Look out.
It's only films to be buried with. Hello, and welcome to films to be buried with. My name is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer, a director, a sign and I love films. As Thomas Edison once said, our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. I do hope there's a part two. There is Tommy Relaxer. Please. Every week I invite a special guest over. I tell
them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life through the films that meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, Jimmy and Jamil, Mark Frost, Showerstone, and even Ked Bambles. But this week it is part two of the Perfectly On Time Earlier If Anything Films of the Year twenty twenty three specialism with business Nis Kumar.
Head over to the Patreon at Patreon dot com, forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you get the extra stuff with this, including a secret get the whole episode uncut, ad free and as a video. Check it out over at Patreon dot com Forward slash Break Goldstein. I have included most of the Patreon for everyone this week except for the secret as that is for the Patreons only, and there's too much good stuff here and it is Christmas after also enjoy it. We left you on a traveling boner,
so let's see what happened next. So that is it for now. I very much hope you enjoy episode three hundreds and three, Part two of the Perfectly on Time Early if Anything Films of the Year twenty twenty three special edition of the Films to be Buried with. Well, let's get to a traveling bonus. Worry, why does mine would be May December? Then, so let's talk about my December.
Yeah.
I thought it was brilliant. I mean, I get a huge, huge, huge Todd tignspan and I thought that it was an incredible film, I will say, and I do think this is quite important. I actually didn't know the real stories based on me, so I was coming to it. But I thought it had like such an interesting like ambivalence about filmmaking and acting and basing stories on real people. Again, there's also now kind of metalla to this where some of the real people involved in the true story I
believe maybe upset about May December. So there's a kind of sort of ethical swirl of questions around it. But I thought it had such an interestingly it had an almost like hostile tone to the act of making a film based on a true story. That was one of the things that I read from it. I thought it was really funny at points. I thought that Julianne Moore's whole performance was so heightened. Natalie Portman was incredible in it. Yeah, I mean, and Charles Melton, who I think is in
is in maybe river Dale. It's another one of these conversations where I go, this, this newcomer is spectacular, and everyone has to tell me, no, he's incredibly famous from something you've something that was on television that has just passed you by. But I thought he was. He was brilliant in it, and I thought I love Portman. I think Portman is such a such an interesting actor. What was the troubling element of the bonum for you?
Well?
I love that film very much. The one question I have. We talked about this once. I don't think I understand what camp is. Keep think because I keep hearing that that film is very campy, and I'm like, I don't know what that means, because I just loved it. I always slightly think CAMPI means bad or deliberately bad or something I never think I've fully understood, because I was just like, this is a fucking brilliant film, which you mean camp sounds to me like a like it was doing something.
What does it mean? Am I thing?
I thought that the point where there's an incredibly dramatic swell in the music and Julian Bore says we've run out of hot dogs, yeah, whilst holding the fridge door open, and then yeah, that I think is very camp. So what does it mean funny? I mean, I think it's like, I think it's any kind of I don't know.
I think it's like think yeah.
To me, it's like that sort of very, very heightened, almost cartoonish expression of emotions that has an air that I sort of recognize as being camp like, And it's like it's an exaggeration of emotional heightened drama and for that bit with the kind of massive swell of music and I don't think we have enough heart dogs like that sort of disconnect and the joke in that to
me feels inherently camp. Okay, anything where some I feel like anything where it's where an emotion is almost pitched to an almost hysterical level that borders on being comedy and at times becomes comedy is campy. Okay, But I also don't know what I'm talking about. We might all have to read Susan's on Tugs on camp. Yeah, okay, but what troubled you about it?
You know, it's about a woman who has slept with her It took me a long time because I'm not American. I didn't know what grade. They don't say how old he was as a child. Yeah, they just say what grade he was in. I was like, I don't know what that means. I don't But it turns out who's like twelve thirteen when they first got together, and then she goes to prison, and then she comes out prison and she marries him and has children with him, and so now he is an adult. So there's you know,
it's all troubling the scenario. But Natalie Portman and Julia and More, two of the most beautiful and most brilliant actors ever. There's like a sequence which I really love where the two of them are in the mirror and they're both just facing the camera and Nadalie Portman's trying to sort of copy her makeup as More's makeup, and the two of them are talking and it's kind of sort of they're feeling each other out, and they're dancing around each other and trying to evade each other and
connect and it's very sexy. And I don't quite know why it's so sexy other than they're both brilliant. But also I'm like, the whole film is I guess troubling because of the situation, but everyone's so beautiful and sexy.
I don't know what meant to think. Does that make sense? Yeah, it definitely makes sense.
Yeah.
In the end, my actual troubling boner was Tar, and we should just move on from that.
Tell us why, because I feel like I should have to explain that because Tar is obviously a troubling boner because it's about an incredibly unpleasant person.
Yeah, but it's still Kate Blanchet in a suit and I'm a human being.
You want to get shouted out by Kate?
Leave me alone? Yes, Okay, it's not good. I don't think any any element of it is good. I got proud of it. Nope, I'm ashamed of it. That's why, in a year of troubling boners, Cap Blanchette and tasted out as the most troubling of all of the boners.
Her performance is that of a troubled bona.
Yeah, the whole thing. It's a troubling bon for a person who is in this midst of a crisis caused by her troubling bonus.
Yes, it's worrying.
It's worrying, White on the movie listen, t is fucking brilliant, brilliant, worry what. It's a fucking brilliant film.
He really is.
That's one of them films that was going to be on the question for that film would be a film that some people don't like and you have no idea why not. It's just a really good film.
It's a great movie, like and it was.
I think before it came out, there was this sort of idea that it was going to be it was going to be this like takedown of cancel culture, and you sort of go, it's so much more interesting and complicated and nuanced than that. And I love the final
sort of last half hour of it. I really love when she goes back to her childhood home and she finds her old VHS recordings of Leonard Bernstein doing his like public access TV shows, trying to teach children about classical music, and like there's just a sequence of her watching it, and you understand, you know, it's like trying to understand like a really monstrous person, because she she definitely does things that are She's awful in so many ways,
but it gets to the core of something about like she, like like a lot of monsters, she kind of started from a there was there was a pure intent, like she does love music, but she's so sort of corrupted
by her inabilities to control he run impulses. Like I think that that movie, her performance in that, and Franzwackgowski in Passages are like two really interesting films about people, like people who work in the kind of creative industries who are sort of in their in each of their own way, monsters or unpleasant in some way.
What is your best third part of a trilogy? Film? Three?
Well, Guard of the Galaxy Volume three, great film. It was a lot. It was a really nice way to close it off. And I think as those Marvel films fall down, this kind of trap of trying to perpetuate a storyline that can spin out into more films. It was quite nice to watch something that I mean, they may well make other movies, but it was nice to watch something that felt truly like the end of a story and the end of a group of characters that we've sort of built up a relationship with.
What was your end part of a trilogy? Creed three, Creed three, great movie. I love Creed three so much. It is when you love Creed three, Hollywood making a good Holly film. Creed three is so good. It's genuinely complicated.
Have you seen it? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I love genuinely I love the Creed films. It's Creed a bad guy. You're not a bad guy, but the Creed you're rooting for the other guy. You're sort of genuinely rooting for him for quite a lot of the film in a way that it's quite brave for a film like that, Like and it even makes the climactic fake. You sort of want them both to have that, like it's a you're really kind of roots you. You ultimately want Creed to win, but you wouldn't mind if the other guy.
It's a I was wondering watching it, whether that was
an idea that they'd had for a film. You know, sometimes there's a film idea that goes around and then someone thinks we could make you can make that a Diehold or something like that, because the idea of you know, a champion boxer whose childhood friend who actually secretly might have been the more talented of the two, but who you know, they have this like they have this sort of sliding doors moment where he sort of takes the blame for something that and goes to jail.
And it's a it's a good it's a good concept.
It's just a really good idea for a movie, for a boxing movie, and then you put the kind of Creed sort of name on it and the build up that they've had over the previous two movies.
I'd love Michael B. Jordan. I think he's great.
Yeah, he's really good. Yeah, Yeah, I really enjoyed cre three. I thought it was excellent.
Which film do you think was the most impressive low budget film? You saw what film did the most with the least money?
Well?
I think that for me, I can't believe How to Have Sex is a first feature.
I love that film, like I thought it was.
Really really brilliant, and again, like with not a big budget, I just thought, what a really don't know, I just thought, what a genuinely sort of complicated and thornier story that has so much layers and nuance. What an amazing thing to have made look effortless. Like that's what I think with that, and you know it's a low budget British moviv. I just I thought it was. I thought I thought it was an incredible achievement.
Yeah, that is in my top three that film.
Yeah, we can talk about it. I imagine it's I imagine it's in various categories for you.
It's fucking brilliant that film. It's in not it's it's very very different. But in the way that I feel about the film sometimes rarely never always, which was my greatest film of last year, where it feels.
That was a couple of years ago. Now I know we're slowly losing track of time with these.
But it feels like a documentary in terms of the acting is so natural, everything, every part of it feels so real, and they definitely look I don't know, but it seems to me they did. They must have just so basically the film is a kind of sixteen year olds going on their first holiday alone as girls, and they go to Magloof I think.
Yeah, I think it's supposed to but yeah, I think it's certainly one of the various party destination party destinations.
Yeah, and they and it's the first time.
They're very excited and they get involved with some people in the room next door who are these guys and a girl, and then they sort of party through the week and one of them is a virgin and things happen along the way and it's just sort of all of it's just sort of observed and it's very subtle, and the story that it tells, like the moment where the guy where Badger goes on stage to play the last game of that thing, it's it's so kind of what it has to say about the culture and the
the complexities of sex and yeah, this culture that is encouraging wildness and drink, but it's also real and those holidays are you know, we've all been on them holidays and it felt like so real. And this story with the girl is so kind of, so subtly told, and
it's just brilliant casting. And she she the lead actor, is so kind of natural, but she's inherently vulnerable because she's shorter than everyone else in the cast, And so you this was going to be one of my film that scared me deviced it was in the area because the whole film, you're just like, you feel so protective of her.
Yeah, because she's because she's.
Small and she's young, and you're like, yeah, God, I hope you're going to be and the kind of nuance between the guys. It's a fucking excellent film. It's really, really, really good. It's but I just assume it was made on the on the run.
It really does feel like that.
I can't believe they had permission to film in places. I think they just must have gone in clubs. Yeah, it's brilliant.
It's just an amazing achievement. Molly Manning, Walker and the lead, me and McKenna Bruce. It's like like everyone involved in that film has pulled off something really spectacular, but particularly those two that performance, the way, the control of the sort of way that it's directed that makes you feel immersed in it. So you're kind of swept up in it, even though you even though when it starts and they're
so just excited to be there. You know, it's that adrenaline rush of like being on holiday with your friends unsupervised for the first time. That it's that you do get caught up in the kind of excitement of it, even though you know that it's there's going to be something bad that happens, and the way it gets into conversations about consent and gray areas around consent and how like, actually you sort of it's like a thing, you like, boys need to be taught about this kind of stuff,
Like it's it's a film that I hope. I read an interview with the director where she said that they screened it somewhere and then there was like a man in his sixties outside like looking angry, and when she was walking out, she thought he was going to bollock her. And he came up to her and said, I think I might have done that to a girl. And it had like sent him on this whole like it had spun him out, and it's like it's an it's an incredibly I thought.
It was brilliant. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
It's terribly sad, and I definitely I remember sitting down in the cinema and like there was like a group of people who were kind of watching it, like they were going to watch like Kevin and Perry go large or something yeah, yeah, or human traffic, and I there's a part of me that actually wanted to go up to them and be like, guys, I think the poster is slightly misleading here.
Ye, but yeah, it's it's.
But I like it does other things that I love in a film, which is I think it has deep love for all of its characters. I think it has empathy for all of them. And there's kind of like Badger is kind of tragic, Like I think the scene, yeah, when he goes up on stage.
And that thing happens.
You should see the film, Like, yeah, it's sad, and I think he sat in the next day he goes, I don't remember anything, and you're like, yeah, you do, And yeah it's God, it's good. The dynamics between all of them, between the girls and between the guys and their friendships and the way it's all done with looks it's a tremendous bit of work.
Yeah, And what was the film that you loved from the low budget And.
My answer is Godzilla minus one fantastic god Z minus one. How did they do that for ten pounds?
I have no idea.
It just makes sense they made it for it doesn't make sense. It's ten pounds. It's such a good film ten pounds. Imagine making god Zilla minus one ten pounds. It's so good, it's so brilliant. It's a very good film, emotional, deep and has huge war sequences and Godzilla sequences. And you're like, very excited.
To see what happens with the people that did that, and talk to me because you're like, I mean, if you can pull that off on those budgets, very excited to see what happens next.
What was your favorite missing impossible film for.
Well, listen, he just keeps rolling on, doesn't he. Yeah, he just keeps rolling on with Dead Reckoning is fucking great. Loved it, absolutely loved it.
What more do you want?
I think a special shout out to Pailey Atwell, who is a movie star, old school movie star, like and the second she's in it, you're like, I love you. You're so charming and funny and light and like light shines from you and you really get this sort of this sort of movie acting, which is like fucking charisma and like, yeah, she's she's brilliant in it.
Yeah, it's my one my one slight, My only slight reservation about it is that the part one of two nus of it, which has happened for a few films this year, including Spider Verse, means that there's just a middle bit where you like, there's just a bit more exposition than there normally would be in this film because you've got to set up the second one. And my only other reservation is massive spoiler alert, don't kill Rebecca Ferguson. We love Rebecca Ferguson.
Yeah, I've talked you about this before. There's a weird bit when Rebecca Ferguson. There's a weird bit of filmmaking. It's a very long fight scene with Rebecca Ferguson. It takes about six minutes I think maybe more. Yeah, And during the fight scene with Rebecca Ferguson, the music is really sad.
Yeah, Oh, she's definitely gonna.
Die because you've got sad music over this six minute secret Why is this? Seemingly she's doing very well in this fight, but the music is yeah, yeah, the music.
Direction yeah, obviously, the motorcycle jump is unbelievable.
They train the train, the train at the end. The train at the end is incredible.
It is amazing that they're still finding they're still finding new imaginative action problems to put him in. Yeah, I can't wait for part two. What is the film that made you laugh the most? I'll tell you what. There were some movies that did make me laugh a lot. I enjoyed Theater Camp a lot. I thought that was very charming, very funny. I really really well done. So many like that, just very stacked cast, so many really
funny people a de Biri. I absolutely love the fact that every so often that people who make comedy films are now just like, let us deploy Patty Harrison, deploy the Harrison drop Patty Harrison in She's She Could, She's gonna be so funny, perfect, Like, I absolutely love it.
It's so fun funny to me.
But I think the film that probably made me laugh the most actually was Ry Lane made absolutely so delighted. It's a very very extreme it's shot in South London, and it's it's a sort of it's a very charming rom com, very familiar part of the world to me. I think they've walked past about three places I've lived in, not even just the areas, I mean the specific roads in Brixton and in and around Brixton. It's delightful. The
two leads are delightful. I will say the blow job Hummers set piece is one of the things I've made
me laugh the most. And like the way that that's done and the sort of like funny inventive filmmaking techniques that they used to illustrate two people telling stories to each other about their lives, which isn't inherently cinematic though, as we've discussed on many occasions, it is my favorite sub genre of movie, just two people walking around talking because of them before before trilogy, but it really made me laugh. I thought that the script was great.
I thought the way it was made was great.
I thought they just consistently stuffed it with really funny people and I was delighted by it.
It is delightful. Yeah, love that film. What was your funniest film? Regan? Oh? Loved?
Should we say that we're talking about the film Megan or well? Do you think people will know?
Mthreagan?
I went in, you know, who knows what I was expecting Killer film from Bluemhouse, who tend to make very good films. What I wasn't expecting was a fun so fun and so funny and the it's so entertaining and there's a like I think one of the biggest loves I have is when the doll turns like looks fucking like what did you say? The Siloicris, it's such a good it's really funny, and the idea is good.
It's a good idea for a film.
And the design of the doe and these sort of actual kind of logistics of or whatever the word is of making that dough and the way the doll moves and the way the doe looks like. The film doesn't work if the dough is ship but the dough is brilliant and the way the doll moves is brilliant, and.
It's really funny. It's like it's a comedy. It's happy.
I think it's like happy death though, Like it's that they're they're really they're they're comedies really yeah again and Roddy Chegg just popping up.
Love it.
I think it's a five style film. I have no Chris, this is brilliant, is just.
Brilliant it's there was no better time had in the cinema, Like just in terms of if you want to have a fun one hundred minutes, there was no better example of that than the Reagan What.
Is the most underseen film that you love the most, that deserves a shout out?
So look, I watched Reality Great because I you know, it's subject matter that interests me. I read a couple of articles about it, but the like, the process for me to sort of track it down was difficult, Like it was, there's so few screenings of it, which I'm sort of surprised by because, like Sidney Sweeney is incredibly famous, so I think I have sort of assumed it would get a wider I think it might be one of those things where we got it in the cinemas here on a very limited run.
But I think it might be an HBO film.
So it's a it's a verbatim film, so it's the script is assembled from transcripts of the recordings the FBI make when they turn up at the house of Reality Winner. Who who was an n say translator and leap and yeah, I know, yeah we should Yeah.
Really confuses every part of telling every time you try and talk about this film. I have to understand this person's actual name is Reality Winner.
That is their name.
This is nothing to do with reality TV. No, it's not a joke. There's a real human person who was called by their parents' Reality Winner.
Yeah, her name is Reality Winner. And she.
Leaks an intelligence report about Russian interference into the twenty
sixteen elections. And you know, she does confess to this because she sort of she sees Trump and kind of Trump acolytes on television saying, you know, well, there's no record of any sort of Russian interference, and as somebody who's working the intelligence service, you know, she admits that she couldn't stomach it because she said, I'm looking at information about Russian interference, like you can make an argument about whether or not it swayed the election, but her
point is that they are outright lying. So she leaks that to the Intercept and so they turned it into a piece of debatim theater and again is it is literally the the transcripts, and they've now adapted that into a film. And I thought it was I thought it was brilliant. I've never and listen, perfectly happy to be directed on this and I'm sure there's loads of examples is but I've never seen a film like I've never seen. I'd heard of the Beati Theater, but I don't think
i'd actually seen of Abatim film before. There's lots of like filmmaking tricks used by Tina Santa, who's the director, to sort of you know, you sort of see the wavelines from the recording machine. There are bits of the of the transcript that are redacted because it has classified information, and people like disappear. Would they start to say the name that they're going to say, and then the characters just disappear on the screen. So it's it's properly like
it's filmmaking. It's not just put some cameras up in film the place, proper filmmaking. I thought all the performances are incredible. I think Sidney Sweeny is amazing in.
It, like, yeah, brilliant.
I really thought it was an incredible film, and it
was a great movie about whistle blowing. And it's the real transcript, so it has this whole other layer of you know, you sort of realize how people, when under pressure, people don't speak in perfectly formed sentences and they don't articulate themselves clearly, and so what you're you actually has that feeling of just being immersed in an interrogation where the two people, you know, people conducted the interrogation are trying to maintain it's not an interrogation, but it's it's
a fucking interrogation. Yeah, and like the way you feel her kind of unravel. I thought, I thought it was brilliant. I really really hope people go and watch it. I thought it was I thought it was such a good film. Huge agree, it's excellent. And it's also the seeing the reality of this interrogation and the fiation up and it's so the again, just the kind of mechanics of the reality of that of like a load of men turn up at this young woman's house. She's on her own.
It's quite scary, and they're just they're trying to be kind of charming, but there's a vague undercurrent of threat and it's like, where's your dog and we should lock the dog up, so we're going to come inside and she's just having to stay calm, but there's like too many men there and it's like what's going on here? It's really it's really good.
I've got two others finish and I don't know if you've seen these films, but they You will fucking love these films because these films are your favorite genre of film, and that genre is Honkis be Terrible.
We'll come back to Hongis be terrible. These films.
Let's confessed that one of my favorite film types of film is Honkys be terrible.
The whites are acting out, You're a new character. Hugy be terrible. Yeah.
Yeah, But these two films.
One is called one thousand and one. Have you seen it?
I have not one thousand and one by Avy Rockwell starring Tiana Taylor, and it is You.
Will love it, Oh my god, you'll love it. And it is a film.
It's a story of a mother who gets out of prison and is trying to see her son, who she
does not have custody or any more. The sun is in foster care, and she eventually kind of steals kidnaps her own child, and then the film goes over I don't know how many years, quite a few years, twenty years maybe more of their life where they kind of in hiding, but she's living in New York and it also has time goes on the gentrification of New York and the area happens, and the performance of the lead is incredible, Like it's you know, that's one of the
performances of all time. And it's so well made, and it looks like it's shot in film. I don't believe it is shot on film, but it feels very kind of like seventy cinema and it's fucking excellent, and you really it's very moving and just a story of these lives.
I love.
You know, one of my favorite genres is time passing. I love, and this film probably we.
Like Richard Basically what you're saying is we like Richard Lakelet.
It's tremendous, tremendous.
Yeah, I saw it and I thought I got to see that, and then it's sort of slightly is one of those that slipped through the cracks.
And then there is a film, a Canadian film that I saw on a plane, and you know, that is not my ideal way to see anything, but I had no other chance to see it. And it is a film called Brother and it is made by Clement Ergo and it's a Canadian film and it is top.
Three I think, right oka it is fucking.
Brilliant, and it will be compared to Moonlight, and that is fine because it is a bit like Moonlight in terms of it's kind of I think it. I think it is three time periods of this boy's life, this boy and his brother, and there are kind of similarities thematically between the two films. And it's really really beautiful and so well done. And the undercurrent of it is your favorite genre of filmy's terrible.
Yeah, it's really all whites are acting up.
It's really good, beautifully made film and oh it's good, and it stayed with me. I remember every second of it. I love it very much. I think it's very very good. I would urge you to see those two films.
Great.
Can I also, just before we move on, give a quick shout out to Emily the Criminal and do my now my now annual tradition of shoehorning an Aubrey Plaza film into every one of these podcasts. But I do just think she's doing some like very varied, wild and interesting work. And Emily the Criminal is again it's okay. The background to it is like, oh, capitalism is collapsing that again, it's like that's the weird.
That's one of the.
Key themes of movies in twenty twenty three. But it's about this woman who have you? Did you see it? I haven't seen it. It's basically about a woman who's like, he's struggling to pay off her student loans, so she basically gets involved in a credit card fraudering and it's like it's just a very very like lean, ninety minute nasty thriller. Aubrey plaz is brilliant in it. It's got one of the most horribly realistic fight scenes, like in a way that it's not like in a way that
real fights are not like dramatic. They're kind of awkward, but also people get really hurt in them, but they don't look cinematic. They just look like two people just sort of fumbling around each other. Like sex and fighting are the two things that look way less glamorous and real. They do it film, but it's got a horribly realistic quite scene. It's a ninety minute lean, like not one unnecessary word in it. She's brilliant in it. Emily the Criminal check it out. I loved it, loved it.
Let's do this Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do, Do.
Do Do Do.
Welcome to the arbitrary Patriot section coming in at some point this might be a Patriot section.
I don't know.
We've talked for only two hours, so who knows. What is the best beginning to a film this year?
My best beginning was Across the Spider Verse, because I loved, loved into the Spider Verse so much. I think it's so beautiful. And then Across the Spider Verse starts you off in Gwen Stacy's world, and I just thought it was so stunning, and it looked so different. They had a completely different color palette, the art style completely changed, and I just thought it was just such a brilliant way to start that movie.
I thought it was I thought it was lovely. What was your best opening? Maybe anatomy of a full?
Yeah, nice, anatomy of a full We have a very long sort of interrog going on. You get pimp on the steel drums, Yeah, sort of playing catch up in this world. It's a very good sort of froze you into it. You're like, who are these people? What the hell is going on? And then a murder or a fool happened in the snow.
It's an answer to mind for another for a different question, so we can return to that.
What's the best ending?
The flat moments, the Lynch cameo as John Ford. You know, if the horizons at the bottom is interesting, if the rises at the top is interesting, if the horizons in the middle is boring, good luck with your filmmaking career, now get now, get the fuck out of my office. I think I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it's good. I think it's something like, good luck with your career, now get the fuck out of my office.
He walks out.
He walks off into the distance, the horizons in the middle. The camera is jolted and the horizon gets put at the at the bottom of the fray. I loved it. I love that. I love that the sort of incorporation of the camera into the storytelling.
They met a thing. I loved it. I thought it was great. What was your best ending?
My best ending? This is a film we haven't talked about. I actually think that it might be Maestro, and I'll tell you the way. Yeah, I think Maestro is a very underrated film. A lot of people were mean about My Stroke, turned on My Stroke, and I suspect that has more to do with publicity and awards campaigns and things like that. I think my store is brilliant. I've
loved my stroke went to see it. I think when I've heard people talk about it in the negative way, I'm like, you know, I think you're not talking about you're missing what the film. What the film's really about, Like when people are talking about his conducting or whatever the fuck they're talking about, it is like, it's a
really heartbreaking film about a marriage. And the bit that I think is so sort of killer about it is when she says, quite late in it, she says, I think it was kind of I think her words are like over arrogant of me to believe that I didn't have needs, that I exist without my needs being met
or something. The kind of deal that she has made in this marriage is like, we'll have a good marriage, but he's going to be up to all sorts and that was kind of agreed at the beginning, and she's in love, thinks that she can live with that, and it turns out as time goes on maybe she can't. But there was a kind of confidence in her own self esteem, in her own sense of self that yeah of course I can handle that because I love him, and I think that's I certainly seemed to me a
very real thing about love and relationships. And I also think there's her These are all spoilers for the film, but she gets cancer and her the end of her life section of that film I think is beautifully done. I think it's so real and moving, and the way
they are as a family is sort of heartbreaking. And I think at the beginning of the film, there's this like quote where it's something about the two sides of an artist, the impossible extremes of one thing and another, and how those two contrasts something something I mean, I probably should live, something about the duality of the impossibility of being one thing and the contrast between two things
makes up or something like that. Something like that anyway, And what I think makes the film for me much more sort of possibly profound is the word than it is given credit for, is that it has this sequence where she dies of cancer, and it's done so beautifully
and it's so moving. But it's not like we haven't seen that kind of thing before in film, you know, it's it's the loss of a partner, and it's portrayed beautifully and it's very sad, and we watch from the distance of the family hug each other, and the film could end there. It could go back to him in his old age makeup giving his interview in him saying and I loved her, I loved her so much. That
does happen. But what happens after that is we then see him in a gay club, sweaterly dancing with his student and coming on to his student, and that's the end. And it is like, I think it's so interesting thing to include that bit, because it is it has taken you to this moment where you're sort of heartbroken and you're so moved, and it's saying this is true, but also.
This is true.
Yeah, yeah, this was a love this was real, this was marriage, this was family.
But also here's a possibly kind of creepy guy.
Yeah yeah, where he probably shouldn't be at this age with these people who are his students getting off with them.
Yeah. Like I was like, that's really good. That's good. Yeah.
Yeah, Like I think it's underrated in that way that it includes that bit, because it is the very thing it's said at the beginning. It's like, all of these things are true. He was a family, he was a good father, he was a love. He was also a bit of a pairv you know what I mean, Like yeah, and he was also a great artist. It's like, yeah, all of these things, and that's kind of hard to keep in your head. And that's what this art is trying to do, I believe.
Yeah, very nice, fair argument for most, very fair argument, very fair argument. I'm going to revisit it. Think Maestro is a movie that suffered from me watching on TV TV. But the sequence where like where she's el Is is very good, and also their fight with the mad Macy's Day parade.
In the background.
But it's another theme of twenty twenty three, the complicated marriages. Yeah, because Maestro Oppenheimer May December, you hurt my feelings. They're all about how do you sustain a marriage and how do you move through like difficulties, some of which are pre arranged and some of which are sprung on you in a marriage.
Yeah, Oh, very good stuff.
What's your favorite set piece, not beginning, not end, just to set piece in a film.
Well, look, I think this thing has taken on a life of its own or it's one of it's the same piece that took on a life it's own, almost as it was happening to us. But I'm just ken. Yeah, you know, it's when you watch it in the film. You know, I watched it in a cinema and people sort of like hooting with delight at it. And you know, then the Oscar's performance, which is incredible, sort of just he has just sort of heightened the kind of the
like furvor of people enjoying that particular sequence. But the scene in the movie is also brilliant in of itself. The other highlights of Barbie for me, the thing that made me laugh. The two things that maybe laugh the most are him when she agrees to go out on a date with him closing the door and screaming sublime, which really made me absolutely how and Kate McKinnon describing herself as smelling of basement I thought was the best line in the movie.
But it's a great song.
It's a really really fantastic set piece, the sets and the way that it's filmed. It's just like, yeah, it was so much fun, and it's and then and then to sort of top it off, he does it at the Oscars and Slash Prize. The guitar siloighted, so like, well, congratulations Ryan Gosling, you are very good.
He's very good, very very good. He's very very good, very good. Yeah.
It's funny because you sort of go sometimes in like entertainment, it's quite abstracted, and especially when you're like trying to do those award shows, you're like, what are people really looking for? And then you watch that and you go, is that that's exactly sorry, that's exactly what everyone wants.
Yeah, that's exactly what everyone wants.
Show business, charismatic, self aware show business.
Yeah, that's that's exactly what people want.
My answer, Can I have two? But they're from the close they're in the same film. Weirdly that I've picked these in the film No Hard Feelings, And look, I think there is issues with the film No Hard Feelings, because I do think the last half hour feels like it got reshot and like it kind of changes. I was a bit confused by the last like hang on
what happened? But it all going a bit so it gets a bit sincere maybe at the end, but it's a very very fun hour and a half and there is a set piece that is so well done and what it does and how it plays with an ad. It's basically Jennifer Lawrence goes skinny dipping with the guy in the sea at night, and the way it's shot is you just see her legs as her clothes come down,
so you just see the bottom of her legs. So it's as if the film is going, obviously, we're not going to show you any nudity, and it's like kind of in the waters and neck and you go like, Okay, I guess it's it's one of these films.
This is the cinematic vocabulary of nudity in a PG thirty. Yes we all know it, we've all seen it.
We know exactly what it.
Plays out like that, and you go like, yes, of course, we're not going to see any nudity in this film. And then some people on the beach steal their clothes and then suddenly jenniferlones fully nude, gets out of the beach and beats the shit out everyone.
It's so surprising.
And so well done and funny and sort of it's brilliantly set up because you can't believe it.
You just can't believe it.
It's really funny and great and sexy and cool.
And it's a really good set piece.
And then later in this film, which maybe is my best film because I've got so many things, I love it it is, there's a scene where he plays on the piano man Eita to her in a restaurant and she's moved by it, and it's genuinely beautiful and moving and wonderful. What a wonderful film, I think, even though like the last half headed half hour, those are my two set pieces. Yeah, it's good. What is the film you weren't expecting to like that you loved?
Easiest, easiest one for me to answer, Marcel the shell with the shoes on, even though I love Jenny Slay. I saw the poster for it and I just thought, you know what, that looks too tweet, even for me. And I've seen I've seen every Wes Anderson movie multiple times, and I was like that, it looks too fucking much too. And then my friend Dom, who I assumed would hate this movie, said, oh, I cried literally throughout that movie. And that was the thing where I was like, oh,
maybe I should give this a go. And I watched it and I simply wept throughout and I laughed, and I cried, and I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't think this would that. I thought it looks a bit precious. Yeah, I thought it was brilliant. I really really strongly recommend people see myself, and I strongly recommend on the off chance.
That you like me.
Thought, yeah, I thought it might be too tweet for me. It's just tweet enough. Maybe it was. I thought it was. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's brilliantly done as well, isn't it. Yeah, it's brilliantly done.
Yeah.
My answer for too tweet for me that I thought I wouldn't was Asteroid City, the Wes Anderson film, because I had sort of interesting I'd sort of reached the end of the road with Wes Anderson. I'd kind of felt like i'd sort of had had enough maybe, And then I was on a plane again and I watched and I thought, I'll give Asteroid City ago only because I didn't you want to see it.
I loved it. Yeah, I loved it so much.
I found it really beautiful and funny and moving and sexy, and I was like, oh, not too to be for me. Loved it, loved the alien love it. Yeah, the Alien's Great.
My grand theory about Was Anderson is that, like, because on paper, you would think if you like one of them, you like all of them. Really, but I think that everybody at some point runs out of patients, and no one has the same point at which they run out of patients, and in some ways it may actually not be a reflection of the film itself, the actual individual film that you'd run out of patients with. So I
reached a kind of threshold after the Dodgel Limited. I was like, fuck this guy, man, I can't do this anymore. I can't go around like this anymore. It's I just can't do it. And then I found myself at moon Rise Kingdom being like what am I doing? And then I was like, I love moon Rose Kingdom, I love what was Anderson. I'm back on board. And I think
I thought that at Grand Budapest Hotel. After Grand Budapest Hotel, I was like, I don't think needs to make another film, Like I really I think that the Grand Buda pest I tell is like, is the perfect distillation of everything he's done. I think it's incredible. And then you sort of watch the French Dispatch and you go I'm enjoying myself. I really am enjoying myself. I Asteroid City. I feel that I'm in another cycle where I just was like, I'm not quite on board with this, but I'll be
back for the next one. I think it's really hard to pin people down for what their most favorite and least favorite Wes Anderson film is. I think you can generally, I think everybody generally agrees that Rushmore, Royal ten, and Bounds. Rushmore is a good film, even if you don't like any of the other Wes Anderson films. Rushmore is one anyone could watch. Royal ten, the Best Friend. Yeah, I think there's a consensus around ten and Balums, but then the rest of it is kind of.
Up for grabs.
Like I love Grand Budapest, I love the Life Aquatic, I absolutely love it. And I think people I think we'll all just I think I look at Where's Anderson the way the Joker looks at Batman at the end of the Dark Night, and I just say, I think you and I are destined to do this for a long time. We'll go around in circles. Well, sometimes sometimes I'll be absolutely on board. Other times I'll think what the fuck are you doing? And gives a shit about
any of this. Sometimes you're going to live long enough to become the villain. Yeah yeah, But I just, you know, whenever I see what it do is, I've always like he's his own genre and we should probably be thankful that he is making these movies and they make money and he gets amazing people in them, And like, yeah, I'm a big Anderson fan.
Do we what do you.
Have a greatest Film? Because I know we're saved favorite, we're saving favorite? What was great?
Well, Okay, now we're into the meat of it.
Yeah, now now we're now we're into the acting categories of the Oscars. We've left we've left short film and sound editing and all that ship behind.
Now we're in.
Now we're into the awards that are people have heard of the people who are nominated for them. And I feel like the Oscars does itself a disservice by not announcing it, being like, Okay, you've sat through a lot of people you've never heard of before.
Now, Emily Blood.
I think that I am struggling to determine where I put three films across Greatest Film and Favorite Film and the three films are Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Oppenheimer. I think I'm going to put Oppenheimer as the greatest, so is it not necessarily my favorite, but I think I'm going to put Oppenheimer's the greatest film. And the reason I'm putting Oppenheimer's the greatest film is it is a film that was designed to be seen
by an enormous audience. It is not an abstract, difficult art house film. It is a film about a nuclear physicist that he tried to bring to as wide an audience as possible, and he did it by us tricks that he'd learned from making Batman films. The sequence where is he says to Oppenheimer, why you need to get out those ridiculous clothes, you're a scientist, and then Oppenheimer ditches his military uniform and goes back to his suit.
That's like Batman putting on the batsuit. That is shot and executed in the exact same way as Batman putting on the batsuit for the first time, and the screenplay is very similarly structured to Batman begins, Yeah, you're right, he's pulled from all of his tricks. But I think the thing going into Oppenheimer, I was like, and you know, I'm a big fan of his I love the Prestige, I love the Batman films, I love Memento. I was wondering whether he would be able to get a kind
of emotional core to it. And the two things that I can take away from having seen the film three times now are number One, it fucking rattles along. It properly rattles on. It's compelling, scenes throw to each other with a momentum that just means you kind of can't stop watching it. And considering it's a film about people talking about science, it is quite extraordinary how riveting it is. But also all of my potential misgivings were kind of answered by the movie. It does annoy me that people
keep talking about it. It's like, Oh, it's just another movie about a great man who did a great thing, and you're like, I don't.
Think you've watched the movie.
It's a movie about a great man who is the smartest man in the world, but his legacy was dreadful, and the end of the film, it's not setting him up or venerating him, it's him realizing that he's unleashed this force on the whole world that could destroy the planet. And the way that Einstein says to him, you know, they'll give you an award at some point, and you see just this flash of him as an old man accepting an award in the White House is so potent
because his legacy isn't the awards that he's won. His legacy is, you know, the death of thousands of thousands of people like he Yeah, his legacy is death. And the biggest thing that I come away from that movie is going, why the fuck didn't he stop building the
bomb to Hitler falls? Because all through in the lead up to it, when you find yourself going, yeah, of course he would build a bomb, and the way that they the way that he explains that, and he says, you know, it's not you know, if Hitler builds a bomb, it's not your people who's going to drop them on first. You know, like that, you go, fuck, yeah, you know he's a Jewish scientist. This means something to him more than just the pursuit of science. But after Hitler falls,
why does he not keep going with it? And does he not understand that the US government is using him because they're already thinking about the next war. The army and the government are already thinking about the war with Russia. Why does he go along with it? And I don't think Christopher Nolan has an satisfactory answer for that, so he doesn't try and force one in there. So you're left with this sense of like, did he just do it because as a scientist he wanted to complete the work,
whether he was too intellectually curious. Yeah, that is such a like sort of moral gray era. And also, and again, if I may wear my pod save the UK hat for a moment, he is often he is a filmmaker who's off and described as being politically very conservative. That movie is fucking pro union. And the fact that, you know, one of the two biggest films in the world. In the premiere, the stars all walked out because it was the start of the strike in the film and television industries.
And the antipathy towards the military industrial complex and the kind of political hounding of socialists and left wing people is extremely interesting. Like, I think it's incredibly interesting. And Killian Murphy's amazing. Emily Blunt in that final scene when she's being cross examined is so brilliant. Yeah, I just thought, we keep on saying we want intelligent films for a mass audience, and he fucking gave you one. And if you come away from it and you go, well it
was a bit too long, then go fuck yourself. I hope you fucking drown in a sea of Aquaman sequels.
I sort of think you've convinced me of and I was the most is the greatest with me.
I think I think you're right. You've made a very very very good argument. You're right. Maybe that's it. I mean, I was going to say, no, how I feelings. No, I was going to say, I mean, I think only because I think you've put that so well and it would be nice to have it at the other end
of the scale. I think I would possibly say how to have sex because it is at the opposite ed of the scale, very small, the kind of mass empathy that it has, and the the subtlety of all of it, and the the non judgmental nature of how it plays out, and then it just feels so real and all the dy no, every part of it is like you understand, people, this is the power of cinema is putting us in these positions of great empathy and here are these sixteen year old girls and we feel completely part of it.
And I just think it's and it's just sort of very loving the whole film.
Yeah, I wouldn't speak well, I just want to quickly sneak in. If we're talking about films about radical empathy, a French movie called Saint Omayer by that Alistiop made, that is the most radical empathy I've ever seen, because that is a movie where the protagonist is finding empathy with a woman who murders her baby. And it's all about the trial of the woman who murders her baby, and it's based on a true story and it's something that really happened to Alistyop, where she became fixated on
this woman that had murdered her child. And it's about a lot of things. It's about motherhood, it's about parenting, it's about being black in France, it's about generational trauma. But it's also its core about empathy and about how sometimes empathy can be troubling because sometimes when you see yourself reflected back in someone who's done something horrendous, it
can almost warp your sense of self. But also at the same time, there is something that's always positive about trying to reach out and understand why something has done. You know, someone has done the thing that's against nature. You know, a parent murdering their child is against the natural order and the way that aspiece is designed to reproduce itself. But anyway, I just think that that is such a morally complex, murky and quite beautiful piece of work.
So yeah, that's just a sneaky extra shout for says sneaky.
Is there anything before we get to favorite? Is there anything any other films.
We haven't done things that you would cry cry the most about?
Oh, because that's my favorite?
What's the most the only other one we haven't wonte this film that would make you want to do something new with your life?
Okay, what is the film that made you want to do something new with your life?
Every time I see a documentary about great musician, it makes me wish I was a musician. Little Richard I am everything. Little Richard, I am everything. It's also just a brilliant documentary. Little Richard is like the person who invented rock and roll. He's also an imperfect hero in so many ways because it was his own relationship with his own bisexuality. It's a very, very superb documentary.
Little Richard on what was in the playlist I have on my tool show. That's what plays perfect. People come in perfect perfect, but you are a musician. My answer is the deepest breath. Despite showing us that maybe the other side is a haunting head of place you never want to see, I do want to be a free diver now and I'm holding my breath.
I'm about to two minutes. That's my new thing, free diving.
What is the film that means the most too, because of the experience we had around seeing.
It Anatomy before, because I went to see it because it was playing in the big screen nearest to me, and I was very excited about seeing it in the big screen. But I was absolutely knackered and I sat down and as the trailer started, I thought I've made a mistake, like I'm too tired to watch this movie. And I was literally falling asleep in my seat. And the film was so good that it woke me back up.
It's the only time in my life there have been definitely times where I've been like, I'm too naked to see this film.
I'm not getting what I should.
Do out of it, shout out hostiles like Christian bell Western. With all due respect, I should not have seen that at midnight. I hold my hands up. That was a huge mistake. But this is the only time where I've gone in going I'm definitely not in the mood for this, and the film was so fucking good that in the end I was riveted, like on the edge of my seat.
The argument sequence is incredible. Sandra Hiller is unbelievable. I did not think we would be sat here talking about a palm Door Winner where a key plot point hinges on a steel drum cover of Pimp by fifty cent. No one could ever have predicted that The defense Lawyer, the bald Defense Lawyer one of my favorite performances of the year. The way that he moves and the way that he like keeps wringing his hands is just incredible. French courts are fucking weird, and that's another thing that
I've learned this year. And in conclusion, if somebody played a steel drum cover of pa MP, I would push them out of a window. So I'm team she did it and was right too.
My answer would be I went with a friend. We went.
We were supposed to see a preview of Zone of Interest, and we turned up there and we had put our name down for it, and when we got there, it was full and we were told we were sent away, and we were really mad, like we'd come all this where we were like fuck. And also to go and see a film like that you sort of have to be prepared for, like this is gonna be singing heavy, so we were all sort of prepared for this heavy
film and we were turned away. And then we walked around the corner and in another room there was a sneak preview going on and there was some seats. We were like, we just fucking sneaking, so we snuck in. We didn't know what it was going to be, and it was Saltburn. So we've gone in thinking, oh god, we're going to watch this really heavy holocaust film. And then we watched fucking Saltburan, which was quite the opposite and was such a fucking great and we were like, well that was much more fun.
Fuck me.
That is that's a that's a shift. That's a shift in your evening. That is a real that's a turn in your evening. So we went in, went in very heavy, left very light the Saltband. What a roller coaster of a film, Love it, What a great fun wild ride. Not expecting that what a tree. You weren't expecting murder on the dances fig was not expecting And if you were, you'd be like Glazer. I think that might be too experimental. I think you might have finally pushed it over the edge.
What about And we'll talk about that film next next year.
For the rest you're wondering where that is, that is the next year film. Yeah, okay, what's the funamator cryd.
Of My One Fine Morning, Mia Hanson love film. Leah Seid plays a woman whose husband has died. She lives alone looking after a daughter, and her dad has got something called Benson syndrome, which is a kind of degenerative neurological disorder. And Okay, even as I say that, I'm like, bear with me, and it's super fucking French. The way that the ease with which she starts to have an affair with a man who's like a friend of her ex husband is one of the most French things I've
ever seen. But it and listen, in the interest of full disclosure, my grandmother is not very well with the degenerative neurological disorder. And I think that two of the films have made me cry the most this year are One Fine Morning and Marcel. Michelle and Marcel. There's a plot with the grandmother, and if you haven't seen it, it's almost hard for me to articulate. It's one of the most harrowing things you've ever seen. A movie is
so harrowing. But the thing about One Fine Morning, you know, it's heartbreaking because you're watching her watch her father die, and like that as a process, I'm sort of experiencing it. I'm watching my mum go through it as well, and so that there's a lot of really heavy stuff in there,
and you know, she's kind of in the street. She runs into one of his students and she just kind of breaks down just at the mention of him, and that the last scene is so heavy because he's they're all sort of singing, and she you know, at this point, he's in a home and they've been through all this process about whether they should put him in a home, what sort of home they should put him in, and she kind of breaks down at the end. And I
was just absolutely in floods of tears. But part of the thing is that there is also a huge amount of love and hope in the film, because ultimately I thought that what this film was about was like, you know, we're all heading for death, and so the only thing to do in confronting that is to live your life.
And I think she has kind of she has sort of accepted her lot at the start of the movie as someone who just raises her door her and looks after her dad, and then like this affair it makes her like remember that she's like a sexual person and she has desires. And she finds a book of his writing at the end, and one of the things that he says is, I'm just going to keep writing because it's the only thing I can do to kind of
fight against the despair. And a lot of the film, for about quite heavy subject matter, is about fighting against despair.
You know.
There's like older people who keep talking about that, like her mother who's like divorced from her father but still is very involved in his care is like constantly going on like climate protests and like getting in turned by the police, which he's going And I thought that as much as this movie made me cry because there's lots of heavy subject matter that is, you know, directly affecting
my life in so many ways. Also, it made me cry because I found it quite uplifting and it's actually a film about Yeah, it is terrible, it is sad, and the only thing for it is to seize life and push back against the despair and protest and love people and you know, experience joy and make things and celebrate the life that you have rather than constantly anticipating its inevitable end. And I actually thought it made me counterintuitively, very very pleased to be alive. And so it made
me kind of cry because I was sad. But it also at the end, they just sort of run up into these gardens in Paris and they're just all looking out on the morning, and that at the end I realized I was actually crying because it had made me feel quite optimistic and hopeful and energized about being alive. I loved this movie so much, so it's sort of like the opposite of your podcast. Yeah, it's the opposite of all of my work.
This movie is the opposite of all of my work.
Also, LEAs I do, she's the fucking best she's so good, and she's so good in this film, and it is like it's funny at points and it's sexy. And maybe I'm just like deluded, but I actually thought that I came away from it thinking that it was a film that is about seizing life.
Yeah. I loved it. I absolutely loved it, and it made me weep just throughout.
Beautiful, beautiful answer before I get to my so which is my favorite? Just one little shout out for the film BlackBerry, BlackBerry. Remember, oh, remember twenty twenty three when there were lots of films about corporations where the hero of the story was like a product, and you thought this is weird.
BlackBerry's fucking great. BlackBerry Hidden Jim, I'll.
Tell you how good BlackBerry is. I watched it on a plane and my partner, the aforementioned amien Ere watched the whole thing because it was quite loud and I couldn't really hear properly. So I had the subtitles on, which I sometimes do on the plane just because I the headphones are not yeah, you know, I'm not amazing, So I put have my headphones on as I put the subtitles on as well, and BlackBerry is so good that she watched the whole film just on subtitles, not on her screen, on my screen.
Great, that's the worst.
Surely the worst way to watch a film is on a plane, but not even on your screen. Yeah, but I watched BlackBerry and Dumb Money Back to Bad Love really a little bit of very positive feelings about both of them.
Yeah.
Film credit posts and of a favorite film of the year is Past Lives. I love pers Slaves so fucking much. I think Perst Lives is a perfect film. Pers Lives, and it happens to me very occasionally. It happened with the Florida Project, happened with Panzelabrin. Past Lives of the film that I went to see and I immediately went to see again the next day, and I saw it three times in about a week because I was like, is this one of the best films made? And they went to check and I was like, yes, I think
it is, and I think it does something. It's very sort of understated. The whole film is very classy. It's a really really classy film. It's sort of very sort of understated and simple, but the way I think it has sort of huge things to say, not just about love. If you haven't seen it. It's about two best friends who are like twelve, I think in Korea, and they get separated because she moves to Canada with her family.
And then about ten years later they get in touch and they communicate by a skype, but you see they become very close as adults over skype. And then at some point she says they have to stop doing this because they're never actually going to see each other, are they, And she needs to embrace life rather than look forward to skypes with this guy. And so they separate again.
And then the last main part of the film is I think another ten years later or five years later, and they he comes to visit her and is now married. And it's so it is a love story in that sense, but there's also a story of like immigration.
And I also think one of the.
Things that's really brilliant about it and very it's just like it's just is part of the film is the reality is about communication. Is the fact that the sequence where they're talking over skype, it's like the limits of technology and the kind of the that sound of beeB boop beep that skype and the fact that they do build this genuine relationship there and you fall you fall
in love with all of them. And then when he finally gets to visit them in New York, the fact that he can't speak English at all really makes him a child. It suddenly from this this kind of erudite, eloquent conversations that you've been observing, suddenly, in front of her husband, he's essentially a child because he doesn't have any language. Neither of them do, and it reduces all
this flex in, all this stuff. Too nice to meet you like, that's sort of all he can really do, and it makes him small and it makes him kind of weaker. And the husband. It's such a brilliant casting and acting and writing, and there is a scene in it. We've talked about it, but the way the film is set up, your team them, because they're who you've watched the original the best Friends. You kind of as a
love triangle. You want it to be them, and then you meet her husband and you're predisposed to the other two you sort of. But then there is a scene which I think is all one take, where they lie in bed together, the husband and wife, and he starts talking about it and thinking about this guy, and it is such a fucking it makes you love the husband completely and by that point you're like, oh, yeah, I
get why you're with him. And there's a just brilliant bit of writing where he and he's starting to wonder if there is a problem with this guy, and he says, all I know is you make my life bigger. Worry I don't do the same for you, And she says, I'm just a girl from Korea and it's and it's so fucking beautiful and you It is this complicated story,
and ultimately I think she's made the right decision. And what it's about, it's about love, is also it's about she's ambitious, she's bigger than her old friend from career. They are different, and he represents home, but she has left home and that's the reality of her and I don't think he is going to leave home, and that
is why ultimately she's in the right place. But the fact that the husband sits just allows this to play out and kind of allows it almost just on faith, like if I do nothing, hopefully this will be okay. And it's a real kind of act of love from him because if it were me, particularly when she says I'm going to walk him to Azuba.
I'd be like, no, you're fucking not. I'll walk into his fucking uber thank you very much.
It's John mcgara, who is both in Big Short and Big Short is kind of a good name for him. But he like, yeah, there's a bit where he's playing like Xbox or something, which he comes back and you're like, dude, you got to get you don't know what your up against here, Dude, you got to get the game. Yeah, she's got a strong emotional bond with Korean Superman. You need to get your head in the game. And there's a bit in it where there's a bit where he says,
just outwright, is he attractive? And she goes, yeah, I'm watching it between my fingers because I'm like, what the fuck is how the fuck is this.
Going to play out?
But that yeah, the yeah you make one my world so much bigger and I hope I do the same for you. Is like, that's that's the thing where you go and like he's like, because they're all creative people, like they meet in a kind of writer's retreat, and so the husband is constantly saying, you know it says
it's this is a great story. You know, this is a great story the two people that you know, it's like it's sort of it's basically the plot of the song Disco two thousand by Pulp, but for immigrants, like it's sort of, yeah, it's that the lyrics of that are, let's all make up with the year two thousand, Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown? Like it's like it's like it has all that stuff in it.
And they at the end the conversation where like you say, they're speaking Korean at the bar and he's sort of just sat there. But what they're talking about is how the film constantly references Indian, which is this like Korean idea of destiny and people being destined for each other. And he basically says, you, you and Arthur have that. And he says to her, the reason I liked you is because you are you and you are someone who leaves.
But he says, but to Arthur, you were someone who stays, and like that whole thing, and when and she says, she says something like that. She talks about the girl that she was that he loved, and she said and she says twenty years ago, I left her behind with you, and like all of that stuff is like I mean this like especially if you're like a second generation ever. I mean she she the character and I are a pretty similar age at but she that you know, that is.
My parents experience.
You walk out that movie and you're like, I wonder if my mom or my dad left someone behind like in India, Like what what you know?
What was that? What's that experience?
No, I don't really know how to it's not it's it's like it's kind of a difficult subject approach, Like I don't even know how to start that conversation because it's like, yeah did you yeah, yeah yeah. But also you realize like they both left like a version of themselves in I mean my mom is like came to England from India via Kenya. So my mum like left two or three different versions of herself in two different places.
And you know, and I do think they so times wonder what their life would have been like if they haven't left India and like and it is like there's that whole sort of layer. If your parents or you immigrated, you sort of go there's probably aver there's a version of me that never existed, that was born and brought up in India, and it's like all of that stuff going on, What was the bit that really sent you
over there? Because, as we've discussed every time, Brett and I are like Mark Ruffalo's Hulk when he's asked, why are you angry?
He says, the secret is I'm always angry.
The secret is we're always crying, and all of the effort goes into us not crying.
I think it's the it's the it's the final walk at the end. Yeah, but it's also it's such a good It's Selene's young debut film, right director mind fucking blunt. But the the the amount of times there's it's a real thing of sort of chemistry and kind of magic of like there's a few times in the film where it's just one and it's the two of them just looking at each other and they don't speak a lot, and it is absolutely romantic as fucking electrifying and beautiful
and magic. And also the thing there's so much of it that's just so like the fact that they do touristy things and the husband's like, I have never done that because I live here, Like there's it's so much about that as well, just the places, and yeah, she moves twice in the film, and she's bigger, she's bigger than she's bigger than him, and the year's time.
Oh god, what a killers.
I was obviously I was just crying the whole time, but like I was like, I haven't really it's sort of I've just been running a low base level. But then at the end when they say goodbye the car, I was like, oh, I'm fine, and then she goes back to her husband and then she and she's actually contained herself quite a lot. I mean, I think gret Lee like she should have won everything. And also like what like it's just a weird thing about being in comedy because I've seen her in like sitcoms and stuff.
He's sort of you really like root for comedy, Like I've never met her, but you sort of weirdly root for comedy people because she was in like New Girl and the Feyan Polar Sisters movie like this, you're sort of like, yeah, go comedy person, but she should have won everything. She is incredible, incredible in that movie. But when she melted down, I suddenly was like, oh no, yeah,
oh God, like pop God spill. But it's because you realize she's going she suddenly mourned the whole life that she didn't even realize that she'd missed.
And she's been so she's so cool.
She's such a cool person, and she's so like even that, but you said like her just saying yeah, he's good looking.
It's like she's just very cool.
And else aware and and she is kind of looking after him when he comes because he is more inno city. Yeah, there's a real innocence about him, and she sees that and she kind of has outgrown him. Oh god, what an hour and a half.
And what a film. What a film. That's my favorite film of the year. What is yours?
Well, my favorite film of the year is Past Lives, But it's a dead heat between Past Lives and the film that when Brett saw it, he sent me two text messages. The first one said, of course you liked it. That film is basically Honkys Be Terrible. I will now be doing a character called Honkys Be Terrible. He sort of sings to the tune of Johnny B.
Good.
The litany of crimes committed by white people around the world it's Killers of the Flower Moon. I went to see this at the Imax. They did a limited run of screenings at the Imax, so it's obviously it's not shot for Imax, but it's it's just it's still fucking massive, you know. It's like when they say doesn't fill the Armax, me like, yeah, it's still bigger than any cinema.
I went, I saw it with you, No I saw it, No we even I saw.
I saw these two films with my friend Vinne, and like we we book ahead. It's very like deliberate planned thing.
And I went there and there is a moment in that film where de Niro and Scorsese are discussing some part of this plot that's unfolding, you know, and they're you know, they're they're white Americans who are furious that the Osage tribe, which was given this kind of derisory bit of land, have now become you know, I think, per capita, the richest people in the world because the land had loads of oil underneath it, and so they've brought in this kind of custodian, this like guardianship scheme
where they all have to have like a white protector and slowly, they just start being murdered, and it's all part of this plot, you know, to essentially murder all of these people. And I think the character Leonardo dca plays died two years before Lily Gladstone was born, so it's this is not ancient history, this is twentieth century America.
And there is a moment in it where De Niro and DiCaprio are planning something, they're talking about something, you know, and they're in a cinema, and there's so many scenes in Martin Scorsese films where people are in a cinema like you know, and are watching like Main Street's Cape Fear. It's you know, it's a trope of his movies, and the film they're watching is a Western, And in that moment,
I thought, holy fucking shit, this guy. These people are committing a genocide, as the genocide that they're committing is being repackaged as a heroic narrative of conquest over savages for the entertainment of the people still committing the genocide, and that single moment it blew my mind. I thought the film was incredible. I thought it was so propulsed.
If the performances are all incredible. As we said when The Irishman came out, It's just nice that every couple of years between, like Uber eats adverts, Robert de Niro goes, I just say, you know, I'm still better than everyone. I'm still better than everyone, Like I'm still the best at this. I choose to do these to do Rocky and Bullwinkle, but if I wanted to, I would do
it and still be better than all of you. I thought DiCaprio was brilliant, you know, Lily, like Lily Gladston is the kind of beating heart of that movie, like the whole thing hinges on her performance. And also Robbie Robertson died this year, and like what a like final piece of work for someone who like loves the band and loves the work that he did with Bob Dylan, like and loves all of his scores, Like the score for The Irishman is so fucking brilliant, and this score
is like a last piece of work. Is like what an incredible epitaph for his career in music, But all the performances were extraordinary, and this is this is like this like Scorsese making a film about a what America is and making a film about the original sin of America. You cannot understand that country unless you understand that it begins with the massacre of the indigenous people and the fact that it was. And we always talk about how like we, you know, people of color, always talk about
how like we want white people to understand whiteness. This is a film that fucking understands whiteness. And I understand when people go, we need to see more from the osage perspective, and Scorsese has said, you know, quite openly, that's not our story to tell. Our story as a white American is the story of the villains. And it is a movie about the bad guys of this story. And it's about what whiteness is as a social construct,
and it's a poison. That means that a husband would slowly try and murder his wife because of love is who he loves, who he loves, and it's is way more complicated than just he's trying to get rid of her. He does love her, but he's like loyalty to what his whiteness trumps everything thing. And it is one of the great films about America. And it's confronting and it's engaging with its history, and it's unflinching in its depiction of the kind of horrors of the massacre of the
indigenous people. And like, when I've walked out, my fucking head was spinning because also it's just Martin Scorsese film, So he doesn't you know, he doesn't make boring films. He makes thrilling movies. And he also, like he makes long films feel short. That it's three and a half hours and I could have watched another two hours. And the fact that DiCaprio was going to play the FBI agent and they suddenly were like, no, that's wrong, because that puts the FBI as the heroes of this and
there are no heroes here. There are just monsters and they're victims, you know. And just when you think the film can't get any better, Jesse Plemons appears. There's no film that wouldn't be improved by Jesse Clemmons popping up through. I just think that Scorsese is, you know, he's the fucking best, and like, we're so lucky that he is continuing to push himself further and further, and he's never made a movie like this, And it's a hugely political
film in its own way. And also I just think he's getting angrier as he gets older, Like there's no mellowing out like you talk about like the message of One Fine Morning being like you have to see. It's like he's fucking seizing life and he's making like you know, he's gonna make a fucking movie about Jesus.
Good.
Great, I can't wait. I can't wait. We have no right to demand any more from him than he has given us, but anything he is willing to still give us we should be grateful for profoundly. And this is why Past Lives and Killers of the Flower Moon are why we fucking fell in love with movies when we were kids, and it's why we still keep being in love with films and why we'll never stop being in love with films.
Yeah, I agree on all of that. It is amazing because he's he's very old, and the fact that he is he is it has the energy to do it, and that he is thinking in such complicated, deep stuff. It's very really impressive. I also like there's a bit in it where I'm like, that's very Scorsese moment where because it did a very grim film, but there are brief moments of like humor in it, and where he
often finds humor in it's like people being hypocrites. There's a bit and Taxi Driver that I always thinks funny where he's buying guns from a man and the man lays out a load of guns and then the guy offers him drugs and he acts as if to say, what sort of person do you think I am?
How dare you?
And there's a bit in Killers Flaming where Leonard DiCaprio says I don't like you to the other guy, who's also an absolute fucking scumback, and he's sort of like, yeah, you.
Sort of discuss me. Yeah.
There's a bit of it where the guy's basically like, well what if I just kidnap the children? And then the guy he's talking to like, well, you obviously know now that I think you're gonna do. Like it's like, there's lots there's lots of like weird like it's there's lots of like quite weird and bleak like comedy in it, and also just like as usual, there's so many like arresting images, the fields burning and the way it's shot through the kind of smoke that makes it look like
a Vangoff painting. Is like, you're like, you know, add that to the montage of unforgettable scores, iicy images.
What's your top ten? Come on?
All right? The top ten was? The top ten was? The top ten is tricky. It's impossible, is actually impossible. I'm not even sure I agree with what I've done here, but you go for it. Yeah.
One film we haven't mentioned, just to quick shout out, is the film Scrapper.
I really like Scrapper was really funny.
Yeah, and in its way, Scrapper is a hugely like bold film because Scrapper plays like a British sort of what appears to be a depressing film set on an estate and feels wildly what's the word revolutionary or something, because it's really fun and has a happy ending. And I watched that whole film expecting it not to have a happy ending because of all films like that, And in the end you're like, oh wow, yeah it was fun and everyone's okay.
This is great. I loved it, all right.
I don't know how I feel about this because I'm looking at my ten and it doesn't have no hard feelings in and given how much I.
Talked about that, surely that we didn't mention that.
Oh God, mine doesn't that anyway, Mine doesn't have one fine morning in it. So that's got to change. Oh God, we've got to start this again.
My mad doesn't have my three good in and that's brilliant. Christ.
Okay, here's mine. I think already angry about it. My stroke Reality, Killers of the Flower Boon, May December, one thousand and one, Oppenheimer Brother How to Have Sex, Tar Past Lives.
Very very good.
Okay, so mine is Passages the Fableman's May December Reality Rye Lane, Anatomy of Befall One Fine Morning, Oppenheimer Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon. Okay, you can have it this, Yeah, it would. It should have been drawn Killers of the Flower Moon. Like listen, I'm none of us happy about this.
This.
We've done about three hours here. This is one of my shortest ones yet. And bang on time before I send you to having one film for you to take from twenty twenty.
Three, I gotta go Flower Moon. But it's it's such as all such. Yeah, this is the thing. I think people will take past lives, so I'll take I'll take explained I.
Stuck you in a coffee and send you sorry. The boom explained bits of you everywhere. I was like, oh fucking I'm with a coffee. You know what I'm like? Stuff you all in, I say, I say to your corpse, I'm about to send you to the episode with a DVD from TWE twenty three. Remember other people that are in heaven trying to have a nice time for film to show the people in heaven.
The people in heaven mustn't know what happened on earth. The Killers of the Flower move off, you go we I've just realized we didn't do the film be most related to Christ?
What's your answer? My answer?
The only reason I remembered it is I got berated my friend for even suggesting this. The film I'm most related to was The Killer, the David Fincher movie, because the first fifteen minutes of that is so accurate as a representation of what it's like to be a stand up comedian.
It's really on your life.
It's true, on your own in a strange city, just waiting killing time until the evening. When you do your work for a very short space of time, you've got to get your heart rate down just enough that you can do the job that you're there to do.
It's true.
I was like, that is so he just wanders around, He has a McDonald's, sits on a bench for a bit. He's also like he's really obsessed with music, which I think stand up because you have dead time in the day. It allows you to indulge in obsessions that you can do in a mobile way, like say, for example, music or a game for the sake of argument the cinema. It really reminded me of big a stand up And when I told a friend of mine, when I told Daniel Kitson, who is also a standup comedian, that he said,
are you fucking kidding me? First of all, he doesn't just wanderinglessly with a purpose. And also when he orders the McDonald's, he doesn't eat the bread. So how in any way is he like you? He's also very bad at his job, the killer. The killer is really bad at his job. It's really bad at his job. All right, nice, I think we've done it. We did hours and hours. We've done it. As ever, I love you. All of our sympathies are with buddy peace.
I love you very much. Buddy peace, I'm going to stop this recording. Oh hey, is there anything we should look out for in the coming year for you this?
I am on tour in the UK and Dublin. The tickets are available at Nishkamar dot co dot UK. I said I was on tour in the UK and Island and people who live in Ireland rightly were like doing one day in Dublin is not an Irish tour. So UK and Dublin Nishkamar dot co dot UK and my stand up special Your Power Your Control is available to buy and also you could listen to the album on Spotify or Apple Music and you can get it from
iTunes at Amazon Prime. If you live in the UK and have Sky, you can watch it on Sky or now Tv, but otherwise you can buy it from wherever you get your video, or just listen to it on Spotify or Apple Music.
Hello you very much, Nisch, Happy New Year, Happy New Year to you.
Happy day.
So that was episode three hundred and three. Head over to the Patreon at Patreon dot com, Forward slash Break Goldstein for the extra secret chat and videos with mister nish Kumar goes Apple Podcasts. Give us a five star rating, but right about the film. It means the most to you and why it's a lovely thing to read, helps numbers, etc. My neighbor Morien loves it always cries at it. Thank you so much to everyone for listening. I hope you're all well. Thank you to Nisch for doing this with me.
Thanks to Scruby's PIP and the Distruction pieces of Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics and Lisa Laden for the photography. Come and join me next week for an excellent episode with a very special, brilliant guest. That is it for now. I hope you're all well, but in the meantime, have a lovely week, and please be excellent to each others.
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