 How much better is this? Well, you're here. Is it spectacular? No. Oh. Your voice is gross. Hey, welcome back to our studio director, Steve Corbyn. I'm Rick! You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more juicy content. Thank you. Do you support some Patreon? Oh, should I count? Indeed. I like a button. You Patreonites. You Patreon... Patreon... You patronizers. Uh, how dare you patronize me? Seriously. Uh... Come on over to Patreon and patronize us. Or patronize, if you prefer it that way. Welcome back. Today we're doing a movie review. And today we got a... I believe it's our first Marathi film of this year. No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. But it came out... Last year. Just like your mom. Just... Uh... I don't remember that. You don't? Yeah. She's a lesbian now. But it's called... Atamama... Atamama pamphlet. Yes. Mama. Atamama pamphlet. Atamama pamphlet. Ah, Atamama pamphlet. The Atamama pamphlet. The Atamama pamphlet. I like it. It came out last year in 2023. Directed by Ashish... Bende. Bende. Written by Pr... Paresh Mokashi. And then... An ensemble. A big ensemble. Yep. A big ensemble, including a bunch of... Yep. Children. But it just came out last year. But it came out a good... Decent time last year. So this will be 100 cents for the review. If you haven't watched it, it's only an hour 30. You can watch it on Z5. At least here in America. You can. I'm assuming it's the same in India. So you can go check it out that way. Rick, your initial thoughts of... Atamama pamphlet. Atamama pamphlet. I've really enjoyed Atamama pamphlet. It is... How would you pronounce it? You just take one of the ones away. Atamama pamphlet. Atamama pamphlet. Yeah. Atamama pamphlet. You added Amma. Amama. Okay, gotcha. I... It's original. Yeah. It's a really funny and pretty insightful satire. Uh-huh. That's both about society and politics and... Yes. It's obviously the primary story is the coming of age story. And I saw a couple of reviews, and that was the only takeaway they had, which was a little bit disappointing, because the cinematic IQ of this goes way beyond just a coming of age story. It's satire with... I feel it's more of a satire than a coming of age. Yeah, it is. It is more satire. I thought it's driven by great direction and interesting editing. It's just an original thing, and the kids are fun, and I really enjoyed it, and I would recommend it, and I'd watch it again. Yeah. When I finished that, I was like, what a fun, original, happy film. Yeah. With a very good message. Oh, yeah. Because you don't get... It was just overwhelmingly positive almost the entire time. Yeah. You don't get... Obviously, there's satire and tongue-in-cheek, obviously, throughout the film. It's about casts, and so there was probably even more that we didn't pick up on in terms of the specificity. And even more. Yeah, it's about cast. It's about basic discrimination in any context, whether it's men and women, children and adults, family members, your political structure, your religious beliefs. It really kind of hits all of them. Yeah. And so there's a lot going on there, but it's quirky. Yes. It's... Especially the ending. I love the ending. It just kept getting progressively... When we get into spoilers, we'll talk about that. Oh, we are already in spoilers. Oh, okay. We are. Okay, so from him getting hit by the truck until the end was just, and just straight-up saying to the audience, okay, so this is what you thought would happen. We're at the climax. Yeah. Yeah, we had conflict. Now it's the climax, and then we'll give you the resolution. It just kept stacking on the top. Yeah, right on top. You thought it was going to be this? No. You thought it was going to be this? No. I like girls. Yeah, that could happen, too. Aliens. I loved it. Yeah, it was very original. And I would even say, like, if we would have seen this last year, this probably would have been... Maybe even in my top five of last year, obviously, it's hard to beat out the big three juggernauts of last year of a 12-fail, Cuff Hall of the Core, three, obviously, I loved Rocky or Ronnie in terms of an entertaining film. But this, I think, would have maybe been number five, maybe on my list. Yeah. It's one of the best of the year, and I was thinking, and this isn't saying much, and I'm not trying to be mean. It's just the reality of the quality, comparatively, that what was selected as the submission. This is better than that. Oh, easily. But it is in my top five. I don't think this is a better film per se than the other ones that you just mentioned, but it's definitely one of the best of last year, not too arguably in the top five. And really, I feel this sense of rooting for the Marathi industry so much because they do the same kind of consistent, original storytelling that Mali Alam does, but they don't seem to get the attention or the respect that the Mali Alam industry does. And I hope they just continue to keep doing what they're doing because great work will eventually be noticed, so don't stop doing what you're doing. Yeah. Did we watch anything in our top five? I think we watched every single one of our top five films if we include this, three of us, Kothal Vakor, Twelfth Fail, and what would be the other one? The theater one. The theater group. Oh, no, but that was this year's film. Oh, I keep doing that. But we watched those all simultaneous. That's why for me, I keep thinking of it. Well, Berlin. Berlin, but we watched those last year. Yeah, in Joram. At least four of our top five of last year we watched in 2020. Yeah, it's true. We didn't get access. This definitely didn't come here. No, that's what happens. I mean, we're still waiting for Mamoudi's film. For 15th, by the way. Yeah, I saw that. We're still waiting for that, and that's just what happens. It's very rare that production sends us a screener or does something where we can go to a screener, and it's just so many films, unless it is a big juggernaut or has Hindi or Telugu as the primary audience members, it doesn't get wide distribution in America. Tamil will get more than Malayalam, obviously. It'll be Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, and then occasionally, rarely, you'll get a Malayalam film that gets a very, very rare. Very, very rare. But yeah, so this entire film... And then the rest of the industry is forget it. Marathi, Canada, Bengali, whatever you want to name, Gujarati, those don't appear on screens. So this film was so interesting because at first you're like, okay, this is gonna be one of the narration voice sounds like Nawaz, right? For a split second I thought it was Nawaz. He's done Marathi films, I believe. So is this where he's from? Is that why it was familiar? Because the dialect is where Nawaz is from? Yeah, it sounded so much like him, I was wondering. Yeah, I was like, it's not Nawaz, but it sounds like where Nawaz would be from whoever this narrator is. But anyways, it started, and it was about these kids, and it's kind of a love interest. And I was like, oh, cute. It immediately starts off very original, very quirky. Very cute little love story, and then it got really, like when all the kids got together and they all started getting angry because they were all different religions. Oh, they burned down the temple. Oh, into school! And then they all was like, oh, then they got in the big fight because they're all different cast of religions. And then they're like, why are we doing this? We're brothers! We all bleed red, I loved brothers. That run through all the way up into the dictator saying brothers. It's all very tongue-in-cheek, because it's like telling the audience, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You know what we're doing. Yeah, can't we all get along? Yeah. But it works. Obviously, when you make a film and you're trying to be obvious and you're in the messaging and kind of winking without looking at the camera, fourth wall break, this is kind of what we're doing in a funny way. That's like a social satire. Exactly. It has profound messaging wrapped in social and political satire. It's great. And silliness. And it's like any time there was any ever conflict and they started questioning, they're like, no, you guys were all one here. I also love the way that it takes, because this is often the case, but this one was so blatant, how it takes the coming-of-age story from this boy's perspective, how he sees a link, because we all feel this way when we're growing up. The world revolves around us. I mean, is there anything other than me? And how every event that was going on in India clearly was connected to his life and how he began to think, well, if this just happened to me, then clearly something wonderful is going to happen in India. I loved that. He said something that was like, I drank for the 30-second time out of that cup or something like that. And they're like, oh, that's why. And it was actually in a different way, similar to what Forrest Gump did with United States history and how he was involved always, because it was in a different way, obviously. But it was really creative writing. I thought all the kids did very well. They did very well. I thought they were really cute. And it's obviously until the very end when all the acting got extremely over the top. It almost became Mel Brooks-y. Yeah, when the generals or the different countries were coming in and they're like, oh, stop, stop, stop. And they're like, no! It almost felt like an SNL sketch or something. Yeah, the bomb, and they're all laying under the bomb. And they say, brothers, and it blows up. And then all the world leaders are so moved by their collective sacrifice for the baby that they all start crying and they all put down their nukes. And then the global warming changes. I loved it, aliens. Now the aliens now think it's safe enough to be with the human beings because we now have our act together. I loved that ending. Yeah, it was a great ending. Obviously, and people were like, why do you like the happy? Because this is what this was setting up for. Entirely. It's satire. It was like a normal style film and they wrapped everything up in a bow that didn't establish that this is just quirky and funny. It's like Princess Bride. It's like, what do you expect when you're watching the Princess Bride? It's gonna have a happy ending. Yeah. And this is even more because it was satire. Right. You're like, I know exactly where you're going with this and I can't wait for it to... And I did not expect the conclusion. That whole sequence. I did not expect. But I loved it. I was out of a smile on my face for most of the film. Most of the film. Especially the end. I was just like, this is wonderful. You know you're enjoying a film. It's different when you're in the theatrical experience which is one of the benefits among many. When you're in a theater, you're very locked into sitting in your chair and being focused and unless you have an emergency you got a pee so bad you can't sit still. You rarely get up. But when you're watching it at home, there's all of these temptations to be distracted in some way. To go get another cup of coffee. This is one of those movies that was wonderful in that I didn't want to pause it. I didn't want to stop the rhythm. I really appreciated the... And it's something I'd ask the director because so much of the editing choices perpetuated the rhythm of the storytelling and the shot choices that were linked to editing and it made me want to talk to both the director and the editor but especially the director and say how much... You clearly envisioned this on the day because so many transitions took place where you had to have been thinking about the next shot when you framed that shot. A lot of the stuff where they were panning up and the next one goes up to the up. They follow the guy and rather than have a slide change for the full scene, it's just the person's outline as they walk past the next frame comes in. Really creative, wonderful, unique, unpredictable editing choices and shot choices that kept... That were in alignment with the quirkiness of everything else in the story. And it was similar in how you sometimes see in Molly Yellum industry with... They do the editing and there's comedy in the editing. Right. In how they obviously, like you were saying, from going from one shot to the next and it's like right up on the guy's face or whatever. Right. And I want to commend the editing there as well. Yeah, great job. Ashish Bende, the director. So there you go. You knew exactly what you were going to do and what you wanted to do on the day. Had already envisioned those editing choices. Probably went through the script and didn't necessarily storyboard it but was already seeing in the mind's eye what those transitions were going to look like. It was exemplary. I thought all the kids did a very good job. They did. Once again, we've seen it a lot in Indian cinema. I feel like that kids... And you don't see it as much here. I mean you do sometimes, but not as much. One because I think Hollywood doesn't like working with kids very much because there's so many rules. There's a lot of rules. It's expensive and it's a pain in the butt and you have them change over time. Obviously they're not always going to be the best actors because they're still learning. If you do have a kid, you typically have... 18 to play younger. Yeah, you have an 18 to look younger and you have one of the... An actor who's really a unicorn who is... My goodness, I'm forgetting her name. She's in The Last of Us, which we first got introduced to her in Game of Thrones. The minute I saw her in the very first Game of Thrones, I thought, okay, well, she's going to work forever. Yeah, I agree. They use kids a lot more, it seems, in Indian cinema. Obviously you don't have a union, so you can use kids all day or whatever. Hopefully not, but... Hopefully not. But that's one of the benefits. I guess I'm not having a union. And I thought they did a really good job with the transitions of age as well and making it believable. They all looked like the characters. They were casting. Yep. And yeah, I just... And great accompanying score. Yeah, I did enjoy the score. Yeah. It was... And hats off to just making it an hour 30. You don't get a lot of hour 30 films in Indian cinema. But for a small film like this that's intimate and you're just trying... You got your message across. And it's satire. And it doesn't go... It's perfect runtime. It doesn't go on any longer than it needs to. I mean, could it have been a little longer? I would have been... Not had an issue, but I'm happy that they were like, I feel happy with an hour 30. Especially with small indie films, I feel like shorter is better. Yeah, if you have a coming-of-age story that is loaded with as much satire as this has, if you have a longer runtime, the risk you run is the satire goes from being really workable and strong and sharp to falling flat and feeling almost like heavy-handed. As in, we get it. You already said that. And there was no redundancy in the satire. Everything was trimmed. All the fat was trimmed off. Anyways, thank you. I know the Marathi people had been waiting for this one for a long time. I had gotten... Especially on Patreon, there's a couple of Marathi patrons that have been screaming for this. Keep them coming. And I looked on YouTube. Not a lot of people have reviewed this. It's because it's Marathi and it makes me sad because they consistently put up really, really elevative cinema. And it's just because it's such a... The industry doesn't get the respect it deserves. Even some of the bigger Indian review... I don't even know if I saw a film campaign. I know. I looked it up, too. And I was shocked to see how few reviews there were. Maybe they didn't actually see it. And it sucked. I get it's a small industry. I get there's not name recognition. But boy, oh boy, please, God, let us get to a place where we start to see more and more audiences and reviewers and people paying attention to things and word of mouth spreading the news about things simply because they're really great storytelling. It's crafted and put together very well like this. This should be seen by more people. Absolutely. Anyways, let us know what you thought about it. If you liked it, if you didn't like it, you're weird. But let me know why. And let us know what the next Marathi film should be. Please. Somebody said the last Marathi film was like eight months ago. There's no way that's true. Maybe it is. Was it? Want me to look at the list real quick and see? I can't even think of what it would be. Let me see. The last Marathi film. Where's my film list? Regardless, I need to get to more. There we go. So our last on the list that I see that is Marathi. Region, region, region, region. It won't tell me when we watched it, but it's going to tell me what it was. It was obviously last year. And it was, it's been a while. There it is. Valvi. Husband and wife plot to kill the girl. Remember? It's kind of farcical, funny. It starts off with them. The one that came out last year? I think that came out last year. Dark comedy? Yeah. That was like in June. It was like, that's eight months ago. Nine months ago. Really? Yeah. That'd be nine months ago. We're in March. I would try to get to more. Yeah. Marathi, I'm sorry. I just don't realize. Obviously it's not as big of an industry, but it's not on purpose if something goes by that long. Exactly. Exactly. And let us know what the next Marathi film should be down below.