The new home of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. They’re back, and it’s bigger, and better and larger-er and more-er.
Film reviews, TV reviews, and all your conver...
A Complete Unknown divides Simon and Mark – with director James Mangold
The big movie release this week is ‘A Complete Unknown’, but our guest is actually pretty famous... James Mangold, director of the much-anticipated Bob Dylan biopic and Hollywood hits from ‘Walk The Line’ to ‘Le Mans 66’, joins Simon for a chat. They talk about putting Dylan’s iconic and mysterious life onscreen, Timothée Chalamet’s awards-tipped performance as the young songwriting legend—and accidentally creating the Jonny Cash cinematic universe.
Picking up a teenage Dylan—then still Bobby Zimmermann—as he hitchhikes to New York, the film follows his discovery as a once-in-a-generation musical talent and a defining voice of the 60s. Through rough relationships with fellow musicians like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro)—and himself—we watch Dylan’s rise to fame, culminating in his hellraising ‘electric’ performance at the 1965 Newport folk festival.
Is Mark shouting ‘Judas!’ or rocking along? Hear his review of the film, along with ‘Wolf Man’— the latest screen outing for the classic horror monster with a modern twist by ‘Invisible Man’ director Leigh Whannell. We’ve got Mark’s verdict on Robert Zemeckis’ new drama too, which reunites ‘Forrest Gump’ stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the story of one piece of land throughout time. It’s called ‘Here’, but it might make you wish you weren’t...
More excellent listener takes too on what you’ve been watching this week. We love hearing from you, so if you’re thinking of writing in, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright...
Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):
Here Review: 04:29
James Mangold Interview: 29:06
A Complete Unknown Review: 43:50
Laughter lift: 57:48
Wolf Man Review: 59:05
You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo
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A Sony Music Entertainment production.
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1:11:44
Now and Ben: Steven Knight on ‘Maria’, his screenwriting secrets, the Peaky Blinders movie & more
In this latest bonus nugget of ‘Now and Ben’ goodness, our sometime super sub Ben Bailey Smith chats to legendary film & TV writer Stephen Knight. He’s penned some of the most exciting scripts to hit our screens over the last three decades, from ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ and ‘Locke’ to ‘SAS Rogue Heroes’ and, of course, ‘Peaky Blinders’.
Most recently he’s written ‘Maria’—a biopic of opera singer Maria Callas in her last days as she tries to rediscover her voice in time for her swan song. Following 2021’s ‘Spencer’, it’s Knight’s second collaboration with director Pablo Larraín.
Ben sits down with Steven for an in-depth chat about the exceptional career that’s seen him become one of Britain’s most prolific and best-known TV & film writers. They talk humble beginnings in British TV comedy with Jasper Carrott, and his journey from the backstreets of Birmingham and the small screen to the bright lights of Hollywood. Ben even gets a cheeky bit of gossip about the upcoming Peaky Blinders movie…
Listen out for more of Ben’s conversations with cinema’s most exciting creative talents dropping into the feed every ‘Now and Ben’…
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40:25
Jesse Eisenberg & Kieran Culkin on ‘A Real Pain’
Our guests this week were ‘A Real Pain’...just joking, Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin were actually really nice...
They sit down with Simon to discuss the comedy-drama, directed, written, produced by and starring Eisenberg alongside Culkin. They play two mismatched cousins David and Benji on a tour of Poland, the ancestral home of their late-grandmother, where they hope to reconnect with their Jewish roots—and each other. With Benji lacking in a social filer (as, delightfully, is Kieran Culkin is in real life—just ask Simon!) their trip isn’t as straightforward as the uptight David planned.
Hear what Mark thought of the film, plus reviews of ‘Maria’—Pablo Larraín’s biopic of legendary opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie), reflecting on her public and private life in its last days in 1970s Paris—and ‘Babygirl’, the psychosexual thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a high-powered but privately dissatisfied CEO embroiled in an affair with Harris Dickinson’s much younger intern at her firm.
Not forgetting your takes on ‘Nosferatu’, ‘We Live In Time’ and more from our bursting postbag of correspondence. Keep it coming!
Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free):
Maria Review: 05:39
Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg: 27:31
A Real Pain Review: 44:07
Laughter lift: 50:00
Babygirl Review: 54:17
You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo
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A Sony Music Entertainment production.
Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts
To advertise on this show contact: [email protected]
And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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1:09:37
Nosferatu (or Yesferatu?) with Robert Eggers
Happy New Year from Mark, Simon, The Redactor and the rest of us on the Take Team!
We’re kicking off 2025 with a top-drawer guest—’Nosferatu’ director Robert Eggers. He tells Simon about his new remake of the1922 silent classic, originally by German expressionist director F.W. Murnau, in which Bill Skarsgård’s vampire nobleman terrorises a town in pursuit of Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, the object of his desires. They chat about his longtime fascination with the story, creating a monster for a modern vampire movie, and a sprinkling of the occult...
Will Nosferatu meet Mark’s high standards for horror? Find out if he thinks it has bite—or whether it’s just a little bloodless? More reviews too of ‘‘We Live in Time’, the time slip rom-com starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh that crashes its lovers into each other’s lives (literally)—and ‘Nickel Boys’, a formally innovative new drama charting the friendship of two young inmates at a sinister reform school in Jim Crow era Florida. Listen back to last week’s episode to hear Simon’s interview with its director, RaMell Ross.
Plus another chance to hear the best of our guests from the year behind us, and the best of Mark’s reviews from the drooling raves to the Kermodean rants for the ages. Looking at you ‘Megalopolis’....
Review: Nickel Boys – 03:03
Review: We Live In Time – 49:39
Best of the guests: 09:51
Best of the reviews: 54:14
Interview: Robert Eggers – 23:19
You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo
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A Sony Music Entertainment production.
Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts
To advertise on this show contact: [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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1:14:00
Best and Worst Films of the Year & More
It’s Boxing Day, but we’ve got more than just leftovers in today’s show—we're just as stuffed full of gourmet goodies as we hope you are right now...
A fresh new guest interview this week with RaMell Ross, director of the awards-tipped ‘Nickel Boys’. Based on the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, it follows the growing friendship between two boys in racially segregated 1960s Florida, Ellwood and Turner, who find themselves unwillingly enrolled in an abusive reform school. Simon sits down with RaMell to talk about his innovative filmmaking approach—and we think you’ll be hearing plenty more from him in the future...
Reviews of ‘Better Man’, the Robbie Wiliams biopic from ‘Greatest Showman’ director Michael Gracey that chronicles the pop superstar’s infamous monkeying around by making him an actual chimp; ‘The Order’, the 80s-set thriller starring Jude Law as a neo-Nazi-hunting FBI agent; and ‘How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’, the Thai comedy-drama in which broke university dropout M cozies up to his ailing grandmother in the hope of inheriting her massive fortune.
Plus Mark’s top 5 films of the year—and bottom 5 cinematic stinkers too.
Merry Christmas one and all—wishing you much festive film-watching...
Review: How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies – 08:20
Interview: RaMell Ross – 17:15
Review: The Order – 33:09
Review: Better Man – 40:06
You can contact the show by emailing [email protected] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo
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A Sony Music Entertainment production.
Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts
To advertise on this show contact: [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The new home of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. They’re back, and it’s bigger, and better and larger-er and more-er.
Film reviews, TV reviews, and all your conversation around movie and non-movie related stuff. Plus a whole bunch of recommendations to watch in cinemas, on all streaming services and on physical media.
As well as the film and TV reviews, Mark and Simon will be talking about anything and everything. Punctuation, Thunderbirds, obscure German pop music, fax machines, subtitles, MRI scans, magic, school assemblies, Scandinavia, and don’t forget the dad jokes.
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