Midweek Mention... The Birthday Cake

SPEAKER_00 0:12

This is a film I'd never heard of. It's called The Birthday Cake. Yes. It does have people in it that I do know. I know. That's why I Ewan McGregor's in it. Yeah. Jeremy Allen White is in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Is this a recent movie?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

2021.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Which me five years ago. My goodness me.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yeah. There's other people. I hang on.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Yeah, there's all the mobs bothered.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Val Kilmer, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

And they actually have to lean into his health at the time. He has one of those things on his throat. The thing you press to speak, I don't know how you call it. William Fickner? Yeah. And Lorraine Lorraine Bracco. Yeah, okay. So people like that are in this. Louis Guzman, I always look at it. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Lorraine Bracco is the Sopranos connection, and there was plenty of that in our other movie that we watched this week.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Well, in this one as well, big pussies in in this uh Oh right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So the premise is we get uh we get a flash where it starts off with the the uh sort of protagonist as a child.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah. Or a youth. He's not even he's not like a child, he's like teenager kind of vibe.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yeah, and he's trying to they're trying to sort of teach him to toughen up. Yeah. He's getting beaten up, he's got black eye, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yeah, by these rushing his stuff. He walks into the church and Ewan McGregor is the priest, and he walks into the church, light lits a candle, which we find out is for his dad, and he's got sunglasses, massive sunglasses on, and for the whole scene, he's just in the church with massive sunglasses. And father, whatever, Ewan, I can't remember his name, but anyway, he is like, I'll take those off. What happened? Are these Russian kids picked on someone and basically got battered?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, his he's got family connections that are known to be Dodge. Yeah. And then his his his cousin or someone who's giving him a pet dog about how to toughen up and basically pal. Just as pal, is it? And actually gives him a gun. So these kids confront him again and he pulls out the gun on them, and one of the the most of them run away, but this one kid stays and realises he's never gonna like shoot him. And punches him in the face and just smacks him again. So he's not quite cut out for he's not a gang life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Street street street life.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And then it's ten years later. Yeah, then we go back to we go f to present day, ten years later, and he's with his mother and he's getting dressed up ready to go out, isn't he? Yeah. He's getting like his name is Giovanni, but they call him Gio. And I still have some guy Silo Silo S-H-I-L-O-H. She Silo Fernandez. Alright. Anybody recognise him. And his mum is Lorraine. Yeah, it's Lorraine Brackel, his mum. She's dropping the needle on some vinyl. I think it's just like some Frankie Valley kind of vibe going on. It's really like trying to do the good fellas thing of having that kind of music play while they're Yeah, and he's like, Oh, you know he can get C Ds and whatever, and he's like, Shut up, dickhead. But she is sending him out with the titular birthday cake. Yeah. And you've got to do this and you've got to do that, and he's like, Oh, fucking hell, every year he's basically got to take this birthday cake, and they've obviously been doing this for ten years, cross town to his uncle's gas.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, and that's his the ten-year anniversary of his dad's passing away.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

And nobody knows how his dad died, but he was found in a in the booth of a car. So not well. Yeah. Not natural cause in, let's be honest. No, that wasn't a natural cause.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

And so what I was picking up from the film was that I didn't like it in the sense that it looks like shit. Does it? Yeah. I don't know like if it was like a cost thing or just a cause it seems to me like a conscious choice to have it very handheld, all over the place, but also nothing really seems to be in focus. Oh god. And do you remember when JJ Abrams had that thing for lens flare?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And then there was a piss take trailer where it was like the scenes in it like this towards the start of the film where it's just almost unwatched, like you can't see anything on the screen because there's so much movement and just kinda not steady and grainy as well. Yeah, I mean it looks like a student's made it, or you know, I mean it is some guy's debut feature, but he had previously made music videos for like proper established people, so it wasn't like it didn't know which end of the camera to look down and all that, but it really I didn't like the look of it.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

So it really like didn't I'm gonna say the even like this was the first thing by the time you get to the scene where he goes across town with with this basically with his cake wrapped in tinfoil and he goes to say to see Jamie Allen and his in the They got a bakery? Yeah, in the bakery sweet shop place, and when he gets there, the all the dialogue seems rushed. You know when everything is it's almost like they they're trying to put so many words, whoever wrote it or whoever tried to do it, it it feels like they they try to put too many words in the film.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Plus Jeremy Allen White's character is just super aggro, hates everyone. Yeah, he's supercharged on drugs and his partner there. I don't know that but they partners' partners are just business partners for the bakery. But I think they're also together. You're thinking, what's she doing with this guy? Like he's just such an asshole. There there's like rival gangs, Puerto Rican gangs. This is when Luis they're in a cab and Luis Goodman's Guzman is the cab driver. And that's the best part of the film. He kind of glimpses in the wing a few times when they're laying into the Puerto Ricans, and like the third time is like, look, look, guys, just to just say no, I'm Puerto Rican, so I don't appreciate all the thing, and he's like, fuck off.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

And it basically has to take this cake across town, and meanwhile, his cousin or his mate that tried to toughen him up when he was a child, he's now out of prison, and he's double-crossed the Puerto Ricans, he's allegedly talking to the feds, and he's also part of his uncle's gang, kind of Italian connection people. So he's wanted basically by everyone, and he's only spoke to Gio on the phone. Yeah. And he's like, Oh, I'm hanging out at this Puerto Rican chick's place, whatever, come and see me. And this is basically a uh his which I'm pretty sure it would have been a lot easier to just take an Uber from his mum's gaff to this guy's house.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

I know, it's so unnecessary, all this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

And and he didn't have to go through all this. He basically walks through half of Brooklyn or wherever he lives, yeah, to bump into all these people that everyone knows everyone, and hey, way, hey, you know, these New York classic typical stereotypes, and he just keeps bumping into more and more people, and he goes to see Leo, he loses his phone, and the Puerto Ricans are there, they execute this guy who he told where Leo was. Yeah. He runs off, loses his phone, ends up at his uncle's gaff in the end, yeah, with the cake. Fine. Somehow he still ran with a cake, but he lost his phone. Priorities, I guess. Yeah. And then even the the whole atmosphere in the house is just it's just so strange, really.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, i well he comes to learn, although it it wasn't obvious from finding from your father being found murdered in the back of a car, in a in the trunk, slash boot, or whatever you want to say it, that maybe his dad was mixed up in some shady shit. And also you and McGregor's priest is also maybe not quite as trustworthy as as he might first appear. So he's gonna go back to the meet Valmer and there's not much to it really. They're just there's a sort of intrigue of just like seeing Val Kilmer towards the end of his life and he's you know having to do all this stuff because in in real actuality he's fucked, you know. So he's his vocals are pretty out there. Yeah. But there's a big sort of twist in the tale because the birthday cake that's been delivered, they've poisoned it.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

Oh the mum poisoned it, and by all accounts the priest. Yes. But he's allergic to chocolate. Okay, so he's never gonna eat it.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So he was never gonna eat it because he's gone off the allergic to chocolate, I can't eat it. The perfect person to send in there. Yeah. He didn't have to lie about eating.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Retribution for having the old man kills. Yeah. It's like the retribution for the red wedding, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he ends up eating his.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Kill everybody. Nice. Yeah. Which is a I have to say, it's a very quick, quick reacting case. Yeah, it's fast acting. Yeah, it's it's really really high, high poison. And I'm pretty sure then he runs back to Leo, and basically his uncle hired a cop to kill Leo, and then he finds out that that cop who he was basically a dirty cop hired by the the mob, that cop killed his dad as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Right. They were all in on it. He shoots Well, that that's William Fickner's the corrupt cop. Yeah. He has basically G O's have to kill him.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

And yeah, even at the start, that was when I first started to think, man, this looks shit. William Fickner's there and in his it's got like a really sort of cheesy looking tash and Avioshays, and it looks like something like the Speasty Voice sabotage video. Okay. But not in a cool ironic. Yeah, not that video. Just look cheap and nasty to us. And because he's had to he's had to take him out, because he's obviously involved in all this, it's all just corruption and mob and you know, all this sort of stuff. And Father Kelly, who is Jim Gregor, just gives him a sort of fake alibi to basically get him out of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Oh yeah, you were painting here all night, whatever. Yeah. In the end. That's basically it, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

But you can probably pick it up that it's not a strong recommend coming. Well, I'm not feeling the love.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

There's no strong recommend coming. I I didn't really read into IMDB or all that. I had it on the Naughty Box, and I can't remember where I've seen the trailer. Um it must have been on Amazon Prime or something at some point when it was free, and I didn't I didn't actually see it, but I think from the trailer it looked like a it didn't look like a first-class mob film. Yeah. But I thought, I know all these actors. Yeah, you got that. Yeah, I looked at the class.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Because Silvino's in it. Although people say you are looking at it from the outside before you got potential.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

All these actors are they being in films that were actually good. The visual style sounds really off-putting. Does it get is it all the way through like that as well?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

That would really bother. Because he's like walking around town and so they it's almost like unnecessarily like POV shorts and stuff. Like, no, just fucking get the camera like fucking now done.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Still making it like an indie movie, basically, rather than it's an indie.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Put your fucking camera on a tripod. What's that? I mean it's just so unnecessary. And it takes you out of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

It's just yeah, it wasn't I I mean, I watched the whole thing because obviously I numbed it. I was like, okay, well, I can't just be upset with myself and not watch it. Um but it wasn't great. It's disappointing. You're hoping for more from it, I have to say.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. So not a birthday. A strong knot recommended. Yeah, not a birthday cake recommended.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

I'd never heard of it, so it can just be consigned to irrelevancy.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah. Right, okay, yeah. I think it was also it was one of them that you watch it with Paramount or with No, it was just Prime Rental. Is it rental or case? Because I had it on on both, and I thought initially I thought, oh well, maybe this is a I wonder if the guys do anything. You know, like someone filmed in the cinema or something like that. A cam rip. Yeah, yeah, one of them. But but then I I put it on Amazon Prime and it was the same, and I just spent it.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

It sounds like a conscious, really annoying conscious choice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

So there we go. I just want to know. So it's Jimmy Giannipoulos is the director. I don't know him. I just want to know if he's done anything else. Or did this just bury him?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Never heard of it. Considering the actors involved, I never saw a trailer for it. I've never heard the name of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Nothing film-wise that we'd know.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

I don't know. Was it just a prime thing or was I I don't I didn't really know?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

No, it was a proper movie.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Okay, so someone actually yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, I'm guessing it would have had a load of like screens in New York, but not much further afield than that. I mean there's a the cast is decent, but it just doesn't land. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Doesn't land all source. Yeah, yeah. You can put a cake in the oven, but if it's shit, yeah. Don't eat it. Don't eat it, yeah.