Ordet

Dishevelled madness emphatically accompanies a scholarly son who embraced study, and took grand imposing theological works to distressed soul and body and mind.

Even amongst an upright people from a severe age religiously endowed, this devout son seems neigh unreachable according to quotidian scripture. 

Upon the farm, one of his brothers is raising a family without faith, his wife dutifully reproaching him yet still conjugally resigned.

His other sibling wholeheartedly seeks the adoring hand of a tailor's daughter, who believes in different spiritual traditions his father scorns with vehement sacrilege. 

Yet united through familial bonds they nurture strength and disciplined fortitude, resolutely caring for one another with kind pastoral bucolic eagerness.

The little children believe their uncle who predicts the future and heralds spirits, with the sincere trusting uncorrupted eye of wondrous observant faithful innocents.

Complications shatter the harmonious simplicity when routine child birth welcomes constraint, and bewildering death despotically envisages humbling loneliness and stoic resolve.

The insane blunt stark reincarnation proclaiming sheer and utter disillusion.

Before objective patience and despondent synergies boldly reawaken slumbering ecstasy. 

Strange to see grim volatile criticisms awkwardly dividing a farming village, acquiesced demographic consistency effectively determining biblical denomination. 

So many divergent alternative faiths vicissitudinously claiming divinity, with fisticuffs and arguments and drills literately fusing spiritual discord.

Ordet's style of film is something I'm not used to a direct illustration of imaginative belief, wherein which archaic lecture and austere fervency generously coalesce with narrative affection.

Was there once a time when religious tales showcasing family life and exotic miracles, widely dominated domestic markets inquisitively inhabited by the faithful?

Was faith so strong that supernatural and otherworldly films created revenue, and were in a studio's best interest to modestly disseminate with robust vigour?

Like the western it likely faded with the secular passage of peaceful times, in the constructive wake of blinding wars which reduced humanity to so much rubble.

Discursive realities monumental trends enthusiastically enriching coffers.

Novelty to trend to anachronism.

Back to school.

Chapter and verse. 

Ragtime

Sigh.

Ragtime's ambitious no doubt indubitably it proceeds with grandiose lofty intentions, most likely seeking academy award nominations with the sets and the period and the subject matter.

It's one of those films that examines freedom from a despondent viewpoint however, and a sympathetic character resorts to violence to achieve just dividends.

What he's asking for isn't outrageous he just wants his car cleaned, fixed, and an apology, from the scandalous band of misfits who themselves behaved outrageously.

He had done nothing to them his only fault was to have been successful, and then to have lived as other successful people do, even though his skin was black.

What does it matter, why do such petty jealousies motivate so many people, do your best, apply yourself vigorously, have a laugh, what else can you do?

Coalhouse could have just taken his car and cleaned up the mess and eventually forgot about it, extremely frustrating to have to do that but a better outcome than what happened in the long run.

He would have returned to his successful life and left the goons behind to rot, he certainly complained to everyone he could and naturally became more angry when they couldn't help him.

Now, they recked his car and abusively humiliated him there's no question he deserved satisfaction, but turning to acts of terror goes far beyond the initial crime and riles up collective prejudicial misgivings.

And he doesn't get satisfaction in the end, rather the police wind up shooting him after he threatens to blow up a museum, they gun him down when he eventually gives up even though he's unarmed and helpless.

Depressing is the word for such a film it's extremely depressing and sad and hopeless, it makes you feel ill and sick after it's over and by no means encourages another viewing.

I know this is what is recommended by many searching to expand minds and cultivate consciousness, but the revolting way you feel when the film finally ends also makes its shelf-life and influence less long-lasting.

Take a film like Dances with Wolves which tells a tragic tale of honour and friendship on the other hand.

The statistics presented at the end are grim.

But the fight against racism isn't tragically lurid.

Birdy

I was surprised to discover I had never heard of Alan Parker's Birdy until last weekend, although I may understand why after having viewed it, such a shame it's been widely ignored.

In terms of animal rights, and the presentation of people who like animals, beyond belovéd nature documentaries, it's perhaps pioneering in its narrative.

In Birdy, a friendship develops between a young adult who loves birds (Matthew Modine as Birdy), and another who's more mainstream (Nicolas Cage as Al Columbato), the two interact without trying to change one another, and their reciprocally constructive friendship thrives.

Al may think it's somewhat strange that Birdy dresses up as a bird and pretends to fly, but they also bond through the reconstruction of an old car, and in other creative unique ways.

Unfortunately, they're both sent to fight in Vietnam as the draft cuts short their youth, Mr. Columbato returning with a disfigured face, Birdy having lost his mind.

The chief psychiatrist at the hospital hosting Birdy decides a visit from Al may help, and they meet up in Birdy's cell, while the film showcases moments from their past.

Why have I never heard of this film, why has it been forgotten, should it be a Criterion, it's strange seeing Nicolas Cage play the straight man?

It's possible that Birdy's gay although he never hits on Al, but he certainly has no interest in women, this could explain why the film's somewhat hush hush.

A mainstream relatable cool and comic film with an ambiguously gay lead character who loves animals, makes friends, and critiques the army, a recipe for artistic suppression if I've ever heard of one, what a shame, what a disaster!

It's still out there though available for rent from different places.

It must be one of Cage's first major roles. 

Another reason I'm surprised I've never heard of it.

But in how many films do you find leads who genuinely care about animals, films that don't try to make such lead characters seem nuts, even if having to have had to have fought in a war has driven one of them crazy, while attempting to appeal to a mainstream audience, without being overly sentimental?

Not many, Birdy may be one of a kind although I'm sure there are others I'm just not thinking of.

I loved it when they rescued the dogs.

It's tragic when Birdy can't open the window.

There should be more films about gentle souls.

That don't even have to focus on the horrors of war.

A classic '80s film deserving of more recognition.

Perhaps too many lines were crossed.

But there's nothing quite like shifting boundaries.

Conceptually speaking. 

Rosewood

An affluent stranger arrives in town perhaps intent on settling (Ving Rhames as Mann), a veteran of World War I who's fed up with violent chaos.

He proceeds with reservation meeting many people without saying much, his experience far too disconcerting to suddenly chill unbound and trusting.

In a neighbouring laidback town two lovers meet for an assignation, the aftermath extremely cold as toxic masculinity furiously erupts. 

Her face is bruised and battered and can't be hidden from her timid husband, so she runs out into the quiet streets to proclaim she's been assaulted by an African American.

Her white assailant visits a local black homestead in case hounds are roused to follow him, as her story enflames racist tensions and a mob gathers seeking vengeance. 

The residents of the African American town misjudge the situation, since they've lived there in prosperous peace for amicable generations.

The stranger quickly departs but bigots head out in hot pursuit, while the mob descends with unleashed fury and women and children flee to surrounding swamps.

He returns to assist and guide but it's too late for the honest town.

But a local shopkeep keeps his head.

And brings an engine round.

Many of the women and children escape but the cultural damage is done, no reparations or retribution for the innocent victims of terror.

According to Posse and 19th century chronicles this was by no means an isolated incident, as hard fought freedoms were vigorously asserted within a climate of grand dismissal.

It's beyond depressing to sadly think about how racist pretensions never faded, or how over a hundred years after the American Civil War they still persist with blunt derision.

Aren't the regions where they still culturally persist still economically disadvantaged, with overflowing prisons and lacklustre public institutions and the majority of the wealth possessed by an elite few (see The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone as I've mentioned before)?

Rosewood highlights the insanity associated with passionate hatreds, the lack of rational thought applied when zealous fervour actively pontificates.

Seeing disproven conspiracy theories proliferate in the current bizarro reckless public sphere, people drinking bleach and attacking pizza parlours, is disheartening to say the least.

When I was younger there was a much stronger emphasis on fact based evidence and journalistic integrity.

Not to mention public education.

Which hopefully isn't being replaced by YouTube videos. 

At Eternity's Gate

Light streaming through the window, dreamy reckoning, exotic pause, patient nimble expression sparrow soaring eyes adoring, vortex, texture, blends, illuminated unconscious spiritually orchestrated canvas, brush strokes, supernatural brevity denoted enchantingly, floral vigour, spellbound charm, relaxed contemplative feeling, emotion, embrasure, less concerned with exacting aesthetics, less enamoured with splayed bedazzle, shyly swaddling landscapes in waves, in vivid undulating coy windswept waves.

Unaccustomed to traditional lifestyles, he struggles to say the right thing.

Unaware of what he's done, he rests for brief periods at times.

It can be very dark, how you have to think to understand what drives some people, sometimes, not everyone by any means, but some people care about such meaningless things, and seem to find motivation through ill-willed spite.

At times.

Many people don't fit roles that suggest they should act a specific way.

Many people which advocate for these roles don't fit them well either.

The roles exist to avoid confusion, I suppose, although I imagine broadening them, expanding them to include more spice, more variability, would make both spice and variability seem just as natural as rigid structure, and communities would correspondingly benefit from the increased diversity, teaching those whom it frightens to have no fear, regardless of whether or not everyone liked the same things.

Vincent van Gogh's (Willem Dafoe) actions are out of line at times and he doesn't realize it. But the violence he encounters doesn't teach him anything, in fact only makes things much much worse.

In the film.

His style, like intuitive observations of incorporeal intangible invisible imperceptible resonances, carefully balancing the sincere and the awkward with realistically composed imagination, perhaps mistaken for humorous representatives of inarticulate blooms in his time, clearly synthesizing wonder with amazement through recourse to the mundane to me, tasks hesitant poetic lucidity, the unobserved omnipresent joys that pass unnoticed as one ages, as dismissals of innocence replace innate fascinations, they never did with Vincent van Gogh, and, according to the two films I've seen about him, he remained unassuming till the end.

Perhaps touched, ingenious, perspicacious, naive, he had a vision anyways and worked hard to clarify it, as if he could never quite realize what it was, but sought to enliven it nonetheless.

The film's a carefully crafted thoughtful investigation of Van Gogh the artist, rich with performances from great actors, the dialogue perhaps too lofty and condensed at times but poignant and revealing at others, Julian Schnabel presenting his own artistic gifts most prominently perhaps when nothing's being said at all.

A gifted filmmaker.

A wonderful film.

The Predator

The Predator franchise having adjourned several years past on a rather unexpected bone-trilling high note, I was quite eager to entertain its brave successor, inasmuch as it seemed reasonable that it would reach even greater heights, hope logically characterized through lighthearted thrift, the lack of prolonged accompanying anticipatory proclamations (trailers) further augmenting wondrous presumption,  I imagined it would impress, if not at least, mischievously diversify.

Yet it seems as if the new team was somewhat overwhelmed by their preceding act, and therefore sought transformative comedic consolidations, the resultant feature perhaps shocking resigned traditionalists, who no doubt stayed till the campy end regardless.

Not to say that Shane Black's unique approach lacks merit, but the Predator films do generally attempt to frighten, relying more heavily on horror than the absurd, often tending to terrify demonstrously.

Within elite commandoes find themselves replaced with a duty-free band of misfits, who have the audacity to tell jokes and exalt mischief, the rapidly paced loosely structured plot maladroitly reflecting their shenanigans, the resulting synthesis bizarrely endearing, typically tantalizing withheld revelations, bluntly shared, unabashed, tomfoolery.

It's more like a keg party than a night out at Saint-Bock, enthusiasm and excess carelessly abounding without taking much time to consider effect, mood, ambience, or likelihood.

Correspondingly, solutions readily present themselves, albeit in an inebriated way, chaotic resiliencies flying high on adrenaline, a family caught up in the jetstreamed carnage.

It's like Joes who haven't done much research suddenly find themselves experientially reaching ingenious conclusions, heavily saturated with kitschy ingenuity, as unconcerned as they are bewildered.

But even if they charmingly hypothesize, they can't outwit the film's brazen capacity.

It is fun though.

I like what they're trying to do, i.e, write a critical horror/comedy, and they mention all kinds of cool things like buses and science and global warming.

Plus it's co-starring Jake Busey (Keyes).

But the script could have perhaps used another round of edits, during which perhaps the predator dog idea would have been reimagined or left out.

A courageous attempt not lacking in ambition that still goes way too far, while mischievously diversifying no less, The Predator may have seriously impressed had it been crafted with more critical insight.

It may convince people to start thinking more seriously about climate change though.

Climate change is definitely real within.

And hopefully still will be in upcoming sequels.

*I never even listened to the Yardbirds!

Harrumph!

Cult of Chucky

Inextinguishable malevolent flames of pure maladjusted fury continue to terrify innocent yet vengeful Andy (Alex Vincent) and Nica (Fiona Dourif), the former having escaped to the country, the later, residing within a minimum security nuthouse, ignored and barely able to move, in Don Mancini's Cult of Chucky.

Not as much time and thought is put into imagining how Chucky (Brad Dourif) will be unleashed once more in this one, yet said Chucky, maniacal embodiment of blind undiscerning impulsive valueless consumeristic purchasing, soon visits rehabilitating Nica, who is being pervertedly manipulated by her secular psychiatrist, the traditional massacre following shortly thereafter, as obdurate extreme materialism rationally will not believe.

Demonic denizens ravaging.

Exonerating sheer incapacity.

For Chucky's wisecracking also betrays the world of pain that awaits young funny people after reaching the age of 27.

Should they choose to continue expressing themselves without a tight grip on the reigns.

And Andy's suffering that of the torment perennially felt by a child abused by the other children in his small hometown, a child who never leaves yet matures to become successful, but must still regularly see those who once routinely humiliated him, as living memories haunt and torment throughout the course of his busy days.

Even if they're now under his employ.

And beautiful Nica, paralyzed and surrounded by an ungrateful frenzied brood, warns of the unacknowledged dismissive regard a generous mother receives when raising bullish misogynistic patriarchal young.

This halloween.

Even if the movie came out some time ago.

Cult of Chucky could have used more Andy.

Great production values nevertheless.

10 Cloverfield Lane

Asphyxiated awakening, crucial incarceration, a story too wild to believe, raw apocalyptic notions, a strange man, another peculiar resident, the destruction of the world notwithstanding, things still seem quite odd, something's misplaced, misaligned, is he benefactor or captor?, saviour or jailor?, conversation promotes jealousy but his moods shift in flux, keeping busy even encourages prolonged periods of mutual affection, stability, camaraderie, domesticity, an end of the world thing, but it's still creepy, screwed-up, menacing, research leading to strategic planning, desperate usurpers, covertly exercising extreme perspicuity.

Below ground.

The bunker's fully equipped with supplies and distractions but the bizarro interactions intensify the infractions.

Claustrophobia.

Tough to keep the old three characters imprisoned together narrative convincingly moving along but 10 Cloverfield Lane lives up to the challenge, anxiously keeping you focused the whole way through.

It introduces the tension in short disorienting bursts but then smoothly covers it up with unconcerned conviviality, to ensure things are neither too warm and fluffy nor too distraughtly psycho.

Solid mix, adhesively struck by another strong performance from John Goodman (Howard), who seems like he's channeling Pruitt Taylor Vince at times.

The alien invasion and nutso farmhouse shelter aside, it's more like a take on arranged or forced marriage, when a young girl doesn't want to marry a much older man and live in isolation.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is handcuffed, locked in a room, monitored, belittled, has to crawl through tight spaces, doesn't want to be there, has questions that neither Howard nor Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) can answer, and no one else to talk too, nothing else to do, confined in secular sanctimony, constantly thinking of escape.

Perhaps blindly travelling the country under hostile conditions in search of compatriots who are fighting to ensure the survival of humanity is better under such circumstances.

In fact, that is better.

Surprising sequel that creatively moves the franchise forward.

Bold.

Lickety-split.

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.

Foxcatcher

The regalia of dedication and commitment, the steps to take, one by one, routines, platforms, workouts, sparring, success breeding opportunity introducing patronage, competing forms of professional logistics, an olympic gold medal winner is given the chance to train with one of the wealthiest men in America, as opposed to his fellow olympic gold winning average joe heart-of-gold brother, difference embraced, independence, appreciated, yet the accompanying affluence and opulent caprice problematize traditional approaches, leading to profound psychological disturbances, as he is disciplined and punished, for adopting the regimen foolishly implemented by his surrogate father.

Who loves wrestling, but, unlike Mark Schultz's (Channing Tatum) brother, knows little about the art of coaching.

Balance, order, masters, servants.

His brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) is confident and rational, aware of his exceptional strengths, and not willing to be toyed with.

The frustrated worker who moves up too quickly, the successful middle-class force, and the spoiled oligarch then proceed to battle wits in a repressive atmosphere which Dave doesn't fully comprehend as he follows the strategy that has lead to his extraordinary accomplishments.

Form and content unite in Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher to restrainedly grapple with differing varieties of freedom.

Psychologies of the gods.

Lamenting luxurious liabilities.

Casting by Jeanne McCarthy.

The Homesman

The callous and the cavalier, upstanding non-traditional direct and driven, courage, at home, with faith in the Lord, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) accepts a challenge, a calling, to save the souls of three hopeless wives, whom stark privation has psychologically deranged, longing for bygone days, the future, The Homesman's depiction of frontier life generally lacks the overdone resilience of pioneering spirits, brutal realities aggregating impoverished still born dreams like despondent cynical destitute waves of bustling bitter contempt, Cuddy stands out, having endured and overcome social and natural hardships, strength, vision, fortitude, the product of her religious necessity, assignments, iron clad dues.

She seeks a man.

And discovers one.

He tragically arrives, windswept and woebegone, worldly and weathered thick and thin wits having left him in need of assistance, yet capable of repaying a debt, still too in/transigent to lay back and cuddle, too independent, too mad.

A team.

They forge a team and set out across the prairie to do the Lord's work, his knowledge pertinent and bound, still too mired in misfortune, to recognize eternal signs of beauty.

It's a lesson in harsh patriarchal limits ignoring sound opportunities based on preconditioned ideas the absurdities of which are sorrowfully conceptualized.

No matter what the age, no matter what the station.

Sadness.

Loneliness.

There is redemption in excess which only exacerbates the age.

Time is built into the script like cold hearted bone.

Bleak but well done accept for the editing at points and the occasional scene which could have used a few more takes.

Nice to see Barry Corbin (Buster Shaver).

Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm)

The importance of observing traditional checks and balances can be psychotically nurtured if oppressive horrific novelties ironically pasteurize love's volatile abandon.

To tenderly sympathize with incarnate cruelty is to harvest oneself a baleful dereliction.

A surprise can self-awarely compromise a narrative's prim and proper puerility if its imaginary facts have not been uniformly concentrated.

Awkward evasive perplexities.

Undisciplined counterstrikes, will be willfully punished even if their unexpected serenities instigate lasting calm.

Assuredly.

The madness associated with a cultural code's disavowed diversions creates sickeningly compelling bonds of trust in Xavier Dolan's brilliantly disturbing Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm), awestruck incredulous bereft terror, to submit, penalize, collapse, love's dedicated time honoured insurgencies, incomparably construct an orderly trespass.

There's no need to introduce his face firsthand, just driven concrete crazed malevolency.

Violently obscuring.

Before the resurrection of sound.

Editing by Xavier Dolan.

Whitewash

Bland mundane blunt verisimilitudes cordially plow absurd fail-safes in Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais's campy Whitewash.

It's not that it's bland.

The characters and situations are somewhat bland but the ways in which they mitigate predetermined discourses of the sympathetic hyperstylizes their cerebral forthcomings.

A down-to-earth puzzling routine pervasively co-opts its miscalculated immersions but Bruce's (Thomas Haden Church) struggle to legitimize his poorly executed attempts to avoid the truth apply a lively coat of untarnished wherewithal.

During his discussions with Paul (Marc Labrèche), and others, he tries not to be blunt, but lacks the finely tuned verbal veneers necessary to convivially cloak his to-the-point observations, although he doesn't have many alternatives when interacting with Paul, whose death may not even be as accidental as it appears.

He remains cordial while hiding-out in the wilderness but guilt and fear infiltrate his interactions, causing him to appear awkward and creepy, loneliness, indulgence, bad luck.

He has to pick up supplies from time to time.

He drives a snow removal machine.

The more I think about it, the film seems less and less absurd, as if it's trying to trick you into thinking it's absurd by exfoliating the unexceptional.

Which makes for some constructive camp.

The previews were pleasantly misleading.

I've wanted to see this since I heard Thomas Haden Church was being paired-up with Marc Labrèche.

Brilliant.

Casting by Margery Simkin.

If you're thinking, this winter's been long and harsh, go see this film.

Not only is it worth seeing, it's perfect for a long harsh winter's February.

On par with Premier Amour and Vic + Flo ont vu un ours.

Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin)

Both the wealthy and the impoverished receive their fair share of unexpected comeuppances in these loosely intertwined grotesquely plighted a/morality tales, presented en masse as Zhangke Jia's Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin), guilty, of having sacrificed.

After the first two vignettes, requisite apprehensions immobilize one in regards to phases 3 and 4, which have the potential to be just as satirically maniacal, just as starkly im/balanced.

Questions of right and wrong atmospherically attire the violence with cold dreaded ethical extinctions, some of the characters not necessarily lacking options, yet inimically immersed in their own substantive slather.

Despair.

Foraged feelings fostered.

Values obliging concomitant abst(r)ains.

Nebulous nuts and bolts.

Complicit chaotic cankers.

Dissonant diabolic docility.

Interactive entropy.

So many reactions.

Consequences aplenty.

My eyes.

Tian zhu ding's so very unhappy.

Nothing's easy in this one.

Oldboy

Much lighter than Chan-wook Park's demented bitter construct, Spike Lee's Oldboy is still illicit enough to provoke degenerative thoughts of decay, bathed in a regenerative yet psychotic ludic lotion, like a transgressive pantomime, cauterizing ruin.

Suppose this particular narrative inevitably comes across as dark.

Even if you throw in Ron Burgundy and his chipper news team.

The vindictive carousing of an insatiable werehyena.

A leather apron.

And a codified shield.

The game plan's the same.

Asshole. Locked in a room for more than a decade for no apparent reason. Suddenly released. Abounding tension. A set of clues. The diagnostic hammer.

Seismic atrophy.

The tension abounds but it lacks the all-encompassing sense of discombobulated dread cultivated by Park.

But I did prefer the new ending.

So dismal it brought a tear to me eye.

Why do people excel at imploding such vivid monstrous moral vivisections?

Vision. Goal. Cyanide.

The discipline of the Real.