Bullet Train

What a strange film.

There's no doubt it's well done. It seems the more critics lambaste gratuitously violent films, the more clever and entertaining they become, consistently challenging their audiences to duel with themselves as they come to reckless terms with their own narrative preferences. 

Bullet Train even interweaves Thomas the Tank Engine, as a paid assassin uses its inherent lessons to frame and construct his sociocultural views, a tender embrace no doubt endearing as he shoots his way through the chaotic frenzy, even sharing the most violent sequence from the film as he and his brother argue about how many people they took out during their most recent job, their dispute graphically and reminiscently depicted, it's insane, it's just insane.

Another nice guy with a gift for killing shares his therapist's advice throughout, and consistently attempts to talk rather than fight, his wise complaints neither brokered nor adhered to.

Überviolent psychological brainy dramatic comedies are no doubt a 21st century speciality, it's clear decades of vertical mutation have enhanced their intricate design, but are there not consequences to such manifestations?

Most people know the difference between psycho film and playful reality, and don't turn into bellicose beasts just because they saw a violent movie.

But you often hear about mass shootings in the States, so you have to wonder if permitting your populace to purchase multivariable assault weapons, while idealizing mass unattainable wealth, and then constantly showcasing brilliant and hilarious violent films, is not a seriously bad idea, even if you're making billions (are hundreds of millions not enough?).

Take away the mass availability of assault weapons and the mass shootings decrease proportionately, borrowing stats from Bowling for Columbine, and the distressing onslaught that's proceeded unabated since.

Then nerd men can get back to thematically impressing nerd women with their bombastic theatrics, and the next generation of eccentric children can constructively flourish in the librarial thunderground.

It's always the same story. ⛄

If your culture isn't prone to routine psychotic outbursts furiously unleashed on the unsuspecting public, and films like this one are reserved for more mature audiences who like gangster movies, Bullet Train is somewhat of a masterpiece, which still goes a bit overboard.

What would The Godfather or Scarface (1983) have been like if they'd been released at a later date?

They still seem a lot more profound.

And it's clear that they're not comedies. 

Birds of Prey

A world wherein which consequence and repercussion have never been considered laments freewheelin' largesse as Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) breaks up with the Joker.

Not a kind world by any means, as ill-composed as it is bellicose, supplying notions like wholesome and sentimental with animate vigour in their shocking absence.

She's sought after by many for different reasons artichoke, and must chaotically improvise to avoid painful brash comeuppance.

Yet she still visits local restaurants and chills at her trusty pad, having rescued a coveted pickpocket who's swallowed a precious diamond.

It contains instructions you see as to how to amass an enormous fortune, and crime boss Roman Sionis (horrible representation of gay people!) (Ewan McGregor) will pay 500 grand to get it.

So Quinn and others find themselves at odds with the irate extravagance, and the aggrieved forge a feisty clique as versatile as it is combat ready.

Those are structural facts although they're by no means determinate, the tale abounding with nuts and nuance intriguingly enunciated.

The clever albeit absurd script keeps at it with unnerving style, non-linear nimble necro accelerated cranked attire.

Not the place for guile or sympathy sorority notwithstanding, cruel worlds enraged colliding mistook madness high stakes shallows.

Necessitous individualism.

Nebulous crazed existence.

All goes well the first run through throughout the reckless merge, the alarming detonated detail shell-shocked, revealing, zesty.

Gotham's controlled by men whom the feminine contest not so shyly, exonerating tactile teamwork independent disputatious.

New characters abound so introductions are in order, the Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), the Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), profiles crafted, futures fathomed.

DC is seriously impressing these days with Joker and now Birds of Prey, nothing that uplifting about either of the films, but they're still ironically well thought out comic book distractions.

Just need to work in the Justice League (or Deadpool) and maintain the creative style.

Birds of Prey keeps reinventing itself with observant discursive fury, right up 'til the traditional end, order out of groundless chaos, a bit repetitive but still compelling.

I hope the Birds have some more of their own films and don't just show up to aid the Batman.

Nice to see the change of pace.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Molly's Game

What a sensation.

Nefariously betrayed by a player in L.A, she picks up and moves to New York, cleverly managing its most lucrative poker game soon after, a table upon which it only cost $250,000 to play.

To buy in.

Exceedingly bright yet mysterious and chill, she lavishly executes with modest reticent conviviality, eloquently ensuring a good time while building her mystique, seducing excessive wealth because she remains unavailable, her clients finding themselves basking in wondrous extremes, vivaciously sustained, through feverish risk embellishment.

Just sitting at the table must have made them feel legendary.

While her exotic enabling and untouchable allure generated complimentary resilient reveries that made losing millions seem like fun.

Elegance.

Jurisprudently classified.

Quite a sporty film, Molly's Game.

The dialogue rapidly disseminates emblazoned information with fervid freeflowing evangelical equanimity.

With innocence.

She's not necessarily free of guilt, but like Columbo in For Your Eyes Only, her crimes amount to nothing when compared to those of Kristatos.

Molly's (Jessica Chastain) lawyer sees it that way too (Idris Elba as Charlie Jaffey), making an impassioned plea for the prosecution's sympathy in one of the film's best scenes.

If you like psychology, Molly has an honest contentious conversation with her father (Kevin Costner) near the end, that argumentatively condenses priceless age-old imbroglios.

It's well-timed.

She was one of the best downhill skiers in the U.S at one point, specializing in moguls, and she matched her athleticism with a sharp intellect that was confident and capable enough to construct palaces out of incredible risks undertaken, while never opportunistically overlooking client confidentiality.

Even when offered millions.

Self-reliant sacrifice.

Supreme integrity.

Good film, fast-paced-high-stakes worked into a narrative that's direct yet still more intelligent than most.

There must be big games in Denver.

Every night of the year.

Maggie's Plan

The spirit of independence, intelligence and confidence, basking in unconscious success, high-level functioning finessed, fabled and fastened, doubts rationally ridiculed, friends casually consulted, expansion, diversity, risk management, decision made, imaginations materialized, nebulous nascent nesting, enlightening epiphany, a child is born.

Yet one marriage dissolves to consolidate her portfolio, her hawkish rival expressing her grievances verbosely, the mutually sought after bad boy wearing on Maggie's (Greta Gerwig) nerves as the years pass, until it becomes plainly apparent, that she'd be better off on her own.

For a time.

In a bit of a pickle.

Maggie's Plan is as clever as it is charming.

Well versed in psychological analysis, manipulative benevolence fetchingly at play, it never loses its sense of cerebral congeniality, fun, it's a lot of fun, fair play you know, in what otherwise could have been tragic and miserable, director Rebecca Miller boldly blends logic and laughter, harmonizing open minds with good intentions, even as chaos clouds over it's smooth, chill, cool, laid-back in full putter, possibly the best romantic comedy I've seen.

There's a great short clip that shows Maggie and Georgette (Julianne Moore) out for a drive that could have easily been cut, but its inclusion hilariously stylizes quaint urban absurdity, thereby lightening the mood with self-deprecating shock, and calling into question its own romantic existence (editing by Sabine Hoffman).

Candlelight.

Gerwig and Moore work exceptionally well together, like Denzel and Mark Wahlberg, casting by Cindy Tolan.

Ethan Hawk (John) also excels, like a mix of Harrison Ford, John Cusack and Harry Dean Stanton, which he makes totally his own.

Watch the English language only Québécois signage. That's technically illegal!

A fun trip to Québec regardless, with good music, lively conversation, tantalizing food and drink, and a bit of snowshoeing adventurously thrown in.

Solid R&D.

No Žižek?

Miller wrote the screenplay as well and handles the brainy dialogue with restrained decorum and explosive observation.

It's like J. M. Coetzee's Foe.

It starts off rushed, in a panic, and then slowly settles down to seductively reflect and ponder, like Maggie's state of mind I suppose.

I'm crying.

Trance

Establishing an historical distinction regarding old and new security precautions taken to protect precious paintings during auctions, right-off-the-bat, thereby foreshadowing both the ways in which Danny Boyle's career has progressed from Shallow Grave to Trance and its contemporary utilitarian utilization of amnesia and hypnosis, narrative tools which frequently showed up in the television shows I watched during my youth, and have possibly been used regularly since then, although I may be blowing the memory out of proportion, Trance has traditional motifs, enticements and motivations (find the painting and cash in) which are thrust into a coherent mesmerizing fugacious distillery, whose economic and romantic film noiresque reversals, complete with critical comments concerning legal structures that prevent female victims of violence from obtaining justice, fitting in relation to the recent horrific suicide of Nova Scotia's beautiful young Rehtaeh Parsons, its diversified ambient tonal modifications, young professional addiction seeks underground remedies for financial miscalculations (gambling debt) which in turn threaten the livelihoods of everyone involved, upend expected outcomes, as if Boyle is precisely aware of what you require him to elucidate, apart from the absent review of Simon's (James McAvoy) extracurricular activities, which I thought would have fit considering that he's responsible for safekeeping 25 million dollar works of art (is that how much it cost to make this film?), most likely because I just saw New World, a review which wouldn't have fit well anyways due to the dense nature of Trance's convolutions (another layer within would have made the brew too lucidly phantasmagorical), destined diagnostic discombobulating detoxification, a less analytical form of Inception, but, if they had found a way, amidst the sex and the greed and the artifice, to stick to the opening sequence more devoutly, while paying the same meticulous attention to unnecessary yet compelling details, I would have perhaps given it a rating of 9.7 instead of 9.4, which really doesn't make much difference.

Life of Pi

A giant freakin' tiger.

An island of meerkats.

A fluorescent whale.

And a mischievous moon bear.

Members of the animal kingdom make up portions of Life of Pi's supporting cast and fill its fictionally fortuitous filmscape with a carnally introspective constabulary.

Indicative of spiritual tribunals.

Necessity being the lover of retention, and survival, romance's wherewithal, Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) makes the case for creative license, while providing a noteworthy response to Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.

Pi's religious curiosity leads him from Hinduism to Christ to Allah and his individualistic embrace/mix of the three is openmindedly archetypal (substitutes welcome).

It's difficult to write about Life of Pi's most compelling point without ruining the film, but, as a film, for me, although I was disappointed that more time wasn't spent directly presenting the convincing case Yann Martel makes for the existence of zoos in the novel, its 'make or break' stretch takes place in the lifeboat, where Pi and Richard Parker negotiate a pact which keeps their cross-examinations afloat.

And it works. The stretch seductively elaborates upon while subtly advancing Patel's position, building up to a moving somewhat overdone transubstantive summit, celestially washing up on shore.

I'll have to wait to respond to the rest (I'm not convinced [and can't explain what I'm not convinced about]).  

The moon bear doesn't have a big part.

There is a moon bear though.

And he or she looks mischievous.

2 Days in New York

The artistic, political, familial, conjugal, critical, social, quizzical, spiritual, sexual and psychological creatively intermingle in Julie Delpy's 2 Days in New York, wherein free-spirits lackadaisically/audaciously/petulantly/mendaciously contend with both the pretentious and the vituperative, in the pursuit of playing a specific role.

These roles themselves, when abstracted, transformed into symbols, placed within a fluctuating in/determinate semantic matrix, in/determinate depending upon the rhetorical convictions of the urges to clarify (and the resultant multi/bi/lateral counter-clarifications), fluctuating inasmuch as difference guarantees the establishment of multiple points of view (many of which temporally fluctuate within themselves [unless you write this kind of thing]), can produce multilateral takes which nurture an inclusive body politic wherein manifold outlooks survey their surroundings, i.e., Web 2.0.

The film itself isn't really my style but I appreciate the dynamic complexity within which it's exoterically expressed.

Employing the spice mélange.

La hérisson (The Hedgehog)

The film version of Muriel Barbary's L'elégance du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog) presents several of the novel's intriguing developments in a necessarily condensed form. Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) still wishes to commit suicide and Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko) is still the secretly atypical concierge, reluctant to engage in personal social interactions with her clients. Screenwriter and director Mona Achache negotiates the tempestuous gulf providentially cultivated between a character's thoughts in a novel and their depiction in a film by having Paloma shoot and narrate a documentary throughout, thereby maximizing the number of literary ideas transmitted without relying to heavily on intrusive objective narration. The introduction of Mr. Ozu (Togo Igawa) is much more subtle in the novel and his perspicacious intuition comes across as somewhat larger than life (if not forgivably endearing). Paloma's acute perceptively dour psychological observations incisively and playfully occupy its forefront, while Renée's metamorphosis gradually picks up steam. Not sure what either Barbary or Achache are saying by having Renée die as soon as she begins to transcend her preoccupations with her thoroughly researched conceptions of her culture's general attitude concerning her personality as it relates to her job, apart from the fact that it dissuades Paloma from committing suicide, but that's another matter. Thoroughly entertaining, piquantly quizzical, and enigmatically enlightening, Achache's film compliments Barbary's novel even if their relationship could be a little less direct.