Nish Kumar - Films Of The Year 2022 (2 of 2) • Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein #245

them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life through the films that meant the most of them. But not this week. This week it's the when you think about it. Way ahead of schedule Films of the Year twenty twenty two Special Part two with Mister nish Kuma. You can watch all of Shrinking on Apple tv Plus and ted Lasso Season three episodes now one to seven on Apple tv Plus. Watch them, love Them, Thank you,

nice one, Good luck to you. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com Forward slash break Golds team, where you get all the extra videos, you get secrets, you get all the stuff you don't get on this one. You get all sorts of things. Just check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward slash Break Golds team. So if you are new to the podcast and you missed last week's Every year, me and this Kuma do our films of the year. We never do them in December because we haven't seen them all and we want

to make sure we do this properly. This edition is way ahead of schedule. We left last week on a massive cliffhanger. I believe the question was what was the sexiest film of last year? Ready to find out?

was brilliant. I saw in the Imax in the Lincoln Center, in the AMC and the Lincoln Center of New and like I saw it with my friend and Fred the podcast where as about FAO, And at one point she turned to me and said, this is the greatest piece of cinema of all time.

sometimes you can just create a whole reality. But at the end of the day, you whack a fucking massive camera in a plane and fly around and nothing is better. Nothing is better, Like no computer effect can be better than a massive camera in the fucking pilot's seat of a jet, and then the jet is Sometimes when the jets were blasting, I was like, I think my insides are gonna rupture. Like it was thrilling. Do we know

the na should they were invading? No? Does it matter? No, best not to best not, that's not to ask questions like that, but.

any of these are troubling bonis. The film that I've gone for is Decision to Leave, which I thought was amazing for Park Cham would absolutely love it. I just thought the atmosphere of it was it was very sexy. I thought the vibe of it was very sexy. I thought Tangway was very sexy, and I felt it. I believed it completely plausible that somewhat that she would be brought in for potentially murdering her husband and the policeman

investigating would go well. First things first, Holy Mama, I think it's important to say that I believe that, and like you know, with like the handmade Park chambook is very he makes great sexy movies and the sort of atmosphere of eroticism.

Indian movie this year. Obviously the big one that everybody he's talking about is R R R. And also I'm not bringing this to an audience at all because this movie that I'm about to talk about was on Mark Kermo's Films of the Year, So it's a movie that

people have talked about. It's called Gungobye Kathia Wordy, and it's about a sex worker, a woman who's like sold into sex work by her boyfriend, who then kind of rises up sort of through the ranks of the kind of hierarchy of that world and ends up becoming a madam and running her own brothel. And it's shot kind of like a Tarantino movie, and it feels kind of like kill Bill, but it is also based on a

true story and this is a real woman. And listen, the second you were talking about things big sexy in the circumstance of this film, it is a disgrace. It is an immediate disgrace. Here's the problem, though, Alia but who plays Gungabye, the main character is she's very sexy. And there is a sequence in it where a man comes to measure her for a sari, and like, it's quite an he's a young man, he's a handsome man. It's quite an intimate process. And she gives him a

look and like she's attracted to him. There's a kind of brief romantic subplot and she gives him a look Brett, and I thought I was going to lose consciousness the look she gives him. And there's a point where she's like, why don't you stand closer? When are you measuring a tree? And I was like, oh god, I was like a Victorian lady that needed to take her vapors. It was it is and again, like I'll also just say like in terms of movie style performances, like all Invited, this

movie is incredible. Her character intro is spectacular. It's pure charisma. She holds the screen with complete swagger, but she looks like she could burst into tears at any point, like it's a sort of it's a proper Lake movie star character actor Denzel in Training Day, Julie Robertson Erin Brockovich, it's a proper la. There is not a better performance on film that came out this year. But my god, she's sexy and I didn't feel good about it. But

that's not even my real answer. My real answer is blonde, and I wish to Blonde made me want to trot my own deck off. Because it's a film about an exploited movie star. There's constant nudity in it. I would argue there doesn't need to be as much nudity as there is in it. So we're making a movie about a woman actress exploited by a system, and we're also making an actress walk around naked the whole time. But it's also Andadai almost is very attractive playing one of

the most famously sexy women of all time. I don't feel good about it, Brett. I hate myself. I never hated myself more in my life.

I highly recommend as an accent film.

It's a lot of things, but I think it's an incredible movie about immigrant parents and immigrant children and how the expectations of immigrant parents can sometimes be a burden on their children, but also how their children can sometimes lose sight of what their parents have been through. I thought it was such an even handed You know, there's so many movies where grand parents are just one dimensional

characters who just want to spoil their kids fun. But to me, it felt like a really really nuanced portrayal of that relationship and that dynamic, and you know, you sort of understand the pressure that Michelle Yoe's character was under from her father, and how that kind of pressure and the sort of generational trauma of leaving your home and upending your life then creates that sense of expectation on your children and how that gets passed along, but

it also showed that you can sort of heal that relationship and just like at the end, like when they're like getting sucked into the sort of vortex and the daughters being held by the mum who was being held by her dad. That film to me was so much about again like the weird thematic overlap between that and After Son, this like idea of forgiving your parents for

making mistakes and for just being human beings. And also just further more to that, you know, like I was a kid who you know, my parents were immigrants, and I the entire way that I interacted with the world as a child was through science fiction and superhero films

and comedy. And so to see a film for me that was about how immigrant parents and children relate, filtered through the prism of really superb comedy and a multiverse based plot line, I couldn't I couldn't believe that anyone else understood that movie because it felt like it was made for me. And I think that interestingly that you sort of highlighted the relationship between the moment that which

is obviously also brilliant. But I think maybe that's why that film is so successful, is that there's a lot of different people who believe that film was made specifically for them and was talking directly to them. But they might have five or six different reasons as to why that is.

So much of that film is about how important empathy going in both directions.

I think the sequence when she tries to break up with her boyfriend and then and it goes on for so long and then they have sex and they learn that it's so real, and then the feeling of when she first meets the other guy, like, all of it, it was all very very I thought, very very relatable. And yeah, and this idea of like it keeps feeling like she's got it, she's figured it out.

came out in January, you came out in January. I think it's a brilliant film.

it was brilliant. I thought Amy Lou Wouold was incredible in it, and I also like, I love Bill Nye and I also like I love the Bill ni thing that he does so often, you know the kind of character that he plays in like sort of versions of this sort of swaggeringly charismatic English gentleman in things like State of Play, and then like the sort of most commercial version of it is the thing that he does in love actually, but with this it was like he was so in this part, and he was so plausible

as the incredibly restrained man who like doesn't know how to express the Shia terror that he's found out he's going to die, and like, I just you know, he decides to do something with whatever time is left for him, and the other kind of guys around him almost don't realize, like, well, we're all dying, like at the end of the day, Like we're all to some extent in the situation he's in. So it should inspire you to take risks and take chances and do things that you want to do, and

he inspires the two younger people in his life. But yeah, I just thought it was beautifully made, Like the script was great, Ishi Guru, just classy, beautifully executed. What was your greatest film?

of it, it is a genuine solution. It isn't just like, well, here's a note of hope to leave you with within this heavy, heavy, incredibly sad, difficult subject. Here is a thoughtful, actual solution that could lead to a better world, you know what I mean. And it's based on those I'm so sorry that I don't know the official term for it, but I believe they did it in the fucking basically making victims meet with.

definitely like films that seem theatery. And I did think there was a point because also it's I think the way that it's film is really interesting because the camera is quite sort of fixed and it doesn't really go handheld for a lot of the beginning of the film.

It's often like quite locked off shots, and then suddenly as the kind of there's like an argument happens and the camera suddenly starts to go handheld, and it's like it's that same thing where a technical thing has a really emotional and rhythmic impact because suddenly you like feel it makes your stomach go, like you suddenly feel like, fuck,

this thing's unraveling. And as it starts to unravel, the kind of icy technique starts to unravel, and then it suddenly hard cuts to the view outside the church, and I just thought that, and then I was like, oh, right, Okay, that's why Brett likes it, because actually it's a film and it's filmmaking, and the just because the techniques are subtle and subsumed doesn't mean that they're not there and choices haven't been made. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

I thought, yeah, I just thought that, like, fuck fucking Jason Isaac's face in that film, like he's just this like contorted ball of like grief and rage and yeah, and yeah, the four performances are incredible, Like without the four performances are extraordinary. The script is brilliant. Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

of heartbreaking thing that she says. And genuinely, what I think is amazing about it is it it doesn't let it off the hook, you know what I mean, It sort of goes whatever the solution you now have in your head, there's also this and this is fucking difficult

for all of them. It's and I just think it's an incredible piece of empathetic writing that he Frank Cranz, who I met and was on the podcast and is like twelve years old, that he could have that he could have got so deep into this in such a way that doesn't feel remotely didactic or preachy or like archetypal.

It's like so specific these characters, and so I just particularly love that and dad and her husband in it that they're quite odd and uncomfortable, don't you don't warnt to them for a long time.

because it's happened. This is I think we're six years after the shooting at the point that this conversation has happened, And you know that it's great just throw away detail, you know when in one sentence someone basically just says a film and then moves on, you know, like the film a film about the sort of relationship between two

people breaking down because their son killed. That's I mean, that is literally that's pretty much we need to talk about Kevin, like but we need to talk about Kevin's just like quite elegantly said almost the side.

community churches. They can sometimes be a little odd and they did remind me of like the venue stuff in like a small art center, like charming, eccentric, goofballs, And obviously, just because what's about to happen is very heavy, it's still happening in a community hall, in a church hall, the people running it. But for the first five minutes I was literally I was more confused than I've been in a film at any point this year, because I

was literally like, what the fuck is going on? I thought this was like like school shooting drama, and now I'm watching this kind of sitcom episode about but you. Yeah, yeah it was. It was brilliant. It was really really brilliant.

all these arguments of why that was. I think what it is is it's a lot of films, and I like all of them. It's a really fun traditional rom com. It's also quite a raunchy gay comedy and like what hardcore in that side of it, And it is also like a Spike Lee film.

see but I didn't feel got developed. The Actually I was perfectly happy watching the straight up rom com Slash, the sort of more adult version of a rom com like raun cheer version of I was very happy watching that and didn't necessarily need or would have like been happy and watching a separate version of that third film. But it's definitely very funny, Like it's definitely got really good jokes in it and really funny performers in it.

that he is. He has come out that night dressed like Tom Cruise's character from Magnolia, and that it's such a brilliant way of going This guy saw Magnolia and thought Tom Cruise was somebody should dress like that. He's such a fucking bell end and like a misogynist and

all of these things. And also I thought it was a brilliant satire about disruptors, and you know that we sort of constantly seeing people describe themselves as disrupting things, and generally what it means is I don't really pay a full lack of tax, like that's like the main thing that they disrupt is the taxation system and the coffers of the public purse. And I thought that all of that stuff was great, and then I thought it became a kind of satire that became embedded within the mystery.

And like Nins Out, one had lots of satirical elements, and it was a kind of goof on satire and privilege, but the mystery of it is still preserved, Like the mystery of it is specific, and what happens to Christminer Plumber is a specific anthichristic mystery. In this one, the satire seeps into the mystery, so at the end there is no mystery. It was the person you thought it was the whole time, because disruptors and people that claim

to be disruptors are simply not interesting enough. And like Daniel Craig's exasperated speech at the end, I thought was so funny and like such a perfect like this installation of something in the culture that I was houting. I

was properly like lost my mind laughing. I thought it was so funny, and also like at the opposite end, I loved it because it was a film that hated a lot of its characters, like it loves obviously, it loves ben one Blanc, and it absolutely loves Jenellemane and who was great in it as well, Like that double performance thing is fucking brilliant. I thought she was brilliant

in it. It loves Genelman, but it hates all of its other characters and lots of the Like TV and film, that's kind of depicting the super wealthy by necessity in order to sustain the drama, especially if it's a TV show, it has to be nuanced and it has to give you layers to these people. This was fucking two hours and it was a comedy movie and they were just like fuck these people.

It's loving it. But it is deeply loving giving the consequences to them and giving Janelle Mona and like you know, she's so like he's like like Annadamas in the first movie, like She's such a like likable central presence, and the film clearly loves her, loves Benoa Blanc, but it properly like it made me laugh out loud consistently, and I saw it in and again like just they should have released it for longer in the cinema because it was a pleasure to see it in a pack cinema, people laughing,

people gasping. I thought it was really fucking funny.

You were away at the Q and A and you were like, just take my ticket, and I just assumed they'd be a ticket. There wasn't. There was a guest list. I looked about in the eye and said, my name is Brett Goldstein, I would like to see liquorice pizza please, And.

them at school. And I thought that this would be a boring film, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it, but then for some reason I saw I think I might have seen the trailer and thought, oh, well, actually that looks interesting. And also everything Terence Davis does is interesting, Like whether you know whether it's successful or not, everything is interesting. You know, whether it's like I mean, Distant Voices Lives is fucking incredible, but like he is one

of the great British filmmakers. And I went to see it and I loved it so much. It's absolutely one of the best films I saw this year. And I think that it made me think a lot of things. I talk about it quite a lot in therapy. Yeah, really, yeah, because I just think that generation, particularly of gay men, were put through so much trauma. They had to live these like secret lives. They all end up getting into these unhappy marriages to equally unhappy women and both of

their lives get ruined and the trauma warps them. And I think one of the things that you understand is you get older. Is like I think when you're a kid, you're like, well, you hit twenty one, and then you saw of the same person until you're about thirty, and then you're just that person until you die. And people talk a lot about self improvement, but also the opposite

is true, you can get worse as a person. And Benediction is the story of Siegfried Tosoon's personality being bent out of shape by his life experience and his trauma, Like and he sees terrible things in the First World War, but then he has to, like he comes back and there's no like hero worship if he has to live alive for his entire life. And then also he's in love with Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen is killed, and then

it's almost almost beyond that. And maybe this is something that I just thought, like if you produce cultural work on art of any description, there's like a pettitoess to him about how he's received critically that I also really related to that, I thought, But all of that like warps him and makes him really sad, And I thought it was a really brilliant depiction, Like the transition from Jack Loudon, who plays him as a younger man to

Peter Capaldi, I think is so wonderfully done. And also there's just lots of like funny and sort of joyful scenes when he's like in his twenties and early thirties and he's just there's this whole like secret subculture of gay men who live these kind of life and they have the you know, they have they sleep with each other, and they you know, go to these fabulous cocktail parties and then they all sort of have to sadly go

off and get married. And also I did think so it made me think differently about how tragedy and trauma can warp you as a person and your life experience. You don't just live through things like life has an impact on you, and if you don't take care to maintain your personality, it can collapse without you even realizing that. He doesn't realize how bitter has become by the end of his life, and his son is just like, you know, why are you so angry about all of these things?

And there's literally a point was like, why are you angry with new things? He's like, because it's young and it's the most honest thing. He says, like he's bitter that his youth has kind of disappeared, but also it really made me. And this is the sort of anger you can only have if you're not from a marginalized

community and having it semi patronizingly on their behalf. But like we studied so much Wilfred Owen and Sacrets to Suit when I was at school, and at no point did it ever come up that they were gay, at no point, And just you think about, like it isn't just that it's an active suppression of information, you know, Like we were still at school when Section twenty eight was a law, and like it was you know, there was a law on the statute books to prevent the

promotion of homosexuality whatever they called it. And it's just like, you know, these people who we like force you to study, they were gay men, and like Wilfred Owen and Secret to do huge parts of the national story we tell ourselves about the sacrifice at war. We're not even going to fucking give them the dignity of telling you that they were gay, and we're going to continue to suppress their sexuality as we did to them when they were alive.

After they're dead, and I sort of walked out of it being like we've we like it's so wrong, Like it's you know, like obviously a gay person knows all of this stuff, and it's like, yeah, we've been angry about this for a long long time. But I walked out of it thinking how different a country we'd be if these people who were like we venerate as like

titans of the story. We tell ourselves about the sacrifice of our boys, and we say things I never forget, you must never forget, but forget this, get this, you forget this huge fucking part of their lives and personality.

I liked the I don't know, it just showed you something that you that you don't usually see, which was an older woman with a sex worker trying to experience something, and it felt very real, the nervousness of her and the insecurity, and I thought it was a lovely, sort of wonderful thing that he never makes her new come she does it and it's like it's a nice.

then just straight into that fight scene. I thought it was like I was giddy at the beginning, you know, like when a film really starts fast, it's sort of a dreamal rush of it just going. It captured that thrill of like how exciting it is when a film just goes his absolutely minimal exposition. I mean, it's an odd comparison to make, but it is sort of is the star Wars thing you get the crawl and then bang straight into the actual I thought it was great. What was yours?

It's such a detailed face he has in the micro expresses all. It's just really something special with that.

We could go back to civilization and you can be my helper or made or something, and she realizes that actually is better for her to be in the community they've created because she's at the top of the hierarchy, and the entire audience like, yeah, you have to bash him on the Absolutely, there's no other way for it.

But I'm going to say the best closing was Hit the Road, which I also thought was an amazing movie, and it sort of summarizes everything that is amazing about that film, because you know, it sort of is a heavy film, like it's a movie about a family who have hit the road because they're basically this son is in trouble with the Iranian authorities and he's basically fleeing

the country. But there's a little kid in the car, and so the whole film is kind of the little kid's perspective, and it's mainly the little kid being a little kid and talking about the batmobile and stuff, and sort of on the peripheries you go, oh, there's something

quite serious and bad happening here. But mainly it's like funny dialogue between the dad and the kid, and the mum is occasionally looking worried at the older son who is the person that's fleeing, and it's like mainly like very naturalistic in the car, you feel immersed in it.

And then this one moment where this kind of special effect thing happens with the dad and the son are talking and they're like lying it looking up at the stars, set up camp on their journey, and it almost becomes like this weird like nineteen sixties Doctor Who shot of like space and the kid flying, and then the second flourish is the end because of the sun has got away.

For all the fun and joy of it is very traumatic and it's very upsetting, and then their dog dies and they're burying the dog and it's just this fucking

bleak thing. And then just like right at the end, throughout there's been like these like Irunian pop songs running through the whole thing, and then just right at the end, the kid lip syncs the song right down the barrel of the camera like this little kid and it's I'm I apologize, I'm about to absolutely mangle the pronunciation of all of this, I'm sure, but the song is called sub Z by a guy called Ebbi, and I definitely

have pronounced that incorrectly. But it's this like really like croonery, rich melodic pop song and the kid starts lip sinking it looking down the barrel of the camera, and it's such a like funny and some rising and like charming end to this movie. And it's like, you know that you sort of come away from it with the sense of like they still got each other and they might be okay. And the way that that's communicated is the

kids seeing down the parallel of the camera. It just like it just made me feel elated at the end of that movie. I think the movie is great in general, but yeah, that ending made me feel elated.

time she can't understand what anyone's saying. And so sometimes so there's this sense of paranora. Are they talking about her? Are they? But they might not be. She just genuinely doesn't understand what anyone's saying. And so there's a scene with her and her husband in the back of the cab at the beginning of the film, and the husband they're clearly talking about her, but she doesn't know what

they're saying, and the husband keeps sort of translating. But there's an element there's one thing that husband doesn't translate, right, So it's like, what did he just say. I mean, it's really sort of good. And she believes she is being watched by someone in the apartment opposite and that

she is kind of being stalked. But as it goes on, he the person watching, goes to the police and accuses her of because she's so obsessed that it looks like actually she's watching here, right And anyway, I won't spoil the ending, but something happens at the ending, and it is literally there is a look at the very end of the film, and the look is it's just one look and the look is sort of I won't even say what it means, but it's fucking like. It's a very good film. Recommend.

That song that fucking dank dun dun dunn, that sort of like like hooky guitar thing, and then just everybody puking and shitting, and I am embarrassed by how much that woman vomiting into the toilet and then the boat to get her big lad away and go mind, we screamed with laughter. Phenomenal, what's yours mine?

really good. And it's quite sort of theatrical and weird. And I'm not saying it's perfect, like there's it's it's a it's certainly an acquiet taste, I would say, but it was certainly I really enjoyed it. And there's a sequence three quarters away through where a load of characters you have never met and are not part of yours sing a song as they're about to go to walk. They're basically about to go over the top to their

deaths in the war. They're being sent to like go over the top, and it's very clear they're all going to die, and they sing this song wherever I Fall, and they're basically writing letters, they're final letters home to their fathers, and it's so good. It's really really beautiful. And I listened to a thing which I write where the producers or the finances whoever it was, were like, you need to cut that scene because it's not about

the lead characters. And so he very deliberately at the end of this song, Yeah, the camera pulls back and their syranide. He's in it, so you can't cut it. But it's just a really yeah, it's just one of them really like powerful moments of this is the end of all these people's lives and you totally care about it. You've never met him. When you care about them, it's really it's good, good stuff.

people like hops up on nationalism. Like it's almost like it's depicted like a drug that they're all on and they're just like, yeah, I can't wait to get to war like and then it's basically just for three hours, ruining their sense that they're doing something good. Yeah, it's very well made film. But yeah, it's funny because it has the exact same sentiment, just not sung.

And also like a quick honorable mention for Kimmy, which is like not really a movie that gets made, Like it felt like a like nineties like really entertaining, fast paced, paranoid tech thriller, like and Zary Kravitz was great in it,

and like Steve Soiderberg. Blake is another one of those like George Miller characters where you like you can't really pin down what he's going to do next, and what he did next was Magic White three, Like you know, it's like he and the next movie does might be like an experimental digital film after he's like shoved an iPhone up a dog's ass or something like, it's like you really just have no idea what he's going to do, Kimmy, Magic Mic three and Dogtown Upper Dogs Ass. There's an

iPhone Upper Dogs ass. Julie Roberts is in it. You just can't see it.

still like a sort of soap opera. It's just it also has really serious things to say about the Spanish Civil War and the legacy of fascism, like it is The Best Man Souvenir Part two, Decision to leave Benediction, the worst person in the world, everything everywhere after Sun.

I love Brian. I was so happy and proud that Brian Gidtins has existed in so many different YEA forms, all of which have been amazing, none of which have been particularly successful, and so for him to have found this thing where it was like this film and suddenly it was like a hit, critical hitting of awards hit, and it was like, you've fucking done it. I love it.

And but then I find you because I just killed you. Yeah yeah, and I'm like, oh blood yeah, what a mess. So I'll put you in a coffin I've always got. I've got a coffin put you in. All the stuff is full in there. There's only enough for him to take one film of the year with you, to take the movie night when it is your movie night in heaven. What film you take it to show people of Heaven in movie night when it's your turn, mister Dishkubra.

service here. I want to say thank you to a cast who've been absolutely brilliant. They've been here from the beginning and they've been wonderfully supportive and wonderful and I love everyone there and I will miss them.

you know, an absolutely banging guest. So that is it for now, Thank you very much for listening, and in the meantime, have a good week and please be excellent to each other.