Kermode & Mayo’s Take - A film of the year already – is it The Monkey?

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Welcome to another show jam-packed with top takes from Simon & Mark—which are still eliciting your ‘quiet affirmative noises’... Reviews this week of The Monkey—a splattery and slanted dark comedy horror about a murderous wind-up toy from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, and I’m Still Here—the Brazilian drama about ‘the disappeared’ under the military dictatorship in the 1970s that has taken the Oscar nominations by storm. Plus September Says, an unsettling drama of sisterly bonds, and a little bit of Captain America: Brave New World, since we were foiled by the screening schedule last week. This week’s guest is 90s New Black Realist cinema’s MVP—that’s Mario Van Peebles. Possibly our smoothest, coolest guest evs, he directed 90s classics New Jack City, Panther, Posse—and now Outlaw Posse. With it, he’s pushing the frontier in more ways than one, bringing us a classic western without the whitewashing as he follows a gang of black cowboys who have rejected the unjust laws of their time to become outlaws. He talks to Simon about Black Westerns, ‘Black Rodeo’—the BFI season celebrating the genre that launched earlier this month—and being part of an indie filmmaking dynasty with his father Melvin and son Mandela. Your verdicts from our inbox on all the big releases too—keep them coming! Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): September Says Review: 08:46 Captain America: Brave New World Review: 19:24 Mario Van Peebles Interview: 27:02 I’m Still Here Review: 46:11 Laughter lift: 52:53 The Monkey Review: 55:22 You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] 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

Hey Simon, there's a bit of an international theme to the Oscars this year, wouldn't you say? Explain? Well, you've got Avian Brody emigrating to America, you've got Rape Finds in the Vatican, you've got Zoe Saldana hunting singing gangsters in Mexico. I know what you're going to say. Here we go, you're going to mention the substance again somehow. Exactly, a French-British-American body horror co-production. Wherever those international titles are taking me or wherever I'm tuning in from, NordVPN can help me unlock

geo restricted films and enhanced streaming. It keeps my online activity safe with encryption and threat protection. And it's the fastest on the market providing smooth streams with no lagging. What's more it's available in 111 countries. How many Oscar contenders does that cover? I think every single one of them probably. Unwrap a huge discount on NordVPN by heading to NordVPN.com slash take plus with our link, you'll get an extra four months free on the two year plan. And it's risk free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. Check the link in the description. I know I will. So, you know how it is always unwise, hello Mark, it is always, always unwise and in fact

illegal to drive when under the influence of alcohol. Illegal would be the headline, unwise would be the secondary part of that sentence. That's very true. So if you're under the influence of drink or drugs, then obviously it is required, illegal to drive. Now here's my thing. I remember reading, I'm in the middle of a big insomnia thing. And I shouldn't be allowed on the air, basically. I shouldn't be allowed to record a podcast because one of the many books about sleep that I read says, you know, if you suffer from, I mean, obviously it's self-evidently true, but if you suffer from sleep deprivation, it's like being drunk. Your reaction times are impaired.

You are not a safe person to be with. Fortunately, I'm not going to be driving today like most days. But there is no doubt also that if I appear to be even more incompetent than normal, or yeah, for example, that sentence which didn't go anywhere, I'm blaming it on insomnia if that's okay. You're just going to didn't go anywhere. I'm blaming it on insomnia, if that's okay. You're just going to have to pick up where I'm leaving off. It is true that you see signs all over the motorway, saying tiredness kills, take a break, and then an image of a cup of coffee. I know you said recently that you had read an article that said that if you were tired,

it slows down your reaction times more than, even more so than being drunk. I remember once coming to, the Dodgers played a gig at, is that thing, what's the, is it called Greenfields Green Piece? What's that festival that you used to go to? Green something. Green Belt.

Green Belt, that's the bunny. And we were driving to the festival on the M25 and there was a car in the middle lane of the M25 that suddenly literally just swerved straight across in front of us and onto the hard shoulder and then came to a sort of crashing stop and we pulled over to see the guy. And it was a guy who'd been on a long haul flight and had got off and had got into his car and fallen asleep at the wheel, which is terrifying. Yep. Should be considered like, you know, you wouldn't drink if you just had half a bottle of Jack Daniel's. So don't drive if you've got insomnia, get someone else to do it.

I'm sorry to hear that you are back from Berlin. You know, I'm back from Berlin, yes. And I'm, you know, perky and not tired, actually. I've had a very good night's sleep. I'm sorry to hear that you are because I do know that you do suffer from insomnia and I do know how utterly exhausting being tired but unable to sleep is. So you have my sympathies. Well, when you stepped off the plane back in the UK, it must have been like going on holiday to the Maldives when you come down the steps, you go, oh, this is so much better. Because Germany just sounded completely frozen.

Germany was minus eight, but the thing about it was there wasn't much wind chill. So that was really lovely. And the other thing, of course, was I just went over, I was just wearing my daps because I didn't think about it. I just thought I'm going to be walking around the pavements in Berlin. But of course, what they had was many many days if not weeks of compacted snow that had turned into ice. So I was walking like a really old man really, really carefully because I was convinced that I was just going to slip and fall over and end up in German

casualty, which I didn't want to do. Mason- One of our German listeners has been back in touch with the show and we'll get to that later on. So what do you, yeah, you've seen some films, you're going to tell us about them, remind me what you've seen. That is generally how this bit of the program works, Simon. So we have coming up reviews of I'm Still Here, which is a really terrific drama. The Monkey, which is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King, and September Says, which is a very, very strange, surreal coming of age drama.

A special guest this week was mentioned last week because she'd had a chat with Mario van Peebles on stage, but now he's talking on the take. So we'll talk to a super cool guy Mario van Peebles in this podcast. Plus in take two, three bonus reviews like this. We have bonus reviews of I Am Martin Parr, which is a documentary about the photographer whose name is? Is it Brian Johnson? It is Brian Johnson. Well done. And there is a reissue of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is just one of the most influential films of modern times. Also, we have our TV Movie of the Week watch Watchlist, Notlist, Thing. One Frame Back

is related to The Monkey and giving you top haunted toy movies. Plus, your film and non-film questions answered on Questions Shmestians. You can get all of it on Apple Podcasts or head to ExtraTex.com for non-fruit related devices. Never been a better time to become a Vanguardista, let me tell you that. Because from now through the whole of this month to the end of February, you can get, this must be a misprint, a free month of Extra Takes to cover the whole of award season. Is that right? Mason Tresdell No, it can't be right. You've said it out loud, you were committed.

Jason Vale Bonus shows, you see, we've already done one for the BAFTAs, then we've got the SAGs, then we've got the Oscars and it's all there. So come and enjoy all the rubbish courtesy of those links. You'll get all the BAFTA reaction because we've done that. The SAG reaction will be with you next Monday post-Oscars chat the week after that as well. Yes. Need to get some rest. Sag reaction next Monday and post Oscars. That, all of those things. Very good. And

if you're already a Vanguardista, as well, you can read this stuff out. That'd be much better. We salute you. We salute you, yes. Positive noises. Morgan Adams and Dog Brown. No,. Morgan Adams and Dog Brown. Dear Morgan Adams and Dog Brown says, thank you, Gonzalo. This is Gonzalo Cotello, director, editor, and cinematographer. Dear Morgan Adams and Dog Brown.

Long time list, the first time email. I first bumped into your show on YouTube, one of Mark's epic rants about Transformers, while living in London with my partner in 2015. I've been hooked up with you and the rest of your team ever since. By that time, my partner and I, who'd been together for a couple of years, had already developed a broad range of non-verbal hum-based responses, which allowed us to summarize complex feelings in both an efficient and intimate way. Those responses would usually be the result of combining two consecutive hums, being the length, pitch, and tone of the hum, factors that would alter the meaning of the phrase. This is like as complex as Chinese. So we've got an example here.

Number one, a short hum followed by a snappy higher pitched one for well done or I agree, for example. So that's short hum, snappy high pitched hum. Yes. Number two, a long sustained hum followed by a declining one for an almost pitiful. I know. Yeah. That says, really? You've, you, is that all you've managed to achieve? It sounded a little bit like a sad police car. Very good.

You are available for voiceover work. Gonzalo says, these little noises became part of our identity as a couple. Sadly my partner and I parted ways not so long ago, but do not worry. We did it on good terms with love and appreciation for the time spent together. We still speak with each other now and then and our gentle hums are still in good use between us. Thanks to the wonderful team behind the production, editors and technicians, because there are hundreds of them. With female pirates and down with right-wing tech moguls, etc. All my love, Gonzalo. Well, so I like this. So we had a lot of affirmative

noises on last week's pod. So now we've just got these, this sort of complex system of signage, really, which I think is more complicated than Mandarin Chinese. Everything is on tone and inflection. It's wordless communication, but it's very good. Thank you, Gonzalo. And you can send anything that you have in your armoury or repertoire, correspondence at kerbenamare.com. Very good. Excellent. So we've already got September 5 that's out

and rocking, but now we've got another September film in February. Yes, September says a very, very different film. This is the directorial feature debut from Ariane Lebed, who's the French actress who won the Volpi Cup for her role in Attila Rachel Sangreis' Attenberg, and sort of became the face of what was then called the Greek weird wave. So basically that film was co-produced by Yorgos Lanthimos, to whom Ariane Lebed has been married since 2013. And this film has something of the strangeness of the early Lanthimos films, like Dogtooth, which we've talked about before here.

She was in Alps and Lobster. Most recently, she's the adult Sophia in The Brutalist. That character from The Brutalist, this is the writer and director of this film. This is adapted from a novel called Sisters by Booker's shortlisted author Daisy Johnson. I haven't read the novel. Honestly, having seen the film, I struggle to imagine what the novel must be like because the film is so much a film, I have no idea what the literary source would be like. It's a fable of sisterhood. It's got British and Irish producers, and it has some trappings that take it into the

area of genre cinema. In fact, the writer-director said, well, you could call it genre, although I'm not entirely sure what that means. But very early on, there's a classroom scene in which we hear a reading from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which as you will know is one of the favorite novels of Stephen King. And it inspired The Shining and there is a visual reference to The Shining in the film. So there are some sort of genre nods early on. So two sisters, September and July, played by, that's their names, played by Pascal Kahn and Maitreya.

They are teen sisters. They are very close in age. They are closer still in their emotional bonding. They live with their mother Sheila, who is a photographic artist who gets them to pose in these weird kind of Deanne Arbus-like pictures, one of which is a visual quote from The Shining. So it's a weird life and they are strange kids and as a result of this they're bullied at school but they're locked in this kind of codependent private world at times.

I was thinking about The Silent Twins, there was a film about The Silent Twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons a while ago that we talked about. So they mimic each other, they do what each other does. But when September says, then July has to do something that September says she has to do. And at one point, as a result of their behavior, they get themselves effectively thrown out of school. They wind up on a beach which appears to be an island, although the location of all of this is always very strange. After breaking into their grandmother's house where she isn't there, it's empty. They wind up on a beach which appears to be an island, although the location of all of this is always very strange. After breaking into their grandmother's house where she isn't there, it's empty. And here on the beach they meet a boy.

Here's a clip. Hello. My name's John. September. July. Are you from around here? I've never seen you before. You've just moved in. Cool. Are you the people here? I've never seen you before. We've just moved in.

Cool, are you the people at the Settlhous? Yes. Oh yeah? Yes. We're having a little party tonight. What kind of party? A beach party down by the rocks. We're going to light a fire and have a couple of beers and maybe even go first time.

You should come. Okay. Great. Maybe. Good. See you tonight then. And that's about the most normal interaction in the whole of the film. Because the whole of the rest of the film is much stranger and weirder than that.

So Arianebade says, I like art that pushes normal circumstances to become disturbing, supernatural, and somewhat detached from reality. That is sort of what's going on here. You remember we reviewed, well, I reviewed that Julia de Kornau film, Raw, which was kind of, it's a film about cannibalism, but it isn't about cannibalism. It's about coming of age and sisterhood and sister rivalries. This is sort of the same thing in that it is a film about sisterly rivalries and bonds, but it just happens to resemble a kind of lynchian nightmare and have things in it that border upon the, not even supernatural, but kind of eerily unnatural. One of the things I really like about it is that the director has a background in dance and performance art,

which we've seen in her work on screen. She's very, very interested in telling stories through physical performance, not so much through dialogue. I mean, the dialogue is fairly minimal. I read an interview with her in which she was talking about camera movement being a form of choreography. She said anything to do with movement should be very sparing and very precise. I've talked so many times on this program about how the visual storytelling is so much to do with the movement of bodies on screen, but also the movement of the camera itself. This is shot on, I think they used 16 and 35 mil. And it creates this, as I said, this slightly lynching world

in which you're not quite sure where it is. It's very geographically unspecific. It seems to exist in a sort of nether world. It could be any time period. I mean, there are mobile phones in it, so it's obviously modern, but it's kind of unmoored. It's a story about two people locked in this kind of private world, having been sort of shut out of the wider world, possibly by the fact that they've been raised by their mother

who has a peculiar take on it. I'm not entirely sure what it's about, and I'm not entirely sure that it all works, but all the time I was watching it, I was pretty engrossed. I think in its third act, it takes a leap that I didn't buy. Something happens and there's a twist that I just felt contrived to me. But for a good two thirds of it, I thought it was really decent, certainly as an indication of we will see better work from this writer-director in the future because there is a lot of promise in it, a lot of promise as a feature director. Box office top 10 this week at number 14, Memoir of a Snail. Epi Gibbon says, I was thrilled to see a preview screening of this back in January

and met Adam Elliott, who was very friendly and delivered a fab Q&A session after the showing. A brilliant follow up to Mary and Max, if not perhaps quite hitting that very high bar, but still very much worth seeing. Memoir of a Snail just outside the mighty Top 10 at 14. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was really, really moving. And somebody sent me something on Blue Sky, which was a snapshot from one of the major cinema chains that was showing Memoir of a Snail. And the description of what kind of film it was, was family. And they said, you haven't heard Mark's review of you, because it's not a family film. It's definitely an animation for grownups. No. 10 is September 5.

Yeah, which I think you and I are both very impressed by. I thought it was very gripping. The Brutalist is at No. 9. Featuring the director of September Says. That's at No. 17 in America. No. 8 in the UK, 10 in America is Chava. So this, yeah, I think so. I haven't seen this because it wasn't press screened. It is the highest grossing Hindi film of 2025 so far. It is an epic historical action film. It has a score by A.R. Rahman. So it sounds pretty impressive. If anyone's seen it, let us know. I will try and see if I can see it next week because next week's screening schedule isn't quite as nuts. So I'll see if I can find it at a local cinema and go and see it.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is at number seven. Eighth week in the top 10. Number six is a complete unknown. We're talking on the BAFTA podcast. One of the things that David Tennant said in his speech at the beginning of the BAFTAs was, you know, one of the things that David Tennant said in his speech at the beginning of the BAFTAs was, you know, one of the great things about this industry is that it's so welcoming and inclusive for new talent. For example, a lot of awards could go tonight to a complete unknown. And it was like, yeah, they didn't. And also, mm-hmm.

Number five is here and in America, actually, is Mufasa, the Lion King. I think we've, well they didn't and also number five is Here and in America. She's been faster the Lion King. I think we've right seems like an ages ages ago Long time ago that Barry Jenkins was on talking about the Lion King and there it is still in the top five Well, that's nine weeks in the charts I've been so that's how long that's been there hard ties is at number four in the UK and in America. Paul on this email, a surprisingly entertaining caper, balancing humour and horror. Is this the first of a new genre? A rom-com horror? What would this genre be called? A laughter slasher? A murder meet-cute? A hor-rom-com? Anyway, Mason Gooding's casting made me wonder, is he now a scream

king in the same limiting way female actors are labeled scream queens after multiple horror roles? Anyway, best wishes from Paul. Anyway, I don't think it's a new genre. No, it's not. I mean, if you remember when Shaun of the Dead came out, there was the whole thing about, oh, it's a new genre. It's a rom-zom-com. Okay? And those of us that were horror fans, I mean, I love Shaun of the Dead, but those of us that were horror fans went, no, no, no, no, no. Return of the Living Dead, part three was actually sold as a rom-zom-com. That was a thing. So it's, no, that genre is as old as the hills. I really enjoyed Heart Eyes. I thought it was really funny and its gory bits were

nicely gory, but somehow the, what did I call it? I was trying to say horror romcom, but I ended up saying a rom-a-dee. Anyway, fun, but yes, but it is- Romcommer? A romcommer. A horomcommer. But I really enjoyed it. I thought it was great fun. It was a good Valentine's Day release. Dog Man is at number three. I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I was going to. As I've been quite clear about this, I was sent to see it by the redactor who said that his kids were very, very keen

on seeing it. Therefore, it was a three line whip and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was mad, with the exception as we have discussed of the voiceover of Ricky Gervais, which I just thought wasn't a good bit of casting. And we had a very, very good email last week from somebody who really understood animation casting. It was talking about how you can quite often get seduced by celebrity casting when it's not necessarily the best voice for a character. And Number two is a new entry, Captain America Brave New World, which Mark will review in just a moment because it came out too late basically for inclusion last week. Fletch says since this was essentially a sequel to The Incredible Hulk, it should have featured

Bruce Banner Hulk versus Air Force One Hulk. Hulk also needed more get off my plane. Damien Fenton, I enjoyed some of the action on a superficial level, but the writing was very messy and muddled. Harrison Ford carried most of the movie for me. He didn't treat it as just another paycheck and actually put the effort in. Ken Lauder says, for a character with more physical vulnerability than the original Cap, I was surprised nothing in the film conveyed any real sense of threat. Any conflict was met with cheap quick resolution. Any drama was overly cushioned. Post credits was hilariously

vague to be this far in. Thin gruel is Ken's summary of Captain America, Brave New World. Do you want to hear a little snippet of it? I mean, I don't really, but I think it's part of the gig. So let's have a clip from that movie. Let's have a taste. Wilson. Thanks for coming in. Well, thank you for the invite, sir.

I have to admit, I'm still getting used to the new look. They said to lose the mustache or lose the election. You and I, we haven't always agreed in the past. But I want to make another run at making Captain America an official military position. And if we disagree on how to manage a situation, then what happens? Work with me Sam. We'll show the world a better way forward. Yeah, it's hard to hear that clip and not laugh derisively.

I know. And actually, weirdly enough, watching a film in which Captain America and, you know, America and all that stuff is talked about with a somewhat heavy heart, despite the fact that one of the key plots is that Harrison Ford is this incredibly compromised president who is trying to prove that he's not actually the evil, wicked fiend that everybody thought he was. I'm assuming that now we're into the second week. There were things in it that I didn't know about. Just to be clear, the reason we didn't review it last week was they didn't press screen it until after we had recorded the show, which is never really a good sign. It usually means that they don't think it's going to benefit from critical responses. There is this weird subplot in it, which Harrison Ford is this very compromised president. I was

thinking, oh, okay, well, maybe I'll find something interesting in here, but no, not at all. I think that the emailer who said that there's no jeopardy, that that's exactly, I mean, I just felt, okay, I'm watching a film about a bunch of characters. I don't really remember the backstory of them and I don't really care. There are some great cast members and there's a sort of political story going on and all these things that I should be interested in but I just don't care because it's just fly, fly, crashy, crashy, get hit by a rocket and a missile. There's a bit when they're trying to avert a military standoff between two nations around the sacred island, the island that's the thing, the hand sticking out of the water.

It's the two flyy things having to stop the jet fighters from shooting down. It's just watching it going, but they're all indestructible. They're all indestructible. It doesn't make any difference. There is no consequences to any of this at all. I don't know that it's the worst of these films. There are some ideas in it and Harrison Ford is trying to do something with that character, but I just found it absolutely impossible to get interested in it. The writing is at very, very best functional and at very worst. There's one gag in it, which is good. There is one gag in it, which is good, in which somebody

delivers a little speech to another character to make them do something. Then there's a pause and the character goes, did your speech writer write that? He goes, yeah, he wrote the end. It was quite funny. That was the one gag that I enjoyed. then there's a pause and the character goes, did your speech writer write that? He goes, yeah, he wrote the end. It was quite funny. That was the one gag that I enjoyed. And then there's a thing at the end that makes you go, oh, really? I just wanted to float the prospect that the whole idea of a film which has got Captain America is now completely flawed. Because if you think in some vague way that America stands for the good things in life, then the arrival of Captain America is a good thing. But if you think that America stands for bullying, corruption, authoritarianism, anti-science, anti-democratic

stuff, then you go, no, actually Captain America can stay at home. We're not interested. Thank you very much. Yeah, but the thing is, the problem with that, Simon, is that you're one of those people who believed until I did yesterday, when I heard differently, that Russia started the war in Ukraine, but apparently not. Apparently, Ukraine started it. Oh, thank you for explaining that to me. I know. I know. It came as a revelation to me. I've got the woke mind virus.

You have. You have. Anyway, so that's Captain America at number two. Number one, Bridget Jones mad about the boy. SP Bub on YouTube really enjoyed it. If you're a fan, you'll get it and love it. Hugh Grant is fantastic. You'd have to be dead inside not to laugh, smile and enjoy every second he's on screen. Miss X says, just back from the pictures. That's fantastic. So one had it signed to Miss X and another had she's back from the pictures. Very nostalgic to be honest, cried my eyes out, laughed a lot.

When the first film came out, I was in my twenties and single. When the second came out, I was traveling the world. When the third came out, I was pregnant. I'm now almost 50 and can relate to all of it. A film about life, really. And Mr. Keith says, Mark's review persuaded me to go with my wife on the understanding that all things considered, it wasn't too bad. It is abysmal and nearly to Pope friends, Bridget is not believable as a human being.

Credit in the bank at home though, so not all bad. So anyway, it's a big hit, but mixed review. Mr. Keith, disagreeing with your take on Bridget Jones, mad about that. Well, okay, I mean, you have every right to think that. You happen in this case to be completely wrong. I mean, I went in with fairly low expectations because I didn't think we needed another night.

It made me laugh, it made me cry, and I've spoken to so many people who said exactly the same thing. They all appear to be on the same page that it's messy and scrappy and there are whole sections of it that shouldn't be there and don't work, but it doesn't matter because it actually does work. You do end up caring about them and you do end up caring about them and you do end up, well not you obviously, I did. Have you seen it yet Simon?

No, no I haven't. But a doff of the cap to Abby Morgan, screenwriter extraordinaire who is responsible. So number one, Bridget Jones bad about the boy. We'll be back in just a moment. Mark will be talking about I'm Still Here and The Monkey and the guest this week is Mario van Peebles. All of those treats on the way. What's up, Mark? All's well. How about you?

Well, I've been thinking about that cushion that we gave away at our live show. Yeah. That and the pencil case. Imagine if we had a load more that we needed to shift. Imagine the riches. Every bottom or pencil case in the country would be graced in some way by our presence. Mason- Well, when you put it like that, we should have used Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide from people selling compasses to comfy cushions.

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And thanks to award-winning help, Shopify is ready to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period at Shopify.co.uk slash curmode. This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI is the place to discover ambitious films by visionary filmmakers, all carefully handpicked, so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere. Mark, what is streaming on MUBI this month? It's not just what's streaming, it's what's streaming and back in cinemas, and there is only one answer. Is it Mary Poppins?

It's The Substance, the Coralie Fargeot movie which I absolutely love and I've been trying to get you to see. It's brilliant body horror, up for five Academy Awards, fantastic performance by Demi Moore, brilliant direction and writing by Coralie Fargeot who made Revenge. It was my favourite film of last year and I keep saying to you, you need to see it. Well now Simon, you have the choice of seeing it on MUBI streaming or back in the cinema. You could try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash Kermit and Mayo. That's MUBI.com slash Kermit and Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free.

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the BFI's Black Rodeo season, a look at Black Westerns, frontier films taking themes from the civil rights era, Black Power politics, anti-war protests and women's liberation to offer different takes on this particular genre. His new film Outlaw Posse is just that. You'll hear a clip from it and then my interview with Mario van Peebles after this. He's about to go. He's true. Some years later, I was sent on a mission to retrieve him. Was your father? And then he disappeared. I don't even know if my father's alive or dead. We weren't exactly on the best of terms. Your daddy was spotted in a border town near Mexico. He's putting together a team to go after my gold.

So I'm guessing you're Mary. Mary's stagecoach, Mary's rules. You find your daddy, and you get your wife back. No! Melendez! Hey. You find your daddy and you get your wife back. No! Balenci! No! Hey, I'm gonna shoot your own son. Rumour has it you're planning a job.

I need him. And that's a clip from Outlaw Posse. I'm delighted to be joined by its director, writer, actor, superstar. That's Mario van Peebles. Hello, Mario. How are you? I'm good, brother. How are you doing? Well Well it's eight o'clock in the morning UK and it's like just after midnight in Los Angeles. Have I got that right? I mean this is a crazy time

to be doing interviews. You have, yes. I got up for it though. I'm looking forward to talking to you guys. That's very kind because I'm on coffee but I was imagining you might be on wine or something. It's very nice for you to get up and to spend some time with us. There is a BFI season in London, Black Rodeo, a history of the African American Western, which is fascinating. Outlaw Posse is running a lot. Introduce us to Outlaw Posse. Tell us where we are. Yeah. So Outlaw Posse takes place in 1908. The real wild, wild West, not the one we saw in the early Westerns, was a fabulously integrated, dynamic place where the Chinese built the railroad. The first 44 settlers off Los Angeles, 26 were African-American. Native Americans gave us everything. Long before women could

vote, you had women like Stagecoach Mary, who had her own stagecoach line up through Montana and she had the deal with the US Postal Service to run mail up and down. And she had before women could vote, you had women like Stagecoach Mary, who had her own stagecoach line up through Montana, and she had the deal with the US Postal Service to run mail up and down. And Stagecoach Mary had a big cigar and a big ass gun, and no one messed with her. And so you had some real wily characters of all stripes, of all colors.

And in the early Westerns, we didn't see that. So if you watched the early Western in the 50s, if you were Chinese, you were the deferential houseboy, hop sing, if you were Mexican, you were the oily bandit, they didn't need no stinking badges. If you were a woman, you were pale and frail and needed rescuing, and if you were black, you were scared and shuffling, sort of the serving class.

You know, you're marginalized, and the only good engine was a dead engine. And so in this Western, out in La Posse, you see all kinds of folks. That's exciting and important and more realistic. Yeah. Which I want to ask you about in just a second. You mentioned just at the beginning of that answer that it's 1908, which is very specific. What is the significance of that? Obviously it's post-Civil War. Obviously it's post the abolition of slavery, but there's a reference to Lincoln's assassination and the reparations being switched to slaveholders and butch and sundance. There are various anchors which tie this story in.

Why did you want to put it in 1908? Well, also, you had some very interesting characters. Like I said, you had Stagecoach Mary, you had reconstruction. There's a line that stage coach Mary has to my son who plays my onscreen son, Mandela Van Peebles, when we're on her stage coach. And she says, boy, you know, you're lucky. You're part of the first generation that can legally call a black man father.

That when your daddy and I were born before 1863, before the Emancipation Proclamation, two years later, if you're in Texas, 1865, a black man couldn't legally be a father. The slave owner, white slave owner, made all the decisions for the child. So we couldn't even get our dedication game going until after 1865.

And so I thought this was a really, really interesting time. I also thought that, you know, there's the whole thing, the plus ça change, le plus ça reste the même. History doesn't always just repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And that America is so crazy and divided now, but we've been more so even before, and we overcame. So I thought it was an interesting time to go back to the old West and remind us of where we had come from. And there's the line that my character says that, Stagecoach Mary says, do you remember

your father? And I say, yeah, they hung him for trying to teach me how to read. Then they told me to call the old white priest father to call the slave owner master and said, by law, I had to take the slave master's last name. So I knew with all them silly ass laws I was going to be an outlaw for sure because when the laws are unjust the just are outlaws. And so my character basically says slavery is legal, taking Native American land is legal, cutting down the forest is legal, not letting women vote is legal, when the laws are

unjust the just are outlaws. It goes a little deeper than one thought. I thought it was an interesting time to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And the idea of when laws are unjust, the just become outlaws is the kind of the message that I think will stay with a lot of people. The relation of this film to Posse, the film you did in 1993, it's like, I think people would say it's Posse adjacent. Would that be, you know, it's sort of, it's related to. Sure. Like Eastwood's early spaghetti westerns were probably adjacent to each other in some way. And yet in Unforgiven, he plays this character that's gotten beat down by life

to some degree. And to some degree plays against those earlier films in Unforgiven. In Outlaw Posse, the characters, it's 30 years later in terms of myself as a filmmaker, but it's not the same character. But I also feel like a man that has not changed in 30 years, hasn't grown that much. And 30 years ago when I made Posse, I had my father with me. I didn't have kids. And now I have my son and I don't have my dad. And so I get to see to be this paternal connective tissue between son on one hand and father on the other.

And that itself is pretty exciting. My son Mandela said to me, dad, in Outlaw Posse, we don't have to fake the conflict and we didn't have to fake the love, it's real. It's just putting it on the screen in a different shape. Yeah. And right at the end, up on screen, it says, in loving memory of the OG badass, Melvin Van Peele. Yes, that's right. Which is a great kind of hat tip to him. The father-son thing is interesting because we have all those historical themes running, which you've just mentioned, but also at the heart of the film, there is the father-son

relationship, there's betrayal, there's lust, there's greed, there's forgiveness, there's beans, there's money. All of that stuff is in there as well. Yes, that's true. I was actually thinking about that Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue. Yeah. That song, if you're familiar with the narrative of it, it's about a guy who's been named Sue and never gets to hang out with his dad. And he finally makes up his mind that he's going to find his dad one day. He's going to find out why he named him

Sue and then he's going to kill him. So he winds up finding his father. He's sort of an old Wiley gunslinger kind of guy, and he finds his father and he says, why'd you name me Sue? And he said, well, I knew I wouldn't be around and I knew I had to do this and that and I wanted you to be tough and I figured you'd be tough if I named you Sue. And so when the father and son connect, the son realizes that there was a lot going on that he didn't understand. There's a quote by Mark Twain where he says, all my life, my father was an idiot, and at 21, he was a genius.'"

Meaning that at 21 years old, I understood what the old geezer was doing differently. And I had some of that dynamic with my dad, and I thought that would be interesting to bring that color to this. There was one scene where Mandela had to get pissed off with my character, and at the end of this shoot, I was like, hey man, are you cool?

We have a big issue, so we need to talk out. He's like, no, no, man. I was acting. I said, okay, cool. The thing about that Johnny Cash song is that this guy has carried around his name all his life. I was thinking, and you named your son Mandela. That's one heck of a name to carry around. Right. He pointed out, he said, why am I like Mandela and then I'm a van people? Couldn't

have just been Bob or Joe or Steve or anything. So yeah, there's probably some of that. Of course. And you mentioned this idea throughout the film of when the laws become unjust, the just become outlaws. There's a line at the end of the film, Mario, where our bad guy says, this country was made for white Christian men like me. And then when I finished watching the film, I turned on the news and I heard from Trump and Vance and Musk. And I thought, he's right. You're bad guy. I mean, I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler, you know, he gets some kind of justice, but that line turns out to be still true. Isn't that something? And when I did the film, that was, you know, it's almost in some ways like

the antagonist one for four years. And it's pretty crazy that we've gotten to that point. So we'll see what the story is. The story is not quite written yet. I know right now it looks pretty grim, but my hope is that democracy makes a comeback and that the people win against the, as far as people versus capitalism, like anything, socialism, communism, anything left unchecked without a certain consciousness can get wonky after a while. We're going through that right now. But if your role as a director, writer, actor, producer is there and you're a storyteller, and if the laws continue to stay unjust, there will need to be more outlaw filmmaking, won't there? Is that where you come in?

Yeah, and that's why I made this film independently. I couldn't have said some of the things that we said that were things that some characters actually did and said. Even though it's historically accurate, they're taking that history out of our history books. But like in the beginning of Posse, there's the great opening where Woody Strode says, history is a funny thing. They got us believing that Columbus discovered America, but the Native Americans were already here. That's like me discovering your car and putting my antenna on your Mercedes Benz and telling you, if you don't get out that car quick enough, I'm going to write in my history books that you're an evil red savage. So it's getting a little banana. So even though they're taking it out of the books, the van people's family

is still putting it on the screen and hopefully, you know, folks find it and we put it on the screen with love and that's what we do. The BFI season I mentioned, Black Rodeo History of the African American Western, continues till March the 20th and the first line underneath the publicity is a quote from Regina King as Trudy Smith in The Harder They Come, we built the West as much as any man, don't let them tell you otherwise. Yes. And that's where your movie sits quite happily. Yes, sir. That's right. And it's a fun legacy to build on. And, you know, my dad always said, history is a book written by the winner. Look, karate is a martial art invented by the Asians.

We can agree on that, probably. But in Hollywood, the karate kid won't get to be Asian. It's not gonna happen. Heavyweight champs will look like Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Joe Louis, but Hollywood will make them look like Rocky. Great movie, but it's just, that's what they'll do. Dances with Wolves won't star in Native American. So the dominant culture tends, when it's making a movie, to insert itself in a dominant way and sometimes reduce the rest of the Americans

to exotic backdrop. And it's very interesting to say, no, we can make film where we don't marginalize anybody and still make an interesting, compelling film that tells a more sort of truthful story, but it's nonetheless a Western. It's bigger than life as Westerns are. But at the end of Posse, you see the real stage coach Marion. Our stage coach Marion looks pretty close, so that's played by none other

than Whoopi Goldberg. Of course. Of course it's Whoopi Goldberg. And I have to say for all of that and all of that is everything that you said is true, there is still that scene where you're in a frock coat, you've got the hat, you've got two guns, you're at the crossroads and you're firing at everybody. So you're having a good time at that moment, I think. Absolutely. I mean, there's the bigger than life stuff. And then the talk at the end when he goes back and he talks to the people at Little Heaven, the integrated group, and he says, seeing you guys living together in peace gives me hope.

Hope that we don't destroy this planet, hope that we don't destroy each other and hope that we can make it happen in a loving collective. And that's a scary thing to hope for. It feels sometimes a little idealistic, if you will, a little Pollyannic to hope for. But as the character says, it's something

worth fighting for. And that's also there. And I like it being grounded in that. I like a little love, a little life affirming along with my action. Can I ask you what you're working on next? So Outlaw Posse is out there for people to see now. What is making you excited as a next project? Well, I'm finishing, I just did a play at Lincoln Center called MVP, and it's a play on my dad. He wrote the music and I wrote all the narrative. He passed in 2021, so I did it post his passing. And it was wonderful to hear all his music and do that. So I was excited about that instead of looking to put that up in other places, in other theaters.

Then I'm probably going to be directing a new TV series soon here in LA, but I'll know more about that later. Then I was so good to be at the BFI. I mean, I was interviewed by Mia Mask, who wrote the history on Black Westerns, and interviewed by James Samuel, who directed Heart of They Fall.

And it was just great to be there. It was a little cold, a little wet, but I like it. We do that. Hanging out with you Brits. We can't all be like Los Angeles. I was going to wrap it up there, but you mentioned your father and your father's music. Have I got this right?

Wasn't he one of the first to discover Earth, Wind, and Fire? Yes, sir, you're right. In my film Badass, I talk about that. And he discovered a group called Earth, Wind and Fire? Yes, sir. You're right. And my film, Badass, I talk about that. And he discovered a group called Earth, Wind and Fire. And they did the music for his film, Sweet Sweet Back's Badass Song. How about that? Well, we look forward to the TV show, whatever it is that you're working on. You're welcome to the cold UK anytime you like. Mario van Peebles, we appreciate your time. Thank you very much for staying up for us.

All right, brother. Thank you for having me staying up for us. All right, brother. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I like being called brother. I mean, I'm sure he does that with everybody and I'm sure he did it with you as well, but it just sounds cooler if it comes from MVP. Well, I was, you know, of course I was wounded when he said, yeah, it's great being at the BFI and being interviewed by lists, great names being interviewed by doesn't mention

me. But here's the thing. He is unbelievably cool and he has a fantastic voice and his knowledge is great. There is an extraordinary lineage from Melvin van Peebles. I mean, if you've never seen Sweet Sweet Back's Bad Ass song, it is an extraordinary piece of work. I mean, it is really, even today, fiery and just full of vigor. There is, of course, a very interesting story about Mario's own role in Sweet Sweet Back's Bad Ass song, which we might talk about later on because there's an email that connects to this later on in the program. Whilst I was listening to

that, I was just checking because when I interviewed him because I did an MK3D show and I said, are we going to see this theatrically outside of the BFI? He was hoping that it would be seen in theatres. I've just been checking. It is available on streaming services. I know they were trying to get a proper theatrical outing for it because it's the West, it's big widescreen cinema entertainment. I must confess, I think he talks a better film than he has made because I think that the film itself has good intentions and some really interesting ideas. I think actually the film isn't as good as the film that he talked about. But honestly, I could listen to him talk for ages because I think he's got really interesting

ideas and he's done such a... I love New Jack City and I thought it was funny when you said this is posse adjacent, which I thought was a funny... I know. Well, I cringed because I couldn't think of another way of saying it. No, no, it was good. That was perfect. Don't you think Mandela van Peebles has to be about the coolest name that it's possible to have? I know.

Although his father... Melvin. Just, yeah, he just helped himself to the van. They're just people's, but he was living in Holland, so he thought, here I am in Scandinavia. I'm just going to put the van there. So the van people's, but it just sounds brilliant. Yeah. I remember when I used to do the Scala radio show, film music show, and I was trying to play tracks from Sweet Sweet Back, from the soundtrack album, on the Scala show. The problem is that the soundtrack album is full of clips from the dialogue from the soundtrack album on the Scala show. The problem is that the soundtrack album is full of

clips from the dialogue from the film, which you can't play on Scala radio at like two o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. But it's a remarkable story and there is a remarkable story about the BBS. We'll maybe come to this later on. But when I did, when I interviewed him on stage, he was there with Mandela Man Peoples. And so the both of them together, I mean, obviously they're both fantastically handsome. That's one thing. And they really do appear to have a brilliant relationship. I asked them both to choose a film that was inspirational to them. And Mandio van Peebles chose a scene from Gandhi and Mandela van Peebles chose a scene from a film in which his father plays Malcolm X. So it's like, okay, fine. There we go.

All right. So more on that later. Mario van Peebles, thanks to him. At the moment, the only workplace that you can see his movie is at the BFI season in London, as I said, it goes on until March. Yes, if you want to see it on the big screen. I know a lot of people are keen for us to get to the laughter lift, but I think you've got a film to review first of all. Yes. I'm still here, which is the new film from Walter Salles, Brazilian filmmaker, kind of cornerstone of the Brazilian rebirth period that came after 1995. His directorial CV includes Central Station, Motorcycle Diaries, the remake of Dark Water, On the Road. I'm Still Here is based on a 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. This has been adapted by the screenwriters Muriela Hauser and Hater Larego.

The BBFC description is 15 for strong threat. I thought that was a really interesting description. This film has been nominated best picture and best international feature, which is something of a rarity, and best actress at the Oscars. The last of those, the best actress nomination is for Fernanda Torres, who is brilliant. She plays Eunice Paiva, who is a mother and activist. Essentially, what the drama is about is the way in which she copes with her husband being taken from her during the military dictatorship in Brazil. Because

of the subject matter, when the film came out in Brazil, it was boycotted by the Brazilian far right, who said it wasn't a dictatorship. Boycott failed miserably, film went to number one, is top of the charts, currently becoming the highest grossing Brazilian film since the pandemic. So well done to the far right. So it opens in 1970 with former Congressman Rubens Paiva now back in Rio de Janeiro, having been in exile, self-imposed exile for six years following the coup in 1964. He quietly supports ex-pats, but he keeps his work to himself for the safety of his family. So he just appears to be getting on living a normal life. And then one day, the military, the police, the government turn up at his door. I'm going to play you a clip, which is in

the original language, but just so you understand what's happening. They basically turn up his door. They tell him that he needs to be taken away for a deposition. He says it's a mistake. They say, no, it's not a mistake. He says, okay, I need to get some clothes. Then his wife says, what are you doing? They say we're taking him away. Is there anyone else in the house? She says, well, just my kids. You don't need to be armed. So here's the clip. Mr. Rubens, there are some men here who... What happened? Deputy Rubens Paiva. I'm not a deputy, Anos. No, there's no mistake. You come with us. Where to?

To make a statement. It's routine. A statement of what, Rubens? I just need to change. Follow the doctor. So they arrest him, they take him away, nothing else is heard. They then respond to any inquiries about where is he and what's happened by arresting his wife, by questioning his daughter, all without ever giving any explanation about why the initial arrest happened and what's happened subsequently. The film, as the BBFC description said, contains strong threat, 15 for strong threat. It is As the BBFC description said, contains 15 for strong threat, it is really powerful, really gripping, and it moves between these two registers of, on the one hand, quiet, loving, friendly domesticity, and on the other hand, oppressive political horror.

It moves back and forth between these two registers brilliantly. I think that what it does is it creates the sense that these two things are living side by side. That you can have a society in which apparently normal life is going on, but at the same time a kind of murderous, corrupt regime is wreaking havoc. And yet, when you walk the streets, there are still families talking to each other and people enjoying life. Now, the film may be 138 minutes long, which by today's standards isn't particularly long. It got a 10-minute standing ovation at Venice. I know that film festival ovations are always a weird one, but this was absolutely, completely deserved. Fernanda Torres is magnificent. She is absolutely magnificent in the central role as somebody who is sort of moved into

activism by the search for what has happened to her husband after they took him away. But it never becomes histrionic, it never becomes anything other than human. She is a wife, a mother, a fully rounded character. It's not just a sort of political cipher. There is also an appearance at the end of the film by Fernando Torres' mother, Fernando Montenegro, who has a brief cameo as her in later life. She was, I think I'm right in saying she was the first Brazilian actress to be nominated for a best actress, I think for Station. There's this extraordinary moment in the film in which it really feels like what you are watching is generationally important.

There's a score by Warren Ellis. I'm a huge fan of Warren Ellis's work with Nick Cave. They did the soundtrack for things like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford, and also Warren has done soundtracks on his own like Mustang. But this is one of his very best works. I think it's one of the films of the year. I mean, for many people, it would have been one of the films of last year because obviously it opened for Oscar consideration and in America last year. But it's brilliant. It's so gripping. The story it tells is, and also the story it tells is really contemporary. Although it's a historical story, as I said, it has at its heart this idea of the appearance

of normality going on whilst this completely corrupt regime is essentially wreaking havoc. And yet it's possible to not see it unless you delve beneath the surface, and to do so is very, very dangerous. So it's called I'm Still Here. It has a brilliant sense of performance. It has a great score. It's wonderfully directed by Walter Salles. I would recommend everybody go and see it. Mason- Excellent. Sounds appointment to view. I'm Still Here. Okay. But it's the ads in a minute. First, it's time. I need to say we're going to step into the laughter lift. It's also been nominated for best scripted

comedy sequence in a film podcast with a lift analogy. Has it? Okay. Excellent. Yeah. And you're about to hear precisely why. Hey, Mark. Once again, this year, I'm entering the annual Showbiz North London's Titus Hat Competition., and this year I'm really hoping I can pull it off. Hey, the lady ceramicist, Terri indoors, told me to put the toilet seat down yesterday, but I can tell you that I struck a blow for the poor beleaguered middle aged man and answered, I'm a man. I don't have to put it down.

Good grief. Simon Meo. She says, you're the only man I've ever heard of who carries a toilet seat around. Please put it down. Hey, people are staring. You know, I made up with her later on, Mark, you'll be pleased to hear once I put the toilet seat down. In fact, we had a very profound conversation about what might happen if one of us were to pass away. I wouldn't want you to live out your days all lonely. Simon Mayo, she says. I was a little uncomfortable as you might imagine.

Oh, no, the good lady ceramicist her indoors. I said, don't worry that won't happen, but she persisted. Maybe you know, you could even remarry promise me. But can I just ask you one thing? Please don't let her wear my clothes. Oh, don't worry about that. I said, she's a completely different size to you and haven't let her wear my clothes. Oh, don't worry about that, I said. She's a completely different size to you. And I haven't seen her since. This is going on a very dangerous tag, by the way. I'd like to see a slightly new direction in the comedy sequence. Much loved

as it is in future weeks. Anyway, on the way, The Monkey, back after this. And we're back, unless you're a Vanguard Easter, in which case you've never been away. I think most people will have a pretty good idea what our movie of the week is going to be, but you just never know because we haven't done The Monkey yet. May I just say also very quickly, I apologize to you for making you step into the laughter lift with somebody who still quite clearly has the remains of a cold. Because you said to me that we were saying about, you go on a train and everyone's got a hacking cough, but you said you got into a lift at your local

train station and the minute the lift doors closed, somebody was coughing. But not just that, it's like a full hacking rattle. And everybody reacted. I mean, maybe part of it is post-COVID, but I think also it's just back manners. Just hold back, man, or use the stairs. I suppose you've got a coffee, not going to use the stairs, but just wait for it not to be overflowing. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Okay. So, The Monkey. The Monkey is the new film from Osgood Oz

Perkins, son of Antony Perkins, who we talked about recently in relation to long legs. First appeared on screen as the young Norman Bates in Psycho 2, and most recently had a horror hit with long legs. The Monkey is based on a short story by Stephen King that first appeared in Gallery magazine in 1980 and then was in the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. And I know that you, like me, are a Stephen King fan. Yeah. And his short stories are very successful. Some of the best stuff he's done. So the story, which obviously takes a lead from The Monkey's Poor, because if you know anything about Stephen King, you'll know that he views the monkey's paw as one of the archetypal horror stories. In his story, a man, Hal Shelbon, is haunted by the specter of a wind-up symbol-banging

monkey. As a kid, every time the monkey banged the symbol, something terrible happened. Then in later life, the monkey, which he threw down a well because he was scared of it, returns and then he tries with his son Petey to dispose of it. So that story was actually adapted as a, in Verticom's long short film by Spencer Sherry a few years ago under the scheme that King has had for a long time called the dollar baby scheme, which is for a dollar you could option certain of his short stories on the basis that the film was never shown for profit. It was to encourage young talent. Then one of the conditions was you had to, at the end, present a physical copy that King could then keep and he weren't ever allowed to profit from it. Apparently, the story of the monkey had been optioned at one

point by Frank Darabont, Short Shack Redemption, Frank Darabont, but then the rights lapsed. So now a feature film by Oz Perkins, James Wan producing through his Atomic Monster banner. Very different to the story. Apparently when Perkins was first approached, they came to him with a script script which he said was very serious. He said, I told them this doesn't work for me. The thing with this toy monkey is that the people around it all die in insane ways. This is the director speaking. I thought, well, I'm an expert on that. Both my parents died in insane headline making ways. I spent a lot of my life recovering from tragedy and feeling quite bad, but it all seemed inherently

unfair. You personalize the grief. Why is this happening to me? But now I'm older, you realize this stuff happens to everyone. Everyone dies, sometimes in their sleep, sometimes in insane ways, but everyone dies. And I thought maybe the best way to approach that insane notion is with a smile. Now, the reason I read that quote in full is that it is probably the best description of Now, the reason I read that quote in full is that it is probably the best description of particularly why The Monkey is what it is as a film, but also why a certain section of horror films can be life affirming even when they are extremely violent. This is extremely violent. This is super splattery horror comedy, very, very different to Long Legs, different in

tone to King's short story with which it takes great liberty. So Theo James is both Hal and Bill Shelburne, twin brothers this time. They encounter the monkey, which has a drum, not a symbol for copyright reasons, as rival kids. They try to get rid of it. Now they have to face it again as adults. Here's the setup of the movie.

The coroner said it was an accident, but it was as adults. Here's the setup of the movie. The coroner said it was an accident, but it was no accident. It was a monkey. When I was a kid, my twin brother and I found something that loved to kill. I did everything I could to make it go away. But it had other plans. Hello, brother. The monkey that likes killing our family. It's back. So that gives you a flavor of it. So Perkins says that he describes it as cartoonish horror splatter in the manner of, well actually weirdly enough he cites Death Becomes Her, the Robert Zemeckis film. And then also cites Richard Donner, who made The Omen, and John Landis,

who made American Werewolf, as the patron saints of the film alongside Chuck Jones, the animator Chuck Jones, you know, for the kind of slapstick animation. I would add to that list Sam Raimi, who's the godfather of the three stooges, Blood and Guts for Custard Pies, Horror in the Evil Dead, and I think a bit of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead. This is a riot of a film, and I pretty much enjoyed every moment of it.

It is extremely gory, but in a cheerful comedic slapstick, not cruel way. It is. We often talk about what you get from horror and I think there is a celebratory side to it. The BBFC rated this 18 for darkly comic horror, which features bloody killings with gory details, which is quite right. The first sort of publicity about it was in the US. The distributors tried to buy advertising slots for it on television and they were rejected by all the TV networks. The network standards and practices things have been rejected to pretty much every scene

in the spot. Stephen King really likes it. I know Stephen King's obviously got something invested in this, but Stephen King has really liked it. He has said, I'm going to birdsong Stephen King. He said, you've never seen anything like the monkey. It's bat-insane. And as someone who is indulged in bat-ery from time to time, I say that with admiration. The thing is, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was funny. I thought the splattery gore was very splattery and very gory and laugh out loud funny. But it's also creepy because the drum banging monkey is a creepy thing. Yeah, very scary.

I mean, it's something about wind up toys that is just really kind of gets under your skin. And we'll talk about this later on in the show anyway. But I enjoyed it hugely and I sat watching it with a big grin on my face and all through the explosions of Goroska, but I really liked the fact that Oz Perkins talked about the way in which he was using this horror as a way of addressing the craziness and the randomness of tragedy in life and saying that thing I thought was lovely. In the end, I thought the best way to approach that insane notion that everyone dies is with a smile. And that's what The Monkey does. And I smiled all the way through

it. Okay. So I'm not quite sure about my very firm prediction earlier, but we'll find out in just a second because that's the end of take one. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jem, Eric, Josh, Vicki, Zachy and Heather. Producer was Gem, the Redactor was Simon Poole and who gets his surname mentioned for no apparent reason. And if you are not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, I think because it is one of the films of the year, I am absolutely going for I'm Still Here because it's magnificent. But you know, if you want just a popcorn evening out

that'll put a smile on your face, The Monkey delivers. And blood all over your face. Blood all over your face, all over your popcorn. Okay, and in your mum's face. It's a little voice in my head said, and in your mum's face. Essentially I have gone back about 15 years. Thank you very much, Steve, for listening. Take two has landed alongside, adjacent to this podcast, and we'll talk to you very soon.

Correspondence at kermitomo.com.