Episodes

  • Warfare with Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza

    Warfare with Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza
    Apr 17 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. ‘Warfare’ co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza join us this week to talk about the astonishing new film that aims to put modern conflict onscreen in the most authentic way possible. With an ensemble cast of soldiers featuring Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, and Joseph Quinn, the film’s events are based on the real wartime experiences of Mendoza (who is played by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai). He’s a former Navy SEAL and Iraq veteran who has used his expertise to advise filmmakers presenting war onscreen, including Garland on ‘Civil War’. Now he’s collaborating with Garland again to tell his own story and that of his colleagues in this truly powerful film. Plus we’ve got reviews of ‘The Penguin Lessons’—the true story of an English teacher in turbulent 1970s South America who unexpectedly befriends the waddling creature of the film’s title, after rescuing it from an oil slick—and ‘Blue Road’, the literary doc on the colourful life of Irish writer Edna O’Brien. Don’t miss an Easter treat in the Laughter Lift this week too... Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): The Penguin Lessons: 08:54 Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza Interview: 29:44 Warfare Review: 43:30 Laughter Lift Easter Special: 57:48 Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story: 1:00:39 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: https://www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • Now and Ben: Charlie Brooker & Emma Corrin on Black Mirror

    Now and Ben: Charlie Brooker & Emma Corrin on Black Mirror
    Apr 16 2025
    If you’ve managed to watch any of the excellent seventh series of Black Mirror yet, you might have spotted our super sub Ben Bailey Smith popping up there... and just for you he’s collared his fellow dystopians Charlie Brooker and Emma Corrin for a chat about the mind-bending anthology’s latest iteration. Brooker is the writer and creator of the show, which has been sending sci-fi shivers down our spines since it first hit British TV screens in 2011, before going global with Netflix in 2016. So for over a decade, “it’s all a bit Black Mirror” has been the phrase on everyone’s lips whenever real-world technology makes another ever-so-slightly terrifying leap forward. Emma Corrin stars in episode three of the new series, ‘Hotel Reverie’, in which a cutting-edge filmmaking technology called ReDream allows modern day actors to star in high-tech remakes of classic films. Actor Brandy (Issa Rae) steps into the world of a 1940s movie—where she meets Corrin’s golden age star Dorothy. Charlie and Emma chat to Ben about Hotel Reverie and the rest of the brand new series. They talk golden age Hollywood, the shipping forecast, and erm... bowling? It goes places. Listen now for the whole story! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    17 mins
  • Laurence Fishburne & James Hawes on The Amateur

    Laurence Fishburne & James Hawes on The Amateur
    Apr 10 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. We have a real treat for you in the guest slot this week—director of ‘The Amateur’ James Hawes, and one of its stars Laurence Fishburne—AKA actual Morpheus from The Matrix. We are not worthy. Laurence plays Colonel Henderson, the grizzled CIA man tasked with training Rami Malek’s geeky decoder Charlie for the fieldwork he insists on undertaking in order to track down his wife’s terrorist killers. Simon chats to the actor and director about this smart action thriller, and its influences from Hawes’ Brit spy series ‘Slow Horses’ to Jason Bourne. We’ll hear stories from the set plus the pair’s thoughts on the theatre, The Matrix and Adolescence. Don’t miss this one. Mark reviews ‘The Amateur’, as well as ‘Drop’--a psycho-thriller wherein a widowed mother’s (Meghann Fahy) first date interrupted by sinister messages threatening to kill her son—unless she kills her dinner companion. Plus, we’ll get the Good Doctors’ verdict on ‘One to One: John & Yoko’, the latest from documentary maestro Kevin Macdonald charting the revolutionary couple’s post-Beatles days in New York. We’ll also be catching up with the movie-going phenomenon that is ‘A Minecraft Movie’, and deciding whether we’re going to let its legions of fans get away with all those code violations... Another week of Top Takes from Simon & Mark and top correspondence from you. Keep it coming! Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Drop Review: 08:15 A Minecraft Movie Review: 19:53 Laurence Fishburne & James Hawes Interview: 29:48 The Amateur Review: 44:55 Laughter Lift: 52:43 One to One: John & Yoko Review: 55:24 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Death of a Unicorn + Toby Jones

    Death of a Unicorn + Toby Jones
    Apr 3 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. Well hurrah hooray because this week it’s a Toby Jones show (not a Noby Jones show) and he joins Simon to chat about ‘Mr. Burton’. In this true story Toby plays the title character, schoolteacher Philip Burton, who spots the talent of young pupil Richie Jenkins in the Welsh mining town of his birth. Burton nurtures Jenkins’ acting flair as he becomes Richard Burton—taking his guardian’s name as the stage name by which he became internationally famous. The erudite everyman as always, Toby chats to Simon about accents, pyjamas, and the future of TV drama. Mark reviews ‘Mr. Burton’ too, as well as ‘Restless’, a psychological thriller about nightmare-inducing noisy neighbours—or at least they would be nightmare-inducing if Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) could get any sleep. Plus, A24’s ‘Death of a Unicorn’—the starry satire where Paul Rudd & Jenna Ortega’s father and daughter accidentally run over a unicorn on the way to visit the billionaire Leopold family (Richard E Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter). Mark’s verdict on all these, plus your correspondence on everything from search engines to The Stath—and memories of the late Val Kilmer. Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Restless Review: 09:35 Toby Jones interview: 31:28 Mr Burton review: 46:11 Laughter Lift: 56:14 Death of a Unicorn review: 01:03:11 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 23 mins
  • Gorgeous George MacKay + Mark vs. The Stath

    Gorgeous George MacKay + Mark vs. The Stath
    Mar 27 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. A smashy crashy action movie double bill on the review slate this week. First up, ‘Novocaine’—the action comedy where Jack Quaid plays Nathan Caine, a man born with a disorder that leaves him unable to feel pain. When the bank he works in is robbed and the girl of his dreams taken hostage, he discovers his physical quirk can be a superpower. But will it make Mark wince? Plus, The Stath returns in ‘A Working Man’--where he’s Jason Statham, doing Stath things. That’s probably all you need to know... but Mark will tell us where it’s at in the Stath stakes. Our guest this week is none other than Gorgeous George MacKay, who plays ‘Son’ in Josh Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic bunker-musical (yes, you read that correctly) ‘The End’. Set 25 years after an environmental catastrophe leaves the earth uninhabitable, MacKay and his ‘Mother’ (Tilda Swinton) and ‘Father (Michael Shannon) carry on a life of luxury and denial in their opulent underground shelter—where Son was born and raised, never having known life before. As Father writes a memoir nobody will read, and the family sing and dance their way through their bizarre existence in Golden-Age style, their brittle harmony is broken by the arrival of an unexpected guest. George tells Simon all about singing, dancing, having the most arthouse onscreen parents evs, and how his own new fatherhood has made him feel differently about the end of the world. Plus more correspondence on Flow from our Latvian listeners, the Milennium Bug from ‘Y2K’ defenders, and of course Snow White--including a message from a young critic giving Mark a run for his money. Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Novocaine Review: 09:04 George MacKay interview: 29:14 The End review: 42:54 Laughter Lift: 51:55 A Working Man Review: 56:13 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Snow White: Mark’s Verdict

    Snow White: Mark’s Verdict
    Mar 20 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. The much anticipated ‘Flow’ is first on the review slate this week. The Oscar-winning animation follows the story of a solitary black cat, displaced from its home by a huge flood in a world now devoid of humans, who finds refuge on a boat with a crew of other animals who must work together to survive. Plus The Alto Knights—the new gangster flick where Robert De Niro as 1950s New York Mafioso Frank Costello squares up to, erm, himself as rival Vito Genovese—and of course Snow White—the live action remake of the 1937 Disney classic. Our guest this week is the fabulously French auteur director Francois Ozon, who’s chatting with Simon about his new film ‘When Autumn Falls’. Set amidst the crisp and golden vistas of Autumnal Burgundy, and featuring lots and lots of extremely chic knitwear, the film follows doting grandmother Michelle—whose family life is thrown into turmoil by an unfortunate accident involving some mushrooms. But was it an accident? All is not as cosy as it seems, and the dodgy fungi aren’t all that’s toxic about this situation... Another week of top takes and high-quality witterings from the Good Doctors—not to mention correspondence from you lot. Don’t miss it! Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Flow Review: 07:52 Francois Ozon Interview: 27:49 When Autumn Falls Review: 39:23 Laughter Lift: 48:40 The Alto Knights Review: 53:31 Snow White Review: 01:00:12 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Ashley Walters & Erin Doherty on Adolescence

    Ashley Walters & Erin Doherty on Adolescence
    Mar 13 2025
    Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. Our guests this week are Ashley Walters and Erin Doherty, stars of astonishing new Netflix series ‘Adolescence’. With each episode shot in one take, it follows the story of a family left in shock when their teenage son is arrested for murder. Doherty and Walters respectively play the psychologist and detective involved in the case, alongside Stephen Graham—who plays the boy’s father and co-created the series alongside Jack Thorne. Erin & Ashley chat to Simon about the technical feat of shooting the film, how absolutely terrifying the internet can be, and how terrifyingly good first-time teenage actor Owen Cooper definitely is. Mark reviews the series, plus all these new releases: ‘Black Bag’, Steven Soderbergh’s seductive spy comedy following Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as married spooks trying to trace a leak whilst navigating a relationship that must have secrets; ‘Opus’, a fandom thriller about the long-awaited and frighteningly cultish return of fictional pop icon Moretti (John Malkovich), and Karan Kandhari’s madcap Mumbai-set black comedy about arranged marriage, ‘Sister Midnight’. Top quality correspondence from you as always, including a right telling off for Mark, news from ‘the internet’s stinkiest it girl’, and a hello to a bit more of Jason Isaacs than we bargained for in this week’s episode of White Lotus.... Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Sister Midnight Review: 08:47 Ashley Walters and Erin Doherty Interview: 25:55 Opus Review: 57:04 Laughter Lift: 50:51 Black Bag Review: 1:05:57 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com 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: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 hr and 19 mins
  • Now and Ben: Bong Joon Ho on Mickey 17, British winters & his iPad obsession

    Now and Ben: Bong Joon Ho on Mickey 17, British winters & his iPad obsession
    Mar 7 2025
    It’s ‘Mickey 17’ release day, and Ben is chatting to Director Bong Joon Ho in today’s episode to celebrate. Starring Robert Pattinson as an expendable worker on a colonized ice planet, the new film from Korean cinema’s modern master sees protagonist Mickey ‘re-printed’ over and over again. Frequently killed in his dangerous daily tasks, ‘human printing technology’ allows Mickey to be simply reborn, with his memories intact. But when he makes it back to base unexpectedly alive one day, he finds he’s already been reprinted—coming face to face with his latest iteration. His girlfriend may be loving it, but the law, upheld by Mark Ruffalo’s villainous Marshall, is not. Ben sits down with the ‘Parasite’ Oscar winner, and his legendary translator Sharon Choi, to unpack this dark comedy sci-fi satire... to name some of the genres this madcap movie might be. Nobody makes them like Director Bong. He reveals the secret real-life location of his ice-planet (complete with mountains of salt standing in for snow), the challenges of working with two Robert Pattinsons, and his obsession with his comfort-blanket iPad. Check out the ‘Now and Ben’ back catalogue for more conversations with cinema’s most exciting creative talents, including four-time Oscar winning director of ‘Anora’, Sean Baker, ‘Peaky Blinders’ writer Steven Knight, and Hollywood royalty Angela Bassett. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    17 mins