 Right, right. Right, alright. Oh yeah, feel it down in my lungs and my loincloth is wet. Hey, welcome back to our stupid director's eating some Corbin. I have a wet loincloth. Gross. And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter for more juicy content. Thank you both for following us on Twitter account. Ring the bell to be part of the vacation squad. Ring it like you mean it. Thank you both. And follow us on our own personal YouTube channel, I don't know where I'm at right now. On our own personal YouTube channels, links always in the description below for different stuff. If you're there. Today we are doing a review movie. Because you did it backwards, I'm doing it backwards. Uh, it's for a trailer we reacted to probably a year ago. But it's called Aligarra. Aligarra? Hey, is that what you're, I know it's a city name. Yeah, I'm guessing Aligarra. That's my guess. I know it's a city. But it's uh, we saw the trailer almost a year ago. I don't know if you remember watching the trailer, do you? Oh, I do. I remember watching it and I remember thinking I want to see this movie. Yeah. Yeah, we watched the trailer and we were really interested, but obviously just like everything else, even though people accuse us of ignoring their things. Yeah. A million things on the list and we finally got to it. So sorry. But it's based off a true story. True story. Which is depressing. But a gay linguistic professor living in a small orthodox city must deal with the aftermath of a sting operation that puts his sexual orientation in front of the entire nation. And I know this, I know a lot of people have seen it, but I know some people haven't. So go watch it and come back if you don't want to be spoiled, please. But I think most people know the story probably. I think it was a pretty national story. Yeah, I guess. Obviously. I don't know about you. I had no idea about this story. No idea, but it is something where maybe people haven't seen the film, but they know the story. Like Adrani, when I told her the name of the film, she said, oh, that's about the homosexual teacher. I said, yeah, have you seen it? She said no, but I know that story. Yeah. And it's a pretty universal story. I think amongst almost every culture, I believe almost every culture has had an issue with homosexuality. For a saint? Lenny. America has had plenty still wrong with it. But happy pride, obviously, to everybody. Anyways, but go watch it if you haven't seen it and then come back and then you can hear our review. We like doing spoiler reviews. So obviously, starring this is technically our second. Yeah. But I think this is our first really. I don't know about you. Yeah, I would say it is. I mean, we've seen him in a lot of supporting things. This is the first thing we've seen him in where he's the star. No, no, we saw gangs. Gangs won. He was the star. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But we actually haven't seen him in anything else. Right. We've only seen him in trailers. But obviously, we hear that lots of people think he is the greatest actor in India, you know, the various opinions on that. He's worked with a bunch of people on your ad cash up every like everyone like that. So we finally wanted to get to some of his films so we can start getting introduced to the man. Yeah. Rick, your initial thoughts. My initial thoughts, you know, in the form of my paragraph. And by the way, everybody. Oh, we have one. Good. Yeah, we have one this time. And if we if we tell you to go see a movie, odds are our review is going to be positive. So that's a little indicator right off the top. But if we say see it before you watch the review, otherwise, we're going to tell you, save your time, save your money, save your children, don't watch it. But exactly. I suspect I'm going to predict our reviews probably going to be a little bit longer than usual because of the social justice stuff in this thing and how it's such a prevalent issue for India. And it's a prevalent issue in America right now. But my paragraph is, I think this is a grounded and thoroughly believable telling of an incredibly important true story, important not only for social justice issues and victims in India, but social justice issues and victims in any part of the world where people are oppressed and criminalized simply because they're different. Yep. And I mean, we, you know, the two actors we know in there, you know, Raj Kumar Rao, I mean, what do you expect? We expected him to be what he is. He's a great actor. He delivered what I expected the same way when we watch anybody that we've known now you watch your phone, that's going to be great. You watch Nois, it's going to be great. You watch Raj Kumar Rao, it's going to be great. But I got to say the casting, I don't know the real man and how replicating he was. But for me, it's immaterial because I felt like Minaj Bajpayee's portrayal was so freaking good. Yeah. And he carried the film on his shoulders in the way that say, when you watch a Daniel de Lewis film, he's carrying the weight of the film on his shoulders. Yeah. And it was so obvious. He was brilliant. Brilliant. I love his performance. It was so and the fact that he carried the whole thing and was so incredibly small and hardly did anything. My wife pointed out the beginning and that's all I could see after a while is that in this, I know I've seen him in real life and I've seen him in gangs. And so obviously him in gangs is very different than he was in this. Very different. If people didn't tell me, I probably wouldn't have recognized it, that it was the same man, which is a testament to this man and how talented he is. But he reminded me a lot in this character of Tony Shalhoub. Oh yeah, great comparison. If you don't know who Tony Shalhoub is, he's a phenomenal actor. He is Tony Shalhoub. He's deeply respected actor in America. He played Monk. He's in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel currently, and that's, I think, one of his best roles he's ever done. He's phenomenal in that, but he's a big Jewish man, especially in that he has a beard. No, he's not Jewish, but he looks Jewish. He has big beard, big hair, the mustache, but he's very soft, spoken a lot of times in his roles, and it's very small, but always extremely brilliant and believable. Yes. He's a highly respected character actor. I would associate him as a character actor, right? I would too. But I think his performance in this was just so, so good. Some of my favorite moments were actually when he was listening to music. Yes. And the director was not nice to him in terms of he was like, I'm going to film you and you're going to do this and we're not going to cut for like a good minute. There is, and I was just going to say I'm glad you brought that up because it's a testament to the direction of Hansel Mehta from mispronouncing his name, forgive me, but Hansel Mehta I thought was very reminiscent of the directing style many times of what we loved about lunchbox. Yeah. The fly on the wall, just hold a shot. There's a couple of shots he did where he's holding for a really, really long time on Minaj. It reminded me of there's a shot when you're watching one flew over the cuckoo's nest, they're having the party in the hospital that they're not supposed to be having. And there's this long shot on Jack Nicholson just sitting there and it's starting to get late and they just hold on him for 60 seconds. Yeah. And Jack just thinks and sits there and then looks at somebody and smiles and then he kind of daydreams for a minute and the director you were right was like, okay, I may never cut, so let's see you not perform. Yeah, my bet was that the director just said I'm going to kind of just let you, let you go. And then when I feel like the scene is done, I'm going to say cut. So just be in the moment, listen to the music, feel how do you think this character would react in this moment. And it was beautiful. And it's so hard to not act in those moments and people don't realize how hard that is. It's true. That's why there is in, you know this saying this to the stupid babies and not saying this to you because you know, there's acting exercises. There's one of them that's called private moment where you simply get up in front of the class and for an extended amount of time, you're supposed to have a private moment that you wouldn't ordinarily want people to see you having, whether it's you're going to the bathroom or you just woke up in the morning, you're just sitting watching TV. And the primary thing you're doing is not performing, not acting, not needing to entertain, you're just being and it's stupendously difficult, incredibly hard to just do nothing and be natural. Just sit and be singing your song or just I love the moment toward the end of the film when he's, he's on the phone with Rush Kamarao and he says he's getting sleepy and he lays back down and there's nothing, the cameras are still on the wall. Yeah. And then he just sits back up because he heard something. A beautiful airing of director and actor, I thought. Yeah, and obviously it means it goes without saying I want to see more of him. And I know you guys are like, hallelujah, thank you finally. But I don't, and so in the comments, of course, we're going to go on here, but recommend what we should watch of his next. I don't know if it's, I think Black Friday was one of his first, that's on your head cash up. And then there's also that one that we just reacted to the Satya as well that a lot of people rave about as well. So let us know. I know he has a ton of work that's all I'm sure brilliant, but we want to explore this man more. I think the rest of the cast also did really obviously Raj Kamarao did really, really, really well. I thought he's really interesting how they kind of left it open to interpretation. I didn't because I didn't know actually if he was actually gay in the end or not. Yeah. And I like that they didn't answer that. And so because you, you know, he slept with that girl, but you don't know if he just did that because he wanted to or if he wanted to get a promotion or what. Yeah, I don't know if that was the actual person in the story, but I appreciated the fact that we may have been watching a young man discovering what it was he was attracted to at that point. And we didn't need an answer. I agree. Yeah. And so I thought that was that was really nice. If he, because he talked to him, he said the day before, and that's one thing I want to talk about the end of the film and how awful it was because he was clearly murdered like 100%. He was set up in the first place. Yeah. He was set up and then he was murdered. But for some reason they ruled out foul play. What? How? And so that obviously it's different countries and because the entire time you're trying to make sure you're like, okay, this is not America. Obviously they can't come into your house and just film you. Okay. That's a different country. Why is this allowed? And then the fact that they flip flopped multiple times. And obviously gay marriage is now legal in India again. Gay relationships are legal. Marriage is not. Sorry, sorry. Gay relationships are decriminalized. Right. But it flip flopped what, two or three times to get back. And that probably caused a ton of animosity between a bunch of people and caused a bunch of people that happened to not just this man, but probably a ton of people in the country. Oh, absolutely. A million. So it was completely heartbreaking that like, one, it was such a stupid conversation in the court. Like, if it's the law, you can't discriminate against the person or fire them just because you don't think that thing that they're doing is correct. It's, God, it makes me. There's an American law. I was thinking about that watching it because obviously we are totally, we just recently came to understand that there's no jury trials in India. So we don't understand all of the ins and outs of the legal system or constitutional law like we do American stuff. But I was thinking to myself, because in American law, you could have, for example, homosexuality is not criminalized. It's legal in all states. It's marriages are granted in 37 of the 50 states already. So the only way an institution or university could get away with firing someone for being homosexual would be if they had a policy within the school that was already printed within the contract of that teacher that said, we have certain standards and ethics that we hold true for us as an organization. And if you violate these standards, whether they're legal or they're not legal, you are agreeing that you are able to be terminated if you violate the term. In the same reason restaurants say, we can, we have the right to refuse service to anyone. You will get a constitutional fight. And the person's going to win because the constitution's what protects them. But that didn't never seem to come up. It was almost like we're just saying we didn't like it and you have to agree. And they're like, the constitution of our country says this is no longer criminalized. So I'm with you. I was like, we actually, why are we even having this conversation? Yeah. So it was, it was strange like that. I did, I, I thoroughly, there was the only a few things that I, it was supporting, there were some supporting actors that I didn't enjoy. But it would not, not a lot. I enjoyed Manoj in the courtroom scene. I thought he was really fun to watch. Sleeping. Yeah. Like just, he was like almost nonchalant just in the background. And also the fact that he, I thought it was really interesting. The offense he took to are you gay? And what that meant to him? And he never really explained it either. And, and I saw, I thought everything the writers did with this, I thought was really nice and beautiful. I agree. I think the, even the filmmakers, because it's in India, even held back some. Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. Like, because if this was done in America, I feel like they would have been a lot more in your face about people's bigotry. I think it would have been more in your face about the bigotry. I think we would have had more graphic depictions of the sexual relationship between him and the rickshaw driver. And when they filmed them as well. Correct. Yeah. I think it would have been more graphic. I think they would have wanted to get the shock factor. How vile that is to go in and film somebody in their own home. Like, you want the audience to be like, this is horrifying. How could, how could anybody do this? Obviously, India, there's a lot more conservative because they have their stupid sensory board. Sorry guys, if you like sensory boards, I hate them. You can't censor all. Anyways, that's not the point of this. But yeah, so I think if they made that here, it would have been more, but obviously it's in India. So I didn't really hold it against it. But I would have even preferred it to go further. I would have too. But I think, I think the directors were probably wise based on the little we know to make it. I think for many Indians, it was for what they've been exposed to shocking. Yeah. And I think had they gone farther, they might have missed the importance of the message. And it would have been more about the shock factor versus the importance of the message. Yeah. And it's really interesting to me because there's still places on earth where very small fractions, thankfully, but there's still places where it's not only criminalized, but you can be sentenced to death if you're found to be homosexual. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't the law, but it wasn't too long ago in America that people would do that too. I mean, it's probably still happens to people because obviously it happened in a shooting. A guy shot up a gay bar and killed 50, 50 something people at a gay bar in Florida, what five, six years ago, my brother was actually at the bar that night. And when we in Texas, there's been many accounts of guys in pickup trucks finding gay men and dragging them behind the truck and beating them and leaving them on fences. So obviously it's not legal, but it happens. Right. Yeah. And that's that's the really sad, sad part, which is why all over the world there are these pride parades and stuff because just like, you know, Black History Month where they celebrate their all coming out from all the oppression and everything that happened to them, gay people have almost gone through the exact same thing. It just in a different way. And it's a universal thing. And it was a sad thing when he talked about had that he could come to America and somebody like him could be live a respectable life. And then Rajkumar's character says, don't say that. Because he was like, he was like hurt that he thinks that he couldn't be respected here in India. Right. But you know, because he was the young guy and he was all hopeful, but he was his name Manoj. Is that what you say? I think so. Manoj or Manoj? Yeah. Manoj character is like older. And I think he was just almost like, no, this is what it is right now, sadly. Yes. And so the difference in age, age gap. But I thought as a whole, the film was really, really good. And I thought powerful and obviously acting and directing and everything like that was top notch. Top notch. Agreed. Agreed. And the other thing, I didn't put it in my little paragraph that, you know, I talked about the social justice issue, which is the primary point. There was another aspect of this that is another conversation and possibly for another time. But most social justice issues tend to also run counter to this idealism where people want to impose moralistic or religious beliefs into the legal system. And the line between having a democracy versus a theocracy is really blurred. And I don't know how many people recognize that that happens, because it doesn't just happen in India. That happens here in the United States. Yeah, all the time. We have all the freaking time. I don't know how many times I've had to remind the people who are taking the moral high ground quote unquote and remind them, we don't live in a theocracy guys. We live in a democracy. And that that's another issue because you have that tension of of the you saw it in the story that all of the people at the school were pounding the table for their moral prerogative and completely forgetting the fact that the nation has a constitution protecting the rights of this map. Yep. So really important, important stuff. Yeah. So I thought, like I said, the film was brilliant. I know some people I'm hoping you're not. Well, you probably know the story. So I guess if you're still here and you haven't seen it, go see it and watch this film because I know obviously this is more of a probably art house film in India, I would I would say I'm assuming this wouldn't have a I mean, I'm I bet it had a nice opening and it made some money, but it didn't make war money. It didn't it didn't make stuff like that because it's not mainstream and it's not a message that a lot of people like to go. If we do, we enjoy these types of films, but like some people don't they want escapism. And this is not escapism. This is not at all you're going to look at your ugly right now. Yep. I love those films. I do too. It's to me, it's it's the quintessential purpose of cinematic artistry is the capacity to not only create something of aesthetic beauty, but create something that has a virtue to it that's going to be communicated about the human experience for all time, where you're going to be reminded for all time, because this isn't just about right now. I mean, I did a little research. The idea of homosexual of homosexuality being criminalized was not introduced in Indian culture. I mean, the Kamasutra has a whole chapter on homosexual sex. Yeah, it wasn't introduced into Indian culture if my research is correct, until the British got there. That makes sense. That makes total sense. Yeah, it's definitely art house. And it's also one of those things that we could put into the conversation of the top films we would recommend for Western audiences to appreciate Indian cinema. I think most Westerners would love this film. Absolutely. I think it would be an easy recommendation, especially for people that like Oscar films, like artsy films, if you have friends that are into the Oscars and stuff, they will 100% love this film. I think the only thing that I would want more is that I want it to be more in your face. I want people to be uncomfortable. And one other thing we didn't shout out for is that needs a shout out. I mean, there's so many technical things we could talk about in regard to any film. But one of the things that I felt was as important as everything else was, I felt that the score by Koran Khokami was very, very tasteful. The kind of score where the moments you need to notice it, you do, and the moments you don't need to notice it, you don't. Really, really nice score, really well done. The whole film is just great. Also, I thought that the person Rajkumar slept with, I don't know if it's Dil Nas Arani. I thought she did really, I thought at first I actually thought it was Kalki, like for a split second, I was like, is that Kalki role? Yeah. I thought she did really, really well as well. So I just wanted to get, and there was one more person in there that he didn't have a huge part, but Rajkumar's buddy who was in Talvar, right? Yeah. Was he in Newton as well with Rajkumar or no? I don't know. Was he? We've seen him in a couple things, but yeah, he was good too. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, I thought everything was really good. Let us know, because this director was also the director of, I believe, Shahid and Omurta, where Rajkumar plays a terrorist in one, I believe. And so I believe people highly recommended those. So let us know more about this director and also more by Manoj. Yes. We need to explore that man a lot more because as you know, and we now know, he is a very talented man. Really good actor.