Making It Awkward (ft. Leo Woodall)

15:13You might get a quick hello, but they have a thousand things on their brain and they're not in the zone to be answering your questions or kind of going out of their way to make you feel... They're not a babysitter. No, exactly. So sometimes you do just feel like you're standing on the side, trying to make some notes without looking like the journalist in the corner making notes about what's going on. It's an interesting feeling. I had one for the TV show A Gentleman in Moscow, which starred Ewan McGregor and also Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a couple in real life. and they had it was like a big emotional scene for those two where she had to like leave him and it was extremely emotional and she was like in floods of tears in the scene but also like after the takes and stuff and i spoke to you mcgregor afterwards because it was a very it was a very emotional day a very emotional set which is great for the story it's great for the piece but I was like trying to watch what's going on whilst also not be in anybody's eye lines like ignore that I'm here I don't I don't want to be prying in this moment even though it's my job to pry while you cry wow what a motto for us I pry you cry that's my motto I went on set of a film called Easy Virtue with oh yeah Jessica Biel and Ben Barnes and Colin Firth and Oscar Wilde adaptation or no coward yeah so um and they told me to get there for some ungodly hour of the morning and then i didn't talk to anyone at all until well after two o 'clock so i'd literally been sitting there for five hours and at one point we were sitting directly behind chris and scott thomas who had come over to you know we were sitting in the video village where the the director and heads of department and so on will hang out um and she came down and sat right in front of us and I was sort of gesturing to the unit publicist who kind of escorts you around on a lot of these visits.

17:15Like, maybe now would be a good time. We could, you know, we could talk to Kristen. And she was absolutely not trying that at all.

17:26Chris Hewitt:She probably couldn't understand your thick Scottish brogue. It's probably that. But also, like, I think, I get it. Like, she was not willing to, in any way, ask if I could talk to her. So I was literally sitting next to her for two hours, but not allowed to talk to her. And I wasn't sure. I felt like a bad journalist because I'm like, should I be actively leaning forward and tapping her on the shoulder and interrupting? But again, she is a bit scary, and I didn't want to. And then I finally got to sit down with Ben Barnes and Jessica Biel in the sort of disused kind of National Trust cafe of this stately home that they were shooting at.

17:59And then 30 seconds after that, they got called back to set, and that was my only interview of the day. Wow. Not a good set visit. Not a good set visit.

18:08Chris Hewitt:See, at that point, you want to start ruining takes as a sort of tit-for-tat retaliation. Is that what I want? I mean, I didn't really. Yeah, or improving takes, as anyone who's seen Easy Virtue would know. Come on now, come on. Let's all play nice. Anyway, should we take a little break? Let's. Should we make it awkward? Always. Always. Whatever, if you want to, it's fine. How do you want to make it awkward? Honestly, Chris, it's up to you. I don't care. Well, yeah. Just do what you need to do. And we'll just go with it. What the fuck does that mean? Well, just like, I don't know. I don't think that was that difficult to figure out.

18:44Yeah, it's sort of obvious, right?

18:46Chris Hewitt:Okay. Have I upset you in some way? I mean, maybe we should talk about this in a break. Oh, okay. Listen, we're going to take a little break now. And yeah, we'll be back in a second. Guess. Bye. Okay, we are back, everybody. Ben and I have made it less awkward. we have patched up whatever differences Ben thought we had which is very typical of Ben to act like that by the way this feels like very blamey language you've got to reopen the rift right now and now it is time to delve deep into this week's movie news I think we've just done it there isn't actually that much movie news is there but what would you like to talk about we are recording this on Wednesday afternoon should say so that is Hollywood's signal allowed to drop some earth shattering news that would warrant talking about but what would you like to talk about?

19:38Can we talk about how they're trying to avoid an omni-shambles on Paddington 4 having obviously at the end of Paddington 2 said fuckity-bye to Paul King and that kind of creative team Dougal Wilson did Paddington in Peru

19:54Chris Hewitt:You let Dougal do a Paddington! I thought he did an okay job I think I like Paddington in Peru I like the Father Ted reference Yeah, it was a good reference Good one So yeah, we have writers for Paddington 4, none other than Armando Iannucci and his regular collaborator, Simon Blackwell, of The Thick of It and Veep and Death of Stalin fame is taking on Paddington. It just tickles me immensely that Armando Iannucci, who is behind some of the most gloriously vicious lines ever spoken on television, is going to get to put words in Paddington's mouth. But he also did David Copperfield, right? Yes, he did.

20:33Not the magician, the Dickens story.

20:35Chris Hewitt:The personal history of David Copperfield. Which was much, you know, cuter than, say, you know. He wasn't dropping F-bombs. No, there weren't nearly so many F-bombs.

20:45Ben Travis:I've always thought that's largely the problem with it. Dickens, but no dicks. There you go. So, you know, I'm super excited. I agree. This is a really, really good call. It feels interesting without being, like, wildly silly. and you need it to be funny yeah like there was still some good humour in Paddington in Peru but it was that very specific blend on the first two of yes it's wholesome and it's beautifully crafted but they are they're funny movies they're comedies and so to have some good kind of comedy blood writing this one is a good sign there are talks for Dougal Wilson to return as director yes which I think we can all agree Paddington in Peru was not outstanding which is a bit of a shame because Paddington 2 was outstanding.

21:32And Paddington. Both five star films. But, you know, I thought it was solidly directed Paddington in Peru and he gets a sense of like the visual whimsy and the world and so having done one of them, I would not be against him coming back for a second. I think he is exactly the energy you want from a Paddington director. You know, he just, he's a slightly shambolic, steaming, but extremely warm and actually very clever and creative guy. So I, you know, I actually don't I agree that there were things that could have been better in Paddington and Prairie but I don't feel like the direction was the big big issue there

22:06Chris Hewitt:so I'm hopeful for this it was a screenplay and Paddington's ego frankly is he's a monster he's a monster the stories I've heard from that set well he also had to keep leaving the set to like escort people to the afterlife and it just really cut into his filming time you know so hopefully this time he can really focus on the actual movie yeah commit to the movie Paddington sorry I've got to walk the queen into the pearly gates. My time has come. Why has he become like the British Grim Reaper? The harbinger of doom. The psychopomp. He is very much the psychopomp. We are a deeply weird nation. And I feel like Paddington should be explored in the third, 28 years later.

22:49I beg your pardon? Like an autopsy type thing. I mean, if Paddington gets the rage virus, who knows what happens. Oh my god. Hard stares all round.

22:57Chris Hewitt:Dougal Wilson's really interesting because I feel like he maybe if he's doing this one he will feel a little freer as a director to not do a Paul King impression which I think was he felt maybe a little straight jacketed by that there's a lot of flourishes in Paddington and Peru that feel like they went what would Paul King do at this point he would have a whimsical animated sequence let's do that shall we and if Dougal Wilson can maybe bring a little bit more of himself to it, then we could be marmaladen with quality. I think going forward. These guys are two of the best screenwriters around.

23:35Chris Hewitt:And Armando is knocking it out of the park at the moment on Taskmaster. He is wonderful on Taskmaster. This is the other thing, obviously, he writes incredibly, hilariously acerbic dialogue, but he is such a happy dude on Taskmaster. He's just a lovely sweet guy, and he seems to be having a lot of fun. Yeah, very much so. So looking forward to that. Okay. Somehow we've done 28 minutes on Paddington 4. Another thing that I think is good news, I think, is that Radio Silence, a.k.a. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette. Gillette, yeah. The best a man can get. 35 seconds. Are making a choose-your-own-adventure film.

24:16How will this work?

24:17Ben Travis:To hear the rest of the story, turn to page 253. Yes. Did you ever keep your finger on the previous page? Yes, obviously. And did anyone ever actually roll dice for the combat, or did you just win?

24:27Chris Hewitt:Sorry, our younger listeners may not know what we're talking about. So there used to be things called books. Yes, made of paper. It made of paper, and you used to read them, and sometimes you could keep your finger in a previous page, just in case you didn't like what happened to the page.

24:39Ben Travis:These would be traditionally the Steve Jackson Ian Livingston books, and you'd have choices. Not all books. You'd have different pages. Ben, this was before the advent of video games. This sounds like an analog bandersnatch. I mean, in many ways it was that. Yes, it was that. So it was basically like, you know, if you want to go into the dark mine, turn to page 84. If you'd like to continue up the hill, turn to page 57. And you were meant to play with dice

25:03Chris Hewitt:and you were meant to roll it right down your...

25:04Ben Travis:But because we were all risk averse, we would put every finger we had in different pages to keep all of our tops open. So we could go back if we needed to. So we could go back if we died. And you could die quite easily. I read things like these when I was a youngster. What books? Books, yes. I liked the pages and how they turned and the words and stuff. I'm pretty sure I read some Goosebumps, like Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were still a thing in the early 90s.

25:27Chris Hewitt:Okay, fair enough. You can still buy them. These were things like the Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Yes, Death Trap Dungeon. Death Trap, oh my God. The cover of Death Trap Dungeon is seared into my mind.

25:38Ben Travis:With the blob thing with all the eyes.

25:40Chris Hewitt:Oh, fantastic stuff. Temple of Terror. Yeah. Citadel of Chaos. Yes. What are they going to do? Are they going to do a thing? Is it going to be like Clue, where if you go and see it in different screenings, different things happen? Or is it going to be something where they build the choose-your-own-adventure mechanism into the story and you have characters who are having to make choices and then maybe time rewinds because they didn't like the choice they made? You did not go see Ready or Not 2 and sufficient numbers to make a sequel. Go back and see it again. I feel like there's a couple of things they could potentially do.

26:17So first of all, we don't know yet. it could be on streaming or something I guess it's being made for 20th century studios but they haven't I don't think the story talked about specifically cinema release but we're assuming cinema release they have done this kind of thing on streaming obviously the Kimmy Schmidt movie with Daniel Radcliffe for example did exactly this Kimmy Schmidt movie yeah sort of movie length yeah after the season ended yeah yeah Daniel Radcliffe's in it it's really cute although it's a very different Unbreakable is it gone? that and Bandersnatch have been wiped from existence.

26:49So Netflix let go of that technology that they created to do the choose-your-own-adventure. You can't keep your fingers in Netflix.

26:56Chris Hewitt:No, you can't. I've tried. There must be something you could probably do with your phones in a cinema. If you put a QR code on the screen at the beginning of each screening, you know, that you could But do you want people taking their phones out in a screening maybe? I don't know. I don't know, but I'm just saying there might be some way of doing that. If you've got digital projection, it might be possible. This could be a great service to be awkward on. Yeah, really good. Bagsy. But of course, they're doing The Mummy next. That is true, and I'm so excited. So they were not going to get around to this for a long, long time.

27:27Chris Hewitt:Unless, of course, they turned to page 73, in which case they can do both at the same time. Maybe it's the same movie, and instead of The Book of the Dead, they find the Choose Your Own Book of the Dead. Oh, my God. That would be...

27:43Chris Hewitt:You choose to retcon The Mummy, The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, out of existence. Great choice. Great choice. Yes, that's it. You've completed the adventure. Oh, dearie me. That's exciting. Well done, Helen. Where did you read that? On Empire? What? Surely not. Are you sure about it? Refresh the page. It might disappear. That's exciting. It's a few days old. Oh, okay. The Batman 2 has finally gone into production. I don't believe you. No, it says it's actually underway. Production has begun here in the UK. The Batman 2 is the happening. is not that. Wow. It is. It's not too late to change that, Matt Reeves.

28:21The event that is actually underway and not just being talked about for years. Right. How long has it been

28:27Ben Travis:specifically since that? 84 years. I mean, almost. It's not that long. I mean, I'm going to say 2022. What are we saying? Anyone? Does anyone have access to any kind of internet that could tell us? It came out in 2022 and so it'll be out next year. But it's a five-year gap. That's a big gap. We have had The Penguin in the meantime, to be fair. We've had something to tide us over. Did they pick up Lee Penguin for season two? They did not pick up The Penguin, no, sorry. But to be fair, I think it was more of a closed book than anything else.

28:57Chris Hewitt:And it was more of Colin Farrell going, I'm fucking not doing that again. Jesus. Is he in this one? Is he in this movie, Colin Farrell? Who can say? Oz Cobb. Not me. Yeah, you're gorgeous. But who is in it? It's very gorgeous people. Oh, always. So gorgeous. how a fjord man himself Sebastian Stan is in this one rumoured to be Harvey Dent but we don't have official confirmation on that Scarlett Johansson lunch and dinner Scarlett Johansson Zoe Kravitz Zoe Kravitz is back well that's been rumoured actually who's confirm it because Matt Reeves was actually putting little clips of people on his Instagram and Twitter wasn't he a couple weeks ago he started filming this week in Liverpool apparently Yes, there are Gotham police cars have been spotted in Liverpool outside St.

29:47George's Hall, going through the Queensway Tunnel, which they shot at St. George's Hall on the first one as well. Was that the city hall? The city hall. So I'm glad they're back in what is, they're keeping a consistent Gotham for this one, because we love the Nolan movies, but he moved around a bit, didn't he? He went very Chicago on the Dark Nights. He went very Chicago in the dark night and then I think was worried it would be two Chicago so then the third one is much less Chicago. It's Pittsburgh, isn't it? The third one? A lot of it's Pittsburgh but not all of it. I think there's New Jersey and stuff in there as well.

30:20Hey, but New Jersey. And of course, Wall Street. Better Nottingham. Willerton Hall was Wayne Manor. Glasgow as well. Batman tends to shoot near me. I don't know why this is. I just attract Batman. You attract the bad productions. Oh my God. In addition to being a nice psychopath are you also a Batman villain?

30:45Chris Hewitt:All right, well, that's exciting. I look forward to talking about that next year. All right. Yeah, it's five years. That's not too long. That is not too long at all. I'm going to do a James Pearl Harbor situation and just turn up and try to take some photos. I think you should. You absolutely should. Hand out tea. You have a Paul Dano energy to you.

31:04Ben Travis:They might think that you're a Paul Dano. Tarantino would agree. Well, everybody who came out against Tarantino is on my side. Yeah, that's the reason. I think you could get on the set. Weak sauce. Yeah. Just try and be Paul Dano.

31:20Chris Hewitt:Just say, hello, I am Paul Dano. Give it a go. I am here.

31:23Ben Travis:I am the Riddler. Yes. I'm here to riddle. Riddle me this. Should I be? Should I not?

31:30Chris Hewitt:Is Shifty Barry in it? Well, he's listed on the IMDb, but I don't know that I trust it. Well, he is Shifty. By nature. Indeed. yes shifty joker love that joker the more interesting thing to me is like what is Andy Serkis like flying in for like a week and doing all of his scenes and then flying back to New Zealand that's a very good point how does that work when does he start shooting on the hunt for Gollum I thought it was like now already interesting and all of his videos recently talking about the hunt for Gollum he's got a big man bun so is Alfred going to have a man bun in that part 2 That would be hilarious.

32:08Chris Hewitt:He's a cool Alfred. It's exciting. That's exciting indeed. Anything else you want to talk about? Should we talk about the Mandalorian and Grogu box office? We should. We shall. Okay. Let's do it. Well, let's do that then. Because we talked about this last week, didn't we? We did, yes. We were predicting our top three movies of the year. And we said the Mandalorian and Grogu wasn't tracking at a hugely impressive rate, shall we say. For a Star Wars movie. For a Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of proved to be the case. It's opened pretty well.

32:41Ben Travis:Yeah, it rallied from the projected number, didn't it? It did better than expected. Like by about 20 pence, yes.

32:49Chris Hewitt:So it hasn't done, it made 100, it was a Memorial Day weekend, I think, in America, right? Memorial Day. And so it was a four-day weekend, and it made$100 million roughly in this four-day weekend, but under 200 million around the world. So we predicted last week it was going to tail off around 400 million. That seems pretty much on the money right now. It may even be less than that. And it's interesting to see how this is being spun in the media because this is roughly the same amount of money that Solo made when it came out. And that was deemed to be such a catastrophe that they basically put everything on hold.

33:32Chris Hewitt:in Star Wars on the big screen, apart from the Skywalker saga. This movie seems to be spun a bit more positively. It's the first Star War in seven years on the big screen. Nine, if you're the three of us in this room.

33:49Chris Hewitt:Good movie. Say it. Yes! There it is. It's like that Simpsons thing. Say it. Say it. Say it. Didn't do it. But it does seem to be spun a little bit more positively. even though it is not going to be, by any measure, one of the biggest films of the year. Ben, what's your take on this, as someone who wasn't here last week? I mean, there's various angles on it, aren't there? Because part of the positive spin is, if you're comparing it to Solo, it costs a whole lot less than Solo. Solo was a big, big expensive movie, plus they did a lot of reshoots, so there were talks of that production cost overall on that film being eye-watering, absolutely eye-watering.

34:31whereas Mandalorian and Grogu is skewing bigger than the series but I think people have said the budget is roughly 160 million which is cheap for a Star Wars movie and so obviously you have a lot of marketing costs and all the other things associated with it that also have to be accounted for but like pure budget of the film itself has already been made back and so I think there are talks that that in itself is being seen as a bit of a win it's low in terms of box office for a star wars movie but as a big screen adaptation of a streaming series in any other context this is like gigantic box office um so it'd be really interesting to see how it plays out over the next few weeks obviously that first weekend you're going to get a lot of the core star wars fans but it uh the film itself skews quite nicely towards a family audience it is the start of the summer it'll be interesting to see if you get a lot of kind of continuous legs from families turning up people taking their kids to go and see the baby yoda movie um as we head into obviously it's half term this week as well so it'll be interesting to see how the numbers go but it is a strange one it's done pretty well here right it's been it's number one at the uk box office and yeah low for a star wars movie big for a mando movie and a disney plus spinoff movie

35:59Chris Hewitt:but we don't know we don't we don't have nothing to compare it to right this is kind of unprecedented in terms of taking a show like that and putting it on the big screen i don't know whether it has justified it what was their faith their faith in bringing mando to the big screen they must have thought well this is gonna be gangbusters because people love the mandalorian so maybe this is a $600 -$700 million movie? I don't know. Are they going to be disappointed if this clocks in at$350 -$400? You would think so, wouldn't you?

36:29Ben Travis:They're not going to be over the moon about it. They've got to have expected or very much hoped that it would have done better than that. But equally, as you say, this is kind of uncharted territory. There was no real way to know. Would people pay the premium for going to cinema to see what is essentially three episodes of The Mandalorian taped together? So, I don't know. I mean, look, we talked about this. I know Ben and I spent like an hour discussing it. We had a nice chat. It's very civil. No blows were exchanged. But ultimately, you know, we are still in a place where we are seven or nine years away from the last Star Wars movie.

37:01Ben Travis:And this, rightly or wrongly, had a lot of expectation attached to it. And certainly for me, it did not feel like an event. It didn't scratch the itch. It didn't scratch the itch. And it feels like, looking at the box office, that was true for a number of people. It's interesting looking at the predictions nowadays for the box office. For a long time, the feeling was you would make three to five times your opening weekend. And it feels the multiplier has really gone down. It really has gone down. And I think that's a bit of a worry. That's a more general point about box office. That's not just Mando.

37:34But front-loading box office to that extent to the opening weekend, I know, it traditionally helps studios because they get a bigger slice of the opening weekend and then it declines the longer the film is out. but it's roughly 50-50 between studio and distributor. But it feels like that is signaling that the cinema-going public has really not quite recovered still and we're still in this slight doldrums for the cinema-going experience. And I feel like Mando's a really good test case of that.

38:05Chris Hewitt:I don't know. I think there's lots of proof that people are willing to go back in droves for the right movie. I just don't think the Mandalorian of Grogu was the right movie.

38:13Ben Travis:It's not what you would call in any way sort of experiential cinema, is it? Because by its very nature, it was birthed and raised on the small screen. So I don't think you're losing an awful lot despite the many, many IMAX sequences. It eliminates

38:26Chris Hewitt:a large percentage of the audience who might normally go see a Star Wars because as much as it tries to be a standalone, you do need to be plugged into that show to an extent. I think it's reasonably standalone. One of the things about the film is that actually it is playing much more to a general audience than it is to a Star Wars audience. For better or worse. Narratively, it's kind of weird in a way that it is shaping itself so you don't need to have seen any of the other stuff and kind of bringing you into those characters. I mean, with that head on as well, the other side of this that people are talking about is that the money they're going to be making from The Mandalorian and Grogu isn't just from the film itself.

39:04And that the merch on this thing, the merch on Grogu, on Baby Yoda has for years now been an absolutely massive money spinner for Disney and I mean one of the things that I'm just enjoying about Star Wars being back in cinemas is especially at an age in my life where I'm like heading into toy shops regularly with a small child all the toy shops are full of Star Wars toys and it makes me so happy to see uh but the sheer merch value in yeah Grogu being out there on the sides of buses on tv adverts plastered everywhere that hopefully will get kids going, I want to go and see that movie but also is just going to get people going oh, can I have a Baby Yoda plush?

39:48Everybody, buy yourself a Baby Yoda plush because they will make you happy. It's another big sort of revenue money spinner from this film. Will a Baby Yoda plush finally make you happy?

40:00Ben Travis:I mean, who knows? Either that or a Mega Mandalorian Whopper Meal or whatever

40:03Chris Hewitt:it is that we had last week. Oh James, it was a Galactic Mandalorian Double Whopper Meal.

40:08Ben Travis:That's the one. Did you have the Force Foss fries. No, we just had normal fries. I was hoping for the Foss fries. The Foss fries have the same green goop that the burger had. You know, like the heartburn goop. I'm very glad.

40:21Chris Hewitt:I don't think I want those on my fries. We were spared that fight. One last thing about this. It's interesting because you would look at the release schedule and go, oh, it doesn't really have a lot of competition in the same category, the same demographic until next week with Masters of the Universe, which is also tracking to open fairly softly. and then Toy Story 5 is coming up at some point. But what's interesting is, I think it's going to be knocked off the top spot this week by Backrooms, which we'll be discussing later on in the show. And this marks a bit of a renaissance in terms of horror.

40:53Chris Hewitt:Horror has been obviously a big attraction on the big screen, but Weapons was huge. Sinners was huge. Backrooms is tracking to be A24's biggest opening to date with over$50 million. obsession is becoming a phenomenon in the states in particular it went up at the box office it went up by like 30 % or something like that in a second weekend which is virtually unheard of and so The Mandalorian and Grogu might be about to face something even more terrifying than Rotter the Hut they might be about to face YouTuber the director which is going to crush them like bugs and Nate Bargatze also has a movie out this week It'd be fascinating to see, because he's a big comedian in the States, and it'd be fascinating to see if that translates to a big Bothell box office.

41:44Chris Hewitt:But yeah, it's a fascinating time at the old box office. Keep an eye on that one. Anything else? No? Good. Should we move on? Sure. Should we have a guest? Why not? Should we have Leo Woodall? Yes. Yeah, because Tuner actually opened last week in the States. It's opening wide this week. I think this movie's terrific. I would urge people, whether they're here or in the States, to go and see it because it's exactly the sort of really interesting character-driven I even hesitate to call it a thriller but just character-driven drama that people don't go to see enough at the moment and it could get lost in the back rooms mania and the obsession craze the obsession with obsession and of course The Mandalorian and Grogu so do go and see it it stars Leo Woodall who of course was eye-catching in last year's Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy and Hollywood really is mad about the boy aren't they Helen?

42:44Chris Hewitt:Because they've cast him in this and other things. He's in something big coming up. He's in Lord of the Rings The Hunt for Gollum. That's what I'm thinking of. Yes and we talk about that very very briefly. He seems to be very very excited about doing that. He plays a character called Halvard in The Hunt for Gollum and there was of course a speculation he was going to play Aragorn or Strider in that movie but that would be Jamie Dornan we discussed that on the podcast didn't we? We were like, is it going to be Leo Woodall? We're not so sure it is and is he a good fit for that role? We decided ultimately he might not be a good fit for that role.

43:14Chris Hewitt:Andy Serkis thought he was a great fit for Halvard, whoever that is. And he's also a great fit in Tuner in which he plays a young man called Nicky who is a piano tuner. He is kind of the apprentice, young apprentice to Dustin Hoffman's wise old piano tuning hand. And he has a medical condition. He has a hearing condition, which I believe is called hyperacusis, which means that he is essentially allergic to loud noises. He wears earplugs and he wears ear defenders when noise gets particularly egregious around him. But this also means that he has trained himself over the years to be an amazing piano tuner.

43:53Chris Hewitt:And in this film, which is directed by Daniel Rohir, he also discovers that this unique gift allows him to be able to crack safes and i'm sure that works out nicely for everybody uh so i went along and had a chat with leo who is a lovely guy in a london hotel room a couple weeks ago and this is that chat do please enjoy leo welcome to the emperor podcast thank you how are you i'm great thank you this is a cracking film tuner Thank you. I wasn't going to spoil too much about the heist elements of this movie, but it's on the poster, so I feel that we can talk about it. Yeah, of course. What did you know about it going in when you first got the screenplay?

44:33Chris Hewitt:Or when you first heard about this movie? Was all that stuff a surprise to you? I'm pretty sure. I was actually thinking about this yesterday. I don't know what I knew about the film before reading it. I just remember reading it and loving it and thinking this is a film that I want to watch. And it has so many different elements of what I kind of look for in a film and what I enjoy about film. And I think, you know, Daniel and Robert Ramsey, you know, did a really wonderful job of kind of integrating different genres into this film. Give me an insight into how, because the soundscape of this movie is fascinating, because Nicky has hearing difficulties in the movie.

45:22Chris Hewitt:And the soundscape that Daniel plunges us into from time to time is really, really fascinating. How does that come across in the page? Was that something that leapt off the page for you? Yeah, it was very well painted out in the script. You really get the idea of what it feels like, however I didn't I didn't you know I didn't expect you know it for it to for it to be so effective I think Johnny Byrne did the most wonderful job yeah yeah when I saw the film I just think what he did with that sound design is so remarkable and really get inside of Nicky's head and you can really it's incredibly immersive.

46:16Chris Hewitt:How did you go about portraying that? I think it was just kind of imagining what it would feel like to have sounds kind of horrific but a needle go through your eardrum and you're sort of the inside of your head burning. That's fascinating. So you're doing that on set whenever action's called, but you're thinking, okay, someone's just shoved a needle in my ear. Yeah, it was just about, you know, really trying to capture the pain of it. You know, pain is a hard thing to imagine, in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but a lot of it was also just kind of story driven and it was also very important to make sure that the moment is captured, not just the pain of it, but how that, you know, like for instance the scene with Rufy when the fire alarm goes off, you know, what has led up to that point that makes this, more effective and you know a lot of that also came down to Havana and her wonderful performance as well and what about someone like working with Dustin Hoffman on this film as well who?

47:49Chris Hewitt:yeah I had to google him did you because he is obviously one of the classic I think maybe has made this change over the years but he was certainly a very very method actor I'm sure you've heard the famous story on Marathon Man where he was running around before a take and Laurence Olivier said, have you just tried acting, dear boy? Did you ask him for advice in terms of conveying Nicky's condition and what Nicky's going through? It wasn't so much about asking him for advice, but just kind of watching him at work and watching how he operates and how he navigates his own performance and brings his own character to life.

48:38And, you know, he treats every take like a rehearsal and he says so. And also when someone is that good, they make you better and they bring you into the world of make-believe further than you may be able to bring yourself, you know.

49:01Chris Hewitt:The reason I wanted to ask about the screenplay and how it was written was that I think the first 20 minutes or so of this movie, before we even get an indication that Nicky has this other gift, are really, really important. Because you really, really like these characters from the off. You really like the dynamic that Nicky and Harry have. You begin to really sympathize and empathize with Nicky. And then the heist stuff begins to work its way in. was that analogous to your experience in reading the screenplay like you went okay yeah I get this character I understand this character I really like this character and now he's making terrible decisions that might lead to a world of shit and you begin to care for him you're already on tenterhooks with this character I think I mean you need you need your character to have inner conflict and to make sort of bold choices so I think when I was I was more just I think I just I kind of smirked when I realized that you know he he got a little kick out of it yeah and I understood it I understood that he lives a very very sheltered kind of mundane life and I understood that though it wasn't what he had planned for or what he'd ever dreamt of, you know, it was new and it was kind of dangerous and it was exciting and he's been sort of longing to rebel against, you know, the kind of cards that he's been dealt.

50:45And so I kind of got it.

50:48Chris Hewitt:he's a guy who has a an incredible gift god-given gift if you will uh for music he has this you know he's he's got perfect pitch he's got this incredible ear in a way uh and then he discovers he has an aptitude for something else he has a secondary gift which is just as interesting in many ways a little bit more dangerous but interesting is that something you can relate to because you know as an actor in the course of your work have you discovered that second thing that you have an aptitude for um no no special skills on the old cv no i think i would i would love someday to try writing something.

51:42Chris Hewitt:Okay, alright. I used to, you know, when I was a kid I used to do that, but to create something from scratch seems really kind of enticing. So you haven't written for a while? No. What sort of stuff did you write as a kid? We're talking like when I was a kid. Oh yeah, yeah. I think I wrote a story about about dog I was obsessed dogs when I was a kid all right tell me about the dog doesn't die I think that's okay that's that's all I don't have a secondary gift

52:20Chris Hewitt:meowing now we're getting somewhere yeah a dog that can meow this is a movie yes this is a ten-part Netflix series you make this work so you haven't you haven't had any like you know throwing yourself learned any special skills in for movies over the years. Some of the things like piano, for example. Yeah, that's one of the sort of... Well, I'll tell you what. I did a movie last year where I played a guy in the kitchen and I learned to shuck oysters. And I'm pretty darn good at that. The sort of head, the main man, oyster shucker in Cape Cod, was sort of teaching me the tricks of the trade. and he yeah might I say he was pretty blown away by my ability to shuck and my stuff were you shucking awful or nice nicely done I wouldn't say I was shucking awful but I I did get pretty cocky and I did like impale my hand because I would shuck it and then have a bucket and I would flick it and as I was shucking I sort of you get the top bit of the show and then you get rid of it but I would my game would be flicking them into the bucket and then of course the camera turns around on to me and I decided to get extra cocky I throw away the towel but like protective towel and I just decided to not even look at the oyster and I was just looking at it and I just fully went into my hand oh Christ and it bled out is there a scar or are you okay yeah I wish there was more of a scar to be honest.

53:58Chris Hewitt:Oh yeah it'd be a real war story in that case. Yeah it'd be a bit more war story. Look what I got doing Tony. Yeah yeah. There's still the knife still through my hand. It'd be like the scene from Jaws. This is British Jaws. Hurt my leg doing that. When he's looking around trying to find a good scar. Got this behind the ear doing Junior. This is from the Indianapolis. What about the piano playing that? I mean I don't want to give away too much but let's just say that you know you're around a lot of pianos in this movie. I would like to be better I would love to get to a to a level where I mean some of it I mean it's a really difficult instrument like arpeggios are incredibly advanced I'd love to get to a level where like I can just nail some arpeggios and at the moment I'm just figuring out how I can really nail Interstellar and also So the Shire.

54:57Oh, yeah. On the piano. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. So that's maybe where I'm at.

55:03Chris Hewitt:So there's a moment in this movie where Harry, where Dustin's character asks you to play something and you just kind of look at him enigmatically and then basically refuse. Is that you? If you were at a gathering, a soiree, and someone said, Hey, Leo, you're in that movie, Tuneer. Give us a tune. He'd be like, No, shuck off. No, I'd go shuck you. But if they ask me to play Bach, then I'm a little screwed. Yeah. So what are we doing? Okay, that's on a curve, greater than a curve. What would you play between Chopsticks and Bach? What's in between? What's your party piece? It's going to be Interstellar.

55:49Interstellar? Okay. Yeah, I've been chipping away at it. all right and and if there was a piano here uh-huh you'd get it you know the song you know the tune I know the chain yeah yeah yeah and I Marius our music's composer sort of really helped me get into like the the base of it and it

56:11Chris Hewitt:sounds good it's amazing very it's very intense you also mentioned the shower there and of course you are I guess wasn't me plugging about by the way I I know, I know, but you've opened a door and I'm going to go through it. Go through it, go through it, it's okay. Because, of course, you've been announced in the cast for The Hunt for Gollum as Halvard. Am I pronounced that correctly, by the way? I am. There you go, there you go. Nailed it. I hope so, yeah. If you're not and I've confirmed it, then that's not the correct answer. Have you said his name out loud yet? Halvard. Halvard. Halvard. It's one of each.

56:43Chris Hewitt:It's one of the two. If not, you can fix it in post. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. just get through the movie mispronounce the name completely and then just fix it in the post I imagine you're looking forward to that I cannot wait he knows his way around that world oh yeah I cannot wait I love that world so much I love that trilogy never thought I would get to be part of that world especially not with Ian and Andy I don't think I have any scenes with Elijah but them being part of it is very special. Amazing. And of course there was some speculation that you might be playing Aragorn but you're not, you're playing Halvard.

57:25Chris Hewitt:But nevertheless, how's your door opening? Just in case there's a moment where you need to open a door in an extravagant manner. Are you okay? I'm okay. See, add that to your special skills as well. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm all about that. Door opening, shucking, playing piano to a reasonable level. Yeah, sure. Writing stories about dogs that can meow. Leo, you're a quadruple threat. Yeah. Very talented man. Come in. Amazing. Well, best of luck on that movie as well. Thank you for having me, pal. Fantastic. Cheers. Okay, that was Leo Woodall talking about Tuner. And should we kick off the review section with Tuner?

58:03Hoorah!

58:04Chris Hewitt:You all right there, Alex? I was yawning and expressing enthusiasm at the same time. Okay, good. Yeah, fantastic.

58:11Ben Travis:Really invested in this podcast. Jimbo. Hello. You've seen Tuner. I have. It has nothing to do with fish.

58:18Chris Hewitt:Yeah.

58:19Ben Travis:Yes, this is, I mean, you already know what it is, because you've already spoken to Leo Woodall, but it is about a piano tuner who uses his powers for evil, or rather for financial gain at any rate. And to be fair, I would say to a good cause, right? So his mentor, Dustin Hoffman, who plays Harry Horowitz, his kind of like tuner-in-chief, if you will. He has mounting medical bills that they can't pay. So it turns out that our Nicky, who, as you say, has very acute hearing, realises that he has a talent for cracking safes not just tuning pianos but also breaking into things he meets a I think it's a fairly shonky security guy called Yuri who while installing security systems likes to rob his clients and he puts Nicky's powers to use cracking safes and essentially stealing things that won't be missed or at least that is the theory but running parallel to that thriller is also a love story so Nicky meets Ruthie played by Havana Rose Liu and she's sort of a pianist She's studying at a prestigious music school, and she's composed.

59:15Ben Travis:Junior art, I think. Junior art, there we go. I've heard that's quite good, Helen. Yeah. And she's composing a piece, and their paths cross, I would say. There's a little bit of friction at first. They don't get on, but obviously as meet-cutes go, someone with perfect pitch, not just on the keyboard, if you know what I'm saying, they get together, and there's a very sweet kind of love story. I don't know what you're saying. There's a very sweet love story kind of percolating in the background while all of this safe-cracking is going on. So it's kind of what you said, Chris. It's not really a thriller.

59:45Chris Hewitt:No.

59:45Ben Travis:It's kind of a drama. It's kind of a romance. It's all of these things at once. And honestly, the romance was the storyline I think I was most invested in, though I enjoyed all of it. I thought they have some lovely moments together, bonding over the piano that he kind of disassembles. And he's really struggling with this idea that he is or was a virtuoso musician himself. and you get the idea that this hearing condition that he's got has come on slightly later, like it's not something he was necessarily born with and he can no longer play the piano. And it's taken a lot of immersion therapy for him to even be in the same room as a piano because the sound causes him actual physical pain.

1:00:23Ben Travis:And so him trying to overcome that disability to bond with her is actually really super sweet. And it almost feels like a film of two halves, like there's two separate tonal narratives going on at the same time. And it shouldn't work, but it kind of does. I think actually it's really because Daniel Rowe obviously directed and co-wrote this with Robert Ramsey but I think the emotional heart of this is kind of what carries it. Partly his relationship with Harry which is lovely but the relationship he has with Ruthie you're so invested in that and even the thriller aspects of it maybe don't play out the kind of way you might expect they would in a very by-the-numbers thriller.

1:01:01Ben Travis:So I think the blending of genre here is its strength because it's not what you think it will be it doesn't resolve in the way you think it will. and it's really sweet and I watched this very late last night I finished it at about one o 'clock in the morning and I had a great old time with it I really really enjoyed it so Leo Woodall yes yeah a perfect pitch indeed he's terrific in this he's really really good I feel like if you've just seen him in something like Bridget Jones or One Day or One Day I mean this I think is the best calling card yet for Leo Woodall movie star like this feels like it's a movie star and he plays kind of haunted slightly damaged He's vulnerable extremely well.

1:01:38Yeah, he's not saying a huge amount in most scenes in this movie. He doesn't talk much, but you still know how he's feeling and what he's thinking at all times, which I think is great. It feels quite an old-fashioned movie to me as well. It does. It's set in New York, and it feels very New York. They shot in Toronto, but they've gone for a sort of, you know, that autumnal kind of New York feel to it. And it's just color-wise and just sort of, it's got the warmth of that and sort of, you know, the sense of like small, sometimes slightly run-down apartments that Harry and Ruthie are living in. But then you've got the contrast of these incredibly rich people's houses that they go to to either rob them or tune grand pianos.

1:02:21And so there's a kind of like, you know, there's an element of social awareness, I guess, which I like. But it gives it a bit more texture and it gives it a bit more sense of a place than I think you would get in many films that were just a thriller. The thriller version of this, I think, would have been much flatter. And this was much more interesting, I think, because it does mix things up. It doesn't do exactly what you think it's going to do. You're kind of bracing for certain outcomes that don't appear, and others that do. But I think it was a really nicely played movie.

1:02:55Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Four stars in for Tuner. Next up, we're going to stick with music and the new movie from John Carney. Helen, it's Power Ballad. It's set in Ireland, but that is not why we're asking you to review it. We're asking you to review it because we respect you as a person. Also, you're Scottish. Apparently, yeah. So yeah, this is John Carney making another movie about music. Who would have thought? John Carney's made his movie again, but when they're all this fun. When they're all this fun, who cares? This is a really, really nice one. So you've got Paul Rudd, who honestly I think is an odd choice for a Carney hero, if I'm honest.

1:03:32I had a little bit of a, I had to trip over that a little bit when this started, but I got into it. Why is that? His name is literally Rick Power, which I did enjoy.

1:03:40Chris Hewitt:Okay. So the idea is, I don't know, I just felt he doesn't have the usual energy I was expecting from that role.

1:03:45Ben Travis:You expect a kind of a more of a, he has a slight hangdog energy, but he's also Paul Rudd. But he is also Paul Rudd, and I think that's it. It doesn't quite gel for me. Well, we're going to get into that. But yeah. He is, he's Rick Power. The idea is he was a kind of promising young musician, fell in love with an Irish woman, married her, settled in Dublin, and is now basically the front man for a wedding band. So they're a good wedding band. We see them perform. They're perfectly competent. But, you know, the crowds are not excited when he plays his own music.

1:04:16Chris Hewitt:Are they called it Bride and Groove? Yes. Yeah. I mean, love it. But, you know, the crowds are not excited when he plays his own music. They want him to just play the hits of other people. and he is frustrated a little bit in his life, even though he loves his wife and he loves his daughter and all the rest. And he's kind of getting more and more frustrated until one night they're at a wedding, fancy big castle, and the groom is a childhood friend of an American pop star who is Danny Wilson, played by Nick Jonas. And he ends up being asked to go up on stage and sing with the wedding band. And he and Rick kind of sing together a little bit and get on well and get on talking later in the night and then end up just shooting the shit and getting drunk and playing music together.

1:05:03And Rick plays something for him that he wrote. And Danny then records it as a song and claims it as his own. And as it becomes a huge hit, Rick is left trying and scrambling, really, to prove that this is his song and that he contributed. And, well, I don't want to get too much further than that, but let's say it isn't easy necessarily for him to do that.

1:05:26Chris Hewitt:And Leah Woodall comes in and tunes the piano. Absolutely true. Cracks the safe. It would have been great if he had, yeah. Jack Rayner actually comes in. He's the sort of manager for Danny Wilson's character. You've got Havana Rosalew again. Yes. As Marsha, who's Danny's love interest. Is she also in back rooms? Tell me she's in back rooms. I wish. She's great. She is great. I love her. But yeah, so this is really about these two kind of lost guys who were at a tough point in their lives because Rick is sort of, you know, he's kind of given up his dreams of stardom and everything else, meets this guy who has had the success, but he's had it as part of a boy band, and he's still very much out to prove himself as a musician.

1:06:05And this is, I feel like, something that the Joe Nye probably kind of know. So, you know, I felt for both of them, like, it's not to say that one of them isn't a fucking idiot and totally in the wrong, and that the other one isn't a force of chaos, and completely incapable of organizing a paper bag. But at the same time, I felt for both of them and I kind of wanted the best for them. How do you organize a paper bag? Well, you just fold it nicely, don't you? You don't just like scramble it up.

1:06:32Chris Hewitt:Oh, okay. I don't know. Shut up. Leave me alone. Anyway, so I like this. I don't think it's Top Tier Carney. Now, that is not a harsh criticism. For people who don't know, what is Top Tier Carney? Top Tier Carney is the movie Once, which I think is astonishing. I think Sing Street is also astonishing. I like Begin Again, actually. Yeah, Begin Again is very good. They're all good. They're all good movies. They're all good movies. They are all good movies. This also is a good movie. I just wouldn't put it with Once and Sing Street, which for me are still like the top tier of comics.

1:07:02Ben Travis:It does riff on Once quite nicely. There's a lovely little reference. Yeah, that's really good. I really like that. But yeah, I had a really lovely time with it. Like I say, I slightly tripped over Paul Rudd, but it wasn't his performance. It's just, I think, his Paul Ruddness. Don't you think that works? I thought it worked. I felt like if it had been maybe a smaller star I felt like it would have worked better for me in the same way that Nick Jonas brings his Nick Jonasness to Danny I felt like if you had a smaller star that would bring a smaller star you know energy to Rick I think so I get why they cast Paul Rudd I get why he probably got this film made and I'm glad it has been I would rather it had been a kind of a lesser known or even unknown actor because I think it would have made that role work better for me I think this is funny because the way this is marketed is where you almost think it's going to be like an A versus B kind of like, almost like caper type film where they're kind of fighting.

1:07:56Ben Travis:Because I mean, they show like a fist fight in the trailer and whatnot. And they make it out to be something very by the numbers. And it isn't that. Because, and this is the thing with all John Carney's films, like the music is always great. And the song that they argue about in this is a banging ballad.

1:08:09Chris Hewitt:Written by? John Carney. And Gary Clark, who was the lead singer of? I definitely don't know. Oh my God, guys. Danny Wilson. Danny Wilson is the name of a band. Correct. Danny Wilson's the name of a band, and then they've called the character Danny Wilson. Yes, because of Danny Wilson. I guess so. Okay. Otherwise it would be a heck of a coincidence. We've learned something new. Do you remember this on Mary's Prayer? No. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Danny Wilson. Well, there you go.

1:08:35Ben Travis:But, as I was saying, the thing with John Carney's films is not only is the music at the core of the film, he has an emotional honesty to his storytelling, always. And they always get you right there, and this is no exception. like it really like I felt the authenticity of that I mean a couple of the plot beats especially how the whole situation resolves I did it has to be said see coming a mile away maybe that's just me but I I thought it was just lovely and I thought it was sort of emotionally pure and it was really touching and I really really I like the whole energy of it which I do all his films actually so

1:09:06Chris Hewitt:yeah

1:09:06Ben Travis:I think it's well worth seeing

1:09:07Chris Hewitt:yeah I thought it was great I think everything's great I've got no critical faculty whatsoever yeah I really like this and also you know to speak to the emotional climax of the movie I watched this with a few Empire people a few months ago I wrote the feature for this and one of our number was in floods of tears at the end and I mean floods I mean like are you okay kind of floods of tears I won't name them Alex no it wasn't Alex but it would be amusing if it was but this really does have the ability to get people I really like John Carney I really like his take on musical dramas. The song is an absolute belter.

1:09:49Chris Hewitt:I think it should be nominated for Best Original Song next year, but that is a category of the Oscars fuck up more than anything else, so it probably won't be. If I were to nitpick anything, it's some of the sound mixing in the live performance scenes. Oh, with the lip syncing. Yeah, there's some pretty bad lip syncing and I'm not entirely sure why they didn't just sing live.

1:10:07Ben Travis:No, not just the lip syncing, but also the sound is very studio sound. Yes. It doesn't feel in any way

1:10:12Chris Hewitt:like a live performance. They're playing live at all. I had exactly the same. Weird and unusual. But once you get past that, and then once Helen gets past Paul Rudd, the last 20 minutes is fantastic. But we get us more four stars, and I think rightly so. Four stars in for Power Ballad. Next up, Ben, this might be the big box office winner of the week, so naturally we've left it until last, is Backrooms, which is a debut by Kane Parsons, who is 12 years old. Not far off. This is the moment where we are obliged to mention that Cain Parsons is 20, maybe 21 at this point. It is unconfirmed. But he has directed Backrooms.

1:10:53And this originates as like an online creepypasta. Does creepypasta mean things to people? It means nothing to me. Horror meme.

1:11:01Chris Hewitt:We have a director now called Curry Barker. And now we have creepypasta. Creepypasta. A very stupid phrase for like online horror mythology. kind of urban legend-y stuff. Comes from like copy and paste is where the term comes from. It does. And so the idea of the back rooms originates as like an online meme, specifically of an image of just a dank yellow hallway with a yellow carpet. And the creepiness of like, ooh, these weird liminal spaces that people talk about where these spaces that exist and you don't really know what they're for and they feel unsettling. And that spun into Kane Parsons making a web series of Backrooms videos, found footage style, created using Blender, the same technology that they used to make Flow, the animated cat movie.

1:11:51So this originates as a very grassroots internet thing. Now Kane Parsons has made a fully-fledged feature for A24, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, who runs and owns a dilapidated furniture store. that is well past its prime. He is dealing with various things in his own life that have fallen apart. And so he is speaking to a therapist, Dr. Mary Klein, played by Renata Rensver. And while he is working at the store, there are weird power fluctuations. And he discovers in the basement of the store, a portal, an invisible portal in the wall that takes him into a realm of yellow sickly colored hallways and rooms that lead to other rooms that lead to other rooms that make no sense with chairs like clipping out of the walls nothing makes sense there are weird noises coming from through the back rooms he gets obsessed with this place with this realm that he's found and tells his therapist about it and then she goes in there looking for him.

1:13:06So that's the kind of setup. And I'm intrigued by this film. It has been very well received by many people. And I was really looking forward to it. I saw it a couple of weeks ago. And I have to say I was very disappointed in it, which feels sad. I was really looking forward to this film.

1:13:28Ben Travis:Unusual for you, I would say. Yeah, here we go. For people who say I just blindly like everything, that is absolutely not true. So I guess to start with the positives, the production design on this is incredible. Like I said, the shorts were made using Blender. But for this, they created massive physical sets. 30 ,000 square feet. Of the back roofs that people could wander through

1:13:49Chris Hewitt:and apparently crew members were getting lost in. James was there for several months. That's right, I've only just got out. Getting people tea, coffee. He was taking pictures of the set, but it was all just a yellow carpet. It's so weird. I mean so much of the success of this hinges on can you create the back rooms and make it feel creepy and I think it does feel atmospheric I feel like they've done a really good job of bringing what essentially began as a still image online and turned that into an entire world that feels real and feels unsettling I think for me I really did not gel with the character drama here I think to its credit it is trying to create a compelling and psychological dynamic between Clark and Mary getting into his real big personal character flaws maybe that how that is represented or reflected back at him by his experiences in the back rooms and Mary's childhood and what she is bringing with her as psychological baggage and her relationship with Clark but I struggle a bit whenever films try and do like therapy speak and therapy i don't know grown-up emotionally complex therapy related dynamics i think it's really really hard to pull off and i was not convinced by any of it in this film i have to say it's written by will sudick um who i'm i'm not aware of any of his work but i found the writing of this and the characters of this disappointingly quite thin um and i i found the atmosphere in the back rooms generally unsettling but i didn't really find this film scary and i'm intrigued to know what helen thinks because i know you have maybe yeah i was gonna say a lower scare threshold than me but i despite finding those sequences atmospheric you are there to watch them wander around in the back rooms and some of those sequences i honestly i felt my brain just drifting off for a while i was proper scared okay yeah so i was sitting next to you yeah yeah i was very scared for pretty much most of the running time i mean there were times when i could tell myself okay it's going to be scary right now because this is the opening scare to get us unnerved this is the guy getting shredded at the beginning of cube so i'm worried for the whole rest of the film right and there is a cubiness sometimes about this So I kind of was bracing for the sort of little prologue bit.

1:16:20I was braced for that. And then I was like, okay, he probably won't die for a bit. I can probably relax a bit. But still, you see a little bit more than I was expecting to quite early on. You see some really sinister shit. And yeah, I was tense throughout. I don't think it's as rich a text personally as Obsession. I still think Obsession is the high point of recent horror. I think it's fucking incredible. But this might well stay with us and sort of haunt us a little bit because I think it does have substance to it. It's not just because it's yellow like the substance. But it's just like it's got real meat on its bones, I think.

1:17:01I wish that meat was tastier. I find it slightly baffling. To me, I find it baffling that this film focused on two middle-aged protagonists. I think it's a weird decision. and I feel like the film can't convincingly inhabit real grown-up problems and convey them convincingly to ground all of the other stuff that's happening here. And I have to say, I did not love the third act. Once it started to really show its hand of like, this is what we're going to do, the air was gone from the balloon and I just, I felt like it went out with a whimper. But loads of people are loving this.

1:17:40Ben Travis:Yeah, it surprised me. I think the character work is definitely the weakest component of this because I think they give them, shall we say, complex backstories, but I don't think it ever fully integrates into the storyline. It's never really particularly compelling. And even when it's relevant to the mythology to a certain extent, it didn't quite fit for me. This film really honestly felt like 100 minutes sort of stuck in a branch of MFI after hours. Like, it really did. I was quite palpably bored. I wasn't scared at any point. Genuinely, I was just... I found it quite soporific. I didn't... The only thing it got me is it has that kind of slightly off-kilter Lynchian vibe that the whole setting, the whole backroom setting, gives you that kind of almost like low-level psychic nausea, if that makes sense.

1:18:24Ben Travis:You just feel a little bit icky all the way through it. That is the feeling of the backroom. Yes. Yes, there is creepy stuff happening in there, but the real creep factor is in just the horrible, sickly mundanity of it. It's like, why are you in there? Go away from there. Why does this exist? and again the film I think portrays that convincingly if you are going to see a full realisation of the back rooms you are going to get this from the film but everything else about it I'm disappointed and I have to say I sat next to Harry Stainer our social media editor who also was really excited for this and we were both quite sad at the end of it because we really wanted to enjoy it he asked me to mention on the podcast that he was sad when it ended like it's fine it's not like it's a bad film It looked great, and I just thought it was a bit mid.

1:19:12Ben Travis:And also a bit long. I think it was pretty good. We gave it a three, which is a recommendation. Just reminding you. It is probably a three, but I'll never watch it again. Yeah, no, I don't know that. But then I don't watch a lot of these horrors again, because I'm, again, a wimp. A wimp.

1:19:29Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. Three stars then for Back Rooms. And real quick, Housebells. There is a directorial debut this week from the aforementioned, in fact, Kristen Scott Thomas, who co-wrote with her husband and directed this story, My Mother's Wedding. So she plays the mother, Diana, who is getting married for the third time. Now, part of this is based on Scott Thomas's own life. So she lost both her father and her stepfather by the time she was, I think, 12, both of whom were pilots and both of whom died in plane crashes. and it's only in sort of more recent years that she's talked to her younger brothers and sisters and realized that they all have very different memories of first of all both figures and also just you know what do they remember of each tragedy so that's kind of the setup for this film so she's simplified the family a little bit down to three daughters you've got the eldest which is Scarlett Johansson's Navy Captain Catherine you've got Sienna Miller as a movie star Victoria and then Emily Beecham as a sort of you know, NHS nurse Georgie, and they all come back together for the wedding and, you know, family secrets come out and they're all sort of dealing with these memories in different ways and sort of reckoning with their mum getting married again and what that sort of dredges up from their past.

1:20:49So it is a drama. It's also very funny at times, quite warm, a lot kind of cozier than I was maybe expecting from Chris and Scott Thomas, because as aforementioned, she can be a little bit film it mostly takes place at the family cottage you know and it's it was just sweet i don't think it maybe gets you know deep enough into the different ways that all of their lives have gone and how that's affected their own experience of motherhood and that kind of thing to really make this uh oh my god extraordinary exploration of you know grief and moving on and tragedy and all the rest but at the same time i do think it's a really beautifully played really well acted well cast nicely put together film.

1:21:34So it's a good start, I think, from Christmas Got Thomas.

1:21:36Chris Hewitt:All right. Do they go into scary back rooms at any point? They don't. No, very, very, no scary rooms at all. No. I mean, there's one person goes into the wrong bedroom at one point. Oh, my God. So they get a scare, if you will. But yeah, no, that's about all. I give it three stars anyway. Three stars. Ellen has given us three stars. Recommendation. Three stars in for my mother's wedding. How exciting. on that note that is definitely it for this week's Empire podcast join us next week for more film related fun we'll be joined by not sure yet but it'll either be Nicholas Galitzin and Camila Mendes the stars of Masters of the Universe I'll get you He-Man or Brett Goldstein writer and star of Office Romance I'll get you J-Lo

1:22:33Chris Hewitt:there's a lot more shagging in one of those movies than the other one yeah I was surprised by that in Master of the Universe I got me honest with you so that's why they call him Ram Man Ram Man wait till you hear about Fisto

1:22:46Chris Hewitt:but anyway until then until we meet again until that suspicious occasion it is goodbye of my three colleagues of such lethal cunning goodbye Ben Travis goodbye oh no I'm lost in the back rooms he's lost in the back rooms goodbye James Dyer goodbye Chris goodbye Helen O 'Hara toodaloo toodaloo to you and it is goodbye from me I am off to actually host an Empire VIP Club screening of Masters of the Universe and I need to change my top because I spilled my lunch down the one I'm wearing now and I had to go out to TK Maxx and buy a new one for£25 true story folks true story hopefully I can get this one off over the Skeletor mask that I still haven't taken off thanks so much for listening see you next time bye bye