Dope

You take away belief and equal opportunity by cutting taxes to the point where public schools become more like a prison than a lightning rod, and you wind up with the situation Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his friends find themselves within in Rick Famuyiwa's Dope, an examination of three scholastically oriented (nerdy) misfits caught up in the harsh realities of brutal embittered hopelessness.

Remaining aloof is the key, but after Malcolm hesitantly agrees to aid a drug dealer's romantic pursuits, their lives enter the domain of high-stakes hustling, enlisting the resources of their technologically advanced connaissance to risk everything to remain afloat, buoying disparate domains, panic stricken, navigation.

Ingenuity, flexibility, impudence, sycophancy, and audacity guide their way, as they demonstrate why they're contenders, in a repressive system designed to annihilate innocence.

Agency.

Black lives matter.

The film excels at celebrating the skills immediacy engenders, while vituperatively condemning the structures which necessitate them, as gentle Malcolm's arm shakes when he pulls out the gun.

At the same time, its odd blend of the naive and the dissolute euphemizes shockingly destabilizing pressures.

The far right says, "don't complain, you're a whiner, we will do as we please and keep everything for ourselves while crushing your hopes and dreams because we find it amusing."

The moderate left diagnoses cultural maladies and finds systematic solutions, opportunities, middle classes, wealth, which it patiently introduces to ease sociocultural pressures.

These solutions aren't like ordering a pizza or buying a new pair of jeans, they take decades of sustained effort to develop, to flourish.

The far right makes them seem like impossibilities and when elected does what they can to halt their momentums.

If you think they are impossibilities, note that the social conditions in Europe and North America weren't that different from those present in many third world countries centuries ago.

The middle class is paramount.

It's not that simple of course, and human nature isn't a butterscotch sundae.

But, in Canada anyways, there's universal healthcare, many strong public schools, opportunities to learn more than one language, the possibility of a highly paid 40 hour work week which provides parents with time to spend with their children, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, free speech, freedom of religion, collective rights, the right to vote, to work in an non-discriminatory environment, to access clean drinking water, a general emphasis on health and well-being.

These things wouldn't be present without politics.

After ten years of seeing these features severely scrutinized, perhaps it's time for a different approach.

Change.

Sustainable development.

But you can't make change if you don't vote, voting being a right that generations fought for desperately in relatively recent times.

The far right will be voting.

At least in this century we don't have to fight our way to the polls.

For a new democracy.

The Pharmacist

The Pharmacist's bland yet perky narcoleptic metainsouciance is amphetamanic.

For the first half anyways.

Not that the second half isn't worth sticking around for.

Let me explain.

Writers Christopher Craddock and Indy Randhawa seem well aware of what audiences may be expecting from a typical run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

The delivery of The Pharmacist's early lines suggest that this awareness is mobilizing a derogatory hyperreflexive irreverent crude yet sympathetic aesthetic, wherein it's difficult to distinguish the zingers from the platitudes, inasmuch as the material presented can potentially appeal to myriad disillusioned tastes, succeeding scenes observe their predecessors with witticisms which motivate the actual plot, the metaplot, and the meta-double-down (the plot which suicidally yet fertilely recognizes how this device has been played as well as the sycophantic yet authoritative intricacies of its institutionalization [I like this form {in films}]), the ways in which the subtitles are showcased will hopefully become an industry norm, while the protagonist, a Franco-Albertan pharmacist suffering from narcolepsy, continuously drifts off, which, during the film's first half, with the help of animation and various changes of setting, genre, etc., metaphorically harnesses multimedial synergies in which a fluctuating banal surreal jaunty consternation unpredictably flourishes.

I was hoping the multimedial influence would sustain the unpredictability, but the film eventually settles on a somewhat glum consistent course, whose insufficiencies are despondently yet quirkily ironed out beforehand, which would have caused me to think its course was tragic if its hyperawareness didn't make me think it was giving me the finger, not that I don't appreciate that, and during the second half I did keep drifting off and then refocusing, as if the film's narcoleptic amplitudes were catching, and the ways in which The Pharmacist gives-'er are commendable, the audaciously meek Mad Dog, pharmaceutically gettin'-'er-done.

What else?

The film feels oppressed by its own design. This is often hilarious.

It would have been nice if there were no reconciliations.

Just brainy underground shape-shifting embers.

No need for generalized coherency in such films.

21 Jump Street

After royally screwing up their first arrest, rookie policepersons Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are reassigned to the undercover division 21st Jump Street, where they're tasked with discovering the supplier of a new narcotic which has recently claimed its first victim.

While preparing for life back in high school, Jenko, who played football, takes the lead, providing advice to the less intellectually challenged Schmidt, who was a member of the Juggling Society. Pretending to be brothers and bunking out at Schmidt's parent's house, they reacclimatize themselves to the young adult social predicament as best they can, before youthfully arising and plunging back in.

But things have changed since they came of age, and environmentalists are now just as popular as the jocks were back when Jenko tossed his tight spirals. Jenko and Schmidt quickly see their traditional roles reversed as the later makes headway with the cool kids and the former infiltrates the nerds.

But as Schmidt begins to socially prosper for the first time, he loses sight of their law enforcement objectives.

It's now up to Jenko to hold the team together and nerd where he has never nerded before.

Down, set, hut.

Ignoring the film's ludicrous structure and myriad implausibilities, the question of where 21 Jump Street sits in the political spectrum remains up for debate, and I'm sure it's currently being dissected in political philosophy classes across North America.

I may as well add my two cents.

The objective of the film: stop the flow of easily accessible trendy narcotics within high schools.

Point awarded to the Right Wing.

But it's not as if the Left Wing wants to see the proliferation of drugs proceed unabated, it simply recognizes that the traditional means that have been employed to prohibit them have had little effect (they're not going away), and since many of them are less harmful than alcohol, don't see an enormous problem with systematically controlling them and making a productive fortune off their taxation. However, the narcotics in 21 Jump Street are new and little is known about them so it would make sense that the Left would seek to analyze their contents and resultant effects before judging whether or not they should be legally regulated/distributed. A commodity is being trafficked off the grid and the government wants to step in and regulate it in order to understand its harmful effects more comprehensively and better educate the public: point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.

21 Jump Street Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) tells his recruits to focus on stereotyping everyone they encounter in order to fit within their high school social spheres more snuggly.

Point awarded to the Right Wing.

Yet by focusing intently on stereotypes, Schmidt and Jenko have trouble fitting into their new environment and only succeed after opening their minds to the possibility of difference.

Point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.

Drugs are demonized throughout insofar as curtailing their distribution is sought after yet the ways in which they are presented glorifies their consumption.

Point awarded to neither.

While the Left realistically understands that the war on drugs is futile, it still doesn't glorify their use, and neither does the Right.

The female officers working for 21 Jump Street close their first case long before Jenko and Schmidt are in a position to begin solving theirs.

Point awarded to the Left.

Chauvinism pervades Right Wing discourses and by making Schmidt and Jenko semi-incompetent buffoons who pale in comparison to their feminine coworkers, 21 Jump Street counteracts its "might is right" ethos. But at the same time, the heroes of the story are men, and even though the women obtain results much more efficiently, their achievements are still only ephemerally referred to and the point is by no means elaborated.

Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.

The principal student drug dealer is an environmentalist, directly synthesizing facilitators of intoxication with those who support initiatives such as sustainable development.

Point awarded to the Right.

Yet the student in question, Eric Molson (Dave Franco), is given some of the film's best lines and shown to be an understanding and compassionate person who cares about his fellow classmates with whom he gets along well. But still, when 21 Jump Street reaches its conclusion, he's dragged off in handcuffs to answer for his activities.

Point awarded to the Right sustained.

From the Schmidt and Jenko duo, it's the football playing jock who holds things together and ensures their success.

Point awarded to the Right.

Then again, while professional football seems at times like a prolonged jingoistic advertisement for the military, this doesn't mean the game itself is necessarily Right Wing, inasmuch as when you ignore the ways in which it's sensationalized, you can still sit back and enjoy an entertaining sport, played by many a Left Winger.

Point awarded to the Right withdrawn.

And ambiguity permeates 21 Jump Street insofar as it's difficult to strictly determine what its political motivations are.

Point awarded to the Left.

Although, even though the Left attempts to break down strict polarities and establish a level non-stereotypical playing field wherein historical factors play an inductive role, it still staunchly adheres to specific points within established dichotomies in order to ensure their ethical survival.

Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.

The only sustained point may have been awarded to the Right, but I still hesitate to classify 21 Jump Street as a conservative film. There's simply not enough evidence.

Is it still an entertaining film that I didn't want to leave half way through?

You be the judge.