Chimes at Midnight

Courtly remonstrance august unflattering distaste, pejorative, authoritative, stately consequent nettle.

He doth resound with magnanimous impertinence irresistibly foiled salubrity, impenitent carefree rummaged spirits, rowdy improvised uncertain objectives.

Friendship inclusively abounds regardless of make or measure, oft depicted through random horseplay, yet not limited to sedate shenanigans.

Capable of suddenly stirring up a crowd with comic insubordinate intent, incapable of honest toil with constructive fruitful sustainability.

Unwary of boldly asserting he hath undertaken heroic deeds, in the presence of rank incredulity, with neither shame nor force of conscience.

Odd interminglings of duty bound recourse and ludic unconcerned pub fare, a future King navigating the discrepancies, a scorned romantic, a noble hare.

His friendship with Falstaff (Orson Welles) idealizes wayward youth, the heir to the throne wilfully led astray, even if he responds when indeed necessary, to the commands of lofty allegiance.

There's no synthesis therein forthcoming, Chimes at Midnight resonates disparately, a tragic forthright emergent declaration, divisive paramount telltale labours.

I feel for the hapless Falstaff, who thought he had won Prince Hal's (Keith Baxter) favour, if only he could have once tried to follow procedure, if only he could have toed the line.

After the coronation anyways, he should have assumed discretion, but such a lack of action would have never crossed his mind, a wild insouciant charismatic knight, far beyond austere pomp and propriety.

How he could have persisted for so very long without concern or trouble or worry, how could he have never assumed solemnity at any time throughout his life?

It's not that he isn't sincere.

Like Archie Rice in The Entertainer, he sincerely lives in the nimble moment, perhaps thinking loosely about the future, but never without much thought or care.

They both have goals to attain, projects in mind, hopes and dreams, but present ambitions generally obscure them, or lead to overwhelming bright temptations, spontaneous light merrymaking.

Their friends love them when they're performing and when they're not performing too, but can't reconcile their differences when the monthly rent is due.

Perhaps Henry the V can be accused of having led Falstaff on, of having encouraged a sense of entitlement the foolish knave should have never considered.

Did he not share so many mirthful years with Falstaff to at least not feel somewhat guilty when casting him aside?

I suppose they didn't make Ministers of Arts & Entertainment back then but Falstaff likely could have played the role.

Without much prep or training.

An irrefutable natural.

Dark Waters

It seems to me like if you're generating a billion dollars in profit every year just from one product in your vast catalogue, and you don't pay your workforce that much comparatively, as they loyally manifest that revenue, and you know that product is making them sick because you've done the research and it's raised multiple red flags, you should tell them they'll likely become seriously ill if they work for you, so they know what they're signing up for, and pay for their medical bills if they eventually do breakdown as well.

A scant fraction of the profits.

It seems to me like if you know the product you're creating is an environmental disaster that doesn't decompose and will make anything that encounters it seriously ill, possibly forever, that you should take steps to dispose of it properly (a scant fraction of the profits), if that's even possible, or perhaps abandon your plans to market it to the public entirely.

Lifeforms who became extinct prior to our experimentations with fossil fuels could at least blame environmental factors for their disappearance, post-existence.

They didn't or don't have to say, well, we knew we were creating lethal substances that were making people who used them sick, and that they wouldn't breakdown in the environment, ever, but we kept making them anyways because we were raking it in, and were highly unlikely to ever suffer from the ground level consequences ourselves.

Could you imagine we went out not because a meteor struck or a virulent plague emerged, but because we wanted to use frying pans that nothing stuck to and eat cheap food at fast food restaurants?

If there is an afterlife for extinct species we'd be a laughing stock for all eternity.

If we're to become extinct some day, let it happen another way.

The current path that we're on's so shortsighted.

Even though the available research is 20/20.

If you think the companies responsible for creating this mess are unstoppable, your thoughts are by no means misguided, but take note that they can indeed be held to account, and be made to address their actions.

As Todd Haynes's Dark Waters demonstrates.

The film presents dedicated lawyer Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) and his fight against DuPont, who knowingly poisoned their Parkersburg West Virginia workforce and environment, for decades, and were none too pleased when they were taken to court.

Bilott took them to court though and didn't let up even as things became more and more challenging.

He sacrificed a lot to stand up for people's rights and kept on 'till he won a settlement that cultivated fertile grassroots.

His family stood by him throughout and dealt with the despondent gloom, unyielding support and commitment, intense cohesive telemetry.

Dark Waters isn't about ideologically or politically motivated avengers, it's about a god-fearing straight edge family who took plutocrats to court to help a struggling farmer (Bill Camp as Wilbur Tennant).

It calls into question categorial delineations.

While harvesting democratic crops.

Beyond popularity.

More films like this please.

The Farewell

A matriarch is stricken with illness, and a family overwhelmed with grief, but she isn't told of her dire affliction, to avoid distressing emotions of fear.

They decide to gather, back home in China, one brother having spent his life in Japan, the other far away in North America.

She's ecstatic to see them, even if her joy's somewhat reserved, everyone assembled to celebrate a wedding, the bride and groom full of flowing good cheer.

It's a bit of a shock.

They've only known each other three months.

But a sense of responsibility motivates their actions, and they play intergenerational ball, Grandma excited to cater and plan, dutiful reckonings, improvised romance.

Granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina) may blow it all though, for she's unaccustomed to hiding her feelings, her relatives hoping she won't attend, and spoil everything with distraught candour.

The Farewell invigorates familial concerns, thoughtfully composed honest observations, blending in harmless well-meaning lies, to uphold sincere age old integrity.

Within a specific context.

Fully aware of the pressures of truth.

The sons feel guilty for having left home, for having left their loving mom far behind. They didn't just leave for another city close by, they made their ways in far off foreign lands.

She's tough though, and doesn't critique or condemn, is rather proud of her children, who modestly succeeded in the great wild unknown.

Grievances aren't absent from the film, in fact they're aired with heartfelt lucidity, less obsessed with who's right or wrong, than acknowledging tension to facilitate healing.

Perhaps they are just a little obsessed with who's right, but their mutual remorseful feelings betray unsure convictions, their conversations relieving pent up grief, embraced maturely by people who get over things.

Perhaps the West is more obsessed with individual desires, and its personal pursuits often overlook family ties.

However I know a lot of people who genuinely love their families, and make sacrifices to spend quality time with them.

Not just at Christmas or on Mother's or Father's Day, or on birthdays, but the whole year through, thanks to the miracle of web based communication.

I find familial bonds transcend the religious and the secular, and that people who have never been to church are just as loving as those who tithe.

My stats are based on conversation and personal experience.

I like to listen to the things people say.

Plus well rounded novels and films.

I don't know much about domestic life in China.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

I briefly considered taking a break from Marvel Studios after viewing the last Avengers film.

It was incredibly intense and seeing another related film shortly thereafter seemed borderline overload; I wasn't sure if I could hack it!

The thoughts weren't too demanding though, just one of the hundreds that float around deep down and then suddenly pop into one's head at random individualized intervals while they trek around town throughout the day, and I eventually found myself ready for Spider-Man: Far From Home for one of its first screenings, with an IMAX ticket no less, purchased for a matinee showing.

And I wasn't disappointed.

Not to heap too much praise on Marvel Studios, and it's important to never rest on your laurels or think you've found that magic touch that works each and every freakin' time, but they do consistently release creative stunning convincing witty films that cleverly blend action, drama, comedy, and science-fiction, to present thrilling tales that'll likely hold up for multiple viewings, for now, and far into the foreseeable future.

Adventure films which made similar impacts were few and far between when I was growing up, which likely explains why I find Marvel Studios's consistency so mind-blowing.

It's like what you used to wait 4 or 5 years for comes out every 3 or 4 months.

And the quality's usually high.

With incredibly deep interdependent storylines.

The new Spider-Man film functions as a spellbinding overconfident-emergent-villain vs. doubt-plagued-protagonist revelation, but it's also a chill coming of age Summer teen comedy, the two thematic thrusts imaginatively seasoned with narrative expertise.

If you want multiple characters developed in varying degrees, there are at least 14 given room to manoeuvre within, and the brisk pace sees them observing and commenting along different youthful and aged lines, as responsibility irritates Peter Parker (Tom Holland), who foolishly thought he was going on vacation.

Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr), and Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove [who could have used more lines!]) skilfully present differing variations of the appropriate, proceeding in awestruck error, in situations far beyond their control.

Perhaps the situations are a bit too out of control for a student trip to Europe.

It's sort of like an elite counter-terrorist is still in high school and on vacation with his unsuspecting classmates, who become indirectly involved as he confronts dire globalized ambition.

But their somewhat far-fetched integration does make for some thrilling comedy, as long as you're confident nothing will go wrong, and Spider-Man will enact game changing regional parity.

But will he?

I highly recommend Far From Home for both fans of the superheroic and people looking to chaotically chill.

In the Summer.

The Summertime elements are so thoughtfully interwoven I'll likely watch it every Winter and Summer for years to come, in Winter as preparation for Summer, in Summer since Summer is Summer.

I should say that Marvel Studios brought their A plus plus game to move their Spider-Man films into the Iron Man position.

Thor and the Guardians have their work cut out for them.

Along with Black Panther.

And so many many others.

Laidback cool synergistic overload.

I do love these new Spider-Man films.

Overflowing with raw contemplation.

Roma

I don't think I've ever seen a film with so many long scenes depicting active lives lived enriched with such vivid detail.

They aren't as multifaceted as those found at the beginning of Truffaut's La Nuit Américaine or Robert Altman's The Player or Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, but they continue to illustrate throughout the entire film and create a visually stunning communal aesthetic thereby, without moving, without moving hardly at all.

It's like Roma has thought provoking characters but they're secondary to the scene, the setting, the environment, like they're a part of a larger world, something much more subtle than that they're enveloped within, subtle yet pervasive, its predicaments and accidents adding pronounced depth without diagnosing psychology, as if their personalities are changing and growing within a fluid diverse realm whose endemic features encourage comment sans judgment, like the world's too vast to be analytically classified, and laissez-faire semantics breach like relaxed ontologies.

Living within.

Held together by a family's nanny (Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo) and the difficulties that arise after she discovers she's pregnant, a support network securely in place which is severely contrasted by blunt negligence, Roma follows her as she takes care of a family while trying to start one of her own, chaotic embodiments of structure ignoring her gentle inquiries.

The urge to classify, to make definitive political sense of life so that one can practically attach theoretical logic to their behaviour and be consequently rewarded or punished, depending on how virtuously they're deemed to have acted, functions like haunting destructive shackles within, inasmuch as it's speculatively associated with dogma, dogma which attempts to clarify, curtail, and control, violently, rather than existing symbiotically in peace.

Cleo's love interest Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) is therefore given an extended self-absorbed scene where he demonstrates his prowess, its stark lack of detail, its animated ferocious thrusts, bluntly contrasting the otherwise curious more robust less volatile shots, as if to intimate shocking austere extremities.

It's not the codes themselves that ironically produce chaos, it's the rigid discriminate attempts to puritanically follow them, even in situations where they clearly don't fit, and make others follow them, or classify others who don't follow them as undesirable, monitoring everyone at all times to make sure they're following them, bellicosely asserting them when faced with opposition, that make extremist variations on composed ethical themes like the ones found in Roma so terrifying.

Roma's a patient thoughtfully cultivated poised undulating ethos, whose undefined compassionate caresses humbly lament tragic imagination.

Calmly blending the search for meaning with unrehearsed existence, it finds purpose through improvisation, and critiques determinate codes.

Reminded me of Solaris.

Gauguin: Voyage de Tahiti

Irrevocably restless, never satisfied, constantly searching for sober novel inspiration with inexhaustible molten severance, erupting in fits of doubt and displeasure, encamped in violable abandon, glacial patience laboriously un/restrained, deep freezes and heat waves embryonically articulated, searching for radical bewilderment, impecuniously torn and strained, ambidextrous ambitions quotidianly qualified, seaside simplicity, inconspicuous nebula.

There wasn't anything else Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) could have done, although realizing this he likely should have embraced celibacy.

He seems to have been responsible inasmuch as he constantly worked to improve his art, dedicated to his personal tasks, resolved to carry on, but his wives and children were left destitute, as was he for much of his life, I suppose his family could have gone with him to Tahiti, although if I had several children and my partner was an artist who had never sold anything and was approaching 40 I likely would have moved on even if it would have crushed me.

Details.

Gauguin: Voyage de Tahiti doesn't present many details from his life, apart from the fact that he left his family behind in France to find inspiration in Tahiti where he met another woman whom he treated brutishly while painting.

The film condenses various aspects of his life into short scenes that depict him working, loving, playing, breaking down, scenes which infantilize his social relations while romanticizing his artistic stagger, the scene where a doctor notices that he isn't painting anymore adding sympathy and concern, the scene where he locks his wife Tehura (Tuheï Adams) up while he goes to work accentuating his callous desperation, as he realizes he has nothing else left, and is aware that must seem unappealing.

A bit of a scoundrel I suppose, base instincts overpowering free spirits at times as nagging hopelessness engendered cantankerous decay.

You still have to imagine you're Gauguin, you're a struggling dismissed talented artist with nothing to hold on to later in life besides works that aren't selling and intense stubborn commitment, no one recognizing your talents besides yourself, students prospering while you struggle, you have to situate yourself within his rugged composure, while remembering that you may have been less lascivious had you no steady income in the age before birth control, to take something enduring away from the film.

You could probably learn more about him from reading 5 pages of a biography.

But would you be able to imagine you were there, struggling as he struggled, toiling as he toiled, watching as everything he risked and loved slipped away, with as much doting dour devotion?

Voyage de Tahiti presents vivid impressions lacking in substance but full of rich emotion.

The other side of the world.

Lost in love at play.

The Giver

Meticulously manicured impartial immersions, the plan, plans within plans within plans, permeating every existential aspect, monitoring, coordinating, harmonious atonal strategically serviced scripts, requirements, nothing out of the ordinary, pharmaceutical synchrony, burnished, witnessed, tanned, The Giver, kindred subjects of Landru, converses with The Third Man, sonic scientific sterility, empiric equilibrium, disciplined and unified, microscopically maintained.

Everything fits within a cohesive holistic whole.

But there's no longer any joy.

No exceptions to the rules.

History's legends have been assigned to one aged caretaker, who sacrifices his knowledge to uphold the new order.

But a protégé is chosen from the ranks of his culture's youth, to share in his burden, to preserve the memories of lost time.

Emotional bombardments proceed to alienate through shock as questions hitherto beyond reason maddeningly dare to forsake.

Exfoliate.

Threadbare.

A classic examination of totalitarian benevolence.

Maudlin yet sane.

Preferred The Third Man.

Argo

It should be noted that Ben Affleck's Argo takes bold steps to attach the responsibility for the hostile anti-American attitudes presented by some Iranian citizens displayed within to the political activities of American and British authorities of the 1950s, and that it is these same authorities who are in/directly responsible for the subsequent rise of madpersons like Ahmadinejad.

It should also be noted that this may not be the wisest time to be releasing a film which displays passionate anti-American feelings amongst those very same citizens, due to the potentially volatile dynamics of our current historical period, although, perhaps my reluctancy to endorse its timing could be a sign of my own hesitancy in regards to taking great risks, which Mr. Affleck, in creating this film at this particular time, has certainly done.

I myself believe that an incredible secret has been kept in Iran based upon my viewings of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance, common sense, and a conversation I had six years ago in passing, that being that many, perhaps even a vast majority of Iranian citizens, don't care whether or not they develop an atomic weapon, have no wish to go to war with Israel, and simply want to peacefully work, live, laugh, love, and travel in a clean environment, like citizens in every other country, without having to be afraid all the time.

Yet I have no idea what you do when a lunatic like Ahmadinejad is in power (or George W. Bush for that matter) or how to go about diffusing the situation.

There are scurrilously ambitious people who seek power and consider everyone else to be like them. They employ reprehensible tactics to achieve this power, and, thinking everyone else to be like them, seek to prevent others who aren't like them from employing the same tactics to usurp them.  This attitude is applied nationally and internationally. Seeing conspiracies everywhere and fearing violent reprisals, they conspire violently, thereby creating that which they feared in the first place, vaingloriously spreading misery.

Argo goes a long way to prevent the spread of misery in its best scene by cleverly intermingling different realities facing American and post-revolutionary Iranian citizens, a scene which shows the Americans laying the rhetorical groundwork to 'make' a fake movie while Iranians try to punish the American and British imposed Shah who butchered them for decades and managed to find sanctuary in the States afterwards, a scene which pulls its American audience into the Iranian situation, its frame reminding them to bear in mind that the events depicted took place in 1979, 33 years ago.

In one of Star Trek the Next Generation's best moments Worf (Michael Dorn) commends his son Alexander (James Sloyan/Brian Bonsall) for choosing the path of peace (Firstborn).

Yes, Worf highly honours the path of peace.

By creating a film which exoterically tackles an extremely important contemporary international political phenomenon with the goal of saving lives or preventing a war, which places the situation within a controversial militaristic, governmental, and individual historical context, Ben Affleck's created quite a film, its exoteric qualities capable of entertainingly reaching a wide audience, and perhaps having a lasting affect.

As if to say, if you thought there was anti-American sentiment flowing through Iran 33 years ago during a volatile time of historic change directly caused by the meddling of American and British authorities, imagine how much there will be if an actual war is started, for decades, centuries, to come.

It doesn't have to be like that.

Not at all.

Intouchables

Improvised confident agile productivity meets frustrated restrained routine continuity in the heartwarming new odd couple film, Intouchables, the two dimensions elastically forging an incorporeal amicable trust.

Or friendship. Friendship is another way of describing that which they forge.

Philippe (François Cluzet) is a wealthy aristocratic quadriplegic who requires the aid of a live-in attendant. Driss (Omar Sy) comes from the projects and only applied for the position to demonstrate to social assistance that he's looking for work.

It quickly becomes apparent that Driss's honest, easy going, cheeky camaraderie is precisely that for which Philippe has been searching, having grown tired of fawning, hesitant, by-the-book cookie cutters.     

And the result is mutually cathartic.

The mix of different attitudes regarding artistic modes of expression is invaluable.

Oddly enough, it seems that there are still a lot of people who don't mix the classical with the popular.

Which is just simply weird.

Illustrating the rewards of embracing alternative therapeutic methodologies in order to rediscover innocuously rebellious invigorating affects, Intouchables acrobatically and celestially displays its inclusive joie de vivre without losing its practical edge.

Worth checking out.

Brave

Traditional gender roles are set ablaze in Disney Pixar's Brave, the magical tale of young Princess Merida's (Kelly MacDonald) coming of age.

Disillusioned by her culture's tradition of demanding that a mate be selected from a tiny prestigious feudal stock, and the rather strict regimen of feminine codes of conduct to which she must adhere, while the men train for battle, the feisty Princess shelves her mother's (Emma Thompson as Queen Elinor) strategic plans and rides off into a forested nexus.

Wherein resides her destiny.

And a witch who provides her with a treacherous tasty treat which turns her mother into a bear upon her return home. 

August insurmountable accumulative wisdom having been startlingly transformed into the wild unknown, little Merida must find a way to relax the resulting tensions and restore order throughout the land. 

As a product of adrenaline.  

The film's piecemeal approach to socio-cultural structural modifications presents a practical framework within which transfigurations can be cunningly concocted, considering the myriad factors which need to be balanced when tempering historic-ideological architectures.

Wasn't impressed by its top-down approach however.

The bears are pretty cool though. 

Not the ferocious bear.

Suppose the other bears aren't really bears either.

There are moments of playful grumpy bearness nevertheless.  

Bears.   

Real Steel

The latest Rockyesque film to hit the big screen is Shawn Levy's Real Steel, a fun and heartwarming story of how a dead-beat dad (Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton) and his feisty son (Dakota Goyo as Max Kenton) forge a strong bond through the power of fighting robots. It isn't the most original narrative although it does creatively work within an established tradition.

And Jackman's love interest Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly) doesn't give up on him even though his reckless ways have proved to be remarkably unprofitable.

Whereas humans were still thought to be at the centre of various cultural dimensions in Rocky's day, in the time of Real Steel technological innovation has usurped their active role. Rather than directly taking part in ridiculous battles which regularly present themselves, proxies abound which can effectively fill in as disaffected combatants. Hence, boxing has been replaced by robot boxing and ex-boxers can continue to make a living boxing if they purchase a robot and expertly learn the subtleties of its dynamic controls.

But can such expertise generate results formidable enough to resiliently defeat the ultimate representative of technological fortitude, Real Steel's Zeus and its mastermind the bumptious Tak Mashido (Karl Yune), without continuing to maintain a multidimensional working person's perspective within the heart of its dynamic cultural trajectory, enhanced by love?

Fortunately it still cannot.

But when robots take over and start making movies for themselves will the human dimension still continue to persevere as the principal factor motivating their legendary decision making?

The answer is potentially fermenting somewhere within communist China.

Mr. Popper's Penguins

As I suspected, the penguins in Mark Waters's Mr. Popper's Penguins are very cute as they mischievously frolic and mingle. But the film itself leaves little to the imagination as it slips and slides from one happy-go-lucky scene to another.

As if they made this film for children.

Mr. Popper (Jim Carrey) makes his living acquiring real estate and in order to become a full-fledged partner must convince Mrs. Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury) to sell her Tavern on the Green, a family run restaurant and the only piece of privately held property in Central Park. Mrs. Van Gundy will only sell to someone possessing personal and familial integrity, however, and balks at his initial proposal.

Mr. Popper has not been very successful at raising his family and is currently divorced and none to popular with his two children. But as fate would have it, his deceased father has left him 6 penguins which are a huge hit with his disgruntled kids. As the film reels on, the penguins bring Popper and his family closer together as he learns to genuinely care for them. Yet how will these penguins effect his professional development as they wear down the hardboiled edge responsible for nurturing his commercial acumen?

The penguins themselves are somewhat magical, possessing intuitive humanistic gifts that accentuate their cuddliness.

Unfortunately the writing surrounding their shenanigans, apart from the opening scene and those involving Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), fails to impress, and although there are a couple of moments within which Carrey displays his considerable talents, many of the lines with which he is supplied freeze his gravitational intensity.

For someone who makes a living convincing people to let go of their most cherished possessions, throughout the film it doesn't take much for him to be outwitted. It's fun to watch while someone who possesses considerable talents in one domain can't find an outlet for them in another, but you would expect him to be somewhat more aggressive in his personal life considering that such tendencies are responsible for his financial security.

Perhaps Mr. Popper's Penguins is saying that you don't have to be a sharp ruthless cutthroat to be successful in business, and that one's modest clever creativity is enough to enable their career related acceleration?

Perhaps it is also saying that the introduction of something absurd into a predictable yet successful routine can recalibrate one's traditional approach in such a way that they discover that for which they have always been searching yet never consciously realized they desired?

Perhaps it is also saying that when one's personality alone is not enough to garner the support of their loved ones, special commodities are required in order to speak to that which they have been indoctrinated to love more than anything else, capitalism?

Whatever the case, the film doesn't flow well and where you would expect there to be cohesive links fluidly encouraging a congenially frosty dynamic, its Antarctic pitfalls breaks up the progress, and only a cheerful, bright, occasionally endearing narrative remains.

I would have rather seen a film entitled Mr. Smithers and his Little Dogs, starring John Waters, where the hero and his 6 little dogs reunite a recovering morphine addict with a former prostitute through the power of puppy love.

It's only a matter of time.