Daddy's Home

The other guy, better looking and stronger than you, father of the two children you are rearing, covetous of your stable ambient domesticity, questioning your every decision, flouting the love his children exhilarate, doing everything you can't do, outperforming you at work, giving advice that contradicts your tutelage, suddenly living in your once cozy home, awake bright and early, to reclaim that which he discarded.

Carelessly.

Since the time of cave people rivalries such as these have endured, but in the contemporary absence of sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths, the biggest challenge for the reckless alpha, is patiently following smoothly polished bourgeois rules.

Being polite.

Complimenting others.

Nurturing through support.

Restraining violent impulses.

Never thinking, "this sucks."

Dusty Mayron's (Mark Wahlberg) suburban shadow Brad Whitaker (Will Ferrell) must also exercise caution by not attempting to court the exceptional, which he no doubt nevertheless tries to do, kneading knee-jerks as his outputs flounce and flail.

The A+ wild man versus A+ dependability, the disharmonious blend struggling within the uncertainty, great ideas not producing the laughs one might expect, although the virile exchanges offer constructive lessons learned.

Sara (Linda Cardellini) caught in-between.

Panda Smooth Jazz.

Griff (Hannibal Buress) adds solid ridiculous structure as his character functions as unnecessary referee, but Leo Holt (Thomas Haden Church) could have been more inappropriate in his consul.

Consul such as his could have provided even more completely unnecessary distractions from the narrative and refined raunchy and/or gluttonously verbose observations.

The kids are funny and cute, used to exaggerate the conflict as much as possible, the best part of the film.

Which struggles.

Anomalisa

Animated like fluffy warmhearted cheer, hummingbird hugs, biscuity blankets, fireside chats while reading pulpy novels, luminescently gliding through the snow with delicate ease and relaxed disregard, a friendly shake, inchoate snuggles, a drive through the country, constitutionally clasped in balm.

Animation at odds with its subject matter, for discontent haunts motivational speaker Michael Stone (David Thewlis), his aged soul overcome by excessive mundanity, plagued by routine doubts, wondering how to reclaim stark serenity.

On a trip to Cincinnati, where an old flame inextinguishably radiates.

But he's lost touch with the other, with politesse, decorum, and doesn't know he's become a full-on perv.

Yet fate still forgives his aggressive libido, and uniquely introduces unexpected novelty.

Manticore.

The result, Anomalisa, a masterful display of understated comedy.

You don't know if you should be supportive, outraged, condescending, repulsed, nimble, sick, saddened, morose.

Such an odd collection of random interactions, ambiguity pruriently stabilized, imaginative independence locked-down and slung, as the borders separating freedom and responsibility slowly and spontaneously fade.

Fun.

There's only one thing Michael finds fun anymore and its ephemeral foundations interject disingenuous ennui.

Jaded conflict.

Obsessive ebb and flow.

Unction.

No way out.

More more more.

The Big Short

You wonder how much some of these characters really cared about the fate of the American masses during the 2008 economic crisis.

It's plausible that those who did care did in fact care.

Without them caring however, The Big Short does turn into a celebration of sorts of the lucky 0.00000000000001% who prospered excessively while the unknowing majority was ruined.

Conscience or convenience?

Without them the film definitely would have been tough to take.

Perhaps not.

It's really well written, constant motion following multiple characters who analyze their subject matter and conduct their research from varied perspectives, these perspectives vivaciously instructing audiences in paradigmatic peculiarities which crippled the global economy, while introducing several tertiary adjuncts who often make more than one appearance (editing by Hank Corwin) and diversify its critique of unsustainable capitalist expansion by illustrating both the reckless joys and famished dreams of the lenders and borrowers caught up in early 21st century frenzied financing.

Writers Charles Randolph (screenplay), Adam McKay (screenplay), and Michael Lewis (Book) may have been able to extract the ethical from this frame without stalling its momentum although the ethical focus does transport its erudite pedestrianism to the realm of the imaginative flâneur.

Holy crap The Big Short takes a lot of shots at the chaotic mechanics which oddly upheld American markets for a significant chunk of time and the people who profited from the resultant unrestrained disillusioning economic creativity.

It's a shame because the rampant charlatanism had given people earning modest livings the chance to live the American dream, houses, cars, microbrewed beer, poutine, it was just totally foundationless and eventually crashed unrepentantly, with basically no penalties, and according to The Big Short and recent forecasts by a Scottish bank, is ready to start frothingly socioproselytizing once more.

What do you do, do you live within your means without accumulating much debt or mortgage your life away and enjoy whatever you can get your hands on?

Can't answer that question, but sustainable development seems more profitable to me in the long run, conserving immaculate environmental and technological wonders in turn while eagerly seeking out sources of cultural and scientific mutation.

I did leave the theatre wondering if I had just seen one of the best films of the year or an exceptional Pop-Up Video collage.

But upon further reflection, I do think The Big Short is a contender, even if it's kind of raw-raw.

Thought-provoking conscientious unnerving entertainment.

Worth subsequent viewings, strong cast, well put together.

The Hateful Eight

*This one's kind of gross. The rules. A different set of rules.

It's difficult to take an exacting intellect capable of exotically yet haphazardly envisioning distinct pulsating shocks and successfully apply it to situations which often import stark congenital gravity.

You have to seem bright without seeming intelligent, unconcerned while meticulously managing the minutia.

In an enlightened stupor.

If you seem too intelligent it's too intelligent; if it's too bland, it's too bland.

You see Tarantino trying to intelligently craft visceral mundane irresistibly kitschy constellations throughout The Hateful Eight but the result is more like a blunt racist ultraviolent unappealing dust bowl.

That's not what you're supposed to do!

It's not that he doesn't have his own thing happenin'.

It's quirky and bizarre enough to make you want to see what's going to happen next, and his confident grizzly backwoods characters hold your attention with outrageously dispassionate abrasive machismo, bullshit, bullshit, more bullshit, mendaciously striking with cold hard-hearted disparity.

It's just, you keep seeing what happens next and it isn't that great, some of it's kind of cool, but there's an extended back-in-time sequence that serves little purpose but to depict a lively happy frontier family being slaughtered, there's torture and rape, the main female character's face is regularly covered in blood because her captor keeps punching her in the mouth, and the races are irrepressibly at odds as the hatred viciously intensifies.

I suppose if you want to indulge in gratuitous gratuity, sleaze for sleaze's sake, that's okay, I guess, I don't know why you would want to do that but it's done all the time, I don't want to be too politically correct here, The Hateful Eight firmly giving the finger to pc everything and it should be examined on its own terms judiciously.

Like, scatological synergies.

Claustrophobic acrimony.

Renegade nausea.

Hemorrhoid puke stink.

One of the first things I thought when I saw the trailer for The Revenant was, "this is what Quentin Tarantino could be doing, he could be making films like this."

But then I thought, it's annoying when people are like, you should be doing this, so I was like, I'm not going to be like that.

Inglourious Basterds is an incredible film that I love watching again and again. It succeeds on so many levels and even has valuable life lessons to learn worked into its frames.

I'm not getting that from Django or The Hateful Eight and think Tarantino should move away from exploiting race relations.

He could give the serious yet comedic unconsciously pliable western one more try, but like I think I've said before, it's extremely difficult to do.

In danger of being eclipsed by Robert Rodriguez.

Troublemaker studios.

Heuristic halcyon.

Joy

Discipline.

Punishment.

The hurricane, crushing, displacing, infuriating, exasperating, draining her reserves with unsettling elasticity, voracious steady plutocratic hunger, petty indignant somnambulistic plunder, she coasts astride, reacting, strategizing, acclimatizing, placating, diplomatically attuned to brokering consensus, to enabling equanimity, fomented franticon, whirlwinds harnessed agon, risking everything she has while enriching her familial bower, through the art of sympathetically nurturing comprehensible inclusive trusts.

She leaves no one behind, her spirit breeding virtue in resplendent fertile abundance, someone you can count on, entrenched hardwired reliability, David O. Russell's Joy (Jennifer Lawrence), an odd synthesis of the exceptional and the mundane.

It's almost there.

The film wavers between the plucky and the humdrum with casual indiscreet dexterity, never seeming too shocking or distant, while enlivening situations you would think might not be so.

In conversation.

By cautiously yet cleverly elevating the tedious, Joy coaxes the extraordinary with undeniable hokey charm, notably when Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) asks her 4 questions.

Still missing something however, its aesthetic resonance asymptotically flirting with the quaintly ethereal, girls on farms, caressing and tantalizing with each exhaled breath, otherwise fun and endearing, well-acted convincing versatility.

The Danish Girl

For a terse, inadequate, understated, rushed synopsis of Foucault's Madness & Civilization, one might write that qualitative evaluations, at any given moment, have specific psychological preferences, stereotypically spiritualized in what they consider to be rational, enticing, praiseworthy, while alternative dispositions which don't snuggly fit the definitions must still attempt to forthrightly applaud them, or fall prey to a legion of mental health authorities who make a living cultivating them, using various methods to diagnose and cure the afflicted who can't help but stand out in sharp contrast.

These definitions change, In Search of Lost Time's examination of the Dreyfus Affair highlighting malleable pretensions to culture, the Affair not relating to definitive mindsets particularly, but Proust's compellingly interminable investigation of its protagonists and arch-villains, themselves changing their positions depending on their analysis of the popular, thereby behaving politically, to parlour, antiquate, and esteem, demonstrates how madness and civilization dialectically contend, embrace, synthesize, in rhetorical applications of epistemological virtue.

There are people who seem to be lacking in reason, people who adamantly believe their pet guinea pigs are reincarnated Julio-Claudians for example, but The Danish Girl's Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) is clearly sane, kind, gentle, yet has no means through which to access inadmissible components of his personality, and is therefore labelled undesirable.

He escapes curative clutches however, enduring minor experimental encumbrances but still maintaining his freedom, and, with the aid of his idyllic wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander), eventually finds a doctor who recognizes his sanity and wholeheartedly assists.

Before discovering this doctor you seem him struggling to animate, as he seeks out the compassion of the civil who misguidedly think him mad.

The film is a quiet timid exploratory illustration of gender identification which focuses more on Lili/Einar and Gerda's brilliant relationship, effervescently brought to life by Redmayne and Vikander, true compassion and understanding, than the horrors Einar/Lili faces as he transforms.

Illumination.

Trying to find markets for art complements Lili/Einar's discoveries, selling paintings like trying to invigorate public opinion, open up new worlds, and encourage sociocultural inclusivity.

Gerda's paintings are quite beautiful.

As is a world where difference is an integral strength.

Intimately unrecognized.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

*I've waited weeks to post this. There aren't any huge spoilers but don't read it if you haven't seen the film.

A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back really are exceptional films. They created a universe and captivatingly pulled you in, refusing to let go, commanding your strict attention for every volatile nanosecond then leaving you wiped from hyperintense emotional exposure. They were dark. They were pressurized. They didn't seem like lighthearted whimsical checks and balances. They built the foundations for worlds within worlds and boldly cultivated a clear spiritual vision, tantalizingly navigating a polarized political spectrum. I watched them again recently, watched all the Star Wars films again recently, and they still hold up, still captivatingly pressurize. They must have had a long lasting effect on the Force Awakens team too, because Star Wars VII borrows heavily from their scripts. I enjoyed watching it, and even preferred it the second time, but it was still somewhat frustrating to see the agile new cast back on a remote desert planet, with a droid containing secret information, off to a new cantina bar, before having to assault a new super-Death Star wherein an Empire like confrontation takes place. The film holds together and is fun to watch, but the script is lacking in vision.

They likely didn't want to try anything too experimental because that was precisely what Lucas did in episodes I-III and they didn't turn out that well. It's a shame because he attempted to multidimensionally diversify the world he created by crafting complex scripts with multiple storylines. It's too bad he didn't get someone else to write the dialogue or rework each script into something less convoluted, something more like episodes IV through VI.

Which is what The Force Awakens team has done, taking the easy route but workin' it intergalactically. I was hoping it would be something exceptional, you come to expect the exceptional from Star Wars films because A New Hope and Empire were so good, and they had a long time to work on this one; you're happy when a Marvel film is exceptional but you don't expect them to be exceptional in the same way that you expect a Star Wars film to be exceptional, so that when it's just solid entertainment, a fun couple of hours revisiting a phenomenal contemplation, it's a bit of a let down, which is easy to get over.

The film's too light.

General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) is like a child in comparison to Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) and Kylo Ren is light years less menacing than Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones).

First rate pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) crash lands on Jakku and then disappears until heroically returning to save the day, having managed to escape from a barren isolated planet being monitored by a Star Destroyer-like ship which is searching for him specifically.

How did he get off the planet!

Because it's so similar to episode IV you know precisely what is going to happen and this takes the edge off considerably even if it's kind of neat to see it all happening again.

With some new twists thrown in.

The text from the opening moments seems more like a bubblegum comic than an invitation to interstellar tragedy.

Was infiltrating the First Order's secret base and shutting down its force field far too easy?

Before Alderaan is destroyed there's a brilliant exchange between Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Tarkin which accentuates the severity of what's about to happen. In The Force Awakens they just fire the new weapon to sever any connection episode VII has to episodes I-III.

Rey (Daisy Ridley) is a saving grace, and her character continuously steals scenes, a cross between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, she should be able to hold the next couple films together.

With Finn's (John Boyega) help; I loved it when he picked up the lightsaber to take on Ren.

I suppose I shouldn't be advocating for darker Star Wars films if I prefer the ways of the Jedi, but it's the competent resilient fierce desperation of the rebellion that made those films stand out, like the Rebels were up against overwhelmingly austere villains whose maturity was viscerally diabolical, the goodness of the Rebels standing out in sharp contrast.

Perhaps George Miller or Christopher Nolan should direct episode VIII. Perhaps they weren't crazy fans of the original trilogy when it came out. That may give them an advantage.

May the force be with you.

*Forgot to mention how cute BB-8 is. Like a well-groomed feisty Bichon.

Spotlight

A community, bound together by traditional bonds stretching back for tightly knit centuries, growing and changing over time yet remaining loyal to specific ways of life, to institutions, whose reputation for kindness and charity has lovingly guided initiatives structured by compassion and understanding which encourage warm hearted gatherings in order to anchor humanistic trusts throughout, within and beyond the great city of Boston, which is under fire this year in American cinema.

But it's not as fuzzy as all that, as Tom McCarthy's Spotlight points out, a filmic examination of the Boston Globe reporters who brought to light monstrous religious failings, abysmal breaches of trust, and an entrenched sociopolitical culture devoted to covering it up, to overlooking its monumental shortcomings, its violence, its subversion of its fundamental principles.

True believers who attempt to tenderly encourage inclusive communal growth are exceptional people, it's only when they either exclude large portions of the population who believe in something else or commit acts of terror that serious problems arise, augmented by parts of the population who try to exclude them for believing what they do.

But for true believers, the bonds they cultivate between themselves and religious authorities are truly sacred, and if such authorities take for granted the sacred nature of these bonds and viciously exploit them to corruptly satisfy perverted desires, relying on their image and authority to prevent people from coming forward with shocking contradictory truths, they shatter their aura of integrity and obscure their charitable foundations.

Spotlight examines the tough decisions Boston Globe reporters, themselves Christian and citizens of Boston, had to make in order to bring the truth to light, the idyllic patience they required to expose corrupt religious and civic bureaucracies as they furtively waited until they had enough evidence to comment.

A passion for justice challenges the team's resolve at one memorable point, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) demanding action, Spotlight team leader Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) logically refusing, the film having carefully crafted a number of corresponding interviews and investigations the revelations of which frustratingly challenge the cohesivity of their discipline, not to mention that it's their community they're shocking, their heritage they're disillusioning.

It's not like someone took office supplies home here, government information was misplaced, high ranking officials from different cultural institutions attempted to block them, the law prevented truths from being discussed, testimony from scared impoverished victims was difficult to obtain, assistance from like-minded jaded professionals difficult to coax, trust, trust had to be relied upon but the issue they were investigating had resoundingly destroyed the bedrock of trust their contemporaries and interviewees had sought to preserve, making the situation highly volatile, its outputs, highly devastating.

Yet invaluable.

A tough film examining tough issues from tough perspectives with a tenacious resolve.

In search of true justice.

True reform.

For true believers.

Macbeth

A loyal man, a bold man, his mettle proven in battle like explicit prosperous ironclad invincibility, his enemies, the enemies of his King, thoroughly ruined, honesty guiding his sword's righteous judgments with dignity and will beknownst to the clairvoyant, who follow his progress with vision, with awe, with inveterate claws, clawing at his conscience to ensure it withdraws, it, submits, submits to the darkness consuming his integrity as ambition commands he ignominiously strike, strike at he who loved him, who cherished and honoured his fierce fidelity, madness the harvest of such grievous misdeeds, in allegiance with infamy, a prophecy fulfilled.

Would it be fulfilled either way, even if he had done nothing, would he still have been proclaimed King?

Encouraged in the act by his restless wife, they plot to ponder virtue askew.

Ravaged.

Betrayed.

In the Scottish Highlands, a tale peculiar to the realm yet pervasive in its cinematography takes shape once again, all power flagitiously corrupting, shallowly reaching out to its vengeful doom.

Focused primarily on primary characters, as opposed to other investments which would have broadened the spectrum, Fassbender, Cotillard, and Harris enrich their acts with multidimensional perplexities, yet Banquo (Paddy Considine), Rosse (Ross Anderson) and Malcolm (Jack Reynor) are sewn into the background like unacknowledged afterthoughts, to digest a pretence to royalty.

The outdoors, the wilderness, the sense of suffocating desolation, how did these people feed themselves?, how did they carry on?, haunts the film with supernatural astonishment, the absurdity of power, fickle and disobedient, revolving extolled gradations.

Justin Kurzel's Macbeth acclimatizes its audiences to considerations of the play's rough isolation, its principal inhabitants becoming pointless as they pointlessly seek out pointlessness, creating that which would have been created had they rested abreast, harbingers of decay, impatience fraught with void.

Cinematography by Adam Arkapaw.