Nish Kumar (The Absolutely On Time Frankly Early Films Of The Year 2O24 Special • Part 2) • #347

very quietly. This week it is part two of the Perfectly On Time if you count in these things Films of two thousand and twenty four with mister nish Kumar. Catch up a part one from last week before you listen to part two. You can catch all of it as a video with extra stuff with a secret with all kinds of extras over at Patreon at Patreon dot com forwards last Brett Goldstein, you get everything add free uncut videos. You know how it works. Anyway, this episode

is the last of this season. I'll be taking a break. In that time. You'll be getting some absolute rewind classics and I'll be coming back soon.

doing it again? You fucking monsters think it's it's so good. They're just very very very good. And it's it's complicated, and it's about the more complicated emotions and this poor girl and you feel for her so much and she's a wreck, and I think it does an incredible in the same way the thing that the most powerful thing about the first movie or is this idea of this visualization of this is a thought, this is an emotion.

And I think what Inside Out Too does extraordinary well is when anxiety, when she's like stuck and it's just worrying around, wearing around. It's such a good like visualization of the feeling of overwhelm, of like where you can't make a decision your facts. I'm like, yeah, I relate to that.

One of the things that I thought was, can you imagine, like I thought it was fantastic, I loved it. Can you imagine how good it would have been for us to see that movie at thirteen fourteen? Do you think we I wonder about that. Do you think we'd be all right if we'd seen Inside Actually? I think that's the point of the movie, is that like there is

like a silver bullet that makes you all right. But I think we would have been probably just wouldn't need films to deal with all Yeah, maybe maybe, or at the very least, we'd be more okay with our brains.

We'd be less angry with our own brains. And that I think is like that's maybe the great gift that hicks Ire is giving a generation of anxious, sad kids by via these inside Out films, which is like this, this stuff is going to happen like because ultimately the film doesn't The film doesn't have a solution for any of these things. It just tells you this is how it's going to happen, and give yourself a break when

it happens like this, and that that's incredibly powerful. I definitely think we would be less mad if but would we be as productive than by what garlics. I don't know, bra, how's the podcast recording that you're doing in between making film and how's the podcast record I'm doing at the start of the Australia leg of my world tour that I'm doing over the course of two months ago. Just taking the time, we've.

The Holdovers. I thought The Holdovers felt like something. I mean, I think some of that was accentuated by the fact that I think they'd even use the credits from a late sixties early seventies, like, yeah, it was basically but The Holdovers is, you know, the story of this cantankrist teacher who's supposed to be minding the children at this elite boarding school that are left for whatever reason at the school over the whole days. And it's this cantankrist

teacher and the lunch lady are basically left behind. Then all of the rest of the kids get taken away in this like almost Simpson z e site gag where one of the it's like it's another one of the like just single frame, single frame jokes of the year. The helicopter comes and just lit airlifts all these kids out, and it means that you end up with just one kid, the teacher and the lunch lady. And you know, it's like her it's shot like a seventies movie. It's shot

like a hal Ashby thing. Like it's very pure, very character driven. The performances are all incredible, and Devine Joy Randolph, who I will always have nothing but love for because me and my partner are like two of the like key defenders of the Zoe Kravitz High Fidelity reboot, which we thought was incredible, and she sort of basically plays the equivalent of the Jack Black character from the film,

and she's incredible in it. Her performance in this it was just one of those things where just won everything and no one raised a dissenting voice for good reason. It's like it's an extraordinary performance and it's set in set in December nineteen seventy is seventy turns into seventy one, and she has this incredible sort of backstory where her son,

she's black. Her son was allowed to be at the school amongst all of these kind of you know, these elite prep school white kids, but because she worked there, her son gets a place there. But then he goes he goes off to Vietnam, and you know, the rich kids, these are very much the kind of you know, to return to a theme, bone spurs generation of push white American men who were not obliged to go to Vietnam when poorer white kids and black kids were sent off.

And her son is drafted and dies in the Vietnam one and she has this kind of incredible, sort of tragic backstory that sits behind her eyes for the entire movie. Like that that's how that's how that performance feels. It. It's an incredible depiction of a mother's grief because in every frame of her performance, you feel the ghost of her son and the weight of what a weight of it pressing down on her. And you know, he is novelistic because this film really is just about these three characters.

And the teacher is played by Paul Jim Marty, and it's like it's the sort of quite kind of incredible because you sort of think, how could there be a more Paul gim Marti performance than Sideways, And somehow this is even more Paul Giomarti than Paul Jim Martin in Sideways.

news and it is always so heartbreaking. He's a very very good actor. I like that film very much and it was really classy and shit. And my other answer in that category is American Fiction, which I loved and thought was and in a way like my old ass, in the way that on paper, American fiction is kind of it's almost like a high concept comedy. It's like a novelist deliberately writes a bad book and become successful and on paper go, okay, I think I know the

jokes of that film. And in fact the film is really like rich and it's got a really sort of beautiful depiction of a family and of dementia, and there's so much life and world going on within that concept that it does feel like a book. It's got the you really know these people's lives and you care about every member of that family, and it's sort of surprising because you go in thinking you're it's one thing, but

really it's a film about a family. And I liked it very much, and I think car Jefferson, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant film.

work is not brown or black or Asian enough. Like it's a universal experience, and like it is really interesting because it is much more character driven and it is very moving at points, but it's also incredibly there's also real, like you know, Charlie Kaufman metafiction thing going on, because like this, you know, this kind of intellectual novelist and also professor of literature at university, is told that his

work isn't black enough. He gets frustrated watching the success of this other novelist played by Issa Ray.

aimed at other marginalized people instead of upwards. Like it's very important that anger's always kept on a level and is lateral rather than pushed upwards at the people actually responsible and so like, and her confrontation of him is actually really really brilliant and kind of explodes and undermines his character and like he but he does write a novel called My Pathology under the pseudonym name stagg A Lee, and like the stuff in that it's it's parts of

it is so funny and what a cast man Jeffrey Wright, Tracy Ellis, Ross, Isa Ray Sterling K Brown is fucking brilliant in it. Again, like just on a subject, it doesn't get better for Paul Giomarti than the Holdovers Jeffrey Wright, who's such a brilliant actor and is so consistently brilliant. This is the kind of perfect this is, this is Yeah, it's the perfect Jeffrey right part Like it's he's sort

of vulnerable and prickly. Like that's the thing that his and Gimty's performances have in common is that you have tremendous sympathy for them and also find them quite high minded, prickly intellectuals who, like intellectuals, are not very often not easy to like. You know, it's like he can often be quite hard to get on with them, and like this movie deals in all of the complexity of its protagonist. And when it's funny, it's fucking funny, you know, it's

it's it's great. It's got some real like adaptation esque flourishes, which it's hard to think of a higher compliment to give a film about writing, and it's sexy, it's got everything that film. It's quite at all.

she changes the world. Daisy Ridley is fantastic, and it is a true story, and it is about the first woman to swim across the Channel, and it's exciting and all of that because these things are but within it. One thing I really really liked about it. And one of the reasons you see it is it's one of the best cast family I've ever seen. Like sister in it, You're like, yeah, I believe that's your sister. The mom and dad are amazing, the family dynamic and the actors.

It's such a good family, so well acted, and you really believe they're a family in a way that's quite unusual, like you properly buy their family bond. And when she starts to cross the channel and it becomes very dangerous and they're waiting by the radio and stuff like that, Like it's very tense, it's very exciting, it's very moving. And then it does the thing I want to talk about with something else where at the end of the film.

I've ever seen. It's an incredible, incredible film. It just won the documentary Oscar And you know, it's about this guy, Basladra who's been trying to document the sort of displacement of palastine onions and he befriends vel. He's a Jewish Israeli journalist who's trying to cover what's going on, and

you know, it's a brilliant, brilliant film. It's also it would also be my answer if we were asking the question, which film is the film that you most thought, how the fuck did they possibly make this fucking movie in the entire time? How many months or years are it's set over, No, it's set over like from twenty nineteen

to twenty twenty three. It's four years worth of footage about the displacement of these people because the Israeli government says that the area has been designated as an Israeli military training area, and so they just have to leave their houses, and so they just keep knocking down their houses, they just keep building them back up again. It's an incredibly powerful documentary. There's footage of people being shot in the film, like it's a stomach churning experience to watch.

But it is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And I'm really pleased because it didn't actually get a formal US distribution, and I'm really pleased that it won the Oscar And you know, when we obviously the Oscars, like all awards are stupid and all this kind of stuff but there are moments where something happens where you go. That is why those things exist. That is why we continue to put up with it. Yeah, that's why we continue to put up with it because it's a fairly sort of extraordinary piece

of filmmaking. First and foremost, it just, you know, even before you get into the political ramifications of what it means, just as a piece of filmmaking. The way the footage has been assembled, the way the footage has been taken, you know, they're under so much threat. You know, they're literally they've got people with guns in their face while

they're holding cameras. Like you talk about bravery in film because somebody like an actor loses a load of weight for a roll or does a funny voice for while the cameras have stopped rolling. All right, I get what you're saying, but it's not nothing. And you've committed to this for forty years and then when Roy along, you're like, finally it's paid off, finally, But yeah, it's it's an astonishingly brave piece of filmmaking and the threat post to

them is all too real. Last month, one of the co directors, ham Done Balal was attacked by Israeli settlers and left with head injuries and was seized by the IDF and sort of essentially sort of disappeared for a couple of days. And there is this strong sense was this because he had made this film? And was it because the film has received attention by the Academy and you know, it's it's an astonishing piece of work, and

I would urge everybody to see it. In parallel to that, I would say that zone of interest that those two movies I watched this year are like probably the two films that I don't know if you could watch again, but at the same time, it's really important you watch

at least once, Like they are incredible, incredible pieces of filmilmmaking. Again, there's a kind of metatextual layer to it, because like Jonathan Glazer gave an incredibly powerful speech when he won the Oscar last year, and it really upset me the amount that that was misquoted, you know he And also the reason it upset me is like Jonathan Glazer doesn't dash off anything. This is a guy who spends five years,

ten years sometimes making films. So the idea that he had written some remarks about the residences he felt the film had with the current situation in Gaza, and those remarks were sort of mangled and decontextualized and at times sort of misinterpreted willfully. Just the fact that it's like, okay, critique what he said if you want, but print what he said first and then engage with the text of

what he said. Don't you owe it to this man who works so who weighs every single bit a minute of every single thing he puts out into the public domain. But just also side of interest, what an incredible piece of filmmaking. When I went to see it, I shushed two people James I went to see with Jamesia Casta. I can't go and see films with you anymore because I should two people. I was like, not for the Holocaust movie, and also ibanned him from drinking his Pepsi

max because he Acaster has a bladder. He has a bladder the size of like a golf ball, and yet the man insists on drinking, ordering a tub of Pepsi max for every movie, and he put the Pepsi baxx down and I was like, I'll have that, absolutely not not in the Holocaust movie. And again separate it from

the power of the content. Separate it from the politics if you want, even though I think those are things that I really lord about it, And just like with no other land, appreciate the filmmaking for a second, filmmaking is extraordinary, all that stuff with the girl in the night who's trying to leave the like the apples as a trail for them to escape. You know, it's it's

such a like potent piece of work. And as much as it's an adaptation of Martin Amis' book about Rudolphuss and his family, it also feels like a kind of philosophical movie adaptation of Hannah Arentz writing about the banality of evil, because it is just about this family who are living this kind of Bucolic country existence, but they are running the Ouschwitz concentration camp and you can hear like again technically the sound design, the churn of the

death camps next to their house is appalling. Sandra Huller against like as a one two punch. This in an auto move of fall is unbelievable, and all of that has to also be taken alongside the fact that the man also made sexy Beast. Is there great arrange in cinema, the zone of interest and sexy beast like unreal. Yes, what zone of interest? Was my answer, which thank you.

It's because there's a bit where she's showing the mum around her garden and she's going, so beautiful the flowers and there's fucking smoke coming out from the walls, and the mum is like what and she's just going and we've got these lovely flowers and you're just like the delusion, the denial of it is almost funny because of the sheer visual of this beautiful garden and smoke coming up from the woods.

It's an incredible piece of work. Yeah, it's a great, great movie. And the and kind of and interesting because you're watching it and you go, I really also think it's funny in.

he's at this party. You see him looking around, you see him looking stressed and upset, and he calls his wife and she says, what you're doing And he says, I'm imagining how I could efficiently kill everyone, and this cats everyone in this room, and you're like, oh, okay, he's yeah, he's already, Like it's quite it's quite interesting that moment because you're sort of like, oh, I think he's is he changing, and it's like no, he's no.

that's ever lived. Like man, it's like yeah, it's it's a real headfuck of an experience. And it isn't just the subject matter is incredibly powerful, but it's the execution of it is just extraordinary. Like he is such a

spectacular filmmaker. And yeah, I would really urge people to see No Other Land because again it's just like again, it's just radical empathy, like it's and there are bits in it that are really uncomfortable, where you know this like well meaning liberal Israeli journalist who is trying to like do the right thing. There are just points where he just is told like you can never understand this, like and they it allows those quite uncomfortable conversations to

happen on camera. And yeah, it's just a piece of really incredible, like radical empathy. Like I saw that at the Austin Film Institute, which is like founded by Richard Linklater in Austin, and it just felt like this is the kind of movie that places like that are designed to show and celebrate because it's this is like, you know, we love movies and this is such an important part of our lives, but so little of it is really important,

and that is a movie that is genuinely important. But yeah, it was really great.

and she'll go, why are you shouting? She does things like that, and she's got to know of an accent in it. And it's a really really, really funny performance and she's a fucking nightmare and she really goes for it and it's very real, but it's very funny and it's very odd, and it's kind of I don't think there's another character like it in the cinema, Like it's almost like a Mike Lee character in the wrong context. And I think it's one of my favorite titlismnt and performances.

What's Yours Mine has been Room next Door?

strong female characters, one of whom is persuading. So Tilda Swinton is a woman who is terminally ill and she has from the dark web procured this kind of life ending suicide pill and she's trying to persuade her friend played by Julian Moore to be in the room next door when she does it, just so that she's not like dying alone. And you know, and you know it's about dying, it's about the circumstances that we all find ourselves in as we sit at the end of the world.

There's one of the great lines in it when there's a great performance from John Tutor owed it where it's very difficult for me to see myself reflected back on SCREENSI viscerally. But there's a point where John Tutor has at lunch with Julia More and he's just like, the climate is an apocalypse that's coming from all us. She's like,

Jesus christ Man, can we just have lunch? Like there's and there is a really really one of my lines of the year is when they're sort of talking about, like, how can you know, how can we even live while all of this stuff is happening. Julia Moore's there are lots of ways to live inside of a tragedy, and that's like one of my absolutely one of my lines. That's one of those lines where you hear it and you go, well, I'm going to think about that for the rest of my life. Thank you, thank you, say

it again. There are lots of ways to live inside a tragedy. And also it's about it's so much about what this podcast is about, which is how do you die? How do you wrap your mind around death? What happens when you decide that you're ready and society doesn't let you. And it's also you know, it's pedro, so it's very heightened. It's got this air of melodrama to it. The score is really beautiful. I thought it's fantastic. I thought it was great, but yeah it was. I thought Tilda is

great and tough but also incredibly brittle. The relationship between her and More is fantastic. You know, it's what more do you want? In some ways, it almost feels like we've become complacent about it. But there's a part of you the watches and you're like is Pedro, it's Julian Moore. It is still diswined. What else do you want? What else do you want from movies?

sending black jazz musicians on propaganda tours to Africa. Some of them didn't know, like Nina, some moan that those tours were being financed by the CIA and thought that they were just like weird like Arts Council funded trips, and some of them, some of them, like some of

them did know. And it's all set around this kind of UN General Assembly where Khrushchev, who at the time is you know, the big cheese from the USSR, is basically grand standing at the UN because of what America and Britain has been doing in trying to overturn the

democratically elected leadership in the Congo. So it's an incredible movie about this kind because also it's a UN General Assembly, so it's all filmed, so you get loads of footage of just like Joel al Nehru, the Prime Minister of Understanding.

They're going, what on earth is going on here? And you know because like a lot of these black musicians are also being sent out on these propaganda tours at a time in America in nineteen sixty where this parts of the country that they can't get on a bus in, and like as so often happens with that period of history in America, Malcolm X is in it and he's the only one who's sort of making any actual sense here.

And in the middle of all of this, Malcolm X is trying to like bring the US up in front of the UN essentially like at the UN General Assembly collargely convened by the US, Malcolm X is like trying to like essentially like arrest America. And it's there's then this incredible thing where they go where they say that Castro is going to be killed. So then Malcolm X invites Castro to stay in a hotel in Harlem and

Nehru and VK. Krishnaman and who's the like there, who's liaison to the un like go up to Harlem to visit for del Castro and Malcolmax. It seeks unbelievable footage like we've got like it's just all documentary footage. But the most important core of it is contained within these light propaganda tours, are these plots to undermine and eventually overthrow Patrice Lamumba, who is the Prime Minister of the

newly independent Congo. And it shows you that like colonialism and capitalism are intertwined, and it shows you that when colonial forces were expelled from a country, that didn't mean the business interests that had been part of those colonial

projects left immediately. And essentially La Mumba is removed from power because he represents a threat to the mining companies, and the mining companies all need the Congo for like key like minerals and materials and you know, and it's a conversation that we see play out every single day

with the conversation around the Ukraine's. But also there's like there's this incredible thing where just occasionally in the middle of the film, it will just suddenly hardcut to an Apple advert or to a Tesla advert, and you realize that actually a lot of the key materials that we need to make iPhones and electric cars are still coming from Congo, and we like we're still continuing this like policy of exploitation of this country. It's an incredible film.

Like it's another one where I'm like, please see it. It's an incredible documentary. It's really really it and it does show you a lot of the conversations around like race, colonialism, and capitalism that we're still having to this day. What was your favorite End of the End of the World movie.

little on him. The idea that he's mulling whether he's going to murder these people or not, that you could, like, if you you would imagine what you ever in the position that you might be about to kill someone, that that would be the sole focus. But to him, it's

so it's nothing. And he's like halfway through threatening to kill these people, Who's like, oh, my face is a bit itchy, I'm better give it a bit of a scratch, Like it's just like one of those like amazing acting choices that you go that is a great way of delivering that line.

it's not fun, and then you have him silence. The sound isn't on, but he's screaming and it's very sad. But I also really like the ending. I like what the president's final quote is. They want this quote from the president and then that final image which is like sort of disturbing and funny or like, I think there's a lot going on that film. I think it's really really good. I really liked it, and I would recommend it too. Well, should we get to why people come? What's the sexiest film of the year?

tennis Josh O'Connor and Mike faced Like. There's a scene in it where one of them smacks the other one in the boner, like you're like, this is a Hollywood movie. It's a film. This is an actual film, but people are like smacking each other's boners around. Zendayah has another one of the lines of the year where she says, I'm always I'm just I'm doing what I always do, which is taking I'm taking such good care of little white voice, which I absolutely It's a horny, horny tennis film.

It's horny. What do you want me to say? I wanted to say honey a few more times. Obviously, Love Lives Bleeding is also a horny movie. And yes, obviously I want to be picked up and held by k T O'Brien. Is that a crime, Brett? Is that now a crime?

what a performance as well? Goodness me, goodness me, she's incredible. All right, up, category traveling bonus? What is it? And what's your troubling boner? The substance obviously, the substance. What's your traveling boner? There's never been a more troubling than the substance. I mean basically the whole of the substance. Yeah. I would say for me, probably my most troubling boner is Anora, because you're like, it is still a sexy movie. That's not great. It's not great that that's sex. Maybe

I should switched the round. But the substance is troubling bonus the movie. Yeah, it's it's a very long traveling boner. The substance is two and a half hours traveling boners. That's exhausted. It's the troubling viagra of troubling boners. Yeah, traveling our way through, whole way through? Is that your answer? Yeah, of course, it is. My experience of watching that movie was the first twenty minutes I was like, this is the worst piece of shit I've ever seen in my life.

And then it clicked into gear for me. And when it became Goria and Goria and Stupider and stupider, it got the more and more. I loved it as a film, and I watched it in a full so it was so nice. And it's so nice that that movie did so well at the cinema because it feels like a real cinema experience of a film. People like whooping and

shouting and kind of gasping. And also, ultimately, it's a film that got nominated for so many Oscars that features a giant monster vomiting up a whole human breast, and that is something worth celebrating. Yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're right. What is the.

But when it came time to me who which student was going to be president of the debating society, they would have hustings. And it was alarming to me that that is the same circumstance. And I know this is a fictional movie, but it is based on real research about how the pope is selected. I don't want to give too much away about the ending of Conclave. If you haven't seen it, you must watch it. I think

there's I know that we sort of get. We don't want to get too like bogged down in awards in terms of people like one movie being more deserving than the other. So I'll just say that I'm glad that Peter Strawn was celebrated by the Academy for that adaptation because I think it's a it's a fucking thriller, and it's every scene it motors along, throws you from scene to scene. Ray Fines has really been better. Right at

the center of the whole thing. I will say as a film, it is not necessarily the most glowing endorsement of the Catholic Church that you can make. A whole film whose perennial rolling twist is no, one's a pedo. That is not a great review of the Catholic Church. That essentially now filmmakers can use that as a kind of bait and swift. Do you think everyone's going to be a pedo? Oh, the Catholics, Everyone's going to be a pedo. I've seen Spotlight, I've seen I've seen the

real story the filmmakers have got. Like you think everyone's a pedo, some of them are, but no, that's not the main thrust of the plot.

fallen asleep was actually quite funny. But yeah, I thought Conclave was great, and it's a great movie because it simultaneously makes you understand religious people and also understand people that have absolutely no religious belief whatsoever, because you could there's tremendous like hope and optimism in the act of faith contained within this film. But at the same time, you could also understand why people would come away from that being like that is the biggest load of nonsense

I've ever seen in my entire life. As an institution, it is insane that we allow this to continue. So I thought that was great. Tucci's great. I love the vaping Priests. I absolutely love the vaping priest Isabella Rossellini with a passive aggressive curtseying was fantastic. It's just like Conclave is almost like the most enjoyable. Like I would put that in front of anybody, like anyone, and I

think it would work. It might not be my favorite film of the year, but I think it's an incredible film. And I also like you could happily, like go and see that with like a gang of young people, and you could also, I think, happily go and see that with your parents, Like it has the kind of it has that kind of classy British film element to it, even though I know it was directed by Edward Berger, who made all quite the rest in front, Like I think, I just thought it was great. Yeah, I thought it

was really classy, propulsive. What was the question, which film has God working through it?

that Aretha Franklin documentary. Amazing grace, amazing grace when she first sings and you're like, holy shit, that's God coming through you. Yeah, that's However, when Cynthia Revo sings, yeah, take it or leave it.

Wicked on a plane. Not ideal, Okay, okay, ideal. On the flip side to that, on a different plane journey. He did watch it, guys, he did watch it. On the flip side, I saw it on a different play journey. I drank a bottle of wine and watched Trap. What that was ideal? That was ideal to watch Trap whilst hammered on a plane and the bit and Trap wire kid cud he says, don't give me dairy milk unless you want me to do do with my pants. That's one of the most I love at anything in the movie.

Is it okay? But yeah, Like I watched Wicked on a plane, obviously not ideal, enjoyed myself, but I also just think I'm going to say, I don't know if Wicked is good. I have no idea and I don't know if Wicked is good because at the end of the day, define gravity is so good that I actually can't tell you if the rest of it was good. Yeah, Define gravity is so good that like the bit where she sings so if you cared to find me look to the Western guy. I actually watched that because I

was on a plane. I rewound it and watched it again. But the bit where she sings that line is like, it's unbelievable. Believable. God's coming through it. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, bro, what the you know?

an absolute miracle of a film. Five stars, ten out of ten. It's a total miracle of a film.

reconfirm with this is a masterplace it is. It's a masterpiece. It's an incredible, incredible film. So it's about these two nurses,

Praba and and who live in Mumbai. And the only my one caveat that I would say to people that I said to you before you watched this movie is it's really important that you know that when the two nurses talk to each other or when they talk to the doctor who's in it, they are speaking a different language from everybody else and it's important that you note that only because it's part of the kind of cultural dislocation.

And there's a point in the movie halfway through where one of the male doctors says to them, man, I really fucking hate speaking Hindi, and then it becomes clear. But I just think that, you know, like in a prophet, they would distinguish in the subtitles between when people are speaking French and when people are speaking the Corsican dialex It's really important to know that they speak a different

lguage because it's about. Part of what it's about is the dislocation they feel from the city that they are living in, because Mumbai's in the north of India. Hindi is the national language of the country, but my family comes from Caeraler, which is the state that these two nurses come from. And like, my dad left India when he was thirty years old and his Hindi is absolute dogshit, Like it's because it's not their language. Like and Malayalam is a language that derives from Tamil. Hindi is a

language that derives from Sanskrit. India is a country that has two latins effectively operating within it as a single country, you know, like two route languages, and it's about the generational difference between these two women. Brothers is older, she's married to a man who's now gone to Germany to work. She has seemingly almost no contact with this man at this point. Anu's a bit younger and is more confident in living the life that she actually wants to live,

and you see her. The introduction scene to her is her basically giving somebody a birth control and of being like, just take it. For God's sake, if you're going to be shagging each other, just take this. And so immediately you get the sense of this as a woman who's less bound by social norms. And really what it's about is the relationship between between these two women and how Prother kind of learns from Anu that it's actually okay

for her to want certain things. And like, you know, I grew up with women from Kerala who were bound by societal norms and expectations, and some of them broke out of those norms and expectations, some of them didn't. And it felt like it had a real like personal

resonance for me. There's a scene where she's wearing her NIGHTI frying fish that is so much like all of the women that raised me, like and specifically the fish that she's frying, like it's like the food that my grandmom and my mum made me when I was a kid, like it is. So there's like there's a harble personal thing, but also what it's about is our great cities. And

Mumbai is one of the world's great cities. And I'm somebody that like loves London and New York and Mumbai, and I'm in Melbourne right now, like I love the kind of great cities of the world. But the uncomfortable truth is the great cities of the world are only able to operate because of this like mass exploitation of working a lower middle class people in them and their friend Parva thee who is a cook at the hospital

is basically being it fitted by luxury flat developers. And you know, at one point they go to like a local like protest group meeting, and so there's this whole other political subtext to it, like small p political but arguably more important to people's day to day lives than big peak politics, you know, more important than anything to people's day to day lives, Like is there a secure place to live without these women, these cities don't operate,

and it depicts how disposable they are to the wealthy people who live in the cities that can only operate because of the sacrifices made by these people. And it's stunningly photographed, and I can't think of a film that has so many just it just these beautiful kind of allegaic I don't know, I never know if that's ellegaic or eligike. I think you and I really have learned are slowly revealing that we've actually learned this really from reading books, from reading books actually, but like it has

loads of these secrets of them on trains. And it also brings in a bit of pyle Caapadia's documentary background, because there's bits where she's interviewed people who live in them by way, they talk about how much they love the city, how they feel conflicted about it, and I knew it was like pursuing this affair with this Muslim man, so you get this kind of there's still this sort of religious conflict in India that still means that it's

tense if she wants to marry a Muslim guy. There's a very funny sequence where they go through loads of arranged marriage proposals that she's been sent and they both do the voices of the guy and it's like a really funny and flirty scene and their relationship is really is really sexy, and in the end, it's about this brother's journey to realize that it's actually okay for her to acknowledge that she has emotional needs and that is

that's something I found incredibly powerful, whilst also the background being what our great cities take from the people who make them great. Really, I cannot recommend this film to people more strongly. It's I think it's extraordinary.

I've been thinking a lot about like, given that she made documentaries, and at the beginning of the film, it is a documentary, as in you're hearing real voices at the beginning, and then when you get to your actors, you're like, this is the most realistic performances I've ever seen, oh not ever, but as in, you could still be watching a documentary, except that it's really beautiful and sort

of wistful and stuff. But their performances are so they seem so so completely natural in a way that it's quite hard to do.

we both came out buzzing about. But if you want to frame it as a question, we should acknowledge the sad passing of like one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and one of your truly truly personal heroes, David Lynch, And like, if we want to frame this is a question where we talk about The Beast, we should say, what movie do you think in the year that he died best exemplified some of the things that David Lynch gave to the overall vocabulary of cinema, And like,

for me, a movie that best exemplified filmmakers working in the Lynchian tradition was The Beast. The Beast is a fucking crazy movie, and in it's people always say people we know, the kind of people we know always say things like we want to see proper actual science fiction like ideas led science fiction two thousand and one, Solaris, We want to see properly like intellectually stimulating science fiction. You got to fucking watch the Beast. The Beast is kind of is set. I guess like the start of

the Beast is in twenty forty four. And there are AI programs that say actually run the world, and they're like trying to purify human beings of the emotional weaknesses that mean that human beings are inferior to AI in terms of actually running the world. So they offer a service where you can sort of purify your DNA by examining all of the trauma in all of your past lives. And so Lea said one of the greatest actors of all time, no no question about it, No one's questioning it.

Goes into this purification session, and then we see her in her past life in nineteen ten in France, where she's a pianist who is having an affair with this guy who's played by George McKay, who's incredible in this movie. And then one of her other past life time periods is in twenty fourteen in Los Angeles where instead of it being a doomed romance between her and George McKay.

He is like an incel who is stalking her in LA And the sequence in twenty fourteen is like, is sort of one of my horror movies of the year, Like it's a properly scary, scared film, but it is David Lynch of the year because it's science fiction but it's also genreus and it feels like a dream but also at points it feels so viscerally real that you are sort of paralyzed with terror for this woman, especially in the LA section, And you know, you walk out

of that movie and you think, we're still coming up with original films. We're still doing it, like like you know, like one hundred and fifty years into the medium of cinema or whatever number we are up to, we're still making truly original films because I honestly can't think of a film that that is like I can think of films that it's influenced by, and that's true of everything. Nothing comes out of nowhere, But that is not a film that's like other movies. You're right, that's a great ending.

Go and see The Beast if you haven't. Yeah, last question before we get to the no I've got a few quick ones. Best Summer movie, best big summer movie, Quiet Place Day one. I've said it before in the show. I'll say it again. They keep making Quiet Place movies. I'll keep going to see the great movie.

loves his grandma. And then the credits you see a clip of the real grammar and she says exactly what was said in the film. You're like, oh, I guess she was an accent hero.

Performances are great. Black Efron is great. The Bear is great. I know he has a name, but he's the bear. The bear is great. John Lennon, Baby Girl is great. Yeah, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, great performances. Fantastic story. I didn't know anything about it. But at the end there's just a photograph of the character upon whom zac Efron is based, like happy with his family. And it's not

even just that. It's such a relief after what that film puts you through, and the view is based on Yeah, you actually see the real guy with his family. And I'm split on using real footage after a film. I think sometimes I think it can go one of two ways. Like I think sometimes when you see the stuff at the end, you're like, none of those people looked anything like that, And then occasionally you get an eye tinia where you're like Jesus Christ, that is, to be fair,

bang on. But with the Iron Claw, it's like a weird like I've never experienced it before. Just seeing him happy was a relief after what you've watched in that fucking movie. It's a really really good film. I really really thought it was incredibly well made. Rough old watch.

the word queer. And there's so much detail, like it's very specific and very detailed, and where it's set and where he grew up and where he goes to his childhood home. And yet it is also a dream and a wish and it's a quite unusual combination of it exists in a kind of heavenly dreamscape but also very specifically in a certain part of England, in a certain time of I mean literally down down the road from where I grew up. It's in Creydon, it's shot in Creydon.

There's a bit. There's a bit where they've shot in the Wick Gift Center, like in the shopping center that I grew up, going to the fucking Wi Gives Center exactly. Yeah, Yeah, I know that, Yeah, I remember the Gift Center on the big screen. I was like, this is it stuff. I was like, I'm already weeping, Andrew, what are you trying to do to me? Are that they're in the

fucking Wickgift Center? Yeah, it's listened. It answers the I think everybody has a fascination with what would you say to your parents if you met them as young people? And I mean with him, it's a very it's a very sort of powerful thing because the character in it, Andrew Scott's character, has lost his parents. He's grown up in the shadow of that grief, who was sent away to Ireland after they died to live with his grandmother.

And you know, he's he's a writer, he's a TV writer who's trying to come up with an idea for a new script sort of jog bits of inspiration, goes back to his childhood home where he finds just in the kitchen his mum and dad as he remembers them before they died. Incredible wonderful performances. Claire Foy and Jamie

Bell are just so so good in it. There is a scene in the film where Jamie Bell as his dad, is apologizing to him for not comforting him when he was being bullied as a kid, and it's just like it's an absolutely it's a wrenching scene. And there's a scene where he's basically trying to confront his mum and they sort of they have a conversation about the fact that he's gay and how she you know, how would she have felt about that if she'd live to see him be, you know, an adult man who was comfortable

with his sexuality. And then in the midst of all of this, he's kind of falling in love with a younger man played by Paul Mescal, and yeah, that you get that great those sequences where they they talk about their differing relationships to their sexuality and how they express them and the differences between their ages, and yeah, it's difficult to pin down as a film, especially by the ending.

And again we don't want to spoil anything about the ending, but it's very difficult to pin down a single interpretation. And part of I think almost the fun of it is you walk away with your theories about how you feel the film ends and what you think that what you think it says about the reality of what you've watched, and also who Andrew Scott is. You know, it becomes very, very complicated, but it's such a beautifully made film. Are

incredibly well shot. The Mescal and Andrew Andrew Scott in that movie is you know, it sort of makes nonsense of the awards in a lot of ways, because you look at that and you go, I'm not really sure how that is not one of the performance Like.

believe she's looking at this adult math. You know she it must be I imagine quite a relate, like an oddly relatable thing for parents where just occasionally you look at your child and you go look at this like adult person's Like at one point was this like completely vulnerable egg that you know had to be constantly like swaddled and protected, and now is suddenly this like like in this case of Andrew's got very handsome, muscular adult man. It's a beautiful film. It's such a good movie. This

what's your top ten? Let's hear it in order. Okay, here we go, no cheating, no messing around. This was a rough one. It's never it's never a good one, but this was a rough one. Okay, so I've gone no other land Anora soundtrack to a Koude Tart, The Holdovers, the Beast, American Fiction, All of Us Strangers, zone of interest. And then my top two is I saw the TV glow and my number one is all we imagine is like, oh and that could change at any point. I sort

of can't believe queer isn't in there. Oh yeah. I mean, I'm looking at my list filled with regret, but here it is civil war, heretic, the holdovers. All we Imagine is light.

so hard. I'm really tired. You talked for five minutes un interrupted about Joker too. This is and this was us. I basically read a two thousand word review of All We Imagine as light, and that this was us trying to keep it brief.