La Pointe-Courte

The opening image suggests mystery as the camera cryptically focuses on a piece of wood, whose grains resemble an ancient desert or plump and nimble whale baleen.

Setting the stage for stark alternatives non-traditional narrative endeavour, unique insights into a livelihood rarely examined with cinematic depth.

A rural village roughly perseveres along France's Atlantic coast, inhabitants making their living from age old oceanic abundance.

But pollution endangers their catch as prohibitions prove prescriptive, and regulations delineate boundaries less expansive than haughty seas.

A nostalgic husband fervently awaits the return of his cherished wife, who's never visited his wild hometown, far away from the streets of Paris.

An older generation contemplates youth with resigned historical parallels, assertive in its grand paternalism yet sympathetic to romantic sage.

Everyone knows each other and even the police cut friends some slack, the maintenance of local economies upheld with mischievous tradition.

It's rare to come across a film that regards impoverished struggles with such poetic enriched decency. 

There's love, romance, imagination, a feisty collective willing resolve, with strength and dignity obstructing forlorn incapacitating distraught helplessness.

When you see the impacts pollution can have on the health of vital resources, it's surprising climate change isn't severely critiqued by effected local populations. 

Things can change so slowly that it seems like everything's always been the same, but the scientific forecast is most distressing as it applies to besieged nature.

Some areas are hit worse than others but there's no doubt everything's connected, and careful prudent planning nurtures paramount resiliency.

Nice to see such an honest couple freely sharing thoughts and feelings, through the art of amorous persuasion delicately timed revealed conceding.

It's like Agnès Varda understood her community from a humanistic stance, and sought to share its visceral daring through undulating vicissitudes.

She clearly loves the environment as La Pointe-Courte's cinematography illustrates (Louis Soulanes, Paul Soulignac, Louis Stein), the patient caring reticent transitions evocative timeless echoes. 

When things seem somewhat downcast the town erupts in celebration.

Much more gentle than Truffaut or Godard.

Still abounding with novel wonder.  

Skyscraper

Whereas there are many international action films that seem like they're trying to capture an American aesthetic, while working within their own sociopolitical cultural regulations and/or guidelines, Rawson Marshall Thurber's Skyscraper comes across like an American action film attempting to capture that very same Americanized international aesthetic, if that makes any sense, a shout out to the burgeoning Chinese film industry perhaps, which must be releasing abundant raw materials.

Set in Hong Kong, English subtitles are frequently used as Chinese characters speak their mother tongue, which makes you feel like you're situated within an international filmscape as opposed to a global anglofied disco.

Whatevs!

When Chinese characters do speak English they do so to accommodate rather than flatter internationals.

Unreeling at a hectic pace, Will Sawyer's (Dwayne Johnson) character is developed well early on, a humble yet exceptional easy to relate to everyperson who's successfully bounced back from total and complete disaster.

He's so laidback yet competent, a wonderful guy, that I imagine anyone, apart from those who prefer authoritarian bluster,* would be able to place themselves in his shoes and wonder what they would have done in similar circumstances.

But the action starts quickly, rapidly replacing character development as it accelerates, and even though the skyscraper itself (The Pearl) is incredibly cool and a lot of the action sequences stunning, in Die Hard, which also takes place in a multi-storey building, you have lead and supporting characters who become more and more diverse as a flawed hero tries to save lives.

Character development is worked into the action.

Skyscraper's characters are pretty stock good and evil, I'm sayin' it, they're interesting, but not exactly overflowing with complications, a feature of international action films on occasion.

And some of them bite it just as they're beginning to assert themselves.

Take Mr. Pierce's (Noah Taylor) character.

After lounging in the background, he suddenly appears to talk to Sawyer's wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) as she attempts to escape a raging fire, at which point I thought, "great, he lures her and her kids upstairs and they become hostages for the rest of the film. All of their characters are diversified as Mr. Sawyer then desperately tries to save them. That's super Die Hardesque in terms of minor roles taking on major responsibilities"

But no, shortly thereafter Pierce has fallen into the flames, his character development cut radically short, as is that of hacker genius Skinny Hacker (Matt O'Leary), bodyguard Ajani Okeke (Adrian Holmes) and vengeful friend of Sawyer Ben (Pablo Schreiber).

Die Hard's all about supporting roles.

I'm not sure if that's a standard feature of international action films.

It should be.

Sarah does escape and faces a Bellatrix Lestrangey villain later on, the brilliant charitable successful mom taking out both the effeminate man and the headstrong woman (Hannah Quinlivan as Xia) in the process.

Stock stock stock stock stock.^

Hokey even, even if I was happy to see Neve Campbell again. I kept thinking, "who's the new Neve Campbell?", until it became apparent that it was in fact Neve Campbell, whom I haven't seen in anything for years.

She was fantastic in Wild Things.

Perhaps Skyscraper's creators were trying to maximize both domestic and international profits by embracing an aesthetic that respectfully works within global boundaries to generate a stateless hybrid, which is a cooler way to proceed inasmuch as it realistically respects local cultures and may ensure huge profits both at home and abroad.

It's sort of like an entertaining Summer blockbuster that's heavy on cultural respect and has some cool action scenes that could have accommodated alternative gender roles much more sympathetically.

Until you introduce the Die Hard factor and its associated higher expectations.

You situate highly motivated well financed terrorists within a skyscraper and no matter what happens, you're going to be compared to Die Hard.

Die Hard, Skyscraper, is not

Where's the constant improvisation? The mistakes? The personality conflicts? The personality?

It's far too precise.

And visual distractions don't effect auditory senses.

Shaking my head.

Note: Skyscraper's still much better than Die Hard 5.

I'm so worried about Die Hard 6.

Argyle.

*Fictional comedy films featuring stubborn fools who succeed are funny. Real international political events that wind up seeming like comedy films are horrifying.

^It was unbelievably cool in The Deathly Hallows though. I'm almost in tears thinking about how I was in tears when I read that scene so many Summers ago.

Lion

Lion tenderly applies a limitless open-armed robustly supple characterization to family by plucking two children from a labyrinthine abyss, and gently ensconcing them within the logical wild.

Cohesive collocation.

Improbability abounds at the heart of this familial bloom, which literally represents the realization of a dream, of a belief, of a mother and father seeking to viscerally inscribe a humble message on the optical bedrock of vision, the odds against little Saroo (Dev Patel/Sunny Pawar) ever finding a safe home having been astronomically high, after he fell asleep on a train in rural Northern India, and woke to find himself hundreds of kilometres from home.

Long before the reliability of Google Maps.

Memories of his lost family haunt him in Tasmania, however, and as he seeks not to cause his adoptive mother (Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley) any distress by keeping his thoughts to himself, he winds up causing her more pain due to his inexplicable self-imposed isolation.

She opens-up to him in an incredible revelation.

What a performance.

Lion excels at internationalizing instincts warm and dear, complicating them through the art of imagining, strengthening them by nurturing responsibilities.

It covers a lot of temporal space which reduces complex relationships to stock familiarizations, apart from Saroo's illuminating conversations with mom, the impact of one scene alone transporting the film to another dimension.

The desperation Saroo feels after finding himself alone in Calcutta is also captured well, perhaps the film could have used another 30 minutes to ensure this refined sensitivity proliferated throughout.

With additional scenes showing the family growing and flourishing dis/harmoniously as one.

Still, a great film with a wonderful ending, beautifully, if not too rapidly, expanding upon convivial conjugal conceptions, thereby globally validating the local, while stabilizing wholesome fantasies in stride.

Hidden Figures

On occasion, if you're asked to work longer hours for the same amount of money, the company you're working for is trying to ensure their profits increase every month/quarter/etc. and targeting your unpaid overproduction as a source of intangible revenue.

Red flag.

Make sure you're trying to find a new job if stuck in such a situation.

However, if you happen to be working for NASA (or have a stable professional position) and you're immersed in a reasonably wild competition with the Soviet Union to do all kinds of crazy space stuff, suppose that competition would be with China these days, and the Soviets are winning, as they are in Hidden Figures, I suppose spending some extra unpaid time at work wouldn't be that bad, if there are no available public funds to pay for the overtime, and you are capable of taking part in something vital.

In space.

Not necessarily in space, but Hidden Figures uses ye olde space race to cleverly promote congenial race relations as a matter of national integrity.

It's too bad a member from a minority group has to be Einstein-smart to break down racial barriers.

You would think common democratic decency would have done that centuries ago.

The film's solid, a feel good family friendly examination of three highly intelligent African American women that's neither too sentimental, nor too fluffy.

I love Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan).

The women boldly yet humbly challenge institutional bigotry through hard work and determination as opposed to violence to make changes in their stilted dismissive working environment.

Some cool features.

Rage and passive resistance are matrimonially engendered as Mary (Janelle Monáe) and Levi Jackson (Aldis Hodge) discuss inflammatory political subjects.

She loves expressing herself yet also loves Levi so she intelligently lets him know when her boiling point has been reached before passionately pontificating with resolute clarification.

He works with his hands but is impressed with her desire to become an engineer and buys her some new pencils out of respect for her mind and the difficulties associated with her approaching studies (she becomes the first African American woman to study at a white school in Virginia).

Dorothy creatively borrows a book from the white section of her local library which she uses to remain employed as computers show up on the scene.

She learns so much that she's able to save 30 odd jobs after teaching the people working for her how to adapt, thereby making their contributions operationally essential.

She doesn't just take the money and run.

She gives back to her community.

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), whose mathematical gifts intergalactically defy limitations, demonstrates why it's so important to never dismiss pieces of information that seem out of date (thereby promoting technical libraries), by using ancient knowledge to solve a contemporary puzzle, proving that sometimes inventing the new means discovering something that was contemplated thousands of years ago.

And Kevin Costner (Al Harrison) kicks ass throughout.

What a great role to play.

I'm going to watch Waterworld again.

I tried that with Alexander last winter (although I had never seen it before).

Double whoops!

I bet Waterworld's better.

Hidden Figures is a wonderful film.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

The unfathomable having become undeniably rational, entrenched rebel forces prepare for an assault on Panem's capitol, the districts conscientiously united, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) locked down and reeling, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) disobeying direct orders to simply act as messianic catalyst, thereby overtly inspiring heroics, instinctively striking back against iconic tyranny.

But the politicians are aware of their potential post-victory predominance, and fear Everdeen's influence in their reimagined state, divisive hypotheses compromising the purity of their cause, the innocence of guiltless reckoning, pushed propagandistically to the sidelines.

The extraordinary orchestrations of the bellicosely desperate beget a dissolute response with extreme dispassionate contempt.

Two leaders, Snow and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), one male, one female, holding on to or coveting supreme authority, drastically maneuvering to inculcate anew.

Throughout The Hunger Games it's clear that the rebel's cause is just.

Snow must be defeated.

He rules absolutely.

Yet in Mockingjay - Part 2 the politics of revenge and their inherent conflagrations remind viewers that citizens of the capitol did not necessarily support Snow, and were indeed terrorized citizens themselves inasmuch as they could not politicize, as a child spots but doesn't give up the Mockingjay, her mother brutally killed moments later.

There's no invincible playbook for such situations, and when terror strikes, or absolutism oppresses, resultant countermeasures can be as uncompromising as those they intend to suppress.

The Mockingjay - Part 2 constructively operates within this volatile antagonism, providing thought provoking disparities for those who engage in war.

The film, on the one hand, seems too sterile, a lack of emotion or a too hardened drive dehumanizing the conflict, making it seem more like a textbook than a testament, still boldly running through the motions.

But on the other, this point of critique fails to recognize the cold calculating dehumanizing affects of war, which turns communities into ordinances, the mischievous into the monstrous.

Chef

Don't know what to make of Jon Favreau's Chef.

It has all the ingredients to be a great film, strong cast, relatable situation, strong characters, heartwarming familial pains, a professional individual's difficulties maintaining a sane work/life balance, artistic expression versus profit-based-strategies, cool tattoo, emphasis on resiliency, neat way to move forward, chill sophisticated artistry sustaining a team, acclimatizations to contemporary phenomenons (social networking issues), crisis, tenacity, rebirth, economic realities respected in terms of friendship, change, coming together, growth, it inspires its audience to diversify their outputs, family friendly yet not picture perfect, imbroglios, composure.

I like all of these things.

But Chef just wasn't my style.

Ah well.