Kon-Tiki

Since a young age I've preserved a healthy skepticism regarding whether or not Columbus discovered America.

As I'm sure many others have as well.

Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.

I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.

But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.

Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.

Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.

Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.

Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.

It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.

A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.

I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.

And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?

Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.

Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?

Worth investigating anyways.

The Great Gatsby

Extravagant timidity humbly refrains an opulent recourse to true's love sustain.

Spare no expense, attract the best and the brightest, the emotion's too deep, the goal of the tightest.

Business contacts whose illicit elixirs submerge their protractive congenial mixtures.

Sponsor time honoured traditions of courtship, implying ambitious circuitous quartets.

As fate's lavish weave blends with chance's reprieve, the noblest of dreams hail permanency.

For people, and Queens, and the prettiest things.

Preferred Australia and Moulin Rouge!

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek, born again.

Was a bit disappointed that Star Trek was born again with the crew from The Original Series, but it's not like there aren't manifold versions of Hamlet out there, Batman will likely live to see another day, Hawaii Five-O is back (I've never seen either of the series), and Beatles and Rolling Stones cover bands will likely continue to sing for centuries to come. 

I was hoping to see the Rolling Stones in Montréal next month but the cheapest seat I could find near the rafters costs over 200 hundred dollars. I paid 34 dollars to see them in 1994.

Bring on the cover bands.

Star Trek Into Darkness confidently gambles that the success of its predecessor paved the way for it to take greater liberties with Star Trek's most sacred moments, and I'm assuming every Trekkie has already seen the film twice, and are already dividing into different fastidious factions, each with their own take on the reintroduction of Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the pastiche of Star Trek II's classic ending, so I'm discussing related plot details.

In my opinion, the new cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise were ill-equipped and unready to incorporate this classic ending, nor the famous Khan scream, and their sophomoric attempts to do so, more concerned with travelling at warp speed than taking the time to generate genuine emotion, even though the trap they fall into justifies this dependence, and within the film the new cast and crew is ill-equipped and unready to confront their adversaries, were, still, disheartening.

The cameo from Leonard Nimoy didn't suck me in. 

Giving Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) expanded responsibilities while leaving them primarily in the background heightened the tension.

The who-should-be-captain dialogue between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) was played out in the last film. 

And McCoy's (Karl Urban) all wrong (no offense to Karl Urban, he does his best with the material).   

Still though, if they hadn't touched Star Trek II's ending, and classic Khan scream, Into Darkness could have been quite different. 

And it's not that I didn't think the fight between Khan and Spock was awesome. It's always awesome when Spock suddenly fights in a Star Trek moment, since you suddenly remember that not only is he one of the phenomenon's smartest humanoid characters, he's also one of the toughest.

Giving Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a strong supporting hopefully continuous role was a great idea. 

Introducing consequential conflict amongst the senior staff, Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Kirk, went beyond the professional dynamics found in the films featuring the cast of The Original Series, and since this consequential conflict sees constructive results, it fits nicely with contemporary conflict management theories, while directly encouraging freewill.   

Benedict Cumberbatch impresses as Khan. 

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock's relationship reappears but isn't focused upon, rather, it comically ameliorates an otherwise typical shuttlecraft descension, accentuating the difficulties of sustaining romantic ties to people with whom you work, while giving Spock a memorable opportunity to advance his coherent logic. 

Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) provides a pestiferous dimension rarely seen within the Federation, thereby diversifying Star Trek's internal cohesions, while preempting a sequel, sigh, where there's a war with the Klingons. 

This seems more like Picard territory, where there's a possible war, but Picard finds a way to negotiate a peaceful settlement. 

Much too early for Picard however.

Perhaps the Borg will attack midway resulting in a sudden pact between Klingons and the Federation.

Kirk never fought the Borg.

Please don't revisit the Nexus. 

But a different ending. Something radically different. This would have lessened the cheesy kitsch factor and not caused me to immediately remove my 3D glasses. 

The Wrath of Khan is the only Star Trek film that can stand on its own outside the Star Trek parallax. 

Discourses of the sacred. 

Khan!

Blackbird

Examining the abysmal side of small town teenage individuality, as the newer kid, a goth stranger from the city who can't adjust to hushing up, hunting, and playing hockey, falls for a girl who likes him but also makes sure to attend every game.

Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.

Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.

Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).

The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.

But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.

It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.

It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.

And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.

He's just a kid.

You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.

In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.

Disturbing, demented, dissonance.

A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.

Still Mine

Couldn't help but wonder what Michael McGowan's Still Mine would have been like had it been made in the States.

The narrative introduces a stern yet friendly do-it-yourself farmer named Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) and his loving wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), 2 of their 7 children, and the traditional family structure that intergenerationally holds them together.

Craig is 86 and in incredible shape.

When it becomes apparent that his home can no longer safely accommodate Irene, due to her ailing health, he decides to build a new one, on his own, going so far as to cut down the requisite trees, by himself, this guy's hardcore.

But bureaucratic regulations and an intransigent unsympathetic inspector (Jason X's Jonathan Potts as Rick) go to ridiculously meticulous lengths in their adherence to related laws, even after Mr. Morrison yields to their demands, doing everything he can to uphold them, paying hefty fees along the way.

Craig Morrison is exceptional.

He's 86.

He's in better shape than I will ever be.

He doesn't only know how to build a solidly constructed immaculately modest house, he can do it, he starts doing it, he does it.

Still Mine makes a great case for the fact that some individuals possess the necessary skills and knowledge to develop intricate ideas and see them through, on their own land, even though they may not hold related educational credentials and may be unaware of the legal consequences of doing so at first, yet if they are still willing to abide by said consequences after discovering their existence, they should therefore be given some productive leeway by obnoxious young bucks with nothing better to do but cross every t.

Mr. Morrison yields.

He pays.

He plays ball.

Weapons aren't involved, the film's not called The Grandfather Clause, he has the wherewithal, and doesn't go ape shit.

I didn't like how he cut down old growth spruce but that's another matter.

He makes a funny point about how many of the houses built in St. Martins New Brunswick without a National Building Code 200 years ago are still standing.

Still Mine also romantically nurtures a devoted conception of marriage, which is difficult for me to understand after all that Proust.

Not that everyone isn't devoted to marriage in In Search of Lost Time.

They simply employ a counterintuitive methodology in their application of various codes of conduct.

Wrong

Small talk.

Having the time.

Honestly expressing oneself.

A hard day's work.

The first film that I've seen that takes banal quotidian frustrations and places them generally within a framework resembling something like a bourgeois displacement of Twin Peak's Black/White Lodge, wherein neuroses and hyperanalytic tendencies proceed, full-speed-ahead, even as corporeal and material structures inexplicably change shape and regenerate, the insignificant theoretically becomes essential, and declarations of counterproductive antisocial lassitudes bifurcate, with explanations required and clarifications sought after, a face burned by acid, a formula for hard wiring permanent love, detectives hired to figure out what's already known to have taken place, figure 13-d, it (Wrong) could be qualified as Kafkaesque but the transitions, the hilarious transitions, director Quentin Dupieux isn't only a master of framing confused asymmetrical curious yet despondent facial expressions, again and again and again, it keeps working, he does the same thing when transitioning from scene to scene, meaning that something ornery takes place, the mood becomes anxious, and then we're back to a comfortable pastoral cheery suburban image, overflowing with stability and integrity, happiness and relaxation, there's no job but the bills are paid, let's start again fresh, like you're having a picnic in a meadow, lakeside, surrounded by elk wearing glasses, before hero Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) must once again attempt to socially interact, and everyone's notable lack of expertise, or bizarre exhaustive supernatural comprehensions, violently yet sweetly cover things up, like a thunder storm bombarding an idyllic mountain stream.

Pets are important.

Routines are important.

It's important to ask questions.

Scientific exploration has no limits.

Caught somewhere between the anal retentive and the blissfully vacant, Wrong appreciates the ways in which the extroverted ideal (see Susan Cain's informative Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking [I love this book!]) has been adopted by oh so many people who were not born to embrace it, but still adamantly attempt to do so.

The key seems to be to buy a pet.

Love it.

End up crushed when it disappears.

And revel in ecstasy when it returns.

Magic: the magic.

Best comedy I've seen in awhile. Stand Up Guys is just as good, but Wrong does it without star power.

Accept for William Fichtner.

Who is now one of my favourite actors.

Almost forgot about the final song.

Still laughing. I'll be thinking about this film and laughing for months.

Dependability.

Wrong defines dependability.

It does.

Iron Man 3

Adding a surprisingly human dimension to Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) Iron Man, through which relatable stresses such as panic attacks are relativistically normalized through recourse to the exceptional, Iron Man 3 finds him suffering from the aftershocks of his debut with the Avengers, aftershocks which force him to begrudgingly confront his mortality.

Kind of.

At first, he compensates by stretching his extroverted insignia to the limits by trash talking a terrorist who then uses his arsenal to obliterate the Stark residence, leaving him theoretically helpless after he barely escapes.

He is exceptional however and thanks to an avenue of inquiry established by his prior research, fortunately lands himself in a crucial situation wherein his gifts are practically vetted.

Screenplay writers Drew Pearce and Shane Black (who also directed) do a great job here of rationally justifying a seemingly highly improbable scenario.

Colonel James Rhodes's (Don Cheadle) dialogue with Stark is used to rationally justify another seemingly highly improbable scenario later on as well.

They also play with the device which sees franchises seeking to extend their limits by introducing youth (something remarkably different more generally) to nurture a newfound pluralization.

Yet shortly after doing this it becomes clear that the Iron Man films will not be (heavily) relying on such devices, as Tony harshly yet avuncularly explains.

Excellent confident synthesis of the particular (the Iron Man films) and the universal (movie trilogies generally).

Some of the minor characters shockingly receive a lot of depth as well as comedic components of Machete's narrative unreel.

The film makes it clear that experimenting on humans is unethical by attaching this component of its narrative to the villains, villains who were created by Stark's callous self-obsession.

In the end, Stark perfects their methods, however, thereby leaving the film in an ambiguous domain wherein which it's difficult to discern what it's clearly stating.

Clarity is important regarding such matters.

The protagonists use technology to differentiate themselves, the villains, experimental performance enhancing pseudodrugs.

These drugs themselves were developed using nefarious methods, and in my opinion, the film would have been stronger if Stark had destroyed everything having to do with them, even though he was indirectly responsible for their creation, in order to find an alternative cure for his condition.

I understand that this is highly improbable, but having an exceptionally gifted iconic individual not use said gifts to actively create an ethically acceptable alternative by overtly employing different tactics while directly acknowledging said differentiation doesn't make sense to me.

Not using research obtained through such means to pursue beneficial ends does make sense to me.

The ending would have been stronger had Iron Man acted accordingly.

The Pharmacist

The Pharmacist's bland yet perky narcoleptic metainsouciance is amphetamanic.

For the first half anyways.

Not that the second half isn't worth sticking around for.

Let me explain.

Writers Christopher Craddock and Indy Randhawa seem well aware of what audiences may be expecting from a typical run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

The delivery of The Pharmacist's early lines suggest that this awareness is mobilizing a derogatory hyperreflexive irreverent crude yet sympathetic aesthetic, wherein it's difficult to distinguish the zingers from the platitudes, inasmuch as the material presented can potentially appeal to myriad disillusioned tastes, succeeding scenes observe their predecessors with witticisms which motivate the actual plot, the metaplot, and the meta-double-down (the plot which suicidally yet fertilely recognizes how this device has been played as well as the sycophantic yet authoritative intricacies of its institutionalization [I like this form {in films}]), the ways in which the subtitles are showcased will hopefully become an industry norm, while the protagonist, a Franco-Albertan pharmacist suffering from narcolepsy, continuously drifts off, which, during the film's first half, with the help of animation and various changes of setting, genre, etc., metaphorically harnesses multimedial synergies in which a fluctuating banal surreal jaunty consternation unpredictably flourishes.

I was hoping the multimedial influence would sustain the unpredictability, but the film eventually settles on a somewhat glum consistent course, whose insufficiencies are despondently yet quirkily ironed out beforehand, which would have caused me to think its course was tragic if its hyperawareness didn't make me think it was giving me the finger, not that I don't appreciate that, and during the second half I did keep drifting off and then refocusing, as if the film's narcoleptic amplitudes were catching, and the ways in which The Pharmacist gives-'er are commendable, the audaciously meek Mad Dog, pharmaceutically gettin'-'er-done.

What else?

The film feels oppressed by its own design. This is often hilarious.

It would have been nice if there were no reconciliations.

Just brainy underground shape-shifting embers.

No need for generalized coherency in such films.

Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life)

Inuit hunter Tiivii (Natar Ungalaaq) finds himself in a bit of a pickle in Benoît Pilon's Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life), after he's transported away from his family on Baffin Island, where he's lived his entire life, by boat, to a sanatorium in Québec City, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

That's a serious transition.

Linguistic factors initially accentuate his sense of isolation until he's introduced to a precocious youngster fluent in both languages.

Kaki (Paul-André Brasseur) enables Tiivii to communicate, share his stories, modestly acculturate, and actively interact.

The film innocently blends differing urban and rural dispositions in a wondrous yet suffocating unexpected encounter with seemingly magical technological and naturalistic attributes whose intricate designs and developments stifle while encouraging Tiivii's desire for exploration.

I loved his first sighting of a tree.

Intercultural relations are helplessly, patiently, curiously, humorously, and communally negotiated, as differing aspects of culturo-linguistic adaptations socialize.

Thought the ending was a bit too tragic.

Seemed like a happy ending film to me.

Thought Tiivii's telephone conversation with his wife was cut off too quickly as well.

Excellent expression of an individual's relationship with the land however.