Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Trailer Park Boys: Don't Legalize It

New plans.

New destinations.

New living arrangements.

Classic Trailer Park Boys.

Going back to the show's roots, writers Mike Clattenburg and Mike O'Neill craft an hilarious instalment, with some of the series's best lines, and enough fresh material to keep things going for the foreseeable future.

Some of the absurdities that drive the narrative, notably how often the boys end up in jail, are playfully referred to, which adds a touch of the gritty galvanized real, a fablelike finesse, and a modest cheeky awareness.

At the same time, said absurdities pleasantly abound, the drive from Moncton to Montréal passing-by rather quickly, Bubbles (Mike Smith) having spent 2 years living under J-Roc's (Jonathan Torrens) porch, Julian's (John Paul Tremblay) latest money making scheme soaked and surgical, Lahey's (John Dunsworth) rampage, beyond anything seen before.

Touching moments subtly romanticize the film, Ricky (Robb Wells) breaking down as Bubbles considers moving to Kingston, the tear Randy (Patrick Roach) sheds for Lahey augmenting their torn troubled trust.

Bubbles's struggles hold the film together.

He's usually the level-headed moral knot tying things together, but he's fallen on tough times, and his friends don't know what to do, because he's the one who normally solves these kinds of problems.

Great plot device.

Dean Soltys's editing reminded me why I fell in love with the show over a decade ago, perfectly timed cocky commentaries acting like sharp snarky visceral strikes.

I wasn't sure if they'd be able to pull-off a road trip far to the West, but they do, and they do it so well.

Outrageous.  

Friday, April 25, 2014

Enemy

Well, if David Lynch is frustratingly not going to make films anymore, I suppose other directors may as well work within his domain, expanding its carnal lethally chipper metamorphosis to absolve instinctive claims, encouraging their characters to experimentally confront themselves as curative acts of regenerative p/haze, immersively diversifying degenerative converse sights, for the love of a beautiful woman, for the transience of a femme fatale.

Denis Villeneuve prospers.

Enemy is too stark for direct comparisons with Lynch's work, but penetrating transverse inveteracies still construct its obsessed will, a trembling fearful confrontation with an other,
forsaken withdrawal, fey iron amplitudes.

Isabella Rossellini (Mother) inhabits.

Sarah Gadon (Helen) resembles Patricia Arquette.

A clandestine group internally promotes coveted exclusive performances.

Identity crises clarify.

Challenging co-existence.

The reality the protagonist cohorts ambiguously disdains its materialistic shell, swapping seductions for synergies, intimately, with standing.

A web based conjugal convection rallies Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) to the next internment, the closing credits befouling his rise, follow the sentient bread crumbs, to unlock a foresighted rendez-vous.

In plume.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm)

The importance of observing traditional checks and balances can be psychotically nurtured if oppressive horrific novelties ironically pasteurize love's volatile abandon.

To tenderly sympathize with incarnate cruelty is to harvest oneself a baleful dereliction.

A surprise can self-awarely compromise a narrative's prim and proper puerility if its imaginary facts have not been uniformly concentrated.

Awkward evasive perplexities.

Undisciplined counterstrikes, will be willfully punished even if their unexpected serenities instigate lasting calm.

Assuredly.

The madness associated with a cultural code's disavowed diversions creates sickeningly compelling bonds of trust in Xavier Dolan's brilliantly disturbing Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm), awestruck incredulous bereft terror, to submit, penalize, collapse, love's dedicated time honoured insurgencies, incomparably construct an orderly trespass.

There's no need to introduce his face firsthand, just driven concrete crazed malevolency.

Violently obscuring.

Before the resurrection of sound.

Editing by Xavier Dolan.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Bears

Ebulliently emerging from their cavernous Winter's den, finding themselves scampering behind their ardent Mother, Sky, Scout and Amber, born atop an imposing majestic mountain, must quickly learn what it means to bear, to survive the threatening upcoming months, and ensure that they're fit for their next torpid slumber.

While trying to have a little fun along the way.

Imitating mom is well within their natural dexterities, but precisely duplicating her actions proves difficult, seeing how they may be having a better time revelling in their mischief, adorably exploring this and that, coming to terms with their brief bounding youth.

Sky does her best, nevertheless (Amber's more aware of the danger), teaching them the ancient ways of Alaskan grizzlykind, patient, observant, nurturing, ready to protect at all costs, doing everything she can, to stimulate their growth.

While food is scarce, tensions run high, and finding what would otherwise be a colossal seasonal feast, is fraught with competitive angst, those not possessing the requisite weight impounded, forced to keep searching, until Valhalla dawns.

Disneynature's Bears offers family friendly insights into the lives of young grizzlies, not without moments that may cause you to think not another Bambi, this is the harsh world of bears, beautifully euphemized, alluringly prohibitive.

The film's primary focus is, correct, bears, and it predominantly examines bearkind, which is both a strength and a weakness, clearly evidencing a variety of behaviours for curious audiences, while perhaps not focusing enough attention on surrounding flora and fauna.

I'm curious to know if the filmmakers had a plan for the Bambi scenario?

Mandatory viewing for jurisdictions considering hosting a Spring bear hunt.

How many Scouts and Ambers end up orphaned every year because of such hunts?

How many?

Narrated by John C. Reilly.

Hoping there's a sequel.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

In/directly contextualizing striking pre-emptive phenomenons, Captain America: The Winter Soldier bravely condenses controversial polarities, from which it extracts a democratic essence, sentimentally sublime in its naiveté.

Perhaps beating Transcendence to the punch.

The issue of brilliant Nazi war criminals finding sanctuary in the United States after World War II is acknowledged, diabolical agents of HYDRA having nested themselves within S.H.I.E.L.D, whose limitless technological resources have given them free reign to menace.

They hope to take out millions of enemies in one extremely precise swoop, the ultimate pre-emptive strike, internationally derailing syndications of law and order, egregiously ignoring the global human factor.

The infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D partially vindicates Eric Snowden and Julian Assange as their methods are proactively defended by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).

Radiantly representing today's youth.

The key to the relationship between these plot threads and the film's subconscious depiction of America's current identity lies in the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) himself, who has no identity, who was revived to serve HYDRA and serve HYDRA alone, the memory of who he once was having been shattered into oblivion.

He is recognized by Captain America (Chris Evans), however, who is also having identity issues, yet he remembers why America (and Canada) fought during the second World War, thereby earning the trust of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

Like Thor: The Dark World, Winter Soldier struggles to find itself during its first 40 minutes or so, although in this case such disappointments fit perfectly.

It's important to remember that when great actors aren't performing at the top of their game, it's okay to ask them to do additional takes.

I don't know how you'd go about doing this.

Just don't go Godard on them (see Richard Brody's Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard).

What follows is a thrilling politicized retrocrazed rush, Steve Rodgers outshining Themistocles, another captivating Marvel film, oh what a world what a world.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Dabba (The Lunchbox)

The hearty provision of delicious nourishment slowly melts Saajan's (Irrfan Khan) frozen exterior in Ritesh Batra's Dabba (The Lunchbox), Ila (Nimrat Kaur) enraptured as someone finally takes note, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) benefitting from the frosty fallout.

As depicted in the film, Indian lunch delivery is a complicated procedure, providing employment for many, their services applauded by Harvard.

Lunch, potentially homemade, is cooked, picked-up, dropped-off at a central location, then distributed to hungry workers, as the day's labour approaches its extended period of rest.

In Ila's case, the lunch she prepares for her husband is delivered to the wrong person.

Curmudgeony Saajan revels in his good fortune even if his bouncy inquisitive replacement (he's retiring) Shaikh continuously annoys him with his enthusiastic go-getting.

Ila discovers that her husband isn't receiving his lunch and begins sending Saajan letters, the two slowly developing a fledgling romance thereafter, Saajan gently mending her broken heart.

Hesitantly yet tenderly unreeling, Dabba quotidianly explores the thoughts of two modest upstanding hard working subjects, their difficulties with the im/moral dimension of their love lettering, or the joys/hardships associated with transgressing cultural codes.

The film required something else to hold it together, and Shaikh's presence, youth contending with age, adds flavourful ingredients to its recipe, rounding out its amorous intentions with related thoughts concerning integrity, friendship, and saturated job markets.

Ila's relationship with her Auntie (Bharati Achrekar) achieves similar ends albeit from a domestic standpoint.

The lotus.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Jodorowsky's Dune

A filmmaker possessing the highest possible artistic intentions, for whom film is a sub/conscious pyrotechnic visceral emulsion, wildly jettisoning extracted reified ideological peaks, capable of concretely delineating multilaterally deconstructive minutia, their testaments clasping your hands and mine, distinct explosive intraoperative trysts, persuasive incipient confounding strips, Alejandro Jodorowsky almost made Dune, and his crushing curtailment still resonates to this day.

The cast and crew he assembled would have possibly been the coolest ever.

That voice which obsesses about disabling degrees of practicality was non-existent, pure unabashed committed expansive insurgence, unconcerned with what actually takes place in the novel which he hadn't even read before embracing it as his next project, motivated by perceived interpretive fortuitous pacts, the universe having opened-up and provided him with chance integral reprieved constituents, like an intergalactic curvaceous onslaught, or the ultimate Proustian daydream.

The Blueberry.

Not that his dreams weren't practical, if anything, they represented the apotheosis of practicality, a spiritual conception of teamwork seeking superlative aesthetic collegial partnerships who were to be given hands-off inspirational direction, united in their pursuit of memorializing a trance, abstraction, attraction, refraction.

Jodorowsky's son Brontis trained intensively for 2 years with a martial arts master to prepare to play Paul Atreides.

Salvadore Dalí may have made 100,000 a minute to play Shaddam Corrino IV.

Orson Welles could have gorged himself ad infinitum.

I don't want to say too much about the film, it's better if you see Jodorowsky and companions explain it themselves, the Dan O'Bannon recording fitting perfectly.

Possibly the most influential film never made, transisting semantic transcendence.

Jodorowsky envisioned a groundbreaking universal consciousness expanding waking delirium.

Too much for one film alone, its manifold parts have arguably become greater than those initially conceived.

Still like aspects of David Lynch's version.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Meetings with a Young Poet

A gifted writer's successful poetic publication emboldens his desire to meet his favourite author, Samuel Beckett (Stephen McHattie), and a letter is sent, a reply is crafted, the two meeting thereafter to see if they can keep collegial compatibility in check, incandescentally enacting a enduring competitive discussion throughout, which gradually foments a spry friendship.

A gifted performing artists seeks the rights to stage one of Beckett's plays, the rights belonging to the poet, hoping to modify an aspect which some consider prescribed, her illuminated life-force agilely advocating.

Their dialogues actively overcome an empty silence whose initial poetic flourish debilitatingly became a literal reality (his love of Beckett prevented him from writing for many years).

Meetings with a Young Poet troubled me.

At points its pretensions made me feel ill while at others I was humbly affected to the teardrop, like reading Mr. Dickens, or a poem lacking rhyme and/or rhythm which still vindicates delicate ethereal reminiscences, simultaneously jealous of Paul Susser's (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) good fortune and cognizant of why Beckett recommended to run from Proust and Joyce, his obvious love for people and the lighter side of life crushing me like waxed ephemeral wicker, two sides of the haughty intellectualized niche contending, one bound to a forlorn pincushion, the other overflowing with grace.

Carole Thomas's (Maria de Medeiros) role, her constantly revitalized cascading flora, this presence generously transmitted to her subjects of desire, thereby simultaneously transferring to them what they need to reboot while obtaining her sought after intention, infuses the film with a bounding effervescence, every bubble's balance beneficially accrued.

Character driven.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel

One of the most well-written/presented films I've seen, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel eclectically and photogenically entices his audiences to cerebrally strap themselves in, inexhaustibly affixing literary liaisons to his rambunctious gentleman's club, scriptual guardrails, amphetamines, and incisors distilled then disseminated, meticulously tidy and neat, lead character and director functioning as one, the details, the details, the details, affluence aplombed, in a duty-bound celestial amazement.

To serve is to rectify.

Young love, friendship, greed devotion admiration jealousy deflection prison-breaks swathed in a flame forsworn to its adversaries.

Retreat.

Contours convened on a swollen strap eased into vertical environed retinal eschews.

Pause.

Consented entrapping pursuant cavalcades.

Mentors and mendicants flossed in the grip.

Critical high-level catered expenditures.

Horizons harassed and danubed.

Treachery, intransigence, vertigo.

Withstanding any attempts to halt its progression, The Grand Budapest Hotel epitomizes g(u)ilded prestige, hostages lacking ransom, taste without snobbery.

Envisioned, exercised, and executed, I hesitate to say, it's my favourite Wes Anderson film yet.