Beau Travail

A group of dedicated soldiers is professionally assembled in Eastern Africa, and taught to efficiently train in the time honoured art of balanced routine.

The locals curiously regard them as they exercise within their lands, the Legion's regimented solemnity a modern spectacle deriving pathos. 

It seems somewhat innocent and harmless as they freely stick to their upbeat selves, and build a harmonious continuity within their sombre intense ranks. 

With no wars to occupy their time and a general desire to remain aloof, the offbeat focused isolated unit peacefully co-exists with the world around them.

Unfortunately, where many find peace there are still those who cultivate conflict, and the uptight fastidious sergeant finds himself bitterly consumed by jealousy.

A new recruit proves quite remarkable and effectively demonstrates natural talent, in the eyes of their commanding officer he has great potential for a soldiering future.

The sergeant can't rationally stand it and desperately seeks to halt his progress. 

Unable to mediate his contempt.

Or accept the calm endearing tranquility. 

Once again, the evocative Claire Denis crafts a multilayered sensual tale, with a small budget in a foreign land while dealing with potentially volatile subject matter (not often you see thought-provoking low budget independent army films).

Startling to see such a tender take on formidable concrete durable masculinity, emphasizing brotherhood and camaraderie from a mutually self-sacrificing reliable vision.

The consistent observations of the inquisitive locals add so much humanistic depth, as you lightheartedly think along with them, what are they doing there?, while peace envelopes the land.

It starts off with intermittent savvy and congenially blends several different scenes, realistically invigorating the tragic tale with inherent foreign spiralling multiplicity.

Details of the plot are cleverly interwoven to the point where it seems secondary like a distant vision, the conducive galvanizing merry imagery awe-strikingly dismissing imperial entanglements.

I was hoping the entire film would continue to progress in this dreamlike fashion, not that the principal narrative is dull or uneventful, 90 plus minutes of the former would have just been incredible.

Too bad so much grief has to pass before the concluding moments fashionably exemplify, a welcoming world not so timorous or severe presenting alternative manners of masculine expression.

Stentorian peace exotically exclaimed with celebratory festive inhibition.

Rare to see anyone make this point.

Especially with such ingenious visceral exhibition. 

Calabuch

Perhaps a playful precursor for the age old mischievous Prisoner, Calabuch examines similar themes from a much less lethal angle. 

Thus, rather than finding himself cloistered away in a remote coastal village, every movement monitored by sympathetic yet grasping authorities, Calabuch's lead successfully escapes from his panopticonic confines, and finds amusing sanctuary along the isolated Spanish coast (while spending his nights in the local jail).

He's like a child at play and has no criticisms to impart, he's productively enthusiastic beyond vitriol or lament, it's classic emancipation, without forlorn regret.

The small town's rambunctiously engaged in harmless reverential mischief, the police and smugglers no doubt at odds even if they've been friends for some time.

The doctor (Edmund Gwenn) having left behind ceremonious stilted shackles, a leading nuclear scientist indeed, in possession of multidimensional clinical knowledge, and eager to help out in any way he can.

It's an absurd scenario generating lucid compassion for the locked-down doc, who clearly wishes he could freely engage with the world at large without reservation. 

He does possess valuable secrets which call into question his largesse however.

In a comic duel between individual and nation.

With lighthearted trim finesse.

It must be unnerving at times to possess highly specialized volatile knowledge, violently sought after by entrenched no-goodniks hoping to capitalize on cultural misfortune.

I suppose you can't just trot off to the market or delicately chill unmonitored at the beach, you would hope you would have access to some kind of private facility but who knows how often you'd get to go there.

You may be stuck in meetings overflowing with polemical tactical verbiage, extremely serious all the time, imagine you could escape!

That's what Luis García Berlanga did in this remarkably entertaining comedy, which may revel in grand distortion, but certainly does so with grand vivacity. 

Must even the hardworking public's precious time off be subject to rigorous scrutiny!, with no constructive comedic outlets, like it was throughout the pandemic?

Imagine years of bleak totalitarian experimental pestilent intrigue, only broken up by even crazier conspiracy theories which are still troublingly shockingly popular.

What to make of the independent cinema which takes them seriously in the forbidding future?

I thoroughly loved the romantic Calabuch.

Throughout which they still listen to doctors. 

L'école buissonnière (The School of Life)

A rowdy foul-mouthed Parisian orphan (Jean Scandel as Paul) is taken in by a charitable domestic  (Valérie Karsenti as Célestine) and set loose on a forested estate one mischievous informative Summer.

Her husband's (Eric Elmosnino as Borel) tasked with managing the grounds and is less enamoured with the boy.

Trespassing is forbidden, and the existence of such wilds within a heavily populated realm tempts landless neighbours to secretively venture forth.

Since little Paul is free to scan and survey his new domain he meets a colourful cast of characters, their ingenuity providing him with playful imaginative recourse, cautiously balanced with the legal lay of the land.

Borel haplessly enforces while feisty Totoche (François Cluzet) outwits through innovation, his clever tricks ensuring modest plunder, cheeky testaments to individualistic invention.

Totoche and Paul forge an undefined team of sorts which excels at living freely, the bachelor and the orphan symbiotically coexisting within natural frontiers, amiable enough to avoid suspicion and crafty enough to brew memorable batches, good times generating familial emotions, cascading in hearty arrears.

A magical tale as realistic as it is fancy free.

Like Dickensian Thoreau subtly blended with Disney.

Friendships made.

L'école buissonnière.

Lighthearted and adventurous yet aware of rules and structure, Buissonnière presents mature mischief to cultivate austere lands.

Independent communities matched with age-old traditions, a public slowly materializes on the respectful inclusive horizon.

Some characters have much larger roles than others, and at times I thought it would have benefitted from more integration.

I wanted more gypsy.

But if you're in the mood for a heartwarming look at innocence emancipated, and wildlife left free to roam, L'école buissonnière offers a family friendly escape into vivacious inchoate wonder, toning down the menace, to focus intently on creativity.

Change.

I hope the forest persisted.

Extant forests must be like spiritual diamond mines in Europe, without the pollution.

Whatever Claire Denis.

Whatever!

Office Christmas Party

Overwhelming pressures voraciously complicating the everyday affairs of a hardworking bunch at play, it soon becomes apparent that a lucrative deal must be struck in order to keep the sultry spice flowing, the troubling news being delivered in überScroogelike fashion, the high-end players responding with executive precision.

There's no other option.

It's time to party.

Festivities of epic proportions are therefore precipitated, the celebrations, ecstatically fuelled.

But as the good times roll, will Josh Parker (Jason Bateman), Clay Vanstone (T. J. Miller), and Tracey Hughes (Olivia Munn) be able to convince Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance) that their research and development should move beyond the experimental phase?

Will Clay's uptight sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston) shut them down to right misperceived childhood wrongs?

Will human resources rep Mary (Kate McKinnon) engage in merrymaking regardless of penitent restrictions?

And will the prostitute (Abbey Lee as Savannah) Nate (Karan Soni) hires successfully pass as his supple theoretical girlfriend?

Before her psychotic pimp (Jillian Bell as Trina) shows up to destroy everything?

Wildly engaging in dishevelling shenanigans, Office Christmas Party educates as it embroils.

Through the magic of Christmas, Clay and Carol stop fighting and come together as a family, while several hilarious subordinates find the partner they've been so shyly seeking.

Lumps are taken, yet necessary risks ridiculously refine surefire stabilities, and remarkably steady technologies cyberspatially save the day.

Dionysian balance.

Brainiac mirth.

Certainly an adult themed Christmas film that sets a bizarro example, Office Christmas Party still excels at letting loose just in time for the holiday season.

Some scenes could have been cut, and a bit more time could have been spent editing the script, but the highs olympianly outweigh the lows, and it's definitely worth checking out.

With so many supporting voices delivering strong orations, it must have been tough for Jillian Bell to outshine them all.

But that's exactly what she does.

Second place going to Randall Park (Fred).

Rob Corddry (Jeremy) needs better material!

Hail, Caesar!

Film production, the magnification of dreams and ambitions, pluralizing heroism and gallantry with clear and precise occasionally ambiguous envisioned dexterity, precipices and pageants promulgating objectivity and sentiment with equally concise provocations, the contemporary and the historical rivetingly aligned, mischievously extracting, the im/pertinence of our times.

A film set.

A star.

A gathering of observers. 

Identity in flux.

Hail, Caesar! converses with Trumbo, a comedic counterpoint to its tragic pen, wherein communists have infiltrated Hollywood and are engaged in criminal activities directly undertaken to support the Soviet Union, only a hardboiled behind-the-scenes gruff steady executive and his up-and-coming Western foil standing in their way, laughs consistently produced amidst the touching absurdity, which seriously suggests it's inherently ridiculous, without failing to shrewdly present itself as a matter of unconcerned dazzle, denoted connotations covertly overted, not the Coen Brothers best comic material but it passes, Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) and his little dog, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), defender of the dialectic.

It's a compelling tool, this, dialectic, oppositions and syntheses you know, but using it to predict the future with dispassionate inevitability is where it errs, the end of history functioning like a religious utopia (a 19th century form fused with secular content) which foolishly casts out history and religion, people are never going to stop remembering the past or believing in the fantastic, and attempts to laud a future which does so is a naive waste of critical resources.

Although, I suppose, in my mediocre understanding of the concept, in an egalitarian society things are, oddly enough, much more equal, and due to the equality of opportunity and resources people would be less willing to bear grudges, and less concerned with what happened hundreds of years ago, because they aren't labouring at all times for peanuts, make things more equal, more comfortable, and such grudges could decrease in severity because it's easier to let go of a grudge when you have free time and a disposable income, things to do, goods to acquire.

It's kind of like a generational thing though, if that theory is still taken seriously (it should be), new generations rebelliously critiquing whatever happens to be the norm, movements generated by boredom, generations growing up in a culture based on equality still seeking to define themselves by rallying against the system, even if it was that system that gave them the opportunity to rally against it, its opposite having no such recourse, taking it apart so their grandchildren can rebuild it.

I don't think you can eliminate the desire to change things and stand out through change no matter how perfect a system you create unless you can somehow materialize the affects of the adversarial without promoting stagnation and decay.

Sports do this well.

But the dialectic in terms of momentary observation, observances of historical mutations, brief narrative evaluations rather than definitive prognostications, is a constructive tool, fun to play with, there are plenty of oppositions out there to note, many of which haven't been thought up to strategically condition the future.

Maybe they should have been, maybe not, doesn't change my thoughts that Hail, Caesar! is funny and worth seeing, a lighthearted yet brash take on life, a minor film in the Coen Brothers's oeuvre. 

With Clancy Brown (Gracchus), Robert Picardo (Rabbi), Wayne Knight (Lurking Extra #1), Dolph Lundgren (Submarine Commander), Patrick Fischler (Communist Writer #2), and Christopher Lambert (Arne Seslum).