Shin Zatôichi: Yabure! Tôjin-ken (Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman)

Across the multivariable definitive lands of bellicose old school Japan, Zatoichi continues to awkwardly progress in search of honour and friendship and loyalty.

Unfortunately, his enduring prowess leads those who would traditionally salute his daring, to mistrust his holistic self-sacrifice as he haplessly seeks to help them.

Strict absolutes murderously upheld haunt his path in this instalment, as an adventurous family visiting from China runs afoul of ancient custom.

Indeed as the lauded clan leader austerely passes in procession along the road, those in front of him must free the way and humbly kneel and bow and worship.

But a Chinese child's long cherished kite suddenly takes off in front of them as they pass, the swordspeople immediately responding with rancour and consequently murdering strangers in their midst.

A one-armed swordsperson also visiting from China valiantly defends the un-armed innocents, only to be blamed for the resultant massacre and viciously hunted in the shocking aftermath.

Sometime after he flees he encounters Zatoichi with the aghast child, Zatoichi unable to understand his language, but as luck would have it, the boy can translate.

They stealthily stride and furtively fascinate until they find shelter amongst the survivors.

But after Zatoichi departs to gather supplies.

He's erroneously blamed for revealing their location. 

You see people who are interested in the same things curiously associating with one another online, without having to worry about nation or culture the similar interests promoting cohesive bonds.

Dispiritingly, the disseminators of widespread mistrust also prosper online, and miserably challenge the international forums within which global communities thrive and flourish.

Star Trek's universal translator certainly eases linguistic burdens, and makes cross-cultural convivial communication much more generally verbose and heartfelt.

We're not there yet but translating devices are consistently improving year after year, in twenty years I reasonably imagine a similar device may in fact exist.

Back in the day, such a miraculous enabling would have engendered dialogue between Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman, and they would not have had to recklessly engage in a lethal death battle to settle the score.

Perhaps with ameliorated time and animate progressions we'll get there one day.

As the intuitive ideas of younger generations.

Make political headway worldwide. 

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie

While the bona fide uncompromising authentic origin tale remains unknown, annual hypotheses loosely based on fact swashbucklingly revitalize widespread interest, the diverse ways in which compelling details vividly transform from one story to the next, festively salute constellated mutation throughout mysterious epic skyways. 

The unimaginative and concretely obsessed may be led astray by absolute claims, attempting to harness commercial synergies through ornate mad disingenuous trusts.

It can at times feel lucid and reasonable to indeed contend you've mastered conspiracy, and can exultingly claim genesizzlin' unalloyed paramount intricate distillate digress.

But then how multivariably arrayed is your manifest mischievous missive, how disciplined in/opportune how distinctly yielding manifold dispersals?

Take Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie wherein which the wicked Stormella defies Christmas law, and conjures a tumultuous storm to inimically ruin Santa's Christmas Eve flight!

We hear no mention of her in the song nor in the old classics from 1964 or 1948, thus should this account be definitively forecast would it not imprecisely promulgate legend?

It is certainly a humble version and the Holiday Season encourages modesty, as the sublime life of the King of Kings effortlessly illuminates oblivious morrows.

We then find in The Last Crusade the cup of a carpenter awkwardly situated, amongst the luxurious ostentatious pageantry libationally orchestrating abstract life.

It provides trusted Indiana Jones with miraculous good fortune and pious fidelity, through which he's able to heal his father through the unabashed art of temperate self-sacrifice. 

But how to line up every Rudolph the Red-Nosed ever constructively theorized across the globe, and exhaustively vet their fleeting integrity with wholesome and practical unparalleled sights?

Perhaps better to praise inexactitude and celestially bathe in impressionable waters, the sought after divine undiluted tarot disproportionately grave and unimpacting.

Although should it be discovered neither to embrace hysteria nor earthquaking frenzy!

Don't worry, Rudolph shines through.

Stormella even learns to chill out.

🎄🎅🤶🎁⛄

The Power of the Dog

Inherited prestige respectfully maintained calm settled prudence rambunctious accord, the arduous management of a prosperous ranch producing tensions through divisional labour.

The less gifted compassionate brother humbly seeks the domestic life (Jesse Plemons as George Burbank), and finds himself smitten with a hardworking lass who successfully runs her own popular business (Kirsten Dunst as Rose Gordon).

The other bro is habitually suspicious of any glad-handing enamoured newcomer (Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank [outstanding performance]), and prefers rough and tumble emphatically coarse hands-on physical quotidian forays.

But marriage soon dawns and with it not only a new likely permanent intelligent influence, but also a shy otherworldly distraction who makes a poor fit with bellicose life.

The productive bower audaciously enlightening belligerent desires for risk and privation, must suddenly accept appeasing elements which may even at times utter contradiction.

But even more, there's a nerve-racking secret that could incite revolt upon their orderly lands.

Or lead to comic disorganization.

Or catastrophic open truths.

It's a haunting solemn new age Western thoughtfully investigating masculine culture, from complementary bucolic perspectives, that have severely re-emerged as of late.

A way of life whose requisite content has not doubt mutated hectically for millennia, still embodies formalities immemorial assertively nuanced in varying degrees.

George takes the logical approach wisely accepting the rigid code, while leaving room for something more that may also integrate feminine cultivation.

Strength is a relative term and has myriad applications beyond what you can lift.

Why embrace strenuous impediments?

When there are so many new developments to ease your burdens!

A way of life I suppose, it's tough to give things up, especially if they're psychologically associated with good times from your youth, and corresponding senses of invincibility. 

Trying new things can help establish new paths to explore and consider, however.

While at times old methods hold true.

Nothing like a bit of old school trial and error.

Blended with postmodern reliability. 

Battle Beyond the Stars

A peaceful world universally renowned for its lighthearted communal levity, is suddenly threatened with total destruction, by a lethal tyrant and his mutant army, who possesses a formidable weapon. 

The planet lacks technological distinction but at one time created a ship, to explore the surrounding stars with inquisitive pluck and attuned recognition. 

In their darkest hour of woe of young adventurer commands this vessel (Richard Thomas as Shad), and sets out in search of mercenaries to defend them from the ruthless Sador (John Saxon). 

His courageous exploration is soon audaciously rewarded, as he's able to find able bodied romantics eager to fight a hopeless battle.

Even though scant retribution can be fortuitously paid, they fight resolutely with stalwart will for resounding intergalactic accolades. 

A curious cast of alien life is correspondingly assembled, from diverse realms with eclectic creeds vigorously applied to the newfound mission.

Not to mention inchoate love hectically maturing in the heat of battle.

For two brave modest souls.

Attuned to devout strife.

Playful sci-fi often flops but you could do worse than Battle Beyond the Stars, whose mischievous investigative libido strives in bold rambunctious posture.

Heavily influenced by Star Wars not to mention Star Trek and Seven Samurai, it still brazenly crafts a randy wide-eyed contumacious original vortex.

It plays clever tricks with expectations at times, notably the potential Cantina-like homage, which turns out to be a generally deserted planet, Jimmy T. Murakami 1, J.J.Abrams, 0.

From ceremonious synthetics to vehement Valkyries, Murakami reconstructs the imagination in space, I applaud his bold respect for Seven Samurai, not easy to pull off forlorn amongst the stars.

I searched to find an article claiming that most of the actors from Battle Beyond had had guest Star Trek appearances. I didn't find one (boring!). Levels of postmodern nerd-dom still haven't reached ecstatic heights! 

Sometimes, every scene within a film takes on a lifeforce of its own, the accumulated resonance of the trails and errors constituently reverberating notwithstanding.

For fans of alternative sci-fi I'd say Battle Beyond the Stars can't be missed.

Awkward. Innocent. Daring. Uncanny.

Why not throw in some mutants?

Can't speak to its lasting influence. 

*Here's a cool list of celebrity guest star appearances on Star Trek.

C.R.A.Z.Y

A father (Michel Côté) and mother (Danielle Proulx) full of love raise a hyper-reactive family, with 5 boys shenanigan prone experimentally tune to voltaic theses. 

The mother compassionately defends her young when conflict abounds and must be adjudicated, her loving intuitive multidimension reflexively nurturing caressed fair play.

The father is somewhat more stern but he's still playfully proud of his boys, his love panoramically abounding within testosterone fuelled parameters.

But one of his boys instinctually lacks traditional masculine brawn and gusto, gravitating more wholeheartedly towards his mom, he loves his dad and doesn't want to get in trouble, but also doesn't understand at times why he's punished.

The overbearing weight of codes of conduct as upheld by his father and siblings, lead to bewildered awkward adaptations as he struggles to come of age.

Natural endemic lucidity is rambunctiously transformed into hesitant confusion, the simple process of embracing one's thoughts imperiously clad in grand complexity. 

But his father isn't a monster and although he's ill-equipped to openly accommodate, he still loves his gifted child with the honest shock of misunderstanding.

______ (Olivier Bénard/Émile Vallée/Marc-André Grondin) just wants to fit in with the family he knows and sincerely loves, his father recognizing his meaningful attempts to express his genuine heartfelt devotion.

Fortunately his father adapts too and a loving relationship prospers and grows, with holistic balance and comprehensive understanding they remain good friends as time slowly passes.

So many films from the '90s made it seem like such a world would eventually bloom (as I've mentioned before), where rigid immutable conceptions of gender would generally relax to forge open communities.

Such communities don't have to critique people who naturally play traditional roles, the roles do seem to fit many people as they interact with various constructs.

But many others don't naturally fit and shouldn't feel bad for doing what comes naturally. Feeling bad about your own harmless thoughts can lead to intense personal distress.

Inclusive communities where difference thrives heals or avoids such sincere distress, and the resultant conflicts and mental illnesses that can develop through blind intolerance.

If one considers nature realistically how could one code of conduct predominate, when ample evidence historically perseveres which proves paramount difference co-exists naturally?

It's a matter of embracing traditional gender roles along with multifaceted gender difference.

Then learning and growing together.

Like people do so well in Québec.

We the Animals

A creative child, impoverished and sensitive, hesitant and withdrawn, immersed in domestic violence explosive tempers rigid flair, bipolar ontologies practically conditioning tempestuous mindsets artistically grained and fractured, love amorously swathing, freedom recklessly improvising, a lack of consultation disputatiously igniting frayed conscience, with striking elementary animosity, fell off the deep end, woe heartaches disbelief, still anchored constitutionally, to sights sounds preached ruptures too familiar.

Tough life for the little guy.

The love's there, no question, but paps doesn't get that he's just not the type of kid who learns to swim if you unexpectedly let go.

A budding young illustrator, painter, designer, architect, explicitly classifying the chaos as unconfrontationally as he can, attaching meaning to the inexplicable with tactile ambassadorial artifice, a collection accrued amassed, grotesquely misinterpreted upon discovery.

He finds it thrown away.

Learns to keep his head above water.

There's no support network overflowing with concerned expertise.

Just actions, reactions, patterns, nature.

A lack of understanding.

Existence.

We the Animals relies more on emotion than rational discourse as it presents itself, a stunning array of carefully selected snapshots delicately scolding in volatile willow.

There's nothing easy about this film, the characters patiently move from hardship to hardship supporting themselves as they frenetically endure, or become accustomed to livid passionate embraces, some people learn to thrive on conflict, a strange inhospitable disposition divisively characterizing sullen negotiation.

Odd habitual inadmissibilities.

An excellent film regardless which pulls you in with unassuming composure, not to be taken lightly even if endearment shines through, not to be bluntly dismissed even if scenes are strictly brutal.

When you see her sleeping on the couch one morning surrounded by mischief you think that must be something exceptionally adorable to wake up to.

But a lack of both resources and community services, and a strong desire to make their own way, lead to violent emotional outbursts which make their situation haunting and desperate.

Logan

Fascist forces of dull simplicity have driven mutants to the brink of extinction in James Mangold's Logan, but a few remain, carving out a meagre living while doing everything they can to conceal the beauty that defines their superlative difference.

Rather than cultivating an inclusive public sphere wherein which difference is free to flourish, that difference has been isolated and weaponized by monstrous geneticists intent on rearing invincible super soldiers to achieve militaristic objectives.

But these gifted children fight back, escape, avoid capture, one of them eventually finding Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) who have been living off the grid in severe destitution.

She's (Dafne Keen as Laura) hunted of course, intense battles erupting everywhere she goes, the death count extremely high as the trio travels from Mexico to North Dakota in search of a secretive promised land.

And a family.

There's a very tender scene where they all sit down to dinner on a farm and warmly discuss different topics, a rare moment in superhero films that briefly and humbly exemplifies everything they've been fighting for.

They're reminded shortly thereafter that for some insane reason their idle happiness enrages conformist obscurities.

Suffocatingly.

Patrick Stewart delivers a remarkable performance.

He often has a leadership role that doesn't display much vulnerability, but in Logan he's quite helpless and therefore given the opportunity to heartbreakingly act beyond the borders his characters often rivetingly apply themselves within.

An outstanding supporting role.

Logan's like no other X-Men film.

It's much more stylistically concerned with the human factor than special effects or introducing a wild array of compelling new characters.

Identity, community, belonging, loneliness, rage, and bigotry still drive the narrative, but they're examined less explosively, with more realistically tender tenacity (when the fighting stops), as if X-Men films truly are applicable to global sociopolitical debates, debates within which their characters dynamically distinguish themselves.

A fitting salute to Hugh Jackman who has thankfully been bringing Wolverine to life for the past 17 years.

So many irresistible moments.

Only the death of Captain James T. Kirk effected me similarly.

Who knows, maybe huge assholes with tons of power will stop militaristically expressing themselves while crushing other people who aren't like them some day.

That kind of bullshit doesn't seem to fly in the EU much thankfully.

Currently.

Difference really is a wonderful thing.

When it thrives, the scientific, artistic, and religious benefits are extraordinary.

It's why we have cars, electricity.

The internet.

Refrigerators.

If the people who invented or discovered these things had been callously excluded and beaten down throughout their lives we'd still be living in the dark ages.

And those assholes would still be in charge.

Nurturing contempt.

Ruling with imperialist ambitions.

Recklessly waging war.

To satisfy capricious whims.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Entombed omniscience, eternally incarcerated in nocturnal necromance, once unparalleled god of an ancient world, tyrannical and ostentatious in luminous immortality, guarded by 4 devoted soldiers living and dying at his command, dedicated to ruling with neither compromise nor exception, suddenly unearthed by a clandestine Egyptian cult, to demonically deconstruct the flourishing postmodern world.

Auspicious ascension.

Consummate destruction.

The world is blanketed in relative calm as those with pseudosupernatural powers and their hardworking compatriots have learned to live peaceful lives, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) even having found a day job and wife, Professor X (James McAvoy) competently facilitating education.

But the extraordinary are still plagued by bigoted misunderstandings, forced to fight to the death or perform parlour tricks, and as Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) begins to rise he quickly finds enthusiastic neophytes.

To unleash a new world order.

The X-Men standing in his way.

X-Men: Apocalypse recasts the franchise, reintroducing favourite characters to the alternative timeline while ensuring traditional rivalries and romances ignite anew.

Too much time may have been spent exploring these traditions, Professor X and Magneto's everlasting polarity growing tiresome at points, future films perhaps expanding upon their routine dialogues, as they possibly explore alternative argumentative philosophies.

Relying heavily on what's transpired in the past, in the past, while laying the foundations to illuminate future irresistibilities, X-Men: Apocalypse isn't the best X-Men film but still delivers an exciting tale which encourages the development of its audience's better selves.

Things that initially seem strange or otherworldly can become as familiar as whatever it is you grew up thinking was natural and good, trying new things and having discussions with people from other cultures paving alternative avenues of inquiry with multidimensional crystalline curiosity.

Hopefully after last weekend's horrific tragedy in Orlando, people feel more willing to embrace less extreme world views.

You could live as long as Apocalypse and still encounter fresh perspectives to challenge your variable order of things with plump compelling intergalactic différence.

Without losing sight of where you come from.

Cross-referencing conversational data with research undertaken at your local universal library.

The Babadook

An intelligent mischievous creative child (Noah Wiseman as Samuel) has trouble fitting in with his Grade 1 class, notably because a demon terrorizes him throughout the night, known only to him and his mother, as the malevolent Babadook.

His mother (Essie Davis as Amelia) finds it odd that he continues to create elaborate contraptions to defend them against what she considers to be a disconcerting obsession, and can't open her mind to the truth of his dementia, until the Babadook menacingly appears.

It's a disorienting look at the ravages of exclusion.

Amelia can't get over the death of her husband who died on the night she gave birth to her son.

As she has understandable trouble reintegrating, her son's social difficulties exasperate their isolation.

She's older and has built up a thicker layer of psychological feints to conceal her overwhelming grief.

But as the manifestation of their loneliness closes in, threatening their sanity, a new defensive system must be hybridized.

If they can't find recourse to sociological restructuring, the Babadook is free to conquer.

Directer Jennifer Kent creates a haunting atmosphere of ostracized tension within, which works well considering her budgetary constraints.

Patient piecemeal manic hysteria quietly descends, facing bravery and insolence as it seeks leverage.

With additional resources, there's no telling what the sequel may unleash.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Evidently, cause and effect temporally deducing, internal philosophical differences debating an approach, the struggle to survive polarizing its parameters, the fact remains that a choice was made, its destructive consequences perspiring an end game, a solution transporting a stabilized atrophy, back to the source, to realign its origins.

Smoothly and shockingly aspiring to First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past rivetingly integrates their two timelines, flexibly intertwining the old with the new, investing the best of both worlds with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).

Harnessing irrepressible elasticities.

Magneto's (Michael Fassbender/Ian McKellen) might-is-right response continues to rebel against Professor X's (James McAvoy/Patrick Stewart) republic, as both are given ample contraceptives, their ideals tumultuously tested, by acts of genocidal supervillainy.

Perceived threats, prejudiced itineraries, Magneto's malignment, Professor X's stand.

Why difference has to often negatively preoccupy powers-that-be doesn't make sense.

Such attitudes can turn potentially productive community members into bitter antagonists, generations of Magnetos, time after time after time.

A cultural framework open to alternatives multiplies the conditions through which it can innovate and progress.

Infinite combinations and constructions.

Limitlessly inducing.

The film's really well done.

What a beginning.

Devil's Knot

Seemingly criminal investigative buffoonery is exactingly exposed yet authoritatively dismissed in Atom Egoyan's Devil's Knot, the lives of three teens dependent on said revelations, the law more concerned with either fabricating or submitting to superstition.

The evidence which Egoyan vets cannot lucidly resolve resulting legal tensions.

Dedicated altruistic private investigator Ron Lax (Colin Firth) resolutely prowls to defend, analyzing the facts exhaustively and judiciously, earning trust where none has ever been granted, proceeding directly, from a sense of justice.

But his team is held back by insurmountable time constraints and predetermined sentences, foregone conclusions belittlingly arresting, narcoleptic networks, propagandized anew.

The film harrowingly spawns a persisted enveloping remittance, a sublime sense of optimism institutionally dismayed, helplessness, the beautiful, the dissolute, the scapegoating of difference, a purloined procedural penitentiary.

Nothing can be proven.

Fights against overwhelming odds.

The knot represents the ways in which authorities sometimes outlaw/vilify/demonize a bohemian perspective then rely on their sanctified laurels while using the strategies of that perspective to illegitimately act.

It happens in the film anyways.

And in Foucault.

Oddly, I've been wondering recently if there's ever been a documentary film made about duty counsels and/or legal aids.

Appropriately timed thought even if Lax isn't a lawyer.

I've noticed a negative stereotype associated with the work legal aids perform which a solid documentary film and accompanying book could help destabilize.

Something like Duty Counselled.

Or something else.

Blackbird

Examining the abysmal side of small town teenage individuality, as the newer kid, a goth stranger from the city who can't adjust to hushing up, hunting, and playing hockey, falls for a girl who likes him but also makes sure to attend every game.

Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.

Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.

Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).

The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.

But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.

It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.

It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.

And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.

He's just a kid.

You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.

In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.

Disturbing, demented, dissonance.

A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.

Intouchables

Improvised confident agile productivity meets frustrated restrained routine continuity in the heartwarming new odd couple film, Intouchables, the two dimensions elastically forging an incorporeal amicable trust.

Or friendship. Friendship is another way of describing that which they forge.

Philippe (François Cluzet) is a wealthy aristocratic quadriplegic who requires the aid of a live-in attendant. Driss (Omar Sy) comes from the projects and only applied for the position to demonstrate to social assistance that he's looking for work.

It quickly becomes apparent that Driss's honest, easy going, cheeky camaraderie is precisely that for which Philippe has been searching, having grown tired of fawning, hesitant, by-the-book cookie cutters.     

And the result is mutually cathartic.

The mix of different attitudes regarding artistic modes of expression is invaluable.

Oddly enough, it seems that there are still a lot of people who don't mix the classical with the popular.

Which is just simply weird.

Illustrating the rewards of embracing alternative therapeutic methodologies in order to rediscover innocuously rebellious invigorating affects, Intouchables acrobatically and celestially displays its inclusive joie de vivre without losing its practical edge.

Worth checking out.

X-Men: First Class

As different childhoods produce distinct ethical engagements, those possessing unique abilities for which they have been ostracized come together to form a team. Revelling in the emancipatory liveliness forged by the inclusive environment which provides them with the opportunity to openly nurture their gifts, a strong sense of self evolves which is nourished by the art of friend making. But opposing philosophies regarding how they should respond to the circumstances which stifled their progress introduce a spirited variable which constructs an internal polarity. Friends must decide where their allegiances lie if they are to be true to their feelings as they construct dreams for the future.

But it's really not that dramatic. True, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, Laurence Belcher) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, Bill Milner) represent opposing politico-ethical stances in regards to sociological group dynamics, but even when said stances are materialized, through the act of a decision necessitated by ego (or a lack there of), they still remain friends as they attempt to thwart each others efforts.

Most of the thwarting takes place in X-Men: First Class's predecessors.

It's fun to watch as Professor X and Magneto youthfully engage in various extraordinary activities, but the film isn't the greatest. There are many, many, terrible lines that seem to be relying on the franchise's built in audience for cheerful support. Many of the scenes where characters meet one another or assume their future identities are as predictable and maudlin as they come, and it's sort of like they've just remade the original X-Men film and substituted a number of new characters and an unconvincing cold war scenario for its content. One major difference is that the writers seem to be favouring Magneto's outlook as evidenced by the sympathy generated for his character, the fact that he is given the last scene, the death midway of the only African American character, and the constant objectification of women. A forgettable instalment in the X-Men saga, First Class is still required viewing for fans nonetheless.