(bell dinging) Call it. Call it, yes. For all I've just called it. (upbeat music) ♪ Two men on a mission ♪ ♪ To watch every movie ♪ ♪ Committed to the task like heaven ♪ ♪ Where you can work and do me ♪ ♪ They see you people ♪ ♪ And you want a man ♪ ♪ A letterbox of names are M-E-C-I-F-R ♪ ♪ In fact, it's Nick Man ♪ ♪ So you know where to go ♪ ♪ If you're an enemy ♪ ♪ Or a friend of the show ♪ ♪ Call it, friend of ♪ ♪ Call it, call it, friend of ♪ ♪ Call it, call it ♪ ♪ Friend of the call it, friend of ♪ - And we're-- - I hate laws more like outlaws, go ahead. - I, yeah, that's, well, I'm an outlaw. I am an outlaw, but I'm also alive. Alive, like any better. - That's good, please sing, go ahead. ♪ Very high ♪ ♪ Last year, yeah ♪ - So, we're, this is the call it, friend of podcast, and we're live, Andy, having a nice week in sunny Scotland. - Sorry, Sonny, I'm having a good week. I've just been playing "The Last of Us" one again for the millionth time, but this time on PS5. - Have you been to the toilet many times? - No, it's for losers. - And because I have these antibiotics, they put me out for my tooth, I've been taking a probiotic, and man, if you haven't taken probiotics, do it. - Okay, what is it, like, just a little, it looks like a little milk bottle thing. Is it that one? - No, it's just a little pill, but it's like, to quote-- - Renton, probably the greatest stomach, might as well suck out my eyes. - No, to quote a Douglas Stanhope's economically-minded hooker. You gotta keep regular if you wanna shop out your ass, pussy princess. No, your shit pussy, that's very wise. - Well, still, that's very wise of you. - Yeah, yeah, 'cause, anyway, yeah, yeah, it's good. I'm keeping regular, I'm keeping nice and regular, yeah, yeah. I didn't get to watch as much in the last week, because I'm not on holidays or injured anymore, so, boo. But I watched two family movies and half a series of TV. What about you? - I watched two very non-family movies and no TV. One episode of "Mr. In Between." - Well, we'll talk about "Mr. In Between" when you're finished the whole thing. - Well, it's gonna be forever. - We might as well do a special. - Yeah, "Mr. In Between" go through every single episode. - I would love to do that. - That would be worthwhile. I'd fucking do that if I would die. - That could be our first Patreon content. - Go through, but don't break it up. Just literally sit down and spend like at least 20 minutes on each episode of "Mr. In Between" all in one sitting. - Yeah, yeah, and just pause the podcast, watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I know Rory Power and Graham Rush, and someone called the Jew Bear would all pay to listen to that. - Yeah, exactly. - Hello, Jew Bear. Thanks for your lovely message. Anyway, what were you watching? - Well, the first thing I watched is something that-- - The first thing I watched was the Jew Bear. - No, it's fine, I think that's fine. - I know, it's his name. - That's his name? - Go on. - The first thing I watched is something that you mentioned last week. It's a little horror film from the Aussie twins, Danny and Michael Philip-- - Ooh, yeah. - Oh, yeah. - I also got to hear what you thought. - Also known on YouTube is Raka Raka, apparently. They're big YouTubers. - Well, you know how Aussies have to rename things. - Okay, Raki's the-- - Raka Raka. - Oh, I'm here on my lappy. - Yeah, but that's it. I watched the 2022 film, talk to me, talk to me. Do you want me to talk to you? So I thought this was scary as shit. What did you think? - You mentioned it last week, but we can go into the premise for stars for anyone who hasn't seen it. So a bunch of teens are in possession of a weird ceramic looking hand, which allows them to commune with the spirits of the dead. And also to let those spirits control their bodies for a short period of time. I wasn't sold on it at first, because the film starts with a fairly by the numbers seen a party where a guy, like a sort of guy looks like he's wasted a party, stabs his brother, and then he slams a knife into his eye and kills himself. And my reaction was like, yeah, that's pretty creepy, but it wasn't particularly scary. So I was like, I don't know if this is gonna win me over. And then over the course of the next 90 minutes, you get to know this other group of teens and you start to care about them so much so that when things start going wrong for them is deeply affecting. And yeah, I absolutely fucking shot myself during this. - It's so scary. - It's very, very scary. I had it on the projector, headphones on, and it was the kind of film where I was nervous going to the toilet afterwards, which is a sign of a good time. (laughing) - I remember that same feeling with like haunting of Hill House, the exorcists and a bunch of other good ones. - It's those sudden appearances of ghouls that no one else can see. - That is so fucking scary the way they do that in that film. But also just genuinely really upsetting. Like, so there's the scary stuff is the ghouls. When the kid brother, let's say, just launches into a fucking rampage on himself, oh my God, that's very distressing cinema like. - There's this, okay, slight spoilers. No, I don't think it's spoilers. There's a scene where one character looks like they're kind of going into like hell or the poetry or something. I mean, fucking hell. It's so well done that part. There's also parts of the film that are really fun too. There's a scene in the middle where they're all messing around playing games. - A montage. - Yeah, yeah. - There's a montage in the middle where they're- - Like a drug montage. - Yeah, they're like out of party. They're like, "Hey, we'll let the ghost go in me for like a minute." And it's genuinely just a really fun moment in the middle of the film. And I was worried that the film wasn't going to take that energy to the end, but like it does, it does. And the shit, when the shit is hitting the fan, it manages. - Oh yeah, and then the end is, it's the sort of lovely setup for a sequel that I quite like. - I think there is like a talk to me too or something is- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in production already, yeah. - It's gonna have Jeffrey Epstein will appear in it and a few others. - But similarly to the other film I lauded last week, horror film and the black phone, it's just it doesn't, there's no need to explain this. There's no need to break down. - That was the, yeah, yeah, that was the thing that while I was reading online, a lot of people who didn't like it, they were like, and this didn't make sense. And I was like, none, or they were like, "Oh, there's a logical gap here." I was like, you don't need any, like all of this can literally just be vibes of whatever people are experiencing. There's no logic to it. There doesn't need to be any logic to this film whatsoever. It's really effective. - Like the theme is there of like this disaffected youth and drug taking maybe. And then apart from that- - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - But those are, those are, like it's not like, you know, when the metaphor needs to be so direct, it's not a metaphor anymore. So it's like, for example, I mean, what's the explanation for Freddy Krueger? There's no explanation. It's just a guy hanging out in your dreams. And this is just a haunted hand. - Yeah, the local families thought he was a pedo and then burnt him or something. - Yeah, they burnt him to dead. Yeah, but that doesn't explain why he appears in people's dreams. - Yeah, it does. He's gotta get some of the little dream highway with his knife gloves. - Well, I missed that one. - Definitely logical. - Yeah. - I've only seen the first three, no, to be fair. - Fair. - Yeah, no, I like no need for explanation. Let's just get on with it. It was the same with the black phone. There's no explaining it. And of the two, I genuinely probably actually preferred the black phone in the end, but this is scarier. - For sure. - But I really hope that if they make a sequel to this, that they don't start trying to fill out backstory or something, which I have a fear that they might do. - Or they could just go the, I mean, they could just go the final destination route and just say, let's just have the same kind of crack in different scenarios, you know? - Yeah, I mean, they can go anywhere with it, if they want to. Their next film has got Sally Hawkins in it, apparently. - Wow. And I mean, they got A24 behind them. So, you know, that's a bit of a Cape Blanchett, you could say. - Absolutely. - But did you ever actually like keep up with and watch the final destination sequels? - I, okay, spoilers for the final, final destination that they put out, but isn't it revealed? It's like a prequel to the first one. It actually looks quite interesting, the last of them. - Well, like, I think they're all just fun exercises in filmmaking, to be honest. - I really liked the second one. The one that starts with the like highway- - Which is an amazing sequel. - That's a great set piece. Plus the other one that's got the like bridge. I don't know which one that is, maybe the third or the fourth one is like- - And there's a one which collapses- - One which opens with the roller coaster, isn't there? I thought that was a shitier one. - But like in the one that opens with the carpylop, which is by the way, I say again, just watch that on YouTube, it's spectacular. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can just watch that scene. - It's so good. But the first death then that happens there, 'cause remember that's just a hallucination, that the guy, the main character avoids and then it actually happens so they cheat death. But then the- - It's the premise of all the final deaths. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so then the first death that occurs with the guy cooking in his shitty apartment and the ladder goes through his face when he escapes the fire, do you remember this? - Vaguely, neither you're talking about it yet. - Yeah, it's fantastic. It's such good fun. And so like that's just a case of a concept that they take for a walk. And I honestly think that's all talk to me is. That's like- - A ladder to the face. - You know, it's just a concept anyway. - Okay, no, it's good. Anyway, it's good. Anyone here wanna watch it? - Please, I wanna hear what kids film you watch this week, go. - Have you seen "My Girl"? - Do you mean your daughter or do you mean the film? - What's that? - You know what I mean? - I have, indeed. It's pointless for "My Girl", but the kid gets stung to death. - Oh my God, so heartbreaking. So for people who don't know, this is set in 1972. And it's the story of a young girl played by Anna Schlumsky, lately of the family- - Pete, Pete, Pete. - whose mother died giving birth to her and her father, an undertaker played by Dan Actright, is very affectionate with her, but has seemingly closed himself off from the idea of any further romance. Enter Jamie Lee Curtis's makeup artist, and one of the drivers of the plot of this. I mean, I just thought, I hadn't thought about it in years, but this is sort of an overlooked classic. Now, as it happens, we're just sick of Pixar movies and cartoons, but my daughter's been able to get on board with films that have kids as their protagonists, right? - So we can, I tried to push for Big Daddy, but in the land pushback, she's like, it's 16 plus. I was like, anything that's 16 plus worthy, she won't understand. Can you back me up? We should be able to watch Big Daddy, shouldn't we? - I think it's probably fine. Are there many scenes without the kid in them? Maybe, there's stuff where he goes to a strip club or something, I think. - Oh, maybe. - It does have that violent hardcore sex scene in the middle, remember that? - Yeah, we'll skip that. - Okay. - I'll watch it later on, whatever, you know? Going to waste it. But anyway, yeah, so she loves that. This is kind of like, so just with regards to what I just said about child protagonist and stuff, the goal is not to enrich her cinematic tests. It's so that she sits down and shuts off for two hours on something that's mildly entertaining. - Exactly. And sometimes it happens that they're really good, and this was one of the ones. Nothing could have prepared me for this. I was in convulsions of tears for the last 20 minutes. - Very sad. - It's intensely sweet, it's sad, it's funny, great cast, Macaulay Culkin, as you mentioned, memorable, believable characters. This is like this week's Doneka family movie recommendation. It's, but also, and here comes probably podcast and movies fans generally cliche, but you couldn't make it nowadays. People don't trust kids with this kind of entertainment nowadays 'cause it's quite dark, but it's really, like Erin loved it. - The only time I remember her getting this into, I feel I'm another, maybe she's fancy with Macaulay, was Home Alone, she really liked Home Alone. - Yeah, she didn't so much fancy the second thing we watched this week, but I was intrigued, but you give me one first. - Well, how did you feel about him getting stung to death by bees, was she on board with that, or? - Didn't really understand this. - It's just a grasp of the concept. - And then we, when he's in the coffin at the end, we said, he's dead like that. And she goes like this, it was her reaction to it. I think she was just reacting, how she thought she was supposed to react 'cause the thing is myself and Balen, Erin has watched films with us and the kind of films that we watched with her typically end with myself and Balen bawling our eyes out. And she's just like looking at her two fans. - That's okay, blizzers. - I mean, Ray, if the toast isn't the right shape, what's this bullshit? Anyway, what's the other thing you watched? - Well, I've been filling up my letterboxed watch list over the last year, mainly from R/movie suggestions. And a film which comes up constantly is a real balls to the wall. Good time is the 2011 Norwegian film Head Hunters. - I've seen this. - Old heady hunters. - Is this the one with Jamie Lannister in this? - It is. - Oh, this is a fun time, I remember. - It is a fun time. - And the guy, if we're, I'm thinking of the right one, the guy thinks his wife is too hot for him and he shaves his head. - That's exactly the film. - I really enjoyed that when I saw it. I saw it when it came out. - This is gay old time. So it's directed by Martin Tildrum and it's the film that got him to Hollywood to where he directed the imitation game and the much maligned passengers with Chrissy Pratt's. He hasn't made any films since then, only TV, probably because he divorced his wife and then she sadly killed herself. So he moved back to Norway. He's been having a battle time, Martin Tildrum, but anywhere cast your mind back to 2011 to have your times. - Oh my God. - When he made the film Head Hunters, which is an adaptation of a novel by old Joey Nesbo. - Back when he was just sitting his director share going, it's fine, I'm going to be successful. I'm going to divorce my wife. - It's all good, it could possibly happen. I'm not going to fuck up passengers, it'll be fine. It stars Axel Henny as Roger Brown, a Jordan Belfer-style corporate headhunter who also steals high-end art. He also cheats constantly on his wife and is just generally a bit of a decade. Quite an unlikable character to have to deal with. Through his wife, he bumps into a guy played by the great Nikolai Koster Wilder, Wilder aka Jamie Lannister, who would be a great candidate for a huge corporate job he's trying to fill. After this guy bangs his wife, Roger's world is absolutely rocked. - Yeah, well, you've seen it, but I don't want to go spoilery just in case someone might be listening to this who's like wants a nicer organization. Yeah, 'cause it's mental, like the first half hour is just set up, and again, I wasn't 100% on board. I was even thinking about switching it off. I was like, I don't know about that. And then there's just like an hour of the most relentless action I can think of. It reminds me a bit of kind of green room, blue ruin at times like that, kind of Jeremy Stonge. - The whole point is to be relentless. - It's absolutely relentless, very dark, extremely violent, but it does have some moments of levity. There's like a darkly comic streak running through it. - Well, how relentless it is is a joke in itself. - Yeah, yeah. - It's almost like, this is the thing that, I feel like movies like Frank and John Wick that lean fully into the irony around the chaos, don't get, is that there is a balance where it can just be so chaotic that you're laughing like you're on a roller coaster. - Yeah, it is kind of like crank about good. - Yeah, exactly, because they're not, they're being sincere with the action. They're not laughing at it. I feel like when movies like Frank and John Wick like laugh at themselves, it's almost like a defense mechanism because they're not willing to fully commit to it, you know? But this is, because also this has sincere themes, your man is his relationship with his wife and all of that. Yeah. - It is actually quite moving at times, but it's also like, it's fucked up, isn't there? - It's a poosene. - It's a poosene, right? - Yeah, yeah, he gets into a toilet into like a sort of house, a toilet thing. - To hide from Zenates. - To hide from, yeah, to hide from old Lannister. It's, well, I really enjoyed it. - Would you hide from Jimmy Lannister in a tub full of poo? - No, I had to run into his arms and to be embraced. - He's just like, he's swung around, like twirled around. - And fucked in the top of the tower in the hope that we'd attract a kid to kill. - Yeah, you would get through, you would get through on either window. You would be climbing up the tower trying to look at him. - For watching you get flapped by Jimmy Lannister. But I get psychic powers though, so all good. And I would use them to look at the ladies. - And then you ruin to the rest of the show. - I didn't watch the end of the show, so there. - It's your fault, it's bad. - Probably, let me, a question for you. Double question, how do you feel about Tim Burton? - I'm not that much of a fan. - And have you seen his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? - I have. - Right, so where to begin? I mean, I think this is, now believe me, let me finish on this. I think this is almost brilliant. But no, no, no, no, no, but I don't mean that like, how would I put it? - Imagine if you took like-- - There's formed turd. - No, but there are a couple of elements in this that if you changed, it would be brilliant. As it stands, I would probably give it two stars. But there are some cylinders that fire so well on that it's like, so like, mainly it's aside from the casting of Johnny Depp, whose performance, some people say it's just suffers by comparison to Gene Wilder, but I just think it's just creepy and awful. But everything else, I think, is actually a pretty good reminder of what Tim Burton is good at. So I went through a period of generally disliking him until I realized it was kind of more his fan base, I found so Orcsum, the way everybody, he's one of those people that everyone's like, ooh, Tim Burton, but the thing is, if you look at, for example, something like, the Star Worth examples I would go to would be beetle juice, big fish, good ones, Edward Cesar's hands. So like, I think he just kind of, he has something perfectly sort of balanced in its weirdness that it's no wonder it got commodified is what I'm saying. So it's no wonder he churns out buckets a shite for loads of money because he's kind of got something. However, I think him and Roll Dal on this occasion is a nearly perfect match. So it's based on the famous Roll Dal book, and apparently there's much closer to it than the 1971. I haven't read the book in years, it's about a poor little kid who wins a ticket inside a chocolate factory and learns the meaning of Christmas, basically. I love Roll Dal growing up, I really hope I can get my daughter into his books, and I think, Charlie, in the chocolate factory, it might be the most Roll Dal book there is, 'cause it's like nasty, it displays a general hatred for children, but blames parents mostly, and it's kind of bursting with magic. So aside from a couple of plot inventions, they tack on a new ending and give a Willy Wonka backstory. Kinda nails it. I mean, it's designed within an inch of its life, and it's gorgeous to look at. This fella called Deep Roy, who's like a Hanyan British midget, plays all the Yum Palumas, and their songs hop between genres, and that really worked for me. The list of people that were originally considered for the lead is toothsome to look at. I encourage anybody, like Leslie Nielsen was considered, and all the pythons and all that shit, but apparently once Burton got on board, Depp was the only person he considered, which is real pity because he's the whole reason I'd probably kicked his fucking two stairs instead of poor. He's so fucking bloody irritating in this, and he's got good lines and everything, but he just delivers them like an alien in disguise in a high school or something like that. Just knows at me. And you know what? Aaron wasn't keen on it anyway, so he won't be watching it again. Oh, the German fat kid rushing chocolate bars is very good fuckers, Blake. - Wasn't Depp doing like a Michael Jackson thing. I thought that's why it was. - That's what he said, yeah. I did not care for it. - I wouldn't want to see Michael Jackson in a chocolate factory either. - Hey, and like, it's not a Johnny, it's not a Johnny Depp, and matched with the Earth what might be. - Yeah, I don't know two other films at Tim Burton's that I like him and can't think of it. - Edward is. - Edward is. - Oh yeah, and Edward is great. And like, for example, Depp's most over-the-top performance, fucking Jack Sparrow. I love him in the Pirates of the Caribbean. I think he's great in those, but it's just knowing in this, and he actually he's got good guides in his lines, but it's just this tall delivered like this. - Yeah, it's the voice. - Oh, it's awful. - But anyway, yeah, it is, you know, I'm using it in its own way, I suppose. Anyway, you got anything else? - No, no, so. - I want to talk a little more- - Take the knackers. - Okay, let's go. - One more thing. - So I watched most of the third season of The Bear, and you're ready for a good metaphor here? - What? - I feel the pot has kind of gone off the boil. - That's like cooking, isn't it? - It's about cooking, it's just like cooking. - That's what someone might say in a kitchen. - Exactly, no. - Well, it's a strange thing, so just to point it- and I will watch the end of it and report back to it, but I thought it was worth saying, while it was still fresh in my head. First of all, this show was great because it really captured the energy of a kitchen, and it progressed as it went, but there was a good story in the middle of it. Like, that's the thing, you're learning about these characters and stuff. And you can tell it's won a load of awards because the entire first episode, listen to this, the entire first episode of the third series, which is 38 minutes long, is a food and cooking montage with no story. You're just watching- - It's stupid. - You're just watching people who aren't chefs. - Don't waste my motherfucking time. - 100%, man. I was like, can we get a bit of the story? Maybe, like do this before the credits at the end of a triumphant episode, but don't do this to me for 38 minutes. And loads of people online are there celebrating, and I'm like, you fucking dopes? Like this is just, no, it's nonsense. Like, you know, it's the sort of episode that people might be celebrating, but I guarantee you, if they were re-watching the show, they'd skip the episode. - Those are people that don't work or have families. - Anyway, the second episode, it's just loads of shouting and arguing and the performance is just very, very samey. And then something dawned on me because I had been clips from Breaking Bad kept popping into my feed, right? And I was watching loads of clips from Breaking Bad. And I was thinking, God, I must re-watch that again. I was thinking about Breaking Bad and then by comparison to the bear. And I thought, what's so class about Breaking Bad is by the end of season two, you're fully against, not against Walt, but Walt is the bad guy. By the time he kills Jesse's, when he kills Jesse's girlfriend. - So, season two, I thought that was like... - That's the last episode of season two, yeah. Holds her nose while she chokes on her vomit. - Well, I think, you know, I don't think he was involved. - I think he was just thinking she doesn't want to smell all that vomit. - Yeah, he was helping her out, if anything. Anyway, point being is he's clearly the villain, but the wonderful thing about the show is he's so clever that you're just like, I want him to keep winning 'cause I want to see what else this fucker has up his sleeve. I think that's like the one of the big engines of the show is what's Walt gonna do next. But all caramel, caramel in the show, who's a genius or whatever, Jeremy Allen White, that fella, there's no tricks he can pull out of his sleeve because you can't taste the show. So you're just watching this guy just be an asshole all the time. And eventually, like I've got four episodes left, I'm completely turned against him. I don't like him anymore. And we're supposed to be rooting for him. There's this one other thing that is very strange in it, which is that one of the characters puts up this picture of a Buddhist garden in the guy from Andor, that fella. - The other one. - The other one, right. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - What's his name? - Ebon Moss, Bert Bakkerach, that guy. - What's your name, fucking change it? Anyway, just come, Bert Young, what's wrong with Bert Young? Anyway, he puts up this picture of this Buddhist garden in Japan and he tells the thing of it. And I kind of recognize what he's saying. And I realized where I've heard it before. I've heard it in an interview that William Friedkin did with Nicholas Vinding-Reffen. And he's talking about the inspiration for the film Sorcerer. And then he tells the story and the other character goes, "Oh, where'd you hear that?" And he goes, "Oh, this is the Chicago director I like." And then the lady goes, "Oh, talking about her husband." Like, "Oh, Bob likes Friedkin too," like that. And I thought to myself, "That's really shoddy writing." Like, he just watched this interview and included three fucking talking points from him. - He still referenced his work, that's fine. - No, no, but this is, sorry, there's this one other thing in the scene, like a couple of scenes later, maybe actually this is clever writing. He says something that William Friedkin says in that interview, because Reffen makes a comment about something Al Pacino said about working with him and Friedkin goes, "You know what? "I don't give a flying fuck into a rolling doughnut "what Al Pacino thinks," something like that. And yeah, the character echoes that in the bear. - And then later in one of the other scenes, the character goes, "We're gonna need an exorcist." Here. - Yeah. And then there's another scene. - There's another scene. - Cruising. - Yeah, yeah, and that guy gets fisted. - Yeah, that's great. - Oof, it's a good show. - Anyway, it is a good show. But is it as good as the eel? - Wait, I think we need to say, we need to do our straight off the dome here. - Oh yeah! - Off the bat. Are we gonna shoot the viewer watch both of these films reveal? - Shall I go first? - You go first. - 100%, yes. - I'm hotter on one than the other. - I bet you're hotter on black rain than the eel. - You know I am. You know I love a toxic rain. - You love melting people. - Yeah. - I like to see people's skin hanging off. - Again, I thought for some reason. - I knew you would like the eel. The eel's right up your filthy alleyway. You dirty little alley. - I mean, I know I mentioned this last week, but I like, I saw, I would have been around 12, something like that. They used to show foreign movies on the Irish language channel in Ireland on like Friday nights. And I would tell in the TV guide by way of indication if there was sex or not in it. So me and my mates would tune in to catch all the boobies. And I actually got, I think it's one of the things that got me really, really into movies because you'd end up watching like highbrow shit, just two cats boobies. - I remember the same on Channel 4 in the UK, yeah. - I remember I watched all of Belda Jour because I read that it was set mostly in a brothel. So I was like, there's gotta be some nudity. There's no nudity in Belda Joury. - No, but there are sexual ideas. - Yes, there are. And I found it very titillating. I remember that very specifically. But then around the same time, I watched the first 10 minutes of this week's movie, the pam door winning the eel, and it's quite a packed opening 10 minutes. - Yeah. - Probably it's the whole plot of the movie. The rest of the film is just Buddhism really. - It's dealing with the consequences, kind of. - Yeah, in a very, do you know what this film really reminded me of? Was Local Hero. You ever seen Local Hero? - If, I don't remember that being Local Hero when the guy stabs his cheating wife to death after she's been pounded out. - Okay, I obviously mean after the opening 10 minutes, the eight years later part. - I guess, but it's got the feel of a lot of lower budget indie films where you've got a small town or like a kind of shitty town and a bunch of people who don't seem to have jobs who just hang around, like saying around. - Oh, I love it, love it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That is your vibe, 100%. That's your ideal life. You want to live in some bumfuck town. - It's quite reminded me of that Takeshi Kitano film we watched. - Absolutely, the one on the beach, what's that called? - I thought this was better, I preferred this. - Annabe, is that Annabe? I can't remember which one it was. - I can't remember its name either. - Whatever, the one where he made traps on the beach and tried to trap guys in them. And that's how that is your dream. It's pretty funny. - Dream life. This is the 13th Palm Door winner that we've watched for the podcast. Can you believe that? - I cannot. - Folks, it's the 13th. - Oh, are you going to ask me to try and name them? - Fuck no, there's a million of them. - I was going through going like, there's another one, there's another one, there's another one. All the way back to like wages of fear. So there's a shit ton on them. But let me tell you instead what this beat out for the Palm Door. So the eel shared it with Abba Skiarostami's Taste of Cherry. - Which sounds incredibly boring. - The only film of his I watched was a certified copy and I don't think I understood it at all. But he's dead now. - Thank God. - Oh, he also had a bit of me too, stuff going on. - So some of the films that the eel beat out include Angley's The Ice Storm, Curtis Hansen's LA Confidential, Michel Hanukkis Funny Games, Gay Old Man's Nill by Mouth, One Car Wise, Happy Together, and Adam McGaughan's The Sweet Ear After. - Okay, I would have given her to Funny Games, I have to say. That would have been my vote. But I can make a very strong case for this film. Very strong case. 'Cause I, okay, so people listen in the opening minutes, this business man, Japanese business man, coming back, reads a letter, Ananos letter saying his wife is cheating on him when he goes on his all night fishing trips, some guy visits her. He goes home, gets his fishing gear ready in seconds and leaves. It's amazing how fast that is. He gives no affection to his wife and he just goes down to the shore. She gives him a packed lunch and then he just gives us a packed lunch away to somebody. He goes back, sees another car outside his house, literally sees red, looks up and vision turns red. It's a little early trick or whatever. And then he goes in, so he knows what's happening already and then he sees his wife. - Yeah, absolutely slammed. - Haven't had a great time at it too. - He did some good work. - But I think he's very specifically directed for it. It's the war, I think the director is trying to get you on board with him going mad and killing his wife. I think that boards a big calf like you. You love it, you're well up for it. You think it's good that he stabbed his wife to death. - I don't think it's good. - And you think the fact that he served eight years in prison is an outrage. You started writing a letter 'cause you thought this was a true story. - You sent a man to jail for eight years from brutally murdering his wife. That's a fucking outrage. What kind of walk bullshit is this you wrote in your letter? - No, so he horribly censored the death. You got killed Bill Blood coming out. Then there's this, there's the, like in a way that probably was normal in Japan, but I imagine for Western audiences was still hilarious just 'cause it is-- - It's for the spurty blood. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not. - It's fun. It's the most fun way of definitely of seeing a lady being stabbed to death. - But then you, it pauses for a couple of seconds and you just see the mutilated corpse of his naked beautiful wife and then fucking her lover shouts out, "Murder, are you murder her?" - You stabbed me too, you bastard, I'm off. - And then your man cycles down to the police station, hands himself in, and it's eight years later. And the thing is, I-- - He's served for massive eight years sentence, go ahead. - I think that is set up and directed the way it is because he wants you to see what this guy did as genuinely a mistake that was out of character for him, right? Now, bear with me on this. This is why he chooses it 'cause it's the worst fucking mistake, so to speak, you could make. And then he goes to show with the rest of the film that basically just by just trying to live, you can just kind of eventually just move on from stuff. It's all Buddhism, it's all very Buddhist. It's like the inverse of something like Blue Velvet, where you see there's this beautiful fucking idyllic town and there's a seedy underbelly where nasty violent stuff happens all the time. This, on the other hand, it kind of like the jarring, it starts with the violence and then it goes into this weird kind of local hair movie. I actually think that's what made me stop watching it because it wasn't the sex and the violence or anything like that. - When you were finished, you had your 10 minutes. - But then-- - Lady and you're like, "I am." - It immediately gets onto this kind of weird, jaunty sort of film and you're like, "I was like, what?" - Yeah, it's like a sort of character thing, a character space. - Yeah, what didn't you like about it? You seem to not be as keen on it as me. - I guess like, maybe I'm coming at it so strongly from like a modern perspective, but like looking at this character and a film that said 1997 and just going like, "He shows no remorse, really." He genuinely thinks that what he did wasn't wrong. Like, I think he thinks he had the right to kill her. I genuinely do think that he believes that. And there's a part of me that-- - I don't think he does. - I think he does. - I think he still thinks, he's like, yeah, I fucked up to a certain extent, but I still think that he kind of feels that he's justified to murder his wife because she was fucking someone else. - So why do you think he makes it a big deal of admitting it to the lady that he murdered his wife? - Well, because he's gonna get, he's gonna get rumbled. Like that was the whole thing, the like trash collector guy comes around and tells her. And so he realizes that he's about to get rumbled. So he's gonna, he decides he wants to tell her first, but she's already found out. And then we just sees it. I don't know, I didn't like the main character whatsoever. And that's fine. I mean, it's okay a lot of the time. I can, I don't need to like main characters. Like a film I've already mentioned that I watched this week. I didn't like the main character, but I still really enjoyed the film. So I don't know, it's just, I feel like this film is apparently it played well overseas, but it didn't do well. - In Japan, I told you. - Yeah. And I just think it's kind of fallen away. And I think a modern audience would probably be troubled by a guy doing eight years for the first ever killing his wife. He got, to be fair, he did get a sentence of 10. And then they let him out after eight. We could bathe here. - Well, I mean, it was probably temporary insanity. He got off on. - I do think he regrets it. I really think he regrets killing his wife. That's why I think he just wants to be sort of left alone. - I guess he does, I mean, there's a part, he says like a part of him died at that time too, but I don't know. I mean, it's just like, I still feel like this character is trying to justify his actions to an extent. - In what way? I never got that. - That's because you think that he's right. You think that he did a good thing. He got rid of another lady off the earth. - Oh, that's terrible. - Yeah, that's not true. I don't think. - We could actually just cut the first 10 minutes off of this and like a screener that men's rights meetings. - Not from my perspective. - Well, I mean, I don't know. This, that's just, that's, maybe it's also because I lived in Japan. That might be some of my pushback to as well. - I had this question about the, this director's depiction of Japan specifically for you. You see so little of this side of Japan. Now, I'm not talking about the seedliness. I'm talking about like shitty rural poor. - Oh, having shitty jobs. Yeah, I mean, there's that. Well, the thing about like most people there are in the same social class. The vast majority of people are just sort of in the middle. But there are like, there is like a real social underclass, you know? And if you go to prison, you're fucked. Like, yeah, you're not going to get, you're not going to be doing any decent job, obviously. - Huh. - And if you like, it's a whole thing. If you break the rules in certain ways, you're just kind of cast to one side. If you don't do what you're supposed to do is you go to university. When you graduate university, you join like a massive company. You start at a shady level and then you work your way up. Like even when I was living there, there was, you know, my friends of mine were doing that. - And every Saturday you get drunk and puke on your boss's shoes, but it's okay. - Yeah, that still goes on. Like I follow the Instagram account of, yeah, people passed out on subway trains and stuff. - They're a big drinking culture, right? They love drinking. - Yeah, but I mean, they've got that enzyme, that Asian enzyme thing where like you can't-- - They can't drink. - Yeah, there's a huge amount of people who just, it turns their finger at that Asian flush or whatever is called their face goes red. But yeah, there's plenty of people are absolutely caning at all the time. - Fair play. - Fair play. - Fair play. - What happens in the eel? - Well, let me give you a little background on the director, Shohei Mamura. - Oh, yes, we're doing two of his this weekend. - Yeah, so we might as well, I mean, so you, why did you choose a film because you just remembered the sexy, sexy times? - I want to see the sexy time. - When you were a kid. - I just thought it was a part of it was, I was looking at old films we had watched and thought, oh, what had been like a surprising good week? And I remember I quite liked that Takeshi Catano movie. And then I was thinking-- - What was the other one that was paired with that? - Can't remember. I think it was, oh, it was, do you know what it was? It was a terrible movie. The Yakuza, the same part of the movie. - Oh yeah, sure, sure. - Not a fan of that, but the other one, what the fuck was it called? I'm going to look at it. - Yeah, look it up because I can't remember. - I have to know. - It wasn't Annaby, was it, it was another one, no. - Sanatine, that's it, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sanatine. Anyway, yeah, Sanatine was pretty good. And I remember like just thinking, I don't know, something weird and suburban and stuff. And then, okay, full disclosure, I went to Chatshi PT and I said, what's some things that's kind of, what's some things that'll be kind of like that? And then I was like, I was like, nah, more numb or I tried a couple of times and then I saw the eel and I was like, is that that fucking thing? And then I just said, why not, why not? Let's give it a go. 'Cause I remember it was highly acclaimed. And I remember, you know, probably once a year, I think about that film and just the 10 minutes I had seen of it and going, that was highly acclaimed. This is crazy. And because I always, that's the other thing. I always remember, I would occasionally read the Wikipedia article and it's all stuff like, it's really funny and heartwarming. And I remember thinking, not what I fucking saw, what I saw was horrible. - Well, he went to prison for eight years. He was fully rehabilitated. - Tell us about our man anyway. - Choe Imamura, middle class Tokyo native, son of a doctor, sighted Rashomon as an early influence. His first job was working as an assistant to Ozu on films like Early Summer and Tokyo Story. - I think that is very pertinent information to talk about with the second film. - But he grew frustrated with the portrayal of Japan they depicted, preferring himself to explore the cedar underbelly of uncivilized amoral protagonists. - Can I just say I'm very disappointed to read that because I thought that was gonna be my original theory when talking about, we'll get to it, but I'm gonna be saying it eventually. But basically, I think Black Rain is an answer to the celebrated Ozu films. I really do continue. - His films tended to be quite explicit. Some of his most highly rated ones include Vengeance's Mine from 1979 about serial killer Akira Nishiguchi. I looked a little bevy, it looks quite bleak. And another big highly regarded Imamura film is The Ballad of Narayama from 1983, which is about people forced to leave their remotes town when they reach 70 years of age. They have to go up into the mountains and die and stop being a massive drain on resources. It's like Logan's run, but we're 70 year olds. - It's like an argument I had with, you can cut his name out if you want it. It's like an argument I had with Andy Cooper one time when he told me that he taught people over the age of 60, shouldn't be allowed to vote. (laughing) But like being serious, he was being serious with that. - That takes a vote the way I say. - I mean, I think it's a very funny opinion to have not knowing the, not thinking about the consequences of it, like it's like the sort of thing a teenager would say, but he was in his early 30s when he said it's like, they shouldn't be able to, it's like what are you gonna do? Just go, go around to all the groups and dads and go, no, sorry, not anymore. - Andy, maybe you could just trick them. Like every one of their votes just got charged. (laughing) - 'Cause if they're 60 years old, they're obviously won't know what they're doing anyway. - No, no, yeah, just boomer. - Give them a post it, no, it's there. Write down what you like there. Anyway, go on. So I'm gonna go into the plot of the eel. - Okay. I think I've already broken down the opening pretty well. - I know, but I'm gonna go through it again because I just wanna say some stuff. It's set in Chiba, which is like Japan's New Jersey. Part of it is close to Tokyo and that part's all built up. But the part of Chiba that we're in for this film is like the station agent, Bumblefuck, New Jersey. - Yes, it's quite Bumblefucky. - Right, right. - I'll give you that. - I spent time in the other part of Chiba, the western part, which is a bit more, yeah, it's like more like city, but it's funny how quickly you can get out into sort of countryside and just absolute dog shit. You don't have to go very far. So in 1988, salaryman Takuru Yamashita receives an anonymous note saying that his wife is cheating on him while he's away on his all night fishing trip. So he cuts his next fishing trip short to catch her in the act. He sees her just absolutely getting smashed by some guy and he watches them for a creepily long amount of time before getting a huge knife, stabbing the guy once then stabbing his wife a bunch with blood spurting out over the camera lens. The guy runs off and Yamashita turns himself into the local police station. Eight years later, Yamashita's released from jail. And you know, why do you think his sentence was so long? Guys aren't allowed to brutally murder their wives anymore. Not allowed to have fun. He's released on parole. It's political correctness gone mad. He's released on parole with his pet eel that he talks to because it listens to him and doesn't talk back like that. Like that lady did. I know, stop. You're ignoring the Buddhist commentary in this film and I won't have it anymore, Andy. I won't have it. Using the skills he learned inside, he opens a barbershop alongside the cast of colorful residents of the town. There's an old guy who he goes fishing with for more eels. There's a Yakuza-style guy who tries to extort him at the start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, "Hey." - This is too very local hero. - And then later, he turns up with this like, Filipino prostitute and he starts like getting off of her in front of him. And then there's the young like UFO. Yeah, and then there's a young UFO enthusiast in cell. - Who's also hanging out there? - He is, he's in the late '90s in cell. - What's the name of that generation of Japanese men who live in their rooms and never leave? - Hikikomori. - That's it. - Yeah, he's one of them. - But he's out. He's out in a biopsy. - But he's a rural Hikikomori, which is- - He's got no house. - He's getting a bit of fresh air. - He gets out and he's into UFOs and stuff like that. So yeah, and they're all mates. I think they all get bonded and they're all fucking gang. - From a little family, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - After some time, a lady wanders past the barbershop looking lost, Takuro finds her passed out in the weeds after she's taken a bunch of sleeping pills in an apparent suicide attempt. This girl, Keiko, is suicidal because her mother is mental and she's banging a lawn shark who's trying to steal her mad mom's money. Eventually, Keiko starts working at the barbershop and her and Takuro have a will they won't they think going on? - Yes, and he keeps ignoring her to death. - Oh my God, Andy. Later, a local bin man recognizes Takuro from prison and is angry that while Takuro has never shown remorse for his crimes, even though he's never shown remorse for his crimes, he's got a decent job on a lady. Whereas a bin man guy has done all kinds of shenanigans to prove he's turned over a new leaf, but his parole has already been going on for three years and he's resigned to collecting rubbish. - So the bin man, I would think, his parole is a very Andy J. Ritchie move. - And what's that? - He goes off on his merry way and goes home and doesn't do anything bad. He tells-- - I wasn't referring to that. - What he does is the bin man tells Keiko the truth about Takuro and then he does also try to rape her. That's true. - But that wasn't the Andy J. Ritchie move. I was talking about-- - I was referring to speaking perfect Japanese. You got it. - Right, thank you. - She tells Takuro that she doesn't care about his wife killing past and wants to be with him. That's what Keiko says. She said, I don't care that that. I don't care that you're going to talk with a wife on the end of your night. - Let's pause, so to reflect on your reflections of this film. The fact that he's like, what's wrong with you? I'd like to her at that point. Like he's like, are you nuts? I killed my wife, I'm bad, I'm bad news. - Of course he regrets it. - Nah, yeah. - But I don't know. I just think you're not deep enough to get this. You don't meditate. - Yeah, probably. - You don't like the Twin Peaks return. - Just 'cause you say sorry, that means we should forgive you. - Mm, no. - You need to go away forever. - No, but he doesn't say sorry and he doesn't ask for forgiveness. - No, this is not a remorse. - Then, there's a hilariously poorly staged punch-up in the barber shop between Takuro and his mates and Keko's boyfriend and his Yakuza thugs, which ends with Keko revealing that she's pregnant and claiming that Takuro is a father, even though they've never had sex. Takuro confirms that it's his child just to get it right up the boyfriend. And then Takuro ends up going back to the jail for violating his parole. He freezes Pateo, eel, eel, and endeavors to look after Keko's kid when he gets out. And she's gonna wait for him. - That's what she says. - To get stabbed. - They don't have a smoochie. - They don't. It's not about that. - No, exactly. - Do you think they'll ever have sex? - No, I think he will try and stay in prison forever rather than. - Do you think he had sex with his wife originally? I did enjoy the scene where the guy was taunting him, the rubbish man guy was taunting him going like, you just killed her because the guy was having sex with her enough, a manly way, and you only had sex with her like a child with like a child. - But actually then. - That's what I said in my subtitles anyway. - It also feel like, because that could have been a hallucination because he does hallucinate about the bin man later when he's out in the lake and the guy jumps out of the water and he's like, "Ah!" - What did you make of the whole, that there might not have been any letter that he didn't originally receive a letter about his wife? - I don't even think the... Because the film doesn't exactly follow through on that, I don't really... I think it could have operated without it. I think it would have been just as well. - Yeah, he just comes back and is like... - By accident, yeah, yeah, there's no need for the letter because, as we just said with our what we've been watching, I don't need everything explained, but that kinda set it up and the way that they explained it was the rubbish man jumps out of the lake and said, "You probably hallucinated it like you're hallucinating me now," which is a bit stupid. I didn't like that now to be fair either. - But also like, if he did receive a letter, that means that him stabbing his wife to death is, that's not a reaction in the moment. 'Cause he knows he's already had information that she's banging some other guy, so then it would be like a premeditated murder, in a way, in that case. Obviously he goes and grabs a knife, but like he's trying to catch in the act. - There is a moment, you might have missed it, much like you missed the lady in the red dress in a hidden life. There is a moment where he sees the guy's car outside and he looks up into a street light and the whole screen turns red. He literally sees red, for a second. And this is the reason why he holds so long on the, look, I know you're Protestant and you don't get passion. - Yeah, exactly. You're not allowed to stab people to death because you saw red. Stop being a fucking child. And handle your emotions, man. - And you see your Protestant wife through a window getting plowed by some Catholic. - And then I have to pay them as well afterwards for the job that I contracted them to do, yeah. - Some kind of a hero. What are you gonna, you're like, "Oh, I said, it's a very terribly bad form." - Well, I'm sat in the coke chair of the science. - Do you ever read the Hemingway story, the short "Happy Life" of Frances McComber? - No, that would require reading. - And he says this, but he's read loads of books, folks. - I've got a few up here, too, yeah. - I'm man, I'm Bible, the Protestant Bible. - I am fully fledged addicted to the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. I'm gonna finish the last one soon and I'll be director. - It's so delicious. - Oh, so good. Strawberry chocolate, vanilla, what's not to like? Anyway, what was I saying? - I thought you were not. - It's a mad tangent. You were talking about the Ernest Hemingway novel. - Oh, yeah, no, it's a short story. So this fella is like off on safari. He's a rich fella and he's got a pretty wife who's American and he is supposed to be hunting lions with this safari dude. And he flinches when the lion starts to run towards them and he legs it out and she's like, "Ah, you're such a pussy." And then she goes off and shags the fucking games man. And then when she comes back to their tent in the middle of the night, he's like, "Really, it's very, you know, you just jump tired." - Spirit animal. - That's what you would be like. Your friends is McCombra, basically. - God, I wish that I'd be famous. I'm in the Ernest Hemingway story. - It's a really good story. Everyone will pop back into reading for five minutes. It's very short and it's quite excellent. - When it comes to cast, the good news is there's almost nothing. The main guy, Yoji Yaku-Sho, he was in Wim Venders' toilet film, Perfect Days. - That's right, yeah, that's right. - The toilet loving Wim Venders film. - And if I could give like just a sort of a tiny analysis on it, just a little bit. I just, I felt like when I watched it years ago, I was like, what the hell? If we're gonna have a jaunty, nice film now, why are you having this guy horrifically murder his wife after that glorious sex scene? Why are we doing it this way? I don't understand, but I do understand now because I truly believe that, okay, what is worse? What's worse than seeing your wife cheating on you? Seeing your wife cheating on you and having a blast like having such a good time. Like, it's the worst thing possible to see. So it is plausible that he just went and fucking stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. And then when he got out of prison, he's just like, he has the eel to talk to because he just can't even face himself. So he's put himself in the eel and that's how he fucking talks. And that's why he's able to let the eel go in the end, by the way. - So progress. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like there's no magic moment that can sort of get him over himself and what he's doing. He just kind of has to patter about and live life and eventually he's not over it by the end, but he's like, made a baby step. And that's all you can kind of do with things like that, you know? And also, by the way, I thought the score was very nice. I really enjoyed the score. - Yeah, I mean, what you say makes sense, but it doesn't make me enjoy the film or anything. - Do you like local hero? - Not particularly. - Fair enough. I thought there was loads of local hero and I would need to rewatch. - I'd need to rewatch local hero has been such a long, long time. It's the kind of thing I watched quite a lot when I was a kid because it was the big Scottish thing, but I need to see it again. - I've heard the artificial village from there, from it is still, you can still visit it. - Mm, it's our, yeah. It's our one of our proudest monuments. - Sounds like you're being sarcastic, Andrew. - Yeah, I don't know where it is. Up north, somewhere, I imagine. - Peter, probably. - You know what's more fun than, you know what's more fun than, by the way, eels are creepy as fuck. I just want to get out of there. - Yeah, they're nasty pieces of work. - They're horrible. - And the eel features in Black Rain, too. - Hmm, well, let's talk about it. I thought they were carp, but anyway. - No, but what were you saying? You know what's leading to it go on? You had a lion in your head. - No, it was something, you know, and what's more fun than watching a man stab his wife to death. The destruction of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. - Good God, Andy. - Good God. - You know, like watching Oppenheimer, you just have to conjure up these images yourself in that scene where he's, you know, everyone is celebrating and cheering and stuff when he's making a speech. - I'm so, well, actually, to be fair, I don't know how well-known this film is, really, but certainly on this side of the world, I'm surprised this film isn't better known. - As I mentioned last week, and as I sent you the article about it, it is kind of maybe bad form on someone's part that there's a Ridley Scott film of Michael Douglas from the same year, called Black Rain. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - In Japan, I mean, like, what the fuck? - I know, yeah, and, I mean, it was the '80s. Nobody gave a fuck about anything, but particularly when you consider the subject matter, this is- - This one has literal black rain falling. - It is, I mean, I've seen threads I haven't seen the day after, but those are fictional speculation films about nuclear holocausts. This is an actual film that from wider shots in so far as special effects will allow it, but like close-in shots in the middle of the action, really grisly, this is a real life post-apocalyptic nuclear story, and it's chilling, humane, funny sometimes, and also has that local hero element I was talking about, but wow, I thought this was like really something else, and I do genuinely think, look at the style of this. So, Ozoo's films are like post-war Japanese films as well, but they do nothing to kind of address the war at all, even though they have a very similar story, at least like three of the ones that I've watched of Ozoo is a lady who needs to be married off, and they can't find someone a marrier, but in this one, the atomic bomb and its effects are still fucking living with them. It's practically a character in the film, and so from the start, when the bomb literally goes off and we see sort of the effects of it, and then we cut to five years later and we see life and the stigmatization of people who were near the flash as they call it, and then we'll flash back and they're trying to escape the city again. I thought this was, I mean, this guy must've been proud of this is the way I would put it, because it's like, I don't think people were making films like this in the late '80s. - No, I mean, they were making films called Black Rain with Michael Douglas or Michael Douglas, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, I guess I never really thought about long-term victims, like atom bomb victims. The people who, like there's something about this film where you're just watching characters stoically face death. There's just death after death, it's really haunting. It's like, it's kind of like all the people in it died on that day in 1945, but then they've just been waiting for the funeral. Like, I guess it's like, yeah, I hadn't really seen something of that point of view before, so I really like this. I think what they were able to do showing, obviously there's like a limited budget, there's limits to what they can show, and I think what they did manage to get of the melting skin and the burnt-eye corpses, and they showed just an absolute nightmare of what it would've been like. - Oh yeah, it's really disturbing. That, like, dude, I said at the start, I think both these films are war-watching. I think you can really tell it's the same director. Both are disturbing, but particularly in the, like, let's say the opening, 15 minutes of black rain, it's, that's upsetting stuff, like thinking that, you remember, like, oh, there's a, there's, the first shot to really get a gasp out of me was, you don't know what day it is or whatever, there's just a shot of the sky, and you see the bomb dropping by parachutes. - Hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's-- - And then the flash. - That is something else. - And then there's a kid who's had all his skin burn off, and then-- - Oh yeah. - Goes up to this guy who's, like, looking for his brother. - And these are all based on-- - Like, who the fuck are you? You've got no skin, and he casts him a few questions, realizes it's his brother. Yeah, they're all based on real stories of stuff that happened. - Crazy. - Indeed, yeah. - There's one thing that I think, no, not one thing. There's just, like, an aspect of some of the choices that he makes in filmmaking that I really like. It's in both films. I noticed it more in the second film, but, like, he'll show you something, give you time to take it in and figure it out yourself, and then a character will talk about it or, like, kind of actually spell it out to the audience later. I can't remember a few-- One that I remember is, like, Yasuko's tumors. Like, she's clearly dealing with the dressing on her back. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It doesn't, you know, it doesn't make a big deal and doesn't spell it out for you directly, and then they talk about it later. It happens a few times in both films. - There's a couple of moments in "Black Rain," both involving her that are, like, really heartbreaking. - Yeah. - Well, first, when she rushes in and says that she'd have, she would like to marry that guy who's gone crazy, and then the other one, when just her hair starts falling out. - Yeah, that's brutal. - And, like, regular listeners to the podcast will know that I deplore something that has got no jokes or humor in it because that's not how humans are. This has got plenty of humor in it, plenty, and it only adds, like, what-- It actually just serves to prove my point because it only, like, adds to-- It gives gravity to the characters the fact that there's humor woven into it, and then you just see this horrific thing they've had to run into and that, like, the gossip running around about this young lady and she can't find somebody to marry her because everybody's afraid of, like-- And you can see, particularly, people who have seen the likes of Tokyo story or late spring or anything like that, you can see the Japanese culture from Ozu in there and, like, the extreme formality at every greeting. - Like, you remember when the would-be suitor meets the parents and he's, you know, bowing, touching the floor and all of that stuff and super excited to sort of get along with things? It's that formal world, colliding with the leftovers of the atomic bomb that's so affecting. Have you ever been to Hiroshima? I understand it's-- - No, I never went that far west. I'd like to go, if I get the chance. One of the other things, also, I think it really shows social class as well. You know, they make a big deal of that. I think that's kind of drifted away in culture, but, like, at that place and time, they're like, you know, he's from a horror family. - The family. - Lower-born. Suffering from PTSD, but don't lie, that worry. He's fine. But yeah, these people, he bakusha. He bakusha, he bakusha, he bakusha. Yeah, that's what they're called. The people who suffer. - People are affected by the bomb. - Yeah, the most famous one is probably Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He's the guy who's the double Ibakusha. Yamaguchi was confirmed to be three kilometers from ground zero in Hiroshima on a business trip when the bomb was detonated. He was seriously burned on his left side and spent the night in Hiroshima. He got back home to his home city of Nagasaki on 8th of August, a day before the bomb in Nagasaki was dropped. And he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. He was the first officially recognized survivor of both bombings. - And you know Jim's camera is making a movie about him? - Yeah, he met him. They hung out and he was happy to hear the camera was gonna make the film. But he went bald from this, all his hair fell out and he needed bandages on his skin for years. But he still lived to 93 years of age. Like that's how healthy life in Japan is compared to the UK or Ireland. Like you can literally drink radioactive rain and still live longer than someone who enjoys a few bites of Guinness on a Friday night. - And some Greggs. - A few steak bakes, yeah. - Do you like a steak bake? - No, I love them. - I don't think I've ever had a steak bake. - You're missing it. - They're wasting, literally wasting your life. - I remember one time I was coming out from a night out in Edinburgh. There was all these people, like it was like five in the morning or something. When we were walking out to Leith, there was all these people queuing up outside of place. And there was drunk people queuing up, trying to get the baker to sell them bread. They just wanted a bunch of loaves of bread. - That's normal. (laughing) - That's perfectly normal. - You're not even in Ireland, do you see such like lots of bread for me? I mean, I mean, we were like, what the hell is this? - There were human over here. - Anyway, anyway. Not much plot to go into with a black rain. The bomb happens. The guy is on the train. - Allegedly, allegedly. - And his niece, he manages to run into her. She's just been sailing across the river. She gets hit with the black rain. I got the black rain. - She avoided the, she didn't get the flash. She didn't get flashed. She only got black rain done. - And then they say, let's get out to my factory where I work to get out there eventually. When we flash forward five years, these guys are living in rural existence. He's got his mates, but he's worried about them. He's worried about his niece more than anybody though because they can't get anyone to marry her 'cause everyone's worried that she won't be able to have babies. - All these people are on the clock. They know they're all gonna die. - Yeah, exactly. And we watched them all die in the film. - We did. - And it's quite poignant time after time. Anyway, the two of the guys' mates die one after the other. He realizes he's got the clock running out on him. And the lady, his niece gets a suitor and he's very into the idea of courting her, but sadly, he drops out at the end of the day just because-- - She tells them to, she tells them to fuck off. - She doesn't fuck her? - Yeah, like the parents were, I think the parents were still gonna say no anyway, but she doesn't want to be with them. - Well, I know she didn't wanna be with them, but-- - But I think she's the one who calls it off. - Okay, okay, okay. I didn't pick up on that. But I'll take your word for it. I often miss out on details. - That's what all he saw was because there was no red. There's no colors, it was in black and white. So you could be like, oh, I saw red. - Well, I was just thinking, well, why doesn't he murder her? He should, he's entitled to murder her now, right? - But yeah, if she says no, then he can just stab her, right? He'll get eight minutes in prison. - Anyway, she, but she wants to, she ends up connecting with this soldier who used to put bombs under American tanks, who's got PTSD, he's a little bit cray-cray. He can't stand the side of the sound of an engineer. He just, he's right back there, he starts hallucinating, but she really connects with him. They sort of come together with their trauma and she says she wants to marry him. But then in the end, she's got her own problem. She's got a tumor on her bum and her hair starts falling out and she eventually has to go away to hospital and her uncle hopes she's going to be okay. That's basically it. - I like that scene with UHE, the one who's suffering from trauma, trauma, trauma. I like when he's explaining what he used to do and with the time rolling over his head. - That's really good, yeah, yeah. - He's acting out with the lights on. I think the choice to film it in black and white and make it look like some Ozu film for like real 50s style, even down to like the sound design and the soundtrack and things like that. - Definitely in the angles and-- - You feel like you're in that time period. It does not feel like it was, I constantly felt like it was made in 1950 when I was watching-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. I think it's all very deliberate. Yeah, I think I'm really, really effective. Just wonder like, I don't know, you don't see many films like this in general, not just anymore or anything like that. Like, I can't think of anything else quite like this because this is, look, this is not a judgmental film. This doesn't even go, this doesn't even get into politics. This doesn't say that the Japanese people did not deserve this. It just kind of says, this is what happened and this is what happened to the people who were near it. And this is-- - There's two things that play there though as well because the characters have the point of view of 1950 and the makers are in 1989. - Yeah, sure. - So they're not like, you know, they're viewing it in a slightly different way. But yeah, I think their takeaway at the end of the film, the main character is like, bombs are bad, atomic bombs, not good, humans are stupid. But luckily we're so far from that ever happening again. So it's fine. - I mean, it turns out it was the weapon to end all wars. No, not wars, wars of that kind. I don't know, we'll see. - I genuinely though, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I genuinely don't think we'll see nuclear weapons again. - So when the next nuclear bombs are dropping on your head, just remember this moment, folks. - Indeed, yeah. (speaking in foreign language) - There's a flash as you melt onto the wall, or what was left of the wall of your house. - Then look to this guy like-- (speaking in foreign language) - Shake your fist to the sky. And that'll make you feel better. - The only thing to say about any of these cast is the young lady who played the main lady, she actually died of breast cancer in 2005. - She had it in like 1992. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Came back 20 years ago. - Fighting it for 15 years, yeah. - Damn. - Anyway. - Tough times. - I would recommend it. I would recommend people seek out both of these, to be honest, 'cause I think they're both really, really good films. Well, I would probably lean with Andy in the end, like Black Ray and I don't think I've ever seen, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like the eel either, but Black Ray and it's sort of particularly unique. It's a real neutral look. Like, this is a, like, I would say this is a completely apolitical film, wouldn't you? - Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't, it doesn't at all delve into, yeah, anything of the war. - Yeah, there's an inch in there. - There's a hero, he too or anything. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So there. - 'Cause it's all about like just the average, how the average person interacts with war. - Yeah. - But through one very, very specific event. - Anyway, I liked it. I liked them both. It was a good week. - It was. - It's close to one of those weeks where you're like, ah, this is definitely why we do the podcast. This is great fun. I was glad to see you. - Yeah, because the films were both only, I mean, the Eel was a little longer. - Yeah. - But they were both around two hours, that's fine. - It is. - Two hours per film. - You hear that fucking vinventors? - Less than two hours per film, even better. Talk to me, it's like 90 minutes or something or maybe even 100 minutes, perfect. All good. - Well, the thing that I'm wondering, the thing that I can't quite get my head around, at this point in time is, I mean, I don't know Andy, how long is the film that you're gonna suggest for the task next week going to be? - I haven't checked. Let's have a look right now. I'm gonna, I'm imagining it is probably about two hours 'cause it's from a time when people made two hour films. It's 111 minutes, it's under two hours. My film is from 1971, it's a Richard Fleischer film. Everyone's favorite Richard Fleischer film that they've all heard of, 10 Rillington Place. You know that one with Dickie Attenborough and Johnny Hertz is in it. - We've never heard of it before, would you believe? - It's about the British serial killer John Christie. It's apparently a big case in the UK. There's also been a TV series of it, not that long ago, of the same story, so. Apparently it's very good. This is another one that I've seen recommended as a real under the radar, quite dark crime film. So, true crime. - Well, a while ago, I listened to a few podcasts about Bo Derek and looked at pictures of this lady and I said, my goodness, she looks like a hot piece of ass. - I like this, this is the origin of your toss picks now. It's like some lady that you saw naked ones. - I thought to myself, she looks like a tractive lady. And then I saw she's in a film with Dudley Moore and apparently it was quite a big deal. And I saw Julie Andrews in it as well. I was like, what the hell we got? And then I saw it's directed by Blake Edwards. So, I'm talking about 1979's film, "Ten." That's what I wanna watch. - "Ten" and "Ten" "Reelington" place, both very similar films. - Indeed. I believe it's my week to toss off. - Yeah, that's a little bit of a kind. - I'll get one. Oh, by the way, do you see Kevin Smith as a new film out? - Yeah, the "Half-Bores" movie or something. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, do you still feel loyalty to watch it? I mean, you watched it. - I watched it. - Yeah, I watched what everyone clicks. - Search "Three" or something, yeah. - And you also watched the "Second J" and "Silent Bob" film, right? - The reboot one, yeah, both. - Yeah. - Hurt me. (laughing) - I don't know. - They hurt my soul. - All right, all right, okay. You've got 20 or good God Spain. Come on. - What is it? - It's fucking Cervantes. I mean, it is his head. It's Cervantes' head. So we could just say-- - 20. - Okay, 20. - It is. Cervantes' head. I'm kind of witching on this. Boo, 'cause I had a really good watch. You could've worn lined up. - Oh, what was it? - Because of the presence of Dickie Attenborough, we were gonna watch his big arrival onto movie stardom, 1948's "Bright and Rock," which I've never seen. - So the Graham Green Book, yeah, exactly. All right, so it's sexy time. What are we watching with big sexy 10? - Well, there could be nothing more sexy than I think was probably considered Blake Edwards' best film, who is most highly rated, and that is 1962's "Days of Wine and Roses" with Jack Lammon. - Did he direct that? Oh, wow, okay, have you ever seen it? - No. - I have, it's very good. - Mm. - It's very good. So a whole 10 of 10 is gonna be too fun, I think. So I just wanted to, instead, I wanted to have tag along something of a man forcing a lady to become an alcoholic, because he was one. We've all been there, so. - From what I hear, from what I learned about 10 from that podcast is a nice bit of forcing in 10 also. Mm, plenty forcing, anyway. - Well, I watched seven, and I watched eight, and I haven't seen eight and a half, but by God, I'm looking forward to watching 10. - Did you watch "Ocean's Eight?" - No. - When all the ladies, I should've watched it, it was great. Anyway, look, that's all I have to say this week. Oh, no, wait, I have one more thing to say. I love you. - I love you, too. - Bye. - Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
