Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Tom Hanks, Lightyear, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Everything Went Fine, and Spiderhead

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Simon speaks to the one and only Tom Hanks about his role as Colonel Tom Parker in ‘Elvis’. Mark reviews ‘Lightyear’ – the story of a young Buzz Lightyear, Emma Thompson stars in ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’, François Ozone’s French drama ‘Everything Went Fine’ and Chris Hemsworth’s new film ‘Spiderhead’ Plus, What’s on World, the Box office chart and more. You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or find us on our social channels. Show timings: 00:11:18 - Everything Went Fine review 00:22:10 - Box Office Top 10 00:34:19 - Tom Hanks interview 00:49:59 - Lightyear review 00:55:12 - Elevator Jokes 00:58:02 - Good Luck To You, Leo Grande review 01:04:31 - What’s On 01:06:22 - Spiderhead review A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-daycare  money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something else. Yeah Mark. That was particularly low this week. For your fam. Oh, yes I'm. Yes. What? To be speaking in a low voice. Yes.

And because Elvis is part of our conversation today. Yes. Okay. I was playing on my drive time show on greatest hits. We played way down, right? We're on down. We're on down. And I didn't know exactly that bit there. Yeah. Is the voice of JD Sumner, who is a renowned gospel singer, and he's the guy that goes way down the end. And then right at the end, it's like a double mind

or sea or something, which is like my French grade. But I never knew that. Yeah, that's very good. I love that record. I absolutely love that record, but it is definitely one of the ones that everyone tries to sing along to realize is that you can't, you just can't get down there.

So just before we start the show, last week you were complaining that you've never been to my house. And since then, you've never been out of my house. I've had a sleep over. Yeah. So excited. So it's just been non-stop. I wake up in the morning and you're there.

And I'm there. Well, that kind of just clarifies. I go down to breakfast and you're there. Well, what happened was, the kind of just clarifies. I go down to breakfast and you're there. Well, what happened was the last time I had to stay over in sunny London, I had an unfortunate hotel experience, which involved the double booking of a room. No names, no Patrick, but it wasn't fun. And I therefore became sort of rather paranoid about any hotel experience at all. And then I had to pick up my car from outside of your house.

I'd still never been into your house, but child one, complicated. And then whilst I was there, the good lady ceramicist, her indoors, in a moment of rational said, of course, if you ever need somewhere to study, there is here. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I was in the very top room. You were. I was in the upchild ones. Upchild, up in the attic. It was very nice.

Very, very nice. But was I a good guest? You were a very good guest. You were a silent sleeper. Silent sleeper. You didn't eat anything. You didn't drink anything. Coffee.

Yeah, coffee. Three cups of coffee. And a diet code. Yeah. A cheap date, basically. So we've done all the practice. So you were seeing a lot more of me since then. How long have we been working together?

38 years. It was the first time I've been to your house. See, we've seen a lot more of me since then. How long have we been working together? 38 years. It's the first time I've been to your house. Well, don't blame me. If you live in Narnia, that's the way these things go. As far as the show is concerned, I can't remember what's happening on the program because I'm exhausted through all the kind of looking after my house guests.

Yes, it's very hard to remind me. I'm going to review light year. Everything went fine. Which is new for my Francois Ozone, spider hit. And, oh yeah, Tom Hanks hit him again. Anyway, we're talking Elvis. The review will come next week, but the chat with Tom Hanks is gonna be this week.

And we're gonna run, what? No, it's gonna say, and we'll also be reviewing a good luxury leo-gram. And we'll go through the box office top 10. And as if that wasn't enough. And on Monday, there's going to be another take-to in which we'll be expanding your viewing in our feature One Frame Back gives you some further.

Watching related to one of the week's releases, that does make it sound like it's homework. But anyway, in this case, it's light-year Mark's going to pick a film which has an imaginary film as part of it for your viewing pleasure. I will be doing that. Somebody sent me a thing from last week's one frame back.

We were doing Jeff Goldblum, maybe it was a couple of weeks ago, we did Jeff Goldblum, you know, pick a Jeff Goldblum movie. And I said, mad monkey, but you can't get it anywhere. So that was very helpful. Somebody just sent me a text saying, it's on a popular streaming service. No, not even streaming service. It's on YouTube. So the whole film's on YouTube.

Illegally, I'm sure. That's how difficult it is to see. That's how difficult it is to see. You type it in and there it is. So not that lost after all. Take it all over, you decide this week, this is the kind of word of mouth on a podcast thing. Mark's gonna be looking at Apple TV plus his severance.

I will. Your suggestions for great cinema adjacent stuff that we may have missed. Correspondents at Kermit and Mayo.com. This can be correspondence, CE, or correspondence with a TS. Yeah, because they bought all the addresses that were adjacent to the word correspondence. Yeah. Which I think is actually insulting, because it's assuming that our listenership don't know how to spell. We have a very astute listenership as some of the correspondents will prove very shortly. And we built up quite a little bank of must see reviews of great stuff to watch on streaming services.

So sign up to Extra Takes and Apple Podcasts to dig into our growing archive. If you've got an archive. Back catalog. If you prefer a different platform, you go to extra takes.com. And if you're already a Vanguard-y step, well, thank you for subscribing. We salute you. All these pleasures shall be added unto you. I did a school report thing a couple of weeks ago. I still haven't brought mine in because I'm clearing out, just clearing out various bits of the house. Yeah, you had photographs all over your table, like photographs taken in the old Kodak format

with the rounded corners. Oh, single tits. Everything looks the color of instant coffee. It's impossible to clear out a box of photographs without stopping and saying, oh look, did you not look fab? Yeah, you were young, man. Yes, it's 50 years ago, okay. Here's the interesting thing,

you had a photograph on your table in which the good lady's ceramicist looks exactly as the good lady's ceramicist does now. But in photographs of you, you look like a child. Yeah, well, that's pretty much. So basically, she hasn't aged, but you've turned into an old man. Well, I am old.

No, I know, but that's fine. It's fine, but she hasn't. Well, my school report that I read out, in case you missed it, I just, I think it was from my math teacher who said he doesn't realize how little work he does, or something like that. Exactly. Joe in Tumberidge Wells,

is a line from a school report here. I didn't realize the inappropriateness until it was pointed out to me a few years ago, but as a 10 to 8 or 9 year old, my end of year report included the ever so slightly damning phrase, copes well within the limits of her ability. See, and that's it again. It's another line that you wouldn't be able to write now, because you have to decode teacher's reports now.

What does that mean? Oh, I see. Alex Nuen. Hello, both. I'm Alex Long-Termliss, and a first-time emailer from Sheffield. Oh, this is going to see a film not realising what you're seeing. Yes. Thinking that you're seeing one film and actually seeing something else. My brothers and I will never forget the harrowing 2006 experience of our mother, taking us to see what we and she thought would be happy feet. Remember that? Yeah, I remember happy feet the dancing penguins.

Each date we went in expecting animated dancing penguins and came out after a harrowing 90 minutes of March of the penguins, a bleak documentary in which eggs are frozen and penguins die in the barren icy wasteland. We have never been the same since. I haven't seen March of the penguins. I've seen happy feet. There was also a case, maybe it wasn't happy feet. March of the penguins is a very good documentary, but it is, you know, as with all documentaries,

you know, nature is red and tooth and all of that. But if you want to see happy, clappy penguins. But there was also, there was a case in a popular cinema chain in which the screen was meant to be showing a kids cartoon and they started showing the latest paranormal activity movie. And they showed something like the first five minutes of it, which included a particularly grueling scene before everybody ran screaming from the cinema. And this is why you need projectionists,

because a projectionist would have pressed go, look through the viewing window and gone, that doesn't look like an animated film. That looks like a live action scary horror movie in which somebody's head is about to leave their body. Matt says, your tells-of-school reports remind me of when I got in the 80s, which I've just dug out of the attic. It says English. Matt is extremely quiet during lessons, which can be deceptive. Which I like, Kev Kohl has got a note from Dr. James Treadwell written at the bottom of his first year undergraduate English literature essays.

If you're going to write about wordsworth, you better learn how to spell daffodil. Two words. So that was actually in the report. So the streamers that we were talking about last week, just before we do some new reviews, real Britannia, was one of them. And it's on Britbox. Some interesting correspondence here. Someone who calls themselves neo-natal penguin. This is always the same when you take these things offline.

It strikes me as odd that any history of British cinema would begin after the 1940s, the era of David Lean, Ealing Studios, Palin Pressburger, Carol Reed, early Hitchcock, etc. It would be like making a documentary about terrorism that begins on September the 12th. The 1940s was quite possibly the high point for British cinema to ignore it seems like

an absolutely bum-brain choice. I'm tired of British cinema retrospectives that pretend there were no films before Get Carter, train spotting, and Richard Curtis, or the Alec Guinness didn't have a career until Star Wars. On the same subject, Space Odds 1985, thanks for getting in touch, Space Odds, well animated and edited, but honestly I found it very condescending. I mean, explaining and taking a pop at the carry-ons, sorry, but they're playing on ITV3

and they're streaming on the very platform this documentary is being shown on Also, I found it's condescending tone on horror and the jump from that to London-based realism without mentioning repulsion 1965 Catherine de Nervini and Henry why No, I just say that there's an impure this is okay Because it was directed by not only a foreign director But by someone who's now considered persona non-grata, also sneering at the angry silence and claiming it has an age well due to its portrayal

of the unions, where have these filmmakers been for the last 40 years? Anyway, so dissenting voices about real brilliance. Well, that's why I mean, I enjoyed it more than that. I mean, it doesn't pretend that cinema didn't exist before the 1960s, but it is a four-part documentary series covering British cinema from 1960s to 2010. So it's like it's kind of, it's doing what it's saying.

I mean, having done secrets of cinema, having done several series of secrets of cinema. Excellent series. Thank you very much. As I said, I have nothing but aberration for something which can construct an argument through using often apparently disconnected clips, but we've to get woven together pardon me

in a way that makes you think, oh, actually I hadn't thought of that before. I didn't find the tone sneering or condescending and I don't think it does pretend that there wasn't any cinema for 1960, but hey, 1940, actually, no, no, there wasn't any cinema before 1960,

1940 is before 1960, as is 1950. Yes. So it strikes neo-Nacled penguin as odd that any history of British cinema would begin after the 1950s. Yes, but it does, but it doesn't pretend that there was no C before I see. Anyway, I'm fighting a rearguard action here. Also, there's stuff that's brand new and exciting and high-time Mark told us about it. So a new film by François Ozon which is

everything went fine. Ozon is the genius behind things like sitcom, under the sand, eight women, you go for it. Most recently, some were of 85, which I liked very much. And some of his films have been so very stylistically adventurous. This is much more kind of conventionally straight in its drama, perhaps because of the subject matter. So, Sophie Mosseau is in Manuel, whose father, played by Andre Ducelier, has a stroke, and who then asks, or rather tells, his daughter, that he wants her to help him end his life. She is immediately shocked, but then realizes that he has given her a responsibility that she has to do something with. Now, in the very first show, we played... We didn't play a clip from a foreign language film, and somebody said,

you know, you should do that because it actually gives us a sense of what the film feels like, even if we don't understand the language. So here is a clip from everything went fine, in which she is discussing with a medic what her father has said is the clip Mais je ne veux pas vous raconter d'histoire si votre père refuse de se battre, vu son état général et son âge, ça durera pas longtemps. Donc il faut espérer que les entités pressent sur agis vite et puis il est important que votre papa se sentent entouré. Faut lui ordonner le moral. Vous en faites pas. En général, il s'accroche tout à la vie. Merci, docteur. Je vous en prie. Merci de la docteur, je l'ai déjà dit. I'm not a doctor, I'm just a doctor. I'm a doctor, I got that bit. Yeah, and what she's told at the end is, look,

what generally happens is that people choose life. After something like this happens, they can often be depressed. We hope that the antidepressants kick in, but people generally choose life. He doesn't. He is long separated from, you know, Manuel's mother, played by Charlotte Rampling.

So she only has her sister to turn to. And the problems are twofold. Firstly, asking to help her father, I mean, she has this kind of loving but conflictive relationship with a father which we see in flashbacks to her childhood in which her father is, you know, often sort of quite brutal with her.

But being asked by your father to help, to assist in dying is a big thing. And as her sister says, the irony of it is, when you were younger, you wanted to kill him. And now you can't. The other problem is that assisting suicide is illegal. And the only way they can do this is to have Switzerland involved,

which means transporting him to Switzerland. And also the fact that he keeps talking about it to everybody else, which is legally dangerous because it puts you in a position of being implicated. So there is also the spectre of someone from his past who we know to be a kind of a random destructive force, but to whom he is emotionally attached and from him he cannot detach. So the subject matter obviously lends itself to the potential of being more kiss or sentimental, but this being I was on, it's he's never any of those things.

This is a drama about spiky people with spiky relationships. And just because one of them happens to want to end their life, it doesn't mean that the film is going to in any way soften those edges. In fact, Andre, in particular, the father is massively cantankerous all the way through it. And the film is very honest about the tensions within the relationship. I mean you get the sense that he is somebody who has spent his life telling everybody how they are going to do

things and how his life is going to be conducted and everyone just kind of falling in line with it because that's what he does. I thought it was really well done. I thought it took the subject seriously but it didn't, it wasn't somber or po-faced about it. There's a lot of humor in the film, particularly in the kind of interaction between the daughters and the father. There is also a kind of general philosophical question about how one should approach the idea of, you know, of the right to take one's own life or the right to be assisted in that

and how once it gets into any form of legal process, it becomes kind of almost Kafka-eskly absurd. But I think the main thing is that it's really, it's an ensemble piece with people playing a family, a family that is being driven by a particularly difficult situation, yet they are still the people they always were in some form of extremists, but not behaving hysterically, not behave. It's not a film of big gestures, it's not a film of grand speeches. It's a very,

very naturalistic look at a very challenging situation and how people would react in it. And I thought, I'm a big fan of Ozai, other than anyway, and I've always liked his films. But I thought this was very well done. I thought so from my so was terrific. And I thought it took a very difficult subject matter and dealt with it in a way that was matter of fact, but not matter of fact, therefore uninteresting, matter of fact and therefore engaging.

So if you'd like to get in touch, we would love to hear from you. Maybe you'll have seen some of the movies which Mark has reviewed that one. Or if you just want to get in touch about stuff, stuff in general. Correspondence at codeom.com just heard, says, Steve Davis from Robotics Surgery Corner.

Oh great. Just heard the question on this week's Take Two regarding what films to show to young kids, but with actors. My recommend to do is bridge to terabetheia. Oh, that's an interesting fantasy film. Control threat dealing with loss. It's a beautiful and perfect film. It's a PG, but both my girls watched it when very young and loved it.

My guess is that it's very nature being a PG, means it's not what they're looking for, but I don't know, it might be wrong. Well, because they wanted something that was slightly more, I think, controlled threat dealing with loss might not be the... Yeah, I mean, British territory beef here is, you know, is definitely dealing with loss.

I came back to what I said before, as I think, amazing Mr. Blondon is a very good place to go because in both versions, because it, again, it deals with big subjects, but it does it in a kind of slightly fantastically environment. Incidentally, I was delighted to find that the novel of the Ghosts,

which is not the Antony Bob novel, and Pomm which amazing Mr. Blondon is based. It was reprinted as a result of Mark Gatiss' recent remake, Cameron Christmas. And I read it again the other day on the train and it's every bit as good as I, because I've written about it in my PhD and I haven't read it for many, many years and it's every bit as good as I remember. What your PhD might know, no, no, my PhD, I hope to never see my PhD ever again. I've done it great.

We could do that as an extra take. You could read out your, what was the title of it? Oh, for heaven's sake, it was the radical ethical and political implications of modern British English and American horror fiction 1960 to something. 75. I think that could be quite great. That could be rubbish.

We've absolutely one of the most solid gold rubb. Take five, Mark now reads his thesis. I'd go for that. Do you know what the final words of my thesis were? Thank heavens that's all over. Are we not monstrous? See that's almost as good as Hey Mar. Look at me. What is it? What Mar look at me top of the world top of the

world that's what you do for take for take five if you read out your your thesis I'm gonna read out mine I could read out yours and you can read out mine okay mine is Burke's theory of revolution what's the last what's the last line of your thesis I've got absolutely no idea. It was complete drivel. As indeed, most theses. Ah, theses, which you could get to with the thesis. You could get to it with the thesis.

You could get to it with the thesis. Should you wish. I'm sure somebody even now is listening, writing a song that rhymes theses with theses. As I would be disappointed if they weren't. It doesn't come up at least six, all recorded in spatial audio for next week's programme. Box office top 10 and Tom Hanks coming up.

Happy Nord Christmas. Protect yourself whilst Christmas shopping online and access all the Christmas films from around the globe. Plus, when you shop online you'll have to give websites your card details and other sensitive data like your personal addresses. Those websites should already have their own encryption built into their payment systems, but to be on the safe side you can use a VPN to ensure that all data coming to and from your device is encrypted. Even if you're using an unsafe Wi-Fi, you'll still be able to shop securely with a VPN. And you can access Christmas films only available overseas by using streaming services not available in the UK. To take our huge discount of your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com

slash take. Our link will also give you four extra months for free on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Hi, esteemed podcast listeners, Simon Mayo. I'm Mark Kermot here. I'm excited to let you know that the new season of the Crown and the Crown, the official podcast, returns on 16th November to accompany the sixth and final season of the Netflix epic Royal Drama series.

Very exciting, especially because SuperSub and Friend of the show Edith Bowman hosts this one. Indeed, Edith will take you behind the scenes, dive into conversation with the talented cast and crew from writer and creator Peter Morgan to the Crown's Queen Elizabeth in Melda Staunton. Other guests on the new series include the Crowns research team, the directors, executive producers Suzanne Mackie and specialists such as voice coach William Connaker and props master Owen Harrison. Cast members including Jonathan Price, Selim Dor, Khalid Abdallah, Dominic West and Elizabeth

Tabicki. You can also catch up with the story so far by searching the Crown, the official podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe now and get the new series of the Crown, the official podcast first on November 16th. Available, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Mooby, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe. From my connect directors to emerging otters, there's always something new to discover, for example. Well, for example, the new Akikari's Macchi film Fallen Leaves, which won the jury prize at CAN,

that's in cinemas at the moment. And if you see that and think I want to know more about Aki Karri's Macchi, you can go to Movie The Streaming Service and there is a retrospective of his films called How to Be a Human. They are also going to be theatrically releasing In January Priscilla, which is a new Sophia couple of film, which I am really looking forward to since I have an Elvis obsession. You could try Mooby Free for 30 days at Mooby.com. Slash, Kermit and Mayo.

That's M-U-B-I.com slash Kermit and Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free. Okay, welcome back. Box of his Top 10 and some Tom Hanks business and light year. All coming up. This from Grigor, first of all, Grigor, who just says, Bodhidha, sadly not good podcasting, but enjoy. I got this courtesy of rarehistoricalphotos.com. Okay. Okay. So it says I should read this out of my best advertising voice. Okay. So given that we're doing lots of lots of those funky ads at the moment, we're very good at it. VPNs, wine, beer, the economist, I enjoy all of them. Sometimes at the same time. So basically your

ideal situation will be sitting down on the internet with your NordVPN on a glass of wine from the right wine club from why reading the economy what else we've missed out and I would be wearing a barracuda still and still no word from them I'm waiting for adnums as well but anyway so Grigor has sent us this photograph of an ad, right? And the ad says, what the heck is electronic mail? So the year is 1977. So this is... So this is... So this is... So this is 1977?

Yeah. Electronic mail is a term that's been banded around data processing circles for years. Has it? Simply put, it means high-speed information transportation. One of the most advanced methods is terminals talking to one another. No. Your mailbox is the terminal on your desk. Punch a key and today's correspondence and messages are displayed instantly. Need to notify people immediately if a fast-flowing development,

have your messages delivered to their terminal mailboxes electronically across the hall or across the world? Electronic mail is document distribution that's more timely, accurate and flexible and so on and so on and so on. So that's the 70s, 1977. So the internet wasn't invented until... It's got to be a bit fuddled. I know. ...crazed man. That looks like me, that looks like me. He's trying to figure out emergency mail. Yes. And there's a whole lot of electronic sparking coming off his computer.

Well, that's what happens. And that's a Honeywell ad. Anyway, thanks for your effort. That's very good. I can voice over anything. That's really fantastic. There's probably a phone number attached. Can you see if it says?

Oh, one. Oh, yes, for more information called Mr. Laurie Reeves ad. There's only one player. It's an American. It's an American. 800, 225, 3, 222, slas 3. So. Right, box office top 10, courtesy of Comscore. At number 12, all my friends hate me, which was picked up by the BFI for distribution

after having played very well at festivals. The story is that this guy who's been abroad comes back, goes to his university friends, posh country house, where he's been promised a slap-up birthday, and in fact, he thinks that all my friends hate me, particularly the weird guy they found in the pub who seems to be conspiring against him. So it's kind of the borderline of comedy and horror, and what I liked about it is it runs along that edge quite well because that's a very difficult balance Ben says all my friends hate me is engaging effective and occasionally brutal film I found it's darkly comic portrayal of social anxiety and mental health struggles

The quiet horror of not being able to trust your emotions of your perception of the world well judged and powerful It deals intelligently and wittily with themes of class, privilege and guilt. It's perhaps not the best film of the year so far, but it got under my skin unlike any other, with salutations from anxiety sufferers apps. Excellent. Very crowded apps, by the way, Ben. Patrick says, the first thing to say after having been to see this film is that I don't think I've physically squirmed in my seat so much in the film. The level of cringe and awkward humour in the writing had me hiding my head behind my knees at points, particularly in the interactions between Pete and Claire. The cast were superb at not batting an eyelid while being completely toxic to their supposed best friends.

The second thing to say was that the portrayal of Pete was so painfully accurate for what I feel is a generational onset of anxiety for the late millennials. I've struggled with anxiety through much of my soon-to-be-ending twenties, particularly social anxiety and on a fairly frequent basis. Do believe that all of my friends or colleagues or family, or all of the above, actually hate me. It's an exhausting headspace to function in, but the reality is, it's mild in the grand scheme of anxiety. The way the character of Pete is written, in the most part, felt like someone was putting my experience with anxiety on screen in a way that I've never seen before. Despite the

left turn, at the end of the film, I found the experience of watching this film to be oddly cathartic, was a helpful reminder that I'm not the only one who interprets every social interaction in almost an entirely negative way. For me, despite the comedy horror trappings, it felt like 90 minutes of a rather horrific therapy session, and I was glad that Mark rated it too. Good. Loving a new podcast, very much looking forward to it guided me through the next 50 years and more of my film going live.

Thank you, Patrick. I'm going to go and I just say, as a fellow anxiety sufferer, yes. Number 10 here, and number 10 in America, anti-sunderanic, which is a technical language romantic comedy. It's distributed over here by DreamZent. So I didn't, there wasn't a national press show, but it appears to be doing very well. If you've seen it, please give us a send us your review. Yes, and send it to correspondence at Covid-19. Number nine here, 18 in America is men, which I think I like more than you do. You absolutely right It's you it gloves off are you really you're really sort of thumbs down for it. I admired it. No, I admired it

I admired it because of the performances, okay, which are just you know Estonishing, but I really I really didn't like it because it wasn't because I don't like body horror. No, it is definitely. I think one of the things is that some people are going to see it not knowing that it does go full-cronenberg. And I think you need to know that it goes full-cronenberg, you know, full-wound is forearm because otherwise the last act would be very alarming. Number eight in this country is Vikram. So Vikram has been doing very well. This is an action thriller which opened a couple of weeks ago It's done very well internationally Incidentally has a very fine soundtrack with music by Anirudh Ravichandar and if you want to be hearing tracks from it

Can I tune in on the sky? You can tune in on the sky right here because I'll be playing a second selection of tracks from it just this week Satinette won that day one followed by Simon Mayer's essential albums. I love this new podcast. Down to Naby a new era is it number seven? Nothing new about it at all. Number six in America. Okay, the bad guys is it number six. Yeah, I think we've covered it. Sonnet the Hedgehog 2, number five. Again, I think we've covered it. Number seven in America, number four here, everything everywhere, all at once. Which is really, I mean, it has proved hugely successful. And when you consider how much it costs and how much it's taken and the kind of reviews they go,

I mean, some people have said, you know, I wish it hadn't been hyped before, I wish I'd just stumbled upon it. And I did say that when we were reviewing it, the problem is if you look at it as a small indie movie with a huge ambition, it's really rewarding. If you go in, having been told, it's one of the greatest movies ever made. It isn't.

But the reason it isn't is because it's a small punchy Indie movie with a lot of DIY sensibility that, you know, you have to take it for what it is. And when you put it next to Dr. Strange, it is so much more adventurous and so much more inventive. And it is right now right next door to Dr. Strange because Dr. Strange in the multiverse of Manus is at number three. Which I enjoyed enough, but it's a great big behemoth, you know, franchise movie. Yes, directed by Sam Raimi, so therefore having a little bit of a personal touch, and I've always been a fan of Sam Raimi's, and I'll always watch his films, but everything everywhere is demonstrably the better film, and it's just

so rewarding to see a little film like that punching so far above its weight. Top three in the UK is the same as the top three in the US, said, Dr Stranget number three, Top Gun Maverick is at number two, Oliver Hutton. Says, I'm looking forward to the day, Top Gun Maverick is no longer in the top 10, because every time you say Top Gun Maverick,

I still cheer Top Gun Maverick. Regardless of where I am, see earlier programs for details. Dear Iceman and is typing, amid all the plaudits, this is a great, this is, this, here is a defining email, which comes from Ian Gad, okay. This I haven't heard or seen anywhere, anyone pick up Maverick on this.

Okay, go ahead. Amid all the plaudits about Top Gun Maverick's extraordinary realism, I believe that one particular attention to detail has been hitherto entirely overlooked. Okay. Punctuation. In the pithy text messages exchange between Isman and Maverick. Right. Each ends emphatically with a full stop.

This may seem a trivial detail, but it's a clear sign that neither is from the instant messaging generation. In which nobody but the full stop is a powerful indicator of feeling that is to be used sparingly. Sorry, is it? Yes. As I'm closer in age to Iceland and Maverick than those who grew up with instant messaging, I learnt the nuances of punctuating text messages via my university students as part

of seminars relating to style and form in the 18th century epistolar efiction. Yes, really. What follows is my understanding of how the full stop operates in messaging. Okay, ready? Go ahead. And I check this with child 2 and child 3 and they both agreed with Ian. Okay.

Sent this. Messaging, unlike email, is more closely akin to conversation and correspondence. And a lack of full stops at the end of a message is a way of signaling an openness to continuing to apply, regardless of whether it applies actually instant or several days later. Using full stops at the end of a message disrupts this. In its simplest form, a full stop can indicate annoyance or frustration, for example.

A message to your significant other saying, you're going to the pub after work that receives a fine without a full stop indicates that this is genuinely fine. If it has a full stop, you're in trouble. A full stop can also add emphasis and sincerity. I love you with a full stop inside the quotation marks means something more than I love you with a full stop outside of the quotation marks. To return to Top Gun Maverick, as you would expect, Iceman and Maverick punctuate their messages as men of their age would do, indicating to those in the audience who were not alive for the original Top Gun that neither is the rule-breaking young gun they

once were. The emphatic full stops at the end of each of their messages signals that they are unable to escape the taught discipline of the military, as well as hinting at their suppressed emotional bond between the two of them. Well. Guess what job Ian Gant, who's our correspondence, guess what job Ian has? Subbelly, sir. Professor of English, literature at Bathsby University.

Here we go. So, your full stop says, Fum, or about well, or what? I would love to know whether that was actually considered, and if you think about how Tom cruises on top of everything, everything, everything, I bet he was on top of everything everywhere, all at once. And he knew about the full stop. Let me just add two things. Joseph Kuzinski, the director and Miles Teller are reteaming for something else, which we are discussing later on today, which is Spiderhead. Also, I was just checking this. I'm right. Everything everywhere, all at once, which is doing very well in the charts, is now also available on demand.

Thank you. The box office number one, US and UK, Jurassic World Dominion. Someone called Lalo Scarf. I've seen Jurassic World Dominion. I thought it was pretty fun. Explored some interesting ideas, but definitely could have chopped 10 to 50 minutes

off the runtime. Really lacked some interesting direction compared to fallen kingdom, which I kind of adore flaws and all. Tom says, I despised Jurassic World Dominion. It was so uninspired, interchanging originality with flat characters and action scenes lacking any tension. The entire thing was totally unengaging and reflected on ongoing problem with blockbusters, cheap fan service and lack of originality. Tim Evans says last night I took the kids to the opening night of Jurassic World to

Minion. My eight-year-old son, Noah, the same boy I wrote to you about last year, who ran through the house shouting, ice cream ice cream on hearing the Swedish rhapsody music on your previous show, has been counting down the days to see this on the calendar for last month. Having just listened to your review, I felt compelled to write in. I fully agree with you that it is a weird, mishmash of sub-power effects, plot holes and uncalled for nods to various unrelated movie franchises. Also, what has happened to Chris Pratt? How can Andy from Parks and Recreation and Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy have become so dull? He just

seems to be there to look pive and stand in strange action poses. Yes, it's definitely not the best film of the series. Yes, it's a bit of a mess. But, and it's a T-Rex-sized butt. And T-Rexes had large butts. All of this was forced from my mind when, at the climax of the motorcycle chase scene with the raptors, I felt a small hand grip mine.

I turned to look at Noah who was sitting wide eyed, breathing heavily and transfixed by the action. He then turned to me with a huge smile and whispered, now this is my kind of movie. Very good. Both he and my daughter, Matilda, loved it. Despite both complaining about the excessive volume level during the action scenes, I feel sometimes we lose sight of the joy that these, to us, adults, formulaic blockbusters can bring to kids. I think, I can think of lots of films that gave me this sort of reaction as a child, and to see my son experiencing this feeling made me feel so happy. He is already wanting to know when we can see it again. Loving the new show, is there any chance you can have a regular segment in which you give Jeff

Goldblum a topic to speak about, then just leave the tape running for the next 50 minutes. Kind regards to Tim Evans. Can I have a good point? No, it's a very good point. And I would like to say that actually, if you compare my review to many of the other reviews, I was kind of surprised by how harsh many of them was. We had one from somebody just then saying they despised the film. A leading newspaper, two leading critics gave the film one star. Ludicrous. Yeah, it's not a one star movie. No, it's not very inventive, it's got loads of things wrong with it.

But you know what, it is exactly, as you said, it does what it says on the packet. And afterwards, I was having a drink with a colleague, and we just went, yeah, I mean, it's just fine. Yeah, take the kids, take the kids. They'll enjoy it. It's there, I mean, there's nothing in it as visually interesting as the J. Byron of course not, because Colin Trevor isn't that interesting of a director, but calling it a one-star film is just silly. It is. Very, very silly. Which is why we don't bother with. This is why we don't do that? That kind of thing.

Okay, next up, a man. That was very jaw-solved as well. Was that on purpose? That was very good. It was. I think I'd quite like to have a feature in which, which is called, I'm not bothered with that kind of thing. Really?

Just a list of things. Okay, it's Tom Hanks' time. Because he is one of the stars of the new Elvis movie. And you can hear my conversation with Tom Hanks after this clip from the film. Come on, you've got to get all in. The party announced, Sean the radio. Come on, let's go.

He's a young singer from Memphis, Tennessee. Give him a warm, hay-ride welcome to a Mr. Elvis Presley. Now I don't know nothing about music, but I could see in that girl's eyes. He was a taste of forbidden fruit. He could have eaten him alive. He was my destiny. And that's a clip from Elvis. I'm delighted to say that one of it stars is Tom Hanks.

Can there be more than one star of a movie called Elvis when it be Elvis? That would be Austin Butler? Yeah. It's kind of like there's how many stars are in a movie called Jesus of Nazareth. There's really only one. And that's kind of like, say, your next picture. Oh, wouldn't that be great? I think we have something to add to that saga.

I think the greatest story I've ever told has not been totally told yet. So we'll add a little bit more to it. Yeah, have you ever been in a biblical era? No, I can't say they've come out for me for the robes and sandals thing. The last time we spoke was for Beautiful Down the Neighborhood. It's January 2020, which is very, you know,

feels like an eternity a go. And you told us in that interview, this too shall pass. So we had that, we had that conversation. And then shortly afterwards, you went to Australia, this is relevant to what we're talking about. And you and your wife got COVID. And I wondered if you had to remember those words yourself and because we didn't know very much about it.

Oh, now that was, we were six days away from starting filming of what would have been, I think, a different version of our Elvis movie. I mean, we were reading the stories that everybody else was, and in fact, we had had this the month before we were in Australia, and the health officials came around and spoke to all of us Americans about this thing that was on the horizon, that was beginning to spread out of Asia and out of China, this thing called COVID.

And then when we happened to contract it, it happened in more or less the wink of an eye, and she got it first, and then I came down with it about 12 hours later, and then down for the count for the better part of 11 days. So that first blast was, it wasn't a life-threatening luckily to us, but it was debilitating. And in what way would this movie have been different if you shut it? It's interesting that you should ask that question because, you know, this movies have this kind of momentum, this inertia that is unstoppable once a decision has been made essentially to sign a check for the rental of the production

office. And no matter what decision is made, the clock is running and the day is going to come where you're going to start shooting film. And no matter how long the script is, or how many variations of any scene that is in it, no matter how much everybody has worked, six days away we had had a kid who even call it a read through, basilarm and conducts impromptu performance. People get up under lights and music is playing and you lean into microphones and he sort of like, and he

literally says, and action. And we had a version of the script that was huge all across the board, hitting all of the, an awful lot of the tropes and the ideas of Elvis and the saga that by and large were all pretty used to. With the shutdown that came on and literally six days before we began, first they were saying, okay, it's the middle of March, we'll be back on the 15th of June to start again. And I said, I don't think we're going to be back on the fifth. And then they moved to the 15th of July, 15th of August.

And when they were saying, we hope to come back on the 15th of September. Baz and I had a protracted conversation. One of the things that had occurred was, is my wife is good friends, well, my wife knows Priscilla Presley from women's cancers events. And they ran into each other at a restaurant in Los Angeles

and Priscilla knew that I was doing this and she said, oh my God, Tom's playing the Colonel in this thing. I hope it goes well and Rita said, why don want to come up to the house and we'll talk. And she did along with Jerry Schilling, who is one of the original Memphis Moffie guys. Jerry Schilling is a guy who knew Elvis back at Hume's high school. That's how far away I think of. And I was prepared to hear horror stories of, as I was familiar, of the Colonel.

How he was manipulative, how he's a puppet master, how he was evil, of the colonel. How he was manipulative, how he was a puppet master, how he was evil, how he was a resputin'. And both Priscilla and Jerry said, the colonel was one of the most delightful men I've ever met. He was caring. Was he a carny and was he cheap and was he a bit of a, you know, can't really call him a crook,

but was he fast and loose with some of the profits and some of the money's yes, and with the time can, we got it all out from them. But in the day, he always said yes, he always had a sunny attitude, and he brightened up of every room that he walked into, and this was completely contrary to not only what I had heard, but also sort of to the direction that we were going in.

Baz, Baz, and the myriad of writers had created one of those kind of relatively understandable show business sagas of a one-of-a-kind artist with a manipulative manager. And that's what we were going to go off and make. And when Priscilla and both Jerry said, you have to understand this about the Colonel. He was not Elvis's manager. He was Elvis's promoter. The Colonel did not have an artistic bone in his body. He did not care about the music.

He cared about the deal. He got the same pleasure about taking $25 billion away from casinos in Las Vegas as he got from taking 25 cents away from somebody who bought a ticket to see dancing chickens. It was the same exact thing. So based on that, Baz and I had a protracted conversation about turning all the no, no, no, no, no,

knows that the colonel said to Elvis into yes, yes, yes, yes. And we ended up making a very different sort of, from my perspective, a different sort of movie than what we would have if we had gone without COVID. So thank yes, yes. And we ended up making a very different sort of, from my perspective, a different sort of movie than what we would have if we had gone without COVID. So thank you, COVID. How did you become Colonel Tom? I had no knowledge of what Colonel Tom Parker looked like. I had no knowledge of what he sounded like.

And from our very first meeting with Baz, Baz was coming over to, I knew Baz from a couple of Shakespearean events that we had been at. And when he said, I wanna talk to you about Elvis. And I said, why? Obviously, I'm not gonna play Elvis. Who am I gonna play Vernon? You know, I guess, maybe there's a good role there.

But when he said, that Vernon, Bernie and Presley was his dad. Played by the great Australian actor, Richard Roxberg. I thought Colonel Tom Parker would be tall and from the south and full of bluster, maybe good looking with a strong chin. And instead he was a short guy with a Dutch accent that his name wasn't really Colonel Tom Parker, he was none of those things.

And this was stunning to me. Bad said, there would have never been an Elvis without Colonel Tom Parker. And they never would have done Colonel Tom Parker without Elvis. And this was an extraordinary saga. I had just played fall staff in a production of Henry IV parts one and two kind of jam together. And I said, well, you're talking, well, this is fall staff in Prince Howell. This is a wise guy who's a bit of a curmudgeon, a bit of a chameleon, a bit of a character, shaping

somebody into a grander form of what they could be. And he said, that's exactly right. So what been required, I literally, I had never seen a picture of Colonel Tom Parker. And he showed me his, like, lookbook. Baz always has a lot of very visual, huge amount of visual material. When I saw this, balding, fat, old guys and all. Thanks, Bass. Yeah. Well, this is going to, this is going to require no small amount of experimentation and we ended up just, just doing the work. And, uh, Bass ended up being a great collaborator.

I heard him described as a maximalist filmmaker. Yeah, we pushed every single day to the max. This might sound a strange comparison. It reminded me of my favorite movie I always say is Amadeus and is it a biopic? Yes, because the guy's name is the title, but we see Mozart's life through the eyes of Sally Erring. Right. And obviously the comparison doesn't work perfectly, but yes, it's an Elvis biopic, but we kind of you're our way into the story. Would you say that's a fair? If there's anybody that could do it outside of like Priscilla, or maybe Jerry, who would tell Elvis's story,

I think would be very, very distinctively different. That it is the colonel who was, he was handling other people. He was a third, low level entertainment promoter. You have to give this guy credit for being a diabolical genius because he paid no attention to the music that Elvis Presley was singing or even to his gyrations up on stage. He didn't take one look at Elvis. He said, Hey, I can make money on that. He looked at the effect on the audience. Anybody could have been back behind him, but he had never seen that effect on women and young girls and the mothers of the young girls

who were watching this guy behind him. He said, this is a one of a kind artist. Priscilla herself said, you have to understand this about my husband. He was Picasso. He was, there was something genetically different about him that he only had an image for the translation of a song to an audience. He didn't care about business, he didn't care about an awful lot of things

as far as even taking care of himself because he only really came truly. I don't think it's too much to say that he only felt truly alive when he was performing in front of people. I think you could say that about Elvis. The thing about the current lit, he never told anybody else, young young man I'll do for you what I did for Elvis Presley. He handled Elvis Presley from the day he signed them to the day he died. There was no other client and you can

that he have the greatest taste in the world when it came down to the aesthetic that was Elvis. I'm going to say no. I think that's not it. But but did he maximize this famous story, famous story about early days and the early days of him handling Elvis? And one of the first things he did was take him off television.

As soon as everybody in America was talking about Elvis Presley, the colonel said, you will never do television again. You are never going to give away your talent for free. If anybody wants to hear you or see you, they're going to have to buy a ticket. That's brilliant because the saga was, he said, last year, before I represented my boy, he had a million dollars worth of talent. And this year, he has a million dollars. That is a pretty basic understanding of the gospel-according to

Colonel Tom Pond. And I realize we've got all the way through the interview. We haven't really talked about Austin Butler being Elvis. Oh my. And that first time that we see him, which is the first time that you see him, it's kind of like a reveal like the shark in jaws. I think we've had.

When we see him on stage in that electric pink suit, it's like he is electrified. He's like he has a current going through him. And I thought it was, I immediately relaxed at that point because it is going to be fantastic because that performance that he does on that stage is incredible. I've never seen it before.

I've never seen anything remotely like that. Yeah, the thing, Austin and I spent very little time together because of our COVID protocols while we were working. We did not have cast dinners. We did not hang out together. We had to stay separate from ourselves. The only time we could really speak to each other was outside the stages as he was going off to one thing

and I was going off to something else. And we had a couple of moments where I said, okay, Lord, hi, you're the man in this thing. How scared are you? He said, oh man, I'm petrified. And I said, well, let me tell you, I am matching you pound for pound for, I'm not sure how we're gonna get through this.

He would go off into his, you know, adjustment into becoming Elvis, and I would be in another room, we wouldn't see each other. And I would be waiting on the set for him to arrive. And every time he arrived, he was full on Elvis, the hair, the clothes, the makeup, the guitar. And more often than not, he was performing.

More often, I was singing music. It was electrifying. I mean, it's one thing to look like the man. Any movie can make you look like the guy that you were there. But his nervousness and his demeanor, his shakiness, and in that particular scene, which was shot towards the end of the shoot, by the way, that was one of the last weeks that I was there.

I was prepared to see a really great look alike, is it Elvis or is it an incredible simulation? I was ready to see that. I was ready to see the Las Vegas version of an Elvis impersonator. But I was not prepared to see an Elvis incarnate upon that stage. And I had already seen him in the Vegas version of it. I already seen him in the 1968 comeback version of it.

And it's literally taken from Baton, from Elvis' first performance on the show called the Louisiana Hayride, which was a second-rate version of the grand old opera that told Elvis to go back to drive in his truck for a living, because he had no future as an entertainer. The men automatically hated Elvis mostly, and the women automatically were in his thrall. And it was a sexual energy explosion. That came from this guy who was moving and singing and committing himself

to a performance like nobody else had ever done. And, hey man, the boy couldn't help himself. That's the only way you could sing. Every time is a pleasure. Tom Hanks, thank you very much. Lovely talking to you. Thank you so much. It occurs to me, there is a, at some stage, there'll be a book or a documentary about COVID movies. Because I thought that was really interesting in the interview interview how he was saying, first of all,

we filmed a different picture because we'd stopped. And how he'd hardly mixed with the other star of the movie because of the Covid protocols. Yeah. No, it's absolutely. I think it's fascinating to hear how his version of Colonel Tom Parker changed, at least in his head, when he said that thing about change the No No Nose to yes, yes, yes. That's correct, but the yes, yes, yes, is have the same effect as the No No Nose. And we'll talk about this when we review the film next week. I think it's a

really nuanced thing. In order to play a character who in inverted commas is a villain, in inverted commas, you have to find a way into that character. That doesn't mean that they aren't still, as far as the movie is concerned, the villain of the piece. And I think it's fascinating. I think it's fascinating. You know that I've now seen the film. Yes, so it's one thing for me to enjoy the film and to be thrilled by watching Elvis

because I do think he puts in a fantastic performance, particularly in that scene, but I came out and think, well, everything will just depend on what Mark thinks because he is the Elvis nut, you and Sanji for the biggest Elvis nuts. The Sanji you've ever met. So the review is next week, but in three words, it was Ace. There you go. It's just great because I, it was ace. There you go. It's just great, because I think it, okay,

so I'm not, I'm not, it's not just that I kind of, well, okay, I can take me or leave it, but I thought it was terrific anyway. So Elvis reviewed next week, thanks to Tom Hanks for talking to us again. Anyway, let's talk about a movie, which is kind of Tom Hanks adjacent. Tom Hanks adjacent, very good.

Lightyear, which is the latest Pixar offering a spin-off from the Toy Story franchise, which to my mind already stretched its luck by turning a perfect trilogy into a less perfect, but still pretty workable decent quadrilogy. Now succumbs to pre-qualitists. So the film begins by reminding us that the original toy story started off with Andy getting a Buzz Light Year toy from his favourite movie. And then

it says, this is the movie. So I go, oh, this is the movie that Andy saw that made him love Buzz Light Year. They made him so excited about getting a Buzz Light Year. So Chris Evans rather than Tim Allen, provides the voice of Buzz who is his hot-headed space ranger who's attempts to get his crew home from a difficult situation, result in a crash and then some time-traveling multiverse adjacent stuff, which leaves him stranded and sad. Luckily, he has a robot cat voice by his son

who is pretty much the best thing in the film, here's a clip. I am Sox, your personal companion robot. My what? I was issued by Star Command to ease your emotional transition after your time away. Oh, well that's very considerative of you, robot feelin', but no thank you. I'm afraid it's protocol. Sensors indicate you've missed four birthdays. Would you like a frost that's not cake to celebrate?

Negative, that would compromise my nutritional regiment. We can talk about your feelings. I am an excellent listener. No, no, look. I've had a very long day. It did not go as planned. The mission was unsuccessful. Affirmative.

Oh, no. I am so sorry to hear that. Thank you, Sucks. You're welcome, Buzz. Shall we play a game? No, thank you. Are you sure? I can create a game specifically for you,

based on your exact personality profile. Hey, listen, Saks, but I'm pretty tired, so I'm going to go ahead and hit the rack. Of course. So the rest of the voice casting includes Tyker with T.T. Keepama, Del Sol's, James Brolin as the voice of Emperor Zurg. OK, so let's do it on the plus side.

Pixar's animation designs have never been anything less than spectacular. This is no different. There's loads of space action interstellar vistas, sci-fi adventure, reminds you why Pixar is so successful. It was pointed out to me that this is the film that Andy's meant to have seen in 1995. Wow, the visuals in 1995 was so much better than one would expect from 1995,

and let's credit child 3 with that ops of, he hasn't even seen it. Who said it last night, and I said, I'm going to use that in a review, and I'm not going to credit you. And you said, in that case, I'm going to credit you. However, aside from the, you know, I'm watering the lovely visuals, I think this is the first utterly irrelevant toy story movie. If Toy Story 4 was the first Toy Story film that was about the toys, rather than the kids that own the toys

or the parents that, you know, begat the kids, which is really what those stories are about, this jumps the shark by not even being about the toys. You remember when we were reviewing one of the Star Wars movies and I made a joke about this, she's getting to the point that you're gonna go, you remember that Angle Poise lamp that was in the office of so and so,

you ever wonder where that came from? Well, here's the backstory of how that Angle Poise lamp, this is that level of, you know, contrivance. It's build as the definitive origin story. The reductio ad absurdum of origin stories will be closer to the truth. It's soulless. There's none of the wit that made the original Toy Story movies pop.

There's none of the brilliant conceit. I mean, the Toy Story worked because the conceit was the toys come alive when the kids aren't there, which is a brilliant idea. You, it's like a one sentence pitch. It has none of the emotional ump that the Toy Story movies had. I mean, the point was the Toy Story movies, they were about toys coming to life and they weren't about that. They were about growing up and growing pains and parental separation and had you and me in tears at the end of Toy Story 3.

The most interesting thing about Lightyear is the stories that everyone will have read in the press about a scene which is a case between two female characters and it was a question about whether or not it was going to be in the film or whether it was going to be out of the film and then it was in the film and then it resulted in it being banned as far as we know in 14 territories and the films producer Galen Susman said that she said to Reuters, we're not going to cut out anything, especially something as important as the loving and inspirational relationship that shows bars what he's missing by the choices that he's making. So that's not getting cut. It's great that we're part of something that's making steps forward in the social inclusion capacity. Yeah, it is. That's not enough for the movie.

It's, I mean, I'm really surprised to say this, but it is the first Toy Story movie in which I was never, never, never emotionally engaged. I think I'm shaken to my core. It's a shame though, but it is a shame. It is a shame. It is a shame, but unfortunately it's true. Yeah, please, enough. Move on. It's a shame. Maybe they'll start now. Yeah, please. Enough.

Move on. It's the ads in a minute, Mark, which I know you're looking forward to. But first, it's time once again to step into our laughter lift. Oh, no. Hey, Mark. Before the ads, I just wanted to tell you about how my week had gone. It's not gone particularly well. I have to say, I came home from my tip-top drive time show, greatest tits radio, 4-till-7 Monday to Friday. Last Friday actually it was, to find a note to pin to the fridge. It's simply not working, I'm going to a hotel for a few days.

I'm no idea what she was on about. It was working out pretty well. But I'm sure you'll find it. Shh. I popped the cork on a bottle from wine 52. Nicely done. Nicely done. And had a perfectly pleasant evening.

When she didn't turn up the following morning, though, I found my friend Trevor Neil Bruno Brooks for some advice. I think it's one or the other. He said cheer up Simon, it could be worse, you could be stuck underground in a whole lot of water from the earth, a pool fed by a spring, a pit, or a hole sunk in the earth to reach a supply of water, or a shaft, or a hole sunk in to obtain oil, brine or gas. I know he means well. Do it again. I know he means well. Yeah, but that would be nice.

That's no, that doesn't know. You kind of peaked. Well, it's written okay. Yeah, that's it. I don't, I just poorly delivered. By the way, Mark, where do you go to weigh a pie? I don't know. Somewhere over the rainbow.

Some, I don't get it. I'm just, where do you go to wet wayup high? Yeah. Oh, Wayup High. Oh Wayup High. There you go. What's still to come, Mark? I have no idea.

Oh yes, we're gonna have a review of Good Luck to You, Leo Grant. There's also a review of Spider Head, which is mentioned before, and lots of other stuff. All to come, Leo Grand, also a review of Spider-Head, which is mentioned before, and lots of other stuff. All to come after this. I'm still thinking about Tom Hanks playing Jesus. Because he didn't sound even vaguely interested. But could he do it?

Is he too old? Yes, he is too old. Yes, but he's Tom Hanks. No, I know, but I mean, surely he'd be Pontius Pilate or he'd be one of the... Could he be one of the second of John the Baptist. He could do John the Baptist. He could do Moses.

Yes. Hard to get Moses and Jesus in the same way. No, no, no, no, but you don't. Anyway, wood did it worse so simple. Okay, so there's a movie, if it's not like you're saying it's hard to get Jesus and Moses in the same thing in a world in which the number one movie is dinosaurs and people. That is, so you know, that's a very good point. Thank you. All of the poster action, once they've scraped you and me off the buses, has either been light here or our next movie. Good luck to you, Leo Grant, which is the new film starring Emma Thompson, which is directed by Sophie Hyde, who made animals and written by Katie Brande. And it's basically a kind of rather stage, but often very, very funny, to-hander, in which Emma Thompson plays Nancy,

who is a retired religious studies teacher, who has, we learned very early on, never had an orgasm, and has spent her whole life married to the same man who's now deceased, and it turns out that their intimate life was spectacularly unintimate. And she now finds herself in a position in which she wants to know what all the fuss was about. So she hires a sex worker, a jiggleo, played by Donald McCormick, who is Leo,

who she rents a hotel room, and she gets him to come to the hotel room, and she says, okay, this is the thing, basically I've got a list of stuff that I want to get through. A list of things that I want to get through and that's what you're here for. Here's a clip. You don't have to worry, Nancy,

this is just about us tonight. So what is your fantasy? I'm not sure you could really class it as a fantasy as such, it's a bit mundane for that. Okay, well, what would you most desire? I mean desires and ever mundane? Um... To have sex?

Tonight, um, with you? That's about it really, for the moment. Great. Okay. I suspect that there was more to her list than that. That's it really, for the moment. Great. OK. I suspect that there was more to her list than that. There it was. And then what she says is, I want to do this. I want to do this.

I want to do this if that's what they still call it. And then I want to do the other, but I don't want to do this thing. And so she has a very kind of school teacherly man. She's literally got a list. And she says, I want to get through this list. And he says, what, all today? And she says, well, you're quite expensive. So that's kind of like a running order. It is precisely an order of service. There we go. And what she knows about sex workers is

pretty much the fact that as an RE teacher, she would regularly set an essay, which was, should sex work be legalized. And the answer was always the same because everyone would just Wikipedia it, and then we'd just sort of copy and paste the Wikipedia answer. So what the film then becomes, it's a series, a chapter series of encounters between Nancy and Leo in this room,

in which she talks about her regrets about what she hasn't hasn't done with her life, and worries about whether or not she's exploiting him because he's a sex worker. He keeps trying to say to her, you know, well firstly, you know, we understand that he's playing a role because obviously what he does is role playing and there are times when she oversteps the boundaries about respecting his privacy and kind of imagines this as being something more than that. But she also, because of who she is, cannot put aside her sort of fuzziness and her brusiness in terms of, I want to do this, this, and this, and this, and this is how we're going to

do it. So, on the plus side, it's a film which is, you know, very sort of frank and very open about the sexuality and it has two very good performances. I mean, both Emma Thompson and I'm going to has two very good performances. I mean both Emma Thompson and I'm gonna make a very good performance. I mean you know I'm a huge fan of Emma Thompson and have been for ages and ages. I'm not somebody who's OFA with Peaky Blinders but obviously even if he knows that Donald Comet is a very good performer. So good performances. Script which is witty and often laugh out loud funny in its kind of the way in which it's

it has that kind of I mean British sex comedies are not something to funny in its kind of the way in which it's it has that kind of, I mean, British sex comedies are not something to be proud of most of the time, but this is something which is very, very well written. If I have a problem with it, it's that I never for one moment believed that I was actually watching those characters. What I believed I was watching was two very accomplished actors playing those characters. I mean, it's interesting because obviously the role of Leo in order for him to do the job, he is playing a role. So, he's an actor playing a role of somebody playing a role. But I always felt that I was watching actors playing a role, one of whom he's playing a role, and another whom he's also playing a role

because they're adopting alternative identities for the purpose of anonymity, which then falls away. At times I was reminded of, do you remember that film Hope Springs with Tommy Lee Jones and Merrill Streep? Yeah. So I had a kind of similar kind of comedy about the awkwardness of dealing with sex at a certain point in your life

when it's kind of fallen away. And you know that there are desires and things but you don't have a language with which to discuss them and you don't, you know, you've kind of, you're sort of almost beyond the point when you could approach it without it being a difficult awkward issue. And I actually thought Homesprings was a pretty decent film. However, if you compare this, for example, with something like the mother, which is Anne-Ried and Daniel Craig, in a comparable situation, the whole tone of the mother is very different. I mean, the mother isn't a comic movie, the mother is much more a kind of serious drama. In the mother, I absolutely believed in

Anne-Ried and I absolutely believed in Daniel Craig all the way through. In this, what I thought I was watching was a stage-y. I mean, it is stage stagey, it is theatrical, I can almost imagine it being performed as a stage play. Very well written, very witty, very well performed, ultimately however performative film about these two people having a frank conversation about sexuality. I mean, it is, it's progressive in its attitude towards, towards sex, towards age, towards gender, all those things. I wish that I bought into it more. I wish that I had been swept away from you. I've read so many articles and heard so many interviews when people talking about why it's, you know, fantastically positive that this film is here now and talking about these subjects. And I think that's all fine. I just think that I wasn't quite as bold over by it as I would like to have been.

That said, it is still subversive and enjoyably whimsical. The Stephen Renek score kind of amplifies that whimsicality. And it's very easy to watch because it has two very good performers giving two very good performances. And when you've seen it, if you'd like to take part in the conversation, correspondents at CurbinMayah.com also the email for some what's on news. This is where you email us a voice note, maybe about your festival or a special screening from wherever you are in the world, the address again. Correspondents at CurbinMayah.com. We're going to start this week with Mary Graham.

Hi Simon and Mark, it's Mary here from First Light Festival, which will take place on the 17th, 18th and 19th of June in Lower Stoffed. On the beach we'll be screening four films, the 1927 Classic Movie Sunrise, Summer of Soul, River and to the Moon. For more info, please check out firstlightlostoff.com. Hello Mark and Simon, it's Stephen here. I made a film with my mate Mark, it's called Adnan and it's about a very imaginative Syrian refugee boy. It's won a bunch of awards at festivals

around the world. It will warm your heart, it will warm your cockles. It is playing on Saturday the 18th of June at 3pm as a fundraiser for the charity Choose Love. If you google Earls Courts under Belly adnán you can get tickets. And there's a Q&A with the filmmakers at the end as well. Thank you, bye! Hi Simon and Mark, I'm Diane Gebrizziag, the head of programming at Cine Lumière in London and one of the creators of the wave, a new festival supported by Chinachita and dedicated to recent Italian woman filmmakers. It will take place

at Sydney Lumière between 15th and 19th of June. We hope to see many of you there. So first up we had Mary Graham from the first light festival. Steven Chatterton promoting his film Adnan. That was great. Just saying, I've got a film out. Good for you. This is how you can see it. And just lastly at the end there, Diane Gabriziak announcing the new season of the wave celebrating its Italian women filmmakers at the Sinny Lumiere. And if you'd like to tell us about a screening, tell us about a movie that you've made,

or anything that you just like to promote, for free, correspondence at curbinamay.com. Spiderhead time. Yeah, so Spiderhead, which is the new movie by Joseph Kaczynski, which co-stars Miles Teller. Our friend. And if those two names ring a bell, it's because they were both involved in Top Gun Maverick,

which is the huge hit. Dystopian sci-fi fantasy. Is there any other kind? I guess that's almost certainly true. Yes. So Chris M. Smith and Miles Teller, Miles Teller made a blivvian before Top Guns, obviously you know, has kind of genre stuff. Adapted from a short story escape from Spider-Head, which first appeared in the New Yorker

and the screenplay is by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, whose joint CV includes Zombie Land and Deadpool. So pretty good pedigree. Yep, the menu looks pretty tasty. Chris Hemsworth is Steve, who is kind of scientist boss of the titular institution, who has developed a series of chemicals that cause emotional changes in their subjects. The institution's inmates who were all incarcerated include Miles Teller's Jeff, who is kind of having a sort of relationship with another inmate Lizzie, played by Johnny Smollett.

None of that matters, however, when Jeff is placed in a room with another female inmate and given love actin and verbal loose, which drives them both, give them what? Love actin, that's a drug. Yes. And verbal-oose. That's another drug. Yes. Which makes them extremely excited, aroused in an Elvis-like manner, tying it back to the tunnel,

and verbal-oose, which makes them talk about what's happening whilst watched from behind a wall of glass by Chris Hemsworth and his assistant, his equipment. Come on, guys. Words, words, words. behind a wall of glass by Chris Hemsworth and his assistant is a clip. Yeah, pump up the verbose that's gonna talk Don't tell us tell each other There are a couple of all right ideas and this I mean obviously, you know that it's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. There are a couple of all-right ideas in this. I mean, obviously, you know, it's from a source material, which is satirical, but is also dealing with, you know, things like, you know, societal dysfunction. And there is some nice cruelty in the way that Chris Hemsworth's character gets the lab rats to administer fear-inducing drugs to each other and starts playing these kind

of psychological games. The problem is, it can't decide whether it's how seriously to take itself and in the end, it's rather silly. I don't mean satirical, I mean silly, which is an important distinction. So it feels like it doesn't quite know what tone it's adopting. Some of the backstory revelations are very, very dark indeed. But because it has this kind of slightly bouncy comedic tone, it ends up being neither as creepy nor as pointedly, societally, satirical as it should be. Honestly, it feels like a short story expanded to feature length, which is kind of, I suppose, when you look at the source, it's kind of expected. But I think the problem is when you have this level of talent

on screen and behind the camera, Joseph Kuzinski, made Top Gun Maverick and Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, who you perfect time to release it. Perfect time to release it. You go, hmm, okay, yeah. There's an interesting idea in there, and there's probably an interesting 30 minute short in there, but it really falls apart as it goes on, and it really kind of, I kind of lost patience with it. I mean, it's not terrible, it's just not great by any means at all.

It really should be better than it is. And it's called spider head. That's the Institute, the spider head institute. Okay. This is all playing out. I wouldn't trust that. I wouldn't trust that. But they haven't got any choice.

It's, they're incarcerated. Oh, okay. But it is like calling something, you know, it's like all the institutions in David Cronenberg are all called things like somafree. You'd never go anywhere near an institution called somafree. Would you go, no, I was just going to stay well away from that. And the company in Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Dominion is called Biosyn. Biosyn, that's right, the clue is in the title.

Yes, S-Y-N, but you know, you still got to say it out loud. There's some, in the David Cronenberg film, the brood, which is where the thing that the shape of rage comes from. Every single thing about the company in the, in the brood that's doing the psychoplasmic. I mean, the very fact that it's called psychoplasmic. So you think, I'm sorry, I'm not getting involved with anything that's called psychoplasmic. No, that does sound very bad.

It's terrible. Anyway, it's a shame because I, you know, I was kind of really looking forward to Spider-Head and then it was like, oh, that is the end of take one mark you can you can rest up and just just briefly how were we? Well, I'm not quite sure that's for others to judge production management and general all-round staff was Lily Hambley videos Ryan Amira Johnny Socials was Jonathan Imiere, Studio Engineer was the fabulous Josh Gibbs. Flynn Rodham is the assistant producer, Hannah Tall, but is the producer, but she's on holiday,

so she didn't do much this week. And the reducter. Thanks, Hannah. Yeah. Have a nice time. And the reducter who just does it in his sleep, it was Simon Paul. Mark, what's your film of the week? Well, Leo Grand, it's not as great as it should be, but it is still film the week.

Is it time to break open one of those bottles of wine 52? It's always time to break open one of those bottles of wine 52. Next week we're going to say hello to Rowan Atkinson, who's talking about his cinema adjacent man versus beam. you