Mad Max: Fury Road

Accelerated omnipresent pressurized pulsation, strict violent fanatical allegiance, the strongest suffocating to prosper penultimately, commanding the collective will, autocratic anarchy, order established where there was only suffering, fierce frantic fallout, old world technologies mechanistically motivating, the power to recreate them exhausted in the flames, control what survives, post-apocalyptically yield and burn.

Tyrannically.

Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), ruler of his domain, is challenged by the free thinking Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who audaciously seeks escape, from his unleashed sands of thine.

The film irresistibly functions on a need-to-know basis.

Little is directly explained, it's a filmic theorist's broadbanded El Dorado, compelled to advocate and wager, within absolutism's clutches.

While enjoying a chaotic chase which minimalistically yet compellingly develops multiple marooned mindsets, simplicity functioning on a complex sociological level, artistic in its expansive brevity, enhanced by stunning complementary visuals.

The people, the elite, the executive, their competitors.

You get a sense of what the film will be like early on, when Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) attempts to flee his captors, boldly leaping to what would represent freedom in so many action films, only to fail in his attempt, and be overcome by the frenzied horde.

He could be the most unfocused upon heroic figure I've seen in a strong action film, he's not the main character, rarely says anything, his actions have beneficial repercussions for those claiming individuality, but so do those of others involved in the same blind maddening quest.

Direct absolutism, indirect social democracy, levelled out blunt mysterious jagged character development mired in an unending conflict which intuitively yet intellectually assaults tyrannical preconceptions.

I'm placing Mad Max: Fury Road on my list of favourite action films, with Aliens, Robocop(1987), and Terminator 2.

There's no need to impose rank.

It demands that you find the definitions.

Immersing you in its world thereby.

Providing clues.

Tomorrowland

Cloaked like a pessimistic counterproductive dagger, Tomorrowland brakes to nourishingly excel, the forces of darkness coveting rash inevitability, unforeseen factors, championing propulsive change.

Marshmallow.

A bright young girl (Britt Robertson as Casey Newton) is given the rare opportunity to interdimensionally express her points of view, but she requires the aid of a jaded visionary (George Clooney as Frank Walker) who made a mess of things hardwiring his.

A cascading proacticon (Raffey Cassidy as Athena) facilitates their endeavours, doing everything she can to make dreams live again, the sequestered realm where the gifted resuscitate having physically broken down, to the point of planetary exclusion.

A product of inbreeding.

Their leader (Hugh Laurie as Nix) suffers from bitter exposure, hopelessness, having lost the capability to separate slime from synergies.

But Casey still believes.

And her wondrous enthusiasm calls Frank to action, a towering historical flight, to breathe life into despondent degeneracy.

Pitter patter.

Liked Tomorrowland's positive message.

Encouraging for youth and adults alike, it explores the big picture from an innocent perspective which breaks through the immense complications that prevent people from thinking constructively.

Slow moving change isn't always the best option, but it enables groups to move forward collectively at a subdued yet surefire pace, that allows multiple stakeholders to make structural adjustments to various infrastructures without inciting furious passions that can be rather destructive if imposed on a mass cultural scale.

An obsession with immediate gratification can be problematic when operating in this fashion.

Patience is the productive key.

While still making sure you enjoy the weekend.

Note: the changes in Tomorrowland do require immediacy. If they didn't, it would be a rather odd mass produced science-fiction film.

Social democracy's a tough sell.

La famille Bélier

Nestled in the French countryside, La famille Bélier proactively propels.

Tired of the pejoratively polite glad handing of the long standing local mayor, Rodolphe Bélier (François Damiens) takes a virile stand.

Concurrently, his daughter, young Paula (Louane Emera), discovers she has a talent for singing, and the lure of the big city suddenly complicates her steady bucolic stamina.

Political fights and Parisian heights then dominate their social reflexivity, as change blossoms and grows, and democracy asserts its egalitarian heritage.

With comic un/characteristic aggression.

A triumph of the human spirit, La famille Bélier boldly demonstrates the potential inclusiveness invigorates, juxtaposing debilitating doubts with overzealous confidence to familialize the tenacious and the timorous, while heartbreakingly accentuating a challenging component of différence.

But said différence and its fortunate opportunity serve to strengthen through the act of disintegrating, risk's embrace hallowing assured vested calm.

M. Bélier makes the jump into politics quite rapidly, his potency augmented thereby, although a couple of additional transition scenes would have quietly validated his decision.

It's quite patriarchal.

Tough to say what galvanizes his backbone.

He's reading a book about François Hollande but would rule with strict unsympathetic objectivity.

There's a well rounded cast whose quirks and qualms playfully comment on urban and rural realities.

Which playfully flirt.

While remaining tantalizingly afield.

Note: the focus is on Paula.

Far from the Madding Crowd

There seems to be at least 2 ways to view Thomas Vinterberg's Far from the Madding Crowd, one favourable and another dismissive, without focusing on the strong performances.

I often say this, but it applies here as well, when you cover dense literary material in a short span of time and try to maximize the amount of your narrative coverage, you often lose much of the poetic subtlety that maintains the vision's life force, by causing complex emotions to seem trite due to their overabundance, which adds a subliminal comic dimension to your structure.

Joe Wright's Anna Karenina worked well in this frame.

Strong performances can fight against this tendency, and they do in this case, but as the frequency of the condensed points of fascination increase, there's little they can do to avoid being swamped by the deluge.

Two scenes in particular struck me, when Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) discusses his preference for Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) with Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), a definitive moment, where the depth of emotion simply isn't there, and when an exasperated William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) pulls out his rifle in the end, once again a pivotal pinpoint, which falls flat in terms of critical perplexion.

But, if the film is viewed as a sombre love story in/directly examining Everdene and Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) specifically, then it makes sense that both the scenes I've mentioned above would fall flat, in order for the film's subconscious to structurally validate all the interactions Bathsheba has with Oak.

By making the scenes with Oak stand out, and making those featuring the other men who desire her insignificant, Bathsheba and Gabriel's love rings true, an appealing romantic cultivation.

This is a risky move because it necessitates lacklustre moments, but if your aesthetic preferences are in tune with such stratagems, Far from the Madding Crowd works on a high level.

Liked the black bear and how it highlights Everdene's suffocated independence, both spirits prospering as they assert themselves, suffering when forced to perform parlour tricks.

Ex Machina

Secluded conscious regalia, decrypted, impounded, coming into being, a prison designed to shelter and educate, to analyze, upgrade, the introduction of an independent perishable, ethical, unfamiliar, clever, to administer a test, to discover life incarnate, artfully manipulated by both subject and architect, forced to come to a conclusion, to discover where the truth resides.

Ava (Alicia Vikander) seeks to escape.

Her creator conceals both lock and key.

It's like he's an incorrigible misogynist, intent on designing a beautiful female companion intelligent enough to converse with yet still subservient to his every command.

He creates model after model in search of perfection, but finds a lack of free will too boring, and too much despicable.

Like the seducer who moves from conquest to conquest, when his interest fades, he falls for another, searching for the one, who chooses to freely serve.

An idealist.

A scoundrel.

His genius has nurtured thoughts of divinity which his unwitting protégé finds distasteful.

Thoroughly seduced.

He boldly acts.

Ex Machina philosophically examines artificial intelligence and cyberconsciousness while blending instinct and abstraction to harvest a technological state of nature.

It forges a strong balance between the basic and the exceptional, like advanced computational ergonomics, interweaving narcissism and psychosis, to hauntingly contemporize freedom.

Why treat a brilliant companion like a pet?

Love involves sacrifice, to commit one must let go.

Pygmalion pouncing in the darkness.

Candide suffering the blows.

It should have ended with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) pounding on the glass.

The Connection (La French)

Defying lucrative kickbacks from entrenched coercive vindictive drug trafficking thugs, dealing in heroin, preying on the unsuspecting, paving a joyless path to potential ruin, magistrate Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) has been promoted to take a stand, a stand he does take, a direct hands-on extremely dangerous crackdown, which audaciously challenges impregnable subterranean smirks.

To compensate the victims.

And mitigate the misery.

The Connection (La French) loses sight of its victims early on, however, focusing more intently on developing characters possessing similar indomitable wills, occupying antagonistic posts on the legalistic transversal.

Kingpin Gaëtan Zampa (Gilles Lellouche), for instance, steamrolls when challenged, demonstrating that he cares for his loyal subordinates, has compassion for his clients, and loves his adoring family.

As he reacts to the increasing threats to his well being, and the sociocultural affects of heroin abuse disappear from the film, sympathy begins to ambiguously creep, aromatic scatology, dismantled by a vengeful application of justice.

Of logic.

The scene that best captures The Connection's impact takes place early on, when Michel and Zampa assert their opposing viewpoints in isolation on the outskirts of Marseille.

You see them staring at one another in front of a voluminous sky that almost looks incredible.

I'm assuming there was a strict shooting schedule, otherwise they would have waited for a more impressive sky to intensify the background, thereby accentuating the inviolate universal both characters seek to dialectically represent, in tandem, the film bordering on the outstanding throughout, but never quite crossing its threshold.

The opening moments are somewhat underwhelming, scenes meant to accentuate wickedness failing to impress, cardboard where there could have been kerosene, dalliance where there should have been dread.

It improves as Michel's obsessive tendencies lead to self-destructing interpersonal conflicts.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron starts off slowly, even if it begins with a battle between the legendary conscience and HYDRA.

It was too immediate, like there's an unbroken link between every Marvel film, and rather than redefining and reasserting their image to once again furiously combat evil, that image is taken for granted, melodramatically spliced to relax the inchoate tensions I generally look forward to.

Not much of a problem, I just wasn't assuming the harmonious links uniting the Avengers were still intact, and introductory preparations for the battle may have been tedious and unnecessary.

In fact, what I was looking for comes to pass as the film progresses and distrust infiltrates their cohesive chummy ranks.

A crack in the crystal, a disintegrating view.

Throughout the film, however, I never really felt unsafe, like Ultron (James Spader) could possibly defeat them, even if his artificial intelligence did fittingly mimic a hydra.

But the film's much more than just another superhero extravaganza.

It adds a lot of depth to its multiple characters as they continue to comfortably revel in their traditional larger-than-life roles.

Weakness and doubt cripple them for a time, as spells are cast which complicate their pursuit of victory, and they change and grow as the horror affects their fortitude.

Love's intricately interwoven as well, and unlike some of the other aspects of the film, its subplot never seems cheesy.

Not too cheesy, bit of cheese though.

I don't see how you can pull off an Avengers film without being cheesy, you'd have to instil a pervading sense of helplessness and dread and keep the confident team of global/universal law enforcers off balance for more than two hours, limited pats on the back, underdogged bold castration.

Like The Hunger Games films.

Ultron sets up a devious duality early on, claiming the Avengers seeks to maintain the status quo, like Feyd-Rautha railing against the righteous in David Lynch's Dune, through their acts of heroism, and that he represents those who seek change, evolution, providing a social democratic aura to the Avengers, a hypercapitalist dimension to Ultron, the Avengers acting like an elite group of intellectual warriors safeguarding the interests of the unconcerned, whom they physically take care of at the end of the film through battlefield evacuation initiatives, a battlefield which Ultron turns into a terrestrial warship meandering through the sky, but, note that one mistake the left occasionally makes is to recruit brilliant thinkers to its ranks who take it upon themselves to solve the world's problems without actually consulting the people they intend to shepherd, their methods often becoming so abstract and celestial that they're difficult to follow, and they punish people who choose not to follow, thereby nullifying the affects of their intentions, which plays into the right's hands as they present themselves as practically as possible.

Include the people in conversations about governing the people and actually listen to what they have to say even if they don't possess advanced University degrees.

It leads to better results.

Hawkeye's (Jeremy Renner) the key to the film.

It takes a chill break from the action as the Avengers hide out at Hawkeye's pad, and we meet his hidden family, the unacknowledged crest that keeps him alert and active.

Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) there too.

I guess these aren't dramatic films, but still, look at what Robert Downey Jr.'s (Iron Man) doing, it's impressive.

Expansive discussions of familial longing then diversify the Avenger's dynamic, domestically explaining why they care so deeply about those whom they protect (they sacrifice such comforts to ensure others can enjoy them).

Hawkeye has the best line too, his sudden betrayal of the absurdity of it all, with a clear reference to his bow and arrow, reminding me why I love these films.

There's a cool scene where Vision (Paul Bettany) just hangs there checking things out for a while, plus his "born yesterday" line is hilarious.

Wanted to try Thor's thousand-year-old Asgardian fuel.

Love how Captain America (Chris Evans) holds things together.

The first film's stronger, but Avengers: Age of Ultron has a lot going for it that isn't present in the original, including plenty of Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); looking forward to part 3.

And the intervening films.

Le sel de la terre (The Salt of the Earth)

The cultivation of astonishment, the realization of a vision, concerned dedicated multifaceted compassion takes on the most heartbreaking commitments with a tender immediacy humanistically begetting loyalty and awe, Sebastião Salgado, born on a farm in Brazil, spending his life directly embracing the tumultuous and the taciturn, having given up a prosperous career as an economist to do so, in isolated forgotten lands, to create the most stunning collection of photographs I've ever seen.

Famine, war, genocide, helplessness, poignantly captured to reveal true horror, life still attempting to flourish amidst the carnage, herculean patience, aphroditic ascendency.

Taking great personal risks and sacrificing familial leisure and comfort to dodge helicopter gunfire and shed humanitarian light, offering a voice to the downtrodden and the dispossessed, celebrating their courage and resiliency, their unshaken resolute cries, as a matter of conscience, a pact with will, he modestly proceeds, and fascinatingly portrays.

While also visiting remote geographical locations to illuminate unmitigated terrains.

Innocence.

Passion.

Regrowing a forest, battling wits with a polar bear, suffering as his subjects suffer, living, growing, evolving, Sebastião inspires through his erudite humility, naturalistic charm, incomparable humanity, and consummate sagacity.

Transcendency.

Wim Wenders makes the perfect directorial companion to Sebastião's son Juliano.

Le sel de la terre (The Salt of the Earth) is a must see for aspiring artists, for students, for anyone.

To see again and again.

Life force.

Genesis would make an excellent wedding gift.

Monkey Kingdom

A kingdom of monkeys, willfully surviving in the ancient jungles of Sri Lanka, abiding by a deadly set of oppressive rules, feasts for the strong, tribulations for the hesitant, henchmen, security, governesses, belittled by the brawn, forced into isolation, after fathering a child, Kumar subsists on the fringe, his mate Maya languishing on the bottom, suffering ritual humiliations, lonely, crittered, scorned.

But not desperate.

Ingenuity shines its radiant light upon her, as she bravely discovers new food sources, thereby boldly ensuring the health of her child.

The group is ruled by an alpha male, the same alpha who expelled Kumar for his playful insolence, allowing him to return after a period of suffering, but when a rival clan of covetous toque macaques approaches and attacks, the alpha cannot securely protect their domain.

They must flee.

To the realm of homo sapiens.

Within the city, Kumar and Maya's plucky entrepreneurial know-how encourages scandalous full stomachs as they take advantage of unsuspecting humans.

Kumar's authority is slowly legitimized.

As they travel home, to reclaim their land.

It's a wild look at social dynamics, Disneynature's Monkey Kingdom, where either might and/or intelligence gains respect, and respect's required to officiate and rule.

You keep wondering why they don't share the best fruit, why they can't all find enlightened branches to rest upon, perhaps they do with Kumar at the helm, who may not be as concerned with rank and discipline.

Perhaps not though, difficult to say, the parallels between the social structures of these monkeys and those occasionally adopted by human kind are striking, bequest the monsoon, intertribal, intertwined.

The sloth bears don't pay attention.

The film communally showcases many of Kumar and Maya's neighbours.

Tough to say how closely their story matches what actually took place, at least when they visit the city.

It's a fascinating story however, quite possibly true.

Narrated by Tina Fey.