Friday, November 27, 2015

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

The unfathomable having become undeniably rational, entrenched rebel forces prepare for an assault on Panem's capitol, the districts conscientiously united, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) locked down and reeling, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) disobeying direct orders to simply act as messianic catalyst, thereby overtly inspiring heroics, instinctively striking back against iconic tyranny.

But the politicians are aware of their potential post-victory predominance, and fear Everdeen's influence in their reimagined state, divisive hypotheses compromising the purity of their cause, the innocence of guiltless reckoning, pushed propagandistically to the sidelines.

The extraordinary orchestrations of the bellicosely desperate beget a dissolute response with extreme dispassionate contempt.

Two leaders, Snow and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), one male, one female, holding on to or coveting supreme authority, drastically maneuvering to inculcate anew.

Throughout The Hunger Games it's clear that the rebel's cause is just.

Snow must be defeated.

He rules absolutely.

Yet in Mockingjay - Part 2 the politics of revenge and their inherent conflagrations remind viewers that citizens of the capitol did not necessarily support Snow, and were indeed terrorized citizens themselves inasmuch as they could not politicize, as a child spots but doesn't give up the Mockingjay, her mother brutally killed moments later.

There's no invincible playbook for such situations, and when terror strikes, or absolutism oppresses, resultant countermeasures can be as uncompromising as those they intend to suppress.

The Mockingjay - Part 2 constructively operates within this volatile antagonism, providing thought provoking disparities for those who engage in war.

The film, on the one hand, seems too sterile, a lack of emotion or a too hardened drive dehumanizing the conflict, making it seem more like a textbook than a testament, still boldly running through the motions.

But on the other, this point of critique fails to recognize the cold calculating dehumanizing affects of war, which turns communities into ordinances, the mischievous into the monstrous.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones)

The brilliance of family, supportively nurturing and caring for one another, intimate bonds strengthened over time, often challenged by organically generated conflicts, still loving in its unconscious bedlam, stabilized volatility cohesively generating truth.

Anne Émond's Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones) introduces one such family, and lovingly blends their harmonies and tragedies, suicide haunting their intergenerational dialogues, a son struggling to comprehend, a granddaughter artistically responding.

The overwhelming joy corresponding to a particularly tender period of time cripples as it fades, the knowledge that it cannot be reproduced shattering a fragile sensibility, impatient as it slowly ages, unable to see future joys to come.
  
The film isn't really that sad, rather, it's a wonderfully humble and cheerful low key moderation of a family that grows together over time, focused intently on David (Maxim Gaudette) and his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay), beautifully highlighting different moments which subtly caress time passing.

Its gentle warmth gracefully tends a humanistic modesty whose sweetly flowing aesthetic embrace makes you wish you could hug someone close to you, like sitting around a campfire or snuggling beneath a comforter.

It calmly and solemnly warns against becoming too caught up in innocent ecstasies, by depicting what is lost through premature departure, without condemning those who decide to quietly slumber.

Equitable.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Remember

Decades pass, monumental changes revitalize cultures and nations are reborn, but the past still haunts survivors with an unrelenting immediacy which cannot be forgotten, forgiven, Auschwitz's legacy, rationalized perpetual vengeance.

Atom Egoyan's Remember sombrely examines such a mindset through a series of alarming encounters which thoughtfully comment on differing degrees of punishment.

Much stronger than The Captive or Devil's Knot.

A holocaust survivor, Zev Gutman (Christopher Plummer), the last person alive who can identify a Nazi war criminal, begins a solemn journey to find him, guided by a compatriot who's too infirm to travel.

When you consider the relationship between Gutman's health and his mission, his mission itself seems profound yet reckless, he can't even remember what he's doing whenever he wakes up, obsessive testaments, pure uncompromising revenge.

The film viscerally questions Gutman's quest, apart from one sequence where a contemporary Nazi is confronted, by integrating lives lived and lost, the present, the world that bloomed after World War II's devastation ended, notably in the final scene where the oppressor is caught ensconced in his familial bower.

Daughter and granddaughter witnessing.

He could have been tried, sentenced, flushed out by an organization dedicated to convicting war criminals.

Absolutely punishing the guilty in front of the innocent through murder 70 years after they mindlessly followed totalitarian commands is not the way to move progressively forward.

Such acts ensure the perseverance of vengeance perpetually.

Remember cautiously yet capably constructs this idea.

Perhaps Kurlander (Jürgen Prochnow) wasn't mindlessly following orders, he could have been one of the psychotics, but his family remains guiltless in the film, unaware of the horrors he once unleashed.

Volatile subject matter skilfully postulated.

With the best twist I've seen in awhile.

Haunting in its drive.

Provocative.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Love the Coopers

A tough look at loveable yet prickly familial frustration as interdependence contends to celebrate the holiday season.

Woe abounds as expectations have led to disappointment and latent engrained perennial disputes condone the eruption of homogenous feuding.

Yet love also persists, coating their arguments with huggable layers of rosy historical endearment, cozy familiarity embedding accessible cheer, like fluffy comfortable blankets filled with age-old soul, reunionizing banter and pith, struggling to reach out amidst the haughty grievances.

It's a Christmas film at that, and yes, I could examine it through a less festive lens, but I did leave the theatre feeling warm and gooey inside, if not lightheaded, reminded as I was of the merriment and wonder that excels at this time of year, eager to watch Christmas specials on YouTube, contemplative of the excitement that still has yet to come.

It is heavy on the patriarchy, the women usually coming round to seeing the male point of view.

Balancing the genders strengthens scripts even if you're writing about cave people or the 19th century.

Bucky (Alan Arkin) does ideally represent the enlightened patriarch whose occasionally harsh counsel aids his family and others as they interact with one another and struggle to deal with life's pressures.

His grandson Bo (Maxwell Simkins) following in his footsteps.

The petulance and the poignancy, the dazzling and the discontent, Love the Coopers heralds the holiday season, along with myriad other cultural exclamations, like a blazing birth of mirthful obstinance, eggnog spiked with gin, it's a great time of the year.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Le Garagiste

A long drawn out inexorable purgatorial condition eats away at the fiesty Adrien (Normand D'Amour), Le Garagiste, his active life having been reduced to a series of strict and tedious rummagings, inexhaustible excretions, as he patiently awaits a new kidney.

Fatigue leads him to hire a young mechanic to work at his garage, fate having tricked him into engaging his only son, whom he didn't help raise but never forgot, suddenly communicating, in the language of a younger generation.

The phone rings after 5 years of silence to announce that a donor has been found.

But the new kidney doesn't jive, and after a lively respite, his routine hauntingly rematerializes.

Courage in the face of adversity waning, he's left psychologically paralyzed.

A sad film, a mournful investigation of intergenerational and marital misfires, the desperate longing to joyfully convalesce, the crushing mental instability of a far too embalmed lifestyle.

Entrenched.

Renée Beaulieu illustrates Adrien's despondency by repeatedly filming him back at the hospital, hooked up to the dialysis machine, antiseptic ubiquity.

I thought many scenes were cut too short and more could have been done with Adrien's relationship with his son Raphaël (Pierre-Yves Cardinal).

Whether or not Beaulieu meant for Le Garagiste to indirectly comment on the current national euthanasia debate is a point for consideration.

Raphaël doesn't have a life altering kidney for instance.

It seems to be suggesting that it's a positive thing, as Adrien's suffering becomes too much to bear.

I think euthanasia should be an option for chronically ill patients suffering intensely.

If God thinks they should continue to live a life of constant pain for years in order to die naturally, he or she could be more loving, don't you think?

Complicated issues bucolically narrativized, Le Garagiste coddles to question, while incrementally challenging stoic perseverance.

Cold and bleak, it subtly generates a wistful external dialogue, celebrating health by interrogating helplessness, that which could be, harrowingly dislocating.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Burnt

Excellence.

The pursuit of a constantly revolving evolving aesthetic immediacy cohesively demanding strict attention to every detail.

The tiniest seemingly unnoticeable pittance searing an unforgettable scathing blight on chef Adam Jones's (Bradley Cooper) culinary reputation, as he coordinates his kitchen's impeccable outputs with the assiduous rigour of an omniscient razor sharp extremity.

In real time.

His team responding in turn, observantly and efficiently respecting his knowledge, his hyper-reactive creative discipline, they merit the strength of his sought after 3 star accreditation, lacerating the wake of his stern commanding temper, acerbic accessibility, confident he can help them improve.

Which he does, having reformed his life after recklessly responding to his calling's accompanying stresses with a maddeningly adroit consumption of interrogative intoxicants, his resultant penance exasperatingly tedious, competently undertaken, to the haunting revelatory end.

Convalescence.

Adam Jones, the exceptional, striving for authenticity with every nanopeculiarity, synthesizing tradition with inspiration to practically adjudicate ingenuity.

Thriving under pressure, Burnt celebrates teamwork as opposed to constellation, the imperfections of the subjective idealized thereby, accentuated yet indoctrinated, revealing, one picturesque particle at a time.

Humanistic.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Victoria

Free-spirited rustlings, attentive impromptu celebratory collisions, mirthful match making meaninglessly meandering, startlingly energetic Dionysian reciprocity, trending, inquisitively intercepting, a night out, a night out with restless strangers, immediate acculturation, Berlin, she's from Spain, works in a café organic, has to work the next day, talented artistic discipline, immersing, communicating, meets wild pack catches eye of one, they converse explore activate, through the streets on the roof, seated, swathed in inexplicable fascination, lives lived trust, a starstruck elegance, a flowering imprecision, cut short suddenly, suddenly descending into ruin, a favour, payback, high-stakes manipulation, demands indiscreetly delegated, crime, they must commit crime, no time to think, immediate reaction, Victoria (Laia Costa) saved to embark discriminately, she only understands Sonne (Frederick Lau), she's the driver, sequestered behind the wheel, they act acquire burn, escape, fried on adrenaline and amphetamines they crash the nightlife, reason rushing in, comprehension, awareness, coerced to desperately perform then crushed, incendiary largesse, despotic agency, consequences closing, unrestrained pressurized emergencies, stick together, trust, compensate, a gross underestimation necessitating one sole response assaults the beautiful with extreme neglect, gentility infused with reckless violence, souls tenderly humanizing warmth and compassion forced to willingly expedite the whims of a psychopath, what could have been haunting you for hours afterwards, the shocking juxtaposition's brilliant constant uninterrupted motion leaving an impassioned imprint on your overwhelmed soul, like you were there, like you took part, the immediacy of the style dominating your reflections and refusing to let go as you consider what took place, a cinematic triumph, as loving and innocent as it is ruthlessly expedient, its chilling naive aura, never to be forgotten.

Cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Spectre

Audaciously challenging his most cunning reanimated nemesis, Bond, James Bond (Daniel Craig), must reflexively disconnect an intrusive network of terrorist and governmental spies, threatening to legally monitor all of Great Britain's online activity, disguised as freedom fighters, to facilitate limitless access to all.

Blofeld's (Christoph Waltz) back, and it soon becomes clear that he's cacopheinated every catastrophe Daniel Craig has averted thus far, Spectre having returned to the franchise's fore in transition, with the intent of legitimizing vigilant maniacal longevity.

Bond must stop them, and M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and Q (Ben Whishaw) assist him along the way.

It's nice to see Q out in the field and Moneypenny continuing to play a more vital role.

There's a clever subplot where M must counter governmental representative Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) who's in league with Spectre and hoping to shut down the 00 program permanently.

M knows that fighting terrorism still requires a human touch and although disappointed in Bond for (sort of) disobeying direct orders and stealing, still adamantly cheers as he recklessly takes Spectre on.

The film's alright, but I'm ranking it third in the Daniel Craig Bond films, much better than Quantum of Solace, but not as strong as either Casino Royale or Skyfall.

It's like it spent too much time trying to recapture the essence of the Connery films, and although this did appeal to my love of that epoch, it still seemed like it didn't focus enough time on continuing to quintessentially complicate Daniel Craig's.

He's been in 4 now and I think it's safe to say he's the best Bond since Connery.

I'm hoping he's back for a fifth.

He deserves the money.

Look at what they pay Schwarzenegger for the Terminator films.

Also, I've seen more exciting opening sequences, the opening sequence should really function as an outstanding separate short film with the potential for integration in the main narrative still standing on its own merit, The Living Daylights perhaps providing the best example.

Spectre's desert base suffers from Jupiter Ascending syndrome as well and destructs far too quickly near the end.

Nevertheless, Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is a classic giant of a foe, Waltz and Craig forge a chilling familial dynamic, its contemporary analysis of invasive information gathering behemoths fits well with the times, Blofeld lives to die another day, and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) is an exceptional Bond Girl.

With the best Bond Girl name ever.

According to Citizenfour, terrorist organizations didn't help governments establish omnipresent online access you know, they completed that task on their own, although, since they justified said completion on the grounds that they established such networks to fight terrorism, it's as if the terrorists were responsible for causing democratically elected governments to treat their own citizens like terrorists.

That's solid Bond.

Even if people are held accountable, it does seem like such networks are here to stay.

I'm already imagining old man conversations where I discuss the ways of the 1980s with a youthful generation of the future, discussing how there used to be a concept known as privacy which faded as the years passed to uproarious thunderous applause.

It's like hip Orwell.

That's how the West reimagined 1984.

Constant surveillance coupled with limitless access to anything you could possibly be interested in worldwide, exceptions pending.

I can't imagine Trudeau's Liberals using such tools to land their opponents in prison on trumped up charges sensationalized in the media, which is what it seemed like Team Harper was eventually going to do.

Perhaps they can neuter them to the point where scenarios like the one just suggested can never be enacted?

Or just scrap Bill C-51, and the TPP.

I bet that's what James Bond would do.

Perhaps Prime Minister Trudeau II is like James Bond?

Slash Jedi.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

If vampire narratives were constructed long ago to suggest that the European aristocracy was carelessly gorging itself on the life blood of the European worker, and zombie narratives countered this characterization by connoting that the European worker was simply jealous of the aristocratic mind, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse asks the questions, "where do American scouts scouting in small town America fit into this dilemma?, and how can scouting build bridges between classes who solely work, and those who only play"?, scouting thereby redefined as a constructive democratic bourgeois intensity.

There are no vampires in Scouts Guide but there is an exclusive gathering, the sons and daughters of the capitalistic elite, the cool kids, in attendance, our scouting heroes given the wrong address in direct humiliation.

The zombies spread after a lackadaisical janitor interrupts a scientific experiment, accidentally awaking a zombie, who then rapidly devours his misplaced curiosity.

Soon the majority of the town is infected as the scouts unknowingly camp out in the woods, and the cool kids cavalierly consort, blissfully unaware.

But soon these 3 scouts must emerge from the forest to apply their skills in battle, aided by a savvy cocktail waitress thereafter, in their unheralded altruistic calling.

Friendship is on the line as two of them are thinking of quitting scouts and one remains true to their cause.

The zombies's hunger leaves them little time to air grievances however, as they fight together as one to save those who ignorantly disdained them.

Thus, since the zombies have been coerced into blindly embracing ideological dogma, and the capitalistic progeny is too young to understand why, the scouts must jurisprudently save them from an unprovoked attack, having tried to save at least one zombie beforehand, while hoping the virus can one day be cured.

Attendee Kendall Grant (Halston Sage) is impressed and expresses her gratitude physically.

Is it juvenile, insufficiently serious, undeniably heroic and fun?, who am I to say?

I thought perhaps the scouts weren't scouting prominently enough for a lot of the film, but the grand finale ingeniously made amends.

It is fun.

I think I saw a bear zombie, a human who had been bit by a zombie bear.

No werebears though, no werebears.

Friday, November 6, 2015

The Forbidden Room

The derivative extracted percolates like pirouetting chestnut, the motion of which extends imaginative license to respect exfoliating indulgences, transitioning from text to subtext to limbo as tasks require undertaking in unwound fecund interdimensional free verse.

Rapscallions.

Tin cups.

Motivated to achieve yet strangleheld by absent physical qualifications, footholds, dreamlike advice metaphorically displacing, insubstantial links riveting unconnected clues, a Kafkaesque hesitance, pursuing, deliberating.

Insecurely supernatural.

Rasputin.

It's possible that the act of distilling the metaphorical displacements through poetic conjecture could construct links in a theoretical chain attached to anatomical veins focused on discussing Lacan or conjuring the ingredients for a delicious microbrew.

Contentment forthcoming.

A stash.

Treasure.

The flames unextinguished as sparrows scatter to intermittently supplant discourses of the heroic.

Cloth delicately swathes young suckling.

Eternal springs of adolescent visions abscond with gruff jingling clairvoyance, you must do something, respond, jangle, consider, trek, quaff, imprisoned existential platinum withstanding phantasmagorical creosote, a glass of milk, chocolate, prime rib, crackerjacks, blankets in winter, firelight, white pine.

The master narrative's unacknowledged marrow.

O negative.

Superlative improvisational resin.

Whole grains.

The Forbidden Room.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

The Last Witch Hunter

Well versed in obligatory pyrotechnics, unerringly battling the forces of evil, Kaulder (Vin Diesel) middle-agedly sharpens his blades, to once again confront an ancient monstrosity.

Who condemned him to immortality.

Unacknowledged eternal pain.

Aided in his endurance by a vigilant religious order, he balances the supernatural while they chronicle his dispassionate deeds.

Beknownst to their principal antagonists.

Whose disrespectful taunting unleashes a visceral tirade.

Imposition.

The Last Witch Hunter seemed more like a television pilot than the first in a series of films, its quotidian spirituality (sparse character development fraught with mundane interpersonal relations) and lacklustre transcendencies (we're supposed to feel threatened by the return of the witch queen [Julie Engelbrecht] but the methods used to combat her are much too conveniently countered [it's easy to take her down]) making a better fit for the televisual realm (these issues would be addressed in subsequent episodes), in my bland and indolent opinion.

Its structure makes a coy comment on threats however, Kaulder having trouble defeating fierce Warlock Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) at first, then easily disposing of him as the witch queen regenerates, the increased level of competition functioning as a catalyst for Kaulder whose skills instinctually augment to face the more potent foe.

It could be a great television show, who knows, I usually just watch films these days, and Star Trek in winter.

I go to the cinema so often that watching films on a television or computer screen regardless of size makes them seem less fascinating.

Much better to see films in theatres.

Disappointed by The Last Witch Hunter.