 Hey, Rick. Hey, Corbin. You're ugly. You like the movie. Hey, welcome back to our stupid direction. You need some Corbin. I'm Rick. And you can follow us on Instagram. Instagram. We talk more juicy content. Instagram. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Look at what he did. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And yes, I don't remember. We've got, I have no clue. All I know is I'm excited. Why the days are mixed together. I'm high tech again. Yeah, we upgraded Rick's audio. Thank goodness. And hey, and hey, everybody, out there in stupid land, if you're drinking chai, I'm with you. I have coffee, but I've made chai before. Anyways, today is, I think, I mean, we have a lot of favorites of stuff we do here, but we love doing movie reviews. I mean, we like movies, and we like talking about it, and we like watching them. And so this is, for those of you who don't know, which most of you do, this isn't just what Corbin and I have done for years. Yeah, we just always just talked about our opinions of movies. So sit around, talk about our opinions of movies, and tell each other how stupid the other person is. But today we reviewed Anurag Kashyap's ugly. Highly, highly recommended. I've told you how many times I want to get into Anurag Kashyap more, because everything we've seen of his has been incredible and amazing. He's a really talented writer, director, everything like that. But yes, so we started with ugly based on everybody's recommendations. I want to read this in opposite of ugly real quick. Please, Rick. Yes, let me get to, I'm sure I've gotten straight to it. No, there it is, I got it. Okay. The case of a missing girl takes us through a journey of human greed and brushes upon the egos and repressed emotions of the characters. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good synopsis. It was directed by Anurag Kashyap, the writers. He was the writer, but there was a couple other writers in there as well. And starring, this is the definition of almost like a ensemble, but it did have a few people that we knew from other films that we'll get into. But once again, 100% spoiler review, go watch this film. Yeah, basically. If you haven't seen it, it's Anurag Kashyap, go watch this film. Yeah, guys, we always are gonna start, for those of you new to Stupid World and Stupid Nation, we will pretty much always give you a spoiler unless the film is a brand new film in theaters at the time. And then we'll do it twofold. We'll do a non-spoiler segment and then the second half will be spoiler. But for a film that's been out, which this is since 2013, right at the outset, we'll let you know if this should be watched or not if you haven't seen it. So go watch this and then come back. We prefer talking spoilers, so. We do. Initial thoughts, right? Well, obviously, Corbin and I won't tell you to go watch something if we didn't like it. Oh no. Because you have a certain amount of... You know, mama loved this film. You have a certain amount of time on earth and it doesn't need to be spent watching crap movies. And I can tell you right now, based on just everything, everything about this film, but especially how it ended, I was talking to Indrani about it just before we started filming. I said, Corbin's gonna love this movie. Oh, I loved this film. I... Yeah, so I... Go ahead, go wax, let mama talk about her baby and be proud. I love... There's not been one thing on your unconscious of his that we've seen that I've not loved because of how he... I don't know if he's a writer first, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's a writer termed a director. Because that his stuff is always so well written and unique and very, very layered. And this, a very fitting name for this movie, Ugly, it's just... Man, is everything in it and everyone in it the epitome of ugly. Exactly. And I think he did a great job. Let's talk about just that, the thematic element of the fact that this picture depicts the fact that all of us have something ugly about us. And there's a brilliant job of depicting it without even our main character who's the seeming antagonist in it. Even he, we're given some snapshots into his personality that we're not allowed based on the greatness of the writing and the greatness of the directing. You're not allowed to put him into a box of stereotypical antagonists. It's very Shakespearean in that these are layered people. Very Shakespearean, yeah. Very Shakespearean, very layered. They're not hollow Easter egg, I mean, Easter chocolate money characters. These are flesh and blood people. My favorite. The way he writes it, and we'll talk about it and cause you up first and we'll get into the acting. He writes one, I'm actually shocked he's not more popular here in America. You're like, you know how there's like Alihanya on your Ritu and then there's Guillermo del Toro and then there's now the parasite director. Now it's all these famous directors from other places that are so, so talented and they got more recognition now in America. I'm surprised at the fact that he is not. I totally agree with you. Every single thing he writes and directs is very palatable and very, I mean, not saying it's Western, but it's very like anybody could sit down and watch this film and just be like, whoa, what is going on? And enjoy. Yeah, yeah. I've said this before about I have felt if anyone from Indian cinema has the best shot at garnering an Oscar, it would be Priyanka because I know she's got the skill, but she's also got the resume now in America. They know who she is. I think when it comes to directing of all the directors we've seen, the person who has the skill level and makes cinema that is palatable to an American audience based on what we're used to seeing from this kind of genre, I would say he would be my leading candidate for a director that I think if he was given the right project with the right people, he could break through in the same way that Inuitu did representing Mexico. I think he could become the first director from India that Hollywood looks at and is like awaiting his next film with Bated Breath. Oh, absolutely, 100%. I totally agree. 100%. Ham Vashal would be right after that. He is exactly. That's when I hesitated. Yeah, it's... I hesitated a moment. Vashal is right there. Yeah, they both make it really... Neck and neck, they're both right there. Gritty films, but I loved the... Because you start with this film and you follow this main... One, it starts with the woman almost committing suicide. Yeah, let's just... Can we talk about... In fact, hold on, I gotta grab... I took some notes down, okay? So I gotta write down my first thoughts when I was watching this at the very beginning and I wrote something about the... I wrote something. Hold on, let me sit down here and get back into that picture. Did I screw the picture up or am I okay? Now you're fine. Okay. Very first frame. Very first frame of the film. With that... She's just... It is so disconcerting. Like it's like a horror film. And it shows you... I wrote down the very first frame proves film is a director's medium. He immediately grabs you by the neck and says, I've got you for the next two and a half hours and you won't go anywhere that I don't tell you to go. And I was literally gripped from first frame to final frame. Oh, me too. And we're getting... I think actually, even though I love the acting and we'll get into more of that, I think he was the star of this film. 100%. Because this is such an ensemble cast, there wasn't like one performance that stood out in terms of like this was the... He drove this film. They all did amazing jobs. So it was more like that. But I feel like from the shots to the writing to the directing, Anurad Kashyap in this film was the star of this entire thing. I absolutely agree. And I want to... I had this thought while we were watching it. And I mean this as both a compliment but it also can be a minimization, okay? He's a blend of Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Oh, okay, interesting. But has his own... Yeah. He has his own originality in the same way. I'm not comparing his style to Tarantino. I'm saying when you watch a Tarantino film, you know you're watching a Tarantino film based on the banter, the way he's using the music, the way he's using his shots. Tarantino puts his thumbprint on it as the Scorsese. And it's different than say a Sanjay Leela Banzali film that has the aesthetic you expect. I'm talking about there's a greasy thumbprint to the thing that has their DNA oozing in it. And he's got that quality. 100%. And it's different. He's very, very original. That's what I mean. I want to minimize him by saying it's just something as simple as a Scorsese Kubrick blend. Yeah. It starts there. And then you add all of the other elements that are his brilliance. So we can talk about some of the acting right now. Absolutely. Starting with the... Where is he? What's his... Ronit Roy, who plays Bose? The main police officer, right? Yeah, yeah. He plays Bose. The dad from Udan, right? The dad from Udan, who was just as good in this. Right when he came on the screen, I'm like, oh, it's him. I got excited because we hated his character, but we loved the actor. Yes. Which is a mark of a great actor, like the actress who plays Umbridge in Harry Potter. Correct. I despise that character and I can hardly watch it because I hate her so much. But that is because the actress plays her so well. And this actor is just as good in this one. And he plays a very menacing asshole of a father, I guess. You would... Yeah. In the same way, like you mentioned Umbridge, I feel the same way, like one of the best performances of somebody ever that made me hate their guts was Jack Gleason playing Joffrey in Game of Thrones. But this is what I think is so great about On Yard Cushy Up, as well as these are very similar roles. So the acting of Ronit Roy, he didn't just... This isn't just a carbon copy of that other character. No, no, no. That's not what I was... Yeah, no. That... No, and I didn't say you were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're very, very similar, but that this guy, there was always lurking underneath him. Something going on behind him. Something else going on that you felt... I wonder how much of his meanness is this facade he's put on because he feels he has to protect himself and to defend himself against the deep, deep hurts that have caused him to... Because even like... Can we just talk for a minute about that last real moment he has with his wife where he finds out she got 1.5 million more, right? And then On Yard Ragh shoots that. He walks and follows her back into the room and On Yard Ragh is literally sitting on his shoulder, just tight on her, just like he's doing to her, will not let her escape from frame. And when she gives the answer, part of me was like expecting him to slap her. Yeah. But again, On Yard left it more real and complex than that. Yep. And her words seemed to hit home. Which is, that's the Shakespearean side of it. It's so believably real. She's also a terrible shot. Like... Exactly. Like, you go rough... How would you miss him at point-blank range? What? Like you were right above him and you just hit him in the shoulder. What? But you know what? That's actually statistically accurate. You probably know this, is that when people who've never shot at another person... Oh yeah, because... Yeah. It's not as easy to shoot an animal if you're hunting or a person if you're at war, or even if you're defending yourself. You'd be surprised how often people miss at point-blank. Who've never pulled the trigger. Yeah, so... Yeah, she missed. But I also want to talk about, where is he? He's my... What is... Where is she at? Oh, he at. That's what I meant. That, right there. I know who you're referring to. Grish. Our buddy from Sacred Games. Yeah, we've seen him in quite a bit, actually. Quite a few things. And I love the guy. Dongle. We saw him in Sakura Gums. We've seen him in, I think, quite a few things. He's always really good. He's always... He's one of those actors that you just... Like, there's probably thousands of them. That you've seen in a bunch of stuff. And they're always really, really good. I think this was probably my favorite thing of his so far. I think, didn't we all just... Did we see him in Chalk to India? Or no? Am I dreaming? I might be dreaming. Anyways, but yeah... Was he part of the coaching staff for SRK? That's what I'm thinking about. I could be wrong. But everything we've seen him in, he's been really, really good. But he was probably my... This is probably my favorite thing he's done in it. And I want to talk about the scene. Come on, I know what you're gonna play. Yes. At the beginning. In the police station. Dude. Oh, it was incredible. How good was that scene? Like, because... I didn't want it to end. Their son, I mean, his daughter is lost. Right. Possibly abducted, in danger. Right. And they are talking about everything else. Besides that. I was cracking up. My wife was like, this is awful. I hate this. Brilliant. But I actually figured out, and I'm hoping this is true. That scene was supposed to be a minute long. The actors improvised it, and it came out to be 14 minutes. Yeah, I did a little reading on how he films, which talk about a guy you'd like to work with. This is an actor's director. It is. And... I mean, man, I would love to work with this guy. Yeah. That scene was so good that if I was still teaching theater, it would be one of the scenes I use to show people what really good acting is all about. You wanna watch a scene that gives you about as believable as acting can possibly be. That scene in Ugly is it. Yeah, and he was carrying it too. 100%. You could tell how seasoned of an actor he is, because he never stumbled. He was just like, I was doing this. You started teaching him how to put a picture on his phone during a kidnapping. Brilliant. Brilliant. Oh, I was cracking up. All of the ladies, including the girl who had a very small role, but played his daughter in the car. Yeah. All of the ladies, this whole ensemble, even the aunt who they questioned every once in a while. Everybody seemed very real. It was almost like a Malolium film. Yes. That everything is so realistic. Yeah, or in fact, I wondered if some of the smaller roles, like the aunt, I thought I wonder if he went Satyajit Rai on us and just found people that looked right and they'd never acted before. It's possible. You know what I mean? Yeah. That just so believable and good and I really believed. The main two. The main two women. The main two women of like his girlfriend, which I believe her name is Surveen. Surveen Chawla. Yes. And his rocky. And his wife. And his wife. Both did really, really well. And the main two guys, the main guy who lost his daughter and his friend. Yeah. Is that, where is she? The wife? Yeah. The actress who played his wife. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Wait, hold on. Why is Ali Abad credited here? Cause she has a cameo. Where? In ugly. Where? What was she? She played young Shalini. Yeah, I know. But what is that? I honestly can't tell you. Did you catch it? No. Hold on. I really didn't. I was talking with Andrani about it. And I said, Ali Abad, cause I was reading up on some of the background on it. And it said that Ali Abad had a cameo in it. And I thought, I completely missed that. What? I wanted you to think I didn't have personal. She wasn't the young girl, like his daughter, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, she played, her credit on IMDb is that she was young Shalini. I don't know where that, anyways. Don't wax on that very long. But if somebody can show me like a screenshot of where she is in the film, cause I don't remember that in the slightest. I even looked up on YouTube. I looked up for Ali Abad seeing an ugly. There's nothing. Maybe it was cut. Anyways, but yeah, they did well. The main guy, the father, he did really, really well. Have we, did we see him in something? The dad of Bows and Shalini? Is that, am I getting that right? What was the little girl's name? I don't remember. Shalini was the little girl. If that was her, damn man, I didn't recognize her as a kid at all. I know she's young, but I guess it was- No way that was her. Maybe that's why that little girl was so good. I guess that was eight years ago. So she could have been a young girl. Cause she's not old, obviously. Ali Abad's not old. No, but still, hold on. That's gonna drive me nuts. Anyways, we can- No, no, there's no way. This was, this was what? Eight years ago? Eight years ago. There's no way she played a 10 year old girl when she was frickin' 19. Yeah. Anyways, you guys are gonna have to let us in. Anyway. No, because that's gonna bother me. It's gonna bother us. But anyways. And I'm, what's the name of the actress who plays Bows' wife? Who we see at the very beginning of the film and is the one who asks for the 1.5 million more? What was that character's freaking name? Anyways, we'll figure it out. Sorry, guys. But I also wanted like the, one of my favorite things about, and we talked about this in Gangs of Wasp or about Anyard Kashiop, what he does with his scores, they're so unique. Because a lot of times he put like these big, almost in gangs, I don't know if you remember, he'd put like rave music almost behind some scenes that were like supposed to be like really serious and they were like these very different style things that you wouldn't normally have behind a scene. He did that in this as well in a couple of times and I thought it was really good and really unique. I thought the score behind this entire film was really good. Yeah, he also does, again, similar kind of thing that Tarantino does. Tarantino did a lot in Kill Bill, Volume 1 and 2 where a song is going full tilt, like all engines are going and you feel like it's just getting started and then there's an edit and everything stops. Yeah. Okay, Shalini is the wife. Okay. Played by Tejaswini Kolipur. That's the actress who played Shalini and Alia played her younger. Okay, gotcha. Got it. I still didn't catch that though in the thing. And the hats off to the actresses to specifically Tejaswini who plays Shalini Bose and to Serbian Chawla who plays Rocky. I thought those ladies were so, so good. I do want to talk about the end. Yeah. Because, you know, I loved it. But I thought it was so brilliant the way this film was written because if in the beginning, people didn't get caught up in, you know, vendettas and just being greedy. Yes. They could have found her very easily because it was the guy with the cell phone. If they would have just traced to find his vehicle or wherever they parked, they would have found her in hours. Which goes back to the brilliance of the seemingly throwaway extended scene in the police station where they're going on forever and there's this missing girl. Yep. Because it conveys throughout the underlying message that keeps getting hammered home not just that everybody's got on the ugly side, but that everybody can be so focused on their own self interests that even something as small as how do I use this phone? You're missing the larger picture of something that's way more important. Like the entire time you're trying to figure out who it is and who took this child and everybody is either trying to just make, like her brother's trying to make money, the mother of the girl missing is trying to make money. The only good people I think of the entire thing are her parents and those- Right, and that's what is so brilliant in that it's frustrating, but at the same time it's brilliant because everybody seems to be way more focused on the money than they are the little girl. Yep, everybody's like, like right when she was like the one, her brother was trying to do her for five million and then she said, I need 6.5. I was like, really? You as well? Yeah, which for me it's the, that for me is the larger takeaway of the film is the larger metaphor. Obviously he's conveying number one, a stark reality that these kinds of things do happen and apparently the statistic I think was like 70 to 80% of all kidnappings have no ransom associated whatsoever. They're just vendettas and vengeance things. And that everybody has an ugly side, get that. But the other metaphorical ugly for me is that ending thing that you just brought up of there are so many things in life, like for example, this can be a metaphor for a dad or a mom who didn't spend enough time with their kid and then they turn around one day and that kid's gone. Obviously in this film, the kid is dead but that can be a metaphor for the fact that not every single child's childhood will come to an end and if you're not paying attention, if you're not investing the time where it needs to be invested, you're gonna turn around one day and you're gonna realize that your parenting stunk and you missed the time with your kid then that metaphor of them realizing that was there the whole time and all I had to do was make some different choices and it could have been better. That for me is the most powerful thing and at every level from actors in this thing, actors pursuing their dream. That little message of, dad, I don't like it when you work when you're supposed to be spending time with me. But what's he supposed to do when he's got some sides to pick up for a big role? We can relate to that. Yeah. Hard choices, man. Everybody was basically evil in this thing. I loved that. What made you happy? You went to sleep with a smile on your face. I was very happy because he didn't, on your unconscious, it does not feel the need to make audiences happy. Correct. And I love that because I'm happy when the audience is very unhappy and that makes me very happy. And the other thing that he does that all great directors do, is they have a mastery of the medium and know that they are the captain, they're the dictator, they're in control. You only get to see, hear, feel, experience what they allow you to see, feel, hear and experience. Hitchcock was the master of that. Yeah. And that, but do it in such a way like he doesn't do and Scorsese does this a little bit. Tarantino will do something I call masturbatory. Pardon my French for those of you who don't like that word. It is a real word, you can look it up, where he will either in his dialogue or what he's doing with his filming, it's just gratuitous. He's just doing it because he wants to and he really doesn't care. Scorsese's starting to do that with his runtimes. Yes, he is. On your occasion, I don't think, I feel like his commitment to storytelling is higher than his own need to do what he wants to do. And the way he edits and the way that he includes music, but at the same time, one of the best, I agree with you, one of the best attributes of him as a director is that he doesn't give you what you want, he gives you what he wants. Yeah, we saw that in gangs, we saw that in soccer gums, we saw that in Udan and that's just his writing. So yeah, obviously we love this film a lot. Let us know what film we should watch next, what you're on, you've got Kashyap, there's a lot. There's ones we've heard Black Friday. Devdi. Gulal Devdi and then Rock, I always forget that R, it's the one with Nawaz that he plays the psycho. Oh my goodness, yes. I think it's Rob Rom 2.0 or something like that. Rob Rom 2.0, Rob Rom 2.0, something like that. Obviously, so let us know down below what we should watch and review next. Thanks.