Jingle Jangle

A brilliant inventor modestly celebrates his most recent creation's genesis, a free-thinking figure that consciously reckons with independent advancing foresight. 

But as he sets off to rest, his apprentice walks in to tidy his animate workshop, and he encounters the enlivened toy who turns out to champion corrupt self-interest.

The toy passionately convinces him to dishonourably steal their benefactor's book of ideas, and create a toy shop of his own to slyly compete and wickedly conjure.

The inventor is thoroughly devastated upon discovering his sudden misfortune, and loses the ability to create, his mind stricken with disbelief.

His business slowly fades and his wife and daughter grow more estranged with each and every glum passing day, 30 years pass in fact in total depression borderline madness crippled ambition.

His former apprentice has gaudily emerged as their realm's dazzling preeminent toymaker, furtively driven by the conniving contraption who never relents lets go subsides.

But so much time has woefully passed that another generation has nimbly ballooned, and Jeronicus's (Forest Whitaker) granddaughter soon comes curiously and cleverly and ebullient and pensively calling (Madalen Mills as Journey). 

Has she arrived in time to help grandfather realize his last vital dream?, before the bank reluctantly forecloses, on Christmas day, the timeline's obscene.

Fortunately, she's incredibly gifted, and at a young age rivals gramp's brilliance, and is therefore able to adroitly assist even if her ideas are initially unwelcome.

The most important thing he's lost is the belief he once had in himself, which is why his latest idea won't jive, won't exceedingly generate awestruck wondrous je ne sais pas uncontrived.

It's more like a film that takes place at Christmas than a supple salute to the season, although traditional spiritual surges assuredly sanctify seasonal synergies.

I suppose it's a sign of the times, that an ingenious toy would be full of deception, as opposed to lighthearted wonder, it's certainly not Cabbage Patch or My Buddy. 

Too much of an emphasis on immoral resolve in recent years to be shocked by a malicious toy, it's like themes oft reserved for horror have been whitewashed to critique widespread greed.

The new toy in question resembles E.T so perhaps it represents a manifest willingness to move past blunt impulses, and return to the less self-obsessed guidance of the 1980s, Foucauldian investigation pending.

Does Jingle Jangle's playful synthesis of machine and spirit foreshadow upcoming advances in artificial intelligence?

The rise of robotic humanism?

Computationally coaxing.

Hopefully not, hopefully hearts and hearths continue to flourish organic. 

There's nothing quite like biodiversity.

Born of ancient mutation.

Widows

Left behind after a job gone wrong, a widow (Viola Davis as Veronica) weighs her unsettling options.

She's not alone, her husband's (Liam Neeson as Harry) entire crew having perished under hot pursuit, although she's a little more willing to embrace unorthodox ideas than her fellow despondent sisters (Michelle Rodriguez as Linda and Elizabeth Debicki as Alice).

After she finds plans for another heist.

And is coercively emboldened.

It's election time in her riding as well, the heir to its political dynasty (Colin Farrell as Jack Mulligan) not as ruthless as his jaded father (Robert Duvall as Tom Mulligan).

Realigned boundaries have cost him thousands of relied upon votes, however, and his strategy must broaden homegrown horizons.

His opponent's (Brian Tyree Henry as Jamal Manning) more familiar with his constituency's grievances, but runs into financial difficulties after his nest egg's ripped off.

Uncertainty ubiquitously abounds.

While goodwill beckons, lightly.

Multiple pieces composing a high stakes puzzle lacking definitive images agitate throughout Steve McQueen's Widows.

Roles, objectives, risk, and betrayal, highlight disingenuous motivations as tempting freedoms advocate.

It's as if those who were stealing everything assumed the people they were stealing from were stealing it from them anyway and therefore had no misgivings.

Serendipitous strategies aligned.

Suspended cause.

Expediency permeates Widows's calling with robust grim integrity.

As long as you only seek change for those who are only helping you, millions of supporters who don't know how or are unable to assist are left assuming everything's vague.

That no one cares.

Widows's ethics may be bleak but its script's still profound and it demands your strict attention.

Left in such situations it's difficult to imagine what one might do, but McQueen crafts several striking hypotheses which provocatively grill emulsion.

Grizzled and real.

Multilayered and invested.

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.

A Most Violent Year

Patience, hard work, and skill, transferrable knowledge calmly and efficiently presented, threats, competitive thefts assaulting bottom lines, disrupting morale and distribution, fermenting internal disputes, fear and uncertainty corrupting the working day, factions, a lawsuit, thugs, insert stoicism, by the books, leadership, an impenetrable reliance on a sense of fair play cultivated through years of shrewd progressive expansion relied upon during its darkest yet most definitive hour, revenue streams collapsing, worst case options relied upon, an unwavering commitment to the law, like Michael Corleone, if he had started from scractch.

Law and order.

Concealment.

As Abel Morales's (Oscar Isaac) business expands, his competitors employ desperate tactics, their livelihoods threatened, pathological pyrosthetics.

A Most Violent Year resists the urge to fight back.

It keeps a level head.

Distinguishing itself from other films in the genre.

It was odd watching it, I kept waiting for the eruption, the countermeasures, the explosion of pent up rage, disastrous regimens of revenge.

But its aesthetic honours goodwill as opposed to vindication, composure rather than frenzy, its blueprints shackling threats of reprisal, steady assured confidence, in the methods that have ensured success.

It's like the feeling you get when you work hard for something, enjoy the rewards, stay true to a vision, accept professional challenges, and continue to modestly achieve.

Like graduating from high school or being promoted.

Staying in business for decades.

Thoughtful innovations.