After Hours

A strait-laced data analyst embraces his routine (Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett), predictability the 9 to 5 smoothly flowing trusted and disciplined. 

An imaginative co-worker dreams of something more (Bronson Pinchot as Lloyd), something beyond cold codes and programs, an open-minded journal that promotes diversity.

Paul dismisses the idea even though he likes to read, mundanely ensconced in static cynicism, unconcerned with creativity.

Yet while reading alone in a diner, a single lass takes compassionate interest (Rosanna Arquette as Marcy), and soon they've decided to meet up later, Mr. Hackett moving beyond his narrow confines.

But should he have left inanimate routine inexplicably behind with adventurous longing, to suddenly extend bland limitations past the stilted sure and steady?

How will he react to liaised limbo immersed in scintillating shock, as enigmatic interactions present uncanny striking novelties?

It's as if he's entered Lloyd's journal with blasé editorial intent, the artists suspicious of his lacking spry free-flowing flexibility.

Instinctually composed beyond traditional direction, oddball night owls offer conspicuous fervid nimble characterizations. 

Bourgeois logic remains irrelevant he can't make the adaptations, his hopeless attempts to assert control instigating chaotic tension.

The journal requires inherent variability latent unorthodox unawareness, without patterns pragmatic paradigms smoothly shifting random flux.

The desire to reasonably analyze in search of auspicious thematic cohesion, leaves him synchronistically stranded as he attempts to swiftly improvise.

But the unknown erratic elements adhesively unite through enthused criticism, generating instantaneous aggrieved startling multidisciplinary import.

Perhaps he'll be a manager some day but on this night he has no agency, and must adjust to the ironic insurrection of laidback generally accommodating peeps.

Thus the arrhythmic inconclusive intuitive chill spontaneous tangents, prove that they don't watch cable television or sit back and read the news.

A wondrous lively essential eclective naturally responding with unclassified stamina, finds momentary momentum uncategorized active spiritual flight.

I'm not sure if he's meant to be comic or if he's portrayed in a tragic light.

Which lends the film a bit of mysticism. 

When thinking about it later on. 

With Teri Garr, John Heard, Cheech & Chong, and Catherine O'Hara. 

The Irishman

Great to see another fascinating Scorsese film, it takes you back to another time that cinema clearly hasn't forgotten, he's still got it, the skills that led him to success with Mean Streets 46 years ago, and has even improved on films like Casino (24 years ago), The Irishman's like a time warp folding 5 remarkable filmmaking decades into one, it would have been shocking to see something this good released by Scorsese in 2019 if I had ever thought he'd lost a step, or stopped givin' 'er with exacting intensity, damned impressive, hopefully for many more decades to come.

The same can be said for Steven Spielberg who continues to impress like he did in the '70s.

I can't believe it's almost been 20 years since Y2K.

It's amazing how much things have changed in the last 20 years, how practically everything has moved online, even in the country, how a device that fits in my pocket functions as walkman (with access to every album in the Apple Music catalogue), flashlight, alarm clock, I'm writing about how much I love my cellphone again, mailbox, newsstand (with newspapers from around the world), internet service provider (I access the web more on my phone now than I do on my computer), calendar, camera, health promoter, wallet, weather network, world map repository (you don't even need to know where you're going anymore), music studio, translator, calculator, compass, stock market ticker, and phone, it's strange when you watch older films or new films set in the past and characters aren't casually checking their cellphones from time to time, even if I certainly spend too much time on my cell, although I rarely do if I'm on vacation.

Working vacation.

The net may even solve housing crises in cities if rural environments can offer steady internet access and people can then move there and work online from home.

The technology's already available in some locations but it's very expensive.

Mindboggling how much things have changed.

Not all for the good of course, what used to seem like deranged lunacy regularly pops up in the public sphere these days, passing itself off as rational discourse, and sensation's lost its edge as the quotidian embraces incredible daily scandal, politics used to at least seem much more responsible, as if the greater good didn't only apply to an elite few.

There used to be more of a humanitarian edge in the public sphere, a much stronger willingness to promote peaceful harmonies, which aren't as naive as provocateurs make them sound, even in Canada someone as loveable as Justin Trudeau is under constant attack, he has made mistakes, but still promotes compassion and understanding likes it's 1967.

Perhaps the next 20 years will see a shift away from petroleum based products as the producers find new ways to profit off biodegradable alternatives, and the world will embrace peace without ever having gone to war as world leaders come to redefine hope and optimism.

It's clear that that's what we need to do.

Doesn't it make more sense than drilling in the Arctic?

There has to be a will to keep people working without laying waste to the environment.

Thankfully they have such a will in Québec.

And elsewhere around the world, I imagine.

Silence

There's a classic scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly that still stands out for me, the one where the bandit Tuco speaks with his brother Pablo the priest and they discuss the different lives they lead after having not seen one another for 9 years.

It doesn't end well.

But during their dialogue, Tuco states that there were only two choices for them when they were young and impoverished, to become a bandit or a priest, and that becoming a bandit was more challenging, harder, fraught with more pain and suffering.

Martin Scorsese's Silence offers Tuco a lengthier response than Pablo's, demonstrating the herculean composure required to work as a missionary under harsh conditions in a hostile land.

Set in the 17th century, fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) travel to Japan to do what they believe is necessary to actively spread the word, while also searching for a famous fellow priest (Liam Neeson as Father Ferreira) who has supposedly lost his way.

They don't speak Japanese and are guided by a shifty alcoholic fisherperson (Yôsuke Kubozuka as Kichijiro) who leads them to a small coastal village where they begin their work.

Not easy by any means, their path, their calling, and since Japanese authorities are persecuting Christians, especially priests, old school style, because they're worried about the ways in which in a foreign religion is conflicting with their own buddhist traditions, Rodrigues and Garupe employ the utmost stealth to avoid detection.

But they're eventually found in different spots and Rodrigues must then run the gauntlet to prove his faith, to demonstrate his courage.

Intellectually, physically and spiritually.

Scorsese struggles a bit in territory he hasn't explored in a while (time for another viewing of The Last Temptation of Christ methinks), the excruciating isolation and gruesome personal struggle involved demanding a more contemplative ascetic humbling approach than that found in some of his recent films, this aesthetic captured at points but Silence isn't Tarkovsky, and the contrast introduced when the violence begins doesn't captivatingly diverge in a stunning juxtaposition.

He did prove he's quite sensitive with Hugo, but the first half of Silence would have benefitted from a less traditional approach, from longer more destitute not necessarily plot-related scenes skilfully blending hope and sorrow, scenes which would have become more emotionally pronounced as Rodrigues's life descended into chaos.

Into more familiar territory.

Still a thoughtful investigation of faith and the trials that await the spiritually bold.

The Wolf of Wall Street

What to make of this one.

Comparing Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street to Oliver Stone's Wall Street could generate some compelling comparative data, in regards to their historical censures.

Has this particular epoch enabled Scorsese to direct without limits, to go beyond Seth MacFarlane and Adam Reed, to freely proceed with neither caution nor complaint in an excessive wanton capitalistic cynosure, to gratuitously salute the golden age of sleaze? 

He tests you within.

He bombards you with luscious images of in/accessible voluptuous beauties, interspersing tips on illegally playing the stock market, and then asks you whether or not you're capable of following the lecture, playing with the process of narrativization throughout.

Tantalizing tutelage?

He takes a group of guys who grew up together, installs one as leader after he learns how to make enormous sums of money, they all then make enormous sums of money, and they basically never leave high school for the rest of their lives, and not one of them even so much as ends up in the hospital.

There are funny moments.

But why they needed 180 minutes to retool this tale is beyond me.

There's just no Gravity in this film.

That's arguably the point, and it's presented as a best case example of raunchy sophomoric absurdity.

But there's too much exploitation for me.

It is fun getting to know smart women.

There's one female stockbroker who succeeds but her role's tacked-on, she's belittled in the end, and is initially dependent on the generosity of men.

However, like American Hustle, it's filled with tips on how to avoid being scammed.

Hugo

Time requires maintenance. Each ticking tock must be delicately managed in order to ensure punctual consistency and historical longevity. This is no easy task, and cataclysmic events can disrupt its narrative flow, as can the resurrection of the unforeseen, the one terrorizing established norms and constructs in the maniacal hopes of strengthening their resolve (the masters of war), the other invigorating traditional forms with revitalized content which in turn can redesign them if the insertion of difference is compelling enough to transmit a reconstituted concrete variability (inception) while (eventually) finding a receptive influential audience (innovative exoteric visionaries). Time will continue to pass regardless but its acknowledgement and associated terms of reference (habitual action X producing results D reinforced by the creation of pattern H) will need a cultural catalyst, from which things can begin anew.

We see both sides of this matrix at work in Martin Scorsese's exceptional new film Hugo, which examines the relationship between an orphan and an elderly toymaker. The orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in the walls of a Parisian train station where he diligently keeps its various clocks running on time. From these walls, he eyes George Méliès's (Ben Kingsley) toyshop in the hopes of obtaining parts which will help him fix an automaton which was acquired by his father (Jude Law) before his untimely death. Inspector Gustav (Sacha Baron Cohen) monitors the station's passageways with a strong desire to uphold law and order (and send orphans to the orphanage). Monsieur Labisse (Christopher Lee) operates a dusty bookshop from which he encourages a love of lifelong learning.

Time was disrupted within Hugo's narrative by the introduction of film making to the Parisian artistic scene. Infatuated with the medium, a magician builds his own camera in order to share the dreamscapes of his imaginings. Having cultivated an audience, he continues to create profusely thereby compartmentalizing various tenants of his vision. But World War I annihilates many markets successfully established in France and beyond, and in its aftermath his audience fails to rematerialize and his films must be sold and melted down.

Time passes and due to the serendipitous reverberations of two curious youths an historical echo increases its volume. Hugo and his friend Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) discover a mystery whose clues lead them to volumes housed in a local library. From these volumes, clues transform into probabilities and an unconscious cultural qualifier approaches remanifestation. An automaton whose ability to produce felicitous active images is brought back to life through the ingenuity of friendship, and returned to its creator.

And an innovative exoteric visionary's legacy is recognized and celebrated, having been resurrected from the ashes of the masters of war. One of time's great disruptions is rediscovered and catalogued in order to ensure its historical longevity.

Shutter Island

Condensing dream sequences, identity (de)mystifications, psychiatrical polarizations, and traumatic war related manifestations into a staggered, disorienting psychological thriller, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island invigorates and interrogates the traditional detective film. Federal Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are on the beat, sent to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane to track down a missing patient. Located on Shutter Island, this isolated mental institution is reserved for violent criminals whom Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) does his best to humanely treat. Provided with limited access to the resources necessary to conduct their investigation, Daniels and Aule do their best to take advantage of organizational loopholes while restrainedly exchanging professional courtesies. A graveyard, a storm, witnesses living in caves, and a healthy supply of cigarettes keep their attention focused, while clues lead to questions followed by riddles and conundrums. Daniels's past haunts him throughout as he digs deeper and deeper, valiantly attempting to subjectively recalibrate his object. The heart of the matter harrowingly pulsates, as personal veins and institutional arteries enigmatically transmit their heuristic fluid.

Tough to craft a mainstream thriller that doesn't come across as hackneyed. In Shutter Island, Scorsese successfully infuses his subject with suspense while cultivating a paranoid, disillusioned aesthetic. Many of the scenes stand on their own and the coherent whole they eventually establish benefits from their gritty individualism. The paranoia is often moderately ridiculous and the dream sequences drag and would have benefitted from a more clandestine form of surrealism. The performances are strong, skillfully utilizing Laeta Kalogridis's hardboiled dialogue which diligently and effectively delineates their characters (Mark Ruffalo stealing the show). The ending suggests that means are more important than ends and objectively salutes tenacious innovative thinkers for attempting to remodel professional paradigms. But the ends are still distressing and I can't help but wonder if they reflect Scorsese's own fears regarding his attempts to rearrange the genre's conventions.

Shine a Light

In 1993 I purchased a ticket to see the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge tour. I thought it best to spend the little money I had on the ticket in order to ensure that I had the chance of seeing them live before one of them died.

Shit was I wrong.

But I did get to see a solid performance from my favourite band and was able to see them again in 1996. In the meantime, I've seen most of Martin Scorsese's films and taken note of the ways in which he usually incorporates my favourite forgotten Stones tunes into his soundtracks, Let it Loose in The Departed for instance. Needless to say, I was pretty frickin' happy to discover that his latest film is a concert from the Stones' A Bigger Bang tour and that this concert can be viewed in IMAX form.

Critics are referring to Scorsese as being 'lame' for having shot this film. And I really don't think they understand what he's done. Throughout, we are shown a concert in New York's Beacon theatre, with the opening act briefly pointing out some of the problems associated with trying to organize the shot. Scorcese brazenly situates himself in the forefront by inserting the words "Martin Scorsese Presents" immediately after the Stones count down to begin rehearsing: 4, 3, 2, 1, Martin Scorsese!

And why the hell shouldn't he? He's a huge fan, he has the resources to bring a concert to a huge audience who likely didn't have a chance to see the Stones last time round, tickets being rather pricey these days, and he wants to ironically share in their mythos for a split-second. Like Ricky Gervais in Extras, he's delighting in the fact that he is able to meet and greet some of his favourite stars while humbly making himself look silly in the process. And in a salute to humility, one of the most prominent features of Shine a Light is the footage of Stones drummer, Charlie Watts. Charlie has been there since the beginning and he rarely gets to emerge from Mick and Kieth's shadow. But Scorsese makes sure that Charlie gets plenty of screen-time in order to pay tribute to the Stones' unsung backbone.

The majority of the film consists of the aforementioned concert, but interviews from the 60s and 70s are intercut throughout (the Stones in Germany, Japan, France). A lot of this footage shows the Stones answering questions regarding how long they think they'll be able to tour, create, survive. By mixing these interviews in, Scorsese presents an objective answer while the Stones's performance illustrates that the same youthful intensity that gave them their start 40+ years ago is alive and well. As if God had sympathy for a bunch of devils and shone a light upon them, making every song they sing their favourite tune. Within the subnarrative lies the youthful intensity Scorsese has garnered from the Stones' music and his extreme delight in having situated himself within their legend. Note how in the end we see him directing the Stones offstage at two different points (while their progress is linear), thereby accentuating his longing to be a part of their aura by doubling his presence within their theatrical exit (extending his presence within for as long as possible).

For the Stones themselves, it's astounding how well they continue to play. Kieth playing on intuition, Mick stretching the strut, Charlie plugging away, Ronnie dexterously exchanging licks, Chuck Leavell rocking the keys, Darryl Jones pumping the bass, and Bobby Keys sucking back that sax like it's a quarter past Sunday. They blast out a bunch of background classics like All the Down the Line, Lovin' Cup (with Jack White), Live with Me (with Christina Aguilera), Some Girls, and You've Got the Silver (sung by Keith Richards), while performing a number of favourites like Satisfaction, Start Me Up, Shattered, and Jumpin' Jack Flash.

If you're a fan of the band, and it’s playing in a theatre near you, check out Shine a Light for the ways in which it pays tribute to a solid rock 'n' roll act flickin' the switch on their 19th nervous breakdown. And the next time the Stones are in town I'll have to spend what little money I have (looking for work here . . .) on a ticket, even though I'm sure there will be plenty more opportunity to see them. Because they're clones.

They probably aren't clones.

Whatever, they could be clones.