Suffragette

A family.

A job.

A resolute drive to maintain the status quo and make ends meet within de/mobilizing socioeconomic circumstances.

Early twentieth century Britain.

Miserable times for female labourers. They work longer days than men for less money, have to put up with the sexual advances of their bosses to keep their positions, the law favours their husbands who have total control over their households and children, they don't have the right to vote, and can rarely enter male dominated professions; thus, they can't either elect representatives who sympathize with their plights, or provide upstanding examples of competent professional clarity.

The suffragette movement developed in response and the curious young previously unaware Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) soon finds herself caught up in its momentum.

Suffragette uses her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) to accentuate the obstinate ironclad stereotypical dogma categorically dismissing women's rights, as he never even considers trying to understand suffragette outrage, and locks Maud out of their house, preventing her from seeing her son, after her civil disobedience is noted in the unforgiving press.

The authoritative policeperson (Brendan Gleeson as Inspector Arthur Steed) violently suppressing their movement which becomes more volatile after their right to vote is denied, does begin to consider the logic of their cause, during a powerful scene where Maud, having been thoroughly beaten down for her actions, still argumentatively upholds the rationality of universal suffrage, eyes almost glazing over with despondency, as she boldly reminds him that women make up 50% of the population.

He doesn't suddenly start supporting them, but the change in his demeanour suggests he may have been part of the establishment that eventually granted women freedoms similar to those enjoyed by British men.

Suffragette's about power, and the ways in which an unquestioning adherence to cultural codes of conduct can negatively minimize freedoms for large groups, those benefiting from the composition of the codes not willing to see them modified, those oppressed by them too frightened to speak out, some of them revelling in their advantages, to the point where they'll utilize brutal methods to ensure their authority endures.

It uses the example of a naive heartbreaking beautiful trapped reluctant ingénue and the group she befriends to emphasize their abuses.

It isn't the strongest film I've seen championing the rights of oppressed groups, because it focuses too intently on a small cross-section, and doesn't multidimensionally stratify its intense historical homage.

Nevertheless, by focusing intently on a small cross-section, it does tenderly yet intransigently present the need for gender balance, as well as rights within the workplace, in any time period, by not shying away from and humanizing specific harsh realities, which condescendingly define/d many prolonged historical epochs.

Worth checking out.

The Martian

Accidentally left behind and isolated on planet Mars, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) digs in deep in order to robustly flourish against overwhelming interplanetary odds, his team rapidly travelling back to Earth, unaware, that he still lives.

Contact is soon made with NASA headquarters yet bureaucratic dillydallying prevents him from communicating with his unsuspecting teammates.

Forced to survive, he employs his botanical ingenuity to boldly cultivate nutritious potato crops, while strategic planning contemplates his rescue back home.

The odds are grim that he'll ever return alive.

Yet trash talk and contentious humour ensure his independence is universally dispersed.

Spatial tenacity.

Temporal quid pro quo.

The Martian, juxtaposing the intense public relations of executive decision making with the humble orchestrations of an astronaut tilling barren countryside, indoors, mathematical inclusivity, scientific parchment, necessitated artistic leisure, perplexing public speaking, it strictly operates within established timelines to generate a complicated sense of extraordinary repartee by directly laying it down without overlooking conflict or relaxation.

Within this dynamic frame collegiality heartwarms and action accelerates whether it be physical exclamations or tense cerebral intersects.

Shaking hands and deliberating, the script's tight and the direction excites, from multiple starstrikes, with collective and individual decision making, infinitesimally precise calculations, and plenty, plenty, of disco.

Not bad.

Brooklyn

The down home, the perspicacious, the loving, the transformative, a new life in Brooklyn awaits modest Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) as she leaves her hometown in Ireland in search of difference abroad, job prospects and alternative acquaintances expanding her conscientious integrity, homesickness and tedium challenging her burgeoning resolve.

It's a feel good tale, moving along at a brisk pace, Eilis's self-sacrifices endearing her to those she meets, who respond by opening doors which she resoundingly walks through.

There's character development but it's sparse and fixated, every aspect of the script calculated to polish stock responses, the polish heartwarmingly uplifting and consistent nevertheless, as every chance interaction collocates constitutional blooms.

A straight shooter, consummately conflicted when she returns home for a funeral, an idyllic pastoral future suddenly materializing, chanting out between worlds, delicately torn asunder.

If Brooklyn's momentum had occasionally paused, swayed, reflected, something more profound could have perhaps been stated, a visceral dimension arising from the resultant contemplations, a judicious milky way transcendentalizing urban and rural.

It's not concerned with such interstellar abstractions however, and competently accomplishes what it sets out to do, a straightforward yet enticing examination of goodwill, restricted yet nimble, acquiesced to trouble making.

This style of filmmaking makes the accomplishment of hard fought goals seem far too easy by reducing devastating complexities to a collection of brief highly saturated moonbeams.

Still, it's nice to see positive films that mildly if not naively celebrate change in flux.

Like roses or a box of chocolates.

Maple syrup.

Caramel.

Carol

Longevity, expectations, accepting who people are as opposed to who you want them to be, appreciating it as they change independently, organically, rather than as a result of the imposition of deductive logic, stereotypes, roles, baby dolls, damsels in distress, it works for some I suppose, for intervals, at times, blunt force and supple misgivings, dialogues constructed, abbreviated, expanded upon, which examine how the masculine robotically initiates, how the feminine submissively emerges, I don't know many couples like this but I see them in movies and read about them in books, often, the man not in love with the woman herself but how she looks believing it's his duty to dogmatically define her, to make her his radiant reflection, consumed by his strength, obsessed with his aura, vice versa, which may work for a time, inspiring passion and humour fuelled by traditional adherences, admittances, basic conceptions of the natural, the good, the permanent, until predictability sets in, not many able to exist for another exclusively, whether husband, wife, servant, manager, or concubine, and as time shifts and moments fade the desire for individuality, for organizational renaissance, eclipses established power dynamics, and authoritative constructs engender prolonged disputes if love can't compensate, can't cooperate, endure.

Carol Aird's (Cate Blanchett) husband can't accept who she is, and, thoroughly versed in chivalry, can only truly love her if she innocently obeys.

Yields to his will.

About to travel down the same path, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) meets Carol one day at a department store, an electric fascination etherealizing their conversation, gloves forgotten encouraging future meetings, trips to the country, unheralded destinations.

Free love.

Carol gently explores and patiently navigates disparate domains to timidly yet vividly explore ecstasy in bloom, critiquing those who too rigidly seek consensus, while celebrating the joys inherent in true romance.

Refreshingly unobtrusive, it modestly presents the facts and gracefully frees from guilt the tender.

Without seeming like it's trying to do anything at all.

Sensitive sweetly flowing wisdom.

I usually don't take note of costume design, but there's a cool scene where Abby Gerhard's (Sarah Paulson) dress suavely matches the chair she's sitting on.

Struck me anyways.

Costume design by Sandy Powell.

Art decoration by Jesse Rosenthal.

I think you're supposed to revel in the power struggle.

I always thought that path led to the dark side.

In love, anyways.

Legend

Underground prestige, the lure of the incorrigibly irascible, sophisticated in its blunt obstinacy, thrilling in its inexhaustible excess, a young girl, fascinated by the criminal underworld, scooped up by a smooth talking gangster, lives the life of an espoused sensation, freed from her drab impoverished prospects, shackled by overwhelming instabilities.

Fears.

The Kray twins (Tom Hardy) dialectically indoctrinate with either a suave well-groomed authenticity or an insatiably psychotic rage, depending on which one is in prison or who commands more clout, Leslie Payne (David Thewlis) efficiently bookkeeping as Ronald's hatred for him slowly grows.

Ronald's indiscretions multiply erratically as time passes and his violent caprice threatens their organization's fundamentals.

Frances Shea (Emily Browning) marries Reggie who has the restrained brains to keep afloat but can't shyly tread while Ronald is intent on drowning.

Active invincibility mortally wounded.

Frances suffocated by the madness.

The Legend, boldly applying a feminine conscience through narration to a gangster film in order to examine chaotic crime through the oft overlooked perspective of an observant non-combatant.

It doesn't work very well, the film struggling to assert itself as either a corrupt frenzy or a righteous indignation, the polarized dialogue thereby generated between both the Krays themselves and the Krays and Frances resultantly muddled and incoherent.

It's possible to successfully pull something like that off but I would argue it requires a less straightforward approach, one which utilizes formal cerebral charm to artistically blend fraternal factions.

Legend's so focused on differentiating the Krays (which it does well) that the secondary material, that which would have transported it to another level, staggers in stagnant inadmissibility.

There are several minor characters of note and the script is quite diverse but hardly any of them develop much personality as the Krays engage in reckless gangstering.

Still, there's a great line equating the underworld and the aristocracy.

A strong effort from the filmmaking team, flush with future potential.

Krampus

Take heed for the information contained herewith concerns spirits of a different kind, whose purpose in regards to Christmas is to malevolently punish and ruin those who disrespect its sincere generosity, arising from the fiery depths of ancient lore to assert his rank as naughtiest, Krampus the unforgiving unleashes his supernatural wrath, the postmodern world unaware of his vengeful agenda and Saint Nicholas unable to counter his chaotic disdain, a heartfelt letter warmly written with tender loving care representative of the true spirit of Christmas is torn to pieces after its author is ritualistically humiliated, said humiliation having cauterized the mutual contempt two related families hold for one another as they attempt to bond over the holidays, in a searing transcendent sweltering condemnation, the wealthier family unimpressed with the gruff pretensions of their less affluent cousins, the less affluent cousins none to subservient to the airs of their relatives, common decency misplaced as they assemble to dine, discourses of purity belittling the times, the letter is torn and they must maintain a united front to defend their families against Krampus's rancour, Omi (Krista Stadler) having met him before, inasmuch as her warnings demand that they exercise extreme caution, lassitude sets in and Krampus's minions infiltrate freely, the Christmas spirit revitalizing their familial fervency as they boldly defend their own, but Krampus is not prone to listen once he has risen, a desperate confrontation ensuing with the festively spiritual maladroitly abandoned, as Krampus reminds them that Christmas requires thanksgiving through his harsh and gratuitous penalties, necrobatically assigned by harbingers of the ungrateful, the absurdity of it all oddly upholding pleasantries like amazement and wonder, the gross infernal exaggerations, the total and complete lack of goodwill, grotesquely generating feelings to the contrary, to the contemporary, insensitively and unconsciously underscoring virtuous contemplations of both bounty and cheer, the beautiful communal ties of the season, rejoicing through the act of gift giving, celebrating life with family and friends, to renew a sense of endearing well being, a mirthful maturation, amusing in solace and laughter.

Trumbo

They actually did it, Hollywood actually made a mainstream film that rationally discusses an individual's right to be politically active on the left, even if you're a communist, the communists are heroes in Trumbo, and those who blacklisted them during the McCarthy era, even John Wayne (David James Elliot), undeniable villains, using their power and influence to prevent hard working Americans from working because they held alternative political views, even going so far as to send them to prison for accessing fundamental American freedoms, while living fundamentally American lives.

Positive things are said about communism within. Trumbo uses the word communist. It's about a bunch of vilified commie writers. The plight of the worker isn't lampooned or infantilized.

I don't believe in communism, or at least am quite skeptical in regards to its practical application or ideas like the permanent surplus, but it is still remarkable to see its proponents championed in a film made in the United States (said proponents weren't as familiar with forced labour during Trumbo's time I'm assuming[the forced labour is supposed to disappear because communism is supposed to arise out of the bounty of hyper-capitalism but history seems to have proven that if you try to adopt communism without the bounty of hyper-capitalism forced labour and limited freedoms abound{unless you're one of the elite few/it's possible that China is trying to create hyper-capitalist conditions to achieve communistic goals but I think it's dangerous to think that way\}]).

I've been wondering how Trumbo managed to see the light of day and it reminded me of some ideas from Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's more social democratic The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, which is a level-headed comparison of statistical data sets from the world's richest countries that suggests inequality is detrimentally effecting the free world's health and well-being, nations like Sweden and Japan scoring high points, countries such as the U.S and Britain not faring so well.

This isn't a book review although I do highly recommend reading the book, but Wilkinson and Pickett do examine the relationship between popularity and governmental initiatives, rationally proving how initiatives which promote a higher degree of equality have brought about monumental changes in various societies when they have been accompanied by popular support, or a logical need to effectively implement them.

One way of looking at this in the anglosphere is to ask the question, "how can we make a more equal society by cashing in on equality?", although that probably isn't how Wilkinson and Pickett would have phrased it. It depends on what you mean by "cash in."

Japan and Sweden apparently have adopted completely different approaches to "cashing in" and both nations enjoy a high degree of prosperous equality, Sweden preferring a system with high taxes which level out the playing field through the provision of governmental social services etc., Japan preferring to ensure that wages are more equal so that more people take home more money and therefore have more money to spend on services that the government would otherwise provide through taxation.

In regards to Trumbo, I'm wondering if its availability is the product of the movements I've been reading about in the U.S at the Huffington Post, American movements which seek a higher degree of social equality, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recognized as their feisty factotum.

It's not that I don't think there are plenty of socially responsible films being made in Hollywood, I think I've proven that Hollywood definitely still has (and always has had) a strong socially constructive urge.

It's more that Trumbo doesn't demonize those who in the past advocated for communism specifically, that it in fact celebrates them, while actually discussing communism, in a gentle somewhat naive way, that heartwarmingly surprised me.

There are too many examples of corrupt communistic bureaucracies for me to think positively about its results in the field, but its goals can influence other discourses on the left who take a less radical approach to fighting poverty and improving standards of living.

It shouldn't be categorically dismissed.

Trumbo boldly presents a life of dedicated action and incredible resolve blended with exceptional ability and tender humanity.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) even falls into the trap of taking himself too seriously and managing his labour force too demandingly, which is a trap that scant resources often creates, which is why the right profits from inequality, such psychological profits earned by first not allowing its opposition to financially tread water and then humiliating it afterwards as a lack of resources challenges the practical application of its ideas.

Japan has low taxes but generally high incomes, that's why Japan is excelling according to The Spirit Level.

If you don't have a disposable income, it's harder to donate to political parties that want to help you acquire a disposable income for instance.

Trumbo's the real deal however, and adjusts his approach as it becomes too overbearing, listening to and understanding his wife's (Diane Lane as Cleo Trumbo) reasonably worried critique.

There's a tendency in some films which examine the past, great men of the past, to focus most of their energy on the husband, their wives often complacently managing the home in the background.

Bridge of Spies does this anyways.

Perhaps this is just the result of specific historical relationships, but it's also a way to normalize stereotypical gender relations without seeming culturally insensitive.

Trumbo is somewhat light for a film that looks at many lives that were ruined by a zealous adherence to a specific point of view.

But it does warmly present the commie point of view while pointing out that it was an American point of view at one time, and that Americans shouldn't be sent to prison for exercising their fundamental freedoms, at any time, that line of thinking corresponding directly to Stalinist or Naziesque approaches (why am I suddenly thinking of the ways in which Donald Trump uses his freedoms?).

It's unfortunate that in the free world people accept unjust methods such as the ones depicted in Trumbo to starve and assault their political adversaries; I'm reminded of the ways in which the Harper government recently vilified environmentalists as an example.

In Trumbo, they illegally take everything away from the opposition and then call the resultant protesters whiners or babies when they legitimately complain, the culprits revelling in their corruption thereafter.

Dalton Trumbo never stopped protesting, and picked his battles wisely. It had a harsh affect on his family for a time, but he recognized his errors and became the person he wanted to be.

A role model for conscientious film writing.

With another outstanding performance by John Goodman (Frank King). There's a hilarious discussion of advocating for working class rights in B movies.

Hey, maybe they just decided to make a film celebrating great writers of the past who happened to be communists. You're free to do that in a free country. Regardless of the political climate.

Secret in their Eyes

Crushing unconscionable all-consuming guilt frenetically drives Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to hunt down a vicious killer, his life having been rigidly repressed ever since he missed an appointment 13 years ago.

Defined by this moment, and the professional relationships he developed therein, he will not yield in his pursuit, and after years of struggling to surface, has finally found a constructive lead.

She still loves him.

And he still loves her, codes of conduct having sublimated their longing for unity, the flame still burns, impassioned by the meaninglessness of time.

What awaits them is what they least suspected, nocturnal netherwhirls soiled and crested, reciprocal tortuous incarcerated plumes, valiantly embittered, confiscated in ruin.

A loving team, a gregarious group, punctually paralyzed through unremitting strife.

Secret in their Eyes.

The film blends the past with the present to accentuate an atemporal thrust for resolution, and although this creates a dismal opaque omnibus, it still aptly reflects a desperate psychological sterility.

It also asks tough questions regarding the war on terror, nationally juxtaposing the private with the cultural, to add a chilling layer of vengeful domestic inquiry.

The darkness is counterbalanced by the mainstream cast whose subdued supplementary teamwork collegially cultivates the light.

Well done but missing something, Secret in their Eyes punishes to persevere, ethics timelessly emboldened, obsessive displaced haunts, enervating in its resolve.

The Night Before

3 confidants, and an annual tradition, a' revelling on Christmas Eve to the tune of friendship and jocularity, rekindling the strength of their amicable bonds each and every year to celebrate the intensity of camaraderous humour, age having decreed that due to the build-up of maturing responsibilities this will be their last irreverent outing, itinerary set, rejuvenating synergies pending.

As an added bonus this year, three tickets have been acquired to attend a secretive party, known for its legendary merriment, coveted by young, old and middle-aged alike.

Will the mysterious counsel of a local pot dealer enlighteningly guide their way as they descend into the night and encounter both shenanigans and loves lost?

And will the magic of Christmas single-maltly convince them that the bonds they have forged congenially transcend time?

As a matter introspective.

A fun thought provoking feelings evoking tenderly rowdy illumination of adult aspirations, The Night Before suspends pretensions of the rational to festively define what is sane.

Note that its definition bizarrely blends the buddy comedy and the Christmas classic to hazily establish a disjointed sense of the revelatory.

But when form aptly reflects content, our role models evolving over the course of an evening of regenerative confusion, who I am to argue with logistics merry making?

Jingle, bells.

Miley Cyrus impresses.

Creed

Driven by an intense desire to prove himself in the ring, Apollo Creed's son Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) quits his steady job and embarks in search of training.

His privileged upbringing and headstrong individualistic nature don't smoothly fit in the grizzled pugilistic realms in which he must flourish however.

Unable to find a trainer in L.A, he soon flies to Philadelphia to court a legend who may be willing to take him on.

But Rocky's (Sylvester Stallone) been retired for many a year, and doesn't take to Adonis's ultraconfident approach, until he remembers the chance Apollo Creed once gave him, and decides to once again professionally serve.

The talented intent savvy well educated rich young upstart must acclimatize himself to Rocky's strict streetwise regimen in order to become a contender.

Rocky has the knowledge he requires.

And is willing to keep his identity secret, to respect his desire to make a name of his own.

Creed struggles with one of its most difficult inherent weaknesses well; it was easy to generate sympathy for Rocky, even in Rocky IV, but not so easy to sympathize with Adonis.

Not that it isn't easy to sympathize with his desire to succeed, it's just that when you see him trying to control things with attitudes his humbler less affluent competitors rarely adopt, it is somewhat grinding.

His desire to make a name for himself and the respect he shows Rocky spar with this point of irritation however, and at least establish that he wants to be humbler, he wants to integrate, it's just quite difficult for him to do so due to his enriched psychology.

It's still his dream and it's inspiring as he follows it regardless, making sacrifices in its pursuit, even if he always has the silver spoon sustaining him.

The finished product may be frustrating for Michael B. Jordan though, Stallone having stolen so many scenes that you leave the theatre thinking more about how his character progressed than how Adonis's was crafted.

Younger generations might not care about Rocky so much.

Best Supporting Actor nomination?

At the same time the script seems to be self-reflexively chiding the franchise as Rocky trains Adonis while undergoing chemotherapy, the balance between rejuvenation and tradition simultaneously excelling while convalescing.

Things are too easy for Adonis in Creed, trainer, beautiful partner, and title fight all falling into his lap without a back breaking struggle sincerely belittling him.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Creed as it followed Adonis on his journey of self-discovery, even if it's not as heartwarming as Rocky, he still dedicatedly perseveres and does his best to cultivate his gifts.

If the film had focused on his Mexican fights and he had not met Rocky until the end, it may have been stronger.

Room

A different kind of malevolence, like a sick experiment a demented philosopher would subject his or her family to in order to study the isolated innocence of the nascent imagination.

Solitary semantics.

Ontological incarceration.

A mother and son locked away for years in a shed, never leaving, never seeing the outside world.

The child, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), having spent his entire life in the shed, imaginatively tries to make sense of existence, while his Ma (Brie Larson) attempts to define the outside world.

It's difficult for him to comprehend, and his creative energies, as applied to his confined explorations, idealize the passionate curiosity of youth, his desire to learn more stifled by a lack of resources.

Escape cunningly presents itself and the real world suddenly emerges, but emerging into a hyper-reactive media sensation contrasts monstrous plans with excessive exposure.

It's too much for his overwhelmed mom, as it would be for anyone, but familial strength steps up as required, to cuddle in consultation, and placate emotionally complex obsessions.

Tough film, Lenny Abrahamson's Room, juxtaposing different pressurized extremes and their belittling affects on a severely traumatized family.

Those are the tough questions you don't ask.

Jack's lack of knowledge saves him from the psychological torments disintegrating his mother, his attempts to simply be profound in their hesitant wonder, the compassionate easing the transition for both of them, trust contra control, revelations of an inchoate spirituality.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

The unfathomable having become undeniably rational, entrenched rebel forces prepare for an assault on Panem's capitol, the districts conscientiously united, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) locked down and reeling, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) disobeying direct orders to simply act as messianic catalyst, thereby overtly inspiring heroics, instinctively striking back against iconic tyranny.

But the politicians are aware of their potential post-victory predominance, and fear Everdeen's influence in their reimagined state, divisive hypotheses compromising the purity of their cause, the innocence of guiltless reckoning, pushed propagandistically to the sidelines.

The extraordinary orchestrations of the bellicosely desperate beget a dissolute response with extreme dispassionate contempt.

Two leaders, Snow and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), one male, one female, holding on to or coveting supreme authority, drastically maneuvering to inculcate anew.

Throughout The Hunger Games it's clear that the rebel's cause is just.

Snow must be defeated.

He rules absolutely.

Yet in Mockingjay - Part 2 the politics of revenge and their inherent conflagrations remind viewers that citizens of the capitol did not necessarily support Snow, and were indeed terrorized citizens themselves inasmuch as they could not politicize, as a child spots but doesn't give up the Mockingjay, her mother brutally killed moments later.

There's no invincible playbook for such situations, and when terror strikes, or absolutism oppresses, resultant countermeasures can be as uncompromising as those they intend to suppress.

The Mockingjay - Part 2 constructively operates within this volatile antagonism, providing thought provoking disparities for those who engage in war.

The film, on the one hand, seems too sterile, a lack of emotion or a too hardened drive dehumanizing the conflict, making it seem more like a textbook than a testament, still boldly running through the motions.

But on the other, this point of critique fails to recognize the cold calculating dehumanizing affects of war, which turns communities into ordinances, the mischievous into the monstrous.

Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones)

The brilliance of family, supportively nurturing and caring for one another, intimate bonds strengthened over time, often challenged by organically generated conflicts, still loving in its unconscious bedlam, stabilized volatility cohesively generating truth.

Anne Émond's Les ȇtres chers (Our Loved Ones) introduces one such family, and lovingly blends their harmonies and tragedies, suicide haunting their intergenerational dialogues, a son struggling to comprehend, a granddaughter artistically responding.

The overwhelming joy corresponding to a particularly tender period of time cripples as it fades, the knowledge that it cannot be reproduced shattering a fragile sensibility, impatient as it slowly ages, unable to see future joys to come.
  
The film isn't really that sad, rather, it's a wonderfully humble and cheerful low key moderation of a family that grows together over time, focused intently on David (Maxim Gaudette) and his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay), beautifully highlighting different moments which subtly caress time passing.

Its gentle warmth gracefully tends a humanistic modesty whose sweetly flowing aesthetic embrace makes you wish you could hug someone close to you, like sitting around a campfire or snuggling beneath a comforter.

It calmly and solemnly warns against becoming too caught up in innocent ecstasies, by depicting what is lost through premature departure, without condemning those who decide to quietly slumber.

Equitable.

Remember

Decades pass, monumental changes revitalize cultures and nations are reborn, but the past still haunts survivors with an unrelenting immediacy which cannot be forgotten, forgiven, Auschwitz's legacy, rationalized perpetual vengeance.

Atom Egoyan's Remember sombrely examines such a mindset through a series of alarming encounters which thoughtfully comment on differing degrees of punishment.

Much stronger than The Captive or Devil's Knot.

A holocaust survivor, Zev Gutman (Christopher Plummer), the last person alive who can identify a Nazi war criminal, begins a solemn journey to find him, guided by a compatriot who's too infirm to travel.

When you consider the relationship between Gutman's health and his mission, his mission itself seems profound yet reckless, he can't even remember what he's doing whenever he wakes up, obsessive testaments, pure uncompromising revenge.

The film viscerally questions Gutman's quest, apart from one sequence where a contemporary Nazi is confronted, by integrating lives lived and lost, the present, the world that bloomed after World War II's devastation ended, notably in the final scene where the oppressor is caught ensconced in his familial bower.

Daughter and granddaughter witnessing.

He could have been tried, sentenced, flushed out by an organization dedicated to convicting war criminals.

Absolutely punishing the guilty in front of the innocent through murder 70 years after they mindlessly followed totalitarian commands is not the way to move progressively forward.

Such acts ensure the perseverance of vengeance perpetually.

Remember cautiously yet capably constructs this idea.

Perhaps Kurlander (Jürgen Prochnow) wasn't mindlessly following orders, he could have been one of the psychotics, but his family remains guiltless in the film, unaware of the horrors he once unleashed.

Volatile subject matter skilfully postulated.

With the best twist I've seen in awhile.

Haunting in its drive.

Provocative.

Love the Coopers

A tough look at loveable yet prickly familial frustration as interdependence contends to celebrate the holiday season.

Woe abounds as expectations have led to disappointment and latent engrained perennial disputes condone the eruption of homogenous feuding.

Yet love also persists, coating their arguments with huggable layers of rosy historical endearment, cozy familiarity embedding accessible cheer, like fluffy comfortable blankets filled with age-old soul, reunionizing banter and pith, struggling to reach out amidst the haughty grievances.

It's a Christmas film at that, and yes, I could examine it through a less festive lens, but I did leave the theatre feeling warm and gooey inside, if not lightheaded, reminded as I was of the merriment and wonder that excels at this time of year, eager to watch Christmas specials on YouTube, contemplative of the excitement that still has yet to come.

It is heavy on the patriarchy, the women usually coming round to seeing the male point of view.

Balancing the genders strengthens scripts even if you're writing about cave people or the 19th century.

Bucky (Alan Arkin) does ideally represent the enlightened patriarch whose occasionally harsh counsel aids his family and others as they interact with one another and struggle to deal with life's pressures.

His grandson Bo (Maxwell Simkins) following in his footsteps.

The petulance and the poignancy, the dazzling and the discontent, Love the Coopers heralds the holiday season, along with myriad other cultural exclamations, like a blazing birth of mirthful obstinance, eggnog spiked with gin, it's a great time of the year.

Le Garagiste

A long drawn out inexorable purgatorial condition eats away at the fiesty Adrien (Normand D'Amour), Le Garagiste, his active life having been reduced to a series of strict and tedious rummagings, inexhaustible excretions, as he patiently awaits a new kidney.

Fatigue leads him to hire a young mechanic to work at his garage, fate having tricked him into engaging his only son, whom he didn't help raise but never forgot, suddenly communicating, in the language of a younger generation.

The phone rings after 5 years of silence to announce that a donor has been found.

But the new kidney doesn't jive, and after a lively respite, his routine hauntingly rematerializes.

Courage in the face of adversity waning, he's left psychologically paralyzed.

A sad film, a mournful investigation of intergenerational and marital misfires, the desperate longing to joyfully convalesce, the crushing mental instability of a far too embalmed lifestyle.

Entrenched.

Renée Beaulieu illustrates Adrien's despondency by repeatedly filming him back at the hospital, hooked up to the dialysis machine, antiseptic ubiquity.

I thought many scenes were cut too short and more could have been done with Adrien's relationship with his son Raphaël (Pierre-Yves Cardinal).

Whether or not Beaulieu meant for Le Garagiste to indirectly comment on the current national euthanasia debate is a point for consideration.

Raphaël doesn't have a life altering kidney for instance.

It seems to be suggesting that it's a positive thing, as Adrien's suffering becomes too much to bear.

I think euthanasia should be an option for chronically ill patients suffering intensely.

If God thinks they should continue to live a life of constant pain for years in order to die naturally, he or she could be more loving, don't you think?

Complicated issues bucolically narrativized, Le Garagiste coddles to question, while incrementally challenging stoic perseverance.

Cold and bleak, it subtly generates a wistful external dialogue, celebrating health by interrogating helplessness, that which could be, harrowingly dislocating.

Burnt

Excellence.

The pursuit of a constantly revolving evolving aesthetic immediacy cohesively demanding strict attention to every detail.

The tiniest seemingly unnoticeable pittance searing an unforgettable scathing blight on chef Adam Jones's (Bradley Cooper) culinary reputation, as he coordinates his kitchen's impeccable outputs with the assiduous rigour of an omniscient razor sharp extremity.

In real time.

His team responding in turn, observantly and efficiently respecting his knowledge, his hyper-reactive creative discipline, they merit the strength of his sought after 3 star accreditation, lacerating the wake of his stern commanding temper, acerbic accessibility, confident he can help them improve.

Which he does, having reformed his life after recklessly responding to his calling's accompanying stresses with a maddeningly adroit consumption of interrogative intoxicants, his resultant penance exasperatingly tedious, competently undertaken, to the haunting revelatory end.

Convalescence.

Adam Jones, the exceptional, striving for authenticity with every nanopeculiarity, synthesizing tradition with inspiration to practically adjudicate ingenuity.

Thriving under pressure, Burnt celebrates teamwork as opposed to constellation, the imperfections of the subjective idealized thereby, accentuated yet indoctrinated, revealing, one picturesque particle at a time.

Humanistic.

Victoria

Free-spirited rustlings, attentive impromptu celebratory collisions, mirthful match making meaninglessly meandering, startlingly energetic Dionysian reciprocity, trending, inquisitively intercepting, a night out, a night out with restless strangers, immediate acculturation, Berlin, she's from Spain, works in a café organic, has to work the next day, talented artistic discipline, immersing, communicating, meets wild pack catches eye of one, they converse explore activate, through the streets on the roof, seated, swathed in inexplicable fascination, lives lived trust, a starstruck elegance, a flowering imprecision, cut short suddenly, suddenly descending into ruin, a favour, payback, high-stakes manipulation, demands indiscreetly delegated, crime, they must commit crime, no time to think, immediate reaction, Victoria (Laia Costa) saved to embark discriminately, she only understands Sonne (Frederick Lau), she's the driver, sequestered behind the wheel, they act acquire burn, escape, fried on adrenaline and amphetamines they crash the nightlife, reason rushing in, comprehension, awareness, coerced to desperately perform then crushed, incendiary largesse, despotic agency, consequences closing, unrestrained pressurized emergencies, stick together, trust, compensate, a gross underestimation necessitating one sole response assaults the beautiful with extreme neglect, gentility infused with reckless violence, souls tenderly humanizing warmth and compassion forced to willingly expedite the whims of a psychopath, what could have been haunting you for hours afterwards, the shocking juxtaposition's brilliant constant uninterrupted motion leaving an impassioned imprint on your overwhelmed soul, like you were there, like you took part, the immediacy of the style dominating your reflections and refusing to let go as you consider what took place, a cinematic triumph, as loving and innocent as it is ruthlessly expedient, its chilling naive aura, never to be forgotten.

Cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.

Spectre

Audaciously challenging his most cunning reanimated nemesis, Bond, James Bond (Daniel Craig), must reflexively disconnect an intrusive network of terrorist and governmental spies, threatening to legally monitor all of Great Britain's online activity, disguised as freedom fighters, to facilitate limitless access to all.

Blofeld's (Christoph Waltz) back, and it soon becomes clear that he's cacopheinated every catastrophe Daniel Craig has averted thus far, Spectre having returned to the franchise's fore in transition, with the intent of legitimizing vigilant maniacal longevity.

Bond must stop them, and M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and Q (Ben Whishaw) assist him along the way.

It's nice to see Q out in the field and Moneypenny continuing to play a more vital role.

There's a clever subplot where M must counter governmental representative Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) who's in league with Spectre and hoping to shut down the 00 program permanently.

M knows that fighting terrorism still requires a human touch and although disappointed in Bond for (sort of) disobeying direct orders and stealing, still adamantly cheers as he recklessly takes Spectre on.

The film's alright, but I'm ranking it third in the Daniel Craig Bond films, much better than Quantum of Solace, but not as strong as either Casino Royale or Skyfall.

It's like it spent too much time trying to recapture the essence of the Connery films, and although this did appeal to my love of that epoch, it still seemed like it didn't focus enough time on continuing to quintessentially complicate Daniel Craig's.

He's been in 4 now and I think it's safe to say he's the best Bond since Connery.

I'm hoping he's back for a fifth.

He deserves the money.

Look at what they pay Schwarzenegger for the Terminator films.

Also, I've seen more exciting opening sequences, the opening sequence should really function as an outstanding separate short film with the potential for integration in the main narrative still standing on its own merit, The Living Daylights perhaps providing the best example.

Spectre's desert base suffers from Jupiter Ascending syndrome as well and destructs far too quickly near the end.

Nevertheless, Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is a classic giant of a foe, Waltz and Craig forge a chilling familial dynamic, its contemporary analysis of invasive information gathering behemoths fits well with the times, Blofeld lives to die another day, and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) is an exceptional Bond Girl.

With the best Bond Girl name ever.

According to Citizenfour, terrorist organizations didn't help governments establish omnipresent online access you know, they completed that task on their own, although, since they justified said completion on the grounds that they established such networks to fight terrorism, it's as if the terrorists were responsible for causing democratically elected governments to treat their own citizens like terrorists.

That's solid Bond.

Even if people are held accountable, it does seem like such networks are here to stay.

I'm already imagining old man conversations where I discuss the ways of the 1980s with a youthful generation of the future, discussing how there used to be a concept known as privacy which faded as the years passed to uproarious thunderous applause.

It's like hip Orwell.

That's how the West reimagined 1984.

Constant surveillance coupled with limitless access to anything you could possibly be interested in worldwide, exceptions pending.

I can't imagine Trudeau's Liberals using such tools to land their opponents in prison on trumped up charges sensationalized in the media, which is what it seemed like Team Harper was eventually going to do.

Perhaps they can neuter them to the point where scenarios like the one just suggested can never be enacted?

Or just scrap Bill C-51, and the TPP.

I bet that's what James Bond would do.

Perhaps Prime Minister Trudeau II is like James Bond?

Slash Jedi.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

If vampire narratives were constructed long ago to suggest that the European aristocracy was carelessly gorging itself on the life blood of the European worker, and zombie narratives countered this characterization by connoting that the European worker was simply jealous of the aristocratic mind, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse asks the questions, "where do American scouts scouting in small town America fit into this dilemma?, and how can scouting build bridges between classes who solely work, and those who only play"?, scouting thereby redefined as a constructive democratic bourgeois intensity.

There are no vampires in Scouts Guide but there is an exclusive gathering, the sons and daughters of the capitalistic elite, the cool kids, in attendance, our scouting heroes given the wrong address in direct humiliation.

The zombies spread after a lackadaisical janitor interrupts a scientific experiment, accidentally awaking a zombie, who then rapidly devours his misplaced curiosity.

Soon the majority of the town is infected as the scouts unknowingly camp out in the woods, and the cool kids cavalierly consort, blissfully unaware.

But soon these 3 scouts must emerge from the forest to apply their skills in battle, aided by a savvy cocktail waitress thereafter, in their unheralded altruistic calling.

Friendship is on the line as two of them are thinking of quitting scouts and one remains true to their cause.

The zombies's hunger leaves them little time to air grievances however, as they fight together as one to save those who ignorantly disdained them.

Thus, since the zombies have been coerced into blindly embracing ideological dogma, and the capitalistic progeny is too young to understand why, the scouts must jurisprudently save them from an unprovoked attack, having tried to save at least one zombie beforehand, while hoping the virus can one day be cured.

Attendee Kendall Grant (Halston Sage) is impressed and expresses her gratitude physically.

Is it juvenile, insufficiently serious, undeniably heroic and fun?, who am I to say?

I thought perhaps the scouts weren't scouting prominently enough for a lot of the film, but the grand finale ingeniously made amends.

It is fun.

I think I saw a bear zombie, a human who had been bit by a zombie bear.

No werebears though, no werebears.

The Forbidden Room

The derivative extracted percolates like pirouetting chestnut, the motion of which extends imaginative license to respect exfoliating indulgences, transitioning from text to subtext to limbo as tasks require undertaking in unwound fecund interdimensional free verse.

Rapscallions.

Tin cups.

Motivated to achieve yet strangleheld by absent physical qualifications, footholds, dreamlike advice metaphorically displacing, insubstantial links riveting unconnected clues, a Kafkaesque hesitance, pursuing, deliberating.

Insecurely supernatural.

Rasputin.

It's possible that the act of distilling the metaphorical displacements through poetic conjecture could construct links in a theoretical chain attached to anatomical veins focused on discussing Lacan or conjuring the ingredients for a delicious microbrew.

Contentment forthcoming.

A stash.

Treasure.

The flames unextinguished as sparrows scatter to intermittently supplant discourses of the heroic.

Cloth delicately swathes young suckling.

Eternal springs of adolescent visions abscond with gruff jingling clairvoyance, you must do something, respond, jangle, consider, trek, quaff, imprisoned existential platinum withstanding phantasmagorical creosote, a glass of milk, chocolate, prime rib, crackerjacks, blankets in winter, firelight, white pine.

The master narrative's unacknowledged marrow.

O negative.

Superlative improvisational resin.

Whole grains.

The Forbidden Room.

The Last Witch Hunter

Well versed in obligatory pyrotechnics, unerringly battling the forces of evil, Kaulder (Vin Diesel) middle-agedly sharpens his blades, to once again confront an ancient monstrosity.

Who condemned him to immortality.

Unacknowledged eternal pain.

Aided in his endurance by a vigilant religious order, he balances the supernatural while they chronicle his dispassionate deeds.

Beknownst to their principal antagonists.

Whose disrespectful taunting unleashes a visceral tirade.

Imposition.

The Last Witch Hunter seemed more like a television pilot than the first in a series of films, its quotidian spirituality (sparse character development fraught with mundane interpersonal relations) and lacklustre transcendencies (we're supposed to feel threatened by the return of the witch queen [Julie Engelbrecht] but the methods used to combat her are much too conveniently countered [it's easy to take her down]) making a better fit for the televisual realm (these issues would be addressed in subsequent episodes), in my bland and indolent opinion.

Its structure makes a coy comment on threats however, Kaulder having trouble defeating fierce Warlock Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) at first, then easily disposing of him as the witch queen regenerates, the increased level of competition functioning as a catalyst for Kaulder whose skills instinctually augment to face the more potent foe.

It could be a great television show, who knows, I usually just watch films these days, and Star Trek in winter.

I go to the cinema so often that watching films on a television or computer screen regardless of size makes them seem less fascinating.

Much better to see films in theatres.

Disappointed by The Last Witch Hunter.

Crimson Peak

I think Crimson Peak was meant to be funny, to be a dis/possessed take on an old style of filmmaking that used to relish in its mediocrity before succumbing to mass alterations in taste.

If this is the case, I didn't get it, and although it might have been paying tribute to a bygone era of gaudy enterprise, it doesn't change the fact that this film suppresses.

It's hard to write that, I usually love Guillermo del Toro's films, larger than life macabre matriculations fluidly dictating realities of the fantastical.

Crimson Peak's production design is on par with his earlier work but the story and its associated devices are uniformly unexceptional and consistently dull.

It seems to be taking itself seriously throughout, that's its greatest shortcoming.

And the intermittent bursts of graphic violence taken out on historical paradigms, the stricken aristocrat avenging herself on the rise of the bourgeoise for instance, seem out of place in a horror film that's so resoundingly not scary.

If it had seemed comic, like it was seriously making fun of itself, it may have corrosively triumphed.

It didn't seem that way to be me though, not, not, at all.

Jessica Chastain (Lucille Sharpe) does put in a great performance however.

She's got talent, and commands every scene she's in.

Bridge of Spies

I remember reading a comic about Pink Floyd in my youth to learn more about the band.

It was fun and informative and one of its frames still sticks out in my mind.

It concerned the creation of The Final Cut and depicted David Gilmour exclaiming something like, "most of these songs were cut from The Wall."

Harsh times.

The band only ever reunited for one show.

Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies made me think of that moment due to its similarities to Lincoln.

Similar themes, a similar pursuit of justice, of truth, a principled man upholding fundamental rights amidst an onslaught of professional and cultural criticism, doing what's right, consequences notwithstanding.

But it's a pale comparison of Lincoln, whose robust multidimensional political intrigues made me recommend it for best picture in 2013.

To its credit, Bridge of Spies does stick to a particular aesthetic throughout, jurisprudently maintaining constitutional continuity, it's just that this aesthetic, no doubt cherished in my youth, is overflowing with trite sentimentality.

You know exactly what you're supposed to think and feel in every scene.

It's like Lincoln focuses directly on the American community with a large cast and myriad staggering displacements, while Bridge of Spies clandestinely curates a lawyer's objective search for counterintuitive yet ideal vindications of the American individual, in a blunt straightforward concrete crucible.

No bells and whistles here, just a basic introduction to American liberty provokingly stylized for today's film loving youth.

It does advocate for a remarkably logical and upright attitude concerning the sociocultural politics of espionage.

I can't behind this one though.

Way too formulaic.

Ville-Marie

Time, working, family, accidents, surprises, routines, love.

An emotion sustained for months or a lifetime, regardless passionate rapture eternally embraced, questioned, appealed to, reevaluated, censored, longed for by many, cursed by a few.

Guy Édoin's Ville-Marie intertwines several lives to examine love professionally, from occupational perspectives, working love into the working day, as it follows two mothers working in amorous domains.

Proust's madeleine can be confusing as you're sitting at work doing some everyday task that seems to have nothing to do with anything you've ever done, before you're then suddenly flooded with long forgotten memories.

The intensity of these memories can throw you off for a second or two as you readjust to whatever it is you happen to be doing, considerations of the madeleine then complicating things further, before you refocus, and plunge back within.

There's no time to dissect the correlation.

No time to illuminate the emotion.

You can come back to it later after the moment has passed if you have an inkling to do so, after which point the resonant intensity will have decreased, and you may have to rely on meditation to recover it.

It's this frame that I externally apply to Sophie Bernard (Monica Bellucci) and Marie Santerre (Pascale Bussières) as I consider their struggles with love, both having estranged relationships with their sons, both competent professionals haunted by their family lives.

Their predetermined roles.

Ville-Marie isn't that simple, rather, it's an intricate delicate yet harsh illustration of the devastating affects of unexpected consciousness altering collisions.

It isn't really delicate or harsh but seemed to be surreally moving back and forth within a continuum established between these qualifications, or perhaps within a spherical relation with love forging the z-axis, professionalism, relationships, family, honesty, and trust stylizing the encompassing bulk material.

The ponderous weight.

Dreamlike yet relatable, Ville-Marie maturely investigates unpronounced social phenomenons, tragically exemplifying the confines of material existence.

Caught within its relational void lie several struggling characters, unconsciously searching for meaning, madeleines within madeleines, awoken by shocking extremities.

With hints of Mulholland Drive.

Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre

It comes down to one man, his independence in jeopardy, democracy in motion, the deciding vote, will Canada or will Canada not go to war?, the Conservatives pro, the Liberals contra, local economic interests seeing opportunities both lush and lucrative, employment, outsiders, vehemently upholding ethical curricula, the pressure intensifying, he seems unconcerned.

Steve Guibord (Patrick Huard) that is, independent MP for a federal riding in Northern Québec, suddenly thrust into the limelight, suddenly given supreme authority.

It's a lighthearted comedy, Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre, heartwarmingly dealing with extraordinarily complex political issues with down home country charm, issues such as Aboriginal Rights, workers rights, big d Democracy, intergovernmental relations, ethical reporting, international sensations, war, and protesting, to name a few.

Haitian born Souverain (Irdens Exantus) endearingly humanizes these factors in an erudite salute to political philosophy.

Seriously contrasting Ego Trip's Sammy.

Obviously many of these issues are quite touchy, and they're momentarily resolved somewhat achingly, but the film does skilfully keep things local, perhaps accidentally addressing predetermined criticisms, by remaining blissfully aware.

Politically aware.

The geopolitics of the proposed war aren't really discussed, the in-depth analysis of war's impact out maneuvered by the prospects of economic growth, unfairly depicted protesters from Winnipeg failing to outwit, until Guibord's daughter's (Clémence Dufresne-Deslières as Lune) frustrated pleas begin to register.

I do find that many people I know are politically aware, but politics is a multidimensional continuum, especially in Québec where the dynamic is much more intense, and when you have a plethora of parties each advocating to specifically yet generally define political awareness, the concept sort of dematerializes, even if it's highly abstract to begin with.

Focus. Remain focused.

It's not that you can't expect an awareness of geopolitical agitations to be found in the North, but you can expect such realities to hold less weight than putting food on the table, on occasion, especially if a mine closes, government subsidies dry up, or tensions increase due to conflicting resource management agendas.

Guibord recognizes this, and playfully uses it to its advantage.

It's not just like that in the North.

But apart from its schmaltzy meandering, I really loved watching Guibord, being a part of the audience.

I didn't get some of the jokes, and didn't really like it, but, and the same thing happened while I was watching Ego Trip, the audience loved it and did get the jokes, and from their friendly laughter I found proof, more proof, that Québec really does have its own vibrant film industry, where citizens do really take their home-on-the-range domestic films seriously, a living breathing cultural conviviality, something that's missing from English Canada.

I haven't said that for years.

Did the Liberal party fund this film behind the scenes?

Questions.

*Who came up with the English title? Lame.

The Walk

The ultimate performance, unannounced and unanticipated, sheer indubitable factualized vision, confidently clinging to an irrepressible irresistibility, lights, camera, action, essential timing delicately stretched, sensational spotlights, a breathtaking parlay.

With the unknown.

The exponential.

High-wire walking between the twin towers.

Nitroglycerin.

At the break of dawn.

Again, a team, symphonic accomplices, taking great risks to accomplish the legendary, photographic amorous mathematical mingling, caught up in the surge, improvised precise romantics.

Hijinks.

It's an entertaining performance, The Walk, its subject matter providing inspirational added value, tenderly heightening taut peculiarities, the underground's apex, transcending on cue.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Philippe Petit) holds it together.

He exuberantly functions as both starving artist and master of ceremonies to conjure an athletic tribute to will and determination, like you're seated in the front row of a stealth big top, ideal showpersonship, nimbly navigating in stride.

In English and French.

Walking the line, North to South, back again, wild card or integral force?

You decide.

Although The Walk isn't exactly cultivating fallow artistic ground, it's still permeated by intense awe inspiring wonder, like gelatin or spontaneous friendship, swaying and blowing with the breeze.

It seems like Zemeckis was genuinely concerned with fascinatingly presenting a down to earth yet wily crowd pleasing sentiment, and with the cast and crew energetically on board, and the climax pressurizing the audacious, I found little to critique about this film, caught between two worlds, a Parisian New Yorker's lexicon.

Everest

A team assembled, leaders guiding both veterans and new recruits, with goals of ascension, summits, their lives held in trust, clutching the ropes, struggling with shock, slowly and steadily moving one foot forwards, circulatory stamina, keeling, as a storm sets in.

It's sometimes but not often the case that strictly adhering to every rule at all times doesn't encourage smooth workflows in the civilian domain, in work-a-day realms where your life isn't directly threatened, but Baltasar Kormákur's Everest warns that when engaged in high stakes adventuring, adhering to the rules is a best practice at all times.

Years of successfully leading the bold up Mount Everest have left both Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) feeling invincible, and although steps are taken to ensure health and safety, crucial factors are ignored, for which they pay a strict penalty.

One heart has grown too big.

Another simply thinks he can do anything.

Everest succeeds as a majestic unpretentious accessible quest, relying on will and determination to motivate its operandi, the rationality of the insurmountable, brashly grappling with its cause.

I was worried that it would unreel like a horror film, the mountain claiming its victims one by one, due to the ways in which it introduced most of its characters, but it isn't like that at all, the storm rather menacing the group as one.

As nature formidably contests, there's a sense of incomparable awe.

A force too omnipresent to dread.

Inspiring images of climate change.

Cinematography by Salvatore Totino.

Sicario

Revenge.

Obsession.

Law.

Order.

The big picture, international intrigue, drugs smuggled in from Mexico to the United States, 20% of the American population consuming them while the profits fuel domestic violence south of the border, the number of sequestered kingpins having expanded in recent decades, too many to control, too deadly to ignore.

Stats and info provided by Sicario.

The film indirectly comments on ISIL, on Saddam Hussein, the theory that he was the strongperson who kept the extremists in check, who maintained Iraqi order regardless of his methods, the vacuum created after his removal having led to ISIL, who is currently seeking to control much more than Kuwait.

Plutocratic blunders.

It's the same thing in Sicario, the Americans having had more success monitoring/controlling the drug trade when there was only one kingping narcotically nesting, according to the film, a multidimensional marketplace full of alluring alternatives working well for the sale of computers or jeans, but not for the trafficking of drugs.

Wolves eating wolves.

Victims menaced and menacing.

Sicario fictionalizes tough decisions, capital gains, as Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) seeks to assassinate a leading man, and Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) idealistically monitors his actions, the masculine and the feminine conflicting thereby.

A Mexican policeperson, a father, enters the narrative to ask the question "do Alejandro's methods justify his results, do his means justify his ends"?, the violent violently infernalizing social spheres, do as you're told or you'll never grow old, dig in deep and try to exist, extreme unlicensed ego, upheld by any means necessary.

No exceptions.

No limits.

No humour.

Behind the scenes kings and queens.

À la carte.

I liked the film; thought that it could have been more menacing.

Shades of Zero Dark Thirty. 

Trainwreck

Trainwreck provides an unconcerned look at players coming off the bench, of accompaniments, of value-added information.

The overt narrative kept losing me.

But throughout the film there are a remarkable number of scenes that suddenly pop-up and add unpretentious inappropriate callous cheeky depth, again and again, scenes which break through the tedium and nonchalantly confide, like writer Amy Schumer was aware that one component of a bipartisan entity (a relationship) sometimes finds romantic comedies unfulfilling, and cleverly came up with ways to keep them playfully amused.

Excalibur.

Enter LeBron James, who I thought performed well enough, commenting on this and that while exercising a pleasantly absurd frugality.

Brainstorming ideas for new articles at the office offers brief insights into minimalistic discourses of the hilarious.

Check out Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei.

Dianna's (Tilda Swinton) blunt obstinance proves fertile, like an egg pickled in stolichnaya.

And it's like these subtle snarky distractions are slowly building to a fever pitch, in the form of a well-played quasi-intervention, Matthew Broderick, LeBron, Chris Evert, and Marv Albert sitting in, expressing their interest while coveting the genuine, unexpected and well executed, a welcome late inning strike.

Reminiscent of Rance Mulliniks.

Asteroids.

Black Mass

Deadly and daunting, impenitent punishment, organized crime teamed up with the F.B.I., seduce the sociopath and secure the judgment, the incarcerations, the quid pro quo legitimizing his wrath, a potentially greater threat emerging in the flames, consolidating, stifling and murdering away, paranoid, wild and wrenching, James 'Whitey' Bulger (Johnny Depp) and John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), kids from the hood, severe yet sloppy.

Lavish lesions.

Like I, Claudius's Tiberius, when the restraints are removed, Bulger becomes increasingly morose, as Connelly begins to think he's an immaculate golden boy, beyond the reach of bureaucratic suspicions.

Earlier on Bulger's more like a loveable gangster, brutal yet principled, a caring family man.

Depp's performance is brilliant, I don't recall him ever playing a similar character, redefining himself after decades of invention, a salute to dynamic vision, to exotic escapades.

Keeping things local.

Black Mass works, simultaneously building tensions both above and under ground.

Loyalty tragically begets oblivion, living the high life neutralizing survival instincts.

Bulger's insanity malevolently menaces over steaks at Connolly's during one potentially enduring sequence, as he toys with the unsuspecting John Morris (David Harbour), and indirectly acknowledges Marianne Connolly's (Julianne Nicholson) foreshadowed contempt.

Bulger's brother is a senator (Benedict Cumberbatch as Billy Bulger) and the fallout of having a criminal brother is oddly overlooked until the end.

You occasionally see Bulger working or discussing his business but his organization still never seems like it's growing, there aren't any scenes that show him managing a dozen or so people for instance, but we know it has grown because he moves into gambling and buys weapons for the I.R.A.

Perhaps the idea was to make him seem small throughout regardless, thereby formally critiquing his actions.

Life and death, the perseverance of a team, Black Mass celebrates good times while hemorrhaging their foundations, improvised expansions, unsettling impermanency.

La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade)

A deadbeat returns to his family after hearing that his son is ill, having been gone for more than a decade, their struggles dourly contrasting his self-obsession.

Their home rests amidst acres upon acres of sugar cane, and they desperately rely on the income it provides.

But that income is not so easy to come by, as managers find excuses to withhold payments, and workers vigorously protest to ensure their compensation.

Alfonso (Haimer Leal) casts a troubled shadow on the plight of his former community, as he bonds with his grandson, and must yield to his wife's animosity.

An impoverished people attempts to garner respect meanwhile, struggling through the ages, making the most of their meagre opportunities.

Sadness, mourning, La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade) blesses the salt of the earth with a refined bittersweet caring perseverance, valuing conviction as opposed to derivatives, the integrity of the daily grind.

The juxtaposition between Alfonso and his family sombrely furrows the sorrow, while forgiveness considers the worth of his presence, like a welcoming balm, pleasantly mitigating despair.

It champions solidarity rather than dramatizing drifting, the gilded courage embodied in action, a location, a tradition, jobs, the oppressed and the obstinate, ageless timeless plunder.

Down home determination.

Inveterate will.

Straight Outta Compton

I may have just focused on N.W.A if I had written this script.

The group interactions are strong.

Characters enigmatically blossom and come together as a cohesive whole, an act, risks are taken then rewarded, popularity brings the pain, along with the elements, with honest explicit expressions, dynamically forging new artistic ground.

It works, but as the band breaks up and Straight Outta Compton begins to follow Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) separately, we're provided with more of a brief general overview than an exacting intricate thesis, celebrated historical events from their lives understandably ingratiating, still sacrificing substance for sentimentality, the incisive for the broad.

It works like well researched entries for Who's Who, not as a magnetic work of hard-hitting brazen fiction.

Due to the rapid pace, a lot of facets that could have built more cultural depth carefreely float away, such as the death of Dr. Dre's brother, the artistic paradigm shifting exhilaration of N.W.A's work, Ice Cube's method, a closer examination of the pressures they faced from the F.B.I, and a more intricate look at the politics of the groundbreaking.

These facets could all function as separate films, turning Straight Outta Compton into a fountainhead of sorts, perhaps.

It covers police brutality well, which would seem exaggerated if it weren't based on fact and backed up by myriad contemporary examples.

I support free artistic expression in most forms, it's only those that eagerly promote hate speech that I question, just remember, racism, violence and misogyny are often more closely aligned with America's Republican Party, with candidates like Donald Trump anyways, the Party who generally squashes minorities and caters to an oligarchic elite.

If you're speaking out against police violence in your music to make a point about how corrupt and unfair it is, that's one thing.

If you're writing songs that glorify misogyny and violence for fun, you're doing the work of the Republican Party for them, saving and making them millions.

You have a choice not to express yourselves in such ways.

And you're free to make that choice.

Félvilág (Demimonde)

Fair weather thickets, robust tumbledown, opulent rickety flush strings resound.

Erotic.

Instrumental.

Respect and fascination, a subject of the film, one diligently striving to detect an aesthetic hidden within musical provenance, thought allied with action distilling muses to kindle pluck, historical serenity, vixens and vertices, the other manifesting sensation in a shroud, aware of its immaculate presence, seizing and securing the moment's acceleration, ostentatious in its longevity, commanding, assured.

Time slowly transfiguring each one.

Elza Mágnás (Patricia Kovács).

Achievement and success, unconcerned with scandal or perplexity, like Odette de Crécy, she mesmerizes in swoon.

Kató (Laura Döbrösi) escapes life on the streets and is caught between the ethical and the spectacle, rigorously learning what she can to survive.

Quickly.

Visceral film, Félvilág (Demimonde), examining morality through an economic lens, poverty and poignancy luxuriously dissected, picturesque propriety, enabling restrictive plights.

A romantic poet, jealous servant, and coddling magnate complete the script, their attention devoted to Elza, who consequently revels in her agency.

Carefree leisure and desperate servitude liaise within, desire harmonizing their ambitions, dedication sterilizing their chagrin.

Court

A lifelong civil rights activist (Vira Sathidar as Narayan Kamble) who expresses himself through folk music is arrested once again in Chaitanya Tamhane's Court, which gradually exposes the corrupt nature of the case held against him, as it scapegoats his sacrifices to oligarchically keep the peace.

Troublemaker, rabble rouser, unyielding in his acrimonious critiques, dedicated to improving the living conditions of India's working poor, vehement virtuoso, brutally tethered while performing mid-flight.

Most of my knowledge of Indian film which is scant comes from Bollywood, and Court recently won Best Feature Film at India's 62nd National Film Awards, so please note that the following respects that decision and believes it was made due to the remarkable differences between Court and Bollywood, the former's stark meticulous litigation, to the latter's flamboyant charm, Court bringing the millions to one, Bollywood focusing on one in a million.

Paradigm shift?

Not sure.

Meghna Gulzar's Guilty, shown recently at the Toronto International Film Festival (many thanks CBC Montréal), also examines India's legal peculiarities however.

Kamble disappears from the film early on while his defence lawyer (Vivek Gomber as Vinay Vora) prepares his case, and the film then follows Vora at length before going through the same procedure with the prosecutor (Geetanjali Kulkarni as Nutan).

While going through this procedure, subtle and shocking features of Indian's cultural mosaic are quotidianly explored, over dinner, at a play, collegial conversations, familial fights adjourned.

I was somewhat frustrated that Kamble wasn't part of the narrative for so long. I wanted to see his character grow and develop, see him featured more prominently.

The tragic injury to his person is accentuated near the end, as he's forced to languish in jail over the Summer (he's 65), while the judge (Pradeep Joshi as Sadavarte) presiding over his case takes an exclusive holiday.

Where he scares the children who waken him as they play.

A painstakingly ponderous look at working within India's courts that loses sight of its feature, perhaps thereby postulating that such voices are often overlooked, Court theoretically diversifies India's cinematic palate, by kindling a genre more concerned with spice than spectacle.

Like Tom Mulcair.

He honestly does care about making things easier for Canadian families, whether they've lived in Canada for generations or have recently moved here.

I get that a lot of Canadians like Stephen Harper, but I really don't understand why.

He seems to divide the country into haves and have-nots and then govern exclusively for the haves, while in/directly supporting the Christian religion.

He also insulted Rachel Notley's democratically elected NDP government several times last night in the Globe and Mail debate, which is rather disrespectful of the choice Albertans made during their last provincial election, a fact that wouldn't sit well with me if I was living in Alberta.

What happened to mutual respect amongst politicians? I always thought that was one thing that positively differentiated Canada from the United States, even if the difference isn't giddy or glamourous.

Why isn't Harper trying to forge consensus? It's like you either agree with the Conservatives or you don't count, which is an odd way of trying to sell yourself as a potential Prime Minister.

Fear based.

Canada doesn't have to embrace an us versus them political dynamic.

Both Mulcair and Justin Trudeau seem interested in building a more inclusive understanding Canadian collective.

But this time it's the NDP who have experience on their side.

I've voted for the Liberals in the past before Jack Layton appeared on the scene because they always had the experience, they always had a stronger more tried and tested team, that seemed more reliable.

In 2015, it's the other way around.

I'd like to hear what Rachel Notley has to say about the way her government was referred to last night, a speech that could perhaps deal a significant blow to Harper.

Harper wants to prove that Republican style American politics can work in Canada permanently.

A vote for the Liberals or the NDP disproves his theory.

And the NDP currently has the stronger team.

*I like the Green Party and love Elizabeth May but there are already two parties splitting the left wing vote, 3 in Québec. A third/fourth one could lead to disaster. If you don't like either politics or Harper, note that by not voting for someone other than Harper you're indirectly assisting his cause.

A Walk in the Woods

Resonant revitalization, on the Appalachian Trail, two older mismatched friends braving the wild to reaccess their incontrovertibility, their lives having followed different paths, one ensconced in yet troubled with bourgeois accomplishments, the other on the run from the law, the trail acting like a synergizing synthesis, adventurously stylizing nostalgic grievances, a larger than life extremity, harmonizing any ontological playing field.

Tomfoolery and mischief blend with reflections on life and living to nurture the wilful and the woebegone as they interact with experts and randomly improvise along the way.

I found myself indirectly identifying with Bill Bryson (Robert Redford).

I suffered with him during his Fox Newsesque interview, as he said the wrong thing at the funeral, mentioned 2 ways that writers often matriculate, had trouble understanding the allure of video games, was frustrated when Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte) brought up embarrassing old stories at the dinner table, and took his first step on the Appalachian.

Although I wouldn't have commented about it.

A Walk in the Woods is a fun family film, like Planes, Trains & Automobiles meets Tracks, although not as strong as either of those films, comfortably offering im/mature commentaries, sentimentalized by 2 actors whom I've loved over the years.

With some cool contemporary and old school cameos as well.

It's also a bit rushed, it flies through a bunch of scenes which I thought could have been explored with more depth, and you often know exactly what's going to happen.

I'm sure two black bears rummaged through Bryson and Katz's campsite in the book, but I've never read about adult black bears foraging together, unless they're salmon bears, or two amorous bears who sometimes spend a week or more together in an affectionate courtship ritual.

They still could have been adult bears foraging together, it may happen, but I think it's more likely that they were cubs who had just left their mother, and the bears featured in A Walk in the Woods are massive imposing beasts.

It's still a funny scene.

Actually saw my first black bear in Shenandoah National Park. I'll always remember how incredible that was. I suddenly look up in the field my father and I were hiking through to see a bear 15 feet away. We backed off at a moderate pace just to be safe and then watched him or her from a distance for over an hour. It was one of the best wildlife experiences of my life.

Oh, and it's really obvious that some of the nature scenes in A Walk in the Woods were shot in a studio.

Bummer.

SanBa

Concrete stark determination, a neighbourhood fighting for its heritage, its future, but without a dynamic set of multidimensional opportunities, drugs and alcohol pervade, a young artist caught within the immoderate inebriated extinction, suddenly presented, with a muralistic escape.

Teamed up with a ponderous beauty, his outlook expands.

Even though his love lacks reciprocation.

It's gritty and pluralistic.

SanBa doesn't just focus on romance, but adds multiple layers of cultural depth by exploring hardboiled local viewpoints, brief reflective communal character building, hammering nails, shots sworn and ontic.

Form mirrors content inasmuch as the camera presents opaque images before curiously zeroing in, the process acting like a subconscious filter, which reflects the traumas associated with impoverished community development.

As well as the effects of substance abuse.

Resource management in flux.

Necessitated patchwork foundations.

Life's hard for Fabio (Fabio Grimaldi) before he finds motivation and income.

Fluctuating fortunes.

Ham on rye.

Borealis

Sean Garrity's Borealis hits and misses, struggling to cohesively grind its aesthetic, while occasionally brewing refined diuretics.

Structurally speaking.

It follows Jonah (Jonas Chernick) as he attempts to pay off massive debts through gambling, making one $50,000 bet too many, winding up on the run from a seriously angry old friend.

What takes place in the film functions as a warning to would-be risk takers, although, due to its consistent focus on the regenerative potential of a lucrative lucky streak, it also glamorizes the stakes, albeit in a downtrodden fashion.

Thus it appeals to card players and those who prefer board games alike.

J'aime les deux.

It tries to introduce the bizarre, a quaintly quizzical quandary, as a small vegetarian dog is offered an entire large raw steak on a golf course, logic unfortunately minimizing its impact, since the time it would take to eat the steak would more than likely disrupt the flow of their game.

The script viciously acknowledges this incoherency moments later.

I think a closer study of Twin Peaks is in order.

Jonah's daughter (Joey King as Aurora) is going blind and he convinces her to take a road trip with him (the getaway [she doesn't know she's going blind at this point]) to Churchill, Manitoba, to see the Northern Lights before she loses her sight, and even if arguments abound throughout their journey, their eventual coming together fuels the film's reckless fervour.

It's tough to bond with Jonah.

He is a huge screw-up, and I had trouble generating sympathy.

But the script does excel at slowly delivering personal historical details from his life which do in fact help to eventually generate sympathy, and reminded me not to jump to hasty conclusions.

The ending (spoilers) best describes my thoughts about the film.

After coming to terms with Jonah's creditors, Jonah and Aurora sit on Churchill's rocky shore, relieved about their reversal of fortune.

Jonah must have been freezing since he had recently been tied up and launched into the water, but, whatevs.

The Northern Lights suddenly appear and Jonah points them out.

It's cheesy that they suddenly appear, but then we discover that Aurora has gone blind and can't see them, which grates the maudlin slab.

Highs and lows, sinuous switchboards.

Liked the hitchhiking roadside imbroglio.

And the shots of rural Manitoba.

Almost went to Churchill once you know.

Way back when.

La isla mínima (Marshland)

Fastidious expediency, Mississippi's burning, clenched vicious smouldering license, eagerly applied, kept in check by stolid capacity, a team, an investigation, creepy crawlies eviscerating the night, extinguishing flames, chomping chomp chomp, youth and innocence curiously explore to their horror, the aged preying on them like craven vampiric necrocities, their tracks covered, their pastimes grim, flouting respectability with mechanized chagrin.

The monstrous hunting the monstrous by employing monstrosities to covet the truth.

Concealment.

Parthenon.

La isla mínima (Marshland) uses a sombre criminal text, employing politics and professionalism to smoothly and steadily increase local tensions, thereby critically examining post-fascist Spain, the survival of perplexing methodologies blended with contemporary romance to question means and bitter ends, crucially constructed, like hardboiled lucid dreaming.

Restraint abounds.

You get the sense that it could have been much darker, but level heads kept things neat to rely more on integrity than sensation.

It presents an ethical dilemma in terms of using violent policing methods to bring about social democratic ends.

I think what's happening in the film needs to be considered as a case, working within a system functioning on a case by case basis, still possessing many remnants of a society that applied such methods to every case, many of the cases likely involving peaceful people who simply didn't like Franco.

I want to see criminals such as the ones depicted in La isla mínima in prison.

But that doesn't mean I want to see every movement of the entire population monitored and scrutinized.

Pejorative panopticon.

Panoramically percolating.

If you monitor and scrutinize the entire population's movements then freedom itself becomes a prison.

If people can function on a case by case basis, while obviously still looking for recurring patterns of behaviour that forge a logical connection between crime and culprit, without employing them dogmatically inasmuch as each case is unique and individual, they will likely still catch many such villains, and learn to appreciate the distinction between reaction and restraint.

Isn't that what they often do already?

Know need for the CyberStasi.

If cooler heads prevail.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The lighter side of the cold war squares off in Guy Ritchie's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as the CIA and the KGB team up to hunt down nuclear weapons, polished and grizzly, both agents preferring to work alone.

An East German bombshell (Alicia Vikander as Gaby) tearjerks and tantalizes to provide them with cover, diligently driven, ready to cut loose.

What follows is fun if not formulaic, it's meant to be a good time, not striving for originality here, it's definitely not Snatch., Sherlock Holmes, or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a less explosive cross-cultural collision, still cocky enough to serialize fried snarky charm, pleasant, entertaining, like a seaside pitcher of lemonade.  

It's quite sure of itself, a much better A View to a Kill sans Christopher Walken, you keep thinking, "their cover should be blown and it's not, their cover should be blown, and it's not," before you just roll with it, sit back, consume.

There is one scene that stands out, and it unreeled just when I was thinking, "now is the time for an unexpected break from the predicability," Solo (Henry Cavill) then escaping death only to find himself seated in a truck accompanied by Dionysian delights, of which he partakes, while Illya (Armie Hammer) frenetically frisks and flounders (Ritchie's take on the [manufactured?] west/east antagonism?).

Solo smashingly rejoins the fight moments later.

I found it odd that we was drinking Johnnie Walker Black near the end, unless it was blue and I couldn't distinguish the colour, but Solo seems more like a JW Blue man, although the black is much more unconsciously accessible.

Harvesting trust.

Also, I was surprised by the amount of detail Solo learns about Illya during the night, claiming he read up on him.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. doesn't take place in the age of exponential information access.

How did he come across all the highly classified details?

What was read, shared, exposed?

*Hold on. Further research has proven that Johnnie Walker Black was a good choice. Still, Solo, Blue, Blue, Solo.

Le Dep

An ordinary day takes a turn for the worst when a crack smoking youth decides to rob the local dep in Sonia Boileau's Le Dep, a familiar face in possession of both lock and key, applying reason to his misguided plans, attempting to commiserate, while functioning as judge and jury.

Their dialogue takes an historical turn, their dialectic polarizing desperation and stability like trenchant tidal tripwire, a delicate balance required to soothe and mediate, the reality of the crime, harrowingly cautioning the nerve.

Ice cream headache.

Whiplashed fumes.

The film concerns contemporary First Nations issues, Lydia (Eve Ringuette) living the routine work-a-day life, PA (Charles Buckell-Robertson) suffering from issues of alcohol and drug abuse.

Stemming from childhood neglect.

And the legacy of the residential school system.

There's a powerful scene where their dialogue suddenly switches from the moment to the event PA's describing, the leap startling and profound, like the ending of Waltz with Bashir, a shocking heartfelt purge.

I may have just shown the child sitting alone on the ground at the party, confused and alone, for around 2 minutes, and then cut back to the present, although the extended scene provides added depth to the story, and helps Lydia's pacifying seem more maternal.

Both actors hold their own, commanding the bucolic script with parliamentary poise, not too brash, not too sentimental, in your face yet contemplative, disadvantaged youth, struggling to age with dignity.

Lydia stands in the middle of a shootout in the end, facilitating peace, rationalizing and peacekeeping, unafraid to voice alternative options, to find mutually beneficial solutions for two opposing factions.

In the thick of it.

Elle porte une tuque orange.

Dope

You take away belief and equal opportunity by cutting taxes to the point where public schools become more like a prison than a lightning rod, and you wind up with the situation Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his friends find themselves within in Rick Famuyiwa's Dope, an examination of three scholastically oriented (nerdy) misfits caught up in the harsh realities of brutal embittered hopelessness.

Remaining aloof is the key, but after Malcolm hesitantly agrees to aid a drug dealer's romantic pursuits, their lives enter the domain of high-stakes hustling, enlisting the resources of their technologically advanced connaissance to risk everything to remain afloat, buoying disparate domains, panic stricken, navigation.

Ingenuity, flexibility, impudence, sycophancy, and audacity guide their way, as they demonstrate why they're contenders, in a repressive system designed to annihilate innocence.

Agency.

Black lives matter.

The film excels at celebrating the skills immediacy engenders, while vituperatively condemning the structures which necessitate them, as gentle Malcolm's arm shakes when he pulls out the gun.

At the same time, its odd blend of the naive and the dissolute euphemizes shockingly destabilizing pressures.

The far right says, "don't complain, you're a whiner, we will do as we please and keep everything for ourselves while crushing your hopes and dreams because we find it amusing."

The moderate left diagnoses cultural maladies and finds systematic solutions, opportunities, middle classes, wealth, which it patiently introduces to ease sociocultural pressures.

These solutions aren't like ordering a pizza or buying a new pair of jeans, they take decades of sustained effort to develop, to flourish.

The far right makes them seem like impossibilities and when elected does what they can to halt their momentums.

If you think they are impossibilities, note that the social conditions in Europe and North America weren't that different from those present in many third world countries centuries ago.

The middle class is paramount.

It's not that simple of course, and human nature isn't a butterscotch sundae.

But, in Canada anyways, there's universal healthcare, many strong public schools, opportunities to learn more than one language, the possibility of a highly paid 40 hour work week which provides parents with time to spend with their children, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, free speech, freedom of religion, collective rights, the right to vote, to work in an non-discriminatory environment, to access clean drinking water, a general emphasis on health and well-being.

These things wouldn't be present without politics.

After ten years of seeing these features severely scrutinized, perhaps it's time for a different approach.

Change.

Sustainable development.

But you can't make change if you don't vote, voting being a right that generations fought for desperately in relatively recent times.

The far right will be voting.

At least in this century we don't have to fight our way to the polls.

For a new democracy.