A blunt invasive school-of-hard-knocks step-father imbroglio pejoratively and lasciviously attempts to assert control in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's dark The Way Way Back, as quasi-conjugal security and stability adjudicates the virtues of its commitment, the historical socializations of both partners and the ways in which they complicate their attempts to activate an ideal contentiously affecting their potentially idyllic summer vacation, a cool misunderstood reserved teen (Liam James as Duncan) struggling his way through, while the bumbling and the beautiful accelerate the malaise.
But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.
I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.
A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.
It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.
First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).
Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.
While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.
It could work people!
Monday, July 29, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Unfinished Song
Routine.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Kapringen (A Hijacking)
Pirates, sailing the seven seas, or the Indian Ocean in this case, in search of bountiful booty, navigate, locate, negotiate.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Pacific Rim
Can't decide if this film was brutal, interdimensional, or exceptional, meaning it was fun, if not ludicrous, to watch.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Lone Ranger
A naive child's material desires accidentally instigate a collusive capitalistic intercultural catastrophe, as contemporary conditionals refurbish historical hindsights with oratorical laments, and a story is told, details epically bulleted, questions, considerations, responses, internally and externally as the dialogue between listener and storyteller is narratively emboldened, and The Lone Ranger arrives incognito, possessing both lock and key, determined to develop a fair and equitable jurisprudent viaduct, even after it becomes clear that the canyon's been railroaded.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
Friday, July 12, 2013
The Internship
As versatile exploratory eclectronic dynamics instigate widespread structural changes within the American economy, two salespersons, two heroes, must reconfigure their occupational allegiances, adjusting their garrulous genuflections to an in/directly interactive domain, sticking to their guns while leaving room for error, boldly entering a new domain where Vince Vaughn (Billy McMahon) has never gone before, wherein past general approaches must swiftly absorb sundry divergent nodes and particulars to fasten new understandings to a previously non-existent fluctuating multifaceted computational interface, psychologically constructed on the fly, after which previous sustainable reflexes find themselves transfigured yet productively cogent, as youth and age contend in a transfixed multiplex.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo)
Assembly lines randomly recite a literary legion of improvisationalists who immediately harness their impressions ensemble with the goal of creating a tale of romantic note.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Frances Ha
Mismatched integrities and harmonious discrepancies awkwardly balance Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha, infuriating yet emancipating missteps and miscues deftly choreographing the undatable's sprightly adaptation to bourgeois vignettes, which catalyze her own artistic vertices.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
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