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.