hi again, mark. and what do you have for us this week? well, hopefully something for everyone. we have thor: love and thunder, another superhero movie. we have a new version of persuasion coming to netflix. and brian and charles, a robot movie with a difference. i'm intrigued about number three. good. but anyway, we will start with thor. love and thunder, which is the sequel to thor: ragnarok, which i know that you did go and see. i did see that, although... you see, there we are. i had to be reminded that we'd seen it, in a kind of "why are we married?" sort of way, because i didn't remember every detail of the film. "which one is this?" ok, so this is once again directed by taika waititi. so the plot is driven by christian bale�*s gorr the god butcher, who is on a mission to butcher gods, as his name would suggest. he must be stopped. meanwhile, thor is pining forjane foster — natalie portman — who was around a while ago

and went away. now she's come back. she's battling cancer, but she finds herself transformed into the mighty thor thanks to the reconstructed hammer, which was shattered, from which thor is now separated, and now he's confronted with his ex—girlfriend and his ex—hammer. here's a clip. so that's the ex—girlfriend, is it? the old ex—girlfriend. jodie foster. jane foster. the one that got away. that means escaped. yeah, yeah. must be hard for you to see your ex—girlfriend and your ex—hammer hanging out and getting on so well. what you up to, bro? come to daddy. come on! mjolnir! hey, there you are! hey! i was just calling you.

i have no idea what's going on there! no, 0k. well, that gag about his hammer being like his ex—girlfriend and the axe being the new girlfriend, that will go on throughout the whole movie. and i don't mind a couple of gags in a superhero movie. kind of stretches a point when the whole point of the movie is, "oh, look, we're making a superhero movie, but we're making jokes about it, cos we're very, very clever! " and also, if you're going to do the whole film as a kind of humorous gag, make the gags better than, "oh, i need a catchphrase. what's my catchphrase? 0h, here's a catchphrase about a hammer," or a joke which basically draws on the shrieking goats meme that even i think is really old hat. the special effects are terrible — i mean, genuinely... but isn't that the whole point? there are scenes in the movie in which you think, "0k, not only are those people not in the same room, they don't appear to be on the same planet," and the cg looks like it's been done really, really cheaply and badly. the opening scene looks like an outtake from the flower pot men. and then the central, the baddie, the guy — it's christian bale,

looking for all the world like the nun out of the conjuring movies but less scary. so, whole things a gag, and you go, "0k, look, if even you guys aren't interested in taking any of this seriously any more, why should i have sat through days of this stuff, months of this stuff, to get to the point which is, �*0h, it's all a joke, making a superhero movie, that's funny! he had a hammer, now he's got an axe, boom!”' and about halfway through, i lost all patience with it. ijust thought, "this is absolutely terrible." now, i should say for balance, other people feel more fondly towards it and think it's funny. i think this river has run absolutely dry. i thought it was absolutely terrible and really kind of like, "0k, none of us care about this any more. just stop!" right, right, that's it. my other half's going to see that one on her own! you've done it for me there! moving swiftly on.

very different for number two. on netflix, new version of persuasion, the jane austen novel, directed by carrie cracknell, who i know that you're familiar with. big fan of as a theatre director. big fan, yes. so, dakota johnson and cosmojarvis are the perfect couple who were persuaded to part after she was told he's not really good enough for you some years ago. since then, they've been pining for each other. now, they're brought back together, but they are unable to declare their love for each other. this is thought to be austen's most heartfelt novel, and the tone of it is often very interior. the tone of the film is much more flippant. there's lots of — you can even see this from the clip — lots of post—flea bag looking at the camera... yeah! doing monologues to camera, i don't mind that, because when so much of it is to deal with interior thought, you have to find a way of doing that on film. i could have lived with a little less of the... "0k, just cheeky!" it's got the kind of diverse casting that made david copperfield so exciting. and the performances are all really good. cosmojarvis is, i think, a fantastic actor. dakota johnson does fine, wrestles

with the accent a little bit. it feels very surface—y. and jane austen fans got very cross when they saw the trailer, and the trailer is pretty much the tone of the film. the trailer is even more flippant than the film itself, but it's kind of passably entertaining for what it is, with some great performances, but it really doesn't have any depth at all. although, that said, put it next to thor: love and thunder and it's war and peace. it's a masterpiece! i mean, it looks beautiful, but i felt i didn't, yes, didn't know what to say much more, apart from that. that's the thing. when what you say about it is, "it looks beautiful," what that means is... 0k. brian and charles, i have not seen, and i'm so interested, because i'm kind of intrigued by this. so, touchingly absurdist comedy about a lonely man living in a cottage in the welsh valleys.

he makes inventions, and one day, he finds a manikin�*s head and he takes into his inventor�*s workshop with a washing machine and he comes out with a robot that calls itself charles petrescu, with whom he develops a strange and, i have to say, rather wonderfully touching father—son relationship. here's a clip. they're just boiling cabbage and chilling out. can i have some now, please? no, no, no. you wait for dindons. so impatient! what are you doing?! are you dancing? are you dancing for me? that's nice. that's nice! oh, look at those hips! look at those hips! watch me go! so, look, here's the thing. this group out of, firstly, an internet radio show and then a standup act and then a short film in 2017, which is about their relationship.

this guy is so lonely that he kind of builds himself a companion, and the companion looks ridiculous. it's a big box with a small head that calls itself charles. and, ok, on one level, that shouldn't work at all, but it does, and it works for two reasons. firstly, the film isn't about robots. what it's about is companionship and friendship and the universal need to have companionship and friendship. and secondly, an awful lot of it is to do with, look, you either buy into this or you don't, and at first when you look at it, you think, "that is the most absurd robot i'v e v e r se e n p. but then that absurdity becomes childlike, and when charles goes out into the garden, for example, he says, "how far does the outside go? does it go beyond the tree?" and i was thinking of room — you know, the questions that are asked with the young survivor of room. yes. and there is a kind of innocence to it. now, obviously, in expanding it from a short film to a feature film, they have to introduce

an element of danger. there's a kind of local guy who terrorises the community. there's a love interest. and all these things work really well, but what really makes it sing is that it's about when you're so lonely that you literally build a friend. and there are elements of, i think, wizard of oz, elements of the tin man from wizard of oz. if you've seen films like marjorie prime or robot and frank, i think there are elements of that, but it's really unique. it's very, very distinctive. is it quite melancholic? it is. i laughed a lot, but you also feel very moved by it. i mean, this is the weird thing. you sit there watching it, thinking, "i'm genuinely feeling distressed about the fact that he has fallen out with a washing machine with a head on it." and also the way in which the voice is done is kind of like... i don't know whether you remember max headroom. yes, yes! the slightly glitchy voice, talking in slightly broken sentences. and the way in which, halfway through — actually, less than halfway through — he goes from being a child to being

a stroppy adolescent teenager, and suddenly the washing machine with a head on it is going, "well, i'm going to go out, i'm going to go to the park without you!", i thought it worked really well. i think you'd really love it. so touching and very funny and very, very moving. and it's not about robots. "it's not about robots!" and best out. i don't even need to ask you what your best out is. i know this. i need to ask you, because you've seen elvis. we all know that ijust think it's a work of art. i loved it visually. i loved it, loved it, loved it, and i thought the first... this is a bit like saying it looks good. well, no, betterthan that, no, better than that. we're not quite back to persuasion. i thought it was stunning visually and all the things i love about baz luhrmann. and the first hour went in the blink of an eye, in a good way. by the end, i won't lie, i did say to someone, "oh, it's too long. it's 2:40 and i'm afraid ijust think it's too long," because it is sort of the same thing over and overfor 2:40. that's how it felt. and i think... did i come at it from a more journalistic perspective? but i wanted to know a lot more about the tom hanks character, because there's something

so peculiar about tom parker... colonel tom parker, who is neither a colonel, nora tom, nora parker. exactly, but a lot of those questions about him don't get answered. there's a brief reference to the fact that he doesn't have a passport — "is he really american?" — all those sort of things, but there was so much, i was going, "well, tell me more! this is really interesting!" and you neverfind out. so i struggled with that. i would say to counter that, it's amazing that they got as much of elvis's life as they did into 2:20, because elvis's life is clearly event—filled. i thought that they did the �*50s, �*60s and �*70s as first act, second act, third act of a kind of shakespearean tragedy rather well. yes, yes. i think there are shakespearean elements in that character of colonel tom parker. i think you really get a sense of the relationship being built on duplicity and complicity. after they strike the deal on the ferris wheel, elvis does agree. he says, "ok, i'm going to make you a star," and elvis says 0k. and it was always a thing

that he did do that. he did tonnes of other terrible things at the same time, but i think that tom hanks doesn't fall into just playing him as a villain. i mean, you can read journalistically about colonel tom parker, but the question about the way in which their relationship works, i think the film sustains it, because you never really... it's notjust like, "well, he's terrible and he's bad and elvis is good." i think it's much more complex... it is more complex than that. i suppose i wanted a few questions answered, but there are lots and lots of things i love about it, i love about it. i probablyjust don't love it as much as you. but that would be hard. yeah, and also i'd say, sanjeev bhaskar, who is a huge elvis fan, loves it as well. i'm starting to think that the more you love elvis, the more you'd love elvis the film, which... i thought the opposite would be true. i thought the less you knew, the better it would be, but i actually think it is a film for elvis fans. but that's no bad thing. 0k, quick thought about streaming? very quickly, this much i know to be true, which is a musical documentary, nick cave

and warren ellis — whose work i absolutely love — when it was in cinemas, i said i will mention it when it comes to streaming services. it's just come to mubi. watch it. it is just magnificent. the music is great, it's emotional, it's profound. again, i think you'll love it. mark, thank you very much. good to see you. and enjoy your cinema—going. see you next time. bye— bye. hello. with high pressure moving in across the uk, lots of dry weather this weekend. feeling very warm in the sunshine, turning hot in places on sunday. 0vernight, there will be some cloud running in towards northern scotland, with a few showers around, an area of cloud through northern ireland, parts of northwest england. it slips south into wales and the west midlands. it will have a few light showers associated with it and temperatures in the mid to low teens as saturday begins. if you are starting cloudy, wales, western england, that slips away southwards by the end of the morning, taking any light showers with it. outbreaks of rain in northern scotland will turn heavier later in the day where it's

still quite breezy. and although there will be quite a bit of cloud running into northern ireland, there may be a bit of hazy brightness at times and temperatures actually, through parts of england and wales that had some heat on friday, will be a tad cooler on saturday before heating up again on sunday. looking like a fine saturday evening away from northern scotland. warmth being felt more widely on sunday. and the hotspots in the south getting into the low 30s on monday and tuesday.