Three Fugitives

Released from his iron cell and begrudgingly prepared to re-enter society, an emboldened felon embraces reform after having lived the daring high life.

The policeperson who initially caught him dismissively awaits his cantankerous return, even offering him a friendly free ride to the nearest bank as soon as he sees him.

While attempting to solemnly engage in formal quotidian codes of conduct, he must sombrely compute the irony, when someone else tries to rob it.

Not only that, when the police arrive, the new thief takes the ex-con hostage, the cops assuming he's right back at it, the two extemporaneously escape.

Lucas is none too impressed with having been associated with another bank robbery, Ned refusing to clear his cold name since he also fears the prison lockdown.

His daughter hasn't spoken since his wife passed and he needs the money to assist with her future.

Spirited odd couple disputes ensue.

But she takes a shine to the grumpy inquisitor. 

Almost as if to indirectly encourage the discreet cultivation of a family man, ill-amused by hardboiled diplomacy and conditionally suited to conduct upstanding. 

Should the emotional exchange of mutually complementing amorous discourse, nurture bilateral reciprocation, a relationship may one day manifest. 

In the neverending landscapes of Canada and Québec stretching endlessly from coast-coast to coast, the extended winter eventually giving way to abundant playgrounds throughout the countryside.

Many arrive but few choose to stay due to the imposing formidable climate, the lucky travellers who permanently reside thoroughly overwhelmed from season to season.

It's nice to hear the old school '80s soundtrack blessedly showcasing sweet flowing tunes, and to imagine an historical epoch when that fluid style effervescently germinated.

I've spent so much time with English as a Second Language that I was able to confidently detect, that Three Fugitives's volatile script was written by an individual whose first language isn't English (it was Jones's initial lines: English people just don't talk like that).

That isn't a criticism, it's no doubt commendable to courageously write something in your second language.

I just mean I may be able to catch spies.

Although there are likely more qualified candidates.

Fun to watch Martin Short and Nick Nolte interact.

Cool casting. 

With James Earl Jones and Alan Ruck. 

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway

While wildly profiting off the old Beatrix Potter tales, Peter Rabbit 2 takes shots at the publishing industry, as it innocently explores the urban/rural divide, and wholesomely promotes ye olde school traditional family. 

The dynamic book is selling and a large publishing firm takes note, and lays out the royal red with the hopes of expanding its global markets.

Bea's (Rose Byrne) impressed by the upscale adornments and quickly takes to the commercial schemes, even considering Peter Rabbit in Space along with many other atypical sequels.

Meanwhile, Peter and his bunny friends find themselves hip-hoppitting in the nearby village, Peter (James Corden) accidentally bumping into someone who claims to have known his dad (Lennie James as Barnabas).

They hit it off and scheme themselves soon intending to pull off a gigantic heist, of coveted sought after dry fruit at the chillin' freeform farmers' market.

Red flags inquisitively eschew but both Peter and Thomas McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson) ignore the danger.

Until the local pet shop captures their friends.

And the executive board attempts a hostile takeover.

Peter Rabbit 2 scores points for the countryside and the the humble laid-back agrarian life, as the sinister ways of the nearby town threaten to dilute its bucolic purity. 

The city's not technically like that although you have to be careful not to lose your head, country markets aren't really like that either, they can be pricey, but the artists sell cool things.

It would seem strange to see Petter Rabbit suddenly taking off into space, or surfing or browsing at the mall, but the same author could explore these locales with different characters.

There are always comedic applications which thrive through sheer incomparable inexhaustibility, the best ones leaving you evocatively abashed, the worst threatening the integrity or your immortal soul.

Ideas just come naturally to many after having spent so much time consuming media, it's a consistent mélange of mulltivariable impulses im/precisely interwoven with sub/conscious thread.

There are just so many of them they consistently bombard every constructive day while actively producing, I never really considered what it would be like to have just one and to spend the majority of your time focused upon it.

Sigh. It depends on how you view it but it can be argued that Peter Rabbit 2 is racist, like I said before, I don't think the anti-racism in film and television movements that hit the U.S ever influenced that many in England, but The Runaway lauds bucolic pastures and lambastes its only live-action black character (David Oyelowo as Nigel Basil-Jones) (Barnabas is also voiced by an African American and he's up to no good too).

As the patriarchs come to terms and settle down far away from the hustle and bustle.

Finding it in their hearts to disagree once more.

Peter Rabbit shouldn't be so political. 

Criss Cross

Incumbent misfortune maladroitly radiates as a good natured local lad returns home from distant travels.

He's aware he shouldn't be visiting whom he can't help but want to see, his innate warm and friendly curiosity reimagining things as they've been.

But his love interest has tied the knot with a local entrepreneur who's none too impressed, as they still meet to catch up indiscreetly as if nothing's changed the palimpsest. 

Fortunately, he's found a way to cool things off before they get out of hand, for he works in an armoured car and is well aware of its routine.

With his knowledge of the vehicle's route he can plan a heist with his ex-partner's new husband, and they can all escape with plenty of dough to newfound lands malfeasant munchies. 

The plan is made even though stately trust still evades congenial understanding, the prosperous possibilities too tantalizing to ignore due to amorous prorated grievance.

But as the job is being pulled something's not quite right with the prized predicament.

Amicable relations remain unrestored.

Hospitalized convalescence pending. 

I suppose when you're writing a script like this you have to pile on the inherent should nots, character A should not have considered even more outcomes than character B or C and their devout minions.

The more radically preposterous and inimitably out of whack, the more likely the lugubrious outcome may surely seem like disastrous fact.

Imagine films like the disillusioning Criss Cross released in abundance each fiscal year, challenging sundry reliable westerns for box office cred impeccable sheer.

Makes you want to smoke cigars/cigarillos and drink whiskey/margaritas afield in the wilderness, perhaps cooking your meals on a campfire randomly fuelled by obstinate strain.

Has film noir ever taken off within space for an intergalactic aerodynamic decade, embracing comedy, tragedy, romance, beyond interplanetary conflict?

It is the age of globalization and it's taken on a disenchanting hue.

But rational applicability isn't so easily mis/construed. 

🔍 😜

The Misfits

Oddly enough, last week I was listening to the Beatles and my mind once again turned to Ringo, who I still think gets a bad rap when you think about the solid backbone he provided the band.

He also cleverly worked his funny personality into the media sensation being built at the time, and refined unique adorable pop character as a matter of reflexive intuitive fact.

Not to mention Octopus's Garden which I was yelled at for liking as a kid (no joke). Love that song to this day (I don't understand the yelling, it made 1967-1970). I'm not saying this blog is like an octopus's garden. I just wish I'd never been yelled at for liking the song.

I mention this because Ringo's legend is brought to life in Renny Harlin's The Misfits with dazzling flair, as the principal Robin Hoodesque phenom assembles a daring altruistic team (Nick Cannon as Ringo).

The intricate individuals started out do-gooding on their own without project or inquiry, yet found things much easier to accomplish when rambunctiously gathered as a stalwart team.

Plus, they could purse loftier objectives like freedom fighting or in this case a prison full of gold, used to buy weapons and finance autocracy around the globe without catch or hindrance.

The prison was built by a man (Tim Roth as Schultz) prone to catching a remarkable thief, who in turn escapes from prison after prison much to his shocked astonishment (Pierce Brosnan as _______ Pace). 

The do-gooding band seeks the escape artist's help to steal the gold from his latest prison.

But they're not sure if he'll freely accommodate. 

So they come up with a multi-point plan.

It's first rate low budget action comedically generating thoughtful ambition, as an agile acrobatic team tumultuously agrees to search and discover.

I've got a lot of respect for low or lower budget action films because it's so hard to take on the behemoths. Not to mention how difficult it is to make a convincing action film to begin with. I appreciate the resonant daring.

I like how The Misfits doesn't blow as much stuff up, it's better for the environment not to destroy so many things.

Computer graphics come pretty close to reality.

Save money, protect the environment.

I've come to terms with my own misfit status although for a while I thought I'd fit in, I thought there must be somewhere I didn't feel odd but it never worked out, plenty of books and films in the meantime.

If you feel like a misfit however swiftly note most assurédly so do I.

Although it generally seems like so many others are strange.

It can make for quite the afternoon outing.

A Scandal in Paris

Career criminals stretch out laidback in prison, as a fortuitous cake emerges, celebrations encoding style.

Having escaped they seek anonymity upon the open road, yet lend their images to a portrait depicting extant legend.

Soon they're reunited with Emile Vernet's (Akim Tamiroff) large outlaw family, who fears for their hard fought freedom, and recommends they join the army.

False identities are procured and they set off to aid Napoleon, still noticing jewels along the way whose brilliance generates temptation.

Years later they've left the service yet still scorn an honest living, and find themselves sheltered in a lavish chateau, presided over by the Minister of Police (Alan Napier as Houdon de Pierremont). 

They decide to rob him anyway and enact an audacious plan, switching the location of the jewels through agnostic sleight of hand.

The Prefect of Police (Gene Lockhart) cannot discover them and is relieved of duty, but Eugéne Vidocq (George Sanders) knows their whereabouts and leads the Minister straight indubitably. 

For his exceptional deductive skill he's generously rewarded, and given the post of Prefect of Police, securing Vernet's relatives jobs thereafter, at the bustling Bank of Paris. 

But his identity remains known to at least 2 adoring love interests, who fortunately enjoy his company, and seek not his instant ruin.

A Scandal in Paris invests striking charm with bewitching clever schematics, which assuage freeform displacements as a matter of upright cause.

Taking things too seriously is not so subtly critiqued throughout, even if Vidocq must watch his back as he nimbly cascades clout.

It seems too farfetched to believe yet is at least partially verifiable, taken from Vidocq's very own memoirs, the validity of which I cannot speak to.

He understood people well no doubt, a master of effortless seduction, freely winning hearts and minds through open-minded grand induction.

Those lacking social graces or appealing fanned conceit, fell swiftly to his daring bold and animate spry feats.

There's a series here within these reels commanding grand detection, each episode a marigold shy intimate selection.

Why not engage a stunning sleuth who once lacked honest virtue, to come to terms with pachyderms investigate the Dooku?

A stunning tale lightly regaled the shocking fluent candour, a charméd life akin to strife concocting goose and gander. 

Flavour.

What a life. 

Rancho Notorious

The future looks bright, overflowing with bounty, as a couple considers their upcoming marriage, happily thriving through steady employ, ensconced in blooming gleeful rapture.

Yet they live on the Western frontier and soon malevolence comes a' calling, the bride-to-be then passing on, her fiancé sworn to loyal vengeance.

He (Arthur Kennedy as Vern Haskell) sets off on the road following leads where he can engaging in bright conversation, or the eruption of bombast flourishing undaunted, should he ask the wrong person the right question.

He hears tales glamorous and bold deftly crafted through spry resignation, of a coveted socialite (Marlene Dietrich as Altar Keane) widely sought after who teamed up with a formidable gunman (Mel Ferrer as Fairmont).

Haskell discovers the whereabouts of the outlaw and ensures he winds up in the very same jail, soon accidentally aiding his escape, before setting out extrajudicially.

The identity of the killer he seeks still remains frustratingly mysterious, but he soon finds the locale wherein which he's supposed to unconscionably reside.

Alongside many others who have earned their livings through corrupt ill-gotten gains, Rancho Notorious revelling in shenanigans transformative vast illicit booty.

It's direct and hard-hitting like a Western bluntly concerned with irate justice, and works in elements of ye olde film noir, whose generic conventions command infatuated.

The femme fatale's by no means duplicitous and remains loosely hitched to the preeminent bandit, who's rather upright and honourable, as if Bonnie & Clyde had endured.

Haskell makes friends with the virtuous crook and seems like he might be at home casually robbing the odd bank (or stagecoach), but the sight of a striking brooch reminds him of goals which have not been forgotten.

The lines between good and evil are ambiguously forsaken as well-meaning townsfolk quickly back down, and no-good rapscallions ignite honest virtue, while vendettas reestablish antipodes.

Never thought I'd see Marlene Dietrich waxing light so home on the range, and didn't know Fritz Lang directed Westerns sans banal black and white refrains.

There's some minor character diversification but it generally sticks to its winning hand, more abundant less superficial interactions may still have cultivated grizzlier lands.

It excels when Haskell's sleuthing more so than when he hits the ranch, the flashbacks and their spirited horseplay generating crucial binding fragments.

There's a lively soundtrack that keeps things focused if not cleverly cloaking wry deception, Lang perhaps approaching generic overload and unable to keep sabotage at bay.

L'amour takes up much more time than hot pursuits or criminal gains.

Preponderantly peculiar.

Almost like comedic romance.

Lucky Logan

Disreputably discharged, scintillating strategy, fraternal fervour, impenitent perfidy, perfecting the penetrating pardon piecemeal, a brother creates a plan to holistically heist, recruiting resins and residents and siblings and stealth, his team patiently exercising precise pitch adjudicatively, jigsawing the jabs and jettisoning apprehensions they not-so-delicately divide up the labour, differing divergencies conditionally coordinated with concise collocation, the moment of truth ascends, departures and infiltrations seismically systematized, they shift into high gear, and tenaciously tear up the track.

I imagine Lucky Logan will find a supportive audience.

It's one of those films you can't help but love even if you really don't like it.

The situations and sequences and shivers and synergies are certainly well thought out, but it's like it blew a tire during the first lap yet continued trekking round and round, aimlessly sans objectif, the idea being much stronger than the execution, which is unfortunately resoundingly flat.

It has its moments, notably scenes with Daniel Craig (Joe Bang) or those involving a distressed warden irreverently operating in isolation.

It's fun to watch while the thieves engage, plus it's super Robin Hoody which is awesome.

But there are so many exchanges which seem like they should be hilarious, like you should be boisterously busting a gut, but it never really happens, it's just too plain, too dull.

Just my opinion though.

And I don't get it sometimes.

Love Lucky Logan, excel and thrive.

Daniel Craig does have multiple scenes.

I'm bloated.

Baby Driver

Split-second ingenious unassailable guiltless reflexes, instinctively classifying delicate improvisation, piquant extemporization, serpentine spontaneity, the driver, driving the getaway vehicle, atavistic awareness vigilantly circulating extractions, an unprecedented impresario envisioned in wild heartlands brake swerve accelerate, coordinate chaos with implicit clandestine credulity, pulsating pumping propulsive paved impertinence, irreducibly reacting, to unpredictable explosive larceny.

Mad skills.

Variably exercised.

Character driven.

Edgar Wright's Baby Driver's hilariously character driven, with Ansel Elgort (Baby), Lily James (Debora), Bats (Jamie Foxx), Buddy (Jon Hamm), Darling (Eiza González), Joseph (CJ Jones), Griff (Jon Bernthal), and Doc (Kevin Spacey) each chauffeuring full-throttle eccentricities that make said characters their own.

The well-thought-out creatively choreographed romantically comedic yet harrowingly hardboiled script (Wright) supplies them with ample maneuverability.

In fact I'd argue this is Wright's best film.

There are two notable oppositions within that reflect different intellectual styles.

Baby and Doc's youthful and aged conversations provide the film with an executive frame as they reticently interact, Doc's nephew Samm (Brogan Hall) brilliantly expanding one of their sequences, while Bats and Buddy concurrently represent clever tenacious earnest hard work, as they durably discuss various subjects between jobs.

Nice to see Jamie Foxx rockin' it again.

Doc heartbreakingly embraces romance in the end, risking everything to aid young Baby and Debora as they wildly set off to matriculate on the run.

I've been focusing on the criminal nature of the film but it's also a warmblooded romance.

Baby owes Doc a large sum of money that he's been slowly paying off for some time.

He meets Debora at the diner where his deceased mom used to work and they hit it off, young adult love at its most endearing, hesitantly tender and shyly enthusiastic.

Since he engages in illicit activities quite frequently, however, the nogoodniks eventually terrorize their sanctuary, especially after they craft plans to escape, which unconsciously precipitate embroiled maturations.

Excellent film that's patiently yet boisterously detailed, the dedicated caregiving, the musical artistry, the Mike Myers gag, the paradoxical sense of coerced altruism, the relaxed quiet dignity, the wanton perplexed angst.

Realistic reverberations.

Sweet sweet summertime.

Breezy.

Triple 9

A system established to maintain law and order unable to fascinate despondent impoverished crime, unemployment and ethnocentricity leaving generations mired in conflict, comatose, incendiary lesions, verbosely segregating consensus.

Violence and combat, strict hierarchical discipline, the police and the gangs aware of respective rubrics, alcohol and drugs lubricating the malaise.

A darkness, the light shining through with jaded poignancy, a vague uncompromising chaotic fluency masterfully stylizing Triple 9's streetwise ambivalence, audience and characters alike captivatingly lost in the foundationless congestion, wherein knowledge contends with principle, loyalty confides through betrayal, a job well done receives no recompense, longings to escape clash with professional competencies, the coerced crushed and pessimistic, the dedicated withdrawn yet conscientious, financial versus spiritual freedom, skilfully blended in enticing multidimensional haze.

One last job.

A covert team including law enforcement personnel forced to take it.

Triple 9's diverse, its complicated script examining international and local crime with members of the aforementioned team playing different roles for opposing sides.

Multiple plot threads with minor characters make lasting impressions thanks to the clever yet chill synthesis of performance, script, editing and direction.

It doesn't have to make statements about why a less violent sociopolitical climate would be more beneficial, it lets its hardboiled yet relatable characters and situations speak ethical volumes, progression in presentation, dynamic sociocultural c(l)ues.

Like Mad Max: Fury Road, there's no centre of attention, no leading role(s), instead it capably assembles more than a dozen strong actors and gives them room to construct a team, thereby formally advocating for inclusivity by demonstrating how reliable a group of self-sacrificing multiracial teammates can be.

Neither sentimental nor sensational.

Love the John Hillcoat.

2 Guns

Centripetally incensing two sharp sabre-toothed cynosures to shifting psychotic solipsistic syndicates, vengefully frothing from within and without, taking precautions which establish guidelines ad hoc, a weathered weaponized multileveled liaison, 2 Guns fires, 2 Guns fires back, a Fred Ward cameo keeps things intact, the script sometimes swoons, occasionally falters, through cutbacks monterey jack, transitional malters, but chemistry can be a wonderful thing, and Denzel and the Wahlberg flow smoothly, ching ching, learning to trust what they've often been taught, is foolhardy nonsense, born, to be bought.

They should seriously do more movies together.

Functioning in fraternal unison.

Excited for the sequel.

Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.

The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.

The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.

Strong female role models are lacking within.

Not much of a focus on technology either.

Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.

The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.

Yes, it does.