Kermode & Mayo’s Take

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. 

Supersub Ben Bailey Smith joins Mark this week for reviews of the freshest cinema releases. We’ve got the Good Doctor’s verdicts on ‘Eddington’, Ari Aster’s much-discussed western starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone. Plus, indie black comedy ‘Sorry, Baby’, and ‘The Life of Chuck’, whose stars Tom Hiddleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor are our very special guests this week.  

We recorded this one with them a while back with Simon, so it’s him you’ll be hearing sit down with the two of them to unpack it. It’s a Stephen King adaptation following one man’s ordinary life and the multitudes it contains, and we can’t say too much more than that without giving it away. Best leave it to Tom and Chiwetel...  

All the usual silliness and profundity to be found too as usual in another top Take. Don’t miss it!  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Eddington Review: 07:58 

BO10ish: 15:28  

Tom Hiddleston & Chiwetel Ejiofor: 28:53 

Life of Chuck Review: 42:20 

Sorry, Baby Review: 52:22 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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. 

Supersub Sanjeev is back again this week, donning his Take merchandise—and he’s not the only special guest we’ve got for you. Bob Odenkirk—star of ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Better Call Saul’, ‘Nobody’, and now ‘Nobody 2’--joins us too. It’s Mark’s turn to do the interview honours this week, and he’s pretty chuffed with that—but as it turns out, he’s not the only fan in the room... They unpack the film’s stonking action seqeunces and talk sequel nerves, father figures and Jackie Chan.  

Mark reviews the summer holiday action comedy too, as well as all the biggest movies you can catch on the big screen this week, rain or shine. First up, ‘The Materialists’--whose director Celine Song was our guest last week...and kind of became Sanjeev’s new bestie in the process? We get both Mark and Sanj’s takes on her New York romcom for our cynical modern dating scene. Plus, a much more grusome take on finding your ‘other half’, ‘Together’. Starring real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, this co-dependency body horror is a real scrunge-fest. Don’t miss Mark’s verdict!  

And for those still enjoying our run of curry house correspondence, this week’s laughter lift is for you. Keep that correspondence coming on all things curry and non-curry related—and make sure to get it in sharpish this week, as we’re recording next week’s show this Friday!  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

The Materialists Review: 09:42 

BO10: 23:51 

K Pop Demon Hunters review: 21:33 

Bob Odenkirk Interview: 33:42 

Nobody 2 Review: 45:55 

Together Review: 54:49 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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A Sony Music Entertainment production.     

Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts   

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Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. 

Simon is off on his holibobs this week, but fortunately the excellent Sanjeev Bhaskar is in town to sub in, and he does an excellent job if we may say so. He takes up the baton to interview this week’s guest—who is the ever-delightful Celine Song. They unpack ‘The Materialists,’ her new romcom about the mercenary modern dating scene, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. Fans of ‘Past Lives’ listen up—and listen out for Mark’s full review of this sophomore feature next week.  

If you heard last week’s guest Guy Pearce on the show, you might have been waiting for Mark’s official verdict on the Aussie star’s new prison drama ‘Inside’--and we’ve got it right here or you this week. Plus two more fresh takes on the week’s new releases: first up ‘Freakier Friday’, the four-way body swap sequel to the 2003 original. And we’ve got the Good Doctor’s verdict on ‘Weapons’ too—a creepy horror-mystery from Barbarian director Zach Cregger.  

Correspondence on celebrity curry house encounters continues this week too—so don’t miss your fellow Wittertainees tales of vindaloo with VIPS and Saag Aloo with the stars. And check out Take 2 for Sanjeev’s very own celeb curry anecdote...  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Inside Review: 07:40 

BO10: 14:14 

Celine Song Interview: 27:42 

Freakier Friday Review: 44:07 

Weapons Review: 54:50 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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: [email protected] 

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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. 

‘Alien: Earth’ is landing on the small screen on 13th August in the first TV outing for the much-loved and multi-sequelled Alien franchise—and we’re bringing you a special bonus drop to celebrate. Showrunner Noah Hawley is the man behind it, and with ‘Fargo’ and ‘legion’ on his CV, it’s fair to say he’s pretty good at putting stuff on the telly that it seems like would be tough to make work on the telly. He chats to both Mark and Simon all about realising this ambitious project, adapting a stone cold classic, and his surprising love for British comedy.  

Plus we’ve got Mark’s review of the series, hot off the embargo press. Where will it place in the Alien canon leaderboard, and can it undo the sins of the later sequels? Don’t miss the Good Doctor’s verdict, and do send your takes in to us too.  

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo  

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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: [email protected] 

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Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts   

To advertise on this show contact: [email protected] 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. 

‘Naked Gun’ is out this week, where Liam Neeson finally embraces his meme-status by playing parody cop Frank Drebin Jr.--son of Leslie Nielsen’s hero of the 1988 original. ...Is it naff though? Find out what Mark thinks—along with his verdicts on Willem Dafoe-starring weirdy fantasy drama ‘The Legend of Ochi’, and ‘Savages’, the new stop motion tale from the director of ‘My Life as a Courgette’. School’s out but the reviews still keep coming!  

Our guest this week is Guy Pearce, who chats so Simon about this hard-hitting new prison drama ‘Inside’, set in his native Oz. Pearce plays grizzled lifer Warren, who is facing up to the uncertainties of freedom days before his long-awaited parole—but does he really want to get out? He stars alongside the ever-versatile Cosmo Jarvis and newcomer Vincent Miller, who plays the 18-year-old new inmate who Warren takes under his wing. Guy unpacks it all with Simon—plus we hear about his music projects, ‘The Brutalist’, and find out which classic role of his he actually hates...  

Some really amazing correspondence this week on ‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North’ too, which has reminded us that we really do have the best and most fascinating listeners evs. Thanks as ever Wittertainees!   

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Savages Review: 07:54 

BO10: 14:39 

The Bad Guys 2 Review: 27:28 

Guy Pearce Interview: 33:09 

The Naked Gun Review: 49:01 

The Legend of Ochi Review: 59:24 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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: [email protected] 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. 

Could we have found the film of the year already? ‘Bring Her Back’ looks like it’s got a fighting chance. Mark reviews this brilliantly unsettling new horror from The Philippou brothers, who last freaked us all out with ‘Talk To Me’ in 2022. We’ve got the Good Doctor’s verdict on ‘Fantastic Four: First Steps’ too—plus the box office top 10 and all your top-quality correspondence.  

Our guest this week is the fascinating Justin Kurzel. You know him as director of 2015’s ‘Macbeth’ with Michael Fassbender, 2021’s ‘Nitram’, and last year’s Nazi-hunting thriller ‘The Order’--and now of his first TV project, ‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North’, which hits British screens this week. He chats to Mark and Simon all about the visceral new series, which follows a group of Australian prisoners of war working on the Burma railway in the 1940s, and stars Jacob Elordi and Ciarán Hinds. Plus there’s a bit of chat about Nina Simone’s chewing gum, and a little teaser for his next project with the guardian of this strange and sticky piece of music ephemera, Warren Ellis. 

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Bring Her Back Review: 08:36 

BO10: 15:50 

Justin Kurzel Interview: 21:55 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North Review: 38:20 

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review: 51:16 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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A Sony Music Entertainment production.     

Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts   

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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. 

Our guest this week is Harry Melling—all grown up after first hitting the big screen as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films. He’s here to chat about the latest in a hit parade of pleasingly weird and wonderful post-Potter projects, ‘Harvest’. This trippy period piece sees a mysterious feudal society in an unspecified place and time fall apart after crops fail and sinister strangers arrive. Simon unpacks this unique film with Harry—plus a bit of Potter chat since the HBO reboot has put the wizarding world back in the spotlight.  

Mark reviews Harvest too—along with two more of this week’s biggest cinema releases: ‘Friendship’--a black comedy about male bonding starring Paul Rudd as the new-best-pal-next-door, and ‘Smurfs’--the latest big-screen outing for the little blue fellas. If that didn’t sound like a bit of Mark-bait already, it also stars James Corden. Odds on Kermode going full ‘Grouchy Smurf’ on this one?  

Plus we revisit the Salt Path controversy, including some of your excellent correspondence, run down the Box Office Top 10 and serve up sizeable portions of delectable daftness as always.  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Friendship Review: 10:25 

BO10: 18:16 

Harry Melling Interview: 26:50 

Harvest Review: 42:09 

Smurfs Review: 56:18 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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: [email protected] 

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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. 

The wonderful Mark Gatiss is our guest this week. He joins Simon and Mark to talk ‘Bookish’—his new crime comedy passion project that sees him play a bookseller-turned-detective in postwar London. Plenty of whimsy, history, detective-fiction geekery and big love for weird archaic vocabulary in this chat, so don’t miss it—he's always a delight.  

Our Mark reviews the series, as well as the week’s big cinema releases. First up, ‘Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness’--a whirlwind imagining of three days in the life of bohemian artist Modigliani, directed by Johnny Depp and (briefly) featuring Al Pacino. And, of course, we’ll get the lowdown on the super-size blockbuster of this week: is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s ‘Superman’!  

We’ll also address this week’s ‘Salt Path’ news, with Mark and Simon reacting to the controversy surrounding the author of the original memoir, Raynor Winn. Since recording, Winn has published her response to the allegations which can be found here: https://www.raynorwinn.co.uk/  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Salt Path discussion: 02:36 

Modì: Three Days on the Wing of Madness Review: 11:54 

BO10: 18:04 

Mark Gatiss Interview: 27:37 

Bookish Review: 42:19 

Superman Review: 49:59 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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: [email protected] 

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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. 

Our very special guest this week is a body horror legend; director of ‘The Fly’, ‘Videodrome’, ‘Crash’ and many more genre classics... the one and only David Cronenberg. He talks to Mark about his new film ‘The Shrouds’. Written in the aftermath of his wife’s death, it imagines a technology that allows those who have lost loved ones to watch their interred bodies decompose in real time. He and Mark discuss the meaning of art, his unique approach to moviemaking, and why we are allowed—and encouraged—to laugh about this most serious of subjects.  

Mark reviews ‘The Shrouds’ too, plus two more of this week’s brand new movies. ‘Hot Milk’—a woozy summer psychodrama starring Fiona Shaw, Vicky Krieps and Emma Mackey—and of course this week’s gigantic blockbuster, Jurassic World Rebirth. What does Mark make of it—roaring success or bound for extinction? Listen up to find out + the Box Office Top 10 and excellent correspondence on what you’ve been watching this week on the big and small screen. 

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

Hot Milk Review: 10:02 

BO10: 18:20 

David Cronenberg Interview: 29:38 

The Shrouds Review: 43:51 

Jurassic World: Rebirth: 55:21 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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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: [email protected] 

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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. 

‘F1’, or ffffwan, as nobody is calling it—is racing onto cinema screens this week, so listen up for Mark’s verdict on this high-speed blockbuster. And we’ve got a review of ‘M3GAN 2.0’—the first of what could be many sequels to the dollfaced genre-mashing horror hit. Can they keep shoehorning numbers into their titles? Looks like we might be about to find out. 

Our special guest this week is Maxine Peake, who stars in ‘Words of War’--a bold biopic of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose work was critical of the Kremlin and the Russian army. She talks to Simon about telling Anna’s powerful story, why the film ditched the fake Russian accents, and being married to Jason Isaacs—onscreen only! You can catch Mark’s review straight after their chat too.  

Top takes in the Box Office Top 10 this week—and fans of 80s radio nostalgia are in for a treat from Simon, so listen out. Plus, 28 Years Later fans, don’t miss Take 2 for yet more spoiler-tastic chat unpacking the film everyone’s talking about—including lots of you in your top correspondence. Keep it coming!  

Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): 

M3GAN 2.0 Review: 09:16 

Box Office Top Ten: 14:55 

Maxine Peake Interview: 25:10 

Words of War review: 40:45 

F1 Review: 51:52 

You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] 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  

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A Sony Music Entertainment production.     

Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts   

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