Predestination

Difficult to say what you would have done differently if you had possessed prescient knowledge way back when, would there simply have been more of an enigmatic emphasis, or would things still have proceeded without grandiose change?

A self-indulgent question to be sure creatively occurring if you've ever had time to consider the past, hypothetical degrees of forlorn or joyous intensities increasing, depending on whether or not temporal interventions could have facilitated alternatives.

But such alternatives would have opened up unforeseen potentialities which may have been more prosperous if not worse, manifold striking unpredictable variables accompanying sundry indefinite outcomes.

Such a perspective almost makes the act of engaging in trivial decision making, seem much more epic in light of the infinite imperceptible comic echoes. 

Would I have wound up teaching in Paris or exploring the bush laidback in Chibougamau, peacefully working away at the Granby Zoo or fishing off the coast of Sept-Îles?

Predestination introduces a time machine and a somewhat invariable interdimensional occupation, wherein which operatives monitor the past to attempt to hinder voltaic malfeasance. 

The rules are quite strict no nonsense the agents are watched with meticulous scrutiny, one attempting to improvise nevertheless after a lifetime of loyal service (Ethan Hawke as the Barkeep).

He befriends a recruit who's alone living a generally solitary existence, having grown up in an orphanage unencumbered by the temptations of bourgeois life (Sarah Snook as the Unmarried Mother).

Could she make a good agent who knows! theory's quite different from work in the field, but at least they have something to talk about over a drink at random one evening.

Even if you had a time machine and could travel back and forth to different ages, how would you ever settle in without standing out like a shocking oddity?

Would you be able to understand the dialect or codes of conduct with enough fluent ease, to do simple things like find lodging or food, and wouldn't the smell be repellent?

I suppose like so many things you'd have to proceed with trial and error, the first jump somewhat overwhelming the second and third perhaps less of a shock (if heading to the same location).

Could a thorough interest in Star Trek help to prepare one for such endeavours, as a kind of theoretical support, perhaps lacking practical value?

Predestination travels time like no other narrative I've seen before, much more concerned with characterized mystery than grandiose spectacle fantastic intrigue.

If you were to meet yourself 25 years ago have you any idea what you'd say?

Predestination has a unique answer.

It's really well done.

A must see for time travel fans.

The Lost Daughter

It's strange how much time I used to spend going to the cinema. In fact it's not strange at all, it was perfectly normal, everything about pandemic existence being strange, but it's been going on for so long that it's starting to feel normal.

That's depressing. And even with the vaccines, there's no end in sight.

Ah well, no use in dwelling, that's counterproductive, and at least we have vaccines and boosters available in Canada and Québec, and the risk of hospitalization is greatly decreased if you get them, I recommend getting the vaccine, getting it soon, I suppose it goes without saying but vaccines help prevent you from getting sick, especially if you get the virus, which is still spreading rapidly, and isn't showing any signs of letting up.

But I used to spend around 8 hours a week carefully or carelessly choosing films in cinemas and travelling back and forth to see them, sometimes while stopping for lunch, it was a great way to pass the time.

Now I've got all the time in the world just to choose two films a week and watch them on my computer or television, and it still seems like I have to find the time, how did I ever come up with all the extra hours?

It's certainly much less engaging watching films at home although there's an endless supply available, still, films are meant to be seen in theatres, and it's kind of lame always watching them on a smaller screen.

No end to the variety, however, and I'm super happy there's a Criterion channel, Criterions used to be really expensive films that you had to buy, if you really wanted to see one and couldn't find it at the library. 

I'm not sure if Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter has resonant artistic flair, but it certainly leaves an impression, and is like nothing else I've ever seen.

It's about an unappealing dull grouch who decides to go on vacation, during the off-season in a resort town, as locals celebrate liberation (Olivia Colman/Jessie Buckley as Leda).

Her ornery disposition and assertive dismissals ensure she doesn't make any friends, she's also generally annoyed when people talk to her, no matter how harmless or well-meaning.

She's plagued by haunting remembrances of the daughters she left behind to pursue her career, the surrounding carefree families at play only serving to vex her further.

She proceeds to steal one of their dolls and even buys it a new fancy outfit, and refuses to return it or just leave it on the beach even after a campaign is launched for days to find it.

The Lost Daughter's total lack of utility and uncanny investigation of gloomy self-obsession, lugubriously generates pathological charm through disorienting morose unabashed stern vision.

It's like a campy intellectual film that leaves you free to discern and judge, is it critiquing cantankerous agency or oddly celebrating unattached dysfunction?

Does she feel bad about not feeling bad about never having tried to cultivate feelings?

I think there's Criterion potential.

Resort towns are fun in the offseason. 

The Vikings

With a new King upon the throne (Frank Thring as King Aella) after a fearsome viking attack, England hopes to see less bloodshed, but their raids continue unsurpassed, in a far off warlike distant age.

While he may indeed be King he lacks hereditary standing, and the surviving wilful Queen (_______ Audley as Enid) has an authentic restless babe.

King Aella seeks his silence with cold dishonourable betrayal, but those loyal to his blood soon quickly send him off to Italy. 

Decades pass without rebellion the same King dispassionately ruling, as vikings plunder throughout Europe with reckless contumacious outrage.

A lord is bitterly critiqued for maintaining peace in his domain (_______ _______ as Lord Egbert), the King suspecting a secret alliance since the vikings leave him be.

He's correct and soon the nobleperson has departed for Scandinavia.

Where he meets a daring captive (Tony Curtis as _____). 

Prone to disobey.

An odd rowdy adventure film pugnaciously ensures, wherein which contention and fearsome battle proceed sans diplomatic reckoning.

The vikings, although realistically raiding and terrorizing the countryside, are portrayed as playful heroes well-suited to the plundering life.

It's as if they're engaged in mischief as opposed to ruthless carnage, savage violent misdeeds whitewashed to seem like innocent horseplay.

Written for men who love to fight and the women who sincerely adore them, it celebrates unrestrainéd shocking discourse with boisterous animation.

There are rather severe penalties for living the combative lives they lead, but the wounds and gashes and fatalities are freely lauded with heroic inhibition.

Although a dispute arises when Einar (Kirk Douglas) seeks to attack King Aella's castle, the scale of his grandiose ambition somewhat unsettling even for vikings.

But the attack is launched eventually and keeping in spirit it's all in good fun.

So many changes throughout the centuries. 

I'm not sure if The Vikings would have been shocking if it had been recently released (it's so not MeToo), or if it would have passed without note or comment? 

Silverado

The lonesome forbidding bellicose treacherous bleak disabling frontier, wherein which justice falls prey to monopolized coercive forceful brutish clutches.

The desire for peaceful community still lightly reckons with friendly resolve, as adventurous settlers dream big and head west to forge new towns in the dangerous wild.

The law attempts to protect them as they settle and herd and farm, but the off the grid free isolation also attracts absolutist ambition.

What if you could in fact open a successful business in a flourishing town, one that adapts and grows and prospers and encourages the lively exchange of goods?

And what if your business prospered to the point where you earned an enormous living, and your town also needed a sheriff to uphold the immaculate law?

Without any regional competition or federal oversight to inspect what you're doing, you could engage in all kinds of self-obsessed law breaking to ensure steady streams of duplicitous profit.

But what if you took things too far and the peaceful inhabitants grew tired of wrong doing, and encouraged volatile alternative jurisprudence to sincerely critique your lofty stranglehold?

Do gooding virtuous antitrusts will inevitably counter your unilateral brigade, with the interests of creating inroads for manifold newfound multilateral enterprises.

Dreaming big the innocent upstarts boldly challenge the bucolic hegemony, to stop the violence and audaciously ensure the freeform countenance of an abundant multiplicity. 

As their businesses take root their owners also start to acquire capital, which can be used to break down the established boundaries which had previously strengthened the haughty few.

But those businesses are then prevented from prospering to see the monopoly upheld ad infinitum, and ill-mannered ornery brute force is cruelly engaged to stifle integrity.

Thus, a showdown looms to propagate expansive means of production.

With articulate offence and defensive reserve.

The impetus recast each exigent Sunday.

And also with Lawrence Kasdan's chaotic action packed tumultuous Silverado, where domestic longing and urges for independence communally clash via honest virtue.

A remarkable cast acrobatically abounding with resonant epic frontier contumacy. 

Taking on racism along the way.

The trials of any given century.

No Time to Die

*Spoiler Alert.

Love's rewards having proven too enticing to ignore, James Bond (Daniel Craig) cultivates a continuous relationship, only to be surrounded one afternoon by the newfound henchpersons of a former rival, he doesn't understand how he's been discovered, and instinctively suspects betrayal.

He finds a new location el lobo solo off the grid, and settles into bitter retirement, trying to prosper through idyllic recreation, unable to placate his volatile will.

Meanwhile, a terrorist network steals a pernicious bioweapon which was developed by MI6, and uses inchoate Borg technology to specifically target individualized DNA.

But it even take things further and finds more widespread applications for the malevolence, intending to unleash it on the unsuspecting world, with genocidal morbid reckoning.

Bond lambastes M (Ralph Fiennes) (having returned) for having sponsored its dissimulated production, who naively thought it would save lives by making assassination more precise. 

To make things worse, the belovéd belle whom he left behind with regret and pain (Léa Seydoux as Madeleine), is sought after by the terrorist leader (Rami Malek as Lyutsifer Safin [who spared her life when she was a child {Coline Defaud}]), and Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) knows their secret.

Without much time with shocking immediacy Bond reflexively engages.

An international incident caught in the crossfires.

Along with his unknown offspring.

The dangers of manufacturing lethal weapons to make the world a safer place, are epically brought to bear on irresponsible bureaucrats lacking accountability. 

It seemed like things were progressing so peacefully for such a long time sustainéd equanimity, but a small fraction of the global population still preferred mutual animosity. 

Becoming more influential and less and less discreet resurgent jingoism renewed latent fears, and wiser ambitions to forge international consensus lost public ground to reckless profit. 

But their reckless ambition didn't only awaken narrow-minded prejudice and unrestrainéd self-absorption, but extremist elements seeking radical shifts to pursue alternative constructs were also empowered.

No Time to Die pits radical evolution against traditional desires to slowly change.

Both ambitions are in need of reclarification. 

Looking forward to checking out News Nation.

*First Bond film I haven't seen in theatres since 1989.

**Still hoping Daniel Craig stars in 7 Bond films to tie him with Roger Moore and Sean Connery, although it doesn't look like it's going to happen (if you count Never Say Never Again).

Larry Crowne

At times I forget that there are so many films out there that don't involve combat or defiance or shenanigans or intergalactic discord, beyond belovéd well-meaning tender-hearted Christmas films, known to many as romantic comedies, I don't spend enough time watching them, although I've never had much of an interest.

I didn't really say that much there but it still took me a while to get started, so I would typically be having a cigarette right now if I hadn't quit today, the first of several delicious cigarettes to have been had throughout the course of writing this review, if only smoking wasn't so bad for your health, it's such an enjoyable pastime.

Larry Crowne isn't only a romantic comedy but it's one starring Tom Hanks (Larry Crowne) and Julia Roberts (Mercedes Tainot), with an ensemble cast including Randall Park (Trainee Wong), Rob Riggle (_____ Strang), Cedric the Entertainer (Lamar), Pam Grier (Frances), Rami Malek (______ Dibiasi), George Takei (Dr. Matsutani), and Bryan Cranston (______ Tainot), smooth flowing and easy going, even directed by Mr. Hanks.

Not that there isn't calamity a loyal worker is cast aside (Mr. Crowne), his years of service callously overlooked due to his lack of post-secondary education.

Bills are due he's middle-aged and has a house and other big ticket expenditures, but he heads back to school nevertheless, to study economics and public speaking.

I would have liked to have treated myself to another cigarette at this point for I've managed to fill a page, but Nicorette gum will do for now, chomp chomp chomp, if I chew too long I get hiccups. 

Mercedes is a jaded teacher whose pervo husband has given up, the two forging an awkward pair of somewhat spoiled highly educated adolescents. 

Mr. Crowne winds up in her public speaking class which she'd rather not be teaching, most of the students are unsure what to do and she doesn't offer much useful guidance.

But through his can-do lack of pretension and unassuming good-natured reliability, she rediscovers her love of teaching, and even begins to apply soulful effort, her students are even happy to study with her again in second semester. 

It's like ice cream bored at the mall covered in adorable chocolate sauce and a dash of sociocultural sprinkles, a little something to brighten up a day that would have lacked genuine purpose otherwise.

Like the 35 cigarettes or so I used to have all day long to ensure a dependable stream of reward.

Although I suppose ice cream's much more wholesome.

I think I'll do it this time.

This Nicoderm patch is first rate!

*Normally I have a cigarette after transferring my review from paper to the net. Chewing more gum.

**That's the first review I've written without smoking at least two cigarettes in over 5 years. 

Dune

The Indigenous inhabitants (the Fremen) of a barren world (Arrakis aka Dune) once flourished unobstructed, until its only resource became the most coveted in the galaxy.

This spice mélange allows gifted navigators to alter the fabric of space and time, while others use it to mutate consciousness, attaining heightened spiritual states.

Different planets within the interplanetary union are governed by an Emperor, who is obsessed with maintaining control, and possesses a massive formidable army.

The rights to mine the spice engender astronomical profits, and House Harkonnen of planet Giedi Prime has obscenely enjoyed them for quite some time.

But House Atreides of planet Caladan has become remarkably popular in the union, as led by its level-headed Duke (Oscar Isaac), and the Emperor has grown jealous of its meteoric rise, and seeks to dishonourably annihilate them.

Thus, he takes Dune's mining rights away for the barbarous self-obsessed Harkonnens, and gives them to House Atreides, who can't refuse the magnificent honour, even if they suspect a trap.

The Harkonnens who hate the Atreides seek to attack them after the transition, supported by several legions of Sardaukar, the Emperor's ferocious spartan troops. 

But the Fremen hold a prophecy that a messiah will lead them out of darkness, and will come from the outer world, and know his ways as if [he's] born to them.

Duke Leto's son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) possesses extraordinary abilities and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood admires them.

Could he survive the Harknonnen's sneak attack?

And find discreet refuge amongst the Fremen?

That's a working general snapshot of Frank Herbert's complex plot, which is difficult to simplify in a film, so this one' stretched into two instalments.

Denis Villeneuve cultivates isolation as a matter of intergovernmental intricacy, so many fierce independent characters collegially united through distinct cause.

Dignified solemnity is no laughing matter as the Atreides accept monumental responsibility, in a fluctuating volatile stern vortex, augustly magnified through intrigue.

The imposing offer freely shared sombrely cloaked in grand deception, the refusal of which would lead to acknowledgement of a rival's mean-spirited intent.

A love so great it leads to trust in the most duplicitous of foes, whose autocratic snide contempt is thoroughly condemned throughout the galaxy.

The belief in prophecy spiritual import patient intergenerational stratagems, producing widespread derelict skepticism as highly invested as it is dismissive.

An oppressed people tired of colonialism and their exploitation by another.

Prone to passionate belief.

Projected reified agility.

The Atreides and the Fremen still find compassion amidst the gloom.

With staple simple pleasures.

The sustainability of life.

*Love the changes Villeneuve made with Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Dr. Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster).

**Loved the palm tree scene as well.

***It's very respectful of David Lynch's Dune and there are many similarities between the two films.

****Loved the dragonfly ornithopters. I was reaching for a cigarette last Summer and a dragonfly landed on my finger, obviously suggesting I should stop smoking, which I'm going to try to do next week, many thanks to dragonfly kind. 

Oblivion

A cataclysmic war has been fought and the once verdant Earth lies in thunderous ruin, scattered remnants of the alien aggressors still subsisting in the barren wastes.

Robotic spherical patrols scan the inhospitable terrain from above, their technological ingenuity a formidable frank deterrent. 

They break down at times however and require attentive maintenance, teams spread across the planet to quickly diagnose and discern.

The fortunate survivors have relocated to one of Saturn's moons in a desperate attempt to save the species, their bold intergalactic reckoning cultivating innovative community.

A couple left behind hopes to congenially join them shortly, their tour of duty approaching its end their dedicated service to be rewarded justly.

But as their departure date approaches a ship chaotically crash lands, and _____ (Tom Cruise) is sent out to investigate whether or not there are any survivors.

He finds one in the wreckage and swiftly saves her from critical dysfunction (Olga Kurylenko as ______), bringing her home to his exotic pad to meet his shy suspicious partner (Andrea Riseborough as _______).

Others seek her extant wisdom hiding in caves far down below.

Ensconced in the inexplicable.

Beyond master narratives pontificated.

Is it in fact true love that fuels their imaginative interactions, as the past hesitantly reemerges in vibrant shocking grand distortion?

Confounding astronomical odds prohibit their joyous rapprochement, as miraculous fated resonance galvanizes amorous schemes.

Is true love yet another master narrative then romantically taking hold, in the midst of armageddon, mission prerogatives deconstructed?

The competing master narratives juxtapose duty with rebellion, as profound psychological conflict seeks uninhibited lucidity.

Serendipitous science-fiction soulfully establishing solar sentience, Oblivion countermands cryptology to court sentimental echoes.

Times change and preferences mutate but on occasion familiarity uplifts, the nostalgic tenderness of reliability persevering unsolicited.

Trusty tradition pervading tumultuous unexpected modifications.

It works so well in books and film.

As to reality, who's to say?

*Clearin' out 2021. What I wrote in 2021. Still a sucker for sci-fi romance.