 If I am tilting my head like this a lot, it's because I have a crick in my neck. It's been a while since you've had a crick in your neck. Do you ever know what, is it usually when you wake up? I don't know what it is. I have a theory. I have a hyperextensive neck, so my neck is very flexible, so what they say is that I over- Compensate when you do self-philatio. Yes, I overextend it, and then that causes it to tighten. Right. It's worth it though to be able to do self-philatio. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It feels great. Hey, well, go right to our stupider exit, of course. I'm Rick, and you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter for our juicy content. Thank you for your reports on Patreon, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to like button. More juicy content. That's how you get it. Yep, you press it. Yep. And it, just like that. It squirts all over the algorithm. Gotta do it. And today we're doing a movie review. Ooh, shit, let's... And we're doing a review of the 2022 Malayalam film. Uh-huh. Oh, hold on. It's covering it. Two seconds. Here we go. Why the heck is it taking so long for that to disappear? There we go. Uh, Thalumala. Thalumala. Yep. Is that how you pronounce that? Thalumala. Thalumala. Thalumala. Directed by Kali Raman. If it's mispronounced at any point, you know we're idiots. Directed by Ashraf Hamza and Musin Parari. Vishnu Vijay is the composer. Starring Tavino Thomas. And a whole bunch of other people. Shine Tom Chaco, Talyani Priyadarshan. Omega Babu is played by Chamban Vinodjos, Vinopapu. Big ensemble cast, but obviously it's Tavino Thomas' movie. It'll be, it came out last year. It's on Netflix. Netflix? So you can go check it out. Hurry up. Rick is having a tumultuous relationship with Netflix. I don't like them. No, they need to fix their stuff. And there'll be more for me to talk about in this review about how Netflix is really awful and they need to really change what they're doing. But it'll be 100% spoiler view because it came out last year. So if you haven't watched it, please go watch it. Come back. I want to make a prediction. I predict, I suspect, I could be wrong. I have a feeling Corbin's going to say this is his favorite film that he's seen this year thus far. That's my prediction. And we'll see what he says when we get to what he says. This, for me, you'll be hearing about this in the dummies, especially as it pertains to cinematography, sound design. This is one of the most original things I've seen since everything, everywhere, all at once. Loved it. I'm so glad because I was gonna have to punch you in the face. I came in ready to fight. And I mean that. I think this is one of the best films I've seen since everything, everywhere, all at once. And is I right? I don't know if it's my favorite because there's also that one film, Malialum, that came out last year as well, which is very funny because last year at the dummies, I said this is the first year in the channel that I think a Malialum film isn't my favorite of the year. Right. But we hadn't seen these before. And the, what was it called, the one with a, it was very sarcastic with the. With all of the funny number two. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That we loved it too, really original. But I mean, probably my favorite films of the year so far, and obviously these didn't come out this year, so this is just what we're seeing. No, that we have seen this year. Are probably all Malialum. This one, that one. Yeah, I wish, I kinda wish this had been part of the, this would have been part of the fighting with Best Films of 2022. There's so much I love about this film. Me too. And for this year, still LJP's film. I love that film as well. Which are, it's wonderful because they're so completely different. It's the fucking Malialum industry. I know. Originality is their theme and it's amazing to watch. And high level artistry is their theme. Yeah, which is a great takeaway from this. I love this film. I think there's a lot of people who would see this and just brush it off and think to themselves, okay, I see the technical greatness in the editing and the camera work and things of that nature, but so we will talk more about why this thing's pretty elevated. And I don't know how much you're familiar. One of my favorite directors is Edgar Wright. And I don't know how much Edgar Wright you've seen. If I have, I don't know it. Baby Driver? Oh yeah, I didn't know that's him. That's him. But he's also Scott Pilgrim versus The World. Didn't see it. Which is, it's based off a comic book and it became like this amazing cult classic. It's incredible. I love Baby Driver. It's incredibly shot like this. And so you can tell either it's one of his favorite directors or he was just like, I want to get some inspiration from him because he also does Shaun of the Dead. He does. Okay. So his style is very quirky, fast editing, extremely creative edits in terms of transitions. Right, right, right. So it's very reminiscent of that. And so I loved it because you don't see that in other industries. You don't see that in Hollywood even. You don't see it anywhere, really. Yeah. It's his style. Like Wes Anderson has a style. Who's the other one? The other ones, you would see it are the brothers, the creators of everything everywhere all at once. Yes, they have a style as well. Edgar Wright's style is this. I'm not saying it was a copy of his, but you could tell it was definitely influenced by an Edgar Wright, whom is one of my favorite directors because I think he's so, so creative. This film is so interesting because it's such a simple concept. Did you look at the translation of the title? Yeah, it's called Ballad of Brawls. Yeah, basically, which is exactly what it is. Yeah, it's a ballad of fights. It's an extremely simple story. Very simple. I got frustrated. There's not a lot of actual storyline going on. In the middle of the movie, I was thinking to myself, okay, for all of its brilliance and its entertainment value, am I gonna walk away from this thing saying what identity do you want? I didn't care about the characters, what was really going on. And then about 25 minutes later, I thought to myself, okay, I get it. Yeah, I get it now. Absolutely brilliant what they, because like, do we shout out the editor? We have, there's a lot of technicals. We have to shout out. Basically, the director- Nishad Yosef is the editor and team. Cinematographer. Jim Shee Khaled and the entire cinematography team. And if I could find the stunt coordinator. The stunt work and something that- Production manager's Benny was apparently missed in the original credits, which is kind of suck. You won't find credits for them on IMDb either. Big applause kudos to the entire animation team. Yeah. Who weren't even credited in the original credits of the film. Really? Yeah. And production said it was a misstep on their part. They apologized. Pretty big part of the film. Pretty big part of the film. Yeah, I love how creative- And sound design. Everybody involved with sound design, just so you know, we picked up on, I'm sure you did too. Every little nuance like when he's sitting at the guy talking about the arts and it's time for him to take out his headphones because the guy said, please take those off while you're on the platform. And you hear the sound you hear in your AirPods when they disengage from your Bluetooth connection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? There's a- Little things like that. There's room out. There were some times the sound design was so good. I had to take my headphones out to see if what I was hearing was happening outside or in my plays because it sounded like a sound there. The sound department is quite big for this film. Quite big. Which is wonderful. Beautiful. The cinematography, the editing, the animation, visual effects on the sound design were everything, everywhere, all at once level. That means it's Oscar caliber as good as that stuff gets. So let's talk about the editing first because the editing- It's probably the first thing that'll strike you about this film is the editing slash transitioning between scenes and what they do to for like he's getting ready in the morning. I love this thing. Yeah. It's, once again, it's very Edgar Wright in the style. If you haven't watched Edgar Wright, and I don't know if you can, if you'd be able to appreciate Scott Pilgrim, but it's, because they shot this kind of like almost a comic book kind of thing. Yeah, it's just the chronicles of comic book of their fights. Yeah. It almost in a couple of spots felt like the multiverse Spider-Man card, the very first Spider-Man. But the editing, seamless. Holy shit, the editing, like there's multiple times that your jaw drops or I'm just like, I literally out loud said, holy shit. Yeah. I had zero continuity flaws that I could find. Oh, it's like, this is incredible. Insanity. Why don't more people do this? Yeah. Well, you know why. It takes such a skill, man. It's so damn hard. It takes such a- That's why they don't do it. It takes such a skill. Yes. And once again, Molly Allen Industries just is like, I'm gonna do something different than what everybody else is doing. And I'm gonna do it on such a high level that you're gonna wonder, why doesn't everybody else do this? But it's like, Molly Allen is the only one that has this kind of creative juice flowing through their veins. I think they are- Around the world. They're the Wild West in terms, literally in terms of anything that they conceive and think of, you could pitch and they're gonna say, let's try it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I'm just gonna say something, I'm pulling you. Someone I was gonna say a second ago about what you were saying. Molly Allen Industries is so creative, so- Yeah, Molly Allen is so creative. We were talking about the editing and no one does it because it's so, so difficult. Yeah. If it comes back to me, it'll be important. But yeah, the editing on this, the transitions, what they decided to do, the, it's like an ADHD person's dream. Kind of movie. Yeah. So I think I love Edgar Wright so much just because he shoots in that way of just like, even though like it's, I think, even if I could speak Molly Allen, obviously you could be much more of that because we have to read subtitles along with seeing what's going on the visuals and Molly Allen talks extremely- So fast. So fast. So there's so much we miss in this film as well. But to stay connected in this non-linear story, extremely non-linear story. So non-linear, but it has a full narrative. Yeah. But like you could get like lost, especially if like you have to read subtitles and you can't see that it says flashback. Right. Or like you could get so lost and be like, wait, wait, wait, hold on, what's going on here? And so, but I thought they did a very good job because non-linear stories, obviously they're, not uncommon, a lot of people do them. A Pulp Fiction very famously, one of the most famous non-linear stories out there. But I thought it was super creative, another just create anything you could do creative in this film, this film did it. It did it. In terms of editing, audio, what they did with like, you'd hear a car horn, right? Or you'd hear car keys. And then you'd hear it again or a dog bark and you'd hear it again. Or the sequence with the ice and the lighter in the bar where it was just always hearing the clink, clink, clink. And it turned into like a stomp. Yeah, it becomes a song. And it's like, it's so unique. And I wanna talk about, cause like one thing that struck me right at the beginning that I was like, I don't know if I like this is when the first song came on. And it's very music video, right? Very music video-y. And I was like, hmm, this just feels like a random song. I don't know if I like this. And then it got to the next one. And then the next one, I'm like, okay, this is a theme and I like this now. Okay, I'm on board with this. Because at first I was like, cause these are just, they literally went for music videos and they just put them in the movie. Just threw them in. And started telling part of the story in the music video. And it was just unique and it was very different. Very visually stunning. Stunning. Just the heightened colors, the beauty of it. Stunning. Once again, everything about this movie is extremely creative and so well done. It's like, I can't, there's nothing bad about this movie I can say. And if anybody is wondering, and obviously we're gonna talk about the fight sequences. Oh yes. But. And I think somebody told me there's a behind the scenes Oh really? Of the theater fight scene. Oh, that's awesome. So the movie itself, a lot of people I think could walk away from this. And if they weren't really paying attention or this isn't their cup of tea, they could easily just walk away from this and think to themselves, what was all of that? It just was just boring, except for there was another fight sequence and another fight sequence. And I guess that's all this is. It's called The Ballad of Brawls. It's just about the fight sequences. The movie tells you itself toward the end when he says, this isn't about hitting. I loved that moment. Because at that point, you know that's not what it's about now. And it's just this straight up wink, wink, nudge, nudge audience member who may be completely disconnected even though we're at the end. This wasn't about the hitting. If you thought it was about the hitting, you've missed everything we've been doing to this point. There's a lot of online messaging as well in terms of obviously. I remembered. I loved the fight. Yeah, I was just going to point out the final, the almost final fight, because we don't see the final fight, the final fight at the wedding when they're going to add it and she's just, and they're like, come on, let's go. No. I also, I extremely love how it ended. Oh, I did too. You thought he was going to go and get the girl and he's like, wait, who's thing do you want to solve first? I think we should do mine. When Babu came walking in, I thought, ah, this is going to be glorious. And then we're going to end on a fight and we're not even going to see that fight. We're just going to be known but the ballad of brawls just never stops. It's very, and you haven't seen it, very Scott Bilgan versus the world. So basically, the concept of that movie is in order to get this girl that he likes, he needs to defeat her seven evil exes. And it's all in an anime style. It's an absolute brilliant movie. I love that movie. It's such a cult classic. One of Edgar Wright's best, but it's very reminiscent of that in terms of they ended it and they're going after another fight. It just keeps continuing. So good. I loved a lot. Okay, can we just talk about some of the spectacular fight sequences including the one arm break? Oh my God. The theater fights, and I know people have talked about this a lot. Oh, the theater fight scene. The theater fight scene might be the best fight scene I've seen in Indian cinema. I'd have to really go back and there's a lot of obviously really good ones. There's Rocky Handsome and you've got all these kind of things. But in terms of on the budget they did and for the technical brilliance of the film making of it going on and how much chaos there is. The last, it's one of the most brilliant fights I've ever seen in cinema. The last chaos in a movie theater I ever saw that I just loved the complete anarchy and bedlam and over the top nature of it. Glorious bastards. You got it, that's it. It's in Glorious Bastards. This was on that level. But as far as- The choreography though. The fight scene, the visual capacity. All of the feathers and stuff going around. I could watch that fight scene over and over and over again just to marvel. And then that final shot behind him with the screen and gulfed in flames. Just absolutely fantastic. And then obviously the wedding fight scene and then obviously the other fight scene. And I- The car fight scene. Yeah, it was great. That shot where they had to have taken the roof off the car. When they go from the front of the car and they're just coming across it and they're all fighting in the car. Yeah. I think they went around in the beginning of it. I think they went around the thing while they were fighting the car, I think. Yeah, they did. It's just magnificent technically. The cinematographer and the editor and the whoever the camera work was. I don't know if that was. I'm assuming it was a camera on a dolly around the car? It could have- Or there was so many different- It could have been a drone. But I felt it was too steady to be a drone. It was very steady. It could have been a rail that was done peripherally that came up so that as it went around you didn't see the rail on the ground. But like this film even, and we haven't even talked about any performances just because- Right. The main thing about it, and there were really good performances. I enjoyed a lot of it and we'll talk about them. The thing about this is the technical fucking brilliance on every goddamn level of this movie is off the charts. 10 out of 10. Yeah, it's- Insanity. It's as good technically as everything everywhere all at once, which was the winner of what? Nine Oscars, including Best Picture last year? Yeah. If I had one gripe and it's not at the end of the film, I think I would have liked it had been maybe just under two hours as opposed to maybe two 20, just to keep it tighter for me. Yeah, maybe. It didn't bother me. It didn't bother me too much, but that would be if I had a gripe. But the performance that I wanna talk about, let's talk about, Tavino Thomas, he's making such brilliant choices as an actor in what he's deciding to do. Because I know you didn't get to see it, but he was in 2018, which just came out about a month ago that I saw, but then he was in Monal Menari, right? He was in Kala, which I loved, which is in terms of a fight film, another technical brilliant film. He has that film coming out, Arm, right? Then we saw the teaser for it coming out. And he's just making a lot of really cool choices as an actor in terms of not just films that will showcase him as an actor in what he can do, because he is a talented actor. But just films that he's like, these are cool films. I wanna be part of these films. He's almost a new kind of 21st century action star, because they're obviously action films, but oddly, it's not their high level artistic greatness, action films on a bunch of levels. Arm, which I don't know when it releases, but obviously it's all the teaser, but it has him and Monal Menari in it, which is gonna be very cool. Yeah, I thought he did a really cool job. He has a great screen presence. He looks like, almost like, you know how, don't take it as this person. Armie Hammer has a movie star look to him, right? Yeah, right. Cannibal. But he looks like a movie star, right? Yeah, yeah. Just his screen presence. He looks like a movie star. He looks like a movie star. He just has this cool demeanor about him. He has this swagger about him. Him and the girl had great chemistry. Great chemistry. I wanna shout out her as well, because I like her performance a lot. I did too. Of all the performances, hers, and it's not a surprise, because she didn't get into the fighting, but hers was the most subtle I thought. Yeah, yeah. She did a great job. I wanna talk about Fafa Light as well. Where is he? Is this him? Yeah. Is that him? Yeah. Shine Tom Choco. In his... Always reminds us of Fafa. But in that photo, he doesn't look so much like Fafa. No, but it happens. God, he looks like Fafa's brother in this so much. I think we said it in the teaser trailer reaction. And he's a great actor too, man. Yeah. Every time he's on, he's like, he's a good villain. I like... He's not even a villain either. No. His character's so complex, but he plays such a... The mustache girl. I love them. It's such an Indian villain thing. It is. Every time he's on screen, the mustache girl. Yeah. It's such a little quirk that I love. Did you like also the shout out to Fight Club? Oh yeah. I thought that was so funny. Did you hear the audio shot? I think it was in the movie theater right before the brawl. Well, I saw Vijay Satapathy on the screen. Oh yeah. Oh, was that my... I didn't see that. Maybe that's why they were watching Vikram Vetta. But did you hear that? Ha-na-na-na-na-na. Yes, yes. Okay, I didn't see what they were watching, so maybe they were watching Vikram Vetta, but I heard the Vikram Vetta audio, and I was like, oh yeah. Because that's such a classic, like da-na-na-na-na. And it was very fitting for what was about to happen. And everybody else, I thought, did a very good job in terms of performance-wise. I loved his friends and their quirkiness, and the lead up to the wedding fight scene was absolutely hilarious. Absolutely fantastic. And then the car, the crescendo in the car was so funny. It was. And this is, the thought that comes to my mind is, this is the most artistic, anti-artistic film I've probably ever seen, because when he's at the thing where the guy is standing up at the whatever it was for the arts, and saying, I don't know why you're here. The people who are here are the ones that do poetry, and the ones who do high-level artistry, and he comes up to the mic, and he says to everybody, how many of you know why I'm here? It's because you're handsome. Yeah, because you fight good, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's so much, I love the score of it all. It was so quirky and unique, as I've said. I think all the songs were a lot of fun. Then when I got into it of understanding what they were doing in terms of the songs, the fight choreography was brilliant. Incredible. And executed so well. All the stunts were brilliant. Man, the bone breaks. That one bone break in the chair where it snaps, and you see the bone was glorious. Oh my word. Absolutely glorious. And so many punches to the face with the cheeks flapping. I just, it's of the two-out-two-twenty runtime, 40 minutes is fight scene. It's fantastic. And some of the best fight scenes you've ever seen on screen. Fantastic. Because theater one is legendary. The theater fight scene is legendary. I remember when this came out and a lot of people wanted us to go see it in theaters. It either wasn't playing here or it was in our way. I would have loved this on the screen. Unfortunately, you don't get a lot of, the LGP film, which we traveled for, took us an hour and a half to get down there. I went down there because I knew it would be worth it because of the LGP, right? Yeah. I didn't know much about this. I heard everybody's raving about it when it came out, but unfortunately, the close theaters around us are either just Hindi or Tolugu or Tamil sometimes. Yeah, but they've got to be huge. Yeah, they've got to be big. Very rarely do you get something that's not a juggernaut anywhere near us. And it just doesn't get the distribution here, sadly. I wish it did, man. Because there's so many that I'd love to see in theaters. I know. I would have loved to have seen this on a big screen. That would have been amazing. Oh, and the sound and everything. It would have been a delight. It would have heightened the experience even more. Yeah. Yeah, I don't... What's there to say about this? Other than there may be some folks who felt like it's Seinfeld. It's a show about nothing. But it is, but it isn't. Yeah, it's one of the most brilliant, simple, one of the most highly artistic, simple films I've ever seen. It's so great. Yup. This is just a film about a bunch of fights. Obviously, there's more context under that. But essentially, when you break down the story, it's a film of a bunch of fights. Yeah. And it has an interesting message in that I think about them laying on the floor right toward the very end when he said it's not about the hitting. And it's, we are who we are oftentimes because of the people we fight. You know, you become your best when you have an adversary who can push you to your limits. And it's not spoken. It's not direct, but that's definitely in there. So what's there to say about this? Other than it's really damn good. Malayalam is just, they're just so much ahead of everyone. Including Hollywood, I did it a lot of times. Like, well, the Malayalam film that came out of Hollywood and it got all the raves that it did was everything, everywhere, all at once. That was a Malayalam style film. And it was nice to see it get the accolades it deserves because there'll be more of them now. So yes, I agree. They're just so ahead of everyone. I feel like every other industry, this is Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Marathi. Original storytelling. Even though obviously all of them, I have great films. I'm not saying that they all have great films. No, we're talking about original creative storytelling. And consistent. Yeah, consistently original storytelling and acting. Yep. And never done for the sake of novelty or cliche or gimmick. Yeah. Really genuinely original. And it's kind of insane that obviously S.S. Rajamuli and R.R.R. deserved all the accolades. But the fact that there's such original stuff coming out of the Malayalam industry and they're not the ones that have gotten the international acclaim. Yeah. Even though they've tried, obviously with Jali Taku they sent and but it didn't make it and but there's like, it's just, maybe it's just too high brow for a lot of people. Same with as well, most of the Marathi films we've seen fall into that same category of high level artistry and originality and those two industries just have not yet penetrated. We saw that in the roundtables too. The talk about, it's, stick to what you're doing. Word of mouth is going to spread. Yeah. There's going, it's inevitable. Yeah, I agree. Anyways, let us know what you thought about this film if you didn't like it, you're a fucking idiot. And what should be the next Malayalam film that we should watch? Let us know down below.