some French bloke called Monsieur Quasimodo. in Paris. I don't think I remember him, but his name rings a bell. I mean, this is, that jokes like a hundred years old.

But I have had some terrible news, Mark. Okay. Here in Showbiz, North London, there was a crash involving a van, carrying two tons of hair on its way to the wig factory. The police are combing the area. Combing the area. Combing the area. I mean. Combing the area.

These jokes are decades old, but we've resuscitated them for your edification. Mark, what are we doing in our next bit, please? We will be doing the voice of Hinrajab, which is a very, very different film. After this. Correspondence at cobbinomero.com is where you go if you like to contribute. Also on Patreon, there are some good ways of communicating and lots of added benefits in there. Mark, what are we doing next? Okay, so a very, very tough watch.

of Hinbrajab, which is BbFC-15 distressing scenes, strong-threat images of real dead bodies, which doesn't even kind of begin to get to where we are. This is the new movie from Chinesean filmmaker, Caltha Ben-Hanier, who made four daughters, which we reviewed here on this show a little while ago. That was Oscar-nominated for Best Doc, although it's a kind of doc-drama hybrid.

In February 2024, she encountered, as did many people, a harrowing news story about a very young, five or six Palestinian girl trapped in a car in Gaza in which her family had been attempting to flee the city. The car had come under fire, and she was on the phone to the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Ramallah, begging them to save her. And the recording of her voice was put out on social media. And Bena Nia said that she felt the voice was talking to her and she needed to do something. This is an interview that I read with her in which she said, I contacted the Red Crescent, asked them to let me hear the full audio.

It was about 70 minutes long and harrowing. It's the word I'm going to keep using, I'm afraid. I knew I had to make this film. I spoke at length with her mother, with the real people who were on the other end of that call, those who tried to help her. And so what she then did was to make a film in which you have actors playing the people at Red Crescent

who take the call, who try to understand what's going on because it's such a young girl, and trying to organise a rescue, because there is, there's a vehicle that's eight minutes away, but arguing heatedly amongst themselves about whether there is anything they can do, is there time to coordinate a safe route, which involves a number of different organisations talking to each other to coordinate a route in which an ambulance will be able to get there. Can they afford to put any of their rescue teams which are massively depleted at risk because so many of them have been killed? Or should they just be trying to publicize the case by getting the case out into the world?

Now, we're going to play you a clip. I'm going to just read you a translation of what's said in the clip in advance so you know, okay? And these are actors acting things. So what happens is the first voice says, she's bleeding, she's hurt, do something. And the second voice you hear says, okay, publish that she's hurt and she's bleeding. And then the next voice says,

oh yes, that's a great idea. And don't forget to write in English, she's bleeding. Seriously, check out social media, images of children's bodies ripped apart on the side of the road. Seriously, do you think that the voice of a terrified girl will spark their empathy?

She needs an ambulance. Here's the clip. The girl is the thing's all right. See, she'll be sure he'll be sure and it's got me, it'saube and it'sive. Ah, a thinkra, raray. And you don't you can't even

to keep her in English, she's bleeding, Aliblisie. What, is, really? Fadrude, look, look, see, look, see, look, a child, mshelchah,

of the street. So what's the child of the small of a little of a little or he'll need to be

an ambulance. So what then happens is that you know that section of the drama is

drama but what's real is the voice of the little girl on the phone heartbreakingly horrifyingly recorded in this

appalling situation in trying to to explain what's going on around her in this vehicle which has been shot at and it is it becomes apparent. I mean, as the story is unveiled, the level of the horror that she finds herself in. Now, look, people may well know this story because there was quite a lot of press about it and there was a lot of kind of controversy about the Israelis saying that they weren't there and anyway. So it's not, I mean, everyone knows that this story has a horrible outcome.

And occasionally, what happens in hearing the recorded voice is that we start to hear the actual voice of the Red Crescent operators, which are then dovetailed into the performances. So you can see that there's a thing going on between drama and actual documentary recording. The film won several prizes, including the Grand Jury Prize at Venice. It got a 23-minute, 50-second standing ovation, which apparently beat Pan's Labyrinth, 22 minutes, which was the previous record holder. The starry executive producers include, and supporters include Brad Pitt, Wachim Phoenix, Rooney-Mara, Jonathan Glazer, Alfonso Quaron, Jemima Khan.

It is, of course, by its nature, an extremely uncomfortable watch, since you know that what you're hearing is real. And the director has said of that, I wanted to honour her voice. To me, it would be very bad taste to use a child actor. So the audience can feel more comfortable like this is fiction, no. and she also sought and got the approval of her mother, which she said was essential to the project. The film was shot cheaply over three weeks, small casts, and it is an object less than stripped down filmmaking, impactful film craft.

It is grueling, it is urgent, it is so upsetting. I mean, so upsetting. And it's one of those cases in which it almost seems, to say it's well-made because, you know. So, yeah, I just found it really profoundly distressing. And as I said, you'll know from the title and you'll know from the news stories. And if you want to, you can Google the new story. It's, you know, it's all there.

I'm talking as a film critic. I'm going to try and talk as a film critic. I'll just say this. I think the film is very well made. I think that the way in which it folds those two elements together is risky and profoundly uncomfortable. And I'm glad that I've read interviews with the director addressing that head on and saying, to me, it will be very bad taste to use a child actor so the audience can feel more comfortable.

What this is like fiction? No. But it's one of those weird cases as a film reviewer when you kind of think, this is beyond what I can do. But it is still a film. It is a film and it is. If it's been written as a book, you would have to be reviewed as a book.

And when people go to the cinema, they'll be paying their money and they'll, and they'll go and see it. So they will see what you see. Will it be difficult to find, do you think? No, I think it will be available because it has such, you know, high profile support.

And so I think it will be playing in cinemas. And as I said, it is important to say that actually the dramatic elements are, think very, very well done. And the way in which it folds those dramatic elements with this sound tape is remarkable. I mean, it is, it is, that was a risky strategy. And I think it's been done really, really well. And it is a very good example of stripped down, low resourced, you know, make the most from whatever you have, filmmaking. I mean, a very fine piece of filmmaking, but an absolutely harrowing experience.

That is the end of Take 1. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production this week's team. Jen, Eric, Josh, Heather and Dom, the redactor, Simon Paul. If you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. If you come over and join us on Patreon, there's a lot of cool stuff there. Mark, what is your film of the week, please? Well, I mean, it's a week in which we've walked the full counter of what is possible in cinema, and it seems foolish to even say this.

But I'm going to go with 28 years later Bone Temple because I thought it was great. I thought it was a piece of filmmaking. It was terrific. And I still stand by my original review of it, which was blimey. And then Charlie. I think you added Charlie at the end. Blimey, Charlie. Yeah.

Thank you very much indeed for listening. You can get in touch. Correspondence at curbinameo.com and another take will land very shortly. In fact, it's there already.