Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the legacy of Rashomon, directed by Japanese cinematic master Akira Kurosawa. Mark examines Kurosawa's enduring screen legacy and why he is one of the most influential directors in film history. He talks to director Asif Kapadia, who is co-programmer of the BFI's upcoming Kurosawa retrospective. They discuss Kurosawa's filmography and what makes him one of the greatest directors of all time as well as Kurosawa's influence on his own work. Mark then speaks t...
Dec 30, 2022•42 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore how a couple of Christmas TV traditions have developed over the years - the made-for-TV Christmas romcom and the festive ghost story. Inspired by The Hallmark Channel's first ever gay Christmas film, Ellen speaks to made-for-TV film aficionado Linda Holmes. They discuss what The Hallmark Channel is and why it has taken until 2022 for the channel to feature a gay lead in one of its films. Ellen also speaks to critic Caspar Salmon about what the recent increa...
Dec 23, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode investigate whodunnits and murder mysteries on screen, ahead of the streaming release of new Knives Out mystery Glass Onion. Mark talks to Glass Onion director Rian Johnson about why whodunnits are so enduring, who left him star-struck on set, and the classic films and books that inspired his new mystery. And Ellen takes a deep dive into the camp 1973 cult whodunnit The Last of Sheila, written by actor Anthony Perkins and composer Stephen Sondheim following their o...
Dec 16, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode revisit Titanic in its 25th anniversary year, looking at James Cameron's epic blockbuster as both a disaster film and a story of immigration. Ellen explores the forgotten tales of immigration onboard the Titanic, talking to journalist Ray Hanania about the Syrian refugee stories only hinted at in the 1997 film. She also speaks to Sally El-Hosaini, director of new Netflix film The Swimmers. They discuss how immigration is depicted on screen and how Sally wanted to p...
Dec 09, 2022•43 min
From the melodramatic gestures of silent movies to the immersive, intricate performances made possible by 21st century technology, acting styles have gone in and out of fashion. But no acting technique is more mythologised or misunderstood than The Method. Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones are getting under the skin of method acting to find out what it is, how it changed the face of American cinema, and why it’s not to blame for some truly weird on set behaviour. Ellen talks to writer and historian...
Sep 30, 2022•43 min
Inspired by the record-breaking success of huge action epic RRR, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the global popularity of contemporary Indian cinema, with the help of some of its key players. Ellen takes a closer look at the box office smash that is RRR. She talks to the film's director SS Rajamouli, who is responsible for three of the top five highest-grossing Indian films of all time. They discuss Rajamouli's role in the Pan-Indian Cinema movement and why he thinks RRR has become such a...
Sep 23, 2022•43 min
Ellen and Mark take a turn into the exclusive gated community of housewives in cinema and television, ahead of the release of new film Don't Worry Darling. Ellen investigates why we're so drawn to housewives on screen, from original housewife satire The Stepford Wives to global reality TV phenomenon The Real Housewives, with the help of critic Anna Bogutskaya and Real Housewives exec producer Andy Cohen. And Mark celebrates director Todd Haynes' cult 1995 film Safe, starring Julianne Moore in he...
Sep 16, 2022•43 min
Ellen and Mark examine the legacy of the quintessential blonde bombshell ahead of the release of Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde. Mark speaks to Blonde’s director Andrew Dominik and US pop culture critic Angelica Jade Bastien about the very different personal connections both feel to Monroe and the reasons for her enduring star power. Meanwhile, Ellen explores some of the bombshells compared to Monroe on this side of the Atlantic. She speaks to Diana Dors biographer Anna Cale about how the label of...
Sep 09, 2022•42 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate 40 years of Film4 with a quartet of famous film-makers who have been part of its rich history and legacy. Founded in 1982, Film4 soon became an iconic and vital voice in British film. It has fostered a reputation for producing gritty, diverse stories from unheard voices as well as championing the more leftfield and experimental side of British cinema. Ellen looks at Film4's origins in conversation with Stephen Frears who directed the very first Film4 film...
Sep 02, 2022•43 min
To mark the 80th birthday of one of cinema’s most enigmatic and polarising characters, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones explore the work, myth and legacy of Werner Herzog. An encounter with Herzog is always compelling, and sometimes risky. When Mark interviewed him in the Hollywood Hills in 2006, the director was shot - an incident he dismissed as ‘not significant’. From the safe distance of a few thousand miles away, Mark and Werner reconnect (over Zoom) to address the conspiracy theory that the ...
Aug 26, 2022•43 min
From the Old Testament to Captain Underpants, via Jane Austen and pulp fiction, the relationship between the page and the screen is unbreakable. But the journey from book to screenplay can be a long and winding road that is sometimes paved with gold, and often filled with detours and potholes. To get under the skin of literary adaptations, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones decamped to the Hay literary festival where the book world’s biggest names gather to enjoy discussion and sharing ideas. Cressi...
Aug 19, 2022•42 min
Fifty years ago a break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington DC caused a cover-up that ultimately cost Richard Nixon the presidency. From the moment the hearings into the scandal were televised, there has been a massive audience for all things Watergate. There have been feature films, plays, podcasts, online comedy series, documentaries and TV dramas. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode investigate the lasting legacy of Watergate on screen. Actor and comedian Harry Shearer has been playing Trick...
Aug 12, 2022•43 min
Ahead of Jamaican Independence Day, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode immerse themselves in one of the island’s greatest exports, The Harder They Come, marking the film’s 50th anniversary. The Harder They Come was a sensation, but it took a while for its vibrations to be heard around the world. In 1972, the premiere in Kingston brought the area to a complete standstill. Outside of Jamaica, the film helped introduce reggae music to millions, thanks to its Jimmy Cliff-driven soundtrack. Exploring the...
Aug 05, 2022•43 min
Ellen and Mark discuss the enduring screen presence of Elvis Presley, from Love Me Tender to Wild at Heart. One of the most hotly anticipated films this summer is Elvis - director Baz Luhrmann’s biopic chronicling the singer’s career and complicated relationship with manager Colonel Tom Parker. Committed Presley fan Mark discusses Elvis’ prolific acting career with a couple of fellow obsessives - the actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, and journalist and screenwriter Ray Connolly. And Ellen explores how The ...
May 27, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore big budget flops, from Ishtar to Cats. Ishtar – writer and director Elaine May's huge budget comedy starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman – was released in May 1987. The film, about a pair of incompetent singer-songwriters who become entangled in a CIA plot in north Africa, tanked at the box office and ultimately put paid to May's directing career. In the process the word Ishtar became a joke - that title alone symbolising Hollywood hubris at its worst....
May 23, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate one of the great doyennes of Hollywood in what would have been her centenary year. Cultural historian Christopher Frayling joins Mark to revisit the rare career retrospective interview he conducted with Day in 1989. And Ellen speaks to Queer cinema expert Emma Smart and singer Rufus Wainwright about the importance of both Doris Day and Judy Garland, who would also have turned 100 in 2022, to LGBTQIA+ communities. Plus actor and writer Tracy-Ann Oberman sh...
May 13, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the history of indigenous and native people on screen. In 1922, silent film Nanook of the North was released. Written, directed and filmed by a white man, the docudrama claimed to show the daily life of an Inuit hunter and his family in the Canadian Arctic - but all wasn't quite as it seemed. A century on, Screenshot explores the representation of indigenous people on screen, and who gets to tell their stories, with film critic Jesse Wente who founded the I...
May 06, 2022•42 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore cinema's steamiest genre - the erotic thriller - 30 years on from the release of Basic Instinct. Mark reappraises recent best director Oscar-winner Jane Campion's oft-overlooked 2003 erotic thriller In The Cut, with the help of the film's author and co-screenwriter Susanna Moore and the film critic Maria San Filippo. And Ellen speaks to film historian Karina Longworth and intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien about the highs and lows of the erotic thriller, and ...
Apr 29, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the influence of David Simon and The Wire, as the Baltimore-set opus celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Beginning his career as a police reporter for the much respected Baltimore Sun, David Simon eventually became disillusioned with changes being made at the paper and spent a year embedded with the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit. That resulted in the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which became the basis for the TV show Ho...
Apr 22, 2022•43 min
Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones explore Christianity on screen, from faith films to nunsploitation. Mark speaks to priest Father Peter Malone and controversial director Paul Verhoeven about two very different cinematic depictions of the crucifixion - Pasolini's Gospel According to Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. And Ellen takes a look at nuns in the movies, from The Bells of St Mary's to The Devils, with the help of film critics Sister Rose Pacatte and Pamela Hutchinson. Scree...
Apr 15, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode jump on board to explore the role of trains on our screens. This week sees the release of Compartment No 6 - a strange and touching romance set on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Trains have played a recurring role in film, right from the inception of the genre. Mark is joined by silent film specialist Bryony Dixon and composer Neil Brand to talk about the appeal of the railway for the pioneers of cinema. And Ellen talks to Compartment No 6 director Juho Kuosmanen and ...
Apr 08, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore hoaxes, fakes and pranks on screen for April Fool's Day. Mark is joined by documentarian Morgan Neville and Anna Bogutskaya for a deep dive into Orson Welles’ 1973 docudrama about forgers and fakery, F for Fake. And Ellen looks back at small screen hoaxes, from the 1970s sci-fi mockumentary Alternative 3 to the terrifying BBC1 Halloween drama Ghostwatch via a sprinkling of Noel's House Party, with the help of writers David Ambrose and Mark Gatiss. Also, cri...
Apr 01, 2022•43 min
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is released in the UK on 31 January. This feature length documentary provides a rare window into the first years of the ground-breaking children’s TV show. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode embrace the nostalgia of the television that shaped their childhoods. Mark explores the impact of Sesame Street with Street Gang’s director, Marilyn Agrelo. He also reflects on one of the UK’s most popular children’s TV programmes, Play School, with one of its beloved pre...
Jan 28, 2022•43 min
The adrenaline-inducing film Boiling Point is out in cinemas and online. Shot in a single take on a single night at a London restaurant, the movie has inspired Ellen and Mark to take a closer look at one-shot films and those that appear to be. What does the one-shot do for a movie? Is it any more than showing off? Boiling Point stars Stephen Graham as an under-pressure chef whose life is unravelling over a busy night in the restaurant. Ellen talks to director Philip Barantini, himself a former c...
Jan 21, 2022•42 min
Film noir Nightmare Alley is released next week. It's director Guillermo del Toro's remake of the 1947 film - a baroque tale of carnival hucksters, psychiatrists and betrayal. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the connections sparked by Nightmare Alley and film noir. Mark speaks to Guillermo del Toro about his five favourite classic noir films, including Fallen Angel and Born to Kill. And Ellen looks at how neo-noir movies subverted and reframed the genre from the 1970s onwards, with the he...
Jan 14, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore David Bowie's impact on cinema. Musician, actor, performer and all-round icon David Bowie would have turned 75 on Saturday 8th January. To mark the occasion, the British Film Institute have launched a month-long season celebrating his work in film and television, from The Man Who Fell To Earth to Labyrinth. Ellen talks to V&A curator Victoria Broackes and BFI programmer Rhidian Davis about Bowie's love of cinema and his performances on screen. And Mark ...
Jan 07, 2022•43 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore New Year’s Eve on film and TV, peering into the dark and the dawn either side of the stroke of midnight. Mark looks back at director Kathryn Bigelow’s controversial 1995 film Strange Days, a dark tech-thriller set on New Year’s Eve 1999, and coursing with millennial anxieties. He revisits an interview with Bigelow recorded on the film’s release, and speaks to Strange Days star Ralph Fiennes about how it resonates over 25 years on. And on a lighter note, Ell...
Dec 31, 2021•42 min
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore festive screen favourites for Christmas Eve. It’s the 75th anniversary of a beloved film that has come to dominate our screens over the holiday period - director Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Like James Stewart’s George Bailey, who is shown what the world would look like without him by guardian angel Clarence, Ellen learns what subsequent screen culture would look like without It’s A Wonderful Life. Cultural historian and fellow fan Christopher Frayl...
Dec 24, 2021•43 min
Crowd pleasers Squid Game and Bridgerton could not be further apart in subject matter, but they are currently the two most streamed programmes in Netflix’s history. We get under the bonnet and behind the mask of these phenomena by examining their precedents on both the big and small screen, tracing how previous works have covered similar themes in so many different ways. Ellen looks at the death-match films from cinema history that form the DNA of Squid Game, with the help of The Purge creator J...
Dec 17, 2021•43 min
France’s entry for this year's Oscars is the extraordinary Titane. Beginning as a Cronenbergian body horror movie, Titane constantly plays with genre, while simultaneously dealing with themes of grief, gender identity, and queerness. The film also features scenes depicting mechanophilia - a sexual attraction to machines. Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones explore the multiple cinematic connections and influences that make up Titane’s DNA. Mark speaks to the film’s director Julia Ducournau, whose pre...
Dec 10, 2021•42 min
