True Story

The truth pounds and pontificates, asserting its virtue like harvested sunlit ascension, but politics and the law prevaricate in turn, truth remaining their raison d'être, placated as a matter of posture, taste, illusion.

Fascination.

The truth becomes more variable as time passes, and you continue to read, and it slowly becomes apparent that there's at least a critical correspondence between the truth and what actually happened, depending on the subjects involved, left wing truth, right wing truth, and their relationships to profit and manipulation.

If the right's too powerful there's no worker truth, if the left's too powerful there's no management truth, the bourgeois bullseye.

Rupert Goold's True Story truthfully examines truth from truthful perspectives, a journalist confusing factual writing with fictive, a murderer seeking to innocently sway.

A librarian involved in the action.

It perspires as it illustrates the truthful, manipulative, and profitable dynamics of legalistic sanities by having the journalist (Jonah Hill as Michael Finkel) meet with the suspect (James Franco as Christian Longo) to battle cloaked blistered scripts.

Jill Barker (Felicity Jones) has the best speech.

Something's missing from the middle of the film, at first Hill and Franco's interactions provocatively move things along, but without anything to disrupt their discussions for a time, an image, an armadillo, bark, the film sags, until the disruptions return.

Also intermingling credibility, reputation, and popularity, True Story still sombrely reflects on the forbidden, stark carnal peculiarities, vivacious choral runes.

Great companion film for While We're Young, insofar as both films adopt different attitudes regarding the expression of truth, one celebrating charisma, the other delegating consequences.

Concerns.

While We're Young

Predictable contained pleasant enough maturity is injected with spontaneous jubilance as two couples at different stages in their lives start chillin' in Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, the art of documentary filmmaking bringing them together, one filmmaker trying to launch his career, another having been interminably editing and collecting new footage for a decade, cradling Borg perfection, creating an abstruse tome.

In search of truth.

The truth isn't necessarily fun, however, and the presence of youth rejuvenates struggling Josh (Ben Stiller), although a well groomed stubborn and proud persona still obfuscates, his outlook rigid and exacting, unable to incorporate the new.

When it becomes clear that Jamie (Adam Driver) isn't a student looking for a mentor, but a competitive force trying to gain access to Josh's more successful father-in-law (Charles Grodin[!] as Leslie Breitbart), the reclassification intensifies.

Hysterically.

Ideas.

Different Approaches.

What's going to work?

In terms of diligently orchestrating a text that's both fun and informative for a variety of different audiences anyways.

Which is what Noah Baumbach has done, again, with While We're Young, love his films, he diversifies this text with multiple characters playfully representing different sociodemographic domains, uses the differentiations to mischievously yet instructively comment on relationships, ethics, and art, the good sides, problems, making manipulation seem fun, just in time for a classic Ben Stiller freak out.

It's not just the couples who are contrasted with one another, but each couple pluralizes a dynamic of their own, within which each partner complements while contradicting the other.

As the streams cross.

Naomi Watts impresses again, don't see her in anything for years, then she shows up in 3 exceptionally cool films back-to-back-to-back.

Outstanding.

Furious Seven

Fast-paced volatile extremely airtight precisions dominate the best moments of Furious Seven, the latest, possibly the last instalment in The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Which could have been better.

Riddick won my heart years ago so I have a soft spot for Vin Diesel, but you have to give him a better script to work with if you want his raw animalesque agility to instinctually throttle.

The franchise moments, the moments where they b/romantically tie all the films together, are so flimsy and sentimental that I thought I might shed tears of corn husked slushie.

I'm not that devoted to the films, so I thought perhaps I would have been more forgiving if it had been a Star Trek or a Die Hard film, but this isn't true, when those franchises screw up, I'm still there to remind them.

For instance, I did prefer Furious Seven to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V, and A Good Day to Die Hard.

You still have to suspend your disbelief a wee bit too much while viewing it however.

The final battle is just too ridiculous.

Dwayne Johnson awesomely decides to leave his hospital bed (where I believe he was watching the Stampeders) and join in on the action, but come on, how did he find everyone so quickly, it's as if he's simply programmed to kick-ass, and can intuitively place himself within those situations which immediately require ass-kicking.

There's more, but I'd rather not get into it.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, and hey, I love a strong Belgian ale, and Kurt Russell (Nobody), and Corona sometimes, at the beach, although if I could get strong Belgian ale at the beach, but they didn't spend enough time on the script, and may have gotten away with some bland insincerities.

The script doesn't show enough respect for fans of the franchise in my opinion.

Although I'm not a devoted fan.

So I might not know what I'm talking about.

Think I'll hit up a terrace though.

Yes, I, will.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

Incisively inclined to meticulously mitigate, Byomkesh Bakshy (Sushant Singh Rajput) lucidly exfoliates the devils in the details, from facade to haste to postage, instantaneously accessing each and every complicit pact.

Indubitably.

This curation doesn't wistfully pry, rather, he gracefully inspects subterfuge and dissimulation like a distraught determined sloosh, ingenuity modestly asserted, the collection of facts, the gathering of precipitates.

Not really a film noir, there isn't a sense of perpetual oppression or an ambiguous translucent hue, Bakshy's too green to be jaded, to successful to be shorn.

More like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, its subject matter gradually becoming more grandiose as Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! progresses, it still does frequent the underground while avoiding the police, Bakshy's insight surveying both realms to serialize ingenious constellations.

Characters curiously come and go, the convivial confessing like crisp contraband, the wicked revelling in their byzantine confessions.

It's well designed, the seemingly insignificant worked into a greater vision, characters reappearing just when I was wondering what had happened to them, logical license and casual constructs, solid crescendo, youthful passion making danger seem fun.

Whenever it appears like it's going to far, Bakshy's detections cleverly level things out.

Intense yet chill.

October Gale

Overcome with shattering grief, a widow heads North, to convalesce in the calming wilderness, embowered yet stricken, facing her demons alone.

When catastrophe strikes in the form of a hunted man, desperately seeking escape, who suddenly shows up unannounced on her island, frightened, abandoned, and wounded.

His story's far-fetched, yet when his assailants come calling, their truth projects panic and understanding.

As the power goes out.

And the storm sets in.

Two struggling lonely resiliencies meet, come together, and lock and load, Ruba Nadda's October Gale supplying their depressions with a maniacal impediment to surmount, its vindictive ammunition, oppressing their hopes for forgiveness.

Compassion and trust come to their aid, as they constructively bond, to prognosticate their survival.

Character driven, the film relies on the strong performances delivered by Patricia Clarkson (Helen Matthews), Scott Speedman (William), and Tim Roth (Tom), the intensity of their restrained emotions, embracing the storm's bitter graft.

The film focuses on scarcity, on lack, on the barren repercussions of losing a loved one, which explains why the scenery isn't warmly pronounced, even though they're in an exceptionally beautiful region of Canada.

Poignancy.

Shi Gu (Lost and Love)

A dedicated father travels throughout China searching for his lost son, his limitless efforts composed yet impassioned, his task seemingly hopeless yet his hope never fades nor yields, year after year alone on the trek, putting up flyers, waving his flags, strangers offering assistance through random acts of kindness, communal decency and wholesomeness addressing his wounds, when one day a teen, who was stolen from his parents at a young age and sold to an unscrupulous family, freely lends a hand, the two then continuing to search together, practically blind but united by purpose, the wonders of social networking, aiding them as they cruise.

Through the labyrinthine zealiotropic haze.

A plan touching in its simplicity yet complex in its random achievement of unexpected results.

It's a feel good film, depressing theme but still feel good, wherein citizens from different walks of life do what they can to limit despair, politely fighting against bland cynicism, expressing a nation's profound disgust.

Madness envelopes ineffable horrors in striking forthright balm, heartache and hardship, pinstriped periwinkle.

It's too cheesy at times but Shi Gu's (Lost and Love's) spirit overcomes these sprawling tear-jerks to illustrate how a strong determined will can positively influence hundreds of lives over the years by remaining committed to a principled goal, and/or how said commitment can move beyond its initial individualistic purpose to find itself driven by nurtured communal bonds.

Lei Zekuan (Andy Lau) isn't just acting on his own, Shi Gu takes a serious look at synergistic interdependence, mutually inspired and inspiring, chillin' on motorized bikes.

It's not all light and fluffy, the edge is a kind of raw innocent unrelenting sharpness that foolishly glides and genuflects, like the loss of a son engendered eternal youth, sustained by an ongoing search, the conclusion of which would bring about age.

Wisdom.  

Unfinished Business

Undervalued.

Underappreciated.

Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn) reacts harshly after his boss announces budget cuts that decrease his well-deserved salary, his hard work not seeming to count for much, which leads him to decide to start his own company, prorated with specialized exactitude.

He immediately hires a 67 year old ex-employee of the same company who was forced to retire, plus a youthful space cadet eagerly seeking his first job.

A strong team they forge.

One feature from the film that could have been developed differently was the dynamic (almost) established between Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson) and Mike Pancake (Dave Franco).

You see it early on, Pancake knows next to nothing, and McWinters is an experienced bitter vet, Trunkman lying somewhere in between, and when Pancake asks McWinters for clarification, he steps in with seasoned awkward advice.

I was hoping Pancake's questions would become increasingly ridiculous and McWinters's answers increasingly inappropriate as Unfinished Business progressed, Trunkman offering chill intermediary comments, but this didn't really happen.

They're hoping to close a big deal and find themselves competing against Trunkman and McWinters's former company, in Germany, and their former boss is ahead of the game, and revelling in self-satisfied obnoxiousness.

Trunkman must child rear while negotiating the deal and this is where the film steps up, Vaughn adding a new dimension to his persona, or at least one which I've never seen him develop so well before, believably portraying a caring, loving, dad, loved the motionless fake screen freeze technique.

It doesn't detract from his parenting.

It also steps up with American Businessman 42, a work of living art, seriously comedic, informatively pranked.

There are also some exploits, the aforementioned team.

Not the strongest film I've seen starring Vaughn, but the traditional sublime underdog functioning playfully yet competently is present, providing cultural insights that make sense in terms of community development, sidewinding and succeeding, workin' it, pushin' it, livin' it.

Wilkinson and Franco round things out.

Could have been diggin' a bit deeper.

The Riot Club

Into the bleakness.

Excessive wealth descends upon an unsuspecting family restaurant in Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club, debauched plutocrats at play, members of an exclusive enclave celebrating to excess in order to excrete authoritative postulates, rancid ribald raunch, the pecking order coaxing adroitly, a vaporous shroud, puffing up the smoke.

The club, the Riot Club, has been devoted to unfettered hedonism for centuries, but in this instance their antics are viciously nuanced, thereby vilifying their freedoms and demonizing their lust.

For chaos.

A lone voice criticizes the calumny, a new member of the club, but his opponent picks up on his indignation, and instigates the reckless in turn, consequently augmenting his rank.

The bourgeoisie holds fast to its integrity, refusing to perform like enslaved sycophantic drones.

The Riot Club plays a dangerous game; it seemed to me that abuse was encouraging latent sentiments of class consciousness within in order to deride the truly wicked, but it could be seen as a festive carnal salute to elitist angst, flagitiously large and in charge, seeking to practically express itself.

The film diversifies several characters, examines responsibility from multiple perspectives, uses its characters to make side comments on issues such as ethnocentricity and belonging, before igniting an inflammatory controversy which makes a sensational yet memorable impact.

Co-existence never seemed like much of a problem to me, you learn from different perspectives, take into account alternative points of view, make related choices.

If group dynamics aggressively seek to enlarge themselves through physical and/or psychological violence, and this behaviour is culturally normalized, a different standard of social etiquette reemerges, whose focus on threats and preemptive strikes significantly pollutes social spheres.

Replacing respect with animosity burgeons tyrannical dividends.

Controversial film.