Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?)

A remote village in Lebanon remains technologically isolated from its surrounding politico-cultural environment which erupts in a religious war. Seeking to ensure that no more of their children are needlessly slaughtered, its Christian and Muslim female inhabitants unite to distract their masculine counterparts. However, regardless of the fact that they know nothing of the war, tensions between these men have been increasing due to sacrilegious activities that have inspired retribution.

Trying to covertly manage the vindictive violence proves challenging.

A challenge to which these heroic women stalwartly, respond.

Exercising a seductive mix of the expedient, the temperamental, and the divine, Nadine Labaki's Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?) fictionally verifies how destructive overtures can be pacified within pressurized time constraints.

Certain aspects of the solution they facilitate may have practical applications beyond said constraints, although reflecting upon whether or not their means justifies their ends pasteurizes acute ethical dilemmas.

Nevertheless, a powerful film with a progressive message, Et maintenant on va où suggests that a rural dynamic can play an influential role in the byzantine global mosaic, as a matter of perseverance as opposed to pride, or acceptance as the foundations of transcendence.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Good God. What the hell happened to Christmas?

It seems as if the traditional Christmas special has been warped and welded into a devious pot smoking lingerie modelling gangster frolicking schism, just in time to usher in the 2011 holiday season. A special crafted for those who have grown weary of the predictable patterns worked into the yearly festive Frostyesque line-up and are hungrily seeking a palpable harbinger of mainstream subversion, of decadent diversions, of subterranean incursions.

Fully endorsed by Santa.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas provides such content and insouciantly precipitates a brazen comical maelstrom into which the politically correct is unwittingly thrust.

As Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Hal Penn) frantically search for a new Christmas tree.

Trying to make sense of the ways in which this film confronts stereotyping is challenging. It's as if representatives of two minority groups are saying that due to the institutional barriers firmly established by the Anglo-Saxon majority it's impossible for us to successfully integrate into the mainstream, but we'll still give it a shot, and playfully present you with exactly what you would expect, based upon your own preconceptions, while opening up a resultant critical space in your public sphere, and affectively plunging within full throttle.

You see, the mainstream often prevents minorities from successfully integrating into its culture. It does so in order to horde the prominent signs of achievement and associated luxuries for itself. As minorities still seek to earn a living and take care of their families, they must find a way to do so in the underground, using the only resources they have available to their general advantage (selling narcotics etc.). If racist institutional representatives and policies promote these stereotypes and they are upheld by their ethnic non-professional counterparts, and progressive legislation such as affirmative action is suppressed, you directly stifle an enormous degree of potential, and keep generations of prominent public role models from ever being able to productively apply themselves.

Therefore the underground becomes their outlet and they carve out an existence within while demonstrating that some of the 'demonized' resources they control (marijuana) aren't really that bad and would legitimize their 'unlawful' pursuits if legalized.

There's some of this in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas and they definitely take things to new levels as they nurture a tormented frustrated blockaded aesthetic while working within a form that has been culturally stabilized.

All the while applying new meanings to concepts like marriage, family, and friendship.

And smoking that reefer.

SUPER

Some superheroes have vast financial and intellectual resources at their disposal which they use to champion justice. Others develop superhuman strength after having directly embraced science's unpredictable diversity. Still others are born with exceptional gifts for which they are ridiculed and ostracized by their fellow citizens. And others are simply nurtured by an alien land whose environment provides them with a permanent degree of invincibility.

But my favourite superheroes are regular average joes who grow tired of corruption's prosperity and take to the streets in a homemade outfit to distribute discipline and punishment with bluntly accurate precision.

Superheroes like SUPER's Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson) and his enthusiastic sidekick, Bolty (Ellen Page).

Crimson Bolt has experienced two perfect events throughout his life which have helped him to overcome an existence otherwise filled with depression and humiliation.

The day on which he helped a police officer fight crime, and that on which he married love interest and ex-drug addict Sarah (Liv Tyler).

But as SUPER begins we discover that Sarah has fallen prey to a local drug-dealing thug (played by Kevin Bacon) who encourages her latent addictions in order to steal her away from her loving and devoted trustworthy husband.

After complimenting his eggs.

That same husband decides it's time to fight back and save Sarah once more, and guided by the forces of instinct, love, and over-the-top Christian superhero The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), he makes a red suit, picks up a wrench, and tells crime to shut-up as he bashes its representatives in the head with said wrench while wearing his red suit.

And playing by the unwritten rules.

As Serial Mom coalesces with Q-The Winged Serpent and becomes what Mystery Men should have been, SUPER psychotically delivers a sensationally laid back hard-boiled piece of cinematic mayhem, swathed in a deadpan frank ready-to-wear elasticity.

Not crafted for the feint of heart or those searching for technological hyperactivity, its comedic intuition and adventurous spirit still distill a universal sense of vigilante dexterity, as one short order cook rediscovers what it means to despair.

Death at a Funeral

Everything that possibly can go wrong will go wrong.

Bring on the airing of grievances.

Take a walk in the park, take a Valium pill.

Nothing brings a family closer together than a little blackmail.

A father has died and a funeral has been arranged. Friends and family are scheduled to arrive. Personal motivations have piqued ambitious interests. The reverend hopes to depart at 3 o'clock sharp.

Hallucinogenic drugs have accidentally been introduced. An affair has been brought to light. An appropriate time to express one's romantic longings is passing by. Solutions are expediently distilled.

Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral lightly presents intergenerational tensions, sibling rivalries, progressive structures, and scatological sentiments. Historical details are used sparingly to support present actions. The principle subject lies motionless and rarely becomes the object of analysis. Anxiety and awkwardness brazenly duel as an afternoon's solemnity is feverishly deconstructed.

Indirectly suggesting that without the influence of one man's protective guise a family's prosperity is in pedantic jeopardy, thereby functioning as a formulaic exemplar of transition, Death at a Funeral symbolically externalizes emotions such as grief and gives them plenty of room to transmute. Consistently juxtaposing the petty and the poignant while delegating comedic insight with a sober intensity, it will certainly cause you to shake your head more than once as you helplessly and cheerfully ask the question, "why?"

Limitless

A struggling writer (Bradley Cooper as Eddie Mora) discovers he can access nearly 100% of his forgotten memories/observations after accidentally receiving a miracle drug from his ex-brother-in-law, and proceeds to excel. He finishes his novel in 4 days and afterwards sets out to make his fortune. The drug's side-effects are none to pleasant, however, and he soon experiences blackouts and debilitating nausea. But because he's functioning at such a high level, there are basically no professional consequences and he manages to maintain employment while suffering a dangerous breakdown. Thugs to whom he unfortunately gave the drug come calling for more and it soon becomes necessary to hire protection.

Much can be said about Neil Burger's Limitless. I thought it was an entertaining film whose execution lacked appeal yet still established several provocative dimensions which encourage further reflection. The ways in which Eddie handles his drug addiction for instance. It's like tobacco companies using their resources to find a cure for lung cancer or governments investing heavily in land reclamation technologies to make mining more environmentally friendly. Or drug addiction itself. Burger de/reconstructs the pharmaceutical industry throughout, evocatively investigating its extremes. The cult of the individual is presented existentially and communally as Eddie and Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) square off, and the ways in which critical synthetic intelligences (and pharmaceuticals) are valued by a knowledge based capitalist economy receives dramatic attention as well. Eddie's rise leaves behind a lot of plot-related baggage which can be justified by the fact that he's continually moving forward, the film moving to fast for its own internal construction, like a drug addict, but it still doesn't spend enough time examining the publication of his novel or the fact that he could have used his abilities to write something comparable to Proust. The film's writing also has a certain flair that disappears after Eddie abandons his writing career, including the introduction of the ex-brother-in-law. The lows Eddie hits and their consequent despair and paranoia are cultivated directly and poetically as he struggles to maintain, and I thought Burger did a good job of filmically distilling a bad hangover. Sort of funny how when he's a broke relatively sober writer everyone treats him like a drug addict but when he starts taking pharmaceuticals and gaining prestige he's revered. One of the morals suggests that beneficial drugs whose side-effects are curtailed can help you become a United States Senator if you hire shrewd lawyers to cover your ass while curtailing said side-effects and can outwit your enemies when they come to kill you. Libya of all countries is mentioned twice. I guess Gadhafi should have invested more in research . . .

Novocaine

While growing up in the 80s I was a huge Steve Martin fan, so I decided to give Novocaine a shot recently even though its reviews are predominantly negative. And it's obvious that those reviews are negative because Novocaine is simply to smart for its own good. It's well written insofar as its melodramatic presentations and pronouncements are consistently subverted by ridiculous subject matter that simultaneously lambastes and reconstructs several film noir 'motifs' in order to ironically elevate the whole kitschy kit and kaboodle. It's like director David Atkins is giving Martin the chance to make fun of the ways in which Steve Martin films were typecast during the 90s by allowing him to return to a more atypical role, like those from Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid or The Man with Two Brains. In fact, Atkins plays with mass conventions and characterizations within in order to reinvent and reinvigorate filmic constructions, notably with his police officers and femme fatales, thereby providing an unpredictable treat for the conditioned status quo, by destabilizing the manufactured organic link between characters and occupations. Which opens up the comedic spectrum and explains the vituperation.

Kevin Bacon's first scene is outstanding.

Altered States

Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is a scientist committed to experiencing/discovering the first thought, the foundational ontological kernel. Conducting experiments with sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs, he comes closer and closer to unlocking existence's primordial governing secret. But as he approaches this void, he sacrifices his wife and family, not permitting domestic comforts to conflict with his pursuit of knowledge. Then, as his genetic structure begins to deteriorate and his blackouts engender carnal repercussions, he must battle reality's constitution and embrace the overwhelming power of love; after briefly transforming into an apelike creature.

As scientific-poetry deconstructs the relationship between professional and personal responsibility, Ken Russell's Altered States melodramatically illustrates a thesis regarding what it means to be human. Its synthesis of art and science can come across as naively sentimental, multifaceted and interrogative, cheesy and distorted, or incredibly uplifting, depending. Can you maintain a substantial "I" without reciprocating a loving partner's devotion? According to Altered States's depiction of the humanistic universe's physiological construction, the answer is "no," you cannot.

The Harder They Come

Peter Henzell's The Harder They Come presents a non-traditional character study of an ambitious musician who tries to build Rome in a day. The character's identity is established firmly on the basis of contemporary action rather than personal history as he reacts to his culture's power structures audaciously. Ivanhoe Martin (Jimmy Cliff) moves from the country to Kingston, Jamaica, in search of a job. His only significant talent is musical and although he cuts a hit single, it isn't enough to pay the bills. Frustrated by having to sign away the rights to his music, he tries to distribute it on his own only to be stonewalled by the system's monopolistic designs. Underground jobs and retributive punishments follow as he tries to fight for a better wage against the fat cats who control the city. After shooting at both police and fellow marijuana distributors in the same week, he soon gains the notorious public image of reckless fugitive and cult hero.

Ivanhoe Martin reacts violently to the barriers in place concerning his personal advancement. Not content to sit back and let the idle few receive the majority of the fruit harvested by the ingenuity of the many, he takes on the system by any means necessary. It's fun watching a wildperson throw caution to the wind and stick up for his idealized rights, and since he survives, the perennially dispossessed begin to revere and love him. As time passes, those in control try to suffocate the network feeding and housing Martin, and the results are as actively ineffective as they are passively revolutionary.