Barbie

It was sad to see the self-reflexive metastyle slowly fade out of cinematic fashion, as the urge to cultivate newfound novelty eventually led to paradigm shifts.

Rather than adhering to the comprehensive guidelines enthusiastically theorized by the critics, the slow return to banal absolutism cacophonically effaced the convivial endeavours. 

Yet as Trump and his minions sought to rework complicated literary trajectories, patriarchically concerned with eternal slaves and masters, a more symbiotic environmental approach gregariously germinated in the wholesome underground, ill-amused with everlasting tethers, and holistically seeking reciprocal gratitude. 

Thus, as the years slowly changed from the 1990s to the 2020s, an intermittent zone materialized, and the do-gooding and collective well-being of the post-war years clashed with feudal modes of expression.

The times during which they had once been employed with malignant rigour and destructive candour having faded from collective memory, the brigands dishonourably proceeded as if they had created something new.

Was it indeed more popular or were studios just attempting to mutate and froth, as a younger generation took the reigns, and vitriolically dismantled their elders's designs?

I didn't think the honourable pursuit of collective well-being and respect and goodwill, was a fad to be gradually replaced however by one-dimensional monocultural narratological goals.

It didn't seem like casting aside relevant millions to tell crass racist jokes, was commensurate with integral progress as commercial interests teleologically contend.

Alas, to rely on Barbie the oft criticized popular doll to redraw the lines, and perhaps create spherical counterintuitive shapeshifting threads like cats playing with multicultural yarn.

Symbiotically speaking, the world of men and women excelling when a level-playing field emancipates, lay androgynous mutual convection, when it works it's totally comfortable.

The world of course multilaterally pulsating to the tune of manifold international drums.

So much passing by unnoticed.

As prominent prognoses ebb and flow.

Red Sparrow

Extreme deception bluntly orchestrating maddeningly corrupt initiatives, coldly addressing severe characteristics with the flippant admiration of vanity in bloom.

Emaciated modus operandi, secretively adjusted objectives, flirtatiously plummeting pirouettes, applauding emotionless utilitarianism.

Innate degeneracy opulently upholding volatile foundations meticulously irradiated.

Occupational hazards phantasmagorically posturing with the resigned duplicitous elegance of nouveau riche ostentation, spread so delicately thin that one's senses aspirationally swoon with treacherous wonder.

Dissimulated.

Prevaricated.

If you can figure out what lies beneath a question's seeming innocuous simplicity as it's delivered with clumsy sincerity by someone who has no respect for you, it's easy to lie and give them the answer they expect to hear, the poorly concealed sarcastic nuances of their tone having betrayed their vicious intentions, their misguided readymade conclusion (along with what they intend to do with it), and after providing the answer for which they search which is easy enough to detect, you'll hopefully never hear from them again, calico.

Red Sparrow.

Wherein incomparable poise is wounded then theoretically transformed into a solicitous unimaginative reflection exalting spirited disillusion, commandeered to effortlessly seduce while never questioning executive artifice.

She does seduce effortlessly and you wonder how an undercover operative could have let his guard down so obliviously, but it does save time in a film that's already considerably lengthy.

For good reason.

It patiently follows resourceful Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) from career ending catastrophe to harrowing rebirth, accentuating her helplessness piecemeal before considering an alternative only awkwardly presented hitherto, thus enabling multidimensional character development within the strictest confines.

Pigs at the trough beware, Egorova is comin' to get 'cha.

The Americans are generally presented as trustworthy agents while the Russians betray their government with cause, a comment on the price of bearing petty grudges, one disloyal American voraciously bisecting the cultural stereotypes.

Not as intricate as some spy films, but Lawrence's stark brutal portrayal of a coerced fledgling homegrown psychopath still brazenly holding on to her innocence, as accompanied by a feisty Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a reserved General Korchnoi (Jeremy Irons), and a fierce Matron (Charlotte Rampling), situated within a clever direct script whose subject matter is uncannily relevant if Icarus and Russia's other international relations woes are interwoven, still helps Red Sparrow stand out, the groundwork for an outstanding sequel having been provocatively laid.

Perfect February release.

Mind-bogglingly coincidental.

The Post

Legal complications threaten the existence of The Washington Post after they publish government documents concerning executive American lies relating to the war in Vietnam, and the ways in which the unsuspecting public was scandalously misled about its necessity, in Steven Spielberg's The Post, wherein which the truth is jurisprudently vindicated.

A bold conscientious writer risks everything to photocopy and transmit the documents to the press, hiding out in a nondescript hotel room as the information first hits The New York Times.

The Post, also in the business of selling newspapers, 😉, is caught off guard without a competitive headline, and immediately seeks the clandestine source while Nixon's administration litigiously responds.

But its owner has recently taken the initial steps of transforming her paper into a public company, and controversial eruptions misclassified as shady dealings could seriously jeopardize the prosperity of its future (Meryl Streep as Kay Graham).

Her longtime and trusted friend Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) manages The Post's daily outputs, however, and is dead set against letting those who started a war, even though they knew it was outrageously unconscionable, unlike fighting back in World War II for instance, off the public hook.

Thus, you have ethics, the correct move in this situation obviously holding the government to account for its domestic and international abuses, versus economics, or the possibility that making the correct move could result in both jail time and the loss of an historic voice, an historic newspaper, omnipresent politics overshadowed by the courageous stand.

Debates abound as to what course should be taken, and multiple opposing viewpoints passionately have their say.

Mrs. Graham is haunted by her patriarchal conditioning and the misogynistic paternalism that has dominated most of her life.

But it's still her decision to make, the bold reckoning resting on her magnanimous shoulders, and wisdom is applied when she makes it, bold risk in the extreme, altruistically disseminated.

The Post's a good film, a dynamic multifaceted script introducing and diversifying sundry distinct personalities as they lucidly dispute big picture questions within scant pressurized time constraints, with the interests of encouraging a more peaceful world, the freedom of the press, and more mature public debate.

The debates are convincing, differences and alternatives characteristically narrativized, determined brash eloquent strengths qualified with reasonable compunction, professionalism, journalism, prison, and friendship, perforating the discussions with apt interrogative logic.

A bit cheesy at times, but I think that's just how Spielberg brilliantly crafts intense complex potentially boring films that can be thoroughly enjoyed by adolescents and adults alike.

With Bob Odenkirk (Ben Bagdikian) and David Cross (Howard Simons).

Reading the news online is convenient but definitely not the same as sitting back with a paper.

Sometimes with online news it's like you have to know what to search for, regardless of whether or not it exists.

With the physical paper you can move from page to page and find compelling articles you never knew you were searching for, as easily as if you're browsing at Indigo or the local independent bookstore.

Come to think of it.

L'Avventura

An artistic heritage so vast and imposing its contemporary admirers can't help but compose themselves with awe.

Quotidian cheek materialistically tethered exchanging observations with speculative mobilization possessing unimaginative magnetism (wry jealousy).

Small towns with no work wherein which the male inhabitants collectively contemplate aesthetics casually passing by.

Playful luxury illusively inconvenienced slumbers with impoverished free speech which differentiates not between beauty and brutality, a life spent with no feminine contact (it's odd when people seek answers and the answers are brutal and you try not to respond but they demand that answer, and if you respond they despise you even more than they would have if you had said nothing, and then treat you brutally).

A culture laments the disappearance of a siren whose mischievous independent preference for theoretical possibility created a sensation which his desire dismissively ignored.

Patriarchically philandering, L'Avventura presents a bored successful man to whom the most sought after precious women helplessly swoon, his innocent unattached habitual eloquence effortlessly ensnaring them within psychological shackles composed of forgiveness, sympathy, contempt, and guilt.

Apart from his betrothed who can't be found.

Culturally inclined, bucolic and urban socioeconomics multifacetedly engender amorous situations which fleetingly comment on relationships and/or conjugal commitment inasmuch as they carnivalesquely sexualize poverty and privilege.

The subject of so many wild comedies intellectually transformed into a literary matriculately meandering exposé, undesirable men imagining they're exceptionally endowed with unqualifiable gravitational irreducibility, which the opposite sex is irresistibly drawn towards, ethically as irresponsible as sadism, politically, masochistically responsive.

L'Avventura gets away with it, cloaking its victorious Lothario in voluminous vulnerable versatility, surrounding his endeavours with enough différence to democratically deconstruct any paradigmatic impulse, wildly commenting with realistic fascination, embroiling and staking with convectional subterfuge, brilliant inspired indulgence or bold calculated virtuosity?, metanarrative expression expressly exalting, cinematic sophistication, love, adventure.

Forushande (The Salesman)

Honourable codes parlay filings frosty, high stress politesse addressed immaterials, expectations, blame, a role, a play, residual sin licentious spaces, jasmine, tremors entrenched repute resounding, a home makeshift explicit riffs callow, advanced notification withheld as fictional and realistic threads intertwine to obscure an artistic commitment, the adoption of a foreign text from a less patriarchal period and country (?) expressing thoughts and desires strictly forbidden, blended with alternative signs of subterranean dissatisfaction to question free thought as if it's a supernatural challenge, as if the artist is being challenged by God, a progressive man on the Iranian scene must internally confront strength, shock, and shame, obsessive disdain, turmoil exhaustively cultivated.

His wife's willing to forgive.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini) spends so much time thinking vengeful thoughts that he overlooks Rana's (Taraneh Alidoosti) suffering as rage slowly consumes him.

She was the victim, she was the one who was attacked, but throughout Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman Emad is more concerned with personal honour.

He critiques the system within which he was nurtured but is still a product of that system and when the real clashes with his noble imagination the sublime does not judiciously compensate.

Women shortsightedly relegated to a subservient role.

The salesperson interrogates to enlighten yet struggles as he surfaces.

The film brilliantly examines his tortured soul, but is also a product of its circumstances, and focuses far less time on the feminine.

A purgatorial predicament.

Igniting bitter flames.

The Eagle Huntress

As I've mentioned before, go out and work some brutal unforgiving high-paying do-it-yourself labour job with a bunch of women seeking to prove themselves and you'll surely find they can tough it out hardcore like any man.

And on the coldest harshest direst days you'll find just as many men seeking shelter as women.

I'm not saying the NFL will suddenly be flooded with female athletes or anything, but I'm sure they'd be welcome if they tried to make the cut.

In a different land, across the Pacific in rural Mongolia, a young girl named Aisholpan seeks to follow her family's traditions and hunt fox on horseback in winter with the aid of an eagle.

Her father is a kind man and agrees to train her even if the patriarchal fox hunting by eagle hierarchy is not amused.

What follows is another brilliant exploration of the strength of the feminine spirit, like the formidable Athena of old, of myth, boldly challenging dismissive conceits, narrated by Daisy Ridley.

I suppose if you live in the badlands with neither television nor internet or within a country that suppresses contradictory proofs, it's still possible to believe women aren't capable of succeeding when prohibitively constrained.

But if such conditions qualify or govern your life, and somehow you're still reading this, note that The Eagle Huntress provides exemplary non-fictional evidence of potentially subversive notions which are likely being stubbornly ignored.

It's quite a positive film that generally focuses on determination as opposed to discrimination, an uplifting story that's strict and to the point, doesn't drag, and generates genuine interest.

Worth seeing.

With excellent eagle-related cinematography by Simon Niblett (Director of Photography).

Felt bad for the foxes.

I'm assuming they thrive in abundance?

Mustang

Children at play, happenstance and hijinks emboldening hilarity, the joys of youth spontaneously free-flowing, the unexpected and the ahistorical flourishing as they bumble, the beach magnetically galvanizing the zeal, time to excel at discovery and exploration, embrace what's new through awe and fascination, dive in and test the waters, let the ultrabliss cascade.

But the elders, the patriarchs and those who fear them, find such joyous acts of emancipated abandon troublesome and unproductive, the youths described previously being 5 young girls, young sisters, one perhaps with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks (Albertine), their village obsessed with strict definitions of the ladylike, coldhearted calculated restrictions which severely limit astronomical potentialities.

Soon they're being taught to be domestic servants while being married-off, one by one, the crime, exceedingly enjoying life, the punishment, squabbling in the shadows forever after.

Sure, it's nice when food is prepared for you, but if you're not prepared to cook the same, there isn't much point in benefitting from the enriching nutrient intake.

Sure, sometimes conversations with opposite genders seem bizarre and incomprehensible, but a collage of masculine and feminine ideas blended within a cultural and political fabric makes life dynamic and unpredictable, makes beautiful cities like Montréal, and is an integral component of vibrant contagious cohesivity.

Gender balance you know, it's not such a bad thing, you can refine some remarkable synergies, it works both ways.

Mustang examines sheer patriarchal oppression and the ways in which obsessions with ruthlessly employed conceptions of virtue and purity, even respect, can asininely suffocate blossoming imaginations.

Its fictional portrayal of incarcerated curiosity juxtaposes the harsh and the tender with disparate shocking alarm.

It's not that concepts like virtue and morality are necessarily threatening, it's only when a specific virtuous concept is enforced dogmatically, obstinately applied to each and every situation, like residential schools or Nazi Germany, that it dissolves its links with the good, and malevolently functions as condemnation incarnate.

You need rules in order to succeed in many domains, and if everyone is constantly subverting everything management decides it's difficult to accomplish anything.

But if management decides something and a situation arises which organically challenges that decision and they sharply suppress the challenge similar problems can arise.

You can be disciplined and successful while remaining young at heart.

Hopefully that's the life awaiting Lale (Günes Sensoy) as she leaves for Istanbul, taking a mature risk to thwart imposed maturity, relaxed in her liberation, ready to take on the new.

Big Eyes

Isolated freedom, revelling in its independence yet struggling with domestic determinants, a husband left behind, another guaranteeing affluence, the domain of patriarchy, one gender controlling, uplifting as it suffocates, a deal is begrudgingly struck, the wife possessing talent, the husband seductive salespersonship, his greed stretching beyond the limits of the financial, his oppression, firm and resolute.

Lies.

Nothing but lies.

Desperate for the prestige yet unable to qualify its conviction.

In terms of actually creating his own texts.

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) produces them regularly, changing and growing over time, a specific insight blossoming in the bower, dedicated, talented, active.

Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) sells them as his own.

The critical art versus kitsch continuum actualizes the scene as recognition leads to expansion, as opportunity pluralizes the popular.

Do what you do well I say.

If Margaret had wanted to stay in the background, the situation would have been perfect, a fortune made, the strengths of both partners flourishing, a pool, a house, mutual agreement, not bad, if it's agreed upon beforehand, and artfully managed with subtle praiseworthy comments here and there, in various conversations, socially constructing a contradictory narrative, intriguing in its gentile playfulness, if time changes the nature of the agreement, and credit need be applied where credit's due.

No such agreements.

No such amendments.

Don't freak when the critics don't like you.

There are myriad critics, myriad points of view, myriad methodologies, myriad revelations, extract relevant insights that can help you grow from those who aren't malicious, pretend like it's all nonsense, onwards.

This is where liking sports comes in handy.

In the NFL, you can be one of the greatest players of all time, but you'll still be torn up if you have a bad game, you can't let it get to you, the opposition's fierce, prepare for the next game, let it go, let it go.

Walter turns out to be incorrigible, trying to take all the credit for his wife's work, but she embodies true integrity, leaves the luxury behind, and starts from scratch again.

I liked the film and was impressed that Tim Burton wasn't directing another remake.

I think he still has another Beetlejuice within, I watched it again recently, I love that film.

Like Margaret's work, Big Eyes is accessible and witty, charmingly plucking its heartstrings, multidimensionally navigating cultural tributaries.

Nice to see Jon Polito (Enrico Banducci).

And Mr. Terence Stamp (John Canaday).

My Sweet Pepper Land

In a remote section of the land of the Kurds, in a remote section, of, Kurdistan, a raw independent audacious subject, committed above all else to upholding law and order, a hero to his people, fearless of the unknown, begins to confront village crime, directly, stubbornly, and effectively, dedicated instinctual calculated improvisation, challenge discovered, in the interests of nation building.

Also living in the village, attempting to teach its uneducated school children, is a feisty strong-willed educator, who also has trouble handling entrenched corruption, refusing to marry at the request of her brothers (who live elsewhere), subverting what they consider to be their lawful authority, majestically playing the hang drum.

Discovered the name of her instrument from Jordan Hoffman's research.

I think of the film as having two main thrusts, Baran's (Korkmaz Arslan) attempts to install a sense of justice in the region, and the coming together of Baran and Govend (Golshifteh Farahani).

It has elements of the classic American Western but its budget prevents it from convincingly executing in this domain.

However, Baran and Govend's relationship forges a very convincing kinetic bond, reminding me more of Bollywood than Hollywood, tumultuously holding the film together.

Hiner Saleem's My Sweet Pepper Land is no minor film in terms of what he sets out to do (have to discuss the ending here).

With the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have achieved a degree of independence.

My Sweet Pepper Land asks what can be done with this newfound independence, how should our nation be built?

Patriarchal authority is strong in the film, counterbalanced, however, by both Govend and a group of female guerrilla fighters.

Both Baran and Govend are interested in nation building, through governance and education respectively, yet resist familial pressures to marry someone for whom they have no feelings.

It's more of a Western model.

It seemed like Saleem was saying that if Kurdistan is to come into being, it should be guided by a strong sense of morality (Baran's law upholding), yet, Govend and Baran's union indicates that he believes that that strong sense of morality should be influenced by substantial individual freedoms.

My Sweet Pepper Land's brilliant move comes near the end when Govend firmly resists the demands of her brothers.

I was expecting Baran to show up to assist, but he doesn't, she resists on her own.

The ending sees them calling out to one another in the wilderness, searching for the other's embrace. The credits role before they find one another, thereby suggesting that the possibility for substantial individual freedoms as well as equal opportunity regardless of gender exist within Kurdistan's developing autonomy, and it's up to progressively minded Kurdish people, to bring Govend and Baran together.

Hoping the soundtrack becomes available.

Saleem does make the most of his budget, peppering his filmscape with nature's beauty, capturing a hawk in flight (think it's a hawk), or the moon and the mountains in the background as Govend approaches the camera's eye.

Borgman

The bourgeois patriarchy finds unconditional support in Alex van Warmerdam's Borgman, a poignantly pointless florescent canker, rifle at the ready, red alert middle-class aesthetics.

While viewing, you may find yourself considering at least two questions, the first, why in hell would anyone make something like this?, the second, is this the pinnacle of paranoid stereotyped fabled uncensored grit, the beast aimlessly targeting the beauty, the arrogance of a stifled hypodermic, unreeling like a Criterion in the making?

The only film to ever remind me of Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout.

It could have been an after school special direly warning teens not to hitchhike.

Or a film where a plane crashes in Alaska and wolves communally hunt down the survivors.

Instead, suburban peace and tranquility is infiltrated by a troupe of travelling possibly demonic psychopaths, who, in this instance, seek employment in order to use the tools at their disposal to create a platform upon which they intend to put on a show, the couple's wife residing in their grip, the husband, completely oblivious.

Discontent is sewn.

I'm assuming Warmerdam has worked a Dutch fairy tale or legend of some kind into his script, the film seeming as if it's a crisp contemporary take on a medieval horror, with cars and cellphones, although the fact that it seemed that way to me is based on my assumption.

Off they go, into the forest.

If there were still bears in the Netherlands, keeping with the fairy tale hypothesis, they would be on the lookout.

Bears were obviously guardians of the forest in Dutch fairy tales/legends.

I know nothing about the Netherlands.

New World

Not sure whether Hoon-jung Park looked to The Godfather when writing and directing New World, but I think the comparison warrants consideration.

I'm not saying the film will have the same impact on South Korean audiences as The Godfather had on North American ones, just mean that elements of its matrix, components of its design, seem to have been intelligently incorporated into New World's script, and the result is a strong examination of an individual's struggle within two worlds, those being an underground criminal organization seeking corporate status and the police who are trying to in/directly influence them.

In Settai the police and the smugglers neutralize each other leaving the protagonists free to explore alternative means of expression.

This is not a comedy, however, it's a voracious rampant demented hypermasculinized scripture, complete with fierce consequences and mortal outcomes, a strict pressurized treacherous contemplation wherein expendable means and sought after ends conspicuously strive for psychological dominion.

Or survival.

Like The Godfather, the violence is omnipresent yet detained, erupting in sophisticatedly timed bursts, unlike what the previews and opening sequence would have you believe.

Both worlds suffer from a lack of abundant institutional active feminine counterbalances whose integral presence would theoretically decrease the violence.

The 50/50 split is best case.

Those fighting to lead aren't from the same family but their characters grow and expand throughout, overcoming stock critiques often easily launched at such personas.

The ending's totally Michael Corleone and less predictable than The Godfather's.

The law enforcement dimension arguably pushes New World past The Godfather, adding an additional layer of consistent threatening complications to the story, well thought out and cripplingly jaded, symbiotically existing with the syndicate which explodes from the inside to the contrary.

I suppose that's the purpose of roughing up the police photographers early on. In The Godfather, that's it, end of scene, in New World, Detective Kang (Min-sik Choi) steps in and asserts New World's respectful intertextual alternative outlet.

While revelling in his unrestrained cheek.

A new Godfather outlet.

Respectful and alternative to The Godfather, not a respectful alternative new outlet.

This outlet's been around forever.

Detective Kang reminded me of Columbo.

A prick Columbo.

A more-of-a-prick Columbo.

Columbo with additional responsibilities.

He's very Columboie.

Midnight's Children

At the stroke of midnight, as India's independence lights up the sky, several children are born.

An ironic twist of fate, whereby bohemian and bourgeois babies are switched at birth, in an act of amorous solidarity, simultaneously precipitates openminded and hegemonic serializations.

One possesses the remarkable gift of being able to use his mind to create a cerebral in/corporeal clandestine commons where all of Midnight's Children can meet and discuss various subjects.

One's overwrought jealousy upholsters a ballistic desire to dominate, within.

The others, playing by a more reasonable set of hospitable synchronizations, collegially, discern.

That's a rather truncated description of what takes place in Deepa Mehta's film; it's much more complicated than that, narratively deconstructing particular parental preconceptions, touching upon complex interconnected conjugal and familial (and pre- and post-colonial) provocations, illustrating the effects of 'practical' ideological implementations on individual constituencies from jingoistically fraternal (ugh) and resurgently romantic jetties, at a frantic pace, which generally focuses on one character's brittle innocence.

The depth of potential lying within the film's itinerant confluences suggests that Salman Rushdie's novel is worth picking up, and that militaristic conflicts prevent the cultivation of prolonged endearing chill relationships.

At first, I found the film's magically real cloak to be somewhat flippant in relation to the gravity of its historical trajectory, but it's actually this light, dreamy, bewildered and baffling ambience that transcends its unavoidable puritanical devices, evoking an abstract laissez-faire conspicuous caricature.

That isn't that concerned with absolutes.

Covering a lot of interdisciplinary ground while firmly resisting attempts at classification, Midnight's Children sacrifices elaboration for stylization to divine a potential mantra.

More fitting to its humanistic features.

Trishna

Aesthetics clash with socioeconomics after a brief period of romantic resignation in Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, where love is permitted to bloom if it knows its place.

Although, as it becomes increasingly clear that that place, due to the different circumstances into which the partners were born, will involve prolonged periods where the dependent lover, Trishna (Freida Pinto), must submit to whatever desire her wealthy benefactor adopts, immediately and without question, her thoughts and feelings being considered by him to have been forfeited in return for the employment and luxuries with which he provides her, said blooming soon morbidly decays.

There is no balance, no give and take, just a one-sided narcissistic vacuum taking full advantage of its power and privilege.      

Trishna's father doesn't help much either being more concerned with honour and saving face than his daughter's trauma.

And a shy, modest, beautiful impoverished woman, who was only searching for things such as respect and a voice from her partner, wanders off into the desert alone, while school children sing a song celebrating equality (it's a powerful scene in terms of strengthening the left in India).

Having symbolically used her realistic imagination to ceremoniously slice through the imaginary real.

Circumstance

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, falling in love is a beautiful thing. Suddenly there's someone there with whom you get along and/or enjoy fighting with regularly who saves you from the interminable tedium of your own personal thoughts.

And loves it when you suggest going at it.

Through the exchange of ideas you learn and grow constructively and destructively as you challenge one another while suffering/flourishing as your dependency increases.

Having the opportunity to do this is something a lot of people take for granted.

Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance suffocatingly accentuates the torment of trying to embrace your mutual feelings in a homophobic socially conservative stasis, as Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) fall in love.

Atafeh is the privileged daughter of wealthy parents whose lifestyle is encouraged by the current Iranian regime. Shireen's parents were free thinking writers who didn't fare so well after the Revolution in 1979.

As they explore their affections in the Iranian underground, Keshavarz showcases their blossoming vitality before the morality police step in and rigidly crush it.

One of the policepersons is Atafeh's former drug abusing religiously reformed brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai).

If you're wondering how the affects of your socially conservative values and their associated misguided ethical conceptions can distort potentially productive members of your community and turn them into passionate iconoclasts, try and imagine a world where all you want to do is have a heterosexual relationship but everyone keeps telling you it's an unnatural crime for which you will be eternally punished.

And ask yourself, "why do I keep bullying gay people?"

Do you seriously think a loving God would encourage such behaviour?

Tree of Life

Smoothly flowing gently falling slightly billowing lightly floating metaphors, a series of remembered events stitched together through fluid dreamlike sequences, delineating foundations, from which identities are constructed. A father, a mother, a family, a routine. A strict routine, a strict father, a housewife, a code. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) unwaveringly sticks to his code whereby his rule is absolute and his every whim, non-negotiable. His wife acquiesces, his children grow, he arrives at work on time, tithes week-in, week-out. A subjective interpretation of a governing structure attempts to supply youth with a disciplined set of ground rules from which a reasonable degree of economic stability can be confidently expected, through the years. No discussion, no questions, just stilted secure repetitious order blindly and diligently recreating itself, again. There's a lot of depth to the scenes in this film and Malick poetically intertwines manifold transitions with incredibly versatile images which in themselves create a byzantine subtext whose hydra-like character challenges the narrative's status quo.

But I don't think it's meant to do this, it seemed more like Malick was supplying as much beauty as he possibly could to suburbia, to a conservative way of life, using a surrealist form to structure his traditional content, with instinct guiding the positioning of his imagery as opposed to planning, whereby Tree of Life develops a naturally secretive grace, as it bids farewell to one dramatization of the North American middle-class.

On the one hand, it elevates patriarchal dispositions to a cantankerously coy precipice, taking content that has been recycled ad nauseum and demonstrating that it can continuously be insightfully replenished if you're willing to put in a little time and effort.

On the other, it eclipses sundry previous manifestations of this particular vision to the point where it seems possible that it's trying to put an end to this storyline once and for all, playing the ultimate winning hand, the graceful capitalist end-game.

Don't mean to be applauding Tree of Life too much. I found the seemingly random quotes which accompany much of the imagery to be irritating (especially since they're supposed to have some sort of ethereal quality) and was happy to comfortably rest my eyes here and there, as Mr. O'Brien and his children had yet another coming of age moment.

It would be a great film to study more closely and definitely leaves the door open for multiple critical accounts which can be situated within various intellectual markets in order to facilitate conceptions of particular ethical viewpoints from which the effects of diverse cultural phenomena can be momentarily diagnosed.

Naturally graceful, or a graceful nature, either way Tree of Life has me examining this dialectic, and has, for me anyway, instilled it with a remarkable life force that I'll find difficult to ignore for some time to come.

This is where film can be different from reading yet just as powerful. In a book like In Search of Lost Time you come across these dialectics constantly to the point where you've been bombarded with so many you suffer from intellectual overload. Sometimes it's nice to take one and use it as a general frame in order to study its vicissitudes specifically, and so on.

Red

I liked Robert Schwentke's Red even though there's not much to it. I recommend it if and only if you're searching for a mildly entertaining brain numbing occasionally amusing action flick wherein several old-school big names (Helen Mirren, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine) give a Space Cowboys salute to their careers. I was glad to see Brian Cox included in the cast. Even though his career hasn't had as many leading roles, he's definitely demonstrated a robust dynamic multidimensional integrity over the years (as if casting personnel Deborah Aquila and Mary Tricia Wood are saying "you, Brian Cox, are the ultimate mainstream supporting actor"). The next generation is represented by Karl Urban who has demonstrated his abilities in films such as The Chronicles of Riddick, Star Trek, and Pathfinder, and he resignedly holds his own throughout. The film vilifies American atrocities committed in Central America during the 1980s and while this is good it's as if its structure is saying that it's to bad it took the American mainstream 25 years to catch up. The internal dynamics point out how hard it is to prevent such things from happening if you're solely concerned with advancing your own personal agenda, unless that agenda is designed to prevent such things from happening.

Up

It's never to late to follow your dreams and you can almost accomplish anything. This message curiously permeates Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson's Up (a Disney/Pixar production) although it is examined from competing patriarchal conceptions of the aged caucasian male. The hero: Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner and Jeremy Leary) and his wife Ellie (Elie Doctor) have dreamed of following Charles Muntz's footsteps and travelling to South America's Paradise Falls since they met. But during their marriage they could never find the funds or the time to do so. After Ellie dies and Carl unfortunately assaults a construction worker, he decides it's time to live their dream and turns their house into a flying machine propelled by thousands of balloons. Accidentally along for the ride is young boy scout Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is working on his helping the elderly badge. The villain: Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) has been living in Paradise Falls for decades trying to capture a rare bird after having been accused of fabricating its existence by the scientific community. While unable to trap the bird, he has created a collar which allows dogs to speak and attached one to each of the "hounds" in his pack. After Carl and Russell reach the area surrounding Paradise Falls, the bird in question takes a liking to Russell's candy bar and begins following them to Mr. Fredricksen's chagrin. Only after Russell helps Carl to discover that Muntz will likely kill the bird after capture does he begin to snap out of his self-possessed fantasy and start fighting back against his childhood hero.

On the one hand we have the old-school conception of the traditional white patriarch, Charles Muntz, for whom nature is a resource to be sequestered and conquered. Obviously possessing an extremely gifted intellect, he cannot overcome the slander attached to his good name and rather than finding other ways to positively contribute to society lives out his days in the wilderness adhesively clutching the past. In the beginning, Carl too wishes to hold on to the past and live out the rest of his life in what he and his wife always dreamed would be paradise. However, young Russell's influence inspires him to stand up and take a side (the child being the teacher of the man) and he embraces the revolutionary environmentalist point of view, disregards his possessions, and decides that it's time the traditional patriarchal male destabilizes his historical stereotype by overtly challenging the forces of imperialism. Thus, the child helps the old man to recognize the horrific dimension of his fantasy and he is then able to develop a confident voice of his own which he uses to reinvigorate his reality. It's no coincidence that the incomprehensible chocolate loving bird is female and that Carl would have never embarked on his journey had he not callously assaulted a worker.

Imagery in Paradise Now

Okay, quickly here, some thoughts on the imagery from Paradise Now. The first scene that really struck me takes place when Suha (Lubna Azabal) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are driving around in search of Said (Kais Nashef). The two of them have a debate regarding their alternate approaches to solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Khaled seeing definite acts of violence and their attendant effects as the best way of achieving peace, Suha recommending peaceful politico-intellectual methods, i.e., debates and passive protests, as a more effective means of achieving mutually satisfactory ends, or at least a framework within which the possibility for achieving mutually satisfactory ends can be created. In this instance, Khaled can be thought of as employing a line of argumentation that believes equality will never be provided to subjugated people because their rulers seek assimilation or elimination rather than a community where both cultures can exist peacefully side by side. Hence, because dreaming of a peaceful political solution is naive and 'unrealistic,' we should strap a bomb to our chest and blow up the enemy so that afterwards angels can bring us to Heaven, which isn't so irrational when you consider the pervasive influence of religious fanaticism within a culture that uses such guidelines in order to create their rational and logical political and cultural methodologies (in a similar fashion to the ways in which the community within Rob Hardy's The Wicker Man functions). Even though the posture is also representative of lunacy.

Alternatively, you can form peaceful think-tanks that protest injustice effectively through hunger strikes, appeals to international tribunals, agreements to work with rather than for the oppressor in order to form a peaceful solution; a method that requires an extremely high degree of patience. Complex issues to be sure. It can be difficult for men to adopt the feminine point of view, especially within a culture firmly rooted in patriarchal rhetoric, for they are supposed to enter the 'world' and make a living in order to support their family. Their needs are immediate, tangible, and frightening, especially in a situation where a huge amount of impoverished aggression is attempting to compete with itself in order to forge a successful and long-lasting place within its culture (which is all the more staggering after you have found such a place and then have it destroyed by the Israeli army in retaliation for a suicide bombing from one of your counterparts, who wasn't as fortunate as you, ran out of patience, and sacrificed himself for his culture. Simultaneously, women can easily adopt the patient route if they are members of a society which does not provide their gender with any means through which they can form a substantial and influential political voice. Hence, they must remain patient, actually creating the resolve that traditionally minded men claim to have naturally, insofar as the strength and courage such women require in order to remain resolute in a situation where many of them are viewed as idiotic baby machines is of a much higher quality than that which simply engages in acts of violence (what is harder, to perennially fight with a boorish husband in order to have your peaceful, intelligent feminine point of view recognized and institutionalized so that its insurmountable strength can have the same kind of sophisticated cultural evaluation that surrounds its masculine counterpart, thereby forcing said masculine counterpart to recognize that what it claims to be its natural monopoly on wisdom is the product of an unjust patriarchal system that brutally castigates feminine methods of expression, or to blow yourself up in the name of God? What requires a more substantial variety of courage?). Even as Said and Suha race down the road searching for Khaled Said informs Suha that if she wasn't the daughter of a prominent Palestinian icon, he would likely be providing her with quite the beating, precisely because her points logically and rationally contradict his own (the point which contradicts the stereotype must be struck down by those who gain strength through its continuing affluence; by striking it down, the aggressor hopes that the physical examples that intelligently demonstrate its fallacious qualities will learn to remain silent: the basic and ugly formula for institutional bigotry). As Said and Suha travel down the road, an oncoming truck nearly strikes them as they accidentally swerve into the opposite lane. By including this scene, I think Abu-Assan is pointing out the fact that the debate held between these opposing ideologies is extremely complex, with no simple solutions. If, while having a debate, you crack the lens through which you usually view the world and from which you find guidance in order to live your life, it is possible for the terrifying force of the Real to manifest itself and quickly run you off the road. So pay attention to your principles while engaging in intellectual debates. The image of the oncoming truck contains more metaphorical weight as well, insofar as it also physically represents the force that Suha's reason has upon Said’s established identity, due to the fact that her wisdom breaks down part of his imperial conditioning, and opens up his mind to an alternate philosophy regarding existence.

Khaled experiences quite the shock, and near the film’s ending we see him in tears after he decides to no longer be a suicide bomber, while Said continues to refuse to listen. In the end, we see Said seated on a bus surrounded by Israeli soldiers. Earlier on in the film, Said was unable to enter and destroy a bus due to the fact that he sees an Israeli boy playing upon it. Because Said is surrounded by soldiers, we are lead to believe that he now has a legitimate target to attack. But we never see Said detonate the bomb, instead the screen turns white, representing either the consequences of an explosion, or the enlightenment gained by realizing that alternative methods of political expression exist. The light quickly fades to darkness, highlighting the fact that "this world is dark and this floating world is a dream" (Kurasawa's Hidden Fortress). No matter what decision is made or what ideology you accept, the outcome is in need of tenacious support, and whether that tenacity is manifested peacefully or aggressively is up to you, as is the decision you make regarding Said's final (in?)/action. I believe in Ghandi, and Suha, and that Said returned home to live with his family and perhaps raise one of his own, members of which helped disarm Palestine and Israel in order to create an egalitarian society, where aggressive tendencies are saved for paintball, and the world works together for the mutual benefit of all.

Note the subtle ways in which Abu-Assan highlights the beauty within Palestine throughout, whether it’s a romantic encounter between Said and Suha in the middle of the night, or the bounty of the tree growing within Said's house, supplying his family with fruit.

One more thing: Said's personality is dealing with the historical fact that his father was a collaborator and therefore insulted his families honour. Hence, he fights daily with his father's memory, trying to understand why he worked with the Israelis, wondering about things like honour and militant acts of justice.