The Newton Boys

A struggling family rambunctiously lives off the wild beaten track in the candlelit country, 4 boys with 2 in prison their mom understanding yet still withdrawn.

One of the more ambitious siblings finds himself released one fortuitous day, and makes his way home where he collegially meets two other businesspeople engrossed in scheming. 

They soon a rob a bank thinking the sheriff won't seek them out if they give him a cut, two of them escaping to trade in their loot with a corrupt bank manager in another small town. 

The manager gives them a coveted list of sought after banks with particular safes, which one of them happens to be an expert in cracking, fluidly at ease with ye olde nitroglycerine. 

Things go well, they come up with a plan to only rob banks at night and avoid confrontation, the other brothers, The Newton Boys, soon freely enlisting in the lucrative cause.

Bank insurance is a recent phenomenon so they don't feel guilty for heuristically heisting.

Emphatically engaged with calamitous caution.

Even making their way to Canada.

The ingenious idea to proceed at nighttime to avoid gruesome bloodshed wins hearts and minds, and likely convinced concerned officials that they weren't quite as ruthless as they may have seemed.

It's a tightly-knit bunch habitual disputes between grouchy brothers largely absent, the 4 getting along rather well and even risking everything when one of them's injured.

I suppose that's the cuneiform key form a trusted group and take care of one another, never forget pressing mutual interests nor lose sight of collective goals.

Steer clear of the big score as well they were exceptionally dealing with obscure transactions. 

In search of millions they decisively falter.

Tantalizing fever pitch emboldenment. 

Cool soundtrack if you like lucid banjos and panachy pianos from a different time.

One of them even makes it to 90.

Not freakin' bad.

For such a rough life.

Bandit

A criminal breaks free from an American minimum security prison (Josh Duhamel as Robert), and crosses the border into Canada, soon looking for work and lodging as the police search frustrated in vain, the 1980s much less suspicious and routinely hysterical, he doesn't blend, without standing out much either.

He still lacks identity cards and cash so he needs to creatively conjure convincingly, fortunately securing a place to stay, without much luck finding steady employment.

Not really cut out for the workforce, indeed brave but also quite lazy, he soon takes to robbing banks for small sums, and proceeds to do so across the country.

At the same time, his parter matter-of-factly announces she's about to bear young (Elisha Cuthbert as Andrea), filling him with enlivening ecstasy since he's always wanted to have a family.

His lifestyle rather ill-suited to traditional bourgeois relational trajectories, he feels somewhat isolated however, yet rather than attempt to learn a trade and embrace regal commerce and industry, he seeks the backing of a local gangster (Mel Gibson as Tommy), and malfeasantly reengages. 

Things proceed quite successfully for awhile before a local task force takes note.

His wife also figuring things out.

Accompanying him thereafter, from time to time. 

I know the pandemic was a difficult time during which it was particularly hard to make movies, and film studios had to green light questionable scripts and move forward with rash decisions, the period we're in now perhaps one of the worst in cinematic history, does that still excuse Bandit's lacklustre writing, lack of conscience, homophobia and general malaise?, no, I'm afraid it doesn't, this film's a directionless amateur train wreck.

People with no artistic skill and a lot of money still attempt to make commercial movies, and they think it's remarkably easy, and proceed with undaunted confidence in a pleasant atmosphere lacking critical aplomb (Mel Gibson most likely rewriting his lines), no stirring voice providing comment and criticism, good god, was this script even edited?

Bandit falls into the new filmmaking category which functions like grassroots bludgeoned briars, Ronald Reagan is therefore celebrated, and work and a steady job for chumps and fools, anyone limiting the fun a homosexual (the police for instance), they appeal to Robin Hood, but this guy's just a piece of shit.

The major transition hasn't taken place but hopefully things improve since restrictions have been lifted.

Some pandemic films were pretty amazing (Babysitter, Viking).

At least a couple of standouts slipped through. 

Inside Man

A detective gets his shot since he's the only one around when the call comes in (Denzel Washington), his captain less willing to throw work his way after a recent erroneous routine rupture.

But a bank's being robbed and they want to negotiate the robbers taking their forbidden time, many hostages struggling nerve-wracked within, a smooth flowing exchange stretched out stressed suspicion.

Meanwhile, the bank's agéd owner (Christopher Plummer) hires an alternative negotiating team (Jodie Foster), to recover an ancient safety deposit box he's worried the thieves have set in their sights.

She exists in the theoretical ether wherein which higher-ups employ extreme discretion, to tidy up raunchy embarrassing mishaps, or in this lofty case, World War II profiteering.

The detective doesn't like it when she shows up with answers to questions he wasn't considering, but the communicative green light is still freely given and soon it seems the bank owner's fears weren't that off base.

Afterwards, chaos ensues, with emboldened predicaments furtively enabling, the concealment of the hypothetical thieves whose plutocratic endeavours indeed prove fruitful. 

The detective still needs to piece things together with precocious puzzling and reasonable riffs.

Interviews discourse entanglements hyperbole.

Thoroughly reckoned with guttural instinct.

A cool suave exoteric rigamarole effortlessly enriches voltaic vehemence, as the opposite ends of Inside Man's investigative continuums cohort and calumnize courtly contusions.

Critically clasped clandestine camaraderie sincerely conversing cross calculi composites, war profiteering is reckless abuse of a world controlled by volatile wickedness. 

I haven't seen any recent related articles covering political condemnations of war profiteering in Ukraine, but you would think some bureaucrat would have thought up something to passionately critique it in the last couple of weeks. 

Many business have pulled out of Russia and I imagine sanctions are making routine life difficult in the massive country, but weeks into the brutal conflict and it's still raging with destructive frenzy.

If businesses and individuals are profiting from Russia's continued vicious bombardment, it would be nice to know they'll be held accountable with sincere constricting jurisprudent venom.

How to monitor myriad factors multidimensionally mired in mad malfeasance, is hopefully being taken care of at the maniacal moment with exceptional haste and sentient synergies. 

Stockholm

A rather odd bank robbery, responded to with an equal degree of the nutso, the robber himself like a devotee of Bonanza, the cops like classical musicians playing jazz, huggably unreels in Robert Budreau's Stockholm, a bizarro affair romanticizing the awkward, as if in order to respectfully reflect the improvised nature of the heist, extemporaneous production scenarios were evocatively conceived, or as if everyone involved feigned jurisprudent expertise, while delicately crafting loose knotted clips at random.

The police and the robber both consider alternative outcomes, and each volatile exchange further augments their misunderstandings.

It's as if they're trying to play sports but the game they're playing doesn't exist, the boundaries separating theory and practise simultaneously establishing while deconstructing themselves, like they're anxiously attempting to generate code, stipulation, or principle, yet can't quite construct any durable foundation, like suddenly trying to take up astrophysics, or the attempts of zoo animals to imagine independence.

It's like both sides are revelling in tomfoolery at times, but since neither participant knows what they're doing, foolishness is perhaps not the best word, expedient lucidity potentially providing semantic clarity, the comedic applications of either evaluation playfully emergent in the rebellious bottom line.

The comedy is difficult to boisterously generate within, because the policepersons are uptight, and Lars Nystrom (Ethan Hawke) is very kind.

The police assume they have the upper hand and negotiate without taking him too seriously.

He tries to create genuine fear but he's so nice even his hostages adore him.

The laughs are much more subtle, much less bellicose than those you often find in American comedy, as if Stockholm reasonably transmits thoughtful European sensibilities.

When Nystrom resorts to unorthodox methods the results aren't funny at all though, a huge downer in the old botched-robbery-hostage-taking-wild-west-romantic-comedy.

But he is forgiven, and, in fact, rewarded, for his inspired blunder.

Excelling at orchestrating romance for a highly dysfunctional spell, while mismatched adventurous characters dubiously prance and spar, Stockholm's still somewhat too serious a lot of the contemplative time, which would have been less ironic if it had made a little bit more sense.

An absurd scenario no doubt.

In which the realism's too ridiculous.

Tough to pull off.

Destroyer

Overwhelmingly consumed by guilt and vengeance, a forlorn detective wearily trudges on.

Notoriously dishevelled, she struggles to deal while attempting to advise her restless daughter.

Having once infiltrated a heist prone entity, she lost everything after she failed to act.

And the individual who's haunted her for 16 years has finally resurfaced, within her reckless domain, his sights set on lucrative crime, boldly flaunting arrogant tension.

She continues to break the rules she's never followed to desperately gain an edge, and accidentally finds herself mired in steep misfortune.

Spiralling swiftly down.

Wildly reckoning sincere uncertainty.

Destroyer flexes gritty wayward concrete confrontation to adjudicate chaotic perception.

From flesh wound to break to hemorrhage to paralysis, it scoops up the lugubrity in piles of distraught doom.

Aptly succeeding at presenting direst woe, it's a little too blunt for my tastes, the intervening scenes lacking the visceral nuances that hold films like To Live and Die in L.A. or French Connection together, shocking violence erupting like periodic head shots every 8 minutes or so, or body checks in a hockey game, except that after each check the play stops and doesn't resume again, and then it suddenly starts back up and there's another check shortly thereafter before it stops again, this pattern repeating until the film's solid ending.

It's obvious that the filmmakers are capable of crafting something more subtle and nuanced and steady and memorable, something less discontinuous, or something that artistically cultivates discontinuity, but perhaps budget constraints got in the way or Destroyer's an initial offering from a fledgling craftperson, still learning to brew something less pulpy and generic.

It does function as an effective warning against both corruption and revenge however, Erin Bell's (Nicole Kidman) dismal distillation a potent reminder to let things go, no matter your gender, to move forward at some point after a period of grieving, and apply yourself with resurgent vigour to whatever tasks eventually present themselves.

Books and films and paintings and television provide limitless options to promote either contemporary or retro lifestyles.

As do sports and the daily news.

Even if even The Guardian is remarkably grim these days.

That used to be the advantage it held over The New York Times for me.  It wasn't so grim. And didn't focus on the United States so much.

It's nice when you meet people who are also living in the present regardless.

A present that isn't consumed with grasses greener.

Where resilient people make the most of their present means.

And occasionally sit back chillin'.

When all their work is done.

Going in Style

Methinks there was a time when companies rewarded 40 years of hard work with a decent pension so their loyal workers could retire with dignity.

I suppose many companies still do assist dedicated workers after they've paid decades worth of dues, Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next and its cheerful examination of European generosity coming to mind, although I'm sure the practice isn't limited to Europe.

It's about community, family, friendship, trust, virtues which scurrilous executives working for the bad companies rapaciously exploit to line their own pockets with ill-gotten gains.

Dignity doesn't make any sense to them because they have none.

To put it bluntly.

Relatedly, I was thinking about Vancouver's housing market one day and the following thoughts came to mind. If someone lives in the community where he or she grows up and owns multiple properties which she or he rents out to his or her fellow citizens, it would be more difficult for them to exploit said citizens due to the strong communal bonds forged during a life worth living. I can't statistically verify the following, but I'm convinced this is why so many Québecois cities remain relatively affordable.

However, if the housing market was opened up to encourage international sales, wealthy foreigners who have no communal attachment to a city's people, unlike landed immigrants, could easily buy up property and start charging exorbitant rates because they have no cultural bonds with their renters.

It seems like if you ever want to own a house in Vancouver, you either have to earn a ballpark $250,000 a year, or hand your mortgage down to your children who would then eventually hand it down to their children and so on.

In other words, if you make 60K a year in Vancouver and buy a home, it's your grandchildren or great-grandchildren who will eventually pay off the debt, theoretically speaking, and some jerk from who knows where may have picked up a new jet meanwhile.

I know it's still hard to buy a house in Montréal but remember they are more affordable than those in Toronto or Vancouver. I haven't read a book covering this subject but I'm convinced it's because Québecers, begrudgingly or not, care more about one another collectively.

In Zach Braff's Going in Style, three elderly friends lose their pension and can no longer afford the rent or make mortgage payments as a result.

So they person-up and take ridiculous risks to make amends.

It's a bit too pom-pom and ding-dong for my tastes, but it does take a light look at the ways in which globalization is crushing some local communities.

While emphasizing the hopelessness of workers caught in such situations through recourse to absurd comedy.

And it's fun too watch agile screwed-over seniors rob a bank Robin Hood style, the same bank who grossly screwed them over.

Suppose it's not only international financial interests that buy up property and jack up the price so disposable incomes disappear.

There's still a local aspect to the global even if international agendas obscure regional concerns.

Has Christy Clark ever done anything to address Vancouver's housing crisis?

All I really know is that the killing of hundreds of wolves was authorized by someone in B.C while she was premier.

They'll be back.

I wonder if she cares about anything at all that isn't plus $250,000?

More often than once every 5 years.

Tragic.

Closer to the Moon

A rebellious blend of frustration and boredom brought about by systematic degradations leads a group of former World War II freedom fighters to commit crimes against the Romanian state, in Nae Caranfil's Closer to the Moon, a lively comic recklessly bold statement, on the entrenchment of hypocrisy, exclusively settling in.

The dark side of socialism, permanent socialism existing outside the boundaries established by regular democratic elections, interminably demanding that everyone conform to a specific set of established principles, which serve to lavishly support the chosen incorruptible few.

Closer to the Moon's bank robbers were all members of the elite, but as the state took an antisemitic turn, even though Jewish people had played an integral role in its construction, their privileges and freedoms were gradually stripped away.

Left to flounder, they choose to enact political drama, which is quickly hushed-up, until the officials can attach a propagandistic lynchpin.

The gang plays along, revelling in the irreverently ironic freedoms brought about by being condemned to death.

They're full of life, overflowing with intensity, applying their wit to embellish each precept, gleefully gesticulating, to maximize their resolve.

The film itself functions in the same way, a spirited salute to freedom, chuckling and plucking away, emphasizing group strength as opposed to authoritative coercion.

Seen through the eyes of a starstruck youth.

30 Minutes or Less

Ruben Fleischer's 30 Minutes or Less is a well-crafted ridiculous summertime flick. Full of plenty of diversifying intertextuality, a father/son relationship to comedically rival that maintained between Braveheart's Longshanks and Prince Edward (enlivened by Fred Ward's machismo [the scene where he thinks it's funny that his son is trying to kill him is priceless]), a sharp examination of the concept of role-playing, witty banters exchanged between both pairs of struggling male duos, complete with different brands of particularized logistical clarifications concerning 'mature' and 'immature' approaches to life after 25, and a shoot out involving a flame thrower (brilliant), all wrapped up in an indirect salute to the puzzling benefits of living in a small town, it keeps the juvenile effervescence flowing abrasively and unapologetically, as it levitates towards its incandescent glass ceiling.

Anxiously highlighting the leveraged conditions of possibility, while playfully working within the master/slave dichotomy, the productive output of this individualized synthesis guarantees a destructive resolution.

Is this because Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and Chet (Aziz Ansari) so eagerly and effectively became that which they had never considered they possibly would due to the imposition of tyrannical constraints, the force of the necessary malevolence which they are forced to distribute overcoming their previously established socially acclimatized psychologies due to the unforeseen consequences of concrete shock?

It's possible that this is what Fleischer means although the point is certainly up for debate. Other phenomenons such as sleeping with your best friend's sister and hiring trained killers are investigated as well.