Beasts of No Nation & Tales of Africa

Beasts of No Nation

Cris: Oh yeah, all three of Our names end up ending in an N. I didn't realize that.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dad's Film Review, the podcast where we don't let a lack of industry contacts, insider knowledge or talent stop us from hurling our thoughts into the ether once a week about a movie we missed over the years. Having literally just finished a discussion about lazy and negative stereotypes associated with Africa, where better to start this week's African theme show than with a discussion of the top five dictators?

Because we like to keep it classy and sophisticated here, as you well know. But fear not, we'll be balancing out our questionable taste with a review of director Cary Fukunaga's powerful adaptation of Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba, and featuring an astonishing performance from newcomer Abraham Atta.

And we'll round things out this week with Netflix's Tales of Africa, showcasing traditional folklore in a collection of vibrant animated shorts. A quick word from our sponsors, Bene's B Days, the Sultans of Splash, who promised to blast away Grime with the precision of a sniper, and then all that's left to do is introduce the dads starting with Gorgeous Chris.

Don't let that pretty face fool you, he's got a mind as sharp as a spoon. There's Loose Cannon Sidey, who's just as likely to insult you as he is to agree with you, and we may be better off Blessed with the questionable love of resident relic Dan so behind the times he thinks the cloud is just something that blocks the sun.

And he may be joining us later.

Sidey: He's literally come like from the airport.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: So we are in his house and he wasn't here.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And I think he's probably gotta spend some time with his family.

But maybe, maybe he'll pop in to talk about a movie. We just don't know.

Reegs: just don't know. He might be joining us and there's me as

Sidey: me as well.

Well, I'm

Reegs: not most importantly, but also here.

What

Sidey: important, but also him.

Reegs: Yeah, I've watched I'm up to episode 4 of Fallout. So I've been enjoying that. And I've also been watching Reindeer Baby, or Baby Reindeer, is it?

The Netflix thing. Yeah, now. Richard Gadd's, um

Cris: um, The Stalker,

Reegs: True story of the stalker. And also lots of other It's weird stuff as well. So that's, that's quite good as well.

Sidey: look like quite a lot like one of

Reegs: You do.

Sidey: really awful people in it.

Reegs: Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. You really do actually. Yeah, you

Cris: awful, so, you know.

Reegs: It's do you remember that show that featured ben chaplin was his name and it was he was like an That's the one.

Do you remember the ginger flatmate? It's him but grown up

Sidey: Right, is it actually him?

Yeah. Right, okay.

Reegs: And he looks not nin at all. No, but

the beard and everything, it's uncanny. We should look at photo of it afterwards

Sidey: both of them. We'll put it on

Reegs: He sexually assaults him. I mean, yeah. Spoiler. Really horribly.

Sidey: Yeah, not in a nice way though.

Reegs: No,

not in a nice sexual

Cris: in a gentle way.

Sidey: way. I also have been watching Fallout. I think I've done five

Cris: out? Is it all out? Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, you can binge watch it.

Reegs: all out for

Sidey: They start off at about an hour and the one I just watched had they got it down to 45 minutes. I could, I could just about do 45 minutes without falling

Cris: What about the, what do you call it? The one that with the, with the stalkers

Yes. No, no, but is that all out?

Yeah, All

of it. Yeah.

Sidey: I, also caught up with Sugar, the Colin Farrell private detective thing. Which I know that there's because all the reviews were scathing. There's a a plot twist halfway through. So, I think maybe next week or the week after, I'll get to that.

I'm intrigued to see what it is like his robot or something. I don't know but II can't wait. I'm actually really enjoying it.

Reegs: really enjoying

Sidey: it's it's quite good.

Cris: Yeah?

Reegs: never heard of it.

Sidey: No, I think I saw the trailer the day before it was released the first episodes, but then it's yes. It's like wait a

Reegs: that an Apple

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. They seem to be throwing like loads of money at stuff that no one is watching.

There's one with Kristen Wig about some members club like a Mar a Lago type thing. Honestly, they're like the set like that. It looks so unbelievably lavish and like huge production values. I don't think anyone's.

Reegs: of it.

I think it's more the fact that, I think

Cris: I think it's more the fact that I think it's probably, especially Apple TV is probably focused mainly on, on the American market,

So

anyone in the UK or I, I don't.

I know a few people that watch and they

Sidey: it definitely is because all the sport that you can get on it is MLB, the,

Cris: so it will be, I would say no one from what we know, but there might still be a big hit in America and,

Sidey: I think the actual content on those is really good. It is my preferred streaming service. Yeah. Anyhow. Chris, what about yourself? Did you catch anything new this week?

Cris: I,

think I'm six episodes into Shogun which is good because it means I have another few It's quite annoying that they released them quite slowly, but at the same time, it is what it is. I can't really cry over it. You

Reegs: Oh, you have literally no control over it.

So you just got to get

over it.

Cris: I know. And I watched a movie called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which is, I wouldn't say strange, because we had a fairly African themed week. And it's about, it's a true story about a boy in Malawi who, during

famine he uses parts of his dad's bike bicycle to

make

a wind turbine with a dynamo who he, which he borrows from his teacher.

His teacher incidentally is Shagin's sister and they run away and is with Trittle Asia four. Is that how you say

Reegs: you say it?

Oh, yeah turtle. Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: With him. So, and he speaks in a I can't remember. I think I watched the, the ghost must be crazy. And it's half English, half some some dialects and all that.

And I said to Carol, I was like, gosh, we watch something else. And I put that on. I was like, oh, let's just watch. This is a true story. And. More than half of the movie is in this dialect instead of, and half of it is English, half of it is in this dialect. So she was not best pleased, but it's a great movie and it's a great story.

And the guy, I think he's got about 32 different wind turbines in Malawi. They basically get two crops a year where they wouldn't get even one if it wasn't raining. And so, so it's an inspirational story about a, a child who finds a book in the library. And Copies what he learned, so the power of education and, yeah, it was quite interesting actually.

Sidey: Very cool. Do you remember last week's Top 5 topic?

Scans. Yeah. Darren Lethley put in a nomination for The Fly. Yeah. Because it scans.

Reegs: result. And

Sidey: Yeah hilarious results.

Reegs: that's all we

Sidey: And I think that's it. I think that's all we had.

one. it's in. Yeah. Not just because it's the only one, it's a good

Reegs: Yeah,

Cris: it is a good one.

Sidey: one. This week's top five?

Cris: Dictators.

Sidey: Let's do it.

Dictators.

I've got a selection of fictional and real ones. How's, how do you feel about that? Yeah. Feel good?

Okay, cool. Chris, you probably got one that's real.

Cris: I've got one that's real and I've got one that I do remember.

However, I was too young when we, as

people, yeah, when we executed Ceausescu.

But I do remember it because it was live on television.

Yes, both him and his missus and they didn't show it live or I think my parents wouldn't let us see it live. They showed it after 12 o'clock at night. So at bang on at 12 o'clock on, I'm going to say boxing day in 1989.

Sidey: That's

a Christmas y sort of vibe, isn't it?

Cris: Yeah. Oh, it could be, it could, it could be, I don't know, maybe like, I can't, I can't remember the date, which is part of Romanian history, but I can't remember.

And I, but I do remember my parents wouldn't let us watch it. And we, both my brother and I sneaked out of the bedroom and we kind of,

Sidey: Yeah, I don't think I would be letting my daughter watch someone get

Cris: yeah, I mean, I was five. But we both wanted to watch it. And I

Reegs: we don't let my children watch a lot of people getting killed

Sidey: No. No.

Cris: I remember because Elena Ceaușescu, Ceaușescu's wife, she lifted her skirt and she wasn't wearing any underwear. So that's kind of like a,

Sidey: what a floozy

Cris: well, I don't know. She just wanted to, how do you say, defy, because they

Reegs: A last protest.

Yeah,

Cris: because they obviously didn't accept the the

Reegs: sovereignty of the court.

Cris: which again, it kind of makes sense because obviously now looking back out of the whole communist party and the whole dictatorship system,

we convicted two people and we killed them.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: But the idea now

Reegs: but nobody else was evil,

Cris: yeah, exactly. Looking back now, it's like, well, they clearly wanted to kill them because they knew who else was involved. But anyway,

Reegs: that was sort of a theme that was explored in what was it? Argentina, 1985 had a bit of that going on and

you go.

Sidey: good. Did they make a film about it at all?

Cris: They made a, it's kind of like a shit documentary type is more, is one of them that puts actors in documentary style movie, but it's made by Romanians in Romania and it's not very good.

Reegs: Would it have been a big like party time or was it a mournful thing when this happened,

Cris: Oh, it was party time. Oh yeah, it was party time. People and this is what it was. They were quite clever when they did it because they killed him and their argument was like, out of all the communist bloc, everyone, all the communist countries had a revolution in 1989 or 1990 and out of all the eastern bloc, Romania is the only country that killed it.

Everyone else send them in exile or put them in prison or whatever. Romania killed them. It's the only country. So because half of the fact being that the country was still afraid of him and his power. So when they killed him, it was a sense of relief. There was like right freedom now, obviously that came at a cost, but I'm not going to get into that.

Sidey: right, Well, there you go. Riggs?

Reegs: Well, I had The Dictator.

I don't know whether you saw that one. Sacha Baron Cohen. Wow,

Yeah. I watched

Cris: it maybe a month ago or something like that. It's brilliant.

Sidey: think he's cancelled now, is he?

Reegs: is it? I don't know. He's just split up with Isla Fisher.

Well,

Sidey: Well, Rebel Wilson outed him as being a sort of horrible bullying arsehole. Really? For the Brothers Grimsby, yeah. I

Reegs: yeah. Oh my god, that was shit as well,

Sidey: Yeah, I know. It doesn't seem worth it.

Reegs: Yeah. In this one he plays Admiral General Shabazz Al Adeen of the fictional Republic of Wadiya.

Sidey: A

Reegs: Fascist misogynistic, Jew hating, North African despot who visits New York to give a speech at the UN and is kind of kidnapped and stripped of his identity, including his precious beard.

And he's left to wander the city until he's rescued by Anna Faris.

Cris: Yeah, and his name is Alison Burgers.

Reegs: Yeah, and yeah, through a series of events tries to find a way back to his home country, prevent democracy from being implemented and build weapons of mass

Cris: Is Ben Kingsley in this

movie?

Reegs: he is, yeah. And it's, it's, it's got a good scene about Islamophobia when they're sort of getting excited in a helicopter and these tourists are getting a bit,

Cris: Oh yeah, that is actually good,

Reegs: getting a bit worried and then there's a great bit, little speech at the end where he, Doesn't at all accuse America of massive hypocrisy that yeah.

So that was okay. The

Cris: also, he's got a really good scene about the Wadi Al Olympics,

Reegs: That is funny.

Cris: where he just, he runs a hundred meters, he shoots people.

If anyone gets closer to him while he's running in a really silly way, he just shoots everyone. It's amazing.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Best friend of reg's, people, Adolf Hitler.

Reegs: we probably

Sidey: Should we probably not joke about something? Obviously he's been depicted in a million different films, but the one I was thinking of was Downfall. Mostly because it's been

Reegs: Mostly because it's been Oh

Sidey: Oh yeah, it's good. I also thought about Inglourious Basterds when they just machine gunned the living shit out of him.

But the reason I like Downfall, look, it's very good.

But whenever something happens that that scene where he loses shit over the map And it's the snow day in jersey

Reegs: Yeah. when they're trying to clear the, clear the roads

Sidey: And he's just like name dropping all these, you know landmarks in jersey and going fucking apeshit about it it just cracks me up every time Hitler's just lols, isn't

Cris: I've not seen that movie.

Sidey: It's really good, yeah, it's really good

Cris: Is it a comedy?

Reegs: Not so much. Not

Sidey: much, but it does sort of make me laugh when they get really upset about socialism not working out.

It's like, just before they all kill themselves.

Cris: I didn't do my research. I probably should have, but in that movie with Tom Cruise, where he kind of plants the bomb.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: assassination attempts.

Cris: I can't remember the name of it. It's like the operation,

Sidey: that

Cris: I've seen it too.

Reegs: of a thousand, no,

Sidey: Wasn't it, it was by the table and they moved it? yeah. It didn't quite work, yeah. It was like,

Cris: the table and they moved it.

Reegs: I think it's just

Cris: I'm pretty sure he's there as well.

I

Reegs: I have seen it, but not for a little while. I think that was by Singer, wasn't it? Brian Singer. So, you know,

Sidey: he's cancelled as well.

Reegs: step.

Sidey: Yeah,

Cris: I'm pretty sure we've got loads others. Have we got others about this? Loads of them with Hitler, I would imagine.

Sidey: We've got Stalin as well.

Cris: well? Yes,

we have him as well.

Sidey: Have

you seen the death of Stalin?

Cris: Yes, I have.

Sidey: So good. I do think about nominating it, but we've all seen it. So it doesn't really meet the

Cris: We can still do

Sidey: it anyway. But just the way that they, you know, they don't do accents. They're just like,

Reegs: it's just a

Sidey: they're all Yorkshires or, you know, Yorkshire and whatever.

It's fantastic. Yeah. But that's been

Cris: like it. I'm pretty, I'm, I really have, I really like the movies that, Could be potentially made into a play. So you could, you could see that movie being made into a play because they act the same way that it would do it in a play. So I like that Hotel Budapest was one of them that it was kind of similar.

That could be a play, but

Reegs: that's very goodbye.

Lenin as well would've qualified. You seen that one with the fall of the Yeah,

Sidey: I know about it, but um like Death of Stalin, that's Armando Iannucci. So you know the writing is going to be tip top really, really good, really strong.

Cris: Is it my turn? I'll have them written down because my memory is, honestly, I'm probably 70 already, but not by I've got a movie that we did for the pod. I can't remember. Was it your name? El Conde?

Reegs: Dan, I think. Yeah,

Cris: with the Augusto Pinochet is a vampire

Sidey: yeah, it was Dan,

Cris: and he is, well, Count Dracula and he, you know, does all that.

And I've, which I'm not going to go into it because we've done it for the pod. So I'm not going to go into too much detail about El Conde, but one, a movie that I really enjoyed was the Devil's Double.

And it's a depiction of Saddam Hussein's son, Uday,

Sidey: Oh yes, I have seen it. Yeah.

Cris: is with Dominic Cooper. He plays like a double role.

Sidey: all his, the, the bodyguards. Yes. The, yeah.

Cris: Yeah. And, and there is a depiction of Saddam Hussein, because obviously that's the dad, but it's Uday Hussein, who is the playboy son of Saddam Hussein, who is allegedly had sex with all these like Hollywood actresses. They would pay them millions of dollars and all that stuff. And he would always travel by helicopter and,

Sidey: it's got all the gold

Cris: yes, yeah.

And he would be as bad, if not worse than his dad. But I thought it was a great

Sidey: he would have run out of money so quick because he because the way he's this

Cris: All right. His lifestyle. Yes. Yeah. Well, Saddam Hussein was not, he was, he didn't have a lavish lifestyle, but his son was just limousines and, you know, lols.

Sidey: also in South Park, the movie.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: great depiction of him. Dan's never seen that. We do keep talking

Reegs: more sympathetic portrayal,

Cris: Yeah. I've never seen

Sidey: never seen Team America, which he did like. So we keep talking about that one

Reegs: trying to badger him into watching it, but

He

Sidey: He won't do it unless it's

Cris: nominated. What, South Park the movie? Why not? I

Sidey: don't think he's ever seen any

Cris: seen any South

Sidey: Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Reegs: know. Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: What is Oh, we have to nominate it then. That's it. It's done.

Sidey: Okay. Riggs?

Reegs: Do you remember the 2005 Kurt Wimmer directed Equilibrium

Sidey: No, I didn't see it?

Reegs: Christian Bale? Yes,

that.

In the wake of the sort of Matrix, it was one of those that came along.

He plays an elite government enforcer in a dystopian future, a world where feelings are against the law, and he's something called a grammaton cleric, which means he looks and fights very Matrix y, using something called Gunkata, which is like

Cris: A sword, no?

Reegs: He's got a sword as well, but it's got spikes on the end of his guns.

That's how he stabs people, but it's mostly about guns.

Cris: cuts someone's face off though.

Reegs: He does cut Sean Pertwee, is it? No, it's it's the other guy actually. It's the leader of the guys. It's got two Sean's in it, this movie. Sean Bean and Sean Pertwee.

Cris: does,

Sidey: Bean die?

Reegs: Yes in fact, propels the plot into motion when he stops taking the drugs that suppresses emotions.

And the other Sean Pertwee is, plays the father, the mysterious dictator figurehead who rules over their society. So he's, he's a dictator.

Sidey: Okay. A couple of dystopian ones that we seem to have a thing for that recently were Big Brother in 1984 and Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta.

Reegs: Vendetta. I really

Sidey: I really like V for Vendetta,

Cris: Yeah, me too.

Sidey: I

Cris: must've watched it 50 times

Sidey: That's a

Reegs: a lot.

Cris: I watched it to learn English

Sidey: Oh, right.

Cris: because they speak, it's all British actors and they all speak.

I don't know if Natalie Portman is

Sidey: Hugo Weaving is also not, but anyway, he does it.

Reegs: No, it's Australian.

Cris: Smith.

Reegs: It's Australian.

Cris: I'm sorry. I didn't do my research, but they speak they speak really good English. And I like the way this is, it's never rushed. It's never. So, so I just kind of try to

learn. it?

Reegs: crazy with the alliteration at one point in this. I don't want to be that guy, but I'm going to be the comic. Did you read it? Alan Moore's original, which was much more about his fear of.

Britain falling into a Thatcherite inspired dictatorship. And then the movie is, you know, and in, in the comic, it's like much more morally ambiguous. Like V is completely crazy and does loads of horrible things that he doesn't do. Whereas in the movie, he's made to be a little bit more morally upright.

Sidey: I mean Alan Moore hates every adaptation of his work.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. And this was by the, were chow skis, I think. Or at least they directed some of the action scenes or produced it or something. I don't know. They were, yeah. Anyway,

Sidey: Have you ever, like, watched an interview with Alan Moore? Yes. He's an interesting chap. Pretty out there.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: He does, he, there's one where it's Stuart Lee interviews him.

I quite like that one. But yeah.

Reegs: he's got a lot of rings.

Sidey: of does look like he needs a good wash. Yeah. I would say. But, I do like his work. Oh, it's back around to you, Chris.

Cris: pass that round to you, Chris. I didn't really understand it.

I saw up.

Sidey: cannibal Yeah,

Cris: And, and I was quite terrified because it's been a while now since I can't remember the year, but it's probably say 97.

Sidey: That film.

Yeah. No way. Was it that late? That early anyway?

Cris: Really?

Sidey: I don't think it's better, whatever.

Cris: But yeah, that

Sidey: he, I think he won the Oscar, didn't he? Fort Whisker for that one.

Cris: could have done.

Sidey: I think.

Reegs: Yes.

Cris: But he, he, he looked

Sidey: have been Ghost Dog, but anyway,

Cris: a ghost doctor. Ha ha ha

Reegs: that

Sidey: Yeah. It's great from,

Cris: yeah, Idi Amin.

Yeah. Um, of Scotland. cast of us

Reegs: Good one.

Well now that The Last of Us and Fallout have finally convinced people that games are, video games can be art maybe it's time to re evaluate some old classics like 1994's Street Fighter.

Remember that? It

Had Van Damme, Kylie Minogue. Yeah. And it had Raul Julia in his last role as General M. Bison, who was a dictator, military dictator, power, mad military dictator conquering the Southeastern Asian country of Shadaloo is what it says here. Yeah. So yeah.

Sidey: Mm. What a movie. What a movie.

Reegs: And

Cris: remember. I can't remember much of it though. I'm pretty sure I've seen it, but. I just can't

Sidey: remember. Kylie Melo was Chung Lee.

Reegs: Yeah, she was. No Cammy.

Sidey: Oh, sorry.

Reegs: She was Cammy, and there was Blanker in it as well, and yeah. It's got a really convoluted plot really not worth rehashing.

Cris: Okay. Which, which one is Raul?

Reegs: He plays the dictator guy with

Sidey: He was the dad in the Addams Family

Cris: Yes, yeah, no, okay, yeah, that guy. I know who you mean, okay, yeah. Okay.

Sidey: In Alo Alo,

Reegs: a

Sidey: They do Heil Hitler and the Italian guy always used to say Heil Mussolini. So he goes in for that. Yeah some other ones. Okay, what about some like lower Stakes not lower states, but like we've gone for you know on a national international level We bring it back down to smaller scale.

What about negan in the leader of the saviors in?

Reegs: Oh yeah,

That's quite good. Yeah.

Sidey: dead because he was good and he had that kind of polarizing Moment and it was the cliffhanger end of series where he baseball batted a couple of people Or did we just didn't do one at the time?

Reegs: We didn't see him do any of them. And then he came back and did two.

Sidey: Well, we saw we saw someone get No, the

Reegs: No, the, the cliffhanger was

just him hitting someone. That's where it cut. So you didn't, it's the cameras span round.

They were all on the floor. I think they had bags over their heads, didn't they? And he was gonna hit more.

Sidey: He did. Yeah. Glenn. and the ginger guy.

Reegs: The ginger guy,

Sidey: Yeah. And, also, now, I've gone small, we could go galactic with Palpatine. Yeah. In Star Wars.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: Oh,

Sidey: No. Sci fi. Yeah. Yeah, the Emperor. The Emperor.

Reegs: know.

Sidey: He dictates on a galactic level.

Cris: Oh, really? Yeah.

Would the guy from the Avengers, the one with the rings, would that be a, he, would he be a dictator?

Reegs: Yeah. Why not? No,

Cris: no,

Sidey: Yeah, 100%. Does

Cris: Does that count? Sure. I've seen that one. Yeah. And I didn't really understand, I thought dictator has to be like from a political sense, just

Sidey: Well, he was

Cris: that guy is,

Sidey: He's basically a Tory.

Cris: Yes,

Right. Okay. And that guy, what's his name? The one with the chin?

Sidey: thanos.

Yes,

the ball bag chin.

Cris: Yeah, it looks like a, like a scrotum.

Okay, that guy.

I remember him. and also I've got I can't remember his name. I have it written down because Juan Pablo Raba, which in the movie, his name is Juan Venegas. And it's a movie with John Cena, which I've mentioned before, because I watched it on my flight back or to Thailand. I can't remember.

And it's called freelance. And it's obviously John Cena is John Cena and it's got full

Sidey: nice

Cris: with John Cena

Sidey: What, John Cena's

Cris: Yeah, you can't actually see his, but you see his dick root and, um, there's Juan Pablo Raba and there's another lady actress, which I can't remember her name. And they, John Cena is like a former CIA is one of those plots that we've seen it a million times.

He is one of his friends who is Christian Slater. It tells him to we need to go and kill this guy. He's a dictator in a Central American state. He goes there and he finds out that this guy is Bad, but it's not that bad. And he kind of, they have another team of South Africans trying to kill everyone, including John Cena, but John Cena is the fucking man and he kind of kills everyone and every day all live happily ever after.

it's, it's, it's a, it's a

Sidey: a, I think we're all John Cena fans right?

Cris: but yeah,

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: that's what it is. And I've seen it.

Sidey: His dick?

the movie,

Yeah.

Reegs: Well, Vin Diesel is a massive nerd. I think it's fair to say. Loves tabletop games and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, and that is completely in evidence when he was given 200 million dollars to make the Chronicles Riddick. You ever see that movie?

Cris: I've seen it.

Kind of like a black and white

Sidey: Was it not Pitch Black first?

Reegs: Pitch Black was first. Yeah, that was a smash hit. Be like a tiny budget, huge return. That was actually pretty good. Pitch Black. But the Chronicles of Riddick was the follow up and it was like a massive big budget sequel.

And in this one, it was like a space opera type thing. Campy. But it's very self serious and it had a load of people called the Necromonger in them and they were ruled over by a dictator called the Lord Marshal, who was Comfeore, who I quite like as so, yeah, Chronicles of Riddick. Not one that gets mentioned on the pod all the time.

No,

Sidey: No, I'll tell you something else that doesn't get mentioned on the pod very often, which seems like a glaring oversight by us is Doctor Who.

Reegs: Yep.

Sidey: because that is like a cultural

Reegs: I mention it every day because there was a few seasons

that

Sidey: recurring villain would be the master. And he. It's, you know, like the polar opposite of the Doctor, and I guess kind of dictatory in a way in many ways, because he dictates.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And I just thought Doctor Who should be mentioned more

Reegs: I haven't got a single one of people just dictating. That would be good.

Sidey: be good. What, writing a letter?

Reegs: or into a little, you know, recording device. Oh

Sidey: God, there should be a million of those.

Reegs: Dammit.

Sidey: Oh, Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper is always on to Diane, his PA or secretary or whatever it is.

That's dictation.

Reegs: Also Big Lebowski I think has a bit of, dictation, does it not? think. Yes, a heavy birtation.

Cris: Okay, last one on my list. It is a popular, it's quite popular in current popular folklore you might not have heard of him.

His name is King Jong Un and it's in the movie The Interview,

Sidey: Oh, okay.

Cris: With my friend, John

Sidey: they,

they literally got into like diplomatic trouble with this film film, didn't they?

Yes.

Cris: because, and Seth Rogan, they, is it?

Sidey: James Franco? And,

Cris: Oh, John James

Sidey: and I think they were told like, don't fucking do it.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: And they've done it

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: And yeah, I did it. It, it is quite funny, to be fair.

Reegs: It's a pretty silly movie for something that was supposed to be dangerous.

Sidey: But I think there was stuff in the, you know, the Sony leaks, where they got hacked.

There was, there was load of stuff in the emails about it that, you know, they were tried to. Tell them to fuck off from doing it, but big fat went and did it anyway. Yeah.

Cris: Yeah, that. And it's quite funny, it's got a really nice scene when they get into the tank together and it's it's quite good.

Sidey: He's also the villain in Team America.

It's a great portrait.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: So

Reegs: Roan, he's very Roan

Cris: Team America, is that a movie?

Reegs: Yeah, have you not seen it? All right, Chris, let's stop the podcast right now.

We did

Sidey: we did it on the pod, but it must have been before you were getting

Cris: it was before my

Sidey: It's, if you, like, you're saying South Park is a masterpiece, it's as good.

Cris: told me about this before. Is it puppets?

Reegs: you scared of puppets?

Cris: No, is it like Elmo and that?

Sidey: marionette kind of

Reegs: Thunderbirds?

Sidey: Honestly, you know, you will love

Reegs: What do you mean,

Cris: no? I've not seen Thunderbirds.

Sidey: So like puppets on string where you can see deliberately see all the strings and stuff like

Cris: Right, okay.

Sidey: It's amazing.

Cris: Team America. Okay, I'll

Sidey: you need to get onto that.

Reegs: Oh, well, just there is a Simpsons for every occasion. And the episode where Bart makes random calls to the Southern hemisphere to find out if the toilets flush in the wrong way.

He ends up calling a dictator in some Latin American country, El Presidente, and the translator tells him the tide is turning or something. And he leaps out of a window.

Sidey: in some

Reegs: so yeah.

Sidey: country, El Presidente, and the translator tells him the tide is turning and so on and he leaps out of the window.

My nomination I

Reegs: let's do that then. Let's do those nominations.

Cris: do

Sidey: Cool, well i'm gonna i'm gonna put in ming the merciless From flash gordon and also he appears in a big train sketch where they're just doing like really mundane stuff like hoovering and things

Reegs: gonna

Sidey: ming the merciless

Cris: I'm going to put a, which is, I know I'm breaking the rules here, but I'm going to put a, he's technically not a dictator because I've never heard of him in my life. However, this is a real person and he threatened me. He's a general in Jordan and he threatened me personally in an email when I used to work for PMC.

Pete and this is, I don't know if he can still trace the emails now because the company had a bit of a problem, but we used to sell Disney tickets and the, this general of Jordan had his name and his title, Sultan general, this, this, whatever. And he, when. COVID happened, everybody wanted their money back.

He bought tickets to go to his family to Disney to be in fairness to him. He probably had loads of kids because it was about 12 grand that he wanted back and he, I booked him the ticket. So obviously I was dealing with these emails and his request and Disneyland Paris said, nobody gets their money back.

They just get. To vouchers, you just give them a voucher so they can use it for the future. But nobody gets their money back, no chance. I tried to explain this to this man and he threatened me and he said that he will, he, he's got the contacts of our company, he'll directly pass them in my name to the government of Britain, and I will be in big, big trouble.

And you? Did you

Reegs: and where you did you ever get in big big trouble?

Cris: I didn't. But I'm just scared to go to Jordan now, because

Reegs: the full might of the jordan army could

Cris: be, could be, but yeah, this is a real guy. I can't remember his name and I don't want to offend anyone

Sidey: Well, I don't think we can disclose that sort of information

Cris: that happened to me.

Sidey: Okay, well done Reese

Reegs: I am going to go for 2008's Zombie Strippers. Seen that

Sidey: No.

Reegs: Robert England and Jenna Jameson, if you remember her.

Sidey: of a cast.

Reegs: yeah. Campy, stupid horror comedy. It's set against a backdrop of a dystopia where George W. Bush is entering an un unconstitutional fourth term, serving as a dictator over.

He accidentally releases a reanimating virus to a bunch of strippers in a very conservative part of Nebraska. Does exactly what it says on the tin, badly. Not sure what else I was expecting, but maybe I'm just difficult to please.

Sidey: hear. If we scoot on over to Discord, we've got a couple of nominations on there. Darren Lethe with The Great Dictator. Yeah,

Chaplin. Which

Cris: Is that Chaplin?

Sidey: Chaplin, yeah. This is a good one actually.

Truman Show, Kristoff.

Ed Harris pulling the strings from from on high and innumerable Star Wars movies with Palpatine Beaver better from him. He's going for Stalin from the death of Stalin and then back to Darren for some more Hitler in downfall action as seen in a billion memes.

Reegs: Yeah, he's right about

Sidey: he is right and it's all good stuff.

So maybe Dan if he pops in in a minute or two might he might be able to give us something

Cris: He possibly could.

Reegs: Let's see.

Sidey: This is Beasts of No Nation. Another one I think that cropped up in the top five. Yes. And then it was at the forefront of your mind. So you nominated it. Yes.

Cris: Soldiers, I think I nominated it and it was Child Soldiers for me. Yeah. And that's why you could see the the reason why I nominated Child Soldiers

Reegs: certainly could.

Cris: it starts off, doesn't

Sidey: well, it starts off, doesn't it?

Cris: With the television.

Sidey: with an

Cris: Through the, through the television.

Sidey: yeah. Some kids, and they're kind of, I don't know, still a, a kind of war. We see soldiers and

Reegs: Yeah. it's

Sidey: But they're having, they're having a

Cris: Yeah, it's a buffer

Sidey: good time still at this point.

We meet.

Reegs: Agu.

Cris: Agu,

Sidey: his family we learn all about his family, his father his

Reegs: We get quite a nice little subversion when he's introduced because you know, the, we see his mum cooking in a, like a hut with a baby on her back and it sort of feeds into like your stereotypical vision of Africa. And then in the next scene, we see, they actually live in a pretty modern house.

Their life is very much the, you know, a middle class dad's a school teacher and something else he keeps referring

Sidey: think he had been something else and he jacked it in to become a teacher.

Reegs: And they look after Grandad who lives with them

Sidey: He's, I think he's quite nice where the lights are on. Doesn't he said that no one's home. So he's, he's, he's getting on. He's much like Dan. The grandfather said, but the family, the whole family unit is there. And they're doing kids stuff. They go around. He's, he's kind of like entrepreneurial. He's, he's trying to make money any way he can.

So he's we see a few things where he's like pissing off his older brother, literally pissing on his older

Cris: Yeah, which is

Sidey: And, and then he, they're going around with this television set, a carcass of a television set and putting it down and then acting things out in front and trying to sell it to people saying it's an imagination.

Cris: tv.

Reegs: Yeah. And when you look through

Sidey: you can do blah, blah, blah.

Reegs: Well, they've, they've staged like little dance

Sidey: Yeah, kung fu. Yeah.

Reegs: and all that sort of stuff. And they entertain some like peacekeeping,

Sidey: Yeah, the, the guys like, okay we'll, we'll exchange and they give them like some tubs of food and stuff to go and take away. So they're well happy with that.

And then it did a little bit later on that they're, they're having dinner in the house and the brother looks around at what's left of his television, goes fucking mad.

Reegs: But after all this lightheartedness things do very quickly fall apart. You know, we hear the background, the sort of political context and the various factions that are vying for control of this African state and pretty quickly the military are there.

Yeah. And there's been a scene earlier on with like, a kind of crazy woman, a local crazy woman, I guess. And she fingers Agu's father. Well, first of all, when it, when it descends into chaos, they try and get the baby and the mother and everybody and the children out of there as quickly as possible.

This was a really heartbreaking scene with the taxi guy. He's like saying, give me 70, 000, whatever it was, I don't know.

Cris: Yeah, whatever the money was, yeah.

Reegs: Currencies, please. And he won't take the boy. He'll only take the mother and the baby. So Agu, his brother and his father are suddenly left with in the remnants of their sort of

Sidey: Yeah. And the reason that that lady is important is she annoyed that the father, he's given up some land to some refugees and she's been displaced or feels like she has. And she's annoyed about that. And she's ranting and raving at him in the street when we first meet her and then the military arrive on the scene when after they've lost, they've moved the mother and the baby off and that they're mistaken for rebels or.

Or

Reegs: Well,

Sidey: oh I've never seen these people before. Well because the military have come in saying anybody who's here will

Cris: Protecting the shops

Reegs: Well, because the military have come in saying anybody who's here will be identified as a combatant. So if you haven't, and they say, well, we're just here to protect our, our belongings and our stores.

Sidey: and but she says, no, I've never seen them before and you're like, oh, no.

Yeah. And the the boys run everyone else is just executed there and

Reegs: is shot there and yeah, the boy, the older brother and Agu run. The older brother is shot in the back as he's running away.

Cris: in the face.

Sidey: You see what's left of

Reegs: Back of the head and his face is on the floor. Agu sees it and they take shots at him as well. And he escapes into the jungle, the camera panning back and revealing that, you know, he runs and runs and runs and runs.

Then he really doesn't. You just don't know where he is or.

And he tries to survive for a little while, you know, eating stuff that makes him sick and that sort of thing.

Cris: vision like a, he hallucinates about this kind of, I, I don't even know how to say what that would be. Would it be like a. African voodoo person or I don't know. Yeah. He has that kind of vision. I don't think it's real. And then It's

Sidey: it's just someone standing in a clearing, isn't it? With with almost like a shaman kind

of

Cris: it's like a shaman.

Yeah, that's, that's the word I was looking

Reegs: it's it's not a vision. It's one of the,

Sidey: but it's one of the guys

Reegs: of the child soldiers. It's one of the

Cris: Oh, right. Okay. I thought he was, he imagined that.

Sidey: No.

Reegs: sees him because they're all dressed in the craziest shit.

We can get into that, I guess. But yeah. So this is when Agu comes across a battle that's occurring, but first it's, he's sort of in the middle of a big squad of infantry

Sidey: They just run straight past him and there's gunfire and it happens all of a sudden because it's really disorientating because it's supposed to be.

And people are almost like running directly past him and shooting and someone leaps over a kind of ledge on top of him screaming as they come down at him. Yeah. And you're like, Whoa,

Reegs: Jesus,

And you could hear bullets being fired, but it's not clear where from and who's being targeted. It's, but they're close and, and that sort of thing.

Sidey: of thing. And yeah, gradually all of these people emerge from, it's like Homer when he comes through the hedge,

Cris: hedge, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they all, yeah, and then he gets

Sidey: and he's, he's down, he's sort of captured and they're trying to find out a bit about him. And eventually Idris Elba appears, the commandant.

Cris: he's in shock because initially he can't he can barely breathe and he

Sidey: I mean, what age is he supposed to be in the film? I mean, he's like, twelve?

Reegs: Eight or nine, yeah.

Sidey: that? Yeah, I mean, he's very, very young. And then they, they just kind of quiz him, don't

Reegs: Well, there's a load of sort of, sort of military sort of pageantry where he, it's clear before Idris is introduced that there's this huge cult of personality about him because they, you know, how does the commandant look? He looks good. He looks good.

He gets the whole everyone chanting

Sidey: they immediately identify that this is a kid on his own. Yeah. We'll just take him in our ranks, you know, it's just another body that we can use.

Reegs: Yeah. And he sort of. He's quite fatherly to him in front of everybody, brings him under his wing, tells him, gives him a reason to live, basically and tells him he'll train him and bring him in to be part of his child soldier army.

And they're all stood around and they're in a variety of battle dress anything from basically a couple of feathers to like an American football jersey or

Sidey: Yeah, some of them have, they look like Sackboy.

They've got, or they've got like a sort of makeshift balaclava thing going on. Or some of them, like a sack with little patches sewn onto them.

Reegs: A lot of

Sidey: And then there's Tripod.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: you think, I

Sidey: has his fucking dick out the whole time. He was a real guy. He was a real soldier who used to do that.

Cris: that. Yeah. yeah.

Sidey: yeah,

Cris: Right, okay. But that, that's, for me that was amazing when I, when it's just a guy that has a big machine gun and is just there with this massive piece that'll just,

Sidey: yeah Because one bit there when they're a little bit later on when they're sort of running into town to take the bridge And he's just like this dick just swinging around You're like

what's an armor on if that was me?

Reegs: so Agu who has absolutely nothing has lost his parents, his mother is whereabouts unknown with his baby brother and he's come across these guys quickly taken in.

And he's first he's sort of away from the battles. He just carries

Sidey: He just carries boxes of, yeah, rounds, yeah.

Reegs: But eventually he will be kind of. further indoctrinated into the group via this elaborate sort of voodoo type rebirth and re death, re death thing. And there's like a rebirth and death thing where they go into a grave

Sidey: yeah, they're shallow graved and,

Reegs: And the ones who don't make it are taken out the back and killed is what I think was happening.

Cris: Kind of ashes at him and feathers and all that. And he needs to run through these other fellow soldiers while

Sidey: the paddling of the swollen ass.

Yeah.

Cris: yes, while, while he's getting kicked in that, but one of them doesn't make it, he gets hit too hard. He doesn't make it through the tunnel of hits and then he gets taken out the back and he gets his throw slit.

Reegs: Yeah, brutal brutal

Sidey: But

Reegs: but he passes his

Sidey: he passes but he's not at this point in full child soldier mode. It's the really dreadful scene where they, which pretty much comes up not long after this, isn't it? Where they capture that fella.

And he's just held completely prone with his arms behind his back and he's just held and the commandant says, right, this is, this is your chance now.

This is one of the men who's responsible, maybe not directly, but this, this, these people, they killed your family. This guy killed your father. You have to kill him.

Reegs: And it's a con, it's a civil engineer. Like he's a, he's a guy. Like I was just here fixing a bridge and

Sidey: and it's a machete, you know, it's really bad it's you know, you just need yeah this think of it like a Coconut I think he says or something like that.

You just crack it and it's done. He's just handed the machete and just fucking like

just they go at him and like Not brainwash, but like pretty much force him to do

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: And he does and it's very explicit and Like the way they show it in the film, you know, the first hit, you know They wax him on the head and then you've seen the machete in the guy's fucking skull and then the other kid striker has a guy wax him and the guy's down You can see in his eyes that he's gone And then there's a slow mo of them just repeatedly bludgeoning this guy with the blood like on the lens like fucking everywhere.

It's Fucking like so harrowing. Yeah

Reegs: there is a quasi military structure going on here. The commandant Idris Elba is taking his orders from a higher up. He has a two IC and ambitious younger guy.

Yeah, dad a good

Cris: Goodblood, yeah, Dada Goodblood, yeah.

Reegs: He has a two IC who's ambitious underneath him and he has striker who's like his favorite that he's taken under his wing, though the camera has already told us there's something, maybe something unsavory going on with them when we see strikers summoned to his tent in the, in one scene and after Agu becomes a fully fledged member of the militia, he tries to talk to striker who is wordless mute about,

and

he won't talk back and it's pretty clear why because not long after this is a scene where Agu is summoned to

Sidey: yeah and

Reegs: Quarters.

Sidey: gives him the chat about you could be a leader, you know, I, you know, give them the big He tells me

Reegs: he tells him about, you know, the difference between being a follower and a leader. Sometimes you have to know when to

Sidey: Yeah, you understand at the moment you're a follower, but you know, you've got that leadership and that could be, and you know, obviously like appallingly horrendous things have happened. But at this point you're like, well, he's kind of been a father figure to

Reegs: you're

Sidey: And then

Reegs: well, he's

Cris: and

Sidey: you can see where it's going and he kind of lies back and you're like, Oh man,

Reegs: it's going. And you're like, oh.

Cris: Yeah, with gunpowder. He's sniffing something with

gunpowder.

Sidey: They call it brown brown, don't

Reegs: gunpowder.

Cris: At least they don't show that. So they just insinuate. He kind of tells him get on your knees and then they kind of show him leaving

Sidey: see him leaving, he's obviously like, You know, broken. Yeah. It's

Reegs: Striker consoles him. And it is, you know, because it is such a good portrayal from Idris Elba. So you can see why these boys were buying into his cult of personality and he has done a lot for them. They had no options, but, and he's turned them into killing machines and now he's raping them. It's a,

Sidey: Yeah. It's brutal.

Reegs: Yeah. And I guess the fallout of that is that Agu becomes disaffected and miserable and starts getting into drugs.

Sidey: Yeah, he's doing heroin.

Reegs: Who?

Cris: Siggy's drugs everything really. Yeah,

Reegs: Is it, is it Tripod who gives him the cut on the side of the head and rubs the brown, the brown, brown in? It's Preacher, is

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: jesus. That's fucking so awful

Reegs: And we get a cool sequence, a very beautiful sequence, weirdly of like Real violence and gore, but it's shot through like bright purples and pinks as you know Agu wanders through the battlefield in a daze of drugs and

Sidey: Yeah, and there's there's a sequence Where they're trying to take a sort of key military target at this bridge.

Cris: Yeah. Because the good blood tells the commandant, if you take that village I'm gonna make you general. Yeah. Yeah. And he, that's what he tells ugly. He's like, I don't always agree with our leader, but I have to follow orders. Yeah. I'm a soldier. I follow

Sidey: When it suits him. So they, they, they're doing that. And in the midst of that Aku sees a lady who he at first mistakes to be his mother and he hugs her and he's saying mother. I knew i'd find you i've been looking for you and she's like the fuck Are you like i'm not your mother And then and then and the other guys in the battalion are screaming get off her.

We want to rape her It's like as fucking bleak

Reegs: It's all done in a really in one long take as well

Sidey: And so he then he's like get off you're not my mother. He's like obviously like just completely out of it and It goes into the other room. I think he shoots a few rounds out of a window Then he goes back and they're raping her and he just fucking shoots her in the head

Reegs: And they're

Sidey: And they're really fucked off him for doing that and you're just like oh my god.

I can't take much more of this

Reegs: yeah,

so In the wake of that, suddenly the fight is called off and the commandant Idris Elba is summoned to the rebel headquarters wherever Dardogood Blood is holed up. And he insults him by making him wait for hours and hours and hours and

Sidey: like overnight, isn't it?

Yeah.

Reegs: that's there, moving him into another room and making him wait

Cris: and he also is more annoyed because before that he tells a story over the campfire where if you go to

Blood City, there's, you know, these women and your soldier and all that. So he, you should see the city. It's amazing. You should see how everything is. We're going to get a grand welcome and everybody, he kind of portrays this image of the city being so cool and he just waits there and they finally get put in a room and they just sleep there.

And that's it. They, they just had and

Sidey: I

Reegs: they don't even get water for about a day

Sidey: And when they do it's in a bag.

Cris: That's generally in Africa. When I went to Madagascar, we, we would get to, and this is not, I've not been to a war zone, but there were places where you would get bags of water instead of bottles

Sidey: of tripods put out. 'cause had to put on a pair of trousers.

Cris: Yes. He was gutted for that.

Reegs: Well, eventually dad, a good blood does see him and his sort of band of misfits that includes striker and Agu and his two IC. And when he does see him, he eventually makes it pretty clear that he's being demoted slash promoted. He's being moved upstairs to a position vice secretary of something or

Sidey: trying to explain to the commandant that this war will end and we need to position ourselves, you know, people are going to look on this war and we're not going to

Reegs: good. We can't have old soldiers and all this sort of shit

Sidey: be associated with anything.

Great things

for me. So I'm gonna lose your battalion. Right.

for him,

like,

Cris: And

Sidey: even the promotion, I don't think

Cris: about my

Sidey: he just wants to carry on.

Cris: Yeah. And also how about my money

Sidey: and he's bloodthirsty

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And, but in the midst of this, 2IC's been promoted and accepted it like right in front of you. And you're thinking, I don't know if he's going to be that keen about that.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, because obviously good blood positions.

This is what a great honor honor that you're going to be, you know, vice secretary to the janitor or whatever, and you're going to be now the new leader of the chart of the battalion. Yeah. Like you say, two ICS well up for it. And so when the meeting is over and it's clear that this is what is going to

Sidey: Well, he tells, Commandant tells everyone to f k off and Delta Goodrim tells the guards to go. So, it's just them two left and he's, he tells him f k off, like you were never going to promote me or whatever. And he just storms out in the end and tells, he says, right, come on, we're going, we're going to the whorehouse.

He's lined up this

Reegs: we've lined up

Sidey: it's a madam with some underage girls in the back.

Cris: And

the lady actually says that I don't have anything for the young ones. So you can imagine that they probably had even younger girls there,

Reegs: I will

Cris: which, which I'd rather know. Yeah. Anyway.

Reegs: So yeah, Commandant grabs his girl and goes off. Sort of coerces 2IC into it as well, although he doesn't take too much,

Sidey: Something happens. A gunshot goes off. And it's

It. The girl, the lady that two IC was with has been, they say, playing with his gun and it's gone

Reegs: I suppose the commandant paid her

Sidey: Yes. I think it was all, it was completely set up to have him killed. insinuated. Yeah.

Cris: to IC all straight goes, you did this.

Sidey: Yeah. He's, he's, he calls it straight away. He knows that having been promoted in his face and done like that, he, he was on a. Is skating on thin ice?

Cris: Yeah. But

Reegs: But anyway,

basically it kicks off another bloodbath. All the women are shot Agu involved in this as well gunning down. And the commandant at 2IC is taken out, but dies, doesn't he? Yeah. And the commandant and the battalion leave. And then we get a sort of montage of them basically being bombarded with heavy ordnance from, I guess, the rebel

Cris: Yes,

Reegs: They were

Cris: they just left, yes, yeah.

Reegs: And eventually they take shelter at, I think it's a gold

Sidey: it's a gold mine, yeah.

Reegs: And we get a terrific. Like one take scene here where the guy is randomly shooting bullets out into the field and he runs out. Everybody, you can see everybody's off their tits. They're all smoking weed and all sorts of stuff. And they run out of bullets. So I go sent in this one long take to walk through the trenches.

Sidey: it's just two guys, like, in, kneeling, like, sitting in this, it's waist high, I think, the,

Reegs: moves

Cris: puddle.

Sidey: Got any bullets? No. They're fucked, they're

Reegs: their tits.

Sidey: finds someone, but he goes to the commandant.

We're out, we're out

of

Reegs: gets to the commandant. Exactly. Yeah.

Sidey: And then I think it's the new 2IC, just comes along and says, We're out. We're leaving.

Reegs: Yeah. They've got no food.

They've

Sidey: no point being here. We've got nothing. He

Cris: What

do you think it will happen? And then obviously Commandant threatens them, You're nothing, if you're gonna go what? You're gonna surrender?

Sidey: he's got like he's now he's kind of impotent. He's got no leverage on them because there's

Cris: There's

Reegs: no resources

Sidey: reason to stay like he's got no power over them anymore. They're either gonna be killed where they are, or they could surrender and try and take their, you know, their last chances to just leave.

They just walk out.

Reegs: blackmail them with some awful shit about your families and them abandoning you and you'll be disowned and all that

Sidey: they've heard it all before at this point.

Reegs: Well, it's not the worst thing

Sidey: heard. Yeah, exactly.

Reegs: And then shortly after that they Surrendered

Cris: to the UN. Yeah.

Reegs: And then they're sent to a missionary and suddenly they're allowed to be kids again.

They're playing and,

Cris: which, which this is kind of, for me, that was came back to a quote from the film where I think after the first time he kills it, because he keeps praying throughout the movie after, after every time, after that, he killed that woman.

After he killed a man with a machete. God, are you watching this? Yeah. How will I be able to be a kid again? Yeah. After I've done this, whatever the, the thing was, and then

Sidey: And unfortunately Stryker has been killed in one of these skirmishes.

Reegs: Yeah

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: Which is where we first, not the first time, but where we really see him, the death that really affects him in the, in the field, obviously his family affected him.

And now, He he's not completely mute, but he's talking to a missionary worker she's trying to get him to open up about Just tell me anything might make you feel better If you tell me some of the stuff that's gone on if you want to open up about a thing And he's not completely mute like so I could but he's I just don't I don't want to

Reegs: Well, but you can't believe a nine year old boy is having to say like, you know, I've done terrible things and if you knew the things I'd done, you'd think I were a

Sidey: and I am one He

Reegs: Yeah, I was like, that is not what children should be talking about. And then you know, and he says, I used to be a good boy. I used to have a family that loved me and all that stuff.

And then it ends really with Agu running into the surf with a bunch of other kids

Sidey: He sees them playing with a ball in the water. And he almost like his face lights up. I'm like, wow, I could just go and play. And you're like, go on, go on.

Cris: Go on. Yeah. Finally, some positivity again.

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: And that's the end. And there's no, because obviously there's no, the only thing is adaptation after a book. There's no true story, but at the same time.

It could be a true story in one of the many countries in Africa that had a civil war in the last 30 years.

Reegs: It felt very, I mean, not that I've got a big frame of reference for it, but it feels authentic. I mean, at least part of that is because of the, it's brilliantly directed as well. But this is a pretty powerful movie, eh? And a great performances from a complete cast of unknowns. Yes.

Cris: except for Idris Elba, there's no, no one else

Reegs: And he's brilliant as well, and it's not, it's not an easy role.

Sidey: No, it's not.

Cris: Or the accent and the way

Sidey: He, so he is good at, so first time I've seen him was in the Wire. I had no idea he was a Brit.

You know, he's, he's really good at accents, I think. Well these ones that I've seen him do, he carries it off very well. And like you say, obviously he's playing like the biggest scumbag going, and it's a great performance, but the kid, Agu, is like fucking knockout.

Reegs: Yeah, because he does naive and sort of horrifyingly mature in equal measure and yeah It's it's really really good and it has a very striking look at a rich color palette as well

Sidey: It's good because sometimes it'll show you like a horrific battle, you know And other times it can look really beautiful landscape wise, you know, and you think god that's all going on, you know in the same places Yeah

Reegs: Powerful, heartbreaking, takes you to some difficult places. Very well made good score as well. Synthy.

Cris: it was so violent. I don't, I don't think I've, I've listened to the except for the sound of bullets. And

yeah. But yeah, I, I, the, I've seen this before. And when I told you guys about it and you, none of you seen it before, I thought, right, I'm going to nominate this to be fair. The gods must be crazy.

Was a nomination because of this. And because this was an African

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah

Cris: theme and I thought, right, I'm going to make it in a way in African.

Sidey: theme

Cris: And if I would have known about the movie that I watched this week, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, I probably would have nominated that, being a better movie and a real story.

Sidey: to do a wind themed episode,

Cris: But, yeah.

Reegs: But it's been a thing though in midweek is where we've gone back and re evaluated things that we liked when we were kids I mean we watched short circuit and that turned out to be absolute dog shit, didn't it?

Cris: dog shit. But anyway, coming back to this, I really enjoyed the first time I watched it and when I, when you guys, especially because it's with Idris Elba and it's a Netflix production. So I thought you might've seen it, you know, how algorithms or however it works on Netflix pops up and it just shows you random things because you watch this, watch that.

I, I really liked it the first time.

I

wasn't very keen to watch it again that soon. I think it's 2017.

Reegs: now, a bit earlier, I think. Yeah. 15.

Cris: Okay. So it's been a fairly almost 10 years. So I've seen it probably when it came out and then never since, and it's going to be a long time before I watch it again, but I thought it was brilliant.

Sidey: It's not something you throw off a bit of light entertainment.

I mean, it's full on It's I think it's brilliant. It's really really well done.

Reegs: It sort of sits along a little bit as almost as a companion piece In vibe a little bit something like city of god or something like

Sidey: I was getting, yeah, because Little Dice and all that,

Reegs: yeah.

But yeah

Sidey: Very good. Strong, strong recommend this one.

Reegs: Chris

Cris: strong recommend.

Sidey: And then finishing up this week with Tales of Africa. Which was really hard to find anything about.

Reegs: at all. Yeah. About this one was from Cameroon, I think this is a series of six

Sidey: Hmm. Yes. Fables, parables, that kind of thing.

Reegs: This was directed by a chap called Nais Yumbe in Con Connect in conjunction with a guy called De Ali Beri.

Sidey: Yes.

well, we've

Reegs: Yes. I guess the framework is probably the same for all the episodes, though I didn't watch another, which is Papa Nazinu comes and tells a story.

Sidey: He's, he's in a marketplace. And he's trying to get some food and then just to the side of him, there's a kickoff because someone has borrowed some tools from someone else.

It's the big fucker, this guy that's lent the stuff as well.

Reegs: has borrowed some tools from someone else. Big fucker this guy that's lending stuff. Yeah, he's

Sidey: Yeah, he's not given the tools back and the big fella's like, you promised and now I've had to do all that fucking work without them.

Yeah. And you've let me down and the fella, the old boy who's in the market, he then gets out this traditional

Reegs: What was that? I put, I put, I must look it up and then I didn't.

Sidey: It's not a guitar, not a sitar.

Cris: kind of,

Sidey: It's two, two spherical parts and a neck with some strings. So it's sort of a guitar looking

Reegs: doesn't sound very guitary.

He

Sidey: plays that and then he starts to recite this story

About.

it's.

things and make it. It's about keeping

promises.

Reegs: a hunter in an

Sidey: Yeah. And in this one, he's not that the hunter is not having success. Hunting and so the family are hungry. His wife is encouraging him to keep going. You know, what choice do they have?

He's set a lot of snares and traps but nothing's happening and one day he goes out and in one of his traps, there is an injured antelope. Yeah. It has a dodgy leg and his eyes light up and he is about to finish it off with his spear and it talks to him. Yeah. In

Cris: to him, in

Sidey: Common tongue.

Reegs: Begs for mercy.

Sidey: Probably a bit surprising, I'd imagine. And it says, listen, if you spare me I've got some shit going on that it's going to, could make you rich.

Cris: but

Sidey: very well out of it.

Cris: to take a year. So it's like,

Sidey: So he's like, I don't know, I'm pretty hungry.

Reegs: hungry. He says, if you've got powers, why don't you use them?

And she rips him, she says, can you imagine a

Sidey: can you imagine a rich animal?

I

Reegs: and I guess the point is was a good answer though. It is, but more to the point, only humans want wealth, I think is what she was saying. So he agrees to rescue her, takes her back home.

Sidey: I think it's through a tree stump, into like the land before time or whatever. Like

Reegs: like a secret grove, isn't

Sidey: there's a load of antelope that can all talk.

And they go into, there's a nest. Which when they blow the sort of cobwebs away, there's two eggs, a black egg and a red egg It says take the black egg smash it on your doorway your gaff and you'll be You'll

have a

Cris: You'll have wealth and

Sidey: you'll have wealth and you'll be content It's like yeah, and there's a fucking red one as well sound.

It's like no Are you the black one's for you? The red one stays here, but he's greedy And he says listen i'd fucking saved your life you owe me So she's like okay Take the red one as well,

Reegs: one as well. You must

Sidey: return it seven years from today Don't fucking forget Otherwise you will experience great misfortune

Reegs: and you're thinking, well, dang it.

Sidey: Yeah, and you're thinking don't fucking forget, you know, but he doesn't have a like an Apple watch or anything to set a reminder

Cris: a reminder. he supposed to?

His wife calls him and puts him with

Sidey: Well, his wife calls him a prick. It's like, what the fuck are we gonna do with two eggs? Yeah, and he's like shut

Reegs: shut the fuck up.

They look bad. Eggs

Sidey: rotten they look bad that eggs don't look like that anyway smashes the black egg on the heart, not the heart, the, the, the entrance to the, the gaff and it, it, it's a hut and it rumbles and then massively grows in stature, just sort of like palatial kind of hut now,

Cris: They have from nothing, just a loincloth to,

Sidey: yeah, he's also, he's still got the, the red egg will enable him to talk to any animal or, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they just have a fucking rave, they just have an absolute tear up.

Reegs: They do, it's a great tune as well. They have this massive dance

Sidey: you know what, the animation style reminded me of you know when the internet came along and there was like flash animation plugins and stuff that that's how it looked to me

Reegs: stuff? That's

Sidey: Yeah, I thought it was pretty pretty cool.

Yeah, the sort of ravey dance thing goes on for a little while they they're having a good time and we see that he's now in robes.

Reegs: In robes,

Sidey: yeah, he's having He's enjoying the the spoils of his new wealth, but fucking wouldn't you know it?

Silly bollocks has forgotten a seven year rule.

Cris: year rule.

Yeah, passing the

Sidey: His talking dog talks to a blackbird

Reegs: a black

Sidey: or something. Yeah. And the man's like, sorry, but you fucked it, haven't you? You're, it's a month. He's gone over by one month.

And he sort of looks up to the heavens and sort of shouts out in frustration and his robes disappear back into his loincloth.

And he's fucked. And it not just back to what it was like, he cannot face the the judgment and the, the. Piss taking from the villages. So he's has to exile himself. Exile, yeah. So I think there's a motto

Reegs: I didn't understand how Pap and Azinu's story tied into any successful resolution. Because they don't really go back to the people who were arguing at the beginning, do

Sidey: They, I think, I think the big guy killed him. I think he, I think he murdered the other guy.

Reegs: the

Sidey: The moral of the story was don't break a promise.

Or you'll be killed by an enraged

Cris: you'll lose

Sidey: Or, you'll lose your magical egg powers.

Reegs: Or you'll lose your magical egg powers. That doesn't even make

Sidey: doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. I mean, like, everything has a Wikipedia

Reegs: people who wrote it, there's very little about, I

Cris: a little bit on TV5 and, and just just a tiny, tiny bit of information

Reegs: The director has a blog that he stopped in about 2011,

Sidey: There is a website called Tales of Africa.

Reegs: Yeah. It's

Sidey: nothing to do with

Reegs: with this. Yeah. No,

Cris: not this, yeah, I've seen that as well.

But I quite enjoy this

Sidey: Yeah, it's really good.

Cris: Obviously, I don't know if I'm ever going to watch the rest of the episodes. But 16 minutes, it's available on Netflix. The animation was good. I actually quite liked it. This one was in French. I don't know if it, but it's a, it's more of an African Cameroonian French.

It's not, it's not a clear French as in Parisian French, but

Sidey: it would be a good one for kids because it's you know shows them a different culture and different take on things.

Cris: it's got positive

Sidey: be a strong. Yes. I think yeah I think this would be a strong recommend.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Who is nominating for next week?

Cris: I don't look at me. I've just done

Sidey: Okay.

Cris: with that. That was

Reegs: me? Yeah, I'll do it. Go for it. Alright.

Sidey: Now, do it.

Reegs: Well, I don't know what it is, but I'll let you know.

Sidey: Um well, that's good. This was strong. Sort of indifferent midweek or I guess but I think we enjoyed the rest of the African content. Yeah. Well done. Well done,

Cris: it. And especially I didn't know anything about the cartoons. So I'm quite happy with that because it's so difficult to find, yeah, it's so difficult to find something that I can watch and be like, okay, this is actually,

Reegs: Doesn't make you want to kill yourself,

Cris: well, no, but it's enjoyable, you know, Jesus all right.

Sidey: Reegs

Reegs: is also not doing this anymore.

Cris: La Revedere.