Long Shot

A passionate writer (Seth Rogen as Fred Flarsky), dedicated to pursuing social justice, finds himself unemployed in protest, after a multinational swallows his resolve.

A close friend (O'Shea Jackson Jr. as Lance) sincerely sympathizes and soon they're out about town jocosely revelling.

Finding themselves at a decked out chandelier soirée, Fred notices his old babysitter, who's morphed into the U.S Secretary of State (Charlize Theron as Charlotte Field).

And as fate would have it, she remembers him, is looking for a new speech writer, isn't put off as he lambastes another guest (the owner of the multinational), nor after he engages in further awkward spectacle.

He joins her team, much to the annoyance of other team members, and must quickly adjust his independent style to something more suited to delicate black tie repartee.

He sort of does, although he eventually doesn't have to, as Charlotte falls for his charming rough edges, and the too craft an uncharacteristic bitterly critiqued political brew, less concerned with image and pork barrels, more attuned to environmental embyronics.

The result's like a Disney film written by a John Waters fan who watched too much Family Guy, love driving a highly unlikely scenario, the raunch gaseously scandalizing atmosphere.

But it's still too polished for its lascivious underpinnings, and even if what takes place is ideal, its biodiversity remains somewhat undernourished.

It seeks a less corrupt political sphere wherein which politicians can enact laws beyond the influence of the plutocratic lobby, but it doesn't present a complex narrative that cultivates alternative pastures and therefore fizzles when it should be flourishing, as if it's more concerned with making clever references and sleazy comments than developing a convincing plot, while relying on truest romantic love, alone, to justify its wild ambitions.

It doesn't need much, just a few more scenes explaining how a novel political approach could successfully lead to a less top heavy political spectrum, plus a couple more depicting Fred becoming more accustomed to political life, and more that profoundly explain how playing the maverick card could produce sustainable initiatives, by contradicting long established evidence-based mainstream convention.

But Long Shot is somewhat of a mainstream conventional film that prefers instinct to logic inasmuch as it celebrates action without thought, unconsciously arguing true love's enough indeed.

True love may indeed be enough, but Charlotte is still a remarkable woman, and if she had been given more remarkable lines and had made more remarkable arguments, Long Shot would have seemed more like the validation of a remarkable woman, than the ascension of an ethical man.

Politicians around the world do seem to be making careers for themselves based on instinct, however.

Perhaps traditional parties need to embrace populist bravado to reestablish less reckless international relations?

Bernie Sanders comes to mind.

With his genuine charismatic appeal.

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.