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.