Project Power

The Marvel instinct is pejoratively packaged and illicitly cast for chaotic distribution, those taking the metamorphic drug unleashing wanton blind destruction.

It enables superpowers derived from beastly DNA, an individual's latent spirit animal emerging in death defying rampage. 

A policeperson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Frank) keeps close contact with a dealer with the hopes of busting the network, but bribes and high level corruption make his duties grim untenable.

An ex-soldier (Jamie Foxx as Art) seeks the dealers who have kidnapped his only daughter, her unique multivariable metabolism having been used to create the drug.

They find themselves forging a team dedicated to preventing its sale.

Without that much to go on. 

Trepidatious flounce and flail.

Project Power takes übermanche obsessions and distills them within a pill, the resulting crazed despotic X-Men committing brazen crimes at will.

It's not the deepest film but it makes the most of its barebones script, not many characters or deceptive scenarios but what persists isn't strained or dull.

A byproduct of preponderant superheroics is the desire to court invincibility, and people taking illegal drugs may express themselves accordingly

The difficulties the police have engaging the users are pronounced but the side-effects are largely ignored, there's no trip to the hospital like that in The Third Man, or a descent into madness like that found in Trainspotting. 

Scholastic endeavour is directly criticized, the film seems to be saying there's no point. The film indeed criticizes the teacher more severely for seeking student engagement than the specific student for selling drugs.

School's a remarkable tool that can help you genuinely engage your mind.

Sometimes you have to make it more interesting (I believe Eminem's expression is, own it) rather than just critiquing education in general.

I've found the scholastic world's much more open, less rigid than worldly practice.

If it doesn't help you make millions, it can still help you develop your mind.

Unlock scholastic superpowers, give it a shot, directly apply yourself.

There's no shame in cultivating imagination.

Brilliant raps in Project Power. 

Paris Blues

Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) and Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) have smoothly settled in Paris, where they work as jazz musicians at a local club most working nights.

Their reputation's solid and they work hard to maintain it, routine practise honing creativity, regular performance hot damn experiment, the vibrant chill nightlife.

Bowen's interested in musical composition and Cook tries to help him write, consistently generating new ideas inordinate spirited bright material.

Their act's established, they're part of the scene, living the life in grooves composing, when two American tourists show up one night in search of improvised l'amour.

They're on a well-earned two week vacation and didn't know what to readily expect, but Ram and Eddie weren't prepared for them either, and their resonant domestic echo.

Different traditions contend as they converse, as they consider relationships long-lasting, sure and steady conjugal comportment, the cookie cut stuck out in the 'burbs.

It's a lot to give up but there's so much to gain but everything's happening so quickly, and Bowen's the leader of his nimble band and his fellow musicians rely on him heavily.

He looks out for them anyways and tries to steer them away from soulless excess, relying on them like a coach or trainer, who works for the same productive team.

Was that a regular thing in the '60s, the '50s, the '40s, whenever?

Professional musicians working the same club every night and wildly drawing them in?

Does it still happen in Paris and New York or somewhere in Montréal that I'm unaware of?, if not I'd argue something's been lost, something beyond commercial value.

Imagine what you'd create if you worked that hard, what you'd routinely exceptionally come up with, if you never stopped to rest on your laurels, if life was a constant improvised rhythm?

I think old school musicians were more concerned with sounding good than with not sounding bad, but that's just a casual observation that isn't supported by vigorous research (does the absence of working class vitality within artistic spheres lead to a general spirit that's more academic than artistic?).

Imagine there were several exceptional bands that regularly played the same clubs in Montréal, and you could see them any night of the week, and they never gave anything less than outstanding?

Imagine they still played their instruments too and sought to etherealize with mad reckless solos, or jam here and there at times, as the drive of their audience compelled them?

Paris Blues captures a rhythmic lifestyle caught up with domestic and political intrigue, and celebrates musician's lives without focusing intently on the negative.

The negative taunts in every domain and it's great to see a film that celebrates the artistic life.

Relationships tempt and tantalize.

Resolute competing responsibilities.  

*Duke Ellington's music's incredible and there's an amazing scene where Louis Armstrong (Wild Man Moore) stops by to jam.

Reversal of Fortune

Snap judgments based upon agitated reckonings lead to pejorative sensationalized repute in Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune.

How to make someone appear guilty without making it look like you're attempting to make someone appear guilty, if they are in fact not guilty?

If they are in fact not guilty, how do you convincingly make it look like someone has attempted to make them look guilty without looking as if they were attempting to make them look guilty, before cold judicial verdicts descend?

It's basic Columbo, the televisual and cinematic world worse off without a regular dose of Columbo, and its freewheeling composed articulate dishevelled discourse, perhaps channeled by Professor Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) and his team in this inclusion, which asks if maligned bourgeois sentiment has predetermined an aesthete's obituary?

It's certainly quite the team.

It's incredible how many people can come together to defend or prosecute, many of them working pro bono, out of devoted respect for the law.

Engrained malfeasance.

People in positions of power exploit that power since no one holds them to account, but then someone does, it seems obvious that they're guilty, and justice adjudicates, condemning the reckless individual.

But it's still quite the task, the required reading voluminously dissonant, to transform every link into a succinct gripping narrative no small feat albeit thrilling for a motivated legal team, in possession of the facts, and interpretive plausibility, expert testimony, meticulous mechanics, it must be like playing a stable integral role in a constantly shifting production, not improvised, still rehearsed, but unaware of specific counterarguments, the speculation part of the fun, bold jurisprudent research and development.

Reversal of Fortune takes place in such a frame as Claus von Bulow (Jeremy Irons) seeks legal counsel, he's been convicted once already, and his lawyer's none too sympathetic.

He takes the case though, assembles his team, and finds evidence which contradicts his assumptions.

Upon appeal, another round of judicial observation considers the alternative facts, and the second reading makes Claus seem as innocent as he was once thought definitively guilty, differing detailed composite accounts, instructive rhetorical consommé.

People observe thousands of minute details distilled into an accessible format that leads them to make claims which back up narrative threads.

Hoping there isn't some technical distortion.

While theatrically duelling in shades.

Waves

As much as you may want to debate it, it's her choice, her decision.

Not an easy decision to make if you haven't prepared for it, and support is key to easing the pressure if uncertainty's fogging things up.

There's no easy way to discuss these things, if you don't like discussing them, but if you are sexually active you should be prepared for the possibility of childbirth, and there are steps you can take to make sure pregnancy's highly unlikely, if you're not ready to have a child and are hoping to finish school or get a promotion, beforehand.

I'd use condoms even if my partner was on the pill to ensure a double line of defence, until such a time as we were both ready to child rear; it's probably the most serious responsibility there is.

But if I didn't want to have a child and she did, I would respect her decision. If she asked for my counsel, I would present my arguments, but it's her decision in the end, either way, and certainly not mine. Upon hearing her decision, I would do my best to prepare for fatherhood (nothing can prepare you for it) should she have chosen to have the child, and accept my nascent responsibilities. You may find as you grow older that you like having the little ones around. I certainly didn't way back when, as I was studying and working while travelling.

It's important to respect her decision.

That's the price for all the carefree fun.

Sincerest woe descends in Trey Edward Shults's Waves after confrontation leads to animosity, as two high school seniors discuss unplanned parenthood and can't come close to seeing eye to eye.

Opioid addiction clouds Tyler Williams's (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) judgment as he struggles to comprehend, an unfortunate injury jeopardizing his wrestling career too, he can't deal, even as people try to help him.

The film's quite well done, with the best cinematography I've seen in a while (Drew Daniels), the camerawork delicately louring you in to its breezy narrative flow, the current heaving as it helplessly adjusts to wayward distraught cataclysm, so felicitous early on, heartfelt ebb and flow.

Waves.

It spends one act presenting a golden road that's fraught with peril and distraction, the other romanticizing first love as a family comes to terms with its grief.

The father's (Sterling K. Brown as Ronald Williams) a good provider but also super, "this is my house!", which frustrates his teenage son who's constantly under his watchful eye.

It's a shame it takes extreme hardship for him to learn to apply the messages he absorbs without thinking, habitually.

But as he lets go of himself and stops trying to control things, as he waits for solutions to be organically presented instead of trying to generate them through authority, his family begins to heal through logical/emotional balance, and he starts to listen to what others have to say instead of just telling them what to do.

Family isn't the army or work.

I've always thought family was a safe haven beyond strict codes of conduct.

Where you learn responsibility at play.

Without having to worry about being fired.

Brought to light at special times of the year.

Sweet lattes.

Eggnog shakes.

Dead Ringers

Symbiotically existing in enriched systemic ecology, unwavering strict calisthenic sophistication, enraptured cozy charismatic extroversion, hesitant timid imaginative reserve, it's nice to share things, to openly bond with your closest friends, to have someone who listens intently, no matter what, with supportive perceptive inquisitive professionalism, inflating recourse to the sensual, with compelling jocose trust.

But from a rigid analysis of the potent data provided, it's clear they've never fallen in love, nor entertained the influence of an other, nor experimented outside of work.

Fraternal camaraderie bromantically heeled and coalesced, a love interest offers escape, from nothing other than endemic exclusion.

And as one twin rises, the other falls apart, the two still irrevocably united, as jealousy struts and strays.

Dark reckonings hark the one, as wild recreation threatens everything he's worked for, the other firmly relying on his research, and their unyielding warm fidelity.

If only he hadn't introduced temptation.

If only they'd persisted in nascent womb.

Dead Ringers bluntly interrogates duality, as purest electrosynthesis meets dialectical destruction.

Infusing interstellar heights with nebulous oblivion, it diagnostically conceives a tragic provocation.

The blend of successful starstruck elegance and distraught candid mayhem produces an unsettling effect, purest material Cronenberg, even as he approaches the lofty mainstream.

I actually skipped this one years ago when I was eagerly renting his early films, because I was worried it'd be too bourgeois, like he'd done something John Waters or John Carpenter would never do, for which I could find no categorical compulsion.

I remained deathly afraid.

But the result's nothing too scary, although it's quite different from Scanners or Videodrome, it's like Cronenberg's trying to do something more traditional (a drama) but still can't restrain himself, so it unreels like a high brow slightly grotesque farce, that's descended into chaos by the end.

Would have been cool if they had found partners at the same time, or had pursued l'amour less sophomorically.

Cohesive reflexive unity.

Extensively engrained.

Socioculturally cocooned.

Still not enough Jeremy Irons (Beverly and Elliot Mantle).

Don't wait an extra 15 years.

Postcards from the Edge

Constant motion, exceptional circumstances, wild indulgence, disorienting repercussions.

A blossoming actress well-versed in cinematic intrigue takes things multiple steps too far, and is sentenced to move back home.

She can therefore continue working after her overdose, even if incumbent oversight bewilders her resolve.

Things remain relatively calm, in Ms. Vale's (Meryl Streep) case anyways, but jealousy and deception neither flounder nor subside, as her mom (Shirley MacLaine) and newfound beau Jack Faulkner (Dennis Quaid) contend and philander respectively.

Explanations or reasons why disputatiously illuminate, as the struggling actress carries on.

Her strength is most impressive.

Her talent, undeniable.

Postcards from the Edge honestly presents a cerebral state of affairs.

Even though the situation's quite serious, lighthearted charm reveals resilient subtle character.

Blending in both sympathy and censure.

It resists impulses to sound too preachy and consequently doesn't infantalize.

It doesn't let anyone off the hook, but doesn't overflow with guilt or blame either.

I didn't know Carrie Fisher was such a good writer.

Postcards excels at offering versatile soul searching conversations between parent and young, examining the thought provoking envy that aggrandized their lives in show business.

But it's not simply envy, the envy's mixed with support and compassion, these beacons emitting clever conversational poise that tries not to offend as it resists temptation.

If it's blunt, it isn't overstated.

The conversations become more and more genuine as the film progresses, and director Mike Nichols gives them plenty of time to bloom as they patiently generate their own lifeforce.

Vale and Faulkner have some good arguments as well.

Some people who overdose don't get to return to work so shortly thereafter, so Postcards is a bit hands-on fairy tale.

But if forgiveness and mercy are to constructively abound, who's to critique such remarkable developments?

Cool film.

Wasn't on me radar way back when.

Rocketman

Abounding with characteristic irresistible melody, Rocketman presents the early life of Elton John (Taron Egerton/Matthew Illesley/Kit Connor).

By no means like warm fuzzy lighthearted hot cocoa, it hits hard at John's blunt childhood trauma, while illustrating how it affected his sudden rise to fame, and led to years of conflicted unrestrained hitched soul searching.

But it's not all that depressing, that's just the frame his actions are depicted within, and at times it overflows with chill wonder, rich with doubts and expedient sublimation.

He was younger once, not so long ago, and although the details of his youth aren't elaborately nuanced, we learn that his father (Steven Mackintosh as Stanley) never loved him, his mother (Bryce Dallas Howard as Sheila) could be mean, and his grandmother (Gemma Jones as Ivy) recognized his talent, which began to flourish at a young age.

He could play anything he heard and write soulful original music, the former winning him a scholarship at Britain's Royal Academy of Music, after which he found himself leading memorable bands.

Rocketman features his lifelong working relationship with gifted lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), and how the two have productively worked together for a mind-boggling 5 decades strong.

With Taupin's lyrics John wrote so many enduring classics, many of which are still played regularly today, and shot them into the stratosphere in the early '70s, from which they've never really descended.

But the excessive wealth and wild lifestyle took its toll, especially considering that he fell in love with his hard-edged manager (Richard Madden as John Reid), who was strictly a man of business.

Rocketman's recalled through a series of defining moments John shares with a self-help group after seeking aid to attain sobriety.

According to the film, he was never really that rowdy, that vain, that hostile.

That much of a prick.

On the contrary, he was a humble brilliant laidback musician who wanted to showcase his talent but didn't do anything excessive to gain recognition, like a really fun cool guy whose ambition was acknowledged without spectacle.

After he became a star his outfits were flamboyant but that was and possibly still is part of the show, part of the thrill of seeing him perform.

Costume design by Julian Day.

The film's musical biography so it isn't overflowing with details from John's life, but the music's enticing and creatively interwoven to sympathize, emphasize, ritualize, and contextualize, reimagining so many great songs, with a damn fine new version of Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.

It doesn't shy away from presenting hardships but in so doing adds depth to John's character, the chosen details resonating with significance, his style still diversifying to this day.

An incredible artist.

And a cool guy too.

Taron Egerton puts in a great performance.

Gentle intense life.

The Souvenir

Spoiler alert.

A lost bored romantic intellectual befriends an aspiring filmmaker who's too blind to be disenchanted 'til they're both very much in love.

She's determined yet shy (Honor Swinton Byrne as Julie), slowly learning to articulate her ideas, and he's in command of thoughtful expressions (Tom Burke as Anthony), which amusingly comment on the artsy world.

He sees something light in her innocent charm which his stilted life is sorely missing, and she enjoys the interactive ideas they warmly share without cost or confrontation.

Early on.

Her first love, her first scandal, her first apartment, her first immersion.

You can interpret the film in different ways but in the beginning their attachment seems genuine.

She genuinely loves him anyways, even after his addiction's revealed.

And the souvenir he provides her with near the end suggests he had genuine feelings too, he wasn't just taking advantage of the free ride, even if he lost control of his reason, and succumbed to blunt bland self-destruction.

Is The Souvenir Joanna Hogg's début film?

If so it's remarkably farsighted.

It's light, charismatic, thoughtful, a bit wild, blending comedic elegance with tragic realization, as if the mind's a random orchestration sweetly plucked in wondrous symphony.

With agile variation.

Composing relevance, nonsense, creeds.

'Til there's something else to do, the film presents wide open-minded invention.

You aren't tethered to specific patterns and expectations even as Anthony gets worse, it's much more freespirited, less checked and balanced like a craze, confident enough to try something novel, yet reliable as if there's something to do.

Some of the scenes, some of the editing, are/is borderline genius.

There were moments when I was close to approaching acritical ecstasy, but the lines weren't as mind-blowing as I instinctively hoped they would be.

The form is though, and many others likely found the content more compelling than I did, who am I anyways?, to even approach something like that in your first film is incredible, and no doubt a brilliant sign for the future.

I imagined Joanna Hogg making brilliant period pieces in the future in fact, rustling up some British history to discursively explore, overflowing with character and subtlety, making points that elucidate tremors.

I keep thinking this is how Jane Austen got started, 19th century style.

Who makes a film like this as a début?

Captivating.

Unique.

Thoughtful and precocious.

Tantalizingly distressed.

Diane

Guilt haunts a reliable community volunteer as her grown son's drug addiction becomes increasingly distressing.

She's sure and steady, well-oiled, remarkable, overflowing with humble self-sacrifice, always willing to lend helping hands.

She serves food to the down and out, finds time to visit sick friends, takes care of the elderly, and loves sitting back to discuss bygone days.

Except for one moment in particular, one extravagance that led to grief.

It's unknown if it brought on Brian's (Jake Lacy) troubles, but she unfortunately acts as if it was the root cause.

But she won't give up on him.

Stops by almost every day, brings him food, is critical but not overbearing, sympathizes unless he's reckless.

He responds. Seeks help. Sort of recovers. Becomes overbearing.

Their relationship's somewhat dysfunctional, Brian either wallowing in despair, or seeking to hoist the upper hand when he's sober.

Diane (Mary Kay Place) patiently deals, showcasing the unsung grace of spry active virtue.

Unassured yet sheltered.

Remorseful yet feisty.

She isn't a saint, I don't mean to suggest she's saintly, but her indiscretions are by no means scandalous, in the present moment, long after an impassioned youth.

Or young adulthood.

The time frame isn't specified but you can guess from the relative age of the characters.

A strange film nevertheless, one which possibly makes more sense if you've ever done good deeds, or been weighed down by guilt for things you haven't done, or simply like chillin' with family.

Why the film explicitly presents Diane engaged in hard drug use is a point of confusion, but notwithstanding a bizarre dream sequence, it does resonate with communal optimism, and establish a strong group of friends.

Who argue, reminisce, listen, tease, protest, are there for each other like a sponge or a duster, understand one another, facilitate, appease.

With that familiar kind of camaraderie that presumes but doesn't judge, that predicts but doesn't wager.

Diane and Brian forge a troubled symbiotic nomenclature nestled within discursive drives.

Actively administering.

Flexible choice composure.

Most of the time.

Vox Lux

Brady Corbet's Vox Lux wildly envisions tumultuous reasonability clad in disputatious aggrieved apotheosis facilitating chaotic calm.

Beware what transpires within, for it's a most uninhibited tale, executively brandishing dysfunction, perilously prophesizing unimpaired.

Like all stories, it begins, a school in a small town no less, where a distraught child assaults his classmates and takes many innocent lives.

It's appalling that lawmakers aren't taking measures to prevent such atrocities, especially after so many brave American young adults have appealed for political conviction.

So many years after Bowling for Columbine, these shootings still take place with horrifying regularity.

Mass school shootings or mass shootings of any kind are so obviously not acceptable and arming teachers to stop them is sheer utter madness, total insanity, extreme irresponsibility, just nuts, such events don't simply happen, they're the product of blind mismanagement, and legal steps should have been taken to prevent them many many many years ago.

Celeste (Natalie Portman/Raffey Cassidy) survives the shooting at her school and writes a song to express her grief, a song which capture's a grieving nation's attention, superstardom awaiting thereafter.

But with superstardom comes unexpected pressure, Vox Lux necessitating improvisation as the unanticipated interrogatively fluxes.

How to diplomatically respond?

When even her most humble words provoke sensation?

It's unhinged and perplexing and preposterous and disorienting when you think about it afterwards, Vox Lux's argumentative acrobatics and substance abuse fuelled rhetoric leaving a byzantine trail of grandiose unorthodoxy in their wake, realities so disconnected and otherworldly it's like they orbit the heart of an imperial pulsar, which radiates untethered brilliance partout, and neglects consequence with refrained spry spectacle.

Yet it's so real, the film seems so plausible, so concrete, so distinct, passionately yet prohibitively brought to life by Natalie Portman and Jude Law (The Manager), like a down to earth fairy tale that's as ludicrous as it is homemade, like a supernatural cookie cutter incarnated in mortal shade.

Bafflingly improbable yet so irrefutably sincere, Vox Lux resonates with raw animation as if a misfit god has awoken from eternal slumber, and what a performance she gives in the end, this former child star who's been nurtured by shock and scandal.

Exhilaratingly conjuring.

In visceral artistic balm.

Approach Vox Lux with caution.

Outstanding alternative mind*&%^ cinema.

T2 Trainspotting

The danger.

The danger of returning 20 odd years later to material which you expertly orchestrated with fertile frenzied finesse in your youth, fans will undoubtedly be expecting equivalent degrees of athletic anguish and bricked portered benzedrine, agonizing adrenaline, hysterical heuristic harkenings, even if they've aged meanwhile, even if the characters have as well.

Godfather III, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, Everybody Wants Some!!

Star Wars Episodes I-III.

But the impulse to buck the trend must be overwhelming, to revisit old storylines, to reimagine old characters, and revitalize them alma mater.

T2 Trainspotting starts out on a depressing note.

Renton's (Ewan McGregor/Connor McIndoe/Ben Skelton) inspiring speech from the final moments of T1 hasn't exactly widgeted bourgeois effervescence, and he's downtroddenly returned home to reestablish old friendships.

The bourgeoisie has experienced sincere difficulties for the last twenty years so it isn't surprising that he's had a tough go of it.

Grievances are aired and there's a rapprochement of sorts, although Begbie (Robert Carlyle/Christopher Mullen/Daniel Smith) remains extremely hostile, and Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller/James McElvar/Logan Gillies) duplicitously presides.

The characters are tetrarchically divided with Renton and Spud (Ewen Bremner/Aiden Haggarty/John Bell) making up one half, Sick Boy and Begbie the other.

Spud is loveable and tragic and incapable of smoothly navigating occupational domains due to years of drug abuse, but Renton is there to help him settle down and remember the sundry positive aspects of life existing beyond narcotic addiction.

Renton and Sick Boy meet in the middle, as mutual love interest Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) hilariously relates in one of the film's many lively observations, but Sick Boy got the bad side of the Schwartz, and is still incorrigibly struggling.

Hence, he is better at grovelling when a local phenom (Bradley Welsh as Doyle) threatens their lives after learning that they plan to open a strip club.

His sleazy misdemeanours make him a better fit for Begbie, who escapes from prison and hides out with his frightened family (like the police wouldn't have looked there [Begbie's relationship with his son is one of the best aspects of T2]), and is just as unemployable as Spud although his joblessness is the product of excessive aggression as opposed to chillin' fireside.

Begbie is wicked, yet when he gets together with Spud a brilliant synthesis cinematically unreels, after the initial terror subsides, and the cold violent horrorshow actually considers something tender.

Like Stalin at a spontaneous unannounced small town parade wittingly kept in line with party guidelines.

Trainspotting 2 struggles early on to reestablish the narrative after so many bygone years, and there were points where I thought it should have been left alone, but, when I sit back to consider the preponderance of insightful claims and witty evaluations afterwards, not to mention its bold calculations and tantalizing cutlass, cutlasses, I have no choice but to admit that my misgivings were premature, and that I did indeed enjoy the film, although I'm not buying the soundtrack this time.

Thoughtful depth is patiently added to the four main characters in a way that aptly reflects the trials they've experienced surviving for the past twenty years.

It's grittier than an everything-worked-out tale and more subdued like middle-age.

Jaded and scorned yet cheerfully torn.

Cynical yet aspiring.

Boyle's still got it.

As do David Lynch and Mark Frost.

Moonlight

Locked-down in isolation but technically free, young Little (Alex Hibbert/Ashton Sanders/Trevante Rhodes) moves between drug abusing mother (Naomie Harris) and violently dismissive classmates as gracefully as he can, finding refuge with a childless local dealer (Mahershala Ali as Juan) whose guilty conscience and ironical good nature suggest he accommodate the boy.

An oasis helplessly haunted, Little still attends school, and the bullies still bully as he ages, as he grows, as he matures.

One way to stop bullying is to fight back but they travel in packs in Barry Jenkins's Moonlight.

Cowardice.

Little (now Chiron) does bash the most vicious of them in one day with a chair after which the police take him away, suffer in silence or respond and go to prison, not much of a childhood for the peaceful gay fatherless African American kid.

Moonlight is a sad film, a resilient film, a crucial film, a sophisticated film.

A simple story on the surface which fluently presents coy critiques of cultural codes without recourse to sentiment while patiently blending in focus, asking why is difference so frightening?, why do so many instinctively suppress it?

Difference spices things up to add alternative flavours which merge and diverge with eye-opening wonder.

Adventure.

It's as simple as bread.

Different types of bread.

White bread tastes good but one day you might try brown, then rye, then pumpernickel, then multigrain.

Then you have 5 options rather than one for making a sandwich, and can experiment to find out what tastes best, for you, on each different type.

If you have to prove you're tough by forming a group to violently suppress another or an individual, you aren't tough, you're pathetic.

If you're afraid of difference ask yourself why?, and try something new, something startling, like blue cheese or a strawberry shake.

Overcoming fears is what Men and Women do.

Took me a while to start loving olives and hot peppers.

Now I eat them all the time.

A lot of the gay people I've met are chill with a great sense of humour.

It makes for good conversation.

Not many films make as serious an impact as Moonlight while just simply presenting a story.

It's profoundly chill considering the tale it's telling.

The highs and lows.

The emptiness.

Crack ruins communities, ruins lives, makes a sewer of superlatives, which otherwise may thrive.

There's no simple solution.

Besides giving up crack.

And refusing to sell it.

If that's the economy something's seriously wrong.

It does not have to be that way.

And takes courage to turn things around.

Bravery.

Dedication.

Understanding.

Will.

In the great wide open.

Moonlight states this without saying a word.

Blessed.

Sausage Party

Sociological structural semantics b/romantically ameliorate as a raunchy yet go-getting cornucopia of conditionals recalibrate unquestioned universals for slumbering succulent psychosubjects.

And the rooster cock-a-doodle-doos.

Okay, there's no rooster, but wow Bob wow I wasn't expecting to see a sustained critique of unacknowledged cast aside postmodern religiopolitical discourses hilariously unleashed in this sultry Sausage Party.

I knew nothing beforehand, only saw it accidentally, and was shockingly blindsided within.

But don't take my forlorn abstruse clarifications ;) as abstract proof of its spluttering legitimacy, view the film and adjudicate adroitly, celestially, to discover whether or not you detect within its reels invaluable collective conscience with an average of 99%.

Could Middle-Eastern tensions be lightened by enlivening sexual experimentation?

Is conscientious awareness maturely elevated through recourse to the ostensibly juvenile?

Is there a dubious state of affairs awaiting those who can't find work within globalized _______ sectors?

Can spiritual dream quests enlighten in lassitude both the lugubrious and the illustrious through the reflection of a savannah's steamy brays?

Can't answer these questions myself, but the hot dog and the bun do hook-up in Sausage Party, as the malevolent douche attempts to scour their union.

Like a comedic genius political scientist ate acid and went 'a grocery shopping, Sausage Party brilliantly utilizes the seemingly mundane to offer a scathing critique cloaked in ludic scatology.

Relishing.

I'm.

The Night Before

3 confidants, and an annual tradition, a' revelling on Christmas Eve to the tune of friendship and jocularity, rekindling the strength of their amicable bonds each and every year to celebrate the intensity of camaraderous humour, age having decreed that due to the build-up of maturing responsibilities this will be their last irreverent outing, itinerary set, rejuvenating synergies pending.

As an added bonus this year, three tickets have been acquired to attend a secretive party, known for its legendary merriment, coveted by young, old and middle-aged alike.

Will the mysterious counsel of a local pot dealer enlighteningly guide their way as they descend into the night and encounter both shenanigans and loves lost?

And will the magic of Christmas single-maltly convince them that the bonds they have forged congenially transcend time?

As a matter introspective.

A fun thought provoking feelings evoking tenderly rowdy illumination of adult aspirations, The Night Before suspends pretensions of the rational to festively define what is sane.

Note that its definition bizarrely blends the buddy comedy and the Christmas classic to hazily establish a disjointed sense of the revelatory.

But when form aptly reflects content, our role models evolving over the course of an evening of regenerative confusion, who I am to argue with logistics merry making?

Jingle, bells.

Miley Cyrus impresses.

Le Dep

An ordinary day takes a turn for the worst when a crack smoking youth decides to rob the local dep in Sonia Boileau's Le Dep, a familiar face in possession of both lock and key, applying reason to his misguided plans, attempting to commiserate, while functioning as judge and jury.

Their dialogue takes an historical turn, their dialectic polarizing desperation and stability like trenchant tidal tripwire, a delicate balance required to soothe and mediate, the reality of the crime, harrowingly cautioning the nerve.

Ice cream headache.

Whiplashed fumes.

The film concerns contemporary First Nations issues, Lydia (Eve Ringuette) living the routine work-a-day life, PA (Charles Buckell-Robertson) suffering from issues of alcohol and drug abuse.

Stemming from childhood neglect.

And the legacy of the residential school system.

There's a powerful scene where their dialogue suddenly switches from the moment to the event PA's describing, the leap startling and profound, like the ending of Waltz with Bashir, a shocking heartfelt purge.

I may have just shown the child sitting alone on the ground at the party, confused and alone, for around 2 minutes, and then cut back to the present, although the extended scene provides added depth to the story, and helps Lydia's pacifying seem more maternal.

Both actors hold their own, commanding the bucolic script with parliamentary poise, not too brash, not too sentimental, in your face yet contemplative, disadvantaged youth, struggling to age with dignity.

Lydia stands in the middle of a shootout in the end, facilitating peace, rationalizing and peacekeeping, unafraid to voice alternative options, to find mutually beneficial solutions for two opposing factions.

In the thick of it.

Elle porte une tuque orange.

Wild

One foot forward, a crushing weight backpacked, stricken through the desert, identity intact.

To the summit.

Waves of energizing and/or haunting memories intermittently bombarding and/or enlivening, accomplishments, missteps, experimental independence mixed with overwhelming grief dealt with through taking on a herculean quest for conscious convalescence, reestablished resilience, contemporary being flushing out the destructive life choices made after the death of a loved one, and their corresponding affects on friends and family, a path with a goal and a purpose, the Pacific Crest Trail, blistering heat and instructive elevations, gear, wildlife, companionship, the impossible slowly dispersing picturesque probabilities, a new sense of self, persevering in the hearth throes.

Emerging.

Jean-Marc Vallée's Wild sets out into the wilderness to build a future by confronting the past, through presence, chillingly capturing subconscious correlations, raw elemental exacting births.

She's tough.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) improvises her way with sheer grit and determination, poetically driving her will, its valleys and peaks, a subtly directed incarnation.

Editing by Martin Pensa and Jean-Marc Vallée as John Mac McMurphy.

Live in the world while focusing on the beautiful.

Posture outfox and sidewind.

Overcome.

Inherent Vice

Blistering pronounced enigmatic athleticism, neat and tidy obscurity, a question asked, a question, answered, competing forms of non-traditional rationalities searching for clues within a down and dirty faceless salute to comic cerebral lechery, with role playing, familiarity, pop-ups, explanations, free form investigative hallucinogenic heartache, golden plunders, an error, bows and arrows, cameolot, freewheeling receptive improvised incognitos, purpose, demand, facts and fictions fused to fornicate, to love, the ether, groundless fluctuating intuitive forward motion, possessed, indecisive, a partnership, sympathy, acquiring a foothold, intransigent brawn, a narrator's clarifications, grinding and gone.

Far gone.

It seems that America's great directors must now hear the call of the The Big Lebowski's pastiche of The Big Sleep to make misguided judgment hedonistically live again.

Insert pot smoke into the underground world of high-stakes narcotic reality.

Remain calm.

React.

It's more about potential and theory, ideas, than plot, although the plot is astounding.

Difficult to say if the events depicted are actually taking place or simply expiring in an exposed hemorrhaged zig-zagged amphetamine.

I didn't see any evidence for this however.

The cast reminded me of that which you often find in feel good comedies, Eric Roberts (Michael Z. Wolfmann) filling in for Sam J. Jones or Billy Idol.

Martin Short's (Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd, D.D.S.) still got it.

I'm buying some absinthe.

Maps to the Stars

Is it possible to take a sterile excessive stale antiseptic and fill it with enough dry 40% neat conversations to soberly materialize a fumigated aesthetic, like sparkling versatile antithetical lard, an affordable Naked Lunch, its sacrificial form industriously high-strung, its intellectual content flowing with literary immiscibility, which, on the one hand makes you feel like insecticide, on the other, like a priceless set of handcrafted heirlooms, David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, a restrained hard-lined masterpiece of elitist horror, a subdued synthesis of the mundane and the maniacal, stronger than both Cosmopolis and A Dangerous Method, inflammable family histories, seductively liaising, emphatically, eviscerated?

It is, Cronenberg's patient strategic mix of obnoxious refinements, youthful misgivings, and childish incredulity, slowly building its complex web of serendipitous interconnectivity, makes you wish you were about to pleasantly throw up after having spent $627 dollars on a bottle of scotch, like gentrified gentility, frenzied fire starters, was that Mr. Mugs?, all-knowing and ever-so-loveable Mr. Mugs?, shot down by 21st century infantile ennui, prevented from teaching his lessons, consigned, forevermore?

Bashful, so difficult to blend these elements without being overtly pretentious or inadvertently condescending, still allowing them to preserve their autonomy, pulsating, integrated, heterogeneity.

It's somewhat of a satirical take on both these potentialities, expertly derelicted, by a master who continues to innovate.

Reminded me more of his early texts Stereo or Crimes of the Future than A History of Violence or Eastern Promises.

His roots.

Back to his roots.

Horns

Cast out.

Disbelieved.

Betrayed.

Punished.

Horns begin to grow on young Ig Perrish's (Daniel Radcliffe) head as his beloved hometown accuses him of the murder of his one true love, Merrin Williams (Juno Temple), Ig valiantly proclaiming his innocence, searching, desperately, for the murderous guilty party.

Unbeknownst to him, in the beginning, his horns unwittingly command everyone he encounters to reveal their darkest secrets, or embrace violence and/or sexual desire, as if they're dislocating a contingent of vice, irascibly disdained, savagely enacted.

This proves rather confusing.

As does the film, which is a bizarre blend of the sentimental, the ambiguous, and the ridiculous, irreverently devout, as deduced by its spry submission.

The sentimentality seems to be appealing to its youthful market, juxtaposed with the ridiculous, which is generally subscribed to adult behaviour, to vindicate cracks of teenage rebellion, coming of age compartmentalizing certain tendencies, to outrightly misbehave, in preparation for the reign of jouissance.

But as Horns takes a moral turn, as Ig's investigation bears fruit, it becomes unclear whether or not the film is being serious, in which case it becomes quite tiresome, or pretending to be serious while revelling in playful incongruities, what's actually happening being rather serious, and sentimental, the situations themselves devilishly corny, and ridiculous, in which case the film excels.

Hence the ambiguity.

If this is what director Alexandre Aja intended, it's a stroke of maudlin genius, don't think about what's happening, just focus on what's being depicted, graceful in its contrite subtlety, overcoming the bounds of placated smarm.

If not, the film collapses during its final third, the irreverence which sustained its peculiar plea, giving way to a uniform banality.

Need to see more of Aja's work to reach a conclusion.

Snowpiercer

The ravages of global warming have accidentally imprisoned the last surviving members of humanity on an invincible super train, Sheldon Cooper's purist blast of ecstasy, which travels the entire globe over the span of a year, codifying condensed calisthenics, perpetual in its autarkic motions.

Built to function as an enviropolitical scientist's incendiary trench-line, if they like quenching sensationally instructive transistors, a fierce class struggle has erupted within, its boiling point having been reactively reached, crisis, calamity, infraction, the oppressed rebelliously coming into being, extinction, be concisely damned.

It comes down to the food supply.

Mixed in with spatial limitations.

Unprepared perplexing stamina.

Jackass authoritative guidelines.

Why the train's supreme ruler chose to employ an oppressive model to govern his domain after the potential for continuous expansion was obliterated, speaks to the ridiculousness of his model itself, as well as the preponderance of its all-encompassing indoctrinations.

The price of a ticket bears consequences eternal.

The population would have to be controlled, but why one section lives in luxury while the other has to resort to cannibalism makes no sense.

The torches made me think of Plato's cave.

The key is solutions precipitated by a lack of preparation.

John Hurt (Gilliam) is showing up in everything cool these days.

Sheldon Cooper would probably have serious issues with the train.

It would be a great lecture.

At least one other species survives.