Mao's Last Dancer

Bruce Beresford's Mao's Last Dancer presents the defection of Chinese dancer Li Cunxin (Chi Cao, Chengwu Guo, and Wen Bin Huang) to the United States during the 1980s. Raised on communist ideology, Li is grateful for the opportunities granted to him as a child but fearful of his government's attitude regarding criticism. He is born in a remote village and one day fortunately granted the opportunity to move to Beijing and study ballet. His resolve is determined and his attitude strict and even though he possesses less strength than his counterparts, he puts in the extra work necessary to be competitive. In 1980, Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood) from the Houston Ballet visits his school and is impressed by his work, which he notes for being more fluid than the other dancers. He then convinces the Chinese Government to allow one of their dancers to come to Houston for a summer and study American techniques; fortunately, Li is chosen. Li begins his cultural studies with a distrustful eye, but after discovering that social codes are more lenient in the States (and falling in love), he marries his partner (Amanda Schull as Elizabeth Mackey) and refuses to return home. Afterwards, he must accept the consequences of having made a hasty marriage in a foreign country while making ends meet as a contract dancer.

Li is lucky enough to find a suitable job and maintain a healthy standard of living. His personal struggles are presented, but, like most of the issues brought up in broad biographies, don't receive sustained critical analysis (so much information must be condensed into brief scenes that a lot of the potential drama unreels superficially). A scene where Li discovers his good fortune after encountering similarly talented Chinese immigrants who weren't so successful would have been more realistic. The Chinese are depicted as being overly obsessed concerning the maintenance of a prominent cultural place for Mao's revolution (dancing must be political for instance), and an atmosphere of tension permeates their scenes. At the same time, the punishments you would expect to be draconian are antiseptic and the non-governmental social interactions are generally innocuous. Mao's Last Dancer is a family friendly film, gingerly presenting the ways in which a youthful artist audaciously if not rashly follows his heart and lives a troubled yet successful life as a consequence. Nevertheless, prominent issues such as racism, cross cultural integration, economic destitution, and political reconstitutions are not adequately interrogated within, and the film would have been stronger if another hour had been added to provide these dimensions with more serious attention.

Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats)

Orchestrating his coordinated artistic skill while saturating it with an intuitively insightful sensibility, Xavier Dolan's second feature film Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats) agilely elevates romantic suffering. Nothing's worse than being in love, and Francis (Xavier Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri) have both fallen for the free-spirited Nicolas (Niels Schneider) and his characteristic seductive charm. They buy him gifts, praise his foresight, eagerly anticipate each and every encounter, and will quickly change their plans in order to indulge his slightest whim. But Nicolas doesn't get it, or doesn't care at least, and can't find it in his heart to simply set up relationships with both of them so that things can get better before they get worse. The enduring friendship forged between Francis and Marie deteriorates as a consequence and jealous motivations extricate their cohesive bond.

I heard Dolan's still a teenager and can't believe that someone that young is capable of pulling off a film with this much presence. His timing's thoughtful, the variety of different shots and situations playfully curious, some of the songs he chooses reminded me of choices made by Tarantino (spellbinding ingratiating novel works which imbue the corresponding setting with a quasi-mythical quality [although Dolan uses Sheila's "Bang Bang" to often]), and the situations presented are plausible enough. I would have liked to have seen more spur-of-the-moment shots of the surrounding scenery but there are quite a few nonetheless including the sudden introduction and disappearance of a cat. If Xavier is really still a teenager, and he doesn't become to commercial with the passage of time (although many prominent directors work well within the commercial system, Christopher Nolan's Inception for instance), and he continues to critically and prolifically cultivate his art, he could become a prominent auteur and be mentioned in the same breath as Almodóvar or Godard. He has serious potential and the temperament to back it up and I look forward to seeing J'ai tué ma mère hopefully sooner than later.

Salt

Phillip Noyce's Salt works as a mildly entertaining energetic action flick, timing and designing its multiple chase/escape scenes effectively. But it isn't much more than that. A Russian spy agency has been raising invincible ideological humanoid weapons and they are on the loose in the United States. Hoping to assassinate both the American and Russian presidents in order to start a nuclear war from which Russia will rise victorious, Russian spymaster Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) sets the wheels in motion, confidently trusting his stunning white tiger, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie).

But he didn't count on the power of love.

Evelyn has fallen deeply in love with her husband (Inglourious Basterds's August Diehl as Mike Krause) and is letting her feelings get in the way of unleashing global armageddon. Oddly, this multitalented independent well-educated sexy professional is committed to her husband, sort of like the anti-femme fatale. She is consequently rewarded by being used and abused by the system which casts her out and leaves her to hunt down Russian spies on American soil alone and by herself. I'm personally hoping that in the sequel she runs into the A-Team and falls for Murdock and they crack some serious heads after learning to surf.

Vampires (Fantasia Fest 2010)

Presenting documentary evidence regarding the life and times of a community of nosferatu, Vincent Lannoo's Vampires comedically chronicles the social, familial, educational, and political practices of the Belgian undead. Focusing on one specific family and their peculiar dissatisfied neighbours, we meet George (Carlo Ferrante), an aristocratic disaffected patriarch, his eccentric wife (Vera van Dooren), their son Samson (Pierre Lognay), whose laissez-faire ways cause them to be exiled, and daughter Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet), who likes to play suicide and wishes she was human. These vampires can be serious: they have their own school, leader, and legal code, all of which coalesce to provide them with a particularized sense of communal individuality. But their concerns are generally care free, and apart from sticklers who meticulously follow the rules, their lives are blissfully discharged at a carnivalesque pace. The film's really funny, using vampires to lightheartedly satirize and elevate Belgian cultural codes, while the larger-than-life cast apathetically yet energetically discusses the quirks of their daily lives. Internal questions persist concerning the ease with which these vampires conduct their activities, different vampire communities live remarkably divergent lifestyles, and it's high times for the coffin business. The most creative and dynamic vampire film I've seen in a while, Lannoo's offbeat mockumentary will have you consistently laughing and cringing while you try to relax and suck back that slushy.

Black Death (Fantasia Fest 2010)

The year is 1348. A plague is ravaging England and it is unknown whether or not it has been cast by God or Satan. Religious theories abound and moral avengers seek out necromancers to curtail their moribund pursuits. Enter a young monk searching for divine revelation to guide him on the just path (Eddie Redmayne as Osmund). A sign is granted and he sets out on a journey to cleanse a village of heathens while trying to maintain a relationship with his beloved Averill (Kimberley Nixon). Ulric (Sean Bean) and his band of mercenaries are grateful for his guidance as they brazenly traverse the countryside acting in a Bishop's name.

Christopher Smith's Black Death is an intelligent gothic horror film which presents sober and realistically fantastical reflections concerning medieval subject matter from a wide variety of angles (Smith showed up and answered questions at the Fantasia Fest screening which was nice). Rigorously researched by screenwriter Dario Poloni and shot in Eastern Germany, Black Death demonstrates that the division between spiritual inspiration and quotidian realizations can be maddening to say the least, and as heroes come of age they can oddly cast their mettle in stone. Both sides of the spectrum are treated to an ambivalently therapeutic analysis while confidently presenting their positions, and beautiful witch Langiva (Carice van Houten) is tantalizing if not infuriating. Definitely an engaging representative of horror, Black Death subtly illustrates its motivations while directly enlivening their inspirations.

Chi ming yu chun giu (Love in a Puff) (Fantasia Fest 2010)

The smoke break: an integral component of working life. While smoking, stories and anecdotes are condensed and shared so that everyone can revel in their culture's 'inflammatory' gossip. Just one smoke: no. Make that two smokes? Definitely. And three? From time to time, when the narrative permits and you don't have to worry about your boss austerely reprimanding you for taking two or three minutes extra. Ho-Cheung Pang's Love in a Puff introduces us to several of Hong Kong's unrepentant smokers, gleefully enjoying their cigarettes and corresponding volatile friendships. While smoking, two smokers grow romantically attached. Advertising executive Jimmy (Shawn Yue) has just broken up with his girlfriend and Cherie (Miriam Yeung) is stuck in a predictable and lacklustre relationship. They take things slow, cautiously getting to know each other, and a number of lighthearted situations unreel, cohesively linked by the act of smoking. I was more interested in the gossip and felt that when the film switched its predominant focus to Jimmy and Cherie's relationship and didn't include scenes with the other characters having related discussions, Chi ming yu chun giu lost part of its allure. But it's still a subtle, playful, well rounded examination of a couple falling in love, lighting up their seductive friendship to reinvigorate present circumstances.

Neverlost (Fantasia Fest 2010)

Chad Archibald's new Canadian film Neverlost reminded me of the Coen Brother's Blood Simple. There's a low budget, tight dialogue, scenes that would have moderately benefited from additional takes, and a deadpan cast committed to promoting and solidifying its aesthetic. I was immediately struck by the direct nature of the opening narrative which sees Josh Higgins (Ryan Barrett) presenting his daily thoughts. The thoughts are presented frankly with candour and this device can work successfully or ruin a potentially prolific film. As it unreeled, there were times where I thought things were somewhat to simple, somewhat overt. But as it continued I became enraptured by its cohesive uniform writing and direction which successfully harmonize two diametrically opposed narratives into an entertaining, thought provoking synthesis. It continues to improve as time passes and its provocatively ironic ending aptly complements the ambiguous dexterity competently utilized to compose Josh and Megan (Jennifer Polansky) (is Megan a bitch or is her caustic temperament justified due to Josh's lacklustre work ethic?) (it's tough to take sides with either of the principle real world characters which is a coherent sign of prominent writing). I hope Neverlost receives mainstream distribution in Canada (and the United States) because we really need to give more commercial credit to our homegrown cinematic talent (they do it in Québec, why can't they do it in English Canada?). A frenetic destabilized yet congruous analysis of love, marriage, fantasies, dreams, Neverlost demonstrates that sometimes there is no solution while highlighting the detrimental effects of escapism. Shot in Guelph, Ontario.

Chernaya Molniya (Black Lightning) (Fantasia Fest 2010)

You're in university, hard working, dreaming of a better life, studious, intelligent, determined. Your parents have sacrificed and saved enough to give you a shot and you're respectful of what they've done for you. But suddenly you're tempted by the capitalistic individualist dream, wherein one helps only themselves looking out solely for their own interests. Little do you know that the professor whose lecture you've taken to heart has created a massive drill and is trying to mine diamonds located at the centre of Moscow's geological foundation, in order to supplement his astronomical wealth at the expense of Russia's most fabled city. You embrace an ideology that doesn't gel with your constitution and wind up losing your life's most important role model, feeling destitute and barren in the aftermath. But you have one saving grace: your new car, a volga from the Soviet-era, is powered by the most advanced technology on the planet, converting regular gasoline into a potent super fuel, and can fly. Hence, there's only one solution: turn that flying car into a robust dispenser of justice and become Moscow's leading super hero.

Once you get over the fact that no one ever notices the volga suddenly taking off and flying into the air, Dmitriy Kiselev and Aleksandr Talal's Chernaya Molniya (Black Lightning) becomes a contemporary old world heroic delicacy, cured with a Russian comedic sensibility. The film calls upon the younger generation of Russians to remember the positive characteristics of communist ideals (helping people out, access and opportunity for all) (represented by Dima's Father [Sergey Garmash]) and use them to strike down rapacious capitalists (Victor Kuptsov played by Viktor Verzhbitskiy) and forge a more ethical economic infrastructure. Will Dima (Grigoriy Dobrygin) be able to use Black Lightning to stop Kuptsov's drill, thereby saving Moscow just in time for this new socially responsible space to develop, or will Kuptsov's immutable greed destroy Russia's historical integrity and send them spiralling down an oligarchic Republican path? The showdown takes place in Red Square on New Year's Eve.

The Neighbor Zombie (Fantasia Fest 2010)

Was impressed by the 2009 South Korean horror flick The Neighbor Zombie. Presenting a series of 6 vignettes directed by Hong Young-Guen, Jang Youn-Jung, Oh Young-Doo, and Ryoo Hoon, loosely tied together by a traditional zombie narrative (a plague spreads, zombies attack, humans fight back), The Neighbor Zombie treads new ground (or at least zombie ground with which I'm unfamiliar) insofar as in the end the survivors discover a cure for the living dead and examine the politics surrounding reintegrating them into society. The ex-zombies have trouble finding work, making ends meet, and dealing with vengeful living relatives of their victims, and this quotidian dimension provides The Neighbor Zombie with an intellectual flair inasmuch as it piquantly showcases the troubling ubiquitous day-to-day realities governing the post-zombie holocaust (it's nice to see a zombie film that doesn't primarily present a hopeless situation wherein a ragtag bunch of would-be-heroes do their best to kick ass [I'm not saying that Zombieland wasn't exceptional]). There's also a troubled daughter who loves her zombie mom and keeps her locked up, feeding her blood and strangers because she simply can't say goodbye. Not to mention that the zombie virus isn't as immediate as it is in other zombie films and it can take weeks/months for the infected to transform completely, one young couple unyieldingly holding on to their relationship as the young adult male slowly mutates. Add a new drug which can make you 'zombie high,' a volatile conversation examining communal versus familial responsibility, 4 directors successfully committed to providing their own unique contribution to a mutually agreed upon uniform aesthetic (I'm assuming), and a bizarro kid who slices off his foot and eats it, and you've got a cerebral treat for your quasi-somnabulistic senses; just try and make sure you don't plan to go grocery shopping immediately afterwards.

La femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door)

You've recuperated. You're over her. What happened 8 years ago has been forgotten and you've moved, found a wife, had a child, and started working full time. Things are great, your life is stable, and you enjoy the peaceful tranquility that permeates every aspect of your small town existence. Then things take a turn for the worst. The woman whom you passionately loved even though she drove you nuts moves in next door with her new husband and is on her way over to dinner. You try and avoid her but she wants to chat. You try and suppress your emotions but they're simply to strong. The affair begins and both of you try to end it, try and take the mature route, accept the logistics of present circumstances, and live as if it never happened. But it did happen, and your desire is exploding, and there's no solution but to embrace it, nurture it, cultivate it, as it effectively destroys you. François Truffaut's La femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door) examines this scenario and the tempestuous repercussions it engenders. A sober reflection concerning inflammatory subjects, it crafts an hysterically lucid perspective which thoroughly analyzes the conception of love.

Inception

Dreamscapes contain valuable corporate secrets. Hidden within the depths of one's psyche lie descriptive vaults and tumultuous treasures which competitors ruthlessly seek to discover. In Christopher Nolan's Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb) and a team of elite surrealists are experts in the art of extraction, an architecturo-scientific technique which enables thieves to enter the dreams of their quarry and learn volatile and valuable information. Basically, chords, chemicals, and a mysterious brief case allow a group of individuals to share a dream. The dream's form is designed by Cobb's architect while its content is filled with the victim's experiences. After the individual bearing the sought after information falls into a drug induced sleep, everyone else joins his or her dream, doing their best to avoid being detected by her or his subconscious (many persons in prestigious positions have trained their subconscious to recognize extractors and fight back). Extraction's opposite is known as inception, the placing of an alien idea into someone's subconscious so that it appears as if it was self-generated. Inception is thought to be impossible, but when a Japanese businessperson (Ken Watanabe as Saito) intent on breaking up a global monopoly offers Cobb the chance to be forgiven for his American crimes and return home to see his family, he accepts, and begins placing the necessary mechanisms in order (the individual is granted the opportunity to rejoin his community if he can effectively shatter a universal).

Problems: while dreaming, Cobb's diseased ex-wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) consistently appears, takes sides with the victim's subconscious, and attempts to thwart his efforts. Usually when you die within a dream you wake up, but the drug used during inception operations is so potent that if your life ends while dreaming you are cast into limbo, and you may stay there for decades while only minutes pass in the real world. In order for inception to work, you need to suggest the idea to your prey at three different levels. Hence, in the real world you are sleeping. In the first stage of the dream world you wake up, find the individual to whom you are attached, make the requisite suggestion, and are then forced to enter a deeper level of dreaming in order to make the suggestion again. While in this secondary level, one member of your team must remain in the first level and prevent the primary dreamer's subconscious from ending your mission. The process repeats itself until you reach the third level at which point it is thought that the idea has been planted with enough cohesiveness to undoubtably produce results in the real world. Hence, you need to be able to militaristically maneuver within a tailored dreamscape wherein you must also execute a precise plan requiring the coordinated efforts of at most four groups of resolute individuals. The defences against which you contend are determined and hostile and the environment in which you are situated is an organized chaotic psychological cataclysm.

Inception's subject matter is deep and skillfully crafted. The execution of the plot contains several well-timed peaks and valleys which dextrously establish an energetic if not schizophrenic ambience. It's definitely dense. A significant portion of the film unreels like a slick lecture but some of the principle points could have still used some more elaboration (why do the different layers of the dreaming have distinct temporal coordinates for instance [it would have been outrageously cool if Neil Gaiman's Dream had somehow explained this!]) . Nevertheless, it's pretty stunning visually and demanding intellectually, not only in regards to the narrative's hefty overt dimension, but also in relation to its tantalizing and ambiguous ending (stop reading if you haven't seen it), which suggests that the entire film was simply Cobb's dream, and would explain why he's the only character whose personal experience is manifested while inhabiting 'someone else's.' To create a work that has at least two layers of critically motivational depth in an exciting fashion that directly deals with issues of individuality, corporate politics, marriage, family, scientific exploration, globalization, and so on, while indirectly interrogating any pedagogical institution (for me the film's dreamworld is that of an educational structure's relationship to a political agenda and the difficulties of ever successfully planting a dominant idea in the minds of its rebellious students [one level elementary, then secondary, then post-secondary]) is exceptional, and Inception is the best Sci-Fi Thriller I've seen in a long time. A shape-shifting analytical delineation of the synthetic, Inception multidimensionally interrogates what it means to dream, while efficiently disseminating its controversial characteristics.

Very real.

Crows Zero 2 (Fantasia Fest 2010)

A vindictive gang war has erupted between two rival Japanese high schools in Takashi Miike's Crows Zero 2, after the former leader of Suzuran Sho Kawanishi (Shinnosuke Abe) is released from a juvenile detention centre. Members of the Hosen Academy come to Suzuran seeking vengeance for their murdered leader whom Sho killed with a knife 2 years previously (the using of weapons being forbidden in their street wars). But their pleas fall on deaf ears as Suzuran grants Sho sanctuary and pseudo-leader Genji (Shun Oguri) infuriates them with his insolence. Thus, the truce between the two schools is broken, and the divided Suzuran must do their best to prepare for the onslaught of violence eagerly and efficiently unleashed by the scorned Hosen.

Takashi Miike's expert directing immediately resituates us within the hardboiled world of Crows Zero, wherein respect is won through direct physical confrontation and one must be resiliently ready to battle. The plot is dense and each thread skillfully and intricately woven into its fabric receives carefully crafted attention. Genji must learn to lead if he is to defeat Hosen and Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada) reminds him that leadership requires more than a swift and precise knock out punch. Genji also contends with his Yakuza father whose defences he is still unable to penetrate. Hosen leader Tiger Narumi (Nobuaki Kaneko) runs a tight ship while keeping the renegade and limitless Ryo (Gô Ayano) in check. And after discovering the grave of former Suzuran student Ken Katagiri (Kyôsuke Yabe), Sho discovers that becoming a Yakuza is not as easy as he originally believed.

The ways in which Miike builds Crows Zero 2 make it an effective sequel as he successfully expands the Crows Zero universe's historical, cultural, and symbolic dimensions. Miike also doesn't forget that he's dealing with high school students and intermittently includes embarrassing coming-of-age distractions which effectively subvert the film's serious nature. Underprivileged students doing their best to get by, studying the only subject at which they excel, Crows Zero 2 salutes and ennobles the dog-eat-dog code of the young adult underground Japanese gang, providing their trials and tribulations with sincere reflection, while directly interrogating conceptions of masculinity. With original music by Naoki Otsubo.

The Trotsky

This is just a personal impression to which I don't mean to attach any objective legitimacy, but I've noticed a lot of jaded apathy regarding left wing collective political movements in several cultural/interpersonal/social domains in recent years, and it's somewhat distressing. Perhaps I spend to much time watching and reading texts manufactured according to conservative ideological guidelines and hanging out with people who regard the adoption of a republican ethos to be a sign of maturity, but the older I get the less I encounter persons who believe in the collective good of unionized activity and the fact that there are people out there who are trying to use political systems to promote social justice as opposed to establishing a maniacal cult (the republican trope of turning the person-of-the-people into a power hungry demagogue is frustrating). Jacob Tierney's brilliant new film The Trotsky astutely addresses this phenomenon by presenting us with Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel), a teenager from Montréal who believes he is the reincarnation of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Leon believes in social justice and is willing to stand up to the powers that be (notably his dad [Saul Rubinek] and high school principal [Colm Feore]) in order to promote egalitarianism and fight the fascists. His commitment and dedication to fighting apathy and disengagement throughout are inspiring especially considering the strength of his opponents. The film's an edgy comedic romantic reinvigoration of unionized labour which provides a glimpse of how social change requires a firm commitment and multiple voices in order for its message to uniformly spread. It's definitely an uphill battle, but hopefully Leon will motivate more labour activists to keep fighting the forces of imperialism. With an exceptional soundtrack by Malajube.

Predators

Never thought I'd see Adrien Brody covered in mud fighting a Predator monster, but Nimród Antal's Predators delivers such a scene and fills it with pugnacious intensity. The film immediately situates us within a frenetic free fall as several elite military personnel awake after having been cast out of an airborne vessel, parachute in tact. After landing, this multicultural group of warriors discover they've been kidnapped and shipped to an alien planet upon which they've become the prey of a group of unflappable veteran killers, who seek their destruction with inveterate artistry. There's only one way to deal: bond together as a group, embrace the brutal predicament, exchange chides and military strategies, be thankful that everyone has recourse to a common language, and fight back by any means necessary. If you like thrilling horrific action films set in a paranoid chaotic environment wherein battles and direct conversations are consistently presented in an exciting straightforward fashion, then you'll likely enjoy the latest instalment in the Predator series. Its attention to detail and expertly crafted wit indicate that it was created by filmmakers who take action seriously, respect their fans, and aren't looking to simply make a buck. I enjoyed the ambiguous dimension developed for Topher Grace's character, the depth added to the supporting cast, the vindictive one-liner delivered in Russian, the expansion of the Predator universe, the outstanding samurai scene, and the well-timed intelligently designed pacing. Acutely accelerated from start to finish, Predators diversifies and electrifies the Predator franchise, just in time for its third filmic decade.

Finding Farley

Leanne Allison's latest documentary Finding Farley provides brief glimpses into an epic journey across Canada, as Allison, life partner Karsten Heuer, two-year-old son Zev, and adventurous dog Willow travel from Canmore, Alberta, to Cape Breton. Their purpose is to meet Farley Mowat who has invited them to visit his summer home. Little did he know that after sending the invitation, they would canoe from Canmore to Hudson's Bay, travelling many of the same routes chronicled in People of the Deer and Never Cry Wolf, before taking a train to Québec and then sailing the rest of the way. They exchange letters via snail mail throughout within which Heuer oddly brings up the critical controversies surrounding Mowat's work while highlighting the ways in which they relive his colourful tales. It's fun watching the family interact with one another as pesky Zev spots beavers and owls and the voyage's physical demands test their will power. If Heuer (Being Caribou, Walking the Big Wild) is indeed inheriting Mowat's legacy, he's definitely proving his mettle, and it's a shame Allison didn't include more footage of the time her family spends with the Mowats during Finding Farley's final moments. A simultaneous homage to Mowat's work and forecast of Heuer and Allison's future, Finding Farley presents a filmic family friendly adventure deep into Canada's literary wilderness, pastorally illuminating a symbolic changing of the guard.

The Wolfman

Joe Johnston's recasting of the classic Wolfman legend wantonly howls while slashing and thrashing, but its romantic subplot can't effectively counterbalance its vicious nature due to the lacklustre execution of its sentimental content. A father and son known as Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) and Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) are set up in opposition. Sir John is a macho patriarch while his estranged son is an contemplative actor, the two excelling in their chosen roles. When Lawrence discovers that his brother has been savagely murdered, he swears vengeance, and recklessly pursues the unidentified killer, only to wind up bitten by the beast and condemned by both the local gypsies and reverend (Roger Fisk) alike. His brother's betrothed (Emily Blunt as Gwen Conliffe) reminds both Lawrence and Sir John of Solana Talbot (Cristina Contes), wife and mother, which serves to further complicate matters. As Lawrence falls for Gwen, their dialogue becomes increasingly saccharine even though Lawrence is a famous Shakespearean actor and likely used to expressing himself eruditely. Since she reminds him of his mother, it makes sense that his education and experience would be misplaced in her presence as he slips into a childish state consequently. However, this reason doesn't legitimize the dialogue, it merely points out that logical depth can't trump banal posturing unless the irony sustaining their relationship can be artistically cultivated, i.e., banal lines that seem superficial at first but reveal hidden semantic currents upon further reflection. Sir John is maniacal and revels in his son's incarceration, gleefully basking in their familial discomfort. The horror is therefore composed of both carnal and psychological elements, apprehensively destabilizing any attempts at a rapprochement between father and son. But The Wolfman's infantilized romantic inclinations troublingly traumatize its terror, and arguably suggest that such a lack of congruity is where the film's transformative powers reside.

Shutter Island

Condensing dream sequences, identity (de)mystifications, psychiatrical polarizations, and traumatic war related manifestations into a staggered, disorienting psychological thriller, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island invigorates and interrogates the traditional detective film. Federal Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are on the beat, sent to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane to track down a missing patient. Located on Shutter Island, this isolated mental institution is reserved for violent criminals whom Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) does his best to humanely treat. Provided with limited access to the resources necessary to conduct their investigation, Daniels and Aule do their best to take advantage of organizational loopholes while restrainedly exchanging professional courtesies. A graveyard, a storm, witnesses living in caves, and a healthy supply of cigarettes keep their attention focused, while clues lead to questions followed by riddles and conundrums. Daniels's past haunts him throughout as he digs deeper and deeper, valiantly attempting to subjectively recalibrate his object. The heart of the matter harrowingly pulsates, as personal veins and institutional arteries enigmatically transmit their heuristic fluid.

Tough to craft a mainstream thriller that doesn't come across as hackneyed. In Shutter Island, Scorsese successfully infuses his subject with suspense while cultivating a paranoid, disillusioned aesthetic. Many of the scenes stand on their own and the coherent whole they eventually establish benefits from their gritty individualism. The paranoia is often moderately ridiculous and the dream sequences drag and would have benefitted from a more clandestine form of surrealism. The performances are strong, skillfully utilizing Laeta Kalogridis's hardboiled dialogue which diligently and effectively delineates their characters (Mark Ruffalo stealing the show). The ending suggests that means are more important than ends and objectively salutes tenacious innovative thinkers for attempting to remodel professional paradigms. But the ends are still distressing and I can't help but wonder if they reflect Scorsese's own fears regarding his attempts to rearrange the genre's conventions.

The Timekeeper

52 days, 52 miles of track. A labour camp deep in the Canadian wilderness, far away from any representatives of law and order. Within, Louis Bélanger's The Timekeeper presents a wanton battle of wills between two opposing viewpoints, one, that of a brutal manager, i.e. "let's get the job done, quit whining and do as I tell you," the other, that of a worker, who tries to honestly and loyally stick up for the rights of his companions. Sooner than later, the worker (Craig Olejnik as Martin Bishop) is relieved of his duties and forced to feed off garbage scraps while encouraging his fellow outcasts to engage in acts of subversion (which include doing a good job). The ideals built into the film's dialectic are populated with secondary characters who deconstruct its attempts to depict one side as absolutely correct, and The Timekeeper's climax suggests that personal integrity requires a firm constitution to remain resolute after being thoroughly beaten down by the powers that be. Cast out, resourceless, starving, and scared, Martin Bishop has only his wits and his belief in right and wrong to psychologically finance his activities, and no matter how successful, still must submit to Fisk's (Stephen McHattie) order of things. Occasionally maudlin while remaining provocative, Bélanger's vision pastorally elucidates the pressures confronting vocal critical dispositions, and doesn't pacify the hard times facing those who possess them. Complete with dynamic shots of Canada's boreal forest (cinematography by Guy Dufaux), and a reverberating soundtrack which enriches its aesthetic, Bélanger's film suggests that authority (age) is indeed in control, while employees (youth) must suck it up or deal with the (potentially elevating) consequences. Financial stability, individual sincerity, or a lifestyle somewhere in between? S'pose it's all just a matter of how one keeps their time.

Boys Don't Cry

Finally saw Kimberley Peirce's Boys Don't Cry and was impressed by how many profound statements were worked into its gritty low-budget frame. You're transgendered, the majority of people surrounding you are not transgendered, many of them are hostile towards you because you're transgendered, and few are willing to listen and try and understand the cultural problems associated with being transgendered. Hence, things are difficult, maintaining a job is difficult, and making friends, keeping in touch with family, and being consistent, is difficult, if not impossible. Lies are necessary, depression is immanent, complications are manifold, and friendship is required, not only to help one deal with the psychological disruptions inherent in such a disposition, but also to firmly establish an enduring sense of normalcy. Because being transgendered is perfectly natural and any son of a bitch who goes around religiously promoting some kind of homophobic rhetoric in regards to such physiological features is an abusive, hate mongering, fucker, whose voice should be silenced, period. Such fuckers abound in Boys Don't Cry and the results are ugly. Peirce's film doesn't shy away from providing provocative evidence concerning the abominable affects of mainstream stereotypes, and precisely points out the reprehensible nature of normalized conceptions of the good, adequately illuminating whose ethos is irrevocably out of line.

Robin Hood

Ridley Scott's Robin Hood presents an epic, complicated tale almost worthy of the designation legend. The plot is dense and starts out intense but its momentum relents as its second half falters. Here's the situation: King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) has been crusading for a decade and is about to return home. In England, his less courageous brother Prince John (Oscar Isaac) has been ruling in his stead. Prince John's right-hand-man Godfrey (Mark Strong) strikes a deal with King Philip of France (Jonathan Zaccaï) in which he agrees to kill Richard and then convince John to brutally tax his citizens, thereby fomenting revolution. Then, after civil war has ravaged England, the French can invade and ruthlessly plunder the country.

However, Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe), an honest member of King Richard's crusade, has other plans in mind. After rescuing the English crown from Godfrey's clutches, he returns it to the Royal Family and then sets out for Nottingham in order to reunite a fallen comrade's sword with his father. When said father (Max von Sydow as Sir Walter Loxley) discovers his son is dead, he asks Robin to pretend that he is that very same son, so that if he should pass on, his lands won't fall into the hands of King John. Robin agrees, and, after convincing his new wife, the somewhat upset Marion Loxley (Cate Blanchett), that he's not a scoundrel, begins to restore justice to the region with the help of his Merry Men (Mark Addy as Friar Tuck, Kevin Durand as Little John, Scott Grimes as Will Scarlet, and Alan Doyle as Allan A'Dayle). Fortunately for Robin, Sir Walter also remembers his father (Mark Lewis Jones), who was killed when Robin was 6, and is able to help him rediscover related memories.

There's much more to Robin Hood's plot than what I've presented above. Political intrigue, ethical imbroglios, spiritual reflections, working class rights, aristocratic wisdom, feminine strength, and feudal customs are also synthesized within to create a byzantine portrait of Polanskian proportions. Even with all these intertwined dimensions, each presenting their points directly and/or covertly, Scott and scriptwriter Brian Helgeland still manage to create deeper layers of provocative sensation, showing how the defenders of a French castle take the time to eat during a siege, dealing with 12th century orphanage issues, depicting greed as a conniving hydra, delicately integrating provincial and "urban" life, and lampooning conceptions such as the divine right of kings. Then, as if worried that all of these plot twists have alienated their audience, the film's last section concerns itself with Godfrey's revenge quest and a ridiculous battle, shooting arrows to the wind, building cliché on cliché stick by stick, the multitude of twists and turns requiring closure which is rushed in order to prevent the film from lasting three hours. Robin Hood's ambitions are grand and its narrative multidimensional, but its dénouement suffers beneath the weight of its bulk, and can't support its synthetic structure. It's nice to see the legend of Robin Hood reimagined and intellectualized, Scott's film providing it with unprecedented layers of historical intensification. But the ending made me wish they had localized the story so we could have spent more time with Robin Hood and his Merry Men, its ineffective grandiose form causing me to wish for more regionalized content. Which is the perfect recipe for setting up a sequel, which I'll probably see, and then complain about having seen.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Intermixing fate, superstition, religion, individuality, gambling, dreams, ethics, history, economics, showmanship, temptation, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus provides a phantasmagorical panoramic synthesis of parapsychological proportions. A religious guru (Christopher Plummer) makes deal after deal with the devil (Mr. Nick played by Tom Waits) only to fall further and further into his demonic clutches. When we first meet the immortal Doctor Parnassus, his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) is days away from becoming the exclusive property of Satan, and, due to his lacklustre antiquated bush-league performance values, the Doctor has no hope of reversing her fate. But shortly thereafter, his travelling troupe discovers a man hanging from a bridge (Heath Ledger as Tony), and, after saving his life, benefit commercially and ontologically from his gifted oratorical skills. So a new wager must be made which the Prince of Darkness generously conceives, the first one to capture 5 souls receiving sole access to Valentina's future, souls being captured after they enter Doctor Parnassus's Imaginarium, which is the Doctor's imagination physically manifested, the dimensions of which are cultivated according to the imagination of whomever happens to enter (the souls have to decide whether to travel the high or low road within, those flying high becoming the Doctor's possession, those not, Satan's). As Valentina falls for Tony, and Tony's credibility deconstructs itself, Anton (Andrew Garfield) falls by the wayside, and the Doctor must come to terms with immortality. The past and the future then destructively present themselves without recourse to binary oppositions or stable, enduring dispositions. One part romance, two parts tragedy, three parts reality, four parts fantasy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus competently delegates intergenerational gesticulations, while mysteriously emphasizing transcendental transmutations. Plus two.

Iron Man 2

Tony Stark is back in Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2, the much anticipated sequel to its critically acclaimed 2008 predecessor. This time around, Iron Man's (Robert Downey Jr.) suit is being sought after by the American military but he refuses to reveal its secrets, claiming to have privatized world peace, the ultimate achievement of the symbolic individual. But historical familial enemies have surfaced, and Stark's Russian shadow-self Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) develops a personalized nuclear apparatus of his own which threatens to dismantle Stark's global franchise. Both of their parents worked together to design the technological infrastructure that created Stark's business, but the elder Vanko (Yevgeni Lazarev) was sideswiped by Stark's father (John Slattery) after which he spent the rest of his days immersed in bitter misery. When the military discovers that another individual has created an Iron Man-like suit, Iron Man's novelty, the fact that he could justify not sharing his design because there was no comparable opposition, wears out, and Stark's friend Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) comes calling. Stark also makes full-time assistant Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow) the CEO of his company, American weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) eventually 'hires' Vanko to streamline the development of battle ready 'Iron Man' suits, the secret intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D recruits Tony to see if he has what it takes to be a member, and Stark continues to fall further in love with Pepper while remaining mesmerized by the sultry Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson). Justin Theroux's script is jam packed with several additional subplots, every scene bristling with dynamic multidimensional energy, and while they are laid on a little thick, they manage to transform Iron Man from a particular galaxy into a melodramatic universe, which is one of the principal motivating factors on every fantasy sequel's agenda.

The issue of a privatized military remains problematic and should be investigated however. I suppose that if and only if a socially conscious peace promoting tyrant thwarting military industrial complex destabilizing individual makes up a one-person privatized military (who occasionally requires assistance from close friends), who doesn't take particular sides and is interested in preventing governments from imperialistically colonizing other countries or enslaving their own populations, then a privatized military is okay (the anti-revolution). Hence, Iron Man 2 is an idyllic fantasy, one wherein the individual can function in a godlike fashion outside of communal confinements in order to keep that community safe. His lifestyle is bohemian, and his private interests wolfish, but when it comes to protecting the public from the forces of evil, he's unconditionally ready at all hours of the day, never wavering in his altruistic commitment, always.

But how does this relate to education? What if one school of thought is responsible for guaranteeing intellectual and cultural safety, and only people subscribing to that school are presented as just guardians of a unilateral global political aesthetic (privatized Philosopher Kings)? If that aesthetic has a communal basis that seeks to preserve and maintain an inclusive diverse multicultural multilingual peaceful public organization, complete with universal supporting educational and medical institutions, institutions that would prevent their military from developing and obtaining potentially perverted weapons of mass destruction, without aggressively forcing their ideology onto the cultures of surrounding nations, preferring organic internal growth to hostile external confrontation, while still functioning as a contributing member of the global economy, but not to the extent that it sacrifices its social programs in order to pay its dues, then I guess that's okay. This liberal philosophical kernel facilitates the development of a multidimensional ethical orchard whose political fruit is openly accessible. At the same time, if the one principal school of thought promotes a one-dimensional divisional political frame that preys upon racial tensions in order to divide and conquer the workforce, encouraging different minority groups to squabble amongst one another while a dominant elite few control the means of production and prevent the people from having access to the knowledge required in order to earn a higher income, or charge them astronomical sums in order to be educated so that they'll be mired in debt afterwards for an interminable period of time, then I guess that's not okay. The question is, does Iron Man 2's privatized symbolic individualized military support a Democratic or a Republican ethos, and if it indeed supports one more than the other, how does it demonstrate this support? In order to answer these questions, I've provided some of the film's Republican/Democratic evidence below in order to demonstrate how it supports both ideologies. If we can determine which side's evidence is more convincing, then we can reach a verdict regarding the political character of Iron Man 2, and, derivatively, that of its quintessential political kernel: an individual privatized military.

Republican points: the majority of characters are beautiful; the principal villain is poor; the exaltation of privatization exalts privatization; many of the locales are populated exclusively by the elite; foreigners are depicted as villains insofar as Vanko is Russian and the French police in Monaco allow him to escape; as Pepper attempts to run Tony's company, a Republican pundit calls her a "pin-head"; the film focuses much more of its attention on technology than humanity; and Tony Stark, as the ultimate individual, ideally embodies the forces of capitalism.

Democratic points: Stark can't win this one on his own: the individual needs the support of his friends the most prominent of whom are female and African American (although they could be female and African-American Republicans); as Pepper attempts to run Tony's company, a Republican pundit calls her a "pin-head," and Favreau's direction indicates that we should consider the comment ignorant (it was still presented nonetheless); the private can't function without the public, the two dimensions forming a politico-ethical yin and yang: the private dimension may as well be represented by an individual who is committed to bringing about world peace; the film's secondary villain, military arms dealer Justin Hammer, is incompetent and a prominent American; while speaking to a Senate committee, Lt. Col. James Rhodes demands that his commentary be presented in context; the principal villain is poor and brilliant, and his anger is justified (although his methods are not) insofar as his family was humiliated by the Starks (his relationship with Hammer productively deconstructs his villainy as well); and women are depicted as being thoroughly qualified for tasks traditionally undertaken by men and there is no mention of family or childrearing.

Within Iron Man 2, we have a privatized personalized military. Overtly, this military obviously supports a Democratic viewpoint insofar as it legitimately seeks to secure a balanced world peace, while also supporting a Republican viewpoint inasmuch as it is a privatized military operated by a wolfish individual capitalist. Favreau and Theroux's film has provided a host of conflicting ideological baggage to support either case, only a small amount of which has been presented here, in order to cleverly disguise/ignore their political motivations. I believe that their Iron Man is more Democratic than Republican since their multilayered plot has intelligently crystallized an assiduous ambiguity, or, alternatively, represents Anarchism's progressive dimension (not as a dominant political aesthetic but as a deconstructive tool to challenge ideological stances) (eventually one must act and deal with the communal consequences of their actions [the ways in which they were interpreted, regardless of motive]). Bold, beautiful, complicated, resilient: there's a lot more going on in Iron Man 2 than many similar sequels and I highly recommend trying to figure things out on your own or with friends.

Crazyheart

The careers of many successful musicians have their ups and downs, and Scott Cooper's Crazyheart begins by introducing us to one of country music star "Bad" Blake's (Jeff Bridges) less fortunate moments. He's 57, has lived through 4 divorces, and currently travels from city to city in his ancient suburban in order to play for modest yet enthusiastic crowds in small bars and bowling alleys. Smoking and drinking constantly while still managing to competently perform (although he may have to take the occasional 'rest' in the middle of a song), times are tough for this living legend and it's been a while since he's caught a break. While playing in Santa Fe, he agrees to provide journalist Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) with an interview and the two hit it off. Thanks to her sober advice, Bad feels more comfortable reestablishing a relationship with country music celebrity and former protege Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), and his fortunes begin to relatively improve.

Simultaneously interrogating the life and times of a prominent musician and the consequences of alcoholism, Crazyheart demonstrates that life on the inebriated road necessitates a host of artistic acclimatizations, the most disruptive of which often result in successful professional developments. The film doesn't really vilify alcoholism to any serious extent, and even builds Bad up as a badass tough-as-nails aging artist, still playing by his own idiosyncratic rules, who has aged to much to sustain his choice of lifestyle (it demonstrates that alcohol abuse results in a peculiar constitution without moralizing intently on the subject). Instead, it poetically highlights the productive tension maintained between personal reclusion and communal creation, while evocatively elucidating one man's saturated experience.

Gunless

The new Canadian western comedy from director William Phillips examines the dynamic relationship forged between a wild individualistic American rogue and a settled congenial Canadian community. In Gunless, Sean 'The Montana Kid' Rafferty (Paul Gross) escapes from his hanging only to wind up surrounded by decent folk who are relatively ignorant of the American Wild West's code. His integration is smooth if not bumpy insofar as he quickly catches the eye of a local belle (Sienna Guillory as Jane) while still taking the time to 'call-out' Jack, the blacksmith (Tyler Mane), after he uses the word "common" in one of his introductory remarks. The plot comedically incorporates a basic formulation of Aristotle's conception of virtue (the virtue of a knife is its ability to slice) which causes Rafferty to dramatically (if not ironically) question his profession's means-of-production. Then, as he sacrifices his individuality for the community's greater good (after those wishing to hang him show up in town), that community responds in his defence by any-means-necessary.

And there's a gunfight, A-Team style.

The film intermingles slapstick relief with cerebral comic portraits (Rafferty and the carrot) in order to provide a sophisticated mix of jocular wherewithals. Structurally, some of the plot devices simply don't work insofar as The Montana Kid is much too friendly to be considered a ruthless killer, and who invites someone to dinner after they shoot up the local 'bar'/dry goods store? The title is problematic since the town isn't gunless and neither is The Montana Kid, the term "gunless" perhaps referring to Rafferty's identity crisis after winding up in Canada; but this doesn't sufficiently explain things since the town's residents do their best to build up his character, and the man he wishes to duel even reforges said duel's required second pistol even though he wants nothing to do with the duel itself. The relationship between Canadian history and Gunless's social dynamic is legitimate if not infantilized: the one Native character (Two Shoes played by Graham Greene of course) consistently outsmarts his liaison in the NWMP (Dustin Milligan as Corporal Jonathan Kent) and is consequently rebuffed (Native wisdom was overlooked and dismissed [or rewritten from an Anglo-perspective] as the West was Anglicized); there is only one character who speaks French (Anglophone policies of assimilation prevented a French Canadian identity from prominently developing in the West); the Asian family runs the local laundry, doesn't show up for the town dance, and is ignored in an educational setting (laws sought to prevent the immigration and integration of Asians into Western Canadian society [see Howard Palmer's Alberta: A New History][the Asian girl speaks perfect English but is introduced in isolation]); a prominent woman attempts to run her own farm (there must have been examples of strong women in frontier towns taking matters into their own hands who weren't segregated, but the fact that Rafferty's advice helps her to run her farm more efficiently still accurately reflects 19th-century patriarchal norms); and the ambiguously gay character is allowed to integrate as long as he marries and stays in the closet (however, the church is surprisingly absent from the film). Gunless also shows how Canadians are occasionally not as polite as they are generally depicted (when the NWMP troops give Montana a beating) while still depicting them as being generally polite. But this depiction is cultivated with its bold, underrepresented underside, for when push comes to shove, the town's inhabitants are ready to fight for what/who they believe in (Vimy Ridge, Québec's Bill 101). I liked Gunless for the ways in which it demonstrates the potentially productive relationship maintained between a community of individuals in a lighthearted, homely fashion (even if that relationship developed in less than two weeks). More cute and cuddly than rough and tumble, Gunless's theoretically absent arsenal still subtly presents an inordinate ordinance.

How Canadian!

Date Night

Meet the Fosters (Steve Carell and Tina Fey), a successful suburban couple comfortably going through the motions, taking care of their two children, and heading out for date night every Friday. Apart from the facts that they're rather busy, and their friends the Sullivans (Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig) are getting a divorce, everything seems tranquil enough if not mundane and uneventful.

Until they decide to steal the Tripplehorn's reservation at a posh restaurant in the centre of a big city one surprising and uncharacteristic night. As it turns out, the Tripplehorn's (James Franco and Mila Kunis) are blackmailing a gangster (Ray Liotta) whose taken pictures of a politician's (William Fichtner) lusty nightlife in order to secure some much needed scratch. The gangster's henchmen, who are also policepersons (Jimmi Simpson and Common), corner the Fosters while they're finishing dinner and demand the return of their boss's philandering flash drive. After a narrow escape, and several spur-of-the-moment relationship related outbursts, it's up to Mark Wahlberg (Holbrooke) and the power of love to unconditionally save the day.

Or night, as it were.

The film's well done and I enjoyed the intelligent ways in which it intermingled the high and low. A lot of its script is concerned with a traditional, stereotypical, steady-as-she-goes marriage, but, if push comes to shove, that traditional couple is still ready to perform a live sex act. The situations in which they find themselves are plausible yet ridiculous, identifiable yet obscure, sordid while remaining wholesome, and fortunate if not predictable. It was still a little to straight and narrow for my tastes; however, since said tastes are so used to not encountering sprightly representatives of the straight and narrow, this straight and narrow film stood on its head.

With Leon (J. B. Smoove) from Curb Your Enthusiasm's sixth and seventh seasons.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

Never thought I'd see Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant reworked and revitalized but that is what Werner Herzog has done in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. Opening on an heroic note, Lieutenant Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) quickly proves that he is on par with Harvey Keitel's degenerate masterpiece, as he travels the streets of New Orleans using his badge to procure as much prurient activity as he possibly can. Things are complicated: a camera has been placed in the police department's evidence room, making it more difficult for him to obtain free narcotics; when a costumer assaults McDonagh's prostitute partner (Eva Mendes), he threatens him even though his political contacts are severe; he is suffering from chronic back pain, the result of his aforementioned heroic act; his gambling debts mount as he can't catch a break and his bookie (Brad Dourif) comes calling; a protected witness escapes under his watch and after ruthlessly interrogating his politically connected grandmother to discover his whereabouts, he is temporarily removed from duty; his relationship with his recovering alcoholic father (Tom Bower) remains estranged; and he can't find the means to put the cocaine dealing murderer Big Fate (Xzibit) behind bars. Certainly not the most family friendly film, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans offers a pristinely nocturnal portrait of a successful substance abusing professional scumbag, shot through the discarded lens of an alcoholic looking glass. Deconstructing the traditional hard-working-by-the-book-master-narrative, it brazenly points out that corruption often finds its own rewards, while highlighting the nefarious steps that must occasionally be taken in order for justice to be virtuously upheld.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Was looking forward to taking a dip in Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine but found it's waters far to tepid. It's fun watching three old friends reinvestigating their youth back in time at their favourite ski resort, but I never developed a bond with any of the characters, felt its crude emphasis was often nasty, couldn't get into most of the "reliving their youth with a 21st century twist" bits, and patiently waited for a montage that never came. At the same time, watching John Cusack (Adam) get ridiculously wasted on multiple substances while pining for a lost love was funny, the humour's dry yet over the top like a well mixed self-aware chocolate martini (so self-aware it's aware that being self-aware is becoming cliché unless you conceal your self-awareness), going back to the 80s for a romp including John Elway's famous Drive caught my attention, and it was nice to see Crispin Glover (Phil) heroically stealing scenes. My "make-it-or-break-it" Hot Tub Time Machine factors came down to Chevy Chase and the dynamics of time travel. I often like integral non-sequiturs and the ways in which they complicate things, but I couldn't help being annoyed by the repair man's babble and the fact that he didn't simply lay things out like Back to the Future's Doctor Emmett Brown. The answers were probably there, cleverly encoded with idioms and innuendo, but I found them as confusing as Adam's accidentally-along-for-the-ride-nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), and potentially will never see their mysteries revealed (something deeper than the forbidden substance found in the Russian red bull). Unless in twenty years I travel back in time and have to see Hot Tub Time Machine again in order to maintain the integrity of the space/time continuum. If that happens, I'll search for the hidden meaning while making sure to hit the gym and eat solidified carbohydrates.

Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

Alberta's tar sands are definitely a controversial issue. It is claimed that they represent the world's second largest oil reserve and are essential for the maintenance of the United States's oil supply. The profit potential for the companies involved in extracting their bitumen is enormous and they also produce lucrative revenues for Alberta's economy. Tough to sincerely criticize an industry that supplies your citizens with job opportunities and disposable incomes but the pollution generated from the tar sands megaproject is a phenomenon worthy of such criticisms. In Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, Peter Mettler films the tar sands's impact on the Albertan environment from a helicopter, providing shots of open pit mines, tailings ponds, and industrial complexes, while juxtaposing them with surrounding untouched forests. The images speak for themselves and the environment has been devastated on a massive scale, the landscape resembling a bleak, stark, uninhabitable lunar catastrophe. Information presented: the tar sands operation burns enough natural gas to heat 4 million homes daily; the project could industrialize an area the size of England; per day, routine business releases as much carbon dioxide as every car in Canada; to date, no comprehensive assessment of the project's social, economic, and environmental impact has been undertaken; the Athabasca River, part of the world's third largest watershed, flows through. Mettler's accompanying narration near the film's conclusion suggests that there are alternatives to developments such as these which should be considered considering their environmental impact (solar energy for instance). In order to stop these operations and adopt alternative sources as our principle cultural fuel, it will take a massive social movement with local and international groups uniformly focused on transforming global economies from those that are founded on non-renewable resources to those that are nurtured by sustainable growth.

Crude

An oil company moves into your jungle home, sets up shop for 26 years, leaves, and your environment's polluted to hell. You dig beneath the ground and instead of soil you find toxic sludge. Your iridescent drinking water stinks like petrol and tastes rancid. Cancer rates in your village are through the roof and you can't afford medical treatment. Your culture and associated way of life has been drastically destabilized by industrial runoff and you've been seeking financial retribution from a dismissive multinational for a seemingly endless period of time. Joe Berlinger's well-rounded documentary Crude provides an intricate examination of the infamous Amazon Chernobyl case, wherein 30,000 Indigenous inhabitants of Ecuador have taken Chevron to court. Berlinger presents viewpoints from both sides, the Chevron reps claiming they cleaned up their mess (to the tune of 40 million) and that PetroEcuador (the company who took over production in the 90s) is to blame. The Indigenous plaintiffs recognize PetroEcuador's crimes and have a separate lawsuit on the back burner quietly steeping. But for now it's Chevron on the hook, sued for 27 billion, trying to justify their position by blaming the sharp increase in cancer rates on poor sewage treatment, claiming there are acceptable levels of hydrocarbons in the water, and boasting that their environmental record is spic and span. If you ask me, based upon Berlinger's filmic evidence as well as the testimony of Steve Donziger, Pablo Fajardo, and several local residents, Chevron must think we're drinking volcanic glasses of idiot juice if we're to believe their side of the story. They definitely cleaned up something, and drawing the line where Chevron's guilt ends and PetroEcuador's begins is complicated to say the least. But these people are suffering, they weren't suffering before Chevron (or Texaco) showed up, and they're living and breathing the effects of Chevron's environmental degradation day in and day out, period. Hopefully the international attention surrounding the case will help speed up the legal process so that these people can be justly compensated for the scurrilous and foul way they've been treated.

Surrogates

Jonathan Mostow's Surrogates reminds me of James Cameron's The Terminator insofar as they are both science-fiction films which express a paranoid attitude regarding post-modern technological developments. In The Terminator, we're exposed to a world where machines rule and the natural path has been thoroughly eroded (note that as it has become increasingly obvious that we are necessarily linked to technological advancements, the Terminator series has adjusted and in Terminator Salvation we meet a humanistic machine/human hybrid). In Surrogates, we're exposed to a world where the majority of people have purchased beautiful remotely-controlled androids (surrogates) to live out their lives for them; or, a world where people live out their lives on the internet after creating multiple ideal identities. Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) has a surrogate but longs to have person to person conversations with his wife (Rosamund Pike as Maggie Greer) who criticizes him consequently. Eventually, Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) (creator of the surrogates) seeks revenge after his son is murdered by a weapon which destroys surrogates but also bypasses their safety mechanisms and kills their operators. He's also rather upset after having been pushed out of VSI, the company he founded to market, develop, and promote the surrogate lifestyle. He finds a way to use the weapon to destroy every surrogate and their operators, and, after the worst antagonist/protagonist encounter I've ever seen, attempts to do so. Fortunately, Tom Greer is there to prevent the weapon from annihilating humanity, but, eager for a conversation with his wife, he still uses it to destroy all the surrogates, taking us back to a simpler time (i.e., before the internet) (the John Carpenter ending). Thus, the distraught individual makes a personal choice that collectively disrupts the foundations of his culture, a culture that had practically eliminated violence, crime, racism, and so on. I find it hard to believe that anyone could be nostalgic for that way of life and had a tough time digesting the ending. The internet presents a lot of opportunities and an abundance of information and I'd rather partake in its virtual reality than any of its preceding fantasies. I suppose Surrogates is saying that things are moving to quickly and we should slow down and reevaluate the ways in which the internet is permeating every social/cultural/political/economic/ . . . sphere, and the ways in which it is changing traditional methods of human interaction. This makes sense: I don't want to go camping with a laptop. But socializing on the internet isn't some grand disruption of the traditional order of things that threatens the ways in which we interact with one another. In fact, it broadens the social domain and provides us with another means through which we can communicate on a progressive social scale, while still continuing to have face to face conversations.

Clash of the Titans

Perseus is back in Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans and he must once again come to terms with his demigod status. Cast off at birth by his earthly step-father Acrisius (Jason Flemyng), Perseus (Sam Worthington) is raised by the humble fisherperson Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite) until he is killed by the vengeful Hades (Ralph Fiennes). Humankind has had enough of worshiping capricious gods and seeks to place themselves at the forefront of their culture, much to father Zeus's (Liam Neeson) dismay. King Cepheus (Vincent Regan) and Queen Cassiopeia (Polly Walker) grievously insult the gods for which Hades demands the sacrifice of their daughter Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) as punishment. But before the monstrous Kraken can devour Andromeda, Perseus has the chance to travel to the underworld with a group of soldiers in order to cut off the head of the vile Medusa (Natalia Vodianova) (which can turn the Kraken to stone). Meanwhile, Hades has grown sick of living beneath the earth and seeks to overthrow Zeus and rule Olympus above. Will his devious plan to use humanity as a means to obtain his revolutionary ends succeed?, or will he remain stuck in his subterranean domain for all eternity?

The film's not the greatest but has a quick pace and an adventurous character that makes it entertaining if not progressive. It's also very similar to Desmond Davis's 1981 version which calls into question why they made it in the first place (couldn't they have done something with Cadmus or Orpheus? [I suppose they're making a fortune]). I liked the inclusion of the Djinn, the ways in which Perseus prefers his humanistic to his divine nature, the two hunters who accompany the soldiers on their quest, and the idea that the titular clash is between titanic humanists and gods. But the humanists pay to steep a price for their free-thinking ideas for me to believe that this isn't just another calling card for the 21st century's military industrial complex. It also contains banal generalized terse dialogue, consistently harsh consequences, and one-dimensional character development.

Queen of the Damned

It's surprising how subdued Michael Rymer's Queen of the Damned is, considering that it showcases the reawakening of Anne Rice's famous vampire, Lestat (Stuart Townsend), and his subsequent rise to rock and roll superstardom. To its credit, Queen of the Damned doesn't provide formulaic crests and valleys as it unreels its dark and sombre narrative. Instead, it proceeds by introducing shocking scenes in a sedate manner that melancholically mediates the sensational subject matter. Lestat is awake after sleeping for a hundred years and ready to embrace the twentieth century. As his popularity grows and he continues to openly claim to be a vampire, his fellow creatures of the night grow increasingly irate and seek to ensure that he delivers a final performance. Unfortunately for them, Lestat's music awakens another slumbering vampire, the ancient Queen Akasha (Aaliyah), who admires Lestat's unabashed openness and seeks his assistance in subjugating humanity. Observing the events is Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) of the paranormal activity monitoring group Talamasca. Her burgeoning humanistic interference is all that stands in the way of either a resumption of the habitual vampiric code, or the unleashing of a monstrous new world order.

I'm not sure if Rymer meant for the film to be so laid back or if he simply failed to dramatically execute the traditional climactic build up (either choice explains why his film was panned), but Queen of the Damned's absent cataclysmic content supports its subterranean form. You would think Queen Akasha would have had a more prominent role but Marius (Vincent Perez) almost receives as much screen time (if not more). I liked how the film's primary focus was relegated to a secondary role for it formally highlights the ways in which supporting players often have a more prominent effect than their political object of desire. But all of these reversals and sedatives aren't surrounded by an inspiring entourage of symbolic pillars (although the musical accompaniment worked well [original music by Jonathan Davis and Richard Gibbs]), which, unfortunately, causes the film to fall flat.

Zombieland

Keep to the path and follow the rules, unless, of course, you're in search of a twinkie. Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland hilariously and absurdly chronicles the death-defying feats of four post-zombie take over survivors in the United States of America. When a hopeless situation arises there's always a serendipitous solution. If your neighbour suddenly turns into a flesh craving representative of the undead, remember the double tap. While fleeing the legions of zombies seeking to devour your post-pestilanic consciousness, make sure to pursue a little romance. And if in doubt, thoroughly express your rage but don't forget to fasten your seatbelt.

Legions of the undead is perhaps to strong a phrase insofar as Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) find themselves ditched and weaponless in a town whose resident zombies are curiously abstaining from their cannibalistic pursuits; but this is an absurd campy comedy whose internal chemistry supports such logical inconsistencies. Give 'em the finger, when a weapon's been used once, discard it; beware of clever fast-talking survivalists (Emma Stone as Wichita and Abigail Breslin as Little Rock); and it's never to late to check out Pacific Playland. If you're going to function as an individual, things are bound to be tough; and uniting your interests in order to obtain common objectives requires a cultivated degree of expedient trust (your chances of succeeding being ridiculously sublime) (in the beginning you have plenty of opportunity to proceed unnoticed). The showdown will eventually come and your success is dependent upon the reception of your cultural/musical/political/commercial/ . . . aesthetic. Just follow the lead of these four reluctant heroes and you're bound to receive critical acclaim.

She's Out of My League

Can't say I understand much about the dating world besides the fact that people often go out on dates and get to fool around afterwards. Yup, that's about all I know, but my lack of knowledge regarding this subject helped me to understand Jay Baruchel's hapless Kirk in the new romantic comedy She's Out of My League, and I was glad to see that he had a couple of moves to show off. Kirk's life is stuck in a predictable routine wherein he goes to work, hangs out with his friends, is derided by his sibling, condescended to by his family, and bored with his job as a Transportation Security Administrator at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Not much has changed over the last ten years and he can't get over the one girl he ever dated, Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), who has managed to maintain a social relationship with his parents. Then, out of the blue, like a wild, blond, voluptuous, productive, maelstrom, Molly (Alice Eve) enters his life, fully equipped with a well paying job and a vivacious personality. She's into Kirk but Kirk can't figure out why and the two engage in a complicated dialogue concerning the compatibility of their divergent lifestyles.

If you like raunchy masculine jock humour tempered by contemplative productive principles you'll probably enjoy She's Out of My League. Jim Field Smith layers his film with a thorough contingent of adolescent humour, considerate compromises, and elated evaluations. The subject matter (should a well endowed successful female date a gaunt mundane male) receives serious reflection and writers Sean Anders and John Morris don't simply pepper their dialogue with one-dimensional catch phrases (Kirk's friends each represent a character type however: Stainer the jock extreme, Jack, the thoughtful mechanic, Kirk, the comic unconfident shy individual, Devon, the sensitive helpful married man [T. J. Miller, Mike Vogel, and Nate Torrence]). A couple of scenes could have been left out to shorten it up a bit, and the feminine point of view receives a lot less screen time, but its final message is something I have to applaud for it firmly suggests that hope still exists.

Alice in Wonderland

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is back in Alice in Wonderland, another trip down the rabbit hole into the blue collar realm of the working class. Having run away from her aristocratic engagement party, Alice is ready to hide out among the people before choosing whether or not to marry the ungodly Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill). But unbeknownst to her, her underground world has been ravaged by the wicked Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and her nouveau-riche Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee). The Mad-Hatter (Johnny Depp), Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), and Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) are still doing their best to go about their daily business, but Underland's playful, picturesque, phantasmagorical playground has been seriously destabilized (the majestic White Queen [Anne Hathaway] powerless and distraught). Will Alice passively accept these changes and quietly look on as her friends and acquaintances are scurrilously downtrodden? Not on her watch. After the blue collar workers remind her who she is, it's payback time, and the Red Queen had better be ready for a full on aristocratic onslaught of revolutionary fury. Dramatics aside, the film's made for kids and Linda Woolverton's script is tame and family friendly. A lot of scenes are cut short and could have used a bit more dialogue to strengthen their characterizations (when the Mad-Hatter first encounters Stayne, the Knave of Hearts [Crispin Glover], for instance). The relatively sane Mad-Hatter's character is built-up at the expense of the surrounding cast and it would have been nice to see some of the supporting characters receive more screen time. And Alice's unfortunate return to her nascent social realm is far to cutesy and perfect. Predictable and saccharine yet jocular and entertaining, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland packs a solid kitsch punch with an extra couple of jujubes. And one more thing, Mia Wasikowska's performance is outstanding and whomever decided to keep her off the promotional poster made a serious mistake (like the film made more money because Johnny Depp's highlighted on the poster).

New Moon

I've seen better films than Chris Weitz's New Moon. In fact, I've seen much much better films that Chris Weitz's New Moon. I enjoyed Twilight because I wasn't familiar with the story or any of the characters, generally like vampire films, and was entertained by its down home country charm. But in Twilight's sequel these characters are supposed to dynamically grow and change and develop and evolve, which, I'm afraid, they don't, in fact, most of the film just follows around heartbroken Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) as she pines for lost love Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) while taking unfair advantage of the feelings of Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) whose too ingenuous to know any better. And when it comes to choosing between them does she pick bucolic Jacob, with his intricate knowledge of blue collar affairs and humble well-meaning disposition? No, no she does not, she chooses aristocratic Edward so that she can fly high with the elite and enjoy a fast-paced urbanized existence even though Jacob is better for her which can't help but tear ya up inside. Perhaps she should go for both of them and give birth to Aristotle's golden mean, a werewolf-vampire; not sure if that's what Aristotle was after but who knows! Apart from that, unless you want to watch a teenaged girl lament her failed relationship while engaging in reckless acts and crying for 90 minutes, I suggest you steer clear of New Moon and wait for Eclipse to be released this June.

It's bound to be better.

Do Communists Have Better Sex?

André Meier's “Do Communists Have Better Sex?” playfully examines the cold war sexual dynamics of Eastern and Western Germany. The film consists of interviews with prominent intellectuals, newscasts, theoretical observations regarding the ideological motivations promoting different sexual attitudes within the two countries, propaganda, and contrasting Christian and Trade Union viewpoints concerning birth control (with comedic cartoons interspersed throughout). The contrasts are strikingly manufactured and Meier's film doesn’t try to solve anything. Instead, it places different approaches within a light-hearted yet provocative frame that gives both sides the chance to display their motivations. In the East, there isn't as much to buy, but there's all kinds of room for the development of one's imagination.

The screening I viewed at Cinema du Parc was followed by two American educational films. In the first, an Italian who speaks English with an accent awaits the birth of his child. However, his child is born dead and his purebred American doctor (who speaks perfect English) informs him that the cause of death was syphilis (purebred Americans never get syphilis!). Fortunately for this noble savage, a cure for syphilis exists, enabling him and his wife to have more children in the future. The end of the film vilifies brothels and who is shown operating these brothels but an African American woman? Racist ethnocentric propaganda at its best cunningly indoctrinating the land of the free. No mention is made of the costs associated with the required medical treatment. Fortunately, this humble Italian-American baker was likely free to receive an additional mortgage.

The second video chronicles the sexual development of a caucasian American teenage girl. She is interested in sex but confused. Her father has no advice and quietly reads the paper while his wife cooks dinner and takes care of the family. After a disastrous encounter with a nogoodnik who is only interested in one thing, she falls for a beautiful caucasian American boy. The quarterback of their high school football team no doubt! Afterwards, their relationship flourishes because they decide to have their sexual union sanitized by the bonds of marriage, legitimizing the purity of their future. Note that they come from the same social class, revel in their popularity (in moderation), and only have jealousy confronting their happiness. No mention is made of material sexual realities because everything is perfect, and only people who have something wrong with them could possibly not know how to naturally engage in healthy sexual activity. Propagandistic drivel, straight from the puritanical pulpit, idealistically scoring another touchdown for one-dimensional conservative points of view. Came close to throwing up my popcorn. With laughter!

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore, filmmaker, social activist, practical idealist, prominent voice. For twenty years he's been crafting socially conscious films which subvert the wealthy American elite in a playful, satirical fashion, and Capitalism: A Love Story once again displays his characteristic dynamic wit. Within, he uses conservative tropes to convey his liberal message to a wider audience. He interviews progressive Catholic thinkers to reestablish the left wing religious dimension (not to say that said dimension is exclusively Catholic, Moore just happens to have been raised Catholic so he interviews Catholic priests primarily). He focuses on his home town of Flint Michigan and includes a scene shot with his dad. He seeks unionized social justice with the degree of confident bravado you'd expect from a small town Western sheriff (masked by a subdued delivery). And he clearly indicates who the American villains are, to the best of his abilities, thereby utilizing the Republican political form and revitalizing it with ethical Democratic content (while simultaneously highlighting Democratic disappointments). He uncovers Citigroup documents which indicate that 1% of the population has more wealth than 95% of the American people combined; he points out that the majority of Americans have no hope of becoming one of the lucky few and could benefit from forming labour unions; he presents codetermination worker cooperatives (California's Alvarado Street Bakery and Wisconsin's Isthmus Engineering) which actually use democratic ideals to structure their business "hierarchies" as well as Vermont's socially democratic Senator Bernie Sanders; he includes footage of how Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the Flint Sit-Down Strike (1936) by sending in the military to protect striking workers; and he suggests that some German businesses have adopted social democratic practices which allow workers to elect members of their company's board of directors. He points out a lot of things and it's a film so the level of analysis is often terse and sentimental, quickly jumping from one scene to the next, presenting a wide variety of possibilities without offering a sincere degree of reflection. And it's also a film inasmuch as it's symphonically built with crescendoes and diminuendos, good guys and bad guys, ambiguity, and a compelling climax. Moore mentions that the one thing which frightens the plutocrats the most is that every American citizen has a vote and can theoretically elect individuals who threaten their capitalistic monopoly with progressive universal legislation. In presenting Barak Obama, Moore cleverly suggests that perhaps he is the person America's been waiting for while carefully enumerating his corporate sponsors.

Ichi

Fumihiko Sori's Ichi presents a resilient blind beautiful sword fighter (Haruka Ayase as Ichi) travelling the Japanese countryside alone in search of the sightless man who helped cultivate her skill, playing the shamisen to make ends meet. Unexpectedly along for the ride is Toma Fujihira (Takao Ôsawa), a shunned samurai warrior who has been unable to draw his sword ever since its blade accidentally took his mother's sight. The pair winds up in a small inn town where the peaceful innkeeping Shirakawa group have had enough of the ruthless, disfigured Banki (Shido Nakamura) and his gang. As they become caught up in the conflict, will Ichi help Fujihira draw his blade?, and will Fujihira melt Ichi's chilly disposition so that she can escape her volatile past?

The film's entertaining enough, with strictly drawn boundaries regarding good and evil, effective doubling, and generally strong performances (especially from Yôsuke Kubozuka as Toraji Shirakawa) (although Bandi's trademark laugh becomes tiresome). A wide variety of nefarious no-good-nicks suffer the wrath of Ichi's calm and delicate back hand slash, and Fujihira provides alarming and awkward comic relief until he comes to terms with his solidified strength. The final sword fight is a bit of a let down, short and to the point rather than extended and intricately choreographed. This is a shame insofar as three of the four main characters suffer from a disability and had the final showdown been elaborately executed, it would have formally accentuated the ways in which said disabilities had been overcome (although by leaving it short and sweet it reflects the theme that disabilities are serious liabilities in Japan, and therefore extremely difficult to overcome). In addition, Ichi seems to be championing feminist forms of political action (Ichi's cultural shackles represented by her blindness) but in the end it's the men who take care of the serious business. Nevertheless, with a fast-paced plot filled with consistent and multidimensional action, Ichi's scope is adventurous and dynamic if not bold and progressive. Part comedy, part romance, while still developing a fluctuating sense of evolving responsibility, Ichi slices and dices its way into the samurai genre, curiously examining gender and power.

Law Abiding Citizen

Taking the law into your own hands, frustrated by the deals and dilemmas necessitated by the nature of the legal system: it's pay back time. In F. Gary Gray's Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) refuses to accept the compromise which frees one of his wife (Brooke Mills) and daughter's (Ksenia Hulayev) killers (Christian Stolte as Clarence Darby) after only 5 years and strikes back with a full on blitzkrieg. His object of vengeance is principally lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) but his methods seek to "incarcerate" anyone associated with the original trial. His goal: teach Rice that you don't make deals with murderers. His methodology: take out anyone and everyone responsible. As a work of fiction, Law Abiding Citizen works well insofar as the ending champions an either/or legal system where the ambiguous dimension structuring day to day judicial decision making is severely criticized (and the either/or mentality is fictionalized). However, if it is stating that this either/or mentality should be adopted, then, from a more practical point of view, the ending becomes problematic. One way out of this predicament is to firmly interpret the ending as a situation where Shelton represents the subjective rogue, Rice, the objective standard. Rice can apply his objective standards generally aside from situations where he encounters the subjective rogue, situations wherein there is no compromise due to the designs of the rogue's ambitions. But if this dimension is being fictionalized then Gray supports a system where Rice can only apply his objective standards to situations where there is no compromise, thereby making the exception the universal and leading us back to the high and low imbroglio. Whether or not Shelton wanted Rice to kill him in the end is ambivalent as well: did Rice truly outsmart Shelton or was Shelton expecting Rice to outsmart him? Was he simply prepared for both options? Does this layer of ambivalence suggest that Gray is fictionalizing the ambiguous dimension of legal proceedings in order to applaud an objective either/or system which is subtly yet directly presented? Either it's an ambiguous ending or it's not, or perhaps the ending is both ambiguous and polar. You decide.

Joyeux Noël

The setting's World War I. Scottish and French troops are fighting the Germans. Heartbreak, lesions, and loss on both sides as they dig in and fight it out attrition style. But Christmas arrives and three commanders miraculously come together and order a ceasefire to give their troops time to celebrate. This unsettles their superior officers and soon enough there's hell to pay, respect for humanity be damned. What Christian Carion's Joyeux Noël points out is that superior officers who are theoretically responsible for representing and maintaining acceptable models of behaviour often take none to kindly to being outshone by their subordinates, especially when such actions resolutely salute the ideals for which each respective officer stands. A gregarious film showcasing hearty camaraderie and its humanistic complement, Joyeux Noël is a must for the annual holiday circuit inasmuch as it thoroughly embodies the spirit of the season.

Up

It's never to late to follow your dreams and you can almost accomplish anything. This message curiously permeates Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson's Up (a Disney/Pixar production) although it is examined from competing patriarchal conceptions of the aged caucasian male. The hero: Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner and Jeremy Leary) and his wife Ellie (Elie Doctor) have dreamed of following Charles Muntz's footsteps and travelling to South America's Paradise Falls since they met. But during their marriage they could never find the funds or the time to do so. After Ellie dies and Carl unfortunately assaults a construction worker, he decides it's time to live their dream and turns their house into a flying machine propelled by thousands of balloons. Accidentally along for the ride is young boy scout Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is working on his helping the elderly badge. The villain: Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) has been living in Paradise Falls for decades trying to capture a rare bird after having been accused of fabricating its existence by the scientific community. While unable to trap the bird, he has created a collar which allows dogs to speak and attached one to each of the "hounds" in his pack. After Carl and Russell reach the area surrounding Paradise Falls, the bird in question takes a liking to Russell's candy bar and begins following them to Mr. Fredricksen's chagrin. Only after Russell helps Carl to discover that Muntz will likely kill the bird after capture does he begin to snap out of his self-possessed fantasy and start fighting back against his childhood hero.

On the one hand we have the old-school conception of the traditional white patriarch, Charles Muntz, for whom nature is a resource to be sequestered and conquered. Obviously possessing an extremely gifted intellect, he cannot overcome the slander attached to his good name and rather than finding other ways to positively contribute to society lives out his days in the wilderness adhesively clutching the past. In the beginning, Carl too wishes to hold on to the past and live out the rest of his life in what he and his wife always dreamed would be paradise. However, young Russell's influence inspires him to stand up and take a side (the child being the teacher of the man) and he embraces the revolutionary environmentalist point of view, disregards his possessions, and decides that it's time the traditional patriarchal male destabilizes his historical stereotype by overtly challenging the forces of imperialism. Thus, the child helps the old man to recognize the horrific dimension of his fantasy and he is then able to develop a confident voice of his own which he uses to reinvigorate his reality. It's no coincidence that the incomprehensible chocolate loving bird is female and that Carl would have never embarked on his journey had he not callously assaulted a worker.