The Witterlist - 9th February 2018

Welcome to The Witterlist, your weekly roundup of all the highlights from the BBC’s Flagship Film Programme on Radio Five (aka BBC 5 Live).

If this whets your appetite for even more from Mark and Simon, don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast for all this plus a plethora of pod-centric extras: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvdrj/episodes/downloads

It was a jam-packed show, with Afrofuturism, boats, trains, an animated mummy and a little light S&M. All that and we even managed to fit in a few film reviews, too.

There were two interviews on today’s show and first up we have Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz talking about The Mercy, the true story of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst and his attempt to circumnavigate the globe singlehanded.

Rachel plays Crowhurst’s wife, Clare, and Colin plays the man himself. It was a challenging role that needed him to play someone becoming increasingly detached from reality.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also had Lupita Nyong’o in to talk about Marvel’s latest blockbuster, Black Panther. Lupita plays Nakia, a former lover of the titular superhero and a spy for the fictional African nation of Wakanda.

Lupita stressed the radical nature of the film, including a diverse pan-African cast brought together to tell a story rooted in African culture.

For such an extraordinary story, Mark found The Mercy to be a surprisingly ordinary film, despite fine performances from Firth and Weisz.

Much more satisfying was Black Panther, a film that manages to be both a cultural landmark and a fantastically entertaining movie in its own right, with characters and relationships that kept Mark gripped throughout– even through those signature Marvel third-act battle sequences.

Fifty Shades Freed is the gripping (?) conclusion to this trilogy of erotic (??) thrillers (???). Who knew something blue could be so vanilla?

Clint Eastwood’s latest true-life tale dramatises the attempted terrorist attack on a French train in 2015, which was foiled by three American tourists. Those same Americans play themselves here, a risk that might have paid off in a better film.

Tad The Lost Explorer And The Secret Of King Midas is as good as its title is short.

Next week we have super-subs Edith Bowman and Clarisse Loughrey ready to step in with a double-bill of brilliant guests: Guillermo Del Toro and Saoirse Ronan. It's almost enough to make Mark and Simon stick around, if only it weren't for Mark's definitely legitimate need for a holiday...