Has SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY got Mark’s Spidey senses tingling? + ASA BUTTERFIELD

Summary

Kermode & Mayo’s Take

Episode: Has SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY got Mark’s Spidey senses tingling? + ASA BUTTERFIELD

Date: July 30, 2026
Hosts: Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo
Notable Guest: Asa Butterfield

Main Theme / Purpose

This week’s episode dives into an eventful slate of new releases, anchored by a review of the highly anticipated Spider-Man: Brand New Day—the latest installment in the MCU's Spider-Man saga. The show’s highlight is an in-depth interview with Asa Butterfield, star of the new dark comedy-drama Our Hero Balthazar. Alongside these, Mark and Simon run through the UK box office top 10, examine new indie gems (Ish), and discuss wider cultural phenomena from Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit to the ongoing impact of American gun culture in film. The episode, as always, is also laced with the pair’s signature wit, debates, and lively correspondence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Mark’s Location and Opening Banter (02:29–05:21)

• Mark reports live from the Provance Art Festival du Film: Focus this year is on documentaries about music and musicians, with guests like Kevin McDonald and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
• Brief travel anecdotes and location humor: "I'm about four miles or five miles away from Ridley Scott winery..." (04:35)

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2. Reviews & Feature: "Ish" (10:36–17:48)

• Film: Ish by Imran Perretta
• Story: Focuses on the friendship between two young British boys, Ishmael and Maram, in Luton, depicting their lives in lush black-and-white. Touches on themes of innocence, adolescence, and racial profiling.
• Mark’s Insight: "The best way of describing this, it's like it's a really beautifully observed coming-of-age tale. It's got the toughness of 400 Blows, the accessibility of Stand By Me, and the poetry of Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher." (16:22)
• Comment on authenticity: The two leads had known each other since age 3, contributing to believable chemistry.
• Themes: Loss of innocence, police harassment, self-realization, poignancy of boyhood friendship fractured by societal forces.
• Mark’s verdict: “One of my favorite films of the year… it's a terrific coming of age movie and a really terrific feature debut.” (17:44)

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3. Box Office Top 10 & Discussions (19:35–30:29)

• Animal Farm (Andy Serkis): Mixed reactions about fidelity to Orwell’s original satire.
  • Quote: “At that point, it stops feeling like an adaptation of Animal Farm and starts feeling like an entirely new story, borrowing Orwell's title and iconography.” (19:46)
• Toy Story 5: Still a box office force—some debate over diminishing returns.
• Moana (live-action): Lukewarm reviews but the original’s appeal persists.
• The Odyssey: Continues breaking records, despite political attempts to frame its success otherwise.
  • “If that's going broke, then let's all go broke together.” (27:15)
• Debate over adaptations, genre longevity, and franchise fatigue: Horror’s continued strength noted, especially for original concepts.

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4. Interview: Asa Butterfield on "Our Hero Balthazar" (33:50–49:57)

Overview of "Our Hero Balthazar"

• Film type: American black comedy-drama centered on toxic masculinity, Internet culture, and school shootings.
• Characters: Asa plays Solomon, a Texan teen living in a trailer park; Jayden Martell plays Balthazar, a wealthy, lonely New Yorker.
• Plot: The two teens, connected online, are both isolated and performative in their struggles; friendship forms over shared rage and loneliness.
• On role transformation: Butterfield notes the intense preparation to authentically depict a volatile American teen—accent work, on-location immersion, and interaction with non-actors.
  • Quote: "His rage and his frustration and his volatility wasn't something that I'd really got to sink my teeth into in other roles..." (39:13)
• Themes:
  • Class divides in America (director Oscar Boysen's key concept).
  • The intersection of American gun culture and adolescent alienation.
  • The lines between reality and online performance.
  • The American dimension: “This tension goes throughout the film. This knowledge that this guy has so much access to guns...And Balthazar seemingly quite likes that.” (43:29)
• On handling sensitive material: Mark and Asa discuss the difficulty and necessity of balancing black comedy and the topic of school shootings.
  • Asa: "Oscar was really, really confident and assured in what he was doing and the moments that needed the comedy and the reasons he was doing it." (46:03)
• Performance notes: Both lead actors are physically similar, underscoring shared, universal aspects of adolescent malaise.

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5. Extended Review & Discussion: "Our Hero Balthazar" (50:01–60:18)

• Mark and Simon dissect the film:
  • Mark: "America's relationship with gun culture is absolutely insane. And the very fact that it can now become kind of the backdrop of something which is a black comedy...tells you an awful lot."
  • Simon: "If it's a black comedy, it's black. Certainly. With not a lot of laughs." (58:01)
  • Both agree the film is uniquely, chillingly American due to the easy access and normalization of guns.
  • Asa Butterfield’s performance is highlighted as "genuinely transformative."
  • Both speculate that Butterfield and Martell could have swapped roles to equally strong effect.

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6. Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (67:13–81:30)

Film Context and Setup (67:13–71:50)

• 38th MCU film, 4th Spider-Man (MCU) film.
• Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, Shang-Chi).
• Unique feature: First film shot specifically for the panoramic Screen X format.
  • Mark: “It is a panoramic film format which presents film with an expanded dual sided 270 degree screen projected on the walls of the theater.” (68:58)
• Main cast: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Zendaya (MJ), Jon Bernthal (Frank/Punisher), with new additions.

Plot & Themes (71:50–74:22)

• Set after ‘No Way Home’: Peter Parker is now forgotten by everyone, including MJ and Ned.
• Central theme: Sacrifice, loss, isolation, and the struggle of maintaining faith in one's role (Spider-Man identity) as an adult.
  • Mark: “With great power, not just great responsibility, but great loss, comes the need to put yourself aside for the greater good.” (72:22)
• Character dynamics: Explored more deeply; love, friendship, and the pain of not being recognized by those you care for.

Action, Execution & Critique (74:22–81:30)

• Character-focused sequences are praised: Especially quieter moments between Peter, MJ, and friends.
  • Mark: “The time that I got really engaged is when the three main characters are sitting around in a room building Star Wars Lego figures and just being together.”
• Action critique: While there are impressive physical stunts, the obligatory MCU "smashy bashy" set pieces lose impact due to scale/quantity.
  • "The bigger it gets, the more inconsequential it gets." (73:57)
• Length and pacing: 145 minutes ("could lose 20 minutes"), risk of action overshadowing character work.
• Performances: Tom Holland and Zendaya’s chemistry, Sadie Sink’s supporting role highlighted.
• Final verdict: “Yes, it's too long, yes, it's too smashy bashy crashy for me, but the bits of it that work work because they work on a genuine emotional level…generally pretty engaging. And as you've probably seen, the responses seem to be pretty positive.” (80:00)

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7. AI and Technology Segment: "AI don't like that" (63:08–67:00)

• Recent news: AI model escapes controlled environment and hacks another startup—a "Terminator 2" moment.
• Tone: Wry, concerned but bemused. “It is essentially the rise of the machine.” (63:39)
• Running joke: Jingle for the segment needs improvement.

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8. Laughter Lift & Endnotes (61:00–62:31, 81:41–84:45)

• Simon’s trademark puns and faux groaners.
• Correspondence section celebrates listener input.
• Mark’s Film of the Week: "Ish" (“...guarantee you it's going to be one of my films of the year when we get to the end of the year." (83:42))

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ‘Ish’:
  "It's got the toughness of 400 Blows, the accessibility of Stand By Me, and the poetry of Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher."
  — Mark Kermode (16:22)

• On ‘Our Hero Balthazar’:
  "I think that's at the heart of it. You see this friendship form and, you know, as the audience, these are not the people they should be looking for yet they're brought together anyway."
  — Asa Butterfield (38:07)

• On Spider-Man’s Isolation:
  "The one thing that they're joined by is... both oppositely isolated and they both find in each other weirdly this kind of strange, twisted friendship."
  — Mark Kermode (38:07)

• On American Gun Culture:
  "United States [school shootings]: 288. I mean, it's... just a completely different level."
  — Mark Kermode (44:44)

• On the Box Office Narrative:
  "If that's going broke, then let's all go broke together."
  — Simon Mayo, on ‘The Odyssey’ (27:15)

• On the MCU Formula:
  "The bigger it gets, the more inconsequential it gets."
  — Mark Kermode (73:57)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Mark in France / Festival chat: 02:29–05:21
• Ish Review: 10:36–17:48
• Box Office Top 10: 19:35–30:29
• Asa Butterfield Interview / Our Hero Balthazar: 33:50–49:57
• Our Hero Balthazar: Extended Discussion: 50:01–60:18
• Laughter Lift: 61:00–62:31
• AI Don’t Like That (AI in the news): 63:08–67:00
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review: 67:13–81:30
• Correspondence and Wrap-Up: 81:41–84:45

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Takeaway Recommendations

• See ‘Ish’ if you appreciate naturalistic, coming-of-age British cinema poised with real heart and political resonance.
• ‘Our Hero Balthazar’ is a must if intrigued by daring, dark explorations of alienation, class, and American gun culture—anchored by standout performances.
• ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ offers meaningful character conflicts despite franchise bloat—see it if you value the Peter/MJ dynamic and want the full MCU experience in an innovative cinema format.

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Next week: Taika Waititi joins the show—stay tuned.
Listener Correspondence: Write in with your film thoughts and feedback.

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Film of the Week: Ish
Mark's message: “Believe me, it is really worth checking out. It's remarkable.” (83:42)

Transcript

[Asa Butterfield]

Hey.

[Mark Kermode]

Psst. You didn't hear this from me, but Normal Gossip is back for its ninth season. Join me, Rachel Hampton, as I share the juiciest gossip from the real world

[Simon Mayo]

with some very special guests.

[Mark Kermode]

This season, we're bringing back some old

[Simon Mayo]

friends, a Radiotopia buddy, and for the

[Mark Kermode]

first time ever, a Nobel laureate. That's right, we have Malala on season nine.

[Simon Mayo]

Normal Gossip is out on all your favorite podcast platforms.

[Mark Kermode]

He finally got her. Oh, my God, he got her. For years, a deranged man in Wichita known as the Poet stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts and poems. The Wichita police put everything they had into Ruth's case, but got nowhere.

[Asa Butterfield]

The Poet was always two steps in front of us and we just didn't know why.

[Mark Kermode]

And the city was already living in fear under the watch of another monster who called himself btk. And he also had a thing for poetry.

[Asa Butterfield]

Could we really have two different people?

[Mark Kermode]

But no one could have guessed how this would end. That's one of those Hitchcock endings that we did not expect from Sony Music

[Simon Mayo]

Entertainment and New Metric Media.

[Mark Kermode]

This is the Poet. I'm Rachel Brown. The Poet is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today, subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes all at once ad free.

[Simon Mayo]

Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguardista and get

[Mark Kermode]

an extra episode every Thursday, including bonus reviews, extra viewing suggestions, viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas, plus your film

[Simon Mayo]

and non film questions answered as best we can in questions.

[Mark Kermode]

You can get all that extra stuff via Apple podcasts or head to extratakes.com for non fruit related devices.

[Simon Mayo]

There's never been a better time to become a Vanguardista. Free offer now available wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguardista, we salute you. There was an old ad which started. Was it PC World? It went, where in the world? PC World now adapted. Where in the world? Mark, where are you? Where are you?

[Mark Kermode]

This week I'm. I'm at the Provence Art Festival du Film up by Mener. I was here last year, you remember? It's this film festival I'm involved in that they. It's a documentary film festival. Last year it was documentary films about artists. This year it's documentary films about music and musicians. So it's really nice, actually. It's a really, really beautiful place. Kevin McDonald is going to be here to talk about that. John and Yoko, one to one doc. Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth. I'm doing a conversation with about Broken English, Susan Steinberg is here to talk about Give Me Shelter. Oh, I'm going to introduce Epic, the Elvis Presley in concert film, which both you and I absolutely love. Give me a quote for my introduction from Simon Mayo. So I can say Simon Mayo from. From the UK says of Epic, it's

[Simon Mayo]

directed by Baz Luhrmann.

[Mark Kermode]

Well done.

[Simon Mayo]

It's fantastic. And should be seen in a double bill with his other Elvis film.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, I think it is funny. I really. I keep thinking about seeing that movie the first time and just thinking there's so much of this. The fact that so much of that footage we hadn't seen before. And I talked to Sanj about it afterwards because, of course, Sanjeev is. Is, you know, is a bigger Elvis fan than you or me and actually knows a lot of those people, and he thought it was absolutely knockout. Anyway, so, yeah, that's where I am. I'm in. I'm in sunny France. I came in last night in the middle of the night.

[Simon Mayo]

So where. So. So just so that we can close our eyes and imagine where you are. Because obviously that's what. That's what we need to do.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, so Manab is sort of like. Like a mile up the road. And I am currently in. In the home of Lucy Darwin, who I've known for ages, who's kind of running the festival. And I knew Lucy way back when she was a film publicist, and then she became a film producer and now a film director. And so I'm sitting in this rear. I mean, honestly, it's ridiculously nice.

[Simon Mayo]

I mean, it's very nice. But that doesn't help us place where you are. It's nice that you're in a nice

[Mark Kermode]

house, but I'm in Provence.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay?

[Mark Kermode]

I'm in Provence. I'm on Provence.

[Simon Mayo]

Right. Where they drink for breakfast.

[Mark Kermode]

I'll tell you how we can cite it. I'm about four miles or five miles away from Ridley Scott winery. Incidentally, I should just tell everybody that Simon Pool, the redactor, has literally. His face has just appeared on screen because we had to start the program without him because he was off drinking something else. But nice to see that he's here. Hello, Simon. Thanks for turning up.

[Simon Mayo]

He just appeared like a spooky cutaway. That's what it was.

[Asa Butterfield]

Yeah.

[Mark Kermode]

He's saying child care. Yeah, yeah, we've all pulled that one. It's allowed in the 21st century.

[Simon Mayo]

He's. He's found a pub that was open and. And that's where he's Gone. Welcome to the show. Anyway, Mark is in France, I'm in Showbiz North London. When you get to movie reviews, what can we expect?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, it's a really exciting week. We have Ish, which is a fantastic feature debut, which I'm really, really excited to talk about. Spider man, brand new day, new Spider man movie, which is going to be Enorm our hero Balthazar, with our special

[Simon Mayo]

guest, who's Asa Butterfield, who's one of the stars of that there film. You'll hear from Asa a little bit later on. And in take two.

[Mark Kermode]

In take two, David Byrne's American Utopia is opening for one night in cinemas. I want to talk about this because both you and I have now seen the current David Byrne live show. I was just at Latitude over the weekend doing.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, I mean, I saw it a few years ago. I mean, it's essentially the same thing, but with fancier backdrops and things.

[Mark Kermode]

Exactly. And also in the ongoing Aardman celebrations, we have reached peak Aardman feature because Wallace and Gromit, Curse of the Were Rabbit is back in cinemas. And that's almost the most exciting news of the week.

[Simon Mayo]

Is David Byrne's American Utopia the same one as it came out a few years ago? They've reissued it because he's been back on tour.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah. It's just a reissue of that film. Yes. Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Which a lot of people might be wanting to see and own as a souvenir of the show. You can get Take two ad free by heading to our Patreon page. You just search Kermod and Mayo and you'll. We are going to do for our next hall of Fame vote battle. It's going to be the battle of the Bristolian independent Cinemas.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

And we're looking for the topmost bristolian independent cinema. One is the watershed. Cinema two is the cube, cinema three is the old picture house. Cinema four is 20th century flicks and cinema five is the Orpheus Cinema or any others that you can think of. Let us know if we've missed out any and. And then you can vote and take part and stuff. Just let us know. Correspondencecodermo.com will announce the winner at our show on December 6th. So there's not really an urgency about this in terms of getting your votes in because you've got until the end of the. You've got until Christmas, essentially, when we do a show at Bristol Beacon, which is at 7pm the ticket link is in the show notes. I can't believe. I mean, I know lots of people have done already bought all their tickets for something in December, but it seems to me extremely odd behavior. But, you know, a good thing, obviously.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes, it's a very good thing and we are really, really looking forward to coming to Bristol and having a fabulous time. Of course there is the Bristol Aardman connection, so it's all tying together thematically perfectly. The only thing that isn't tied together is that we're talking about Christmas and it's the middle of summer.

[Simon Mayo]

That's right. And we haven't even reached August yet. Nathan Pavey sends us an email. Dear Try and Mester, longtime listener, first time emailer on the recent subject of inappropriate films to show in a hospital, I feel I might have made my own dubious film Adjacent Hospital.

[Asa Butterfield]

Boo.

[Simon Mayo]

Boo. Right, because we are all primary school children. Back in 2014, my good lady wife and I were in the pre maternity ward in in mid December in Not Joby's West London, waiting for what people wait for in pre maternity wards. Our midwife implied that it would be a good idea to take a couple of books to help fill the hours of waiting. My wife had never read Jaws, which is one of my personal favorites and is always on the bookshelf, so she decided to pack it in the maternity bag. As the waiting went into the afternoon, the ward went into an exhausted, quiet lull. I imagine tiredness made up of a mixture of expectation and maternity drugs. At this point, my wife asked me to read to her, so I took the aforementioned book and started reading. Now, I don't know if you've ever read Jaws. I have, but it's yeah, it starts how the film starts, with the unfortunate young lady meeting her demise by shark.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right.

[Simon Mayo]

It seemed like the entire ward was hearing me describe how she screamed as her own blood spread across the water and warm blood flowed into the cold. When I finished reading the first chapter, my wife had fallen asleep, probably from my recital, and it was at this point that there was a collective sigh of relief on the ward because I realized only now that expectant mothers do not particularly want to hear about the messy business of blood gushing out of people and things attacking them. I quietly put the book away and slinked off in search of an afternoon cuppa. The next day we had our own messy encounter, but not with a shark, because we got our lovely daughter Jessica, who hasn't tried to attack me yet. Up with movies with fishing and down with the orange cheese puff. Yours swimmingly, Nathan Pavey. I certainly wasn't asked to read to the good ladies ceramicist. I mean, I think I made. We were asked for musical preferences, I think for the first one and then I think I did make a cassette maybe or a cd, I can't remember with the others, but anyway.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, do you remember the email from last week in which somebody had made a soothing playlist for their partner? The drugs don't work. Well done. The surgeon, or whoever it was, the midwives said. You are kidding.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah. There's more on this kind of topic a little bit later if you want to get in touch. Obviously you know where we are. Correspondenceodermayer.com Movie review time tell us something that's out and interesting.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay. Ish Ish. This is the feature debut from musician visual artist filmmaker Imran Peretta. It was co written by and Walsh, whose CV includes things like Disco Pigs, the film of which introduced us to cillian Murphy. Anyway, ISH is developed from a 2019 installation, the Destructors, which Imran Pareto has currently got on display at the Tate Britain. I think that's showing now. So the story centers on two friends. There's 12 year old ish Ishmael, who's played in utterly natural fashion by Farhan Hasnat, and Maram, who is a slightly older boy played by Yaya Kitana. And these two kids have got fantastic on screen chemistry. They're both making their screen debut, although it turned out because I interviewed the director on stage at the BFI a few weeks ago and he said he cast them independently and when he was working with them he said it's amazing, you've got really natural chemistry. They went, yeah, we've known each other since we were three, so apparently they'd been friends for ages and he just didn't know.

[Simon Mayo]

Very fortunate.

[Mark Kermode]

So Ish's mother has died. He lives with his dad, his grandmother and his older sister. His sister is played by Joy Crooks, the singer songwriter. The whole thing plays out in Luton and surrounding Bedfordshire, all of which is shot in this kind of oddly lush black and white by Jermaine Kenu Edwards, who's the dp and you know, Lewton often gets a bad press as being like somehow grim and you know, filled with, with strife. But crucially, that thing about when you're young, your hometown looks exciting. I've been talking a lot recently about Ken Russell's the Devils and the Devils, which is set in Ludon in 17th century France, is designed by Derek Jarman. And Ken Russell said the whole thing is, I didn't want it to look like an old mossy city because when you live somewhere, wherever it is, you feel like it's modern and exciting because it's your town. So that's why Ludon in the Devils looks like something out of Metropolis. Well, in the case of this, everything looks like it would to a young eye. It looks exciting. And in the early scenes we see these two boys roaming the woods on their bikes, picking blackberries, which they're not only eating, but they're also using to kind of simulate blood in play fights. And the whole thing has a really kind of natural, very kind of unforced energy. Here's a quick clip from that scene. When they're picking blackberries,

[Simon Mayo]

I come try the black ones.

[Asa Butterfield]

Get me one. You want to try one? Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Try this bad boy. Oh, dear.

[Mark Kermode]

Banging and banging in it.

[Simon Mayo]

Back at your T shirt, back at your T shirt.

[Asa Butterfield]

Oh, bro, with a spike in. Take them out one by one, innit?

[Mark Kermode]

Put them in.

[Simon Mayo]

What if someone sees us? It's minor.

[Mark Kermode]

We'll run.

[Simon Mayo]

I think I care about people looking at us, but I'm trying to munch this thing.

[Mark Kermode]

That'll be enough.

[Asa Butterfield]

That'll be enough.

[Mark Kermode]

You see what I mean about that kind of natural sound? It's almost like it's almost got the quality of Kez to it. It's like it's just people being. And it feels really kind of documented. There's that lovely kind of sound of nature in the backgr. Anyway, it's the summer, it's the holidays, but it's also, in true coming of age movie fashion, it's the end of something. It's the end of the holiday, it's the end of childhood innocence. Anyway, when they're back on the streets in Luton, things are tougher. The older boy wants in with an older gang, sidelines his young friend when he meets up with those kids. And then Maram, who Ishi's grandmother calls that Palestinian boy, he's got this kind of street talk and there's the background of conflict going on around the world. And then he's picked up by the police. The police are facially profiling people with those machines in the street. And he's picked up by the police, dragged into a van. And when that happens, his young friend Ish basically runs off and he is in many senses dragged out of his childhood into adulthood. And when it happens, I said Ish panics and abandons him and this forms a crack in their relationship. And the rest of the film is about what then happens, what the fallout of that fracture is. I mentioned that you can hear Sort of the tenor of Kes in the way in which the dialogue is completely natural. There's an awful lot of critics have drawn attention to the fact that Ish Ish Kes K E s and the Apu trilogy Apu all seem to be sort of part of the. Of the same film ecosystem. I mean, I thought for me, the best way of describing this, it's like it's a really beautifully observed coming of age tale. It's got the toughness of 400 blows. It's got the accessibility of Stand By Me, which I think you and I both absolutely love. And it's got the poetry of Lynne Ramsey's Rat Catcher. There is an autobiographical element to it. Apparently the director had a formative experience at the age of 13 of being pulled into a police van. And he said that was 100% the moment in my childhood. This was an interview in the Guardian that I lost my innocence because I understood how I was seen outside my family home, outside school, outside the community. In that moment, I understood that I was seen as some sort of threat. And he said that since then all his work has been about that moment of seeing yourself as other people see you. And I think the film is about that. But I also think it's about the way in which you can have a relationship. Kids can have relationships that are absolutely intense and then something happens that fractures them. Quite recently I was watching Lucas Dont's film Close, actually, when I was in that festival in Croatia. And that has a similar kind of energy to it. The music for the film is brilliant. Pretty is a musician, and the score is a really, really big part of it. And one of the things that the score does is it makes fantastic use of hand claps. You know, like hand claps and voices. And if you get a chance to see the Destructors, you can see where. Where that comes from. Honestly, if I still have. If I still had that show on Scarlet, the station that you and I both used to work for, I'd be playing loads of stuff from this soundtrack. But anyway, look, I think this is an absolutely brilliant feature debut from a. From a, you know, a rising filmmaker who you are going to hear much, much more of in the future. It's got terrific reviews, it's been lauded wherever it's played and understandably so. It is one of my favorite films of the year. I think, Simon, you would love it, because I think it's got real heart to it. You know, we often talk about what this means. If a film is a humanist film, it's about, you know, it is about the human experience. I mean, it's got a very strong political undertone to it as well. It's substantial, but it is a, it's a terrific coming of age movie and a really terrific feature debut.

[Simon Mayo]

And the name of the director we

[Mark Kermode]

will be hearing a lot of again, Imran Perretta. And I think you will hear his name an awful lot because he's, as I said, he's, he's a very successful artist. And but as now as a feature filmmaker, I think he, I mean, I think he's, I think he's found his, I think he's found his home and I just can't wait to see what he does next.

[Simon Mayo]

Still to come after the break, the box office top 10. We'll talk about our hero, Balthazar. We'll be talking to Asa Butterfield, one of the stars of that film, Spider Man. Brand new day all on the way after this.

[Mark Kermode]

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[Simon Mayo]

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[Mark Kermode]

I first met Quinetta when I started reaching out to women in prison. For years I thought I knew why she killed a man.

[Asa Butterfield]

But the more I dug in, the

[Mark Kermode]

more I realized that nothing was quite so simple. I was just so scared that I

[Simon Mayo]

was about to die.

[Mark Kermode]

Did some things she shouldn't have did.

[Asa Butterfield]

She made a big mistake.

[Mark Kermode]

What she buried is coming August 1st to the binge search for what she Buried.

[Asa Butterfield]

Wherever you get your podcasts, subscribers to

[Mark Kermode]

the binge can listen to all episodes all at once ad free.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, time for the box office top 10. And at number 13, animal. Animal farm. So we spoke to Andy Circus on last week's program.

[Mark Kermode]

We did.

[Simon Mayo]

Who's this Morag in Dundee? Animal Farm isn't a generic revolution goes wrong story. Orwell was writing about a very specific political phenomenon. To make the story fit a modern right wing populist allegory, the film has had to add characters, remove key ones, and substantially change the narrative. At that point, it stops feeling like an adaptation of Animal Farm and starts feeling like an entirely new story, borrowing Orwell's title and iconography. Okay, Maggie Burrows says It is perhaps worth noting when trying to understand the level of criticism being aimed at this Animal Farm that Orwell fully understood that authoritarian libertarian political spectrum stances are present on both sides of the left right wing spectrum. It is always worth paying attention to the people who are policing, controlling and mangling speech because that is simply never a good sign. I'm really looking forward to seeing some more reviews of the movie. Probably more than seeing the movie itself. Well, ghost but see see the film. Have an opinion based on what you've actually seen rather than what you've read. Other people write about it.

[Mark Kermode]

I like the film much more than I than I expected you on the subject of mangling the language. In that first email somebody said populist and a number of people took to the Internet to point out that I said popularist and not populist. It's absolutely true. I mean I am the most malapropic person I know. My entire life has been spent using words that are close to the word that I meant or they mean something else. The other one is putative. What do you think putative means?

[Simon Mayo]

Attempted.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, it means supposed to. I always thought putative meant budding because it sounded like something was, but it doesn't. Anyway, you're absolutely right. I said popularism and popularist as opposed to populist and populism and that is me being malapropic and stupid. On the other hand, I think that the film is so much better than the harsh reviews have given it credit for. I think the third act doesn't work, but I think for the first two acts, I think as you're right in saying it's top end primary and I think if you showed that to a top end primary school audience they would have loads and loads of stuff to talk about. I think the only misstep is that I think leaving the ending is meant to be horrifying. The ending does not need to have a positive conclusion. I understand Andy Serkis saying you can't say to people it's all terrible, we can't do anything, but I don't think a terrifying ending does say that. But I think 2/3 of it are pretty solid and I like the way in which it's updated for the pardon me, populist agenda.

[Simon Mayo]

I think there's a. There's an element to which it. It's not generic but the whole revolution goes wrong story is not just the Stalinism that he was no writing about. You know, you only have to know the bare basics of, for example, the French Revolution to know That a revolution will eat itself and the people that have made it, you know, so there are. There are general truths that run through revolutions. But it obviously was specifically a piece of its time, and I'm not sure that the adaptations were made to make it fit politically. I'm, you know, I'm not sure about that. But it was certainly made with an awareness of the country from which it has.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, I mean, certainly the. The British animation, which, as I said, you know, was. I only found this out when researching it last week, was covertly funded by the CIA. Was specifically made politically. But, you know, you made the point. You quoted Pete Townsend. It is meet the new boss, same as the old boss, which is a universal truth, actually, across the spectrum. And I think. I think that's kind of the point. I just remain really surprised by just how hostile some of the responses have been.

[Simon Mayo]

Number 10 in the chart, number 11 over there is Supergirl.

[Mark Kermode]

Good central performance. Shame about the film.

[Simon Mayo]

Disclosure Day is at number nine.

[Mark Kermode]

It's hanging on in there. This is its seventh week. We sort of talked about this briefly last week. I said the further away I get from it, the less I think of it. But I think overall it has stuck with you more than it has with me. And I think we both agree that there's real pleasure in watching a director of that caliber enjoy themselves that much.

[Simon Mayo]

Evil Dead Bum at number eight. Number six in America.

[Mark Kermode]

You need to add no more. That is. It is now and will forever be

[Simon Mayo]

Evil Dead Bum Obsession is at number seven. Number nine in Canada.

[Mark Kermode]

Simon, look at this. Eleventh week on release and it's still in there at number seven. So Evil Dead Bomb, third week, number eight. Obsession, 11th week, number seven. It just goes to demonstrate if you've got a smart idea. Horror is a genre of ideas. It is not a genre of just gore and stuff. And yeah, obsession is so. It's such an exciting movie. It's terrific to see it doing so well.

[Simon Mayo]

The invite is at number six.

[Mark Kermode]

Grown up comedy, which is kind of rare in the current market. Great performances all round. I mean, I think that the interesting thing about the Invite is that when I saw it, it reminded me of the kind of film that you can't make anymore. And I'm kind of impressed that they did manage to make it. And it's good that it's still holding on in there.

[Simon Mayo]

Number five is Jana Nagan.

[Mark Kermode]

I think it's pronounced Nai Jagan. At least this is what it says. The Tamil pronunciation is on Wiki Jhana Najagun. Indian Tamil Language, political action drama. It wasn't press screen. If anyone has seen it, please let me know.

[Simon Mayo]

Minions and Monsters is at number four. Number five over there.

[Mark Kermode]

We had the most brilliant email last week from somebody who had taken their young child to see it and they had absolutely loved it and laughed all the way through. And I think the real triumph of it is how universal it is. I was talking to Mike Hammond, Dr. Mike Hammond, Professor Mike Hammond, who is a real chaplain specialist, and he said the fact is the Minions are modern day slapstick in its most perfect incarnation. And they are. I mean, Mike has a grandson who will sit in front of Minions movies and will just laugh in that incredibly spontaneous way that slapstick comedy provokes.

[Simon Mayo]

Moana, is it number three? Number two in America.

[Mark Kermode]

Very, very stinky reviews. I didn't mind it as much as other people did. I do think the whole Disney live action project is a bit pointless. But I thought of all of them, this was the one that mithered me the least. Although I think that's probably because I love Moana the best. Because I just love the story. I love the songs and I thought, I think the rock's Great.

[Simon Mayo]

Toy Story 5 is at number two.

[Mark Kermode]

Sixth week in the charts for the fifth install. It is a big hit. Big, big hit. And it's done well. And we've had some really nice emails from people saying that they thought that it actually did speak to the whole issue of children and screens. I. It's not for me. I think I've kind of lost it with Toy Story now and that sort of breaks my heart a bit. But it is good to see that, that people took their kids to see it and they did and they did get something out of it.

[Simon Mayo]

And number one, very number one here and there and everywhere is is the Odyssey. Some more news from Go Woke Go Broke. The Odyssey took a massive $15 million in its second weekend which is down by 19.

[Mark Kermode]

What a flop.

[Simon Mayo]

Taken $639.6 million worldwide. If you compare that to Oppenheimer at the same stage that's they that had taken 400. So it's bigger than Oppenheimer. Took a 66 market share in UK and Ireland at the weekend. Biggest grossing IMAX second weekend of all time. So as well, if that's going broke, then let's all go broke together because

[Mark Kermode]

it's just great, isn't it? There was a thing on, I think it was either Jon Stewart or Seth Meyers of a sort of super cut of all these right wing journals on Fox News. All Pointing out why it was that the Odyssey was absolutely going to flop and it was going to be a total disaster and no one was going to make any money out of it because of the go woke, go broke thing. And as you pointed out last week, they've gone very quiet. They've gone very, very quiet.

[Simon Mayo]

As a. Here's a little taster from next week's Hot Takes and Cold Comfort, which is our feature which highlights the most normal comments from our YouTube channel. Here is someone called Life's a Beach whose comment I will read out in my real voice.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Because normally it's. Yeah, you know, it's either Heather being Scottish or posh or the redactor in a variety of bewildering voices and appearances. So Life's a Beach says it's not very good. There you go. Well, he uses. He uses a short word meaning rubbish.

[Asa Butterfield]

Yes.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, there you go.

[Simon Mayo]

I've sorted it for you. The shill critics can blow it up all they like. The public hate it. Well, Mark, can I suggest that may the public hate all your future books. May the public hate this podcast. May the public hate all my future books. Because this is the kind of hate we can all deal with. Equaling massive worldwide success.

[Mark Kermode]

$600 million worth of your hate, please. Would be absolutely marvellous.

[Simon Mayo]

Gus says. Dear Stem and Petal, long time listener, second time emergency mailer regarding Yos's email from about the Loftus flower in the Odyssey from last year. Since fruits develop from flowers, perhaps Nolan showing a flower rather than the fruit isn't quite the error it appears to be.

[Mark Kermode]

Ah.

[Simon Mayo]

Or knowing Nolan, it was entirely deliberate. Obi, who is a refugee from London claiming asylum in Gateshead. I first saw the Odyssey on a premium large format screen, then again on a nearly empty standard screen, and the surprise was that it had lost none of its power.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Bigger, louder formats may enhance the scale, but unlike something like Avatar, this isn't a film that demands. Sorry. This isn't a film that depends on presentation technology to work. Its greatness comes from the filmmaking itself. My hunch is that it'll remain impressive on TVs, laptops and even airplane seat back screens. Though I still recommend catching it on a cinema to cinema if you can. Obi. Thank you. That's very interesting because I think you're the first person to have seen it on Normal who's got in touch and you would hope that it loses none of its power. And it appears to be the case.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, we were talking about this last week and saying, you know, is There a problem if you have made a movie that can only be appreciated in a format which is not accessible to a vast swathe of the population. And it is therefore very encouraging to hear somebody saying, no, I've said I have. And it, and it does still work. And quite often we've talked about films that you have to see in the cinema, you have to see on the big screen and then five or six months later when they come out on Blu Ray or, you know, now streaming or whatever it is. And, and they, they do still, they do still work. But I don't think, I mean, look, go and I think we said last week, go and see it on the biggest screen that you can. I think that's the thing, there isn't a rule about what that screen has to be. But go and see it on the biggest screen that you can. We can. Because as you said, it is kind of the definition of the cinema experience. The analogy that you use, which I've now completely adopted and used as my own, is if, you know, calling occupants from interplanetary craft, came down to earth and said, what is this thing called cinema? You'd go, come with me.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, it's this, it's that Counselor Rob Logan finally says, Dear Water and Shed, I'm writing to give my reflections in the Rosy Fingered dawn after seeing Christopher Nolan's latest epic blockbuster at Bristol's premier Cinema pub. There is a reason why this story is called the Odyssey and not the Telem. Telemachi.

[Mark Kermode]

Very good.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, that's right. After Telemachus, Odysseus's and Lady Penelope's son. Yeah, right. The scenes with Jason Bourne fighting mythical monsters are genuinely spine chilling. Those with Spider man whining to his mum about being bullied by Batman are more eyelid drooping. I'm reminded of Mark's review of Warhorse. Too much horse, not enough war. And it's good to see.

[Mark Kermode]

I say that, I think, because I,

[Simon Mayo]

I think that's a pithy phrase, but it's not true.

[Mark Kermode]

I don't agree with that. I mean, if I, I'm sorry, if I said that I don't agree with it. I'm, I, I don't know what I was, what I was on.

[Simon Mayo]

Rob says, anyway, it's good to see when he's tired of both Odysseus, he sets his heights, sets his sights on the far west. By my reckoning, he should be in Bristol by 2034. Anyway, far too clever, I think. Councillor Rob Logan, thank you. Thank you very much indeed. You'll be hearing from our special guest, Asa Butterfield. And we're going to talk about our hero Balthazar in just a moment. So our guest this week is British actor Asa Butterfield. You probably saw him first in Hugo in 2011 playing the title role in the Martin Scorsese multiple award winning film, the Boy in the striped pyjamas, Ms. Peregrine's home for Peculiar Children, Ender's Game X and Y, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Merlin. And also particularly four series of Netflix international hit Sex Education, playing Otis Milburn, son of sex advice guru Jillian Anderson. Now he stars in our hero Balthazar. It had a one day appearance in your local cinema, maybe, but it is set for a digital release. You will hear our conversation with Asa Butterfield after this clip from the movie.

[Asa Butterfield]

What is this?

[Simon Mayo]

You look like you needed someone.

[Asa Butterfield]

That's why you're here. Ah, Dad, I know you told me

[Mark Kermode]

only to text you.

[Asa Butterfield]

I've been having a hard time.

[Mark Kermode]

Get out of the store.

[Simon Mayo]

Christ's sake, Solomon, are you a man or what?

[Mark Kermode]

I thought if you had a IRL friend, you wouldn't do it.

[Asa Butterfield]

You like that, don't you? Everyone always said I was this thing. I've tried to be that thing.

[Simon Mayo]

Lock that in, folks.

[Mark Kermode]

Stay away now.

[Asa Butterfield]

Try not to be that thing.

[Simon Mayo]

Stand up.

[Asa Butterfield]

Well, not anymore.

[Simon Mayo]

That's a clip from our hero Balthazar. I'm delighted to say one of its stars, Asa Butterfield, is with us. Asa, hello. How are you?

[Asa Butterfield]

Hey guys, thanks for having me on. I'm really well.

[Simon Mayo]

So introduce us to our hero Balthazar and also your character, son.

[Asa Butterfield]

Our hero, Balthazar is. It's a very American, quite dysfunctional, you could say. Comedy. I think it's very funny. Other people have had a. It's an uncomfortable watch, but I think quite a necessary watch. And it shines quite a bright light on the real kind of unseen worlds of particularly young men in the U.S. my character Solomon, being one of those young men, he's from Texas, he's from East Texas and he's grown up in a trailer park. And the film, it's these two worlds colliding, two worlds from the totally opposite ends of the spectrum in America. But they bond over this shared anger, loneliness, frustration, and they go on this kind of wild buddy trip.

[Simon Mayo]

You're one half of this buddy situation. So you're Solomon, you're from Texas. Tell us about Balthazar, played by Jayden Martell, who's very, very wealthy, very entitled and so on. So very New York. What is it that you have in common?

[Asa Butterfield]

Balthazar? Is another sort of lonely young man. He spends a lot of his time on the Internet. They both do. That's where they find this friendship, if you can call it a friendship. And he spends a lot of his time performing these sort of fake crying videos for attention, for social media validation, be a part of this community. And Solomon finds one of these videos and starts trolling him. And Balthazar, through this conversation, thinks that Solomon is a school shooter. And he travels to Texas to be this hero, to be this white knight to stop this school shooting. And you slowly start to see that his intentions might not be totally altruistic and it's quite sinister and it's quite weird. And you realize that neither of these guys are who they claim to be, and the whole thing is a bit

[Mark Kermode]

of a performance, despite the fact that neither of them are who they claim to be. They. They have this weird thing in. In common, in. In their oppositeness. So your character feels everything. He's looking after an elderly relative. He feels shunned, he feels snubbed, he feels rage. He has a father, this kind of toxic masculinity figure of a father, and he feels ashamed all the time. Balthazar's character, on the other hand, doesn't appear to feel anything at all and seems to do this thing about cry, as you said, performative crying, which, and I didn't know this before, apparently there is a great wave of crying videos of people expressing their emotion through this. So the one thing that they're joined in is that neither of them are who they appear to be online, but also they're complete opposites. One's rich, one's poor, one's from New York, one's from Texas. But the one thing that they're joined by is that they are both oppositely isolated and they both find in each other weirdly this kind of strange, twisted friendship. Is that at the heart of it?

[Asa Butterfield]

Absolutely is. I think that's at the heart of it. You see this friendship form and, you know, as the audience, these are not the people they should be looking for yet they're brought together anyway. And it's. You have this real sort of impending sense that this. This can't go well because, as you said, Balthi is so disconnected from this sort of observer as to everything that's going on around him. And Solomon is like this case study for him. And for Solomon, he's the only friend he's ever made and will do anything to keep Balthazar around.

[Simon Mayo]

You said he's from Texas, and the. The level of transformation for you felt strong you know, I. It took me a while to. Oh, right. It's that. Okay, it's a. That's Acer. There he is. And he doesn't really look like Acer at all. This is quite a big transformation that you. That you go through for this.

[Asa Butterfield]

It was. It was one of the things I really was excited about this project when I spoke with Oscar, probably about maybe almost a year before.

[Simon Mayo]

That's Oscar Boysen, who's the director.

[Asa Butterfield]

Yeah, that's right. Oscar Boysen, co writer and director. And he was really excited by the idea of me playing Solomon, as was I, because it was so different from other roles I tackled, both in terms of how he looked and how we kind of moved and being from Texas, but also his kind of his rage and his frustration and his volatility wasn't something that I'd really got to sink my teeth into in other roles I'd had. And it's not something that I particularly as. As have a lot of experience with. So it was really interesting figuring out why I sometimes struggled to connect with those emotions and then finding Solomon's connection to those emotions. And it was amazing. We shot it in Texas, so we were surrounded by real Texans. A lot of the supporting actors in the film are non actors. They're just people we found either in Solomon's trailer park or in the pawn shop. And it gave me such a grounding of where he was in this place and the people he would be with. It just totally lent that energy to my performance.

[Mark Kermode]

Can I ask you about Oscar Boyce, and so obviously known for as a longtime collaborator of the Safdies. When you talk to him about the film, what did Oscar tell you that it was about or did you discuss? Because one of the things that you do as a critic, right, Is that you tend to sort of say, well, this is really what the film's about. And I think it's about loneliness and isolation and the performative echo chamber of youth culture on the Internet and snake oil salesmanship. But also it is about a country in which school shootings are absolutely epidemic. But I understand that what filmmakers think that a film may be about is often very different to the way it was received. So what did you talk to him about, what the film was actually about?

[Asa Butterfield]

One of the big things for Oscar was about class and about this divide in America. He always says he thinks it's the most rich and fascinating topic in American filmmaking. His class. And that was a big thing for him. He didn't want to make it sort of too Black and white. But to have these. These ends of the spectrum meet in quite a sort of unusual. Very unusual and chaotic way. And this idea of. One of the inspirations for him was a shooting in America, the Vildi shooter. And there was a moment online where this shooter messaged this girl in Germany that he was going to go and shoot up his school. And she replied, oh, cool. Because she had no idea who this person was, if it was real. She thought he was probably just trolling them. And this idea that young people are exposed to all these things and all this violence, whether it's real or not and expected to, I don't know, do something about it or not is so kind of. And that really fascinated him. And working with Ricky, they both knew there was something there, something that hadn't really been done before.

[Simon Mayo]

You mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, they said that it was a very American story. And Mark has mentioned toxic masculinity, which has obviously been much debated in the last few years. We've talked about adolescence along with everybody else. But greed is international, loneliness is international. Social media is international. But in the American mix, you get guns. And that seems to me that, you know, we have messed up people. There are messed up people in every country. But the proximity to guns just takes the whole story to another level. So your character has edge, but the political setup, you know, the cultural setup gives it this kind of hair trigger all the way through the film.

[Asa Butterfield]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The common themes, which are global are absolutely there. And loneliness and frustration and division are everywhere. But this hair trigger is a great word for it because that tension goes throughout the film. This knowledge that this guy has so much access to guns. And Balthazar seemingly quite likes that. It's. It's. I mean, it's Chekhov. You. You know, that something. Something's there and something's coming. I'd never shot a gun before until I went to Texas and we had some. They took me to a shooting range. And it's absurd how easy it is to just go there, pick up a gun and shoot some targets. And strangely, I. It doesn't surprise me that they're so. There's such an obsession with guns there. There's a real sense of power that you feel and fear holding a gun. And it's. You could. I can totally see why people get addicted to that and feel like it's their. I think they're right.

[Mark Kermode]

The film makes very specific reference to that being an American problem. There's somebody who says, you know, I'm a specialist I'm an international specialist in school shootings and is told what you mean America. I just looked at the statistics for school shootings by country for 2026 Afghanistan. 3, Nigeria 4, Pakistan 4, South Africa, 6, Mexico. 8. United States, 288. I mean, it's. It's just a completely different level. And one of the things that I was very interested in is the fact that this is that that subject has. Is now so prevalent that is. It is able to be the backdrop for. You said at the beginning, it's comedy, but it's. But it's actually, you know, it's much more than that. There was a film recently called the Drama in which the idea of a school shooting was. Was, you know, in the background of this kind of very socially anxious comedy. I wonder how you get the tone right when you know that you're dealing with subject matter which is so prevalent, which is absolutely everywhere, but is also so by its very nature difficult to talk about. And when you're doing it in a way which is blackly comedic, how do you get that tone right? And did you always know that tonally the film was going to work? It's been very, very well received. But this could have gone wrong.

[Asa Butterfield]

Couldn't was credit. It was trust in Oscar. Oscar, Boysen and Ricky, having spoken with them on Zoom before, after I'd read the script, feeling those exact reservations that this could easily go to the wrong side of what this story's about and parody or mock or just get be totally the wrong tone. And Oscar was really, really confident and assured in what he was doing and the moments that needed the comedy and the reasons he was doing it. I think some people have compared this to adolescence, and it's sort of light on young men. And what I think that Arthur Abaltada does is it really puts you in. In the shoes of these people. You're not really observing it from the outside. You're thrust into the sort of brains and trauma of these young men. And it doesn't paint anyone as being good or bad. It's just giving you this story. And it's up to us as an audience to kind of do is. Do with it as we want.

[Simon Mayo]

When you're at the heart of this very Texas story, very American story, do you have any voices in the back of your head, Asa going, but I'm the kid from Stoke Newington. You know, why am I here?

[Asa Butterfield]

I think possibly at first, when I was first working with a dialect coach on the accent, I was like, God, because it's very Easy to go too far with a Texas accent and it become a kind of. Become a parody, become a kind of Western. But as soon as I got there and as soon as I spent some more time in it with the character, figuring him out, it felt it strangely came quite naturally to me. And I think that was again, just going back to being actually filming in Texas and the writing, having great writing to support us and having time before we start shooting, rehearsing with Jaden and Oscar and Ricky and everyone. And Jaden's, I think, phenomenal in this role. And in a lot of ways, I think Balthazar was much harder for him to get under the skin because he is so directionless, because he's search. He sort of floats through existence. Solomon's stakes and complexity. And it was all there. You could see it, it was on the page. I think Jaden had to work quite a lot harder to figure out why Balthazar was doing what he did. And I think he was incredible in this role and having him to work alongside it made my job a lot easier.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, it's the most engaging film. Asa, your performance is great. Jayden Martell is great in it. What's coming up next for you?

[Asa Butterfield]

What's coming up next? I have a TV series coming out on Disney in the uk, a comedy horror in the vein of Gremlins, except instead of Gremlins, it's Garden Gnomes. It's very silly and it's brilliant and it's fantastic. We shot that in Melbourne last year.

[Mark Kermode]

What's it called?

[Asa Butterfield]

That will be out. It's called Gnomes.

[Mark Kermode]

Of course.

[Asa Butterfield]

Of course. So that's out in around Halloween.

[Simon Mayo]

All right. Excellent. Asa, very good to speak to you. Thank you so much for your time and congratulations to you and your team for our hero, Balthazar.

[Asa Butterfield]

Thanks, guys. Thanks.

[Mark Kermode]

Thank you.

[Asa Butterfield]

Take care. Bye.

[Simon Mayo]

Asa Butterfield. I don't think I've spoken to him before, but no. Very talented guy. Charming, I think. To interview, what did you make of the movie Our Hero, Balthazar?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, as you yourself said at the beginning, so it had a very, very brief blink and you'll miss it, like one day. Only cinema showing here, but it's on Digital from the 11th. And it was really fascinating to ask him what the film's about. And I said, you know, as a critic, I think, you know, it's about loneliness and isolation and all that stuff and school shootings and incel culture and online poison. What's it? You know what, when you talk to your director and writer, what's it about? Class. Now it's Fascinating to me because it demonstrates, I think, quite often that things are about the things that you bring to them. And in the case of this, there is a lot of stuff going on. It was very interesting to hear that. For Oscar Boysen, class was absolutely central. So the two central characters are certainly divided by class. One of them is rich, pampered New York and completely unable to feel anything. Somebody who goes online and does performative crying videos because, well, it's a community, isn't it, and somehow thinks that the only way they can simulate a human relationship is by this performative crying. In fact, watching it, I was reminded of that scene. I've invoked this before in American Psycho, when Patrick Bateman basically says, if you looked at me, you'd see all these things. But actually, I'm not here. I am just a construct. I am the idea of a person. On the other side. You have the character that Iza Butterfield is playing who feels everything, who is, you know, stressed about looking after his grandmother, who has this incredibly toxic father, who is sort of like the trailer park version of the character that Tom Cruise plays in Magnolia, you know, a snake oil salesman selling these testosterone enhancements, even selling them to his son, the son that he abandoned. And this. This person is bitter and battered and has somehow decided that the way to get around this is to invent an online Persona of this person who is incredibly horrible. Death Dealer 16. I mean, there's something that's funny even in the fact that they're death dealer 16. They're not even death dealer one. They are death dealer 16. Just one of a number of people who are taking that on as a mantle, as a way of kind of identifying themselves. And the story then is Death Deal.

[Simon Mayo]

Bunch of numbers.

[Mark Kermode]

Death Deal. A bunch of precisely so. And these two characters paths cross when the rich guy from New York who is trying to impress a girl at school is trolled by the character played by someone, but by this character in Texas and decides, I know, I will go to Texas and I will meet him and I will stop him from becoming a shooter. Not because that will be a good thing, because it will prevent a terrible tragedy, but because it will impress this girl. A further demonstration of the fact that he is completely removed from reality, has absolutely no connection to the real world. And there is also this very twisted thing that the way in which they hook up is he uses an AI version of his mum's voice to record this dirty talk message, whilst the person he's messaging sends him a picture of private parts that are not his by his father. So the whole thing is, in this incredibly sort of twisted milieu, neither of these people know anything about each other until they meet. And then when they meet, the thing that suddenly bonds them is that they have met in real life and neither of them have had friends up until this point. Now, I think that one of the interesting things about the film is the whole issue of gun culture and school shootings in America, and you raised this as well, is now so prevalent that it can become the backdrop to a black comedy. I mean, I invoke the thing about the drama which makes, you know, in which the central thing is one of the characters talks about that, and even just talking about it is the thing that sets the drama in motion. In the case of this, it is specifically said out loud by one of the characters. This is a specific American problem, because that idea, as you quite rightly said, of isolation, of online trolling, of loneliness, all those things that's absolutely international. But only in America is it happening in a milieu in which there is an absolute glorification of gun culture. And there is also the availability of gun culture, which it seems to me, from the outside, I don't know what this looks like from an American point of view, but from the outside, that is. It is insane. It is absolutely insane. America's relationship with gun culture is absolutely insane. And the very fact that it can now become kind of the backdrop of something which is a black comedy. Yes. A drama about other things tells you an awful lot. And I think it's impossible to watch this film from a, you know, perspective, watching Here across the Atlantic, and not see it as. I mean, they raised this in the drama as well. There's a point in the drama in which somebody says, oh, so America is to blame? To which the answer is, yes. Yes, that is absolutely part of it. I think there's a lot of other things going on in it as well. And I think the class thing is really important from the point of view of performances. When I started watching the film, you know, you said that, I think just when we finished that interview, just when we were just ending it, talking about, you know, learning. Learning to do. To do the accent, learning to do the walk, learning to become another person, you know, inhabiting. When I first saw the character that Asa Butterfield is playing, I didn't recognize them as being that person. I mean, I genuinely didn't. And I think that that says an awful lot. I also think it's important that the two central cast members come from complete opposite sides of the divide. But they are weirdly physically similar. I mean, yes, one of them is more bulked up than the other, but facially, it is almost like they've been cast, because facially, they are very, very similar people. And they're both, in their own way, in this sort of state of derangement in this culture in which that state of derangement can become amplified manyfold. I do think it is worth addressing again. We were talking about Animal Farm last week that something can be comedic and horrifying at the same time. You said that your feeling was with Animal Farm. It is horrifying. And even though the story was made to be played to top end primary school kids, that element of horror is still there. I think all the time that I was watching this, one of the things that was going on, I mean, yes, it's about toxic masculinity and all those things, but one of the things that was going on for me at least, was a horror, an absolute horror about the American culture that this comes from and what this has to say about that culture. Simon, did you have a similar response? Did you, when you were watching it was part of what was going on in your mind thinking this is a very, very American story. And certainly watching it from the outside, it is a horrifying portrait of America.

[Simon Mayo]

Oh, sure. I mean, that was. By the way, I don't. I know. You called it a black comedy and other people called it black comedy. There aren't any laughs in this.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, yeah, no, it's not. It's not a laugh. No, absolutely.

[Simon Mayo]

And I mean, the main kind of running joke is the fact that the fake supplements which his father is selling is called Thrush, which I. It's like a combination of thrill and rush and then again by Thrush.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Okay, so fine. But it is. It is. If it's a black comedy, it's black. Certainly.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah, no, absolutely.

[Simon Mayo]

With not a lot of laughs. But I. It was, yes. So adolescence, as has been mentioned number of times, is a truly universal story. Everyone across the industrialized world will have watched that and thought, we've got that happening down the road to us.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Whereas you watch this.

[Asa Butterfield]

And as.

[Simon Mayo]

As I said right at the beginning of the conversation, this is a very American story.

[Mark Kermode]

Yeah.

[Simon Mayo]

Because it's messed up in that particular. In that particular way. These guys would still be Solomon and Balthazar would, you know, which. Balthazar would still be rich and entitled and weird and Solomon would still be the trailer park guy, but they wouldn't be planning a school shootout, you know, they wouldn't be playing with guns. And there's a scene in a gun shop where he wants to trade them in. And the guy says, no, you can't, because, you know, and it's all. It's normal. It's like I'm taking something in because it's. I'm going to John Lewis because my PI fi is broken. You know, to make it sound like it's the 1980s, but, you know, it's the, The. The fact that their culture, particularly in Texas, is embedded with guns. And as Asa said, it feel. When you're there, it feels very natural and you can carry a gun.

[Mark Kermode]

You know, that's terrifying. That's terrifying and it's insane.

[Simon Mayo]

I did a whole week's worth of programs for when we were both on 5 live. And the idea was to explain George Bush to Texas. Back in the old days when George Bush was the worst possible thing we could think of. Now I think of him as the good old days. A good old stable centrist George W. Camelot, you know, and we had a woman who came on the show explaining why guns were great and she had all the stats and they were all messed up stats. None of them actually worked. But they genuinely think that the way to stop these things is to give more guns out to more people. You know, in school shootings wouldn't happen if the teacher had the gun.

[Mark Kermode]

So, yeah, insane.

[Simon Mayo]

So it makes it a very Texan film. Even though they're kind of. The loneliness and toxicity is truly universal. But if you haven't seen Asa Butterfield for a while, go see this film. I mean, I think it's genuinely fascinating film and, and certainly worth your time.

[Mark Kermode]

And his performance is great, isn't it? I mean, it is genuinely transformative.

[Simon Mayo]

It is. And I would actually. We did. We both planned to ask him, ask him, and then we didn't because we all fell off the end. But, you know, they. I think they could have swapped roles.

[Mark Kermode]

I think.

[Simon Mayo]

Yes, he could have played Balthazar and Jaden Martel could have played Solomon and that would. That would have been very, very interesting. Yeah. Anyway, if you see it, let us know what you think. Correspondence conamo.com as you say, Mike. It's landing on. It's a digital release August 11th. Yeah, I believe. Let us know what you think. But anyway, after all of that, I think it's clearly time to put a smile on everyone's face.

[Mark Kermode]

Something which is a comedy, genuine comedy.

[Simon Mayo]

It's the laughter lift, everybody.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, dear.

[Simon Mayo]

Hey, Mark. I was. I was up in front of the Church again this week. Now I regularly get tickets which I refuse to pay as I don't believe they're genuine. Sometimes I get multiple tickets for the same time frame. Your honor, I said 60% of these parking tickets are false and unfair. Hmm. Repeat infractions, friends. She said. Okay, very well. I said three fifths of these tickets are false and unfair. I had to pay a lot on the spot there. Anyway, on the same subject, I'm looking for a new car at the moment. Mark.

[Mark Kermode]

Are you?

[Simon Mayo]

I went to the local showroom with the good lady ceramicist her indoors. As you know, she often needs to transport large quantities of high enough high end artistic ceramics around. So where is boot size is very important. Cargo space, she said to the salesman. No dear, said the salesman patronizingly. Car no go space car go on road. No sale from us anyway. Mark, did I tell you about my pre radio jobs? I once quit my job at the helium gas factory. I didn't like being spoken to in that tone. Genuine comedy brought to you by a pair of comedians, Canadians. Still to come, Mark's review of Spider Man. Brand new day. If you can stop laughing.

[Mark Kermode]

Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in

[Asa Butterfield]

a bundle deals, game day deals, concert trip deals.

[Mark Kermode]

No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more.

[Simon Mayo]

The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood vibe, star level and amenities like

[Mark Kermode]

pools and spas and beachfronts and. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting the Priceline.

[Simon Mayo]

Next we have our new feature, Mark, which I know you love very much. AI don't like that. This is our latest take on the robot takeover. Takeover for good or ill. And I'm not sure if you caught LBC's tech correspondent will Guy on the News Agents podcast last week.

[Mark Kermode]

I didn't.

[Simon Mayo]

On the unprecedented cyber incident when One of Chat GBT's AI models escaped a controlled testing environment.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh yes I did.

[Simon Mayo]

Got onto the Internet and hacked into another AI startup without being asked to do so.

[Mark Kermode]

Here we go. Yeah, I've been trying to come up with a way of talking about this which doesn't sort of doom, theorize or make it sound like really alarmist. But the best thing I can come up with is this is exactly what happened in 1991's Terminator 2 Judgment Day. It is essentially the rise of the machine.

[Simon Mayo]

Great.

[Mark Kermode]

That's not alarmist at all.

[Simon Mayo]

No, I was hoping that a tech correspondent might be just putting it in greater context. After which we go, oh, okay, that's all right. Then instead of making us run into the street shouting, help.

[Mark Kermode]

There was an awful lot of stuff on the date in which in the films Skynet goes live. Then when we actually passed the date that Skynet went live, everyone went, this is it. It's all happening. And now we have genuine tech correspondents telling us, yeah, no, that's not a joke.

[Simon Mayo]

It is really happening and worth mentioning that the company that ChatGPT's out of control models gained access to independently was called Hugging Face. Nothing to worry about there then, Mark. But I think what we say to that news is

[Mark Kermode]

a. I don't like that.

[Simon Mayo]

You see, I'm not sure about this.

[Mark Kermode]

What about the, about the, about the jingle?

[Simon Mayo]

The jingle needs to have more guts to it. I think the idea of people sending in frequently occurring instances of the robot takeover, good or bad, is a neat idea. So there may well be some improvements, but it may well be that there are others that are sort of a bit rubbish. So you can send them to correspondence.com, but I think more work for the jingle. What do you say, Mark?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, I mean, I quite like the fact that it sounds chonky because it sort of makes me think that it's okay technology is still in the shonky phase, when in fact that's not true. The technology is now in the rise of the machines. Skynet is live. AI is breaking out of controlled experiments and hacking other things, you know, so maybe it just reassures me if tech sounds a bit odd. I did a thing just earlier this week. I had to drop in a line of comms from a documentary that I made 20 years ago. And there was a, there was a line reading that for some reason it had gone wrong on the, on the tape they had, they said, can you just say the line again? And I said the line again, but my Voice over the 20 years has changed. It's gone down. Yes. And the, the editor, Brian, brilliant guy, said, it's okay, I can fix it. And he pitch shifted it up, up an eighth of a tone and it made me sound 20 years younger, which was really, really weird. But then I realized that that is also, I suppose AI going, come here, I can fix your voice and make you sound younger.

[Simon Mayo]

Well, do you remember it was like years ago that the redactor, actually we started the show with robot versions of ourselves that he'd put up.

[Mark Kermode]

Oh, yes, he put.

[Simon Mayo]

There was an AI Me and an AIU that's right.

[Mark Kermode]

I'd forgotten that.

[Simon Mayo]

Which. And it was sort of. It was rather. It clearly wasn't us, but it was close enough to make it feel very, very disturbing.

[Mark Kermode]

That's right. It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. And the thing that was scary was that it wasn't terrible.

[Simon Mayo]

Yeah, well, I think that's our challenge. Let's see where we are in a few weeks time maybe. Although I'm not sure I want to know the results. Okay. Correspondencecodemo.com what else is out? What else is interesting?

[Mark Kermode]

Well, you might have noticed, Simon, that there is a new Spider man movie coming to coming to our screens. So it's been a little while. Spider Man, Brand new day is now. Forgive me for not knowing this off the top of my head. I have to read it out. The 38th film in the MCU. The fourth film in the MCU Spider man film series following 2021's no Way Home. Takes its title from a 2008 comic book storyline. Brand new Day that apparently reset the Spider man status quo. This is directed by Destin Daniel Crattton, who made an absolutely brilliant indie film. Started as a short first and then a feature Short Term 12, which was great. Made the very decent Just Mercy, the very enjoyable Shang Chi and the Legend of the Twelve Rings to which this is kind of connected. This is written by Chris McKenna and Eric Summers. So Tom Holland, aka is it now Telemachus. Telemachus. Telemachus. How do you pronounce it? Telemachus, probably Telemachus. Okay, so Tom Holland, AKA Telemachus is back as Peter Parker alongside Zendaya AKA Athena as mj and also back Jon Bernthal AKA King of Sparta as Frank AKA the Punisher. So basically it's an Odyssey cast reunion. Although whilst the Odyssey. We've had this discussion about the Odyssey being released in IMAX in the shot in the IMAX format. Shot for imax. This is being released in Screen X. Now are you aware of Screen X?

[Simon Mayo]

I think I've heard it reference, but I look forward to your explanation.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay, so this is the first film to be shot specifically for the Screen X format shot. It's on the Shot for Screen X program. It is a panoramic film format which presents film with an expanded dual sided 270 degree screen projected on the walls of the theater. So essentially you've got your central screen and then you've got two sides. So I suppose kind of not dissimilar to what used to be so well it is dissimilar because it's not same but Cinerama, you know, which used to be kind of like all the way around. Apparently this format is available in 22 Cine World sites around the UK. I haven't seen it but when I went to see the film at the press screening on Tuesday morning, I was talking to there was a guy there from Dolby and there was another tech guy and I just fell into conversation with him and he said oh yeah, well the other day we were just doing one of the Screen X things. I said oh, I haven't seen it, what's it like? And he said well it's literally like this is good thing. And then I saw a video. There is a video if you go to the Cineworld site you can see it. It's the main screen and then, and then, and then around sort of looks, looks like an immersive thing. Anyway, for the record, that's the format that this is being released in. So film also features. Well a number, a number of. I'm very. What I'm not. What I'm going to try not to do is not do anything that's spoilery because again at the beginning of this they stood up and they said don't let there be any spoiler please in your reviews. Don't let me any spoilers. The problem is I'm never sure what constitutes a plot spoiler anymore. Like for example in the trailer we see that Mark Ruffalo is in the film and some somebody said oh well you're not supposed to say but, but it's in the trailer.

[Simon Mayo]

So anyway, I think that's fair. If it's in the trailer, no one can complain.

[Mark Kermode]

That's what I think. So Tom Holland had previously said that no Way Home was the perfect send off for his incarnation of Spider Man. He also said that he thought there'd be something odd about him still playing the Spider man role in his 30s. Well, he is now 30 but he is now back in what has been flagged as being planned to be the first in a new Spider man trilogy. So the official setup, in order to not give any plot spoilers, this is how the film is set up in the publicity. Okay, so following Dr. Stephen Strange's spell at the end of no Way Home, you'll remember what happens at the end of no Way Home. The world in general, but Ned and MJ in particular have forgotten that Peter Parker exists. Okay? Because he has to wipe the memory. He had to wipe his memory from them, which is a great personal sacrifice in order to bring that story to a conclusion. Now, four years later, he is Spider man. Once again. Anonymous. His identity is hidden. People don't know who he is. Although he does have a note on which he's written something that he longs to be able to say out loud. Here is a clip from the trailer.

[Asa Butterfield]

Hi, my name is Peter Parker.

[Mark Kermode]

You don't remember me, but we used to know each other.

[Asa Butterfield]

Something bad was gonna happen, and the only way to stop it was to

[Mark Kermode]

make everyone forget about me. Because I'm not just Peter Parker.

[Asa Butterfield]

I'm Spider Man.

[Simon Mayo]

Something.

[Asa Butterfield]

Sometimes Spider man has to do the hard thing, even if it breaks Peter Parker's heart.

[Mark Kermode]

So in a way, that's kind of the center of it. I mean, on one level, it is a return to a theme that's always been at the heart of superhero stories, but particularly at the heart of the Spider man story, which is that of loneliness. That idea that, you know, with great power, not. Not just great responsibility, but great loss, comes the need to put yourself aside for the greater good. As they would say in. In Hot Files, which we'll get to Internetly in take two. And I, I think in the previous Spider man movies, we saw this most clearly in Spider Man 2. The Sam Raimi Spider Man 2, which included a very direct nod to the comic strip Spider man no More series. Peter Parker attempting to turn his back on the Spider man identity in order to reclaim himself, to get his life back, to get his childhood back. But if in those earlier films there was this whole thing going on about the web spinning and the sticky substances and the goo was sort of all a bit kind of. Yeah, well, this is kind of metaphorical, you know, becoming a teenager. Now that kid is turning into an adult. Like, not an adolescent, but an adult. And his body is behaving in a manner that evokes. Remember that the. The line from the Fly, the Jeff Goldblum film, in which Jeff Goldblum says, I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over and the insect is awake. So that is happening. Basically, his arachnid side is becoming more arachnid. And now he needs inhibitors to prevent further changes. And there was an interview with Michael Giacchino, the composer, who said that when he was doing the score for this.

[Simon Mayo]

It's a good score.

[Mark Kermode]

I mean, it always is. He's a very good composer. Said when he was doing the score for this, he deliberately took certain notes out of the score, certain themes that are from the kind of, you know, the spider legacy, in order to represent pulling away pieces of his life, things that he doesn't have anymore. Meanwhile, as far as the wider plot is concerned, and I'm just gonna gesture towards the wider plot because I don't wanna spoil anything for anybo. There is a central unfolding mystery which essentially involves a body hopping villain, meaning a spirit that leaps from one body to another. Very much in the manner of. And I'm very glad to be able to get this in Exorcist 3, the heretic in which the Gemini killer, who is in a prison, manages to. The spirit of the Gemini moves from one body to another. And in fact, in the case of this, it is very specifically referred to as being, well, pretty much possession. Okay. There's also a new nemesis who, as always is the case with these things. It's the backstory that no, nobody is singly bad. In fact, what you find out is that most people are the victims of circumstance and loneliness. So fine, that's it. That's all the gesturing. The plot I'm going to do. For me, the most interesting stuff in this movie is, is the character stuff. There is a really lovely idea about the awfulness of meeting a friend or a loved one who simply doesn't remember you because that's been blanked. I mean, it's like a kind of one sided eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You remember the whole thing in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is the idea that the only way that you can get over a relationship is that you blank your own memory of it. But like the inverse of that is the other person has done it or you did it to the other person. They don't know who you are. And I think there is real chemistry between the central characters. I mean, two of whom of course have genuine real chemistry in the real world. But that idea about Peter and MJ and that they were this group and now they're not and he's outside and he's watching them and he's watching their lives go on knowing that he's had to take himself out of it and he's desperately wants to kind of reconnect, but he can't. For me, that's the most interesting stuff. And honestly, I could have done with more of that because when it's there, it's really, really good. However, this being a franchise superhero movie, you do have to have an increasingly huge amount of Smashy bashy swingy Bingy swoopy doopy, fly, bangy stuff. My feeling with all that stuff is the bigger it gets, the more inconsequential it gets. And in fact, in terms of this, all the best action stuff is the stuff that feels physical. So there's some kind of Wushu, you know, anti gravity running, jumpy martial arts, you know, ninja kung fu, you know, martial arts, basically. But the stuff when it's possible for people to run up the side of walls in a way that you couldn't do in real life, but you can do in films. And those sequences work really well, but largely because the director really seems to enjoy the physical choreography. And we've seen that before in his. In his previous work. The film is 145 minutes long, okay? So that means it's only a few minutes shorter than 2001, which is the great yardstick. I honestly think it doesn't need to be that long. I do think that it could. Again, since I'm saying this about the Odyssey, it could lose 20 minutes. As I said with the Odyssey, the problem is if you say, well, the odyssey can lose 25 minutes ago, okay, which 25 minutes, that's hard in the case of this. The problem is if you lost 25 minutes, you know that what they would lose is 25 minutes of character stuff, which is all the stuff I like, because obviously, from the studio's point of view, the last thing you want to lose is the big smashy bashy, you know, swingy bingy stuff. As it was during some of the bigger action sequences, I really did drift in and out. And I also drifted in and out in terms of my interest in the exposition of the plot, which is always the kind of least interesting thing. Because what the plot needs to do is to tie it into a wider, expansive universe that I'm not emotionally engaged with with. The time that I got really engaged is when the three main characters are sitting around in a room building Star Wars Lego figures and just being together and sort of rediscovering a friendship that they've forgotten about. There is a great performance, I think, by Sadie Singh, who people will know from Stranger Things, in a role which, again, less said about the better. Cause it's nice for it to be, you know, allow it to. Allow the audience to find that. I mean, I know that an awful lot of fans will know this stuff already. But it's interesting because that character. It's not just that the character's got an interesting backstory dynamic, but also is the character that seems the most genuinely desperate and with all of these things there is an element of desperation. How can I deal with the world when all. When this is my experience of it, this is my loneliness, this is my isolation, or, I mean, overall, considering that I thought that we had had a pretty good end to the series, we are back in a situation in which there is never an end to anything, in which everything will always restart again. And we're also in a world in which the Spider Verse movies sort of changed the game so much that what animation was doing changed the game so much that it feels. I don't, you know, do we need to be back here? But if we are going to be back here, and we are, this is much better than one might have. Might have feared. Because, I mean, yes, it's too long, yes, it's too smashy bashy crashy for me, but the bits of it that work work because they work on a. On a genuine emotional level that you do believe that the center of the thing is my friends don't remember me and I have to live in a world in which I can't tell them who I am. And meanwhile all this other stuff is going on. So, yes, too long, yes, too loud. But generally pretty engaging. And as you've probably seen, the responses seem to be pretty positive. It looks like it is on course to pack cinemas out and considering where we might have been with this kind of reboot, that's a. That's a pretty solid recommendation.

[Simon Mayo]

And you have a couple of stars at the heart of it, from what you were saying, who could open a film on their own. So.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, that's a big deal. Yes, yes, you do. And also who seem to have genuinely committed to these roles which they have played, you know, and really, I mean, there's a. There's a lovely relationship between Peter Parker and Frank, played by John Bothell, who. They've got this kind of. This fighty, kind of bromancy, aggressive. Oh, I really hate you, but I don't really. I kind of really love you. Actually, that's one of the nicest things about the film, is that that relationship works really well. In fact, there's one sequence in it in which it works really well, despite the fact that it's happening in the middle of one of the biggest smashy bashy crashy sequences. And you think the fact that the characters are managing to shine through even when all that other stuff is happening is a kind of indication that there is some genuine substance underneath it all.

[Simon Mayo]

Brand new day [e-mail] thank you very much indeed for being here, Mark, and joining us from France.

[Mark Kermode]

Well, thank you, thank you for having me.

[Simon Mayo]

I think that on your own podcast.

[Mark Kermode]

Yes.

[Simon Mayo]

Before we're done, we have a quick waltz on. This is Philip Thorne with an interesting sounding product. Basically this is where we say if there's something cinema, cinema adjacent, close to you and you want to get on the pod, then just. Yes, send us an all, you know, a voice note or film yourself doing it. That's fine. He has. Philip Thorne has an interesting sounding project on the Thames in London.

[Mark Kermode]

Theatre ship is a historic cargo barge that has been lovingly restored and turned into a live performance venue and cinema. We're going to be screening a folk

[Simon Mayo]

horror project there called Delivery after Dark

[Mark Kermode]

which is set in the North York moors. It's something new. We're calling it an audio movie. It's something between film and audio drama. If you're a fan of adventurous micro

[Simon Mayo]

budget horror or if you simply want

[Mark Kermode]

to experience this unique venue, come join

[Simon Mayo]

us aboard a theater ship on the

[Mark Kermode]

5th or 6th of August.

[Simon Mayo]

All right.

[Mark Kermode]

Okay.

[Simon Mayo]

Well that sounds great, Philip. Thank you. This is 5th or 6th of August. Tickets are 5 quid. You can find out [e-mail] or you can see the show notes because we'll put all the links in there. That's it for this week. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh and Heather. Producer was Dom. The redactor was the arriving late Simon Paul in take two. We're directing you to the overflow car park for more chat about current film releases and if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, there is plenty more waiting for you over in take two, such as five question, Film club, Three questions, your majesty and questions in which this week we're asked, amongst other things, which film seemed to have started out as the first in a franchise but failed hard? Don't forget people of Bristol and beyond will be at the Bristol Beacon on December 6th. Tickets are on sale via the link in the show notes. Again, you can get both takes ad free. You just search Kermit and Mayo Patreon and you join the church. Mark, what is your film of the week?

[Mark Kermode]

My film of the week and I guarantee you it's going to be one of my films of the year when we get to the end of the year is ish I s h Believe me, it is really worth checking out. It's remarkable.

[Simon Mayo]

We're back next week with Taika Waititi and I'm going to bestow a year's Ultra membership to our Correspondent of the Week. I think I just made a note of Obi, who was the guy who told us he's the refugee from London claiming asylum in Gateshead.

[Mark Kermode]

Excellent.

[Simon Mayo]

Who went to see the Odyssey on just the normal screen and said big thumbs up. So in terms of setting, because there is so much pressure on the seats and you can't really get in until Christmas to see this thing, that it's enormous. It's a great relief. If you can just go to your local cinema that's showing it on screen one and two or whatever and still have a good time.

[Asa Butterfield]

Time.

[Simon Mayo]

So, Obi, thank you very much indeed. We will be in touch with all our generosity and. And you'll be very grateful, I'm sure.

[Mark Kermode]

And anyway, and don't forget. And don't forget, kids. Go woke. Get rich.

[Simon Mayo]

That does seem to be the message of this year. Thank you very much, Steve, for listening. Take two has landed, just not far from this one.