Mimi wo sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart)

Inquisitive fascination drives a young student to actively read (Yoko Honna as Shizuku Tsukishima), her love of fiction borderline exhaustive as she eagerly embraces diverse narratives.

While vigorously engaged one day with the investigative art of literary exploration, she happens to notice upon the cards in her texts that someone else is reading the very same books!

Who could this mysterious kindred spirit be and do they have many things in common?, these questions worth at least an intermediary degree of alert practical heuristic sleuthing.

She finds herself on the métro curiously travelling to the library one afternoon, when she notices a grouchy cat onerously lounging with their fellow passengers. 

The cat reaches his or her trusty stop and abruptly departs with agile obfuscation, Shizuku still following him or her upon their route, until they reach an otherworldly destination.

The antique shop incontrovertibly proves to be a thought provoking creative catalyst. 

Whose revelations interfere with Shizuku's school work. 

After she's encouraged to write her first novel.

A peaceful celebration of the reflexive life patiently resides within Ghibli's Mimi wo sumaseba (Whisper of the Heart), routine developments ecstatically yielding to sudden opportune enigmatic spells.

Enchanting elevations of wondrous observations cleverly crafted through innocent insights, blend with sincere and caring tutelage to foster lively enthused animation.

Of course dispiriting misgivings honestly arise throughout the engagement, to provide a prudent indeterminate perplexity which must be challenged with genuine daring.

As artistic expression seeks cheerful endearment romance awkwardly bewilders simultaneously, love's flourishing wild uncertainties evoking earnest productive confusion.

Through which the narrative emanates cherished lucidity as it casually and freely progresses, the tragic clock the emergent blimp violin construction impromptu jammin'.

Not often one encounters cinema generously presented with so much levity.

Concrete complications questioned concordance. 

Mesmerized on the thoughtful horizon. 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

A small village in rural Malawi struggles to make ends meet, farmers reliant on the yearly harvest to generate vital income.

The Kamkwambas have been working hard with the hopes of sending their son to school, they've even paid his initial deposit and purchased the requisite uniform.

William's (Maxwell Simba) eager to learn, to excel, but needs time to sit back and study, competing demands ensuring time management's a full-time strict priority.

As school progresses and routines conflict drought descends with stifling severity, and his family can't pay his remaining tuition and must subsist on meagre preserves. 

But his sister's dating his teacher so he thinks of a crafty plan, and gains access to his school's modest library keeping instructive books on hand.

He's quite adept at finding solutions for quizzical electronic conundrums, his practical fluency highly valued by friends and neighbours and family.

He finds books that teach him new things and give him ideas he never thought possible, including a way to irrigate crops during the lengthy hot dry season.

With this method his family and others can plan to grow crops throughout the year, the extra harvest a bountiful godsend scientifically engineered. 

But book learning's still highly suspect and his idea simply seems too radical, his father (Chiwetel Ejiofor) fearful of making things worse should it fail to produce as planned.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind celebrates bold dynamic learning, in an environment suffering from extreme hardship, without staples or resource to spare.

It's a shame the library within wasn't public and required so much wealth just to access it.

Creating public libraries can be rather difficult if there's little to tax, but communal initiative can spearhead exuberance to keep infrastructure intact.

The sharing of ideas the transmission of knowledge the transformative vast applications, await people seeking solutions to questions they may never have known how to ask.

Myriad subjects augment traditions with novel imaginative spice, skies opening up within reason as ingenuity serves to entice.

You can learn a lot through chill conversation while working on various projects, but sometimes the right book will present years worth of discussion in less than 200 pages.

William reads such a book and makes an incredible difference in his community.

Resiliently daring to dream.

Cultivating robust yields. 

With Joseph Marcell (Chief Wembe).

*Also, a great film directed by an actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Ready Player One

Ready Player One takes Game Night to the next level by presenting a world within which every waking moment characterizes free play.

Arguments lauding the values of physical existence having been virtually refuted, the Oasis intergenerationally supplies invigorating imaginary agency to anyone curious enough to enroll.

It's the ultimate online experience, manifold worlds within worlds abounding with purpose and challenge and leisure and romance, astounding variability thematically applied with visionary intertextual synergies slash infinite individual accommodations, instantaneously accessible, intravenously mounted.

Created by James Halliday (Mark Rylance/Isaac Andrews), a brilliant pop culture enthusiast with a propensity to articulate architecturally, its ownership enters a period of flux after he passes, only those clever and skilful enough to find the 4 keys he's hidden within having the chance to become its new guardians, and since it's valued at half-a-trillion, and its riddles are next to impossible to solve, only a select few possess the talent required, although all and sundry compete by all means.

And then it happens, after years of clueless endeavour, two diametrically opposed groups seemed poised for victory.

One, an accumulation of indentured gamers coerced into working for colossal douche Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), sheer numbers intended to overwhelm the opposition even if they instinctually lack any genuine personal revelation.

They invade the Oasis en masse, intimidating everyone they can to cheat their way to the finals.

Reminding me of ye olde deflategate thereby.

The other, a bucking homegrown organic dedicated team in the process of formation, possibly lead by a modest competitive young superfan who also possesses innovative interpretive intuition.

Will the 5 of them combine their strengths to outperform the corporate world, thereby preventing it from transforming the Oasis into a heartless tiered unimaginative conglomerate, as if both B.C's coastline and its interior were contaminated by millions of gallons of oil, or the internet itself, was regulated like cable television?

The odds would be stacked highly against them.

If they weren't so exceptionally gifted.

Like indomitable lamda kitshatz haderached omega particles, never pausing to adjust for wind resistance, near wild heaven trucking through the danger zone, they keep goin' mobile as the labyrinthine adventure begins.

Ready Player One playfully unites myriad awe inspiring protocultural constellations like an enigmatic enlightenment transisting renaissance.

Spielberg still possesses the youthful wonder that has helped him to create stunning films for decades, Ready Player One clearly proving that he hasn't lost touch with his incomparable artistic genius, nor his undeniable love of cinema.

I'm betting that whatever decade you grew up in, this film will help you feel like you're back at home in your youth.

A remarkable cohesion of multigenerational inter and independence, it reifies the North American cultural spirit, without losing sight of its cool.

Why wasn't it released in July?

It

Plagued by an ingratiating ravenous monstrosity, a team of creative outcasts struggles to envision.

It preys upon them in isolation, shockingly manifesting their most potent fears in trepidatious real-time after they've been discovered alone.

Or at least passing by unnoticed, adults being immune to the clown's pestiferous ploys, and unable to assist their young as they struggle to outwit vicious appetite.

Yet one boy (Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough) boldly decides he will not yield and convinces the others to affirm contention.

Thereby emerging as leader.

Having realized they are stronger if they resolutely unite as one, they set out in search of conflict, whether engaging with the malevolent Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), their parents, or other unhelpful adults, things are bleak, castigating apprehensions woebegone, they eventually strike with vehement poise.

Umbilical.

They mustn't be afraid you see, and contending as a group helps them face then overcome their fears, Pennywise functioning as the haunting prospect of a spoiled unproductive lonely maladjusted youth, it doesn't necessarily kill them but transforms them into mature horrors, mired in a revolving stasis, the sought after younglings organized in It, finding friendship like an antidote to venom.

Articulate idiosyncrasies.

Improvised bedlam.

It's unconcerned restrained yet volatile examination of unsung heroism shyly elevates the versatility of teamwork while cohesively combatting bullying and rumour.

It's a matter of timing, strategizing, envisioning, coordinating, communicating, adjusting, adapting.

The film mechanically delivers some solid frights while still developing young adult character and plot without overemphasizing the grotesque or understating childhood trauma.

All around bad, being a kid in It's filmscape.

That is one crappy fictional town.

Transformers: The Last Knight

Can science, myth, religion, history, the aristocracy, the people, the British, Americans, the privileged, the self-made, the men, the women, humankind, and Autobots, be chaotically yet adventurously, ideologically yet practically, intergalactically yet locally, or quite simply extracurricularly brought together in a wild brainiacally styled jewelled Nile Summertime extravaganza, complete with a spellbinding mix of the brash and the delicate which epically unites risk, love, service and dedication, to thoroughly entertain while multilaterally seeking knowledge, like a trip to New York, or a voyage down under?

Yes.

I would say, "yes, yes they can."

"Affirmative" even.

A constructive ebb and flow.

It's always fun when the new Transformers films are released but I'll admit I've never enjoyed one as much as The Last Knight.

I mean, I'll actually watch this one again.

It's number 5 too.

So many metamorphic developments.

Plucky little Izabella (Isabela Moner), resiliently in search of friends and family.

The hyperreactive robotic butler (Jim Carter as Cogman), who flamboyantly yet earnestly adds neurotic inspirational spice.

Agent Simmons (Jon Turturro) is back, theorizing and analyzing his way to the heart of the narrative's conceit.

Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins), youthfully and mischievously contemporizing more than a millennia of British legend.

England and the United States romantically come to terms?, the couple in question perhaps creating an invincible universal super being?

Plus secret entrances, spontaneous sushi, cheeky self-reflexive criticisms of blockbuster music, Cuba once again warmly featured in a 2017 American mainstream release, prophetic books preserved, getting-away-with-it explanations, scenarios, Bumblebee (Erik Aadahl), First Nations fluidity, Tony Hale (JPL Engineer), whales.

The wild script energetically shifts from sentiment to shock to certitude to sensation, manifold short scenes eclectically yet straightforwardly stitched together with (en)lightninglike speed and ornate dishevelled awareness.

Fascinated, 'twas I.

I've often thought these films don't focus enough on Transformers, but Last Knight presents a solid shapeshifting/organic blend, its biological proclivities overwhelming desires to see Transformers discursively deliberating, relevant contributing human factors, caught up in the thick of it, creating solutions intuitively their own.

In fact, the subplot involving Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) was my least favourite part of the film.

The extraordinary examination of British History and its relationship to transforming-lifeforms-from-space easily made up for it though.

I'd love to see Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice during the witching hour.

How did they move those rocks?

They be pretty freakin' huge.