Family Switch

The title's misleading. 

The rebellious self-obsessed years during which curiosity is severely criticized, and traditional wholesome old school activities condescendingly dismissed with haughty verisimilitude. 

The resultant antithetical shockwaves producing unsettling bland confusion, as festive recourse to playful jocosity sincerely struggles amidst the pretension. 

It's the Holiday Season in High School and the Walker Family is bitterly composed, having lost the communicative cohesion that once underscored their familial unity.

Mom's (Jennifer Garner) got a big presentation and daughter CC (Emma Myers) might make the national soccer team, Wyatt's (Brady Noon) hoping to get into Yale and his father's (Ed Helms) band has a unique opportunity.

Usually, the power of Christmas would unflinchingly aid their courageous misadventures, and by harnessing the spirit of the season they would proceed confident and emboldened. 

The unextinguished light fails to constructively guide them however.

Until they stop by a local observatory.

Where corporeal mischief interpersonally accrues.

Given the flamboyant opportunity to craft ebullient effervescent dreams, Family Switch's yuletide extravagance lucidly facilitates transmutation.

It's more like Die Hard nevertheless, more like a movie that takes place at Christmas, the Holiday Season popping up from time to time but by no means the predominant focus.

The otherworldly transformations seemed a bit too studio as well, as if an eccentric mystical expert wasn't consulted when shooting the scenes.

A missed opportunity: when the neighbourhood wives show up and start grilling CC and Wyatt, who are stuck in their mom and dad's bodies, individual criticisms are shared. But without accompanying close ups (think the end of Crocodile Dundee). The focus thus remains on CC and Wyatt. If each individual criticism had been announced with its own striking close up, the collegial balance between supporting and principal actors would have been more universally sustained. 

Part of the narrative directly celebrates teamwork so the point is eventually made. There's actually a lot of cool in this film. They put a lot of time and effort into it (try and find like 6 Christmas films or films that take place at Christmas to watch, some of them don't attempt to excel that much).  

I thought the acting improved a lot after the body switches and the actors starting pretending to play someone else 😜, I don't know if that was intentional, but the secondary characteristic investments paid imaginative dividends. 

I also thought it made a lot of clever points about family, and was thoughtfully designed to bring disgruntled folks back together during the holidays without being too preachy or overbearing.

Director McG should score points for ensuring the cast and crew took things really seriously.

The cast and crew should score multiplie points for creating a year round Christmas film. 

Even without the mind-blowing mysticism. 

Christmas in California.

Worth checkin' out. 

Unarmed Man

Harold Jackson III's independent Unarmed Man presents an impassioned interview taking place after a man was killed.

Shot dead even though he was unarmed by a trigger happy policeperson, all too willing to shoot first, none too prone to asking questions.

At least not to African Americans.

He has to give a statement, provide routine answers, in the fatal aftermath, and he's sincerely eager to participate, as long as the script is strictly followed.

But his interrogator's in search of truth, and doesn't play things by the book, asking tough questions that need to be asked, even after he's sharply reprimanded.

The film's fictional content is saturated with verisimilitude, its situations and legal ease striking chords all too familiar.

When does it end?

It happens so often.

Why are unarmed African Americans shot multiple times so often, even though they've done nothing wrong?

And why are the offending policepersons soon back to work without consequence or repercussion, how can they possibly be protecting and serving the black citizens upon their beat?

The racist system's as revolting as the answers to those questions, so many innocent lives cut short, so much potential recklessly shot down.

But Jackson's film doesn't simply preach, it provides a well-rounded argument. Its strength lies in its investigation of alternatives, the policeperson's point of view, which is refuted with upstanding logic.

Unarmed Man lays it out, explains why some policepeople are trigger happy, the stresses associated with their jobs, the fears such stresses naturally produce.

I've often thought about what it must be like to work full-time as a policeperson in a neighbourhood overwhelmed with crime, whether it's white, black, asian, or first nation, and it must be extremely difficult to do so day-in and day-out, especially when your colleagues lose their lives, having made the greatest sacrifice in the line of duty.

But policepersons still need to be trained to distinguish between different scenarios, one obviously threatening (a robbery, a drug bust, domestic violence, gang conflicts), another relatively textbook (pulling cars over for no reason).

If they can't distinguish between these scenarios they should be transferred to less demanding jurisdictions, or perhaps find work elsewhere.

Black people shouldn't have to put their hands on the steering wheel and make painfully slow movements if asked to show something every time they're pulled over.

But it seems like that's what they have to do to objectively avoid being shot.

Since it's clear that policepersons target black Americans.

Time and time again.

Unarmed Man's argument is well worth seeing and passionately brought to life by Shaun Woodland (Aaron Williamson) and Danny Gavigan (Greg Yelich).

Definitely tough subject matter.

Which will hopefully seem antiquated one day.

To Rome with Love

For a summer in Rome, an office clerk finds himself thrust into the spotlight, his routine reflections hyperbolically sensationalizing influence, as an architect revisits his youth to bring back to life/cross-examine his most serendipitous subject of desire, a young communist lawyer contends with a retired opera producer when it's discovered that his humble father can sing exceptionally well, and a married couple, in town for a potentially prosperous employment opportunity, find themselves accidentally embracing exotic extramarital affairs.

Felicitously framed by a traffic cop's dissolving point of view.

The conditions of which inculcate calisthenic creativity.

Romantically mingling the celebrated with the starstruck and the ordinary with the hyper-intensive, while evoking the nimble necessity to unearth metaphorical mirth within corresponding psychoanalytic observations, Woody Allen's To Rome with Love's palpable playful pluck picturesquely procures impressionable popularizations, and salaciously serenades atemporal condensations.

Fidelity strengthened through chance, temptation tethered to testimony, regret distinguished from revelation, and dreams evanescently alighted.

A virtuosic variation on a theme.

There's a lot more to it than that.