You Were Never Really Here, Mom and Dad and Susan Sarandon Film 2018

Hello there, this is Film 2018,

and I'm Antonia Quirke.

We are live, so tweet us.

Tonight we're talking about stardom

and the golden age of Hollywood.

Who do you think personifies

the classic Hollywood star - Gable?

Bogart? Hepburn?

Details on the screen, now. Coming

up tonight... Director Lynne Ramsay

returns with the harrowing three

like You Were Never Really Here

starring Joaquin Phoenix. One thing

we are never short of these days is

a new Nicolas Cage movie, only this

time he is more cagey than ever in

horror thriller Mom and Dad. And we

chat to one Hollywood legend, Susan

Sarandon about another the Golden

age superstar Hedy Lamarr.

It isn't

a prerequisite in Hollywood to be

smart.

Plus we take a look at

British wrestling comedy Walk Like a

Panther. You can't say it's not an

eclectic mix.

I'm joined by the

brilliant Ellen E Jones

and the ferociously well informed

Empire Magazine's top man,

Chris Hewitt to make sense of it

all...

Award season is over, hurray!

Yes.

Is it over? Am I hallucinating?

Let's start the new film year with a

good one.

First up is the new film

from unclassifiable,

never boring British director,

Lynne Ramsay.

Her follow up to 2011's

We Need to Talk About Kevin

is You Were never Really Here -

an equally dark tale

starring Joaquin Phoenix.

He's Joe, a military veteran

teetering on the brink,

in a role that won him

Best Actor at Cannes.

Let's take a look...

I'm going to ask you some questions.

How many are they?

One guy's at the

front door. Second lie on the top

floor.

It's done.

It's a new joke

story.

Why am I here?

Albert Votto,

his daughter has been missing the

weekend.

He's an enforcer.

They say

you are brutal.

I can be.

Beyond

that it's something much more. I

think it's about a man having a kind

of midlife crisis, in a way.

Do you

have kids, John?

No.

I've heard of

these places. If she's there, I will

get her.

It is based on a novella. I

loved it had those elements, moved

fast and I didn't know what to

expect. I said to John, I'm going to

do it in my own direction, do it my

way, because I've never done that

sort of collaboration. He said, I

just want it keeps that kind of

momentum I had. That was something I

wanted to do.

The heart of it was this really

interesting character. Joaquin came

late into the frame, but when he did

he was like a member of the crew. He

said he understood less than 50% of

what I said. There was a kind of

exciting energy and set because so

compelling to watch another does the

same thing twice that gives you so

many options in an edit create this

character with many dimensions.

He's not the knight in shining

armour, a fallible man. He's not the

six-pack. He's kind of going to seed

and bringing all these things in to

make him rich were really to me and

him. I grew up on Hitchcock. My mum

and my dad were film buffs. My mum

watched classic movies all the time,

thrillers. Yeah, who knows, I

suppose everything is a remix.

Three... Two... One...

Close your

eyes.

Not an easy film.

No, but a great

one. I kind of expected, because

it's Lynne Ramsay unconventional

form but a very conventional

thriller storyline in a way. I found

myself initially at least wanting a

bit more detail from the plot,

wanted to know more about this guy's

back story. It only slowly came to

me this is what Lynne Ramsay is all

about and the scarcity of the detail

is what makes what is there so

incredibly evocative. Jelly beans,

hammers, wallpaper... These are

random word to people that haven't

seen the film but I know you guys

know. What she does by depriving you

of repeated details of things that

make things too obvious to make sure

you are right inside this guy Joe's

head. You can't get up in the

quality of the event, you have to be

there in his psyche.

Grimness and

transcendence are the keynotes?

Absolutely. Joe is a guy at the end

of his tether, he's looking at more

from life. When you meet him on his

suicidal, on the verge of ending it

all when he wants something more. He

want something more from the

grimness of darkness. Lynne Ramsay

is great at those bass notes. Action

sequences in another movie, this

movie is so close on the surface to

being taken for John Wick chapter

three, and I am for those movies, I

love those movies but she is not

interested in that. She's looking at

diving below the surface and finding

something new about this guy. Debbie

had a really style speech... I don't

know who you are, I don't know what

you want but I will find you you,

you wouldn't understand a word he

says. It's a very different

performance, a different kind of

quote unquote action hero in this.

Phoenix is 43 now and in the absence

of the late great Philip Seymour

Hoffman, James Gamble Feeney and

Daniel Day Lewis apparently now

retired, the mantle of our greatest

screen actor is out there to be

grabbed. It might well be Phoenix

and on this evidence it might be

him.

Certainly with Lynne Ramsay's

helps. One of the things I love

about this film is how it reverses

that traditional direct use gender

role, the way is the other way round

here. He's brilliant in it. It's a

great physical performance. He has

this saltiness which also seems

natural and vulnerable at the same

time. You can see the flashes of the

little boy he once was. At the same

time he has this murderous rage.

Where do you think this sits in

Lynne Ramsay's filmography? Would

say she is someone that would resist

the word career being applied to her

filmography. It's more a body of

work she is going for. It strikes me

she's the man who said I won't do

that all that but I will do that.

You never know what to expect but

there are so many -- Lynne Ramsay

characteristics. You find everything

you need to know about his mother in

a 42nd sequence which is absolutely

fantastic. We should also say Jonny

Greenwood's score is so good.

So

good. Like the last great Radiohead

album. It is a really great school.

I think it is up there with the best

of Lynne Ramsay's work. Weirdly

commercial and non-commercial at the

same time and she's not really

interested in conventional action

beats. There are sequences in this

movie that would be unconventional,

the corridor fight in Taken four or

something but Joaquin Phoenix takes

apart a guy with a hammer, very

brutal, but shot on CCTV cameras. I

love those little notes. She does

want to present things to do that

you've seen before.

You might think

you've seen before the taxi driver

element but it's bold how in

conversation with the taxi driver

the doing something different.

To

take on something like taxi driver

takes balls.

There is a real

tenderness to it, the early scenes

with his mother, without those

scenes it would be a very different

film. Real moments of beauty.

And

can I say, as a person of a certain

guys, great to see Joaquin Phoenix

walking the dad board.

Really worth

seeing. From a film that had a seven

minute standing ovation to Cannes to

zombies.

What are they?

Mom & Dad - a horror comedy

starring the one and only

Nicolas Cage with a performance

dialled down to 11 in this tale

of when the sacred bond of parental

love gets frayed...

Can I go to a movie with O'Reilly

tonight? With Riley? Your

grandparents are coming to dinner

tonight, remember.

Take my advice,

don't ever have kids!

What's the

rush today? It's like...

What's

going on? Is that McKenna's ma'am?

Multiple reports are coming in as

parents owe murdering their own

children.

Listen to me, you have to

get out of the house before ma'am

and before dad get home.

Believe it

or not, I used to be young ones as

well and not all that long ago, by

the way. And I think about how

things were in my day. But now, the

world you kids are living in, the

things you see on the Internet.

Things I only saw in magazines.

No!

And the expectations that must come

with that.

Dad?

Oh yeah, you put your right foot in,

you take your right foot out, you do

the hokey Cokie...

Stop!

Yes, mum's here.

You're going to open this door! This

was a really great idea, honey.

I

forgot, your parents.

That was

tonight?

Nicholas, Nicholas. Chris, we like

to be clear on this programme. Is

this a zombie movie or what?

It is

not a zombie movie.

In what way is

it not?

Zombies are creatures that

are dead and rise from the grave.

These guys, they are just infected,

just a little bit sick, a little

under the weather. Same thing as 28

days later. Sorry, that is not a

zombie film.

You can imagine the

animated pitch for this, to fix...

It felt to me like a sequence, raw

action sequence after another.

There

are absolutely moments of six fun in

this which go to the movies for. But

yeah, the things it does well for

me, it's not a zombie film but also

not quite anything else. Doesn't

seem to define the rules within the

film. There is an issue with static

on the telly that seems to be

sending the parents crazy but no one

else crazy. They're not just killing

therein children but they seem to

want to kill everyone. I was

confused.

A pseudo- zombie movie?

Anything with anything like this

going on is satirising something.

I'm not sure what he was satirising.

Satirising parenthood, suburbia? Are

the young children hopeless, useless

consumers question at what's running

through the movie's veins?

I don't

think much, but I enjoyed it. The

director Brian Taylor, who

co-directed both cranks, action

classics I would bat for all day

long. He also directed Nicolas Cage

in ghost Rider. I wouldn't bat for

that one. Frenetic action sequences,

tries to undercut it nice and then

-- now and then with some music.

I

like the music.

It's fine, it's OK,

but ultimately I don't think he is

saying much. A nice spread in the

movie when some how next page gets

infected and they begin to repair

the marital discord about.

That's

nice.

It doesn't go anywhere. The

director used to be a camera

operator. Quite visceral, in amongst

the fray and that is quite

appealing. But can we praise Nicolas

Cage?

All day long, twice on Sunday.

When he is dialled up what is he

saying, I'm I realising everything,

enjoying me, and you can't help but

do that.

Yes.

I love Nick Cage, con

air is my favourite movie from

Nicolas Cage. I kind of thing... I

know this will be unpopular, I never

realised it is possible for him to

be too over the top. In this film he

saw the start that full throttle and

accelerates from there. For the full

unleashed Nick Cage experience you

need him to be at least initially

leashed.

We are always aware with

him as an actor that he has a movie

like the bad Lieutenant Colonel, he

can be more lyrical, he can dial it

down. That is within him. I think he

is like the modern-day... Amazing

films and then 80 forgettable ones.

He's coming up to 100 movies now.

This is true, most of which sadly

forgettable and most which recently

have gone straight to video. This is

great because if there is -- there

is a cinematic release for this one.

I love Nick Cage, and the wild ABCD

E guy. I thought for the most part

he had gone, recently he's been

phoning in with some performances

just moping around with his big moon

face.

Real face? He'd be horrified

to hear that.

He's engaged, engage

the cage.

In the 1940s, actress Hedy Lamarr

was marketed as the world's

most beautiful woman -

a title she'd come to despise.

Frustrated by the limits

of a Hollywood career, she did not,

like many other diversifying actors,

invent a line of perfumes

or publish a book of photographs.

Instead, she invented

the technology behind wifi.

Now another Hollywood immortal,

Susan Sarandon, has produced

a feature documentary

about the remarkable Lamarr's life.

I went to meet her...

Hedy Lamarr, screen goddess by day,

inventor by night. Quite a story. It

is one that has enthralled actress

Susan Sarandon. When did you first

become aware of her extraordinary

extracurricular activities?

When I

started the documentary, we were not

sure we would be able to prove that

she actually had invented.

Inventing

was her hobby. She not only had a

complete inventing table set up in

her house, but Howard Hughes gave

her a small version of the set of

equipment that she had in the

trailer where she stayed in between

takes for her motion pictures.

There

are some people that just didn't

want to believe that someone that

beautiful, a woman that beautiful,

could have done that. It seems too

preposterous.

Not only was there the bias in the

scientific community, and the world

in general, a beautiful woman

contributing to science, but then

there was the problem of ageism in

Hollywood.

Well, Hedy Lamarr, she was at her

most famous at a time when

Hollywood, the machine, they were

described as racehorses,

amphetamines to get them going

during the day, sleeping pills at

night, 18 hour days. The good old

days! Do you recognise that image of

Hollywood does that sound like hell

to you?

You exchange your personal

life for this protection of the

studio. People literally got away

with murder. What did they give in

exchange for that? The studio pretty

much controlled their life for the

duration of the contract. So much of

making someone into an icon has to

do with how they are packaged. They

had a better system of that, I

think.

Thinking about Lamrr and the

beauty tag, and the sexy tag that

has been levelled at you, is that a

stultifying thing?

Well, I was never

called the most beautiful woman in

the world, I saw myself as a

character actor. There are two kinds

of actor, you have people like De

Niro, Sean Penn, I think of myself

as that. That is probably why I have

lasted, playing character parts, and

they don't have identifiable, really

strong personality that is packaged

and sold, like George Clooney. But

people will not accept George

Clooney playing a bad guy, probably.

In a career spanning almost 50

years, Sarandon herself has

defiantly escaped pigeonholing.

Roles in Thelma & Louise, The

Witches of Eastwick, Atlantic City

and Dead Man Walking, she has

remained very much her own person.

So many of the films you have been

involved in half the event films,

inasmuch as...

It's crazy.

The

conversation goes on for about a

year. Are you ever aware in the

moment that it is going to be that,

or is it always a surprise?

We

didn't with Thelma & Louise. We were

doing a cowboy movie with women on

trucks instead of guys on horses.

I

don't think so.

Ridley Scott is a genius. It became

so iconic, I think, because he put

us in this landscape that John Wayne

had been part of.

You choose things that the director

feels passionate about because that

is really important. Bull Durham was

like that, I love Bull Durham.

In

another lifetime I was probably

Catherine the great Francis of

Assisi.

What was that character

like, the baseball fan who offers

her body and soul to one player. How

did that character read on the page?

Great. That is why I jumped through

hoops to get it. Nobody in the

studio, they didn't want it. She was

smart and funny, she was in charge

and did not have to die because of

it at the end. Kevin was so hot.

Sarandon may have enjoyed such a

variety of roles, but as the

documentary reveals, back in the

40s, things were not as easy for

Hedy Lamarr, who eventually died

alone and a recluse. Ultimately, do

you see her as an inspirational

figure or is it more of a cautionary

tale?

I think both. Mostly an

inspiration. I think it is

inspirational for young women to

understand that they don't have to

choose between being beautiful, sexy

and smart. Was it a cautionary tale?

Yeah, because ultimately I don't

think she had a very gentle last

act. There is a transition that

happens for everyone, if you are

lucky enough to live past 50, 60,

70. I'm going to be 72. It can be a

really interesting time. But for

Hedy it was the end of everything.

Yeah, I guess it is a cautionary

tale, although we are not against

what the most beautiful woman in the

world was up against.

Susan

Sarandon, thank you very much.

72? Impossible to believe! We asked

you on Twitter for your top star of

Hollywood's golden age. Thomas says

Mary Pickford, one of the most

powerful women in Hollywood scene to

this day and a trained trailblazing

producer. Another, John Wayne for

action, Laurel and Hardy for comedy.

There is a great story, John Wayne

was discovered carrying an armchair

over his head on the set of a movie,

the director said, part that man on

film! -- put that man.

Our last film is Walk Like

a Panther, a British comedy set

in the world of wrestling,

grunting, grit and lycra...

Nothing meant more than being in the

ring with the Panthers. My wrestling

family. The 1980s, an audience of

millions.

Now we are pulling pints, and I

wouldn't change a thing.

Shame,

really, that this is to be my final

pint in here.

What is he talking

about?

They are going to close.

They

can't be serious? If that pub

closes, we are left with nothing, so

we have to do the greatest show of

our lives. It's not going to be

easy, we have to turn the clock back

30 years. You look ridiculous!

Ziggy.

What is that shortfall?

What

are you short for!?

It's going to go

viral.

Not me, I am clean as a

whistle!

Now we've got the chance to

make this a fight that will never be

forgotten.

This is our moment.

Watch

and learn!

Are they swollen?

I don't

think they are swollen, they are

still very little.

Keep wafting.

I've got my site back, that is a

bonus.

Time to walk like the

Panthers that you are! I bloody love

wrestling!

I love you, son.

wrestling!

I love you, son.

Eh?

We

have come a long way from Local

Hero. Full Monty, with wrestling?

When you set yourself that low a bar

and still don't reach it, David Webb

problem. Thing I find impressive is

how many aspects of it terrible. The

costumes are terrible and

distracting, the soundtrack is a

horrible litany of large rock that

nobody should have to listen to, and

yet we do. The editing is

yet we do. The editing is sub Lock

Stock, freeze frame. Don't get me

started on the script.

60 speaking

parts, 200 extras, that must be

applauded?

Yes, more than Avengers.

60 speaking parts, just two jokes,

by my reckoning. A strange film. I

don't think it is so terrible as

some of the really low points of

British comedy, the likes of The Six

Lives Of The Potato Men, Mrs Brown's

Boys The Movie. It is not a bad

film. It desperately wants to be

likeable but it can't make up its

mind what it wants to be. Is it a

movie that is morning a lost Britain

that never existed, does it have a

social conscience, a father-son

story, or a comedy about wrestlers

that over the hill? It doesn't

really decide.

Movies like this push

the pantomime tone to such a pitch,

even a lovely actor like Stephen

Graham, even an actor like that,

begins to not be able to pick up a

pint and drink it in a way that

seems human and normal. It almost

begins to feel like Kabuki.

That is

what I find most unforgivable, it

makes good actors look really bad.

Stephen Tompkinson, who I usually

like is terrible, everybody is

terrible in it. It reflects badly on

their past careers. I am watching

Dave Johns and thinking, was Daniel

Blake as good as I remember it,

because he is terrible in this.

Just

his second film, working with a very

improvisational technique, with a

script, he does have a very naive

quality. I'm not sure that works?

No, he seems to be in a slightly

different movie to everybody else.

Stephen Graham seems to be a

different movie to everybody else.

Different parts of Great Britain,

never mind movies!

The accidents,

some Geordie, some Scouse,

Mancunian?

Doesn't come together.

The Full Monty was not my favourite

movie, but it had a beating heart,

it was sincere. The director of this

went to see Big Daddy wrestling when

he was 12 and it went in deep when

he read interviews. I'm not sure...

Film of the week? We are out of

time!

The wonderful Clive Anderson

is here next week, but we'll leave

you with the Chilean winner

of Best Foreign Film

at this year's Oscars,

A Fantastic Woman.

Starring rising 28-year-old

trans actor Daniela Vega,

the film is the story of a singer,

Marina.

Following her boyfriend's death,

she is forced to confront the family

that won't accept her

for what she is, which is -

like Hedy Lemarr,

Susan Sarandon and ...

Ellen E Jones - sorry Chris!

A fantastic woman.

Good night!

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