Bullet Train

What a strange film.

There's no doubt it's well done. It seems the more critics lambaste gratuitously violent films, the more clever and entertaining they become, consistently challenging their audiences to duel with themselves as they come to reckless terms with their own narrative preferences. 

Bullet Train even interweaves Thomas the Tank Engine, as a paid assassin uses its inherent lessons to frame and construct his sociocultural views, a tender embrace no doubt endearing as he shoots his way through the chaotic frenzy, even sharing the most violent sequence from the film as he and his brother argue about how many people they took out during their most recent job, their dispute graphically and reminiscently depicted, it's insane, it's just insane.

Another nice guy with a gift for killing shares his therapist's advice throughout, and consistently attempts to talk rather than fight, his wise complaints neither brokered nor adhered to.

Überviolent psychological brainy dramatic comedies are no doubt a 21st century speciality, it's clear decades of vertical mutation have enhanced their intricate design, but are there not consequences to such manifestations?

Most people know the difference between psycho film and playful reality, and don't turn into bellicose beasts just because they saw a violent movie.

But you often hear about mass shootings in the States, so you have to wonder if permitting your populace to purchase multivariable assault weapons, while idealizing mass unattainable wealth, and then constantly showcasing brilliant and hilarious violent films, is not a seriously bad idea, even if you're making billions (are hundreds of millions not enough?).

Take away the mass availability of assault weapons and the mass shootings decrease proportionately, borrowing stats from Bowling for Columbine, and the distressing onslaught that's proceeded unabated since.

Then nerd men can get back to thematically impressing nerd women with their bombastic theatrics, and the next generation of eccentric children can constructively flourish in the librarial thunderground.

It's always the same story. ⛄

If your culture isn't prone to routine psychotic outbursts furiously unleashed on the unsuspecting public, and films like this one are reserved for more mature audiences who like gangster movies, Bullet Train is somewhat of a masterpiece, which still goes a bit overboard.

What would The Godfather or Scarface (1983) have been like if they'd been released at a later date?

They still seem a lot more profound.

And it's clear that they're not comedies. 

Deadpool 2

I returned to my apartment around 2am a year or so ago and decided to throw on Deadpool, having loved it so much the first time I saw it.

I was tired and gaseous and distracted and a bit tipsy and wound-up shutting it off after only having viewed the first half-hour.

I figured it was unfair to judge the film because fatigue and flatulence were both likely preventing me from adoring its paramount trash talk, yet, due to the nature of Deadpool's reckonings, I also thought it appropriate to cast judgment based upon ludicrous criteria ingenuously articulated, as if such inanity was more in tune with the film's blunt charisma, as if in doing so I was being rashly genuine.

Thus, I never watched it again, and even though I still cherish the memories I have of loving it around Valentine's Day as I watched it in theatres à tout seul, and I arrived to see Deadpool 2 in energetic spirits calisthenically adjudicated, I was still worried that it would fail to impress and leave me bewildered and shocked as if I had aged to a point where I no longer got it, where I had become too stilted and bloated, where I had lost touch with the insouciant modes of expression I had studied lackadaisically in my youth, and could no longer intuitively access the mischievous spirits that once characterized so much harmless interrogative free play, like no longer enjoying hot dogs from street vendors in Toronto, even if I only eat vegetarian exemplars of the notorious snack these days, covered in pickles, onions, and corn relish, they're still quite tasty, and fill you up for under $5.

I wasn't disappointed.

The first viewing was a mind-blowing pristine cacophonous array of non-stop well-timed inappropriately pertinent comments unleashed with the untameable fury of well-educated individuals who lack the trust fund to perennially compete in the internship top-heavy elitist postmodern corporate world.

There's no lull, no pause, no moment where gifted writers Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds couldn't come up with another hardboiled multilayered remark that obliterates as it coddles or simply celebrates courageously embracing disenfranchised incredulity.

Asserting agency while confronting meaninglessness.

About a week before I saw Deadpool 2 I was wondering what happened to self-referential metaforecasts which critically examine their own narrative threads while simultaneously building them up with paradoxical discursive assertion.

Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) keeps getting better with age, does anyone play the grizzly sarcastic ferociously charming nerd better?, or has there ever been a better foolish romantic determined endearing smart ass contemplating pan-fried cultural conundrums with cold brazen provocative expertise?

Not that he isn't part of remarkable team that holds Deadpool 2 together, expressing individuality collectively to overcome shortsighted institutionalized supernatural miscalculations.

Like you're watching duty counsels in action.

There's so much more to the film than what I've presented here.

Boom.

Damn it's good.

Atomic Blonde

If this is the mainstream cinematic age of fantasy and action, it’s fascinating to see how different directors are imagining themselves franchised in the genre(s), as they create hyperreactive propulsive enterprising incinerations which vehemently ponder conundrums cloaked in smarm.

Brainiac brawn.

Succulent seduction.

King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword, John Wick, and Atomic Blonde do this anyways, offering jousts and jinxes to challenge unconcerned juggernauts.

Atomic Blonde is borderline brilliant with its kinetic complications and extensive improvisations, multiple characters each playing integral roles as a beautiful deadly agent thrives on information hunger.

The cold war is about to end (that’s end!) but not before a coveted list of pejorative players appears for sale on clandestine markets which seek to see its content temporally manifested.

French, Russian, British and American operatives desperately clash to obtain it on the streets of a divided Berlin, double-crossing, combatting, entertaining, conjoining, keeping track of who’s in first simmering hardboiled whats and I-don’t-knows, as it becomes clear that everything’s obscured, and only those who can proportionally balance the incisive with the bellicose have a chance at emerging unscathed.

The judicious exchange of bodily fluids a portentous exemplar of trust notwithstanding.

Or slightly scathed.

Quite scathed perhaps.

I didn’t see Ghost in the Shell so this statement may be incorrect, but Lorraine Broughton's (Charlize Theron) altercations (perhaps) set a new standard for tenacious females furiously and potently defending themselves.

Cool title, cool action, cool interactions, icy wherewithal, David Leitch's upcoming films may be some of the best espionagesque cerebral thrillers to ever gladiatorally grace American cinemas, notably if he keeps working with Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir (editing) and Kurt Johnstad (screenplay).

The music’s fantastic too and creatively mixed with the action.

Not for the feint of heart but essential to establish glacial bearings, Atomic Blonde exfoliates in overdrive to romanticize tranquility.

And calm.

Leitch used to be a stuntperson apparently. Has a stuntperson ever gone on to direct before?

John Wick

A surprisingly well crafted visceral revenge flick, a frenzy attuned to instinctual reflexivity, just in time for Halloween, John Wick delivers a fast-paced sophisticated personalized bloodbath, continentally conceived with considerations for respect, an elite world of criminals, immaculately imploding.

Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a legendary assassin who retired to settle down with his wife who then died, leaving behind a small dog to remind him of her.

He goes for a drive in his automobile one day, and the son of a Russian gangster requests its sale.

He refuses and drives away.

The son then visits him in the middle of the night, beats him senseless with the help of his goons, _____ the dog, and steals the car.

Wick wakes up the next day composed yet enraged, in preparation for an insane rampage designed to express his dissastifaction.

It's a very basic plot, but the visuals, dialogue, music, acting, and combat scenes crystallize a uniform carnal indignant balance, almost Lynchean in terms of surreal elegance, comedy awkwardly yet cursively situated to allow the film to concentrate on internal affairs (the police aren't involved [editing by Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir]), the invincibility factor realistically deconstructed inasmuch as Wick almost bites it a number of times, saved here and there, by trustworthy old friends.

I think the cast and crew really took the making of this film seriously which could be why it stands out.

Casting by Jessica Kelly and Suzanne Smith.

Look for David Patrick Kelly.

Probably didn't have to be quite so violent.