Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Summer Holiday Highlights of the year so far

Episode Date: August 28, 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.  It’s a lovely highlights show for your summer holiday this week, where mark and Simon will be bringing back all the highlights of the year in film so far. You’ll hear all the greatest hits from our guest interviews with Justin Kurzel, Craig Mazin and Domhnall Gleeson.  And reviews of Sinners, Bring Her Back, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Adolescence, Death of a Unicorn (oy!), Jurassic World: Rebirth (yeesh!) and Another Simple Favour.  Reminisce and relive it all with us—and it’s back to school with a brand new pencil case, more new reviews and shiny starry guests next week.      Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):  Bring Her Back: 03:43  Sinners: 07:45  The Ballad of Wallis Island: 13:17   Justin Kurzel: 18:20  Death of a Unicorn: 25:44  Another Simple Favour: 31:09  Jurassic World: Rebirth: 36:41   Domhnall Gleeson: 41:32  Adolescence: 46:57  Craig Mazin: 58:02      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

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

There's never been a better time to become a Vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available, wherever you get your podcasts. and if you're already a vanguard Easter, we salute you. It's a very boring technology conversation, but we're recording this in a slightly different way, like on a 15 IPS roll of tape. 15 inches per second for those

from a previous physical era. And we get a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown, which is a visual thing, which I think is using exactly the same font as was used for the Thunderbird's TV show. Exactly. It's that. It's that. Definitely. Thunderbirds are go.

So anyway, that's what this is. So August, what a great month it's been for me. Has it been a great month for you, Mark? I see you have particularly square glasses on today. You've seen these before. They're different glasses to normal. Yeah, but they're not your normal. Well, I mean, the point is, Simon, I now, I have 10 pairs of glasses.

The only two, three things I change are my glasses, my T-shirt, or my tie. Everything else I wear is the same. Week in, week out. Underpants, always the same. No, clean, clean undergarments on, you know, but just in terms of the, you know, the present. So if I'm this, it's always a T-shirt, you know, drill, trad of jeans, and a Harrington. but it's a different T-shirt and maybe a different Harrington

and if it's a suit it's always the same suit but a different tie and different thing so I literally wake up in the morning and I have a line of glasses and I choose which pair of glasses I am going to wear on that day

and it makes me happy other people would start in showbiz world I wake up, they would say I wake up in the morning and I have a line no I just have a line that's what I do

but you have a line of spectacles to choose from I have one set of spectacles and you're looking at it and now I'm feeling a little bit nervous that I need at least a few hours. Well, you do need at least a backup pair because what happens if that's a... Have you got a spare set? Only from about 20 years ago. How would you feel... Well, they're probably not the right prescription anymore, are they? No, I'd have to

wear sunglasses everywhere. Yeah, okay. Well, you know, sunglasses. I mean, I have got prescription sunglasses. Well, they are part of the 10. It's not just... The 10 includes, I got the blue tinted ones. I got the green tinted ones. I got the blue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I like the thing about waking up and thinking, how... And this morning, I woke up, and I felt a bit Michael cane. So I wore these. Spectacles. If anyone has any... No nurse, I said remove these spectacles. That's the line that occurred to me there. This is a highlight show. As you can tell, as you can tell already, from the many highlights. So we're drawing a line under the Oscars and looking at everything from spring onwards, the best and worst of the films from then until now, as well as highlights

from some of our favourite guests. Mark, what films are we looking back on fondly? Well, we're going to be reliving my reviews of Bring Her Back, the horror movie. Sinners, Adolescence, not a film, of course, but absolutely seminal TV. Plus, Ballad of Wallace Island, a little bonus for our extra take episodes, and an unexpected box office hit. And looking back, Fowley? Another simple favour, Death of a Unicorn, Jurassic World Rebirth. Oy.

Plus, chances to hear again, or maybe for the first time, who knows my chats with Craig Mason, Justin Cazin, and Donald Gleason. First, you're going to hear Mark talk about these films. Bring her back, Sinners and the Ballad of Wallace Island. Then my chat with Justin Kuzel about the narrow road to the deep north. Hey, Georgia. Hi, David. Have you ever wished that you could slip into a disguise and travel anywhere in an instant?

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I know it's hard to tell what's going on, but it's so creepy. And actually, even just hearing that gives me the shivers. So the whole thing is what's going on, what's going on in the house, what's going on with the mother, what's going on with gaslighting the brother, and what is up with Oliver, who appears to have to be locked up for ages and ages for his own safety. So I won't say anymore, because the thing is the story reveals itself very slowly, and it needs to do so because what it does is it builds up the sense of family dynamic, of family drama, of dysfunctional family dynamic.

And then there is this atmosphere, this growing atmosphere of dread and unease. And I remember William Freakint once said that he wanted the exorcist to feel like a cold hand on the back of the neck or the score for it to feel like this. This feels like the clammy, cold mud of an open grave in which you have been buried alive in, you know, somehow enfolding you. At the center of it all, you have great performances. I mean, I think Sally Hawkins, who we think of as happy-go-lucky or maiden Dagenham has this whole other side talents on full display in this film. But when you first meet her, she seems to be kind of ditsy and upbeat and a bit of a free spirit, but there's something much, much darker going on.

Also, there is a sense that underneath it all, there is this grief and sadness. the filmmaker said, talk to me was a party movie. We wanted to do a character study. Talk to me is umph, um, this is a snowball and then a spiral out of control. So they've also cited this genre film, which I hadn't heard of before, Psycho Biddy, which is basically films which owe a debt to things like whatever happened to baby Jane, kind of, you know, what used to be called women's pictures, melodramas with a kind of gothic, grong, gignon overstatement about them. So those influences are all there. You get the dread, you get the anxiety, you get the anxiety, you get the grief. However, the film also has teeth. I mean, it's an 18-rated film and it's, you know, it's no surprise why. When it bites, you really win. I watched it in a, in a screening room on my own. And I was really glad I was on my own because I was vocalizing my reactions to certain scenes going, you know, that's against the code, that is. I know, honestly. And that's why I was, I was really, really glad I was because I was, you know, I was, there was, there was things in it that was so, you know,

painful to watch that I almost did the thing that I never do, which is to turn away from the screen. And it was interesting afterwards, the projectionist, who's a friend of mine, you know, we had a very quick chat about it. We both went, oh, you know, there's a real atmosphere to something clammy and cold and genuinely dreadful. There's a really terrific score, which really gets under your skin. So great performances. And it's about something. It is about grief and sadness and loss, but it really, really knows how to turn up the horror when it needs to. And I think it's a step up from Talk to Me, and I think it absolutely establishes the Philippi Brothers as the real deal. They know how to do this.

They've had an extraordinary career. Apparently, they started off as drivers on the Babadook, but they are, they're here to stay. and I thought this was really unsettling, really disturbing, really sad and really scary when it needed to be. And can I just do a hat tip to everyone else who, when you said psychobiddy, they instinctively said, because to say, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, and so on. Yeah. This ain't no house party. Y'all ready to drink.

Y'all ready to sweat till y'all stand. You keep dancing with the devil. One day he's going to follow you home. We've got it's a problem now. What the hell going on? Oh, we heard tale of a party. This world already left you for dead. I can save you from your fate.

You don't need no saving. Yes, you do. And you are? I am. Your way out. It's a good trailer, isn't it? I said, we didn't review it at the time because we've been off for two weeks, and we hadn't been screened before we left. So, hybrid, period, drama, horror, thriller with a strong

musical element, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, who made Fruitbell Station, and the Black Panther films, I think, is a thing that's probably best known for. So early 30s, Mississippi Delta, identical twins, smoke and stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, returned to Clarksdale, which, as you and I've talked about before, I've spent quite a lot of time in Clarksdale, home of the Blues, home of the Riverside Motel, the place where Ike Turner was knocking together, Rocket 88. Anyway, so they buy an old sawmill, which they turn into a blues-filled Duke Joint, and then their paths cross, this is all against the kind of the backdrop of old-school Jim Crow racism, with Irish Nocturn Remick, played by Jack O'Connell, who arrives at the Duke Joint with two compatriots, and asks to be invited in. Now, when things people arrive asking to be invited in, that means one thing in particular. The film was tailor-made, I mean, because it's been out for a couple of weeks, I imagine that everybody pretty much knows everything about it, but I'm trying not to spoil

anything. So, look, Taylor made for me in terms of its thing, you know, 30s, Delta Blues, Clarksdale, element of supernatural horror, resonating guitars everywhere, mouth organs, story told through dueling musical styles, and, of course, this element of supernatural horror. So here's the interesting thing. So obviously the deal with the devil, everyone, the Robert Johnson story, Birth of the Blues, all that stuff.

In that very first email, there was the line about telling the story through music. And this is the thing that particularly gets me about the film. And bear in mind, going into this, I was very conscious of the fact that I'd been sent text by people that said, this film is made for you. It's got so many things that you're interested in. And immediately,

you want to go, okay, well, fine. So can I be critical about it? Or can I, am I just going to go, oh, yeah, I look, I love the fact that it's a Dobro resonator. I love the fact that it's there. I love it, you know, all that stuff. There is a scene in it in which they go and find the three Irish rogues led by Jack O'Connell. And they are sitting at a stop, and they are playing Wild Mountain Time.

You know, where you go, lassie go, da da, da, da, da, da, da, that song. And it really reminded me of the use of fair and tender ladies in Winter's Bone. That scene when she goes up to the shack and they're playing fair and tender ladies and you think this is going to go really, really badly wrong. There is no way this is going to end well. It also reminded me, and incidentally, hats off to Ludwig Gorinson, who was in charge of all the music. The music is really fabulous.

But the fact that they go from the blues joint where there's the whole thing about, you know, should you be playing this kind of music, you've been blessed with this, you know, all that stuff is tied up with it. They go to this place where there's this rendition of Wild Mountain Time. And I was thinking while I was watching it, this reminds me of something, what does it remind me of? And I say this as a compliment, it reminded me of the way that Alan Parker used music in Angel Heart. Now, Angel Heart is a different setting, because Angel Heart is the 50s, although it's changed from the novel. But there's the whole thing in Angel Heart that an awful lot of the story is told through the music.

If you listen to the music, it actually tells you the story of the film. And I thought the way that Ryan Cougler used the music and specifically the kind of dueling musical styles and the narrative of the music was just, okay, fine, I'm on. I mean, I am on board. I mean, I know the characters are saying stuff and they're doing stuff and all that, but it's the music is telling you what's happening in the film. So I really enjoyed it. I'm really glad I was away when it came out because I missed the whole thing that apparently has dominated the headlines about how much it cost and how much it will have to take in order to make its money back, which it will do.

But it's like one of those things where it's like straight to the heart of the periphery in the case of this is that with all this stuff going on in the film and that's the thing that you're complaining about. Plaudits to the cast, which is a very good cast, including Hallie Steinfeld, Dewey Lindo is terrific. Jack O'Connell is genuinely creepy. honestly the film would have had to get a lot of things wrong to have lost my support because just from the beginning I was in there but the fact for me the thing that worked for me and different things will work for different people and different audience experience but for me the thing that worked with it was work for it was this is a story told through its music and and that it's so well done that

the sound that the songs are telling you the story We were lucky enough once to see the bootleg Beatles. Brilliant. You've seen them, heard. Something else, tight as a drum. Okay. Hit after hit. Can we just please?

Can we just please appreciate this damn sunset? Okay, so you get a sense from that of the kind of tone of the comedy. So this began life 18 years or so ago as a short film made by the same key center. team, so James Griffith is the director and then Tim Key and Tom Bazden writing and starring. In that short film, the central relationship was really between the two of them. In the case of this, that's been expanded by the fact that you've got this, the third part of the story, which is him being forced into this unexpected reuniting with the partner with whom he sang all these songs that means such a lot to Charles' character.

but their lives have moved on, the character that Kerry Mulligan plays, she has sort of, she's carried on with the life. She now has a whole other life, and she's happy to come and do this and play the songs and to be paid for doing it. But he is clearly stuck in the past. And the reason the film works, and I think one of the reasons that it sort of, it struck such accord with Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis is very good at that kind of comedy of awkwardness. I mean, one of the things that Richard Curtis does brilliantly is people going,

just sort of stumbling in that very British way. In the case of this, firstly, that awkwardness that Tim Key plays is brilliant. And if you're familiar with his stuff anyway, you'll know that he's very, very good at that. But there are a couple of moments in the film in which the camera moves in on his face as he watches or listens to something. And it's quite remarkable because what you see there, is suddenly that behind this sort of slightly buffoonish, like talking all the time, punning all the time, constantly needing to make jokes about things, there is this deep well of something else.

And there are two separate moments of them, which the camera just moves in on his face. And you go, wow, he's a really accomplished actor. What he's doing in those moments is actually really touching a nerve. It's doing something quite profound. So that gives it a real sense of heart. The second thing is that the songs, as with once, the songs are good and they need to be good because they need to imply that there was a point at which

this pair were a folk duo who had some success. And Herb has now moved on to collabs, as he calls them, which aren't anything like as good. But you have to believe that the songs are good and they are, and you have to believe that they were, I mean, when you see them performing together, There's no, I mean, we know that Kerry Monaghan can sing anyway because obviously we've heard her singing in films, like whether it's shame or actually in the far from the madding crowd. We know that she can sing, but hearing the two of them harmonized together is really beautiful. The other thing is that there is a touch of the kind of lonely melancholia of that film, Brian and Charles, which I really, really liked, is another sort of very low-budget British movie, which looks like what it actually is about is a guy who invents a robot. But it's not about that.

What it's about is about somebody who invents a robot because they are lonely. And they also have a potential relationship happening around them that they are completely unable to deal with. So all of those things are going on in this. But at the same time, it's just playing out in a way that's done with a real lightness of touch, a real genuine sort of comic timing to it. But I can see the reason why Richard Curtis would love it so much is, as with all of the Richard Curtis stuff, the funny stuff is only funny because of the pathos.

The lines are only funny because of the gaps between them. And there is a sort of observational correctness to it that makes the comedy work. Anyway, it's, like I said, it's a small, very charming movie. And as we got to the end of it, I started to worry, as I do, they're going to blow this, they're going to blow this, I can see they're going to blow this, they're going to blow this. And then they didn't.

And I came out after the film, and I saw Lauren LeVern, who I hadn't seen for a while, and we had a little conversation. But it was one of those things when, because I'd been quite emotional at the end of the film, I was talking rubbish. I was talking gibberish because my brain was still sort of slightly. And that is always for me, the indication that a film has worked, that in the immediate aftermath of it, you still, you know, you haven't left the island. You haven't left the thing.

So anyway, it's a coming of a, it's a middle age, of age tale that's about loneliness, play that with folk music, that's very funny but touching and poignant. And as I said, joint film of the week. Justin, hello, where do we speak to you today from? I'm in Tasmania, in Australia, actually where the book was written by Richard Flanagan. In which case, that would seem a very appropriate place to start. So this is an extraordinary book. Just introduce us to, this is a book of prize-winning novel by Richard Flanagan, I think he's a friend of yours. So when did you come across this book? Did he give you a copy in advance, you know, many years ago now? Yeah, he's a family friend of my wife, Essie Davis,

who's an actress, and we were actually in London, living in London at the time when he won the Booker Prize. So we were sort of there the night that he sort of won it and spent the evening with him. So we sort of had a history with the book and we had many discussions. about, you know, his father being a prisoner of war and my father being, my grandfather being a Radda-Brook and we sort of got to the idea that perhaps this could be, you know, this could be a good series and it was a very, I guess a different take of Australia's involvement in that particular war that hadn't sort of seen, have been seen before. Just introduce us to the character of Dorigo Evans, just as a way, just interesting.

she's introducing us to the story, played by Jacob Allaudi, and then Kieran Hines as an older man. Who is he, and where do we find him in the story? Doro goes, at the beginning of the story, he's a young man, he's a young surgeon. He's been practicing medicine, and he comes from Tasmania, and he's born in a really poor family,

and he sort of finds himself suddenly in Melbourne, amongst the sort of rich and sophisticated and he is sort of out of his depth and he has a sort of summer holiday where he has this sort of extraordinary affair with this woman who's actually married to his uncle. She's much younger than the uncle and they have this, we call it the summer of love where this extraordinary relationship happens over six weeks, that's it, he never sees her anymore because he's then sent off to war and in Singapore he's captured and becomes a prisoner of war and is part of building the Burma Railway and looking after all these men, it's his

responsibility to keep them alive as they're dying around him and ultimately in this series to choose those that will live and those that will die. And there's a, we see him after the war much, much after in his 70s looking back on that legacy, but in particular this relationship with Amy, this six weeks of love that kind of becomes this ghost love in the prison of war camp. It's the sort of love that kind of keeps him alive. And so it's quite an epic story through one man's life, through dealing with the tragedy of Burma and what he's seen there, but also this sort of extraordinary love story that evolves from something real into sort of something in memory. There are some terrible experiences in the camp, some terrible

experiences on the railroad. As the director, what effect does that have on set? Do people dread these scenes? Do they look forward to them? What is the impact of those particular scenes on the Japanese actors you're working with and the Australians? Well, I think you go into it with a book like this and also the, obviously, the true history of what happened. And through the research that the actors did, there's always an enormous amount of gravitas to it before going in but in particular there's a particular scene in episode four um i think that that was a you know it was a day that we all knew was sort of coming and um and and i could sense that too in terms of the japanese actors of kind of you know the the sensitivity of how they were being portrayed and

you know really making sure that the point of view was right um and that they felt comfortable with with that i mean it's interesting you know we spent a lot of time in rehearsals and a lot of those Japanese actors who were very young, you know, sort of talk about what happened in Japan at the time and how they view the legacy of war through their parents and their grandparents. And it's actually not spoken of enormously. So it was, you know, it was really interesting to be having very sort of frank and open and honest conversations about what that legacy is and what that relationship is with people, especially young people living in Japan now, to, to what happened all those years ago.

I just wanted to ask, Simon was talking about how difficult it is to address those scenes, those scenes of brutality. There is a moment of reconciliation towards the end, and I know it's fleeting, but in which the Kieran Hines incarnation of the character is told by Japanese delegation, the things we did were, and Kieran Hines says, something to the effect of they were long ago, they were in the past. And since so much of the miniseries, and I confess I haven't read the book, since so much of the miniseries is about memory, it is also about the way that these things, they do persist, but they are in the past. They have, they do belong to a different country.

And I wonder whether you think that in the end, the story, the arc of the story is one of healing, is one of coming to terms with very, very dark matter. Yeah, completely. I think that the series is about, it is about memory and not losing memory and things not disappearing and those voices and those experiences from the past and events not disappearing and being talked about, not only the people that were involved and the relations that were close to them and the countries that were affected, but also I think for a new generation, my daughters are 19 and I remember sitting in the lounge room as a boy with my grandfather, you know, not being able to speak. going off and drinking throughout the day and really being kind of in this fog of war, whereas, you know, my daughters, it's so, so distant sort of what that legacy here in Australia was. So I do think that, you know, having those conversations and having series like these made and, you know, having war memorials that a young generation can go to and have an active engagement with only allows those memories not to fade and for there to be a continuous conversation about them and to somehow speak to now.

I mean, I think that the series, there were a lot of things while we're making the series that definitely felt as though they were rubbing up to, you know, tensions and conversations about the kind of hostilities in the world now. That was Justin Kuzel on the Darrow Road to the Deep North. Back after this with Mark Watt. With the stinkers plus Donald Gleeson, not a stinker. Who's never a stinker? No, absolutely. See in a moment.

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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. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com.com. Go to shopify.com.com.uk slash take. Shopify.com.U.K. slash take. Welcome back. Okay. First off, we have reviews of... Well, these are the lesser releases. Death of a Unicorn, another simple favor,

and Jurassic World's Remus. And then a conversation with Donald Gleeson about Echo Valley. A lot of species in this area are rare. What exactly are we saying this is, though? I think we know exactly what it is. A horse-like mammalia. With some sort of protrusion or growth. It's a fucking unicorn. And that is basically the key gag. So it's kind of, you know, we're up there with these horrible rich people.

They've hit something on the way and it's a unicorn. And the creature then revives because it's a unicorn and is then promptly dispatched. And they quickly realized that it's blood. I think we don't know whether it's blood. It's whatever it is that's in its body has healing properties. So Richard E. Grant is the sort of head of the family who is very, very ill. But he, and they've said this pharmaceutical thing,

so they immediately try to figure out a ways of, oh, look, it's got these magical healing properties. How can we market them? How can we sell them? How can we make the most amount of profit and save on and live forever? And also there's a thing about she gets some of the stuff on her face and her acne clears up. But, of course, this being the A-24 thing, oh, it's not the lovely, cuddly unicorns of, it's the old unicorns of, you know, mythological stuff in which they're dangerous. And then the joke becomes people get disemboweled by unicorns, okay?

So it is a one idea riff, which is, hey, it's a unicorn, and guess what, the unicorns are angry. And that idea might have sustained a short film. And because it's sort of, you know, it's the Jurassic Park thing. Oh, the dinosaurs, they're amazing. But now they're going to start to eat the tourists. When stretched to feature length, this is hugely underpowered. And I have to say, I went from, I didn't know anything about this in advance. I only knew the title of it.

And I seen that it was built as a comedy horror. I didn't know it was A-24. I didn't know anything at all. And it started. And I was like, okay, well, I wonder where this is going. And then about 20 minutes in, oh, Richard E. Grant and like Richard E. Grant and, you know, that's kind of tealione, but both of those incidentally are and performances. It's very, very definitely and Richard E. Grant. And about half an hour, 45 minutes into it,

I had lost all patience with it and it was starting to really, really annoy me. So it's rated 15 for strong bloody violence or horror, strong bloody violence horror, gore, including the sight of people being, sorry, I know, people being impaled and disemboweled by fantastical creatures. And in a way, that is the whole movie. So the gag is unicorn horns pulling out people's intestines, which is funny up to a point. But the weird thing is about the film. I don't know why it's it when people do features.

They think, oh, well, we're doing this. But actually, we do have to have some seriousness. So there is a kind of weird little, my little pony kind of oogabooga about, oh, yeah, but they're actually in touch with the, you know, with the spiritual almighty. And, you know, both the two central characters are suffering from this loss. But actually, you know, it's going to be all right because there's going to be father bonding. You go, I'm sorry, no, this is a film about people getting impaled and

getting their intestines pulled out by unicorns and it's an eat the rich thing. Why am I having to sit here watching all the father-daughter bonding? And that juxtaposition of sweetness and gore is presumably the point of the movie. It's presumably the thing that they all thought was hilariously funny in the development meetings. But, you know, it's like if you're old enough to enjoy the gore, you'll find all the sort of, oh, River of Life stuff just intolerable as the father-daughter bonding stuff is and anyone who's in the market for My Little Pony philosophy

won't be coming to see this film because it's a 15th certificate. It doesn't help that the creature effects are terrible. I mean, I know the movie's comparatively cheap. It's 15 million. But I mean, it's, we live in a world in which people are making, I mean, you just said flow was designed entirely

from open access technology which nobody was paying a huge amount of money for. I'm sorry, unicorn effects this shunky. Jurassic Park was so far ago, so far ago. There's no excuse for creature effects being this terrible. The whole thing about, oh, they're rich, yeah, and therefore they're terrible. Yeah, and what?

And so it's just, it is, and this is the second time this word has been, it's, it's smug. It's so pleased with itself. It's scrappy, it's ugly, it's poorly constructed, it isn't funny. on the plus side, Will Poulter is good at doing the kind of the bratty over-entitled son because Will Poulter is good in pretty much everything. But I just thought the rest of it was,

I was watching it. I thought, okay, A-24 have lost the plot. A-24 have lost their mojo. This is the point that the wheels come off. And then later that day, I saw another A-24 film, which also had Will Poulter in, which we'll be talking about next week,

in which I thought, oh, the wheels are back on again. But it was like, what are they doing with this? I mean, it's a real mess of a movie. It's annoying. It looks horrible. The gags aren't funny. The gore is infantile. And I say that as somebody who likes infantile gore.

And as I said, the entire movie, the entire movie can be summed up in the BBFC description, which is strong, bloody, violence, horror, gore, including the site of people impaled and disembowel. by fantastical creatures. Boom, tish, yorn. This stars Anna Kendrick, who I loved from Twilight to pitch perfect, and Blake Lively, who really well being in the shallows, and I thought it was pretty decently it ends with us, and there's been a whole bunch of other stuff about that.

I went back to my original review of a simple favour, in which I described as a frankly chaotic mashup of conflicting genres, ditsy rom-com, erotic thriller, modern post-mar, old-fashioned, who-done it. I said in my review of that that the source books, it's based in a book, was billed as a chilling debut thriller in the mold of Gone Girl on the Train, that Wikipedia called a simple favor, a post-noir mystery, and Paul Feig there calls it Hitchcockian thriller. So, you know, what genre is it? Well, who the hell knows? But in the original film, there's tonal shifts. They're all over the place. I mean, it's messy and scrappy, but because the two central performances gel as well as they do, the whole thing holds together. And as I said in my review, this shouldn't work, but somehow against all the odds it does.

It was, I think I said in my summary, it was a film was lifted up by its cast, you know, peculiar, genuinely all over the place. I also ended up by saying, I think I enjoyed it, because the two leads have got the measure of the material even when I didn't. And as you said, yourself,

it became something of kind of cult favorite during lockdown. So this sequel is built as a black comedy mystery, set five years after the first movie and as we just heard from that interview Stephanie is promoting a book about Emily who shows up and invites her to Capri to be made of honour at her wedding despite having previously tried to kill her

so Anna Kendrick, Blake lively are back alongside Alison Janney as you said Elizabeth Perkins who sometimes steals a show and Paul Feig said that he's afraid of sequels he tends to avoid them and that at times he tried to You know, you said he said that he tried to kill this because he was terrified that it wouldn't work, and he loved the first film so much. And then he said he talked about the writing process, and he said there was one point where they thought, you're going to give up because it wasn't working.

And there was a lot of stuff being thrown into the mix. They thought they should abandon it, but then the writers, every time they did, the writers would come up with something else. Then everybody had an idea. And then, you know, and then this happened. And it's rubbish. I mean, it's absolute rubbish. It is, it's lightning didn't strike twice. What's interesting about what's rubbish about it is that going back to my review of the first

film, I remember thinking, you know, this is one of these things that shouldn't work and yet somehow it does because of this charming chemistry. And this time it's just like, no, no, this shouldn't work and it doesn't because it is a bag of stuff thrown at the screen in the most incoherent ramshackle way. It is tonally all over the place. It isn't funny. It isn't It isn't tense. It isn't sexy, quirky, interesting. Now, I don't take any pleasure in saying this. But one of the things with this film is it literally just consists of a bunch of completely unbelievable things happening. And then the characters going, oh, well, that just happened. You know, ironic wink. None of it makes any sense. Glamorous travelogue footage. I mean, yeah, you know, Capri. Hey, looks pretty. Ludicrously contrived an uninteresting thriller plot. And then characters going, well, that just happened. And here's the really brilliant thing about that interview. You say in the middle of it, and this had never occurred to me, you said,

you know, it could have been a musical. And I thought, Simon Mayo, you are a genius. It should have been a musical. Paul Feig said this thing about, yeah, but when you go into the musical things, you know, the musical sequence, it will take you out of the reality of the stakes. You know, there's no stakes. There's no reality. was never thought any of this was real, but being a musical might have made the out there

part of it acceptable, because the point about breaking into song is it becomes a fantasia. I mean, heaven knows they're dressed for a musical. I mean, it's all costumes and set pieces and, you know, and that hat that she wears at one point that's like the, you know, the size of the rings of whichever planet it is. And so, but so, and in fact, and once you said that, I. thought that is so insightful. It is like watching a musical that never sings, a musical that never breaks into song. It just lies there and you keep going, yeah, go on. Do the thing that would be the only thing that would exist. And what was really fascinating was, I mean, I think

it's genuinely awful. I think it's a massive waste of talent and resources. And I'm not saying any of that, because I like so many of the people involved in it, but it's just, it never, ever has any idea what it should be tonally. And the reason is, when Paul Feig said, Paul Feig said that thing about, yeah, but you know, if you broke into song, it would take you out of the tension of the Hitchcockian thriller. And I thought, you have no idea what you've made. You literally have no idea what you've made. And I, I don't think I've ever said this in all the time that we've been together in this show, you could have made a better film. You should have been in that meeting and said, guys, this is a musical, whether you like it or not.

Don't see that every day or ever. So you see what I mean about stuff happens then? You don't see that every day. You don't see it ever. Maybe we should make this quick. Blah, blah. Now, two things. Firstly, I saw this at a premiere screening in which the audience went nuts. They cheered, they laughed, they whooped, they, you know, they did the whole thing. And I say that because I think that I need to have that up front because I didn't do any of those things. So the first film, the first, I mean, it's so hard to think back to this, but do you remember the first time you saw Jurassic Park?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. First time we saw it, it actually gave us the impression of walking with dinosaurs. You know, it was like, wow. However, in the world in which this film is said, the world has become completely bored with the thing about dinosaurs. And honestly, I think as audience, is so of we. And so of the filmmakers to the point that it's not just dinosaurs now. It's

mutated dinosaurs. It's the distortus rex, which incidentally, the reveal of which has already been spoiled by the publicity. So for a film which says it's a new start, new characters, new storyline and it's called rebirth. It's strange how much of this, just the overriding senses we have seen all of this before. But crucially, we cared about it more. So all the usual beats are there, you know, big dinosaurs, ensemble, cast of misfit characters. sinister corporations doing sinister corporationy stuff people getting picked off by the you know by the dinosaurs which were rides but aren't rides anymore what there isn't is firstly any of the memorable dialogue of the first film you remember the first film all the stuff about chaos theory remember

all the brilliant stuff about you know your scientists were so busy wondering whether they could they never stopped to wonder if they should all that stuff clever girl all those brilliant things nothing like that here instead the characters of paper thin, the plotting is, I mean, when they explained the mission, it was like, oh, come on, that is just thunderbirds. The shipwreck family,

the computer game goals, even the sort of big farmer is baddy stuff, it all just felt like, okay, yeah, and the next beat, and the next beat and the next bit, and the next and then the dinosaurs, which are now basically just big screen roaring

monsters. The only potential surprise being the reveal of the stuff which we've kind of already seen. I read a thing in which the scriptwriter said that what he wanted to do was get back to the tone of the original Jurassic movies. It doesn't. What it does is remind us how much more,

particularly the first movie, how much more exciting it was the first time and how the sense of awe that we got the first time, you know, all those reaction shots, the reach of people looking up and suddenly seeing like a whole field full of dinosaurs or the dinosaur in the tree or the first time the T-Rex I and all that stuff,

it's gone. Now, on the upside, it's better than the last installment, which isn't saying that much. And Gareth Edwards is a very, very good director who proves himself very capable. And I think he gets the very best out of what is honestly a shonky script. But compare that to what he did with Creator. You liked Creator, right?

Yeah, I know absolutely I did, yes. And it had loads of interesting things in it. It didn't all work, but it had loads of interesting things and some things that you really hadn't seen before and some ideas that you didn't expect. And it was adventurous and it went to strange places. This feels like, do you remember there's a thing in, it's one of the early films in which there's like dinosaur fast food?

You know, they're at the theme park, so there's dinosaur themed fast food. And this basically reminded me of that, you know, the kind of the processed samey hugely, sailable, utterly forgettable. It's like the, it's like a, it's like a, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, if, if, if, if one is a bucket of popcorn movie, then this is basically a big mac with fries movie. And it was funny, because I was watching it and I was thinking, I was, I was, I don't whether

you remember, there was a film of fast food nation in which Bruce Willis does this thing about, you know, about processed burgers. And he says, yeah, you know, it's a sad fact of life, but, you know, if you're going to eat processed burgers. The truth is we all have to eat a little from time to time. And I did think watching this, it's going down well with the crowd. I can hear it. They are literally whooping and cheering. And when stuff happens and missions, they are all, they are real. And bear in mind, it's a premiere crowd. Many of them are just excited to be there. But it was clearly playing well with them. It will clearly take a ton of money. It is better than the last installment. Edwards has done a really, really good job with a very shunky script. And at no point

was I interested at all. And that's a clip from Echo Valley. It's a new movie that stars Julia Moore, Sidney, Sweeney and the wonderful Donald Gleis. And other, Donald, how are you? I'm really good. And when I say wonderful, clearly, you're not that wonderful in this movie. How do you mean? Well, what I mean is you mean a lot of different things. You are very good in the picture. Good, good. The character that you play, as we just heard. Yeah. Well, how you describe, Jack? I would say what he says in that clip is quite empathetic. He's empathising with her. He's saying it must be awful. He's the thing that I've learned that about empathy. Just because you're empathetic, it doesn't mean you're using that for good. Oh. You can be, you can use all

that empathy and realize how you can exploit someone. And I think that's very true of Jackie. We've been on the trail a little bit talking about it. And sometimes you realize more afterwards than you need of the time. But I think like one of the things he's really good at is finding someone's their vulnerability. He just knows it immediately. And when he finds it, will get everything he can. Like, he will exploit that to the most of his ability. And I think that's probably how he sees the world, is in terms of power rankings. Is he above or below?

And if he's above, how can he get the most from the person below him? Yeah, I think he just recognises she's on the hook. She loves her daughter way too much. We can get what we want from her. Yeah. I think it's very useful advice. As you go through life, just remember that someone who might be an empath might be using it for all the wrong reasons.

Could also be a psychopath. Yeah. And it's a whole new look for you. You're looking like a psychotic rome. And Keating. That's how I would have. Or just Ronan Keating. No, no, no, that's the joke. I've never, I've never, I've never, I've never, you've got long, you've got long blonde hair and you have, exactly. Because I still mainly associate, I mean, maybe this is, maybe this is just because of when you come on, come on the show. When you were in, goodbye, Christopher Robin. That's how I think of you. Somewhere between that Star Wars and Harry Potter. And about time. Yeah. So less serial killer, more nice don't know. Yes, but in something like ex machina or other things that I've sort of, some people know me from, those characters are like carrying a lot and there's a lot happening to them and they're under a lot of pressure and they kind of have to take it. And so those are the ones that worm into your head and follow you home and you kind of can't shake the feeling of being under someone else's thumb.

And Jackie in this film, he's under pressure from a lot of other people. That's part of what I find interesting about him. But what he's doing in the film is holding people, other people under his thumb. And so there's something, I don't know, it just doesn't follow you around as much for some reason. How much room for maneuver did you have in creating the character? How much of it was given to you? So it's directed by Michael Pierce, who did Beast an Encounter. How much was given to you and how much could you do yourself?

I mean, it was all on the page. It was a really well-written character. but the conversation I had with Michael was about just making sure he was a real person like that he wasn't just a bad guy because I think it's probably scarier that he comes in and feels like a really real person who really kind of likes what he's doing

and why that would be. Like there have to be reasons for that. We don't need to know the reasons, but finding that. And so digging into his luck into how he would have grown up what his world is like when he walks off screen, what his home is like, the pressures he feels at home, all that sort of stuff,

building all that. stuff was up to us away from it. And you did that. And we did that and it was great. Like I met with the chief of police who was an advisor on the film and who had been an advisor on Mayor of Easttown that Brad Ingallsby the writer also wrote. And he drove me around a couple of neighborhoods, talked me through a few sort of case files and, and then I watched documentaries and interviews and all the rest of it. People like Jackie. People like Jackie and people who were under the thumb of people like Jackie. Yeah. And maybe it's all just two inside baseball and it's stuff that people don't need to know. All that matters is what you see on screen and how it makes

you feel. The way you get there shouldn't really matter and is of no interest to most people. But like, I think sometimes these things work and sometimes they don't. I think this film really works, like, as a thriller, and I think part of the reason it really works is when people talk about elevated genre, which I used to talk about, and then I realized in a way it was doing down genre, because there's good genre films and bad genre films, as of our good films and bad films and a good genre film will probably be elevated if you know what I mean and I think

this is like this is it's just a good genre film because it's a thriller but like Julianne's performance is fantastic Sydney's performance is fantastic you've got all these amazing actors in it playing roles that are not the biggest roles in the film Michael directed it really really well

it's shot great like I just feel like it's a kind of a high calibre movie and I think it works incredibly well in its own terms don't know Gleason there what a lovely chap and, as regular listeners to this show, we'll know already. Final section coming up, Mark, what do we have? We have my review of adolescence,

which we think is one of the most important TV series of the year, if not of the decade. Some correspondence on that and your talk with Craig Mazin. Coming up after this. Okay, welcome back. final section, you're going to hear my conversation with the extraordinary Craig Mazin plus Mark's review of adolescence. And some great correspondence on adolescence afterwards. I hope that wasn't too gushing. When you see excellence, you just need to say it. And there isn't

a duff performance in it. And I think the thing about this show, I mean, I had the huge, I don't think we gave too much away, because the best thing about this show is to, ideally is to see it, not knowing very much about it. And I think it always surprises. It never does quite what you're expecting it to do next. What did you think, Mark? Well, I watched it knowing nothing at all about it other than the title. And I watched all four episodes in one viewing. I hadn't planned to do so. But that's just, I just went from one to the next. I thought it was, I mean, I think it's quite brilliant. I think you're absolutely right. I think it was quite right to say at the beginning, you know, it deserves every award going.

Firstly, it's important to say, credit to Stephen Graham, who is the kind of, you know, he's not just in it, but he's the co-creator of it. And he continues to do astonishing work. And I think he's a real force for good in the industry. And, of course, he's working with Philip Barantini, who he's worked with before, memorably boiling point in which we saw

that the one-shot thing can be more than just a gimmick. what's really extraordinary about this the very first episode which is the episode which we heard there in which the police turn up and do the arrest the one shot thing really

is it's I mean it was I found it almost like like having a panic attack being in the house as all this stuff was going on but the thing that's really smart about the series is that you as I think you did with Boiling Point

you start not thinking about that format at all in fact I was watching it for quite a while while before I realized that that's what it was doing. I hadn't gone into it thinking, oh, it's a one-shot drama because I said I knew nothing about it at all. And I think that it talks about a really complex issue in a way that is never patronizing, never trying to simplify something which is really complicated. I mean, I think, you know, you did a very good job of saying

to the two interviewees, you tell us what it's about. And the subject which comes up is, you know, it's about, at least on one level, it's about male rage. And it's important that, for example, the name Andrew Tate appears only fleetingly and never by the central character, because it's talking about a much wider thing than that. It is talking about a kind of culture in which it is possible for somebody who's, you know, his home, no one is more astonished than his parents at what is happening. But during the course of it, you start to realize that all these things have influenced him and been influences on him. And he has sort of been, you know, marinated in this stuff that they just didn't or don't know about.

And I mean, I found it devastating, honestly. I was completely gripped by it. I thought it was really intelligent and really, as you said yourself, it's the beginning of a conversation. It's not the end of a conversation. I mean, you know, God bless Jack Thorne. He's a great writer, and he does know when not to fill stuff in. He does know when to present stuff. And then, as far as the performances are concerned,

I mean, like you say, not a single Duff performance from seasoned professionals to somebody who is on camera for the first time in this incredibly challenging role. And I think the most important thing is that it doesn't go for easy answers. In fact, it doesn't go for answers as such. What it goes for is inquiry. And I watched it a few days ago now, almost seven days ago. And I don't think there's been a day since I saw it that I haven't thought about it. Yeah, I thought it was just, I thought it was every bit as good as you said it was in the beginning of that interview.

I think, and the episode three, which is where Erin Doherty's character is with Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, because it's the one take thing, it's easy for people, and I've read some people say it's a gimmick, you know, and it's showboating and that kind of thing, but the effect in that room where the clinical psychologist is talking to this child is that it makes it even more intense. There are no cutaways, there are no establishing shots. you know, you don't come out of the room and then go back in again, it just ramps up what is an extraordinary conversation. So I found it very interesting when everyone was talking about, you know, he coughs and so he has a glass of water and all that. That's all, that's all part of that experience. And it makes the kind of explosive nature of that conversation even more, even more powerful.

I messaged, I emailed Jack and just said how much I'd enjoy it. And he said that, that kid, he said, took on the whole show and one. Episode three was the first one that they filmed and he said rehearsals were a magic show. You can imagine if you've drent this up, and you're watching this stuff appear on the screen, I just think it's an unmissable experience and it will be terrifying for some parents, but not because it's gruesome, not because it's gory, not because it's explicit or anything, it's just not knowing what goes on behind the door when your kids shut the door and go online. Not because it's, because what it doesn't do is it doesn't do one of the things, oh, yeah, you know, violent dad or something like that. It doesn't do any of that at all. It's, I mean, it's so well balanced. It's, it's so thoughtful. And yes, horrifying because it needs to be, but also completely empathetic, whether it's empathetic or empathic. I'm sorry, my English is not very good. Empathetic, I think is empathetic. Empathetic. You, you, there are moments.

when you sort of recoil from it because you can't get your head around it and then there are other moments when you're just you know you are literally in the room with them and yeah it's it's it is it is as you said it deserves every award going if there's any justice in awards

box office top 10 kind of in a moment but just some emails about adolescence which we were talking about because Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters yeah and we're on the show it has to be the most talked about TV show of the year, I would think. Everywhere you look and on talk shows and on Radio 4 and places,

there's lots of conversations that are happening, and they're happening because of adolescents. Yes. It's sort of like I think it's the first show of the year where you kind of, you have to see it just to join in the conversation, really. Stephen Duggan in Wicklow in Ireland. Simon and Mark, I'm writing to you following your discussion, last week about Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham's extraordinary drama

adolescence. In particular, the moment when you both rightly ascribe the power of the writing to the empathy that underpins the portrayal of every character, which in turn makes each episode not only compelling but truthful. I was the, in quotes, very kind listener who wrote to Jack's agent, Rachel, following his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2021, suggesting that he might be autistic. At the time, I was going through my own process of reflection and discovering leading to an official diagnosis of autism. And although I agonized about sending that email because I didn't want to intrude or to seem like a crank, I'm very glad that I plucked up the courage to do so, as not only did Jack himself reply that same evening,

but we remained in touch while he went through the process of getting a diagnosis himself, most especially because Jack has since become a passionate and vocal advocate for the neurodivergent community. He has, yeah. I'm writing not to pat myself on the back, however, but because perhaps the most persistent prejudice, which still remains about those of us with autism, is that we are incapable of empathy. Even Simon Baron Cohen, who devised the AQ test for autism, once described it as, quotes, an empathy disorder, though he has since retracted that view. The truth, as ever, is more complex than that. Like Jack, I too am a writer, and though lacking even a modicum of his talent,

I have found that my autism is in fact central to my ability to create believable and sympathetic characters. While autistic people may often lack cognitive empathy, the ability to read social cues or the unspoken signals which people pass between them, particularly in groups, many autistic people have extremely well-developed affective empathy, which is the ability not only to recognize but to share in others' feelings and emotions. quite literally sometimes to feel their pain or distress. You both rightly ascribe the power of Jack's writing, whether in adolescence, toxic town, best interests, or the myriad of TV shows and movies that the hardest working man in show business has penned

to his ability to empathize with and then communicate the emotional truth of characters from every walk of life. In doing so, Jack is not only showing himself to be among the very greatest writers currently at work across these islands, but he is helping to shatter the last and most persistent of myths about autistic people,

dating back to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and even now being perpetuated in all those films and TV shows which routinely present autistic characters as purely logical or unfeeling. For this, Jack deserves the thanks of the entire neurodivergent community, and although I'm still very loathe to disturb him, given that he may well be writing his next television or film masterpiece, I can also confirm, as Simon said, that he is indeed an extremely nice man. In regards Stephen Duggan in Wicklow.

good, very good. Absolutely. And also fascinating. And this is one of the emails that I think I might remember because I was not aware of the fine-tuning of this conversation that Simon Baron Cohen had come up with an empathy disorder as a phrase, a phrase that she doesn't believe in anymore. And the difference also between cognitive empathy and affective empathy seems to me particularly fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much for that. Very, very well-written and very, very clearly explained email, and it is, again, it is a credit to adolescence that is provoking this kind of response. I think when you said it is going to be one of the most talked about TV series of the year, I think it's going to be one of the most talked about

TV series of the decade. I mean, people are talking about it as one of the greatest pieces of television ever made. And I don't think that's completely hyperbolic. I think it is affecting people exactly as it intended to do. And it's raising, it is beginning a conversation rather than presenting a solution. And I think that's a great thing. As we speak with four episodes into series two, there are only three episodes to go, which feels wrong somehow. But what feedback are you getting as we're sort of more than halfway through?

Is it because it's a prime number? Yes. An odd. Yes. A prime number. Nobody wants a fact of 10. that's what that's what I agree with you by the way I think we would have loved for it to be six eight or ten six seems like not quite enough but it was an interesting circumstance here we had a different situation with our source material season one or series one as you call it we were obviously adapting the first game and we felt like okay there's not enough here for two seasons of television there's enough for one good long one or what we now call a long one but for the second game because it's so enormous we knew we had to divide it up. And we just kind of look to see where the dotted line of narrative seemed to be, where it would be correct to hit pause. And I've said a number of times, and we're starting to work on exactly how we're laying out our next season. But these seasons television will not necessarily be the same length. No single season may be the same number as any other. So this one

pulls in at seven. The next one could be nine. It's sort of just where it wanted to end. We've talked about your shows on this podcast a lot, and I've said a number of times that I think Chernobyl and Last of Us are two, the greatest TV series of my lifetime. Good Lord. So I'm just putting my cards on the table. Oh, boy. But just so, spalling back briefly, after Chernobyl, what were you looking for? Were you looking for something similar or something completely different?

Was it meeting Neil Druckman? Was it playing the game? How did you end up in this series? In this situation. Yeah. I was actually terrified after Chernobyl. I remember even before it ended, I remember thinking, well, I think this is a pretty good show. And I don't know if anyone's going to watch it, but it seems to me like there's at least a chance to do something else after this.

What will it be? I remember walking around, we were shooting in Vilnius, Lithuania, and I would just sort of walk the streets of Vilnius thinking, well, obviously now I adapt moments from history. What moment from history should I? And it all felt very forced and scared, which is normal for me. And when the show came out, I really did not know what to do. And I asked Casey Blois, who is the head of HBO, what do you want? Which seemed like a nice cowardly thing to do, just to ask what was demanded to me. And he said, we want whatever makes you levitate.

What will get you excited every day to wake up and do something, as opposed to feeling obligated or trying to recreate or anything like that. And I didn't know the answer to it, but around that time, the rights for The Last of Us reverted back to Naughty Dog, which is Neil's company, which is owned by Sony PlayStation. And I had played both of the, well, I hadn't played the second game yet. I hadn't been out, but I played the first game, and I was obsessed with it, and I'd played it when it came out. And I had asked about it years earlier, and it was just never seen like a possibility for so many reasons. And around that time, Neil also watched Chernobyl. And it happened as fast as that. It's a very good lesson, actually, for me to just be patient, wait.

Sometimes if you just stand still, it will arrive. It's hard because I'm an impatient person, but I called Casey and I was like, okay, found it. I'm levitating. Buy this for me. The infected, I just want to ask you about them, because they are terrifying. Obviously, they have to be, and they've taken over. I don't know if you've read Sapiens, the Yuval No Harari book, but he says the two things that make us human and made Homo sapiens triumphant is, I think I'm paraphrasing this right, that we're better organized and that we can tell stories. Now, I don't know if the infected can tell stories, but the scary thing is they appear, now we're in halfway through series two, better organized than we are, correct? No question. Well, they can't tell stories,

which makes them far less interesting than humans are, but that is, in a sense, a superpower as well. part of the way we do organize ourselves socially as we begin to hopefully have some sort of empathy with each other through storytelling, which is why I love being a part of that tradition. And therefore, humans do interesting things like sacrifice sort of nobly or not. But the cortisps are organized by biology. So when I was in college, I took a class on animal behavior. And one of the things I learned, because I was always sort of interested in why ants or bees, seem so selfless. I mean, the idea that a bee is perfectly happy to die to protect its friend,

just if they sting someone, that's it, they're over. Well, as it turns out, bees and ants are far more related to each other than we are to each other. So a bee's brother contains way more of that bee's DNA than my sister contains of me, which means we're all kind of the same thing, which means it's no problem dying. The genetic prerogative is not as strong. Individual for them. And cordyceps don't have that problem. They've lost that sense of individual prerogative. We still have it. And that leads us to do some incredibly beautiful things, some noble things, but it also leads us down horrible paths. There is a price to pay for the way we consider ourselves to be separate from each other. Okay, that's your lot. This has been a Sony

music entertainment production. This week's team was Jen, Eric, Josh, and Heather. The producer was gem, the redactor in absenteer with Simon Paul. And if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get this podcast. Mark, what stood out for you from those films? I don't know how you're supposed to answer that question, but Mark, what stood out for you there? Well, obviously, I was very affected by Bring Her Back, and you and I were both very affected by adolescents, as I think was everyone who saw it. There will be a take two for the Vanguard, as normal dropping alongside this podcast. We're discussing plenty of good stuff, including the busiest and ballziest films from the coming months. And our classic, terrible accents

from great actors game, accents, schmaccents. If you're not subscribe, give it a go. Why don't you? It's worth every cent. That's what Mark says anyway. Thank you for listening.