Larry Crowne

At times I forget that there are so many films out there that don't involve combat or defiance or shenanigans or intergalactic discord, beyond belovéd well-meaning tender-hearted Christmas films, known to many as romantic comedies, I don't spend enough time watching them, although I've never had much of an interest.

I didn't really say that much there but it still took me a while to get started, so I would typically be having a cigarette right now if I hadn't quit today, the first of several delicious cigarettes to have been had throughout the course of writing this review, if only smoking wasn't so bad for your health, it's such an enjoyable pastime.

Larry Crowne isn't only a romantic comedy but it's one starring Tom Hanks (Larry Crowne) and Julia Roberts (Mercedes Tainot), with an ensemble cast including Randall Park (Trainee Wong), Rob Riggle (_____ Strang), Cedric the Entertainer (Lamar), Pam Grier (Frances), Rami Malek (______ Dibiasi), George Takei (Dr. Matsutani), and Bryan Cranston (______ Tainot), smooth flowing and easy going, even directed by Mr. Hanks.

Not that there isn't calamity a loyal worker is cast aside (Mr. Crowne), his years of service callously overlooked due to his lack of post-secondary education.

Bills are due he's middle-aged and has a house and other big ticket expenditures, but he heads back to school nevertheless, to study economics and public speaking.

I would have liked to have treated myself to another cigarette at this point for I've managed to fill a page, but Nicorette gum will do for now, chomp chomp chomp, if I chew too long I get hiccups. 

Mercedes is a jaded teacher whose pervo husband has given up, the two forging an awkward pair of somewhat spoiled highly educated adolescents. 

Mr. Crowne winds up in her public speaking class which she'd rather not be teaching, most of the students are unsure what to do and she doesn't offer much useful guidance.

But through his can-do lack of pretension and unassuming good-natured reliability, she rediscovers her love of teaching, and even begins to apply soulful effort, her students are even happy to study with her again in second semester. 

It's like ice cream bored at the mall covered in adorable chocolate sauce and a dash of sociocultural sprinkles, a little something to brighten up a day that would have lacked genuine purpose otherwise.

Like the 35 cigarettes or so I used to have all day long to ensure a dependable stream of reward.

Although I suppose ice cream's much more wholesome.

I think I'll do it this time.

This Nicoderm patch is first rate!

*Normally I have a cigarette after transferring my review from paper to the net. Chewing more gum.

**That's the first review I've written without smoking at least two cigarettes in over 5 years. 

The Square

Contemporary art clashes with civilization as the repercussions of spontaneous decisions made plague The Square's timid curator.

The square itself is a beautifully conceived space wherein which those who enter should feel free to honestly engage with one another.

Crafted according to egalitarian guidelines, it promotes goodwill and kindhearted understanding.

The supersaturated sensation prone advertisers tasked to promote it can't think of a complementary way to proceed, however, their resultant ad generating the critical controversy they seek, but, nevertheless, it's unceremoniously steeped in just bitter outrage.

By bellicosely blending explosive guilt with tender innocence, the ad reflects mainstream media obsessions with death and violence, the ways in which news outlets focus intently on the abominable in order to generate higher ratings, the unsuspecting public perhaps functioning like the innocent child blown to bits within.

But recognizing such a purpose and detaching it from its grotesque depiction, as it's applied to a subject of the public sphere (a museum), isn't exactly something you can expect from all and sundry, since they're more likely to see an explosion killing a young child within a zone dedicated to peace, and wonder why someone chose such a disastrous advertising method.

Here, intellectual pasteurization confronts working realities wherein which it's reduced to sheer idiocy in a matter of viral nanoseconds, accumulating high ratings meanwhile.

This happens elsewhere in the film too.

Not the ratings.

Explanations making things much much worse.

Means and ends.

The Square brilliantly comments on detached postmodern peculiarities, the universal accessibility immediately granted by YouTube and Facebook seeing old world sociopolitical boundaries disappear in radiant flux.

But the film's also concerned with hapless Christian (Claes Bang), who has a good heart but is somewhat of a fool, who tries to live according to the square's ethics but doesn't really get it, and consistently generates fury as he tries to take part and must eventually defend his poorly thought out decisions.

Being a public figure responsible for promoting a cultural institution, he has to constantly answer questions that don't follow an adoring script, with discursive agility and multifaceted ease, but he often can't formulate the simplest of sympathetic responses, can't flexibly b(l)end with inherent political realities.

Christian's ineptitude is chaotically brought to life both publicly and privately after one of his performance exhibits goes psycho at a formal dinner (the embodiment of disenfranchisement playing a role it naturally wouldn't if elites didn't reflexively assume its rage [or a role played by the disenfranchised who wrongly assume the elites assume they're malevolent {best to take each action on a case by case basis/plus watch the ending of The Dark Knight\}]) and his oblivious attempts to get his stolen wallet back cause trouble for a young immigrant boy (Elijandro Edouard).

This review just looks at a small cross-section of what's reflected upon in The Square and offers hasty interpretations.

An international extravaganza that not so subtly uses contemporary psycho comedy to question paths the arts are following, and the constitution required to manage the synthesis of everything, it interrogates the act of questioning with dry satirical responses, and leaves one man floundering while he assumes existential parlay.

Vivacious vortexts.

Decay in bloom.

Still Alice

A high-functioning established warm caring multifaceted professional is confronted at the height of her career with the onset of Alzheimer's disease, and its effects quickly take hold.

She's a fighter, accomplished and strategic, boldly doctoring her plight, taking things in stride, coping, achieving, her family coming to her aid to help out wherever they can, together functioning as a cohesive unit, through strength, distress and helplessness increasing as time passes, slowly transforming into stoic acceptance, the acknowledgement of pain.

Still Alice maturely approaches illness from fruitful familial viewpoints, Alice Howland's (Julianne Moore) husband and children supporting while suffering to do what they can.

Julianne Moore delivers a career defining performance as she pluralizes her conception of identity, stunningly adding varicose variabilities.

There's a great scene where her new self communicates with a predecessor via a preprepared homemade video, a buoyant succinct butterfly.

Her alpha husband (Alec Baldwin as John Howland) convincing juggles his urge to dominate with his expressions of sympathy, respected by Alice through understanding, his attempts to hide his frustrated emotions callously manifested at times.

He has trouble halting his progression.

The children react as befits their personalities, aptly introduced through the art of conversation, the daughters featuring more prominently than the son.

The family's love holds back its depression although it could have been more sorrowful.

Hope in the darkness.

In tune.

The King's Speech

Tom Hooper's The King's Speech unites commoner and King with a national goal as the threat of war becomes increasingly more palpable. Providing brief glimpses into the trials affecting representatives of both domains, the film trivializes neither while promoting the ways in which they complement one another. The Duke of York (Colin Firth) stammers and is a source of mild embarrassment for his family when compelled to deliver public addresses. None of the doctors to whom he has been sent has been able to ameliorate his situation which becomes increasingly pressurized as his chances of becoming King improve. Enter Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech therapist whose alternative methods have gained renown and censure within his profession's culture. A confident, bold, and successful practitioner, Logue isn't intimidated when The Duke seeks his help, conducting his experimental business as usual. But a relationship develops wherein the therapist finds himself navigating political currents with which his social histories are unfamiliar. As The Duke learns to speak, Logue learns to hold his tongue, which makes him a trusted advisor as he adjusts and redesigns the manner in which his advice is offered, making it less treasonous. As progress is made, the commoner becomes a friend, and their dynamic deconstructs class barriers as the inevitable clash with Germany approaches.

Of course these class barriers are deconstructed because this situation is exceptional and it's only after every possible traditional outlet is sought out in vain that a plebeian alternative is considered, which seems to be saying that only in exceptional circumstances can royalty mingle with the common person in order to find a working solution, which isn't exactly progressive. Entertaining film nonetheless which suggests that if it wasn't for the relationship established between King and commoner Britain would not have had an august figure to sustain its resolve throughout World War II. Some of the scenes are rushed, there's the occasional inappropriate piece of gaudy cinematic melodrama, and the Duke of York's personal troubles receive much more attention than those of Mr. Logue. But The King's Speech does champion experimental forms of professional conduct and the determined individuals who resolutely pursue them while providing the working person with dignity and humanizing the life of a King.

Nice to see Derek Jacobi looking like pesky old Claudius throughout, Hooper's tribute to the stammering Roman Emperor so brilliantly theorized by the 1976 BBC miniseries.