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.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
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.
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.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Irrational Man
Hold on.
Situation critical.
It's been a long time since I haven't liked a Woody Allen film.
Curses.
Merry-go-round and around and around.
It seems like a joke, Irrational Man.
What I think happened was that Allen realized his script wasn't on par with his typical texts, and salvaged what he could by including recurring lackadaisically upbeat music, which consistently states, "whoops", while deliberately editing scenes too quickly, or including rather short scenes that could have been left out, to formally chide philosophy, mock the corporate tendency to pack too much information into too little a packet, and reflect on the emptiness of existence, when one never has time to calmly sit back and reflect.
When you take a bunch of philosophers and reduce what they're saying to a couple of trite statements, the engagement with philosophical texts is lost, Xavier Dolan making the same error with literature in Laurence Anyways, if they're not the focus, it's better just to leave them be.
There are so many banalities and clichés in Irrational Man, leap-frogging their way through the script like giddy platitudinous inanimate cockadoodles, inadequately developing character and then arrogantly assuming firm bonds between character and audience, that it's difficult to sit through, until the music picks up again.
Take the Russian roulette scene.
If a professor actually plays Russian roulette at a party with students, firing the gun several times, you would think it would have a greater impact on the story, but it practically disappears immediately afterwards, like it wasn't significant, like Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) was comparing prices on toothpaste or blankly examining bark on a tree.
Perhaps Irrational Man really is Allen's subtle satirical crack at corporate filmmaking.
It does co-star Queen of the Indies Parker Posey (Rita).
And Allen has stood outside the system for decades while generally still delivering high quality accessible thought provoking films.
I've heard people critically condemning Allen's examinations of relationships and he seems to be acknowledging their insights by exaggerating these faults in Irrational Man, the male protagonist's relationships within being way freakin' ridiculous.
There was an interesting critique of romanticism mentioned by Jill's (Emma Stone) Father (Ethan Phillips), however, that caught my attention.
Utopias, goodwill, fluffery, I admit that such ideas, when applied to daily life, often seem bizarre and out of touch, especially in the "we're all hopelessly craven so why don't we just act that way?" nihilistic disengaged pandora, but without them you leave yourself vulnerable to total and complete ethical unaccountability, because they set practical guidelines which apply foresight to fascination, in order to uphold something greater than common individuality.
One additional point.
In regards to my interests in action and science-fiction films, note that gregarious generalizations about literature and philosophy (etc.) in dramatic films often work more successfully disguised as character traits for monsters and heroes in action sci-fi, like in, one more time, Mad Max: Fury Road.
The action is the argument.
Surveillance, likewise.
Situation critical.
It's been a long time since I haven't liked a Woody Allen film.
Curses.
Merry-go-round and around and around.
It seems like a joke, Irrational Man.
What I think happened was that Allen realized his script wasn't on par with his typical texts, and salvaged what he could by including recurring lackadaisically upbeat music, which consistently states, "whoops", while deliberately editing scenes too quickly, or including rather short scenes that could have been left out, to formally chide philosophy, mock the corporate tendency to pack too much information into too little a packet, and reflect on the emptiness of existence, when one never has time to calmly sit back and reflect.
When you take a bunch of philosophers and reduce what they're saying to a couple of trite statements, the engagement with philosophical texts is lost, Xavier Dolan making the same error with literature in Laurence Anyways, if they're not the focus, it's better just to leave them be.
There are so many banalities and clichés in Irrational Man, leap-frogging their way through the script like giddy platitudinous inanimate cockadoodles, inadequately developing character and then arrogantly assuming firm bonds between character and audience, that it's difficult to sit through, until the music picks up again.
Take the Russian roulette scene.
If a professor actually plays Russian roulette at a party with students, firing the gun several times, you would think it would have a greater impact on the story, but it practically disappears immediately afterwards, like it wasn't significant, like Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) was comparing prices on toothpaste or blankly examining bark on a tree.
Perhaps Irrational Man really is Allen's subtle satirical crack at corporate filmmaking.
It does co-star Queen of the Indies Parker Posey (Rita).
And Allen has stood outside the system for decades while generally still delivering high quality accessible thought provoking films.
I've heard people critically condemning Allen's examinations of relationships and he seems to be acknowledging their insights by exaggerating these faults in Irrational Man, the male protagonist's relationships within being way freakin' ridiculous.
There was an interesting critique of romanticism mentioned by Jill's (Emma Stone) Father (Ethan Phillips), however, that caught my attention.
Utopias, goodwill, fluffery, I admit that such ideas, when applied to daily life, often seem bizarre and out of touch, especially in the "we're all hopelessly craven so why don't we just act that way?" nihilistic disengaged pandora, but without them you leave yourself vulnerable to total and complete ethical unaccountability, because they set practical guidelines which apply foresight to fascination, in order to uphold something greater than common individuality.
One additional point.
In regards to my interests in action and science-fiction films, note that gregarious generalizations about literature and philosophy (etc.) in dramatic films often work more successfully disguised as character traits for monsters and heroes in action sci-fi, like in, one more time, Mad Max: Fury Road.
The action is the argument.
Surveillance, likewise.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
The Look of Silence
The abysmal aftermath, intergenerational dialogues, between men forced to live with their crimes, and a thoughtful soul inquisitively vilifying them.
According to stats from The Look of Silence, a million communists were killed in Indonesia in 1965 after the military seized control and began executing its potential opposition.
Dark times.
Inimically ideological.
Fascist dogma.
Crippling legacy.
Gruesome testimony.
Many of those responsible for the systematic killings survived into old age, living a relatively comfortable life, still believing in the brutal cause they supported.
A gentle, ah, fellow citizen?, Adi Rukun, whose brother was butchered, interviews a sampling of them while Joshua Oppenheimer films their conversations.
The victims and the voracious, acknowledging they can't come to terms.
Many community members criticize Rukun for examining the issue, not wishing to see the same set of historical circumstances ignite again.
I suppose if you lived through the horror that would be a natural reaction, although ignoring/covering up history with egregiously inaccurate lies does little to compensate its concerned ethical descendants.
Silence.
The silence itself possibly creating the tension it hopes to obscure.
The circumstances likely wouldn't repeat themselves.
And acknowledging the truth, like acknowledging scientific truth, looks less internationally pathetic.
More questions than answers here.
Dangerous questions to ask.
Integral to social justice.
According to stats from The Look of Silence, a million communists were killed in Indonesia in 1965 after the military seized control and began executing its potential opposition.
Dark times.
Inimically ideological.
Fascist dogma.
Crippling legacy.
Gruesome testimony.
Many of those responsible for the systematic killings survived into old age, living a relatively comfortable life, still believing in the brutal cause they supported.
A gentle, ah, fellow citizen?, Adi Rukun, whose brother was butchered, interviews a sampling of them while Joshua Oppenheimer films their conversations.
The victims and the voracious, acknowledging they can't come to terms.
Many community members criticize Rukun for examining the issue, not wishing to see the same set of historical circumstances ignite again.
I suppose if you lived through the horror that would be a natural reaction, although ignoring/covering up history with egregiously inaccurate lies does little to compensate its concerned ethical descendants.
Silence.
The silence itself possibly creating the tension it hopes to obscure.
The circumstances likely wouldn't repeat themselves.
And acknowledging the truth, like acknowledging scientific truth, looks less internationally pathetic.
More questions than answers here.
Dangerous questions to ask.
Integral to social justice.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Mr. Holmes
Reflections on lives lived and current pastimes, a tripartite treatise, excavated thoughts on loneliness, the life of the mind, a life of service, three families torn by grief, Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen), sleuth, benefactor, cause, troubled later in life by hindsight's haze, fortuitous fog cutting, carving out a literary track.
Conducive.
One mother longs for her lost children, another takes care of her son, one son lost his father to empire, families surreally strung.
Bees with their honey, organized, assiduous, living a life of harmony and order, perniciously plagued par les guêpes.
With the aid of his housekeeper's (Laura Linney as Mrs. Munro) clever son Roger (Milo Parker),
Sherlock tends his hives while painfully looking back.
Has he done his best to promote unity?
Or functioned as unwitting predator?
Apicultural endeavours, interrogating the solitary life.
Mr. Holmes couldn't be more different than Guy Ritchie's films.
Or any other manifestation of the iconic detective I've seen.
A pasteurized yet potent clarification of the facts, Sherlock's existential longing, a search for wisdom's tranquility.
For rest.
For satisfaction.
He seems to embrace related impossibilities in the end, while finding what joy he can in thoughts prone to melancholia.
Sherlock the retired country gentleperson.
Taking care of a family.
Keeping his bees.
Conducive.
One mother longs for her lost children, another takes care of her son, one son lost his father to empire, families surreally strung.
Bees with their honey, organized, assiduous, living a life of harmony and order, perniciously plagued par les guêpes.
With the aid of his housekeeper's (Laura Linney as Mrs. Munro) clever son Roger (Milo Parker),
Sherlock tends his hives while painfully looking back.
Has he done his best to promote unity?
Or functioned as unwitting predator?
Apicultural endeavours, interrogating the solitary life.
Mr. Holmes couldn't be more different than Guy Ritchie's films.
Or any other manifestation of the iconic detective I've seen.
A pasteurized yet potent clarification of the facts, Sherlock's existential longing, a search for wisdom's tranquility.
For rest.
For satisfaction.
He seems to embrace related impossibilities in the end, while finding what joy he can in thoughts prone to melancholia.
Sherlock the retired country gentleperson.
Taking care of a family.
Keeping his bees.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Paper Towns
The studious approach, diligent digests, a plan, a routine, generally adhered to in order to achieve goals later in life, like minded friends similarly striving, the goals they modestly pursue leaving them cast out of their high school's rigid social convective, commentating on the fringe, two-thirds of the trio romantically handicapped, steady textbook longing, The Stars of Track and Field, aloof in their unheralded excellence.
Chaotic casserole.
Quentin (Nat Wolff) has been in love with the free-spirited Margo (Cara Delevingne) since childhood, when they were close, and although their paths no longer frequently cross, she shows up at his window one night enlisting aid, to humiliate those who have unjustly wronged her.
Vengeance.
Competing ontological truths.
She disappears shortly thereafter, leaving behind a set of clues, clues which Quentin and his friends follow, in a salute to surefire Summertime spontaneity.
Can the wild and the timid synthesize their dialectic as one?
Or will alternative pressures crush their holiest of unions?
Paper Towns is alright.
Somewhat tame, but that fits with its bourgeois aesthetic.
But is the pursuit of high grades and professional success indeed tame?
Turning such pursuits into a riveting film is tough to do without seeming tame, but the rigour and dedication one has to apply to their life, the sacrifices they have to make, their tenacious time management, necessitates a factual fortitude, often not possessed by the purely tame.
To pass those tests achieving high scores demands strict obedience, to be sure, but without a resounding will to live, to succeed, predicated upon expansive desire, untethered in its imagination, such goals seem fleeting at best.
The hunger for knowledge.
Information hunger.
Boldness is a must.
The unacknowledged thrust of true stoicism.
Which also reserves time to relax throughout the week.
There's a wedgie coming on.
Chaotic casserole.
Quentin (Nat Wolff) has been in love with the free-spirited Margo (Cara Delevingne) since childhood, when they were close, and although their paths no longer frequently cross, she shows up at his window one night enlisting aid, to humiliate those who have unjustly wronged her.
Vengeance.
Competing ontological truths.
She disappears shortly thereafter, leaving behind a set of clues, clues which Quentin and his friends follow, in a salute to surefire Summertime spontaneity.
Can the wild and the timid synthesize their dialectic as one?
Or will alternative pressures crush their holiest of unions?
Paper Towns is alright.
Somewhat tame, but that fits with its bourgeois aesthetic.
But is the pursuit of high grades and professional success indeed tame?
Turning such pursuits into a riveting film is tough to do without seeming tame, but the rigour and dedication one has to apply to their life, the sacrifices they have to make, their tenacious time management, necessitates a factual fortitude, often not possessed by the purely tame.
To pass those tests achieving high scores demands strict obedience, to be sure, but without a resounding will to live, to succeed, predicated upon expansive desire, untethered in its imagination, such goals seem fleeting at best.
The hunger for knowledge.
Information hunger.
Boldness is a must.
The unacknowledged thrust of true stoicism.
Which also reserves time to relax throughout the week.
There's a wedgie coming on.
Friday, August 7, 2015
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Cut-off from the IMF after the CIA critically rejects its equations, and the powers-that-be decide it needs an additional layer of oversight, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sets out on his own, relying solely on the immutable ingenuity that has reflexively guaranteed his elusive agility, his multidimensional brawn, to seek and destroy a terrorist organization, making the most of the tools at his disposal, while slowly falling in love.
His team gradually catches up with him.
It sounds standard, now that I think about it, but Rogue Nation's execution overcomes its contusions to put together an entertaining brain tease, an exciting extension of the franchise, somewhat weathered but still worldly, holding its own amongst the incredible number of sequels and the like being released these days.
Or being released always.
Perhaps I shouldn't write standard, I've just seen so many action/thriller/superhero films in recent decades that they're all starting to seem kind of standard, which shouldn't really be a point of critique, it's more like it's up to me to swim with the saturation.
And applaud Mad Max: Fury Road once again.
Whereas Ant-Man struggled to impressively mature, Rogue Nation acrobatically fascinates, minor characters given room to briefly grow, accept for Benjy (Simon Pegg) who's present for most of the action, "exabytes of encoded excrement," nice, more of a battle of wits than a provoked hyperaccelerated impossibility, it reacts to the facts and holds back on the cracks (sometimes the comedic dimension in such films can ruin them [not in this case]), while creatively diversifying intergovernmental collusions.
All prim and proper.
A British spy agency even foolishly creates a network of terrorists intent on dealing in death and destruction.
Aren't the roles governments play in the creation of terrorists forbidden subjects these days?
End transmission.
His team gradually catches up with him.
It sounds standard, now that I think about it, but Rogue Nation's execution overcomes its contusions to put together an entertaining brain tease, an exciting extension of the franchise, somewhat weathered but still worldly, holding its own amongst the incredible number of sequels and the like being released these days.
Or being released always.
Perhaps I shouldn't write standard, I've just seen so many action/thriller/superhero films in recent decades that they're all starting to seem kind of standard, which shouldn't really be a point of critique, it's more like it's up to me to swim with the saturation.
And applaud Mad Max: Fury Road once again.
Whereas Ant-Man struggled to impressively mature, Rogue Nation acrobatically fascinates, minor characters given room to briefly grow, accept for Benjy (Simon Pegg) who's present for most of the action, "exabytes of encoded excrement," nice, more of a battle of wits than a provoked hyperaccelerated impossibility, it reacts to the facts and holds back on the cracks (sometimes the comedic dimension in such films can ruin them [not in this case]), while creatively diversifying intergovernmental collusions.
All prim and proper.
A British spy agency even foolishly creates a network of terrorists intent on dealing in death and destruction.
Aren't the roles governments play in the creation of terrorists forbidden subjects these days?
End transmission.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Ant-Man
How to be diplomatic about this one?
Okay, Marvel's bound to have a screw-up at some point, something that's so unimaginative and formulaic that it's profoundly painful to watch.
Yes, the Ant-Man idea is imaginative, but the surrounding details, the support network, the venom, the drama, must have been written for the really young of age.
Lure in the next generation.
Even they may have knew exactly what was going to happen, yet since they may not have seen dozens of similar films, they may not have been able to tell that this one never even attempted to try something out of the ordinary.
Just because the concept is extraordinary, it doesn't mean you don't have to exercise your right to preponderate.
Laziness.
Alright, I know Marvel films aren't artistic philosophical masterpieces, but that's not really what I'm looking for.
What I am looking for is something like Mad Max: Fury Road or Aliens, Terminator 2, Die Hard, an engaged thoughtful hyperactive multidimensional salute to passion and existence that symphonically agitates myriad disparate domains.
Methinks Mad Max: Fury Road will endure.
It's just disappointing because the Marvel films are earning so much profit.
It's possible, although I hope this isn't the case, that the people running things behind the scenes at Marvel are starting to follow the same strategies adopted by the Toronto Maple Leafs for the last decade.
Decade.
Say it ain't so Marvel.
Say it ain't so!
Okay, Marvel's bound to have a screw-up at some point, something that's so unimaginative and formulaic that it's profoundly painful to watch.
Yes, the Ant-Man idea is imaginative, but the surrounding details, the support network, the venom, the drama, must have been written for the really young of age.
Lure in the next generation.
Even they may have knew exactly what was going to happen, yet since they may not have seen dozens of similar films, they may not have been able to tell that this one never even attempted to try something out of the ordinary.
Just because the concept is extraordinary, it doesn't mean you don't have to exercise your right to preponderate.
Laziness.
Alright, I know Marvel films aren't artistic philosophical masterpieces, but that's not really what I'm looking for.
What I am looking for is something like Mad Max: Fury Road or Aliens, Terminator 2, Die Hard, an engaged thoughtful hyperactive multidimensional salute to passion and existence that symphonically agitates myriad disparate domains.
Methinks Mad Max: Fury Road will endure.
It's just disappointing because the Marvel films are earning so much profit.
It's possible, although I hope this isn't the case, that the people running things behind the scenes at Marvel are starting to follow the same strategies adopted by the Toronto Maple Leafs for the last decade.
Decade.
Say it ain't so Marvel.
Say it ain't so!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)