Paterson

Keep your ears open.

Your eyes.

That cat, that pick up, that vroom, that bud.

I didn't see trees covered in ice this winter.

I rhyme too much.

Rhyme provides focus.

Focus indents fusions.

Sometimes it doesn't.

I rhyme too much.

I love rhyming.

I also love poems that don't rhyme.

Proust mentioned that he liked rhyming.

I don't know if he changed his mind.

There's an old thought, an old idea, about auras of authenticity. Rich people used to use this idea to claim that works written by other rich people were authentic because they possessed a sacred aura that legitimized their being. Things were too religious at the time. Poor people realized that they could also make art yet were denied the sacred aura because they didn't know the right things to say or discuss when questioned. Pop culture developed to challenge the lofty realm of the fussy elitist and continues to frustrate purists to this day. Yet people still obsess about auras and the sacred like they're postmodern divinities acculturating themselves to materialistic throes.

It's confusing.

I really don't care.

I like rhyming.

Sometimes I don't like rhyming.

I didn't used to rhyme so much.

But Paterson reminded me of how impacting, how chill cool distant yet immediate poems that don't rhyme can be.

Or poems that kind of rhyme, sort of rhyme here, don't really rhyme there, aren't concerned with rhyming, are just expressing something like upholstery or glades.

Or they are concerned with something that it seems as if they aren't concerned with, like girls.

What a partner. What a character.  Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) is one of Jarmusch's best, imagine coming home to someone like that, it's like you'd be living with receptive discursivity, a poem, a book, Paterson (Adam Driver) is also chill, a lot of chill in this film, not too cool, elitist cool, but chill cool, livin' it cool, with a disruptive jealous dog.

Tons of sweet bus shots too, bus moments, cinematography by Frederick Elmes (Eraserhead).

It's hard to write in my favourite spots in Winter.

I tried to see every Abbott and Costello movie in my youth.

They have quite a few.

I didn't see all of them.

I used to have a bus license.

I thought it would have been cool to just show Lou Costello park and not talk about it later.

I'm making a sandwich later.

I bought vegetarian ham this week.

It's not bad.

Goon: Last of the Enforcers

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized there was something odd about fighting in hockey.

I began to slowly notice that other sports enforced much stricter penalties on athletes who decided to fight during a game, and that professional hockey's pugilistic characteristics were often regarded with astonishment by those hailing from far distant lands.

I admitted that, in comparison with football, basketball, baseball, and soccer, (okay, it wasn't until I was much much older that soccer was included in the list), it did seem strange that regularly squaring off during a game was culturally applauded, although, having matured within that very same culture, as a spectator, I found I didn't evaluate this aspect of the game that negatively, and instead tried to teach newcomers words and phrases such as, "bruiser," "goon," "toe to toe," "left hook," and "got knocked/laid the fuck out," in order to encourage their Canadian acculturation.

Some of them were also familiar with boxing, which made me think their transition to Canadian life may indeed be smooth, like learning to skate on a well-groomed ice surface.

Perhaps it was.

If they were still searching for more information concerning Canada's love of hockey fighting, I would certainly recommend Jay Baruchel's Goon: Last of the Enforcers, and also Goon, which I'm afraid I haven't seen.

Goon 2 uncritically captures Canada's love of enforcing the game, and a close study of its combative emphasis can likely assist roosted travellers in finding cozy ways to relate to their newfound Canadian brothers and sisters.

Had Mr. Baruchel known that his film would be functioning as an ambassadorial aid, he may have hired Mike Smith, Rob Wells, and John Paul Tremblay to help out with the script (they recently started writing new Trailer Park Boys seasons themselves and have scripted some of the best TPB episodes yet), which, although funny at times, struggles to generate long-lasting comedic momentum.

It does excel at emphasizing teamwork, family values, commentating, and friendship, absurdity bellicosely bromancing f(l)ights fantastic, but more time and care will be required to shoot Goon 3 into Don't Legalize It territory, not that it wasn't fun to watch, or hilarious at times.

Picnicface could play an opposing team coached by a scandalized Mr. D.

Erica from Being Erica could challenge Doug (Seann William Scott) and Eva's (Alison Pill) relationship by coquettishly introducing herself on the road in Moncton.

Bruce Greenwood could play the doctor with the magical cure.

Fred Ward's not Canadian but he could play a villain of some sort.

It's win win win.

Win win.

Win win.

With recurring curious comments from the recently moved Little Mosque on the Prairie family who at one point run into Ron MacLean in the stands who cheerfully explains everything?

What could function as a better unacknowledged integrational family friendly feature?

Like a grilled cheese for breakfast.

With blueberry crêpes on the side!

Kong: Skull Island

Could it be that islands still exist, prehistorically penetrating legend and myth with unbridled evidenced imposing extant luminosity, persisting undisturbed in majestic unrecorded intransigent galed shadow, a roar, a whisper, more lively and crisper ecosystems biologically invested in atemporal ontological sincerity, harmony, in other words, crépuscule, a delicate balance, a ferocious bottom line, lost in leisure in starlit environs, vigilance required to consummate freedom, at home in the pacific, empirically thine?

I would write that the adventurers weren't ready for their quest if it wasn't for the fact that nothing could have prepared them.

But I suppose the nature of questing demands a forged psychological allegiance between ill-preparation and adaptability, immediacy continuously generating an agile improvised awareness, which is narratively applicable to the epic in hand.

Characters descend on the ancient generally undiscovered home of King Kong in Jordan Vogt-Roberts's Kong: Skull Island, a chaotic campy realistic yet improbable, and therefore emancipating, energetic exploration of the quaintly forbidden.

Their goal is scientific yet commercial and thus the military's aid is bromantically secured.

Friendship, collegiality, professionalism, and love, populate the script with wild rhythmic versatile denizens, its cosmopolitan lodge fertile if not frenzied, the unfriendly monsters ready to eagerly devour those with too much or not enough innate courage.

Plus random soldiers.

But Kong protects them which trigger-happy Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) cannot comprehend as he attempts to kill him to right misperceived wrongs.

His attempts are obviously pigheaded but they do aptly reflect mad extremist methodologies.

The explorers, military personnel, and scientists, curiously encounter an old pilot from World War II who was forced to make his home on the island as well.

He survived by living with an Indigenous tribe who Kong altruistically protects from voracious giant lizards.

Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly [it's classic John C. Reilly :)]) represents the Indigenous people in the film, stands in for them as they (literally) fade into the background, and Packard refuses to listen to his tooth and nail.

Would the ending not have been more striking, more memorable (alright, Kong's fight with the Lizard King is memorable but the surrounding material isn't so much [okay, they escape on a boat, I'll remember that, but . . .]) if the Indigenous peoples stopped Packard before he tried to kill Kong, and everyone then escaped having understood the logic of their decision?

Such a development would have functioned as a salient metaphorical critique of the Vietnam war which otherwise isn't critically examined.

What I'm trying to say is, it would have rocked if Skull Island went Avatar.

With Kong still fighting the giant Lizard of course.

It's still a lot of fun, the new King Kong movie, and, as a matter of fact, I couldn't help comparing it to Planet Terror and Machete Kills since it unreels with a similar more family friendly aesthetic.

There are moments where it captures the magic that makes those films stand out, but the sequels will have to dig deeper for me to mention their names in the same breath.

Again.

I still recommend the film.

A great March release.

I was worried about March this year.

But so far it ain't so bad.

A United Kingdom

It's bizarre how something as wonderful as two people falling for each other can have so many painful consequences, and how surrounding support networks, which are also supposed to be amorously bound, can suddenly disappear after the declaration, in an appeal to what the slighted individuals oddly refer to as shame.

It seems more shameful to me to cast out a loved one for following their heart and deciding to live with/date/marry . . . the person they hold dear.

People have been writing similar things for millennia because the problem has persisted for millennia and adults often don't consult 5 year-olds for solutions to such matters, even though in such cases the youngsters often possess a much clearer understanding than the mature grown-ups scorned.

In terms of race anyways, unless their parents have corrupted them at an early age.

When Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and Prince Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) engage in Amma Asante's A United Kingdom, and then marry, their contentment is multilaterally assaulted.

The British government is relying on its South African income to stay afloat after World War II , and since Khama is the hereditary heir of what eventually becomes Botswana, the South Africans, who have just enacted apartheid, are enraged by his betrothal to a white woman.

Correspondingly, his family, who have been begrudgingly living for decades under pretentious conservative British rule, sees their marriage as an affront to African dignity, the coddling of the colonizers, and regards their happy union with contempt.

The politics of empire are obviously quite complex, and if an important revenue stream is dammed up, ways will be found to ensure it continues flowing.

Thus, Khama is blocked in his attempt to begin governing his domain as the British cut him off after his uncle (Vusi Kunene as Tshekedi Khama) betrays him.

But democratic appeals to the British and Bechuanan public generate sympathy for the controversial lovers, and a working solution begins to materialize.

A lot of unforeseen trouble for the young couple.

Who steadfastly remains harmoniously united.

A United Kingdom breaks down the best and the worst of sociopolitical matrimonial relations to champion integrity as opposed to bland disgust.

Family friendly yet bold and powerful, it romantically digs deep to forge new ground, celebrating ethical reimaginings of the political, and two tenacious nestlings, who were fortunate enough to fall in love.

Logan

Fascist forces of dull simplicity have driven mutants to the brink of extinction in James Mangold's Logan, but a few remain, carving out a meagre living while doing everything they can to conceal the beauty that defines their superlative difference.

Rather than cultivating an inclusive public sphere wherein which difference is free to flourish, that difference has been isolated and weaponized by monstrous geneticists intent on rearing invincible super soldiers to achieve militaristic objectives.

But these gifted children fight back, escape, avoid capture, one of them eventually finding Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) who have been living off the grid in severe destitution.

She's (Dafne Keen as Laura) hunted of course, intense battles erupting everywhere she goes, the death count extremely high as the trio travels from Mexico to North Dakota in search of a secretive promised land.

And a family.

There's a very tender scene where they all sit down to dinner on a farm and warmly discuss different topics, a rare moment in superhero films that briefly and humbly exemplifies everything they've been fighting for.

They're reminded shortly thereafter that for some insane reason their idle happiness enrages conformist obscurities.

Suffocatingly.

Patrick Stewart delivers a remarkable performance.

He often has a leadership role that doesn't display much vulnerability, but in Logan he's quite helpless and therefore given the opportunity to heartbreakingly act beyond the borders his characters often rivetingly apply themselves within.

An outstanding supporting role.

Logan's like no other X-Men film.

It's much more stylistically concerned with the human factor than special effects or introducing a wild array of compelling new characters.

Identity, community, belonging, loneliness, rage, and bigotry still drive the narrative, but they're examined less explosively, with more realistically tender tenacity (when the fighting stops), as if X-Men films truly are applicable to global sociopolitical debates, debates within which their characters dynamically distinguish themselves.

A fitting salute to Hugh Jackman who has thankfully been bringing Wolverine to life for the past 17 years.

So many irresistible moments.

Only the death of Captain James T. Kirk effected me similarly.

Who knows, maybe huge assholes with tons of power will stop militaristically expressing themselves while crushing other people who aren't like them some day.

That kind of bullshit doesn't seem to fly in the EU much thankfully.

Currently.

Difference really is a wonderful thing.

When it thrives, the scientific, artistic, and religious benefits are extraordinary.

It's why we have cars, electricity.

The internet.

Refrigerators.

If the people who invented or discovered these things had been callously excluded and beaten down throughout their lives we'd still be living in the dark ages.

And those assholes would still be in charge.

Nurturing contempt.

Ruling with imperialist ambitions.

Recklessly waging war.

To satisfy capricious whims.

Angry Inuk

I don't think I could ever kill a seal or a dear or a pig or a cow, but, as mentioned previously, I do eat meat and understand that somewhere down the line the lives of the animals I consume are cut short, that someone else brought their lives to an end, and they may earn their livings by engaging in such activities.

It's different if the species is threatened or endangered, or animal babies are involved, or if people are eating a species with a slow reproductive rate, but husbandry usually doesn't manage species at risk, as far as I know, the inherent cruelty of many aspects of factory farming notwithstanding.

Keep raising your voices and such aspects will change, all you have to do is frustrate a business's bottomline.

Several of the animals I eat are quite cute, however.

They're all quite cute.

I've considered posting pictures of them on my fridge to remind me not to eat them but still haven't gotten around to it.

Man I love steak.

Still, I'm glad there aren't massive industrial entities harvesting seals along with pigs and cows, but if some people in remote areas where there are no alternative economic opportunities want to hunt them, and sell products made from their skin etc., I see no problem with this, since the seals in fact flourish in abundance.

The seal population in Nunavut, for instance, is much higher than that of its human residents, meaning that if such residents want to hunt seals and sell boots and parkas made from their hides afterwards, I can't rationally critique such commerce.

Alethea Arnaqua-Baril's Angry Inuk takes a hard look at the EU's decision to ban the sale of seal products within its domain, and the effects that that decision has had on small communities in Nunavut, Canada.

Before the ban, the communities were earning enough money to support themselves, and people in Europe may not know that a 12 pack of ginger ale can cost as much as $82 North of 60.

After the ban, these communities were still (are still) able to hunt seals for subsistence purposes if they could afford to buy gas for their snow machines, but without markets to sell their seal products, they couldn't afford to do much else, the ban on the import of seal goods having effectively crushed their only economy, and left them dependent on government assistance.

They sustainably harvest a small fraction of the seal population and if allowed to do so can support themselves with dignity and respect.

I therefore support a reversal of the ban.

I find it hard to stomach that the EU props up the veal industry, which is extra revolting, the mass slaughter of baby cows, the systematic mechanized profit based mass slaughter of baby cows many of whom are restrained from birth, and it won't support a handful of Inuit hunters shooting free seals in the wild who have grown to adulthood outside of a cage.

Baffling.

I've heard that centuries ago working people in England desperately wanted to eat meat because the upper classes generally were the only ones who could afford it.

I think that if you transported many of those workers to the 21st century and showed them the unbelievably miserable lives many animals lead in order so that the majority of North Americans and Europeans can eat meat, over a billion deaths weekly according to some sites, they may return to their time(s) lacking their former jealousies.

Or currently, currently send oblivious citizens to a slaughterhouse and have them stay there for a week, invisibly, so they can see how the animals are treated when the workforce thinks no one is looking.

Factory farms can become organic.

It may only raise the cost of a big mac by 35 cents.

Governments could also subsidize the transition.

While subsidizing the cost of food North of 60.

Canada's population North of 60 is around 114, 970.

If the oil and gas industry receives massive government subsidies every year, there must be some money lying around to bring the cost of a 12 pack of ginger ale down to $7 in the far North.

If food costs come down and the Inuit can market seal products again, you've got a thriving aboriginal success story.

That's not only good press.

It's also solid humanity.

Angry Inuk, a must see documentary.

Shame on you Greenpeace.

Shame.

Forushande (The Salesman)

Honourable codes parlay filings frosty, high stress politesse addressed immaterials, expectations, blame, a role, a play, residual sin licentious spaces, jasmine, tremors entrenched repute resounding, a home makeshift explicit riffs callow, advanced notification withheld as fictional and realistic threads intertwine to obscure an artistic commitment, the adoption of a foreign text from a less patriarchal period and country (?) expressing thoughts and desires strictly forbidden, blended with alternative signs of subterranean dissatisfaction to question free thought as if it's a supernatural challenge, as if the artist is being challenged by God, a progressive man on the Iranian scene must internally confront strength, shock, and shame, obsessive disdain, turmoil exhaustively cultivated.

His wife's willing to forgive.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini) spends so much time thinking vengeful thoughts that he overlooks Rana's (Taraneh Alidoosti) suffering as rage slowly consumes him.

She was the victim, she was the one who was attacked, but throughout Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman Emad is more concerned with personal honour.

He critiques the system within which he was nurtured but is still a product of that system and when the real clashes with his noble imagination the sublime does not judiciously compensate.

Women shortsightedly relegated to a subservient role.

The salesperson interrogates to enlighten yet struggles as he surfaces.

The film brilliantly examines his tortured soul, but is also a product of its circumstances, and focuses far less time on the feminine.

A purgatorial predicament.

Igniting bitter flames.

En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove)

A routine lifetime, sturdy crystalline productive disciplined rigour, shocks and surges and synergies refreshed and reconstituted, dis/ingenuous gravitas, im/pertinent shallows, crises, crucibles, cubicles, companionship, curmudgeony coca, grumpy old bear, shattered inveterate disrepair, friendly yet fiendish, stubborn yet understanding, a bleeding heart with no tolerance for stupidity, a prognostic paradigm, tired of living alone.

An unwilling multicaring master of quotidian ceremonies seeks to end it all after having grown none too fond of his lonely predicament.

Yet every suicide attempt fails as curious neighbours inquisitively interrupt him.

In search of aid.

Will the attempts stop as Ove (Rolf Lassgård) accepts his necessary role or is the loss of his wife simply too much to ignore?

To unburden.

I should have just called him an aging romantic.

Old school know-how, postmodernly applicable.

Comedy, tragedy, dismissals and outrage fluidly blend and contradict as Hannes Holm's En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove) proves that life's worth living.

From driving lessons to guidance counselling to children's stories to a complimentary spade, the film ironically employs a grouchy weathered patriarch to communalize arabs, gay people, eccentrics, regular joes, and the happy-go-lucky.

Captivatingly so.

There are moments where people air their grievances only to be briskly reminded of the greatness they have undeniably achieved.

According to Ove's incisive summaries.

But the film isn't preachy, such dialogue is expertly woven in to avoid seeming too emotional, to counterintuitively use implausibility to capture something realistic.

I don't know much about what's happening in Sweden these days, but I can claim that En man som heter Ove internationally and often hilariously synthesizes the left and the right while pretending like it'd rather be stretched out on a couch watching reruns of Cheers, or the Swedish equivalent of the celebrated American sitcom.

Sort of like hot chocolate.

Points to make, style to consider.

Ove may not want to do anything ever, but whenever he attempts something, he engages full-throttle.

Occasionally expressing road rage.

Toni Erdmann

The unexpected smile, the medium coffee spontaneously upgraded, surprise Thai food, microbrasserie du Lac St-Jean, discourses of extemporaneity startling and surprising with lighthearted charm and velvety enchantment, extracurricular cuddles, subtlety delicately embraced, yet it doesn't have to be so cozy, so huggable, the art of introducing mild-mannered bizarre yet keenly shocking escapades to a routine having been disruptively cultivated by a few, mischievously mutating manifestations genuinely juggling various psychologies in sundry situations to produce desired wtfs?, perfecting their grasp over a lifetime, to pluck up and stack anew.

Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann addresses such potential by placing a loveable creative comic within a corporate crucible, his goal, to cheer up his successful yet sad daughter, who's living the high life yet shovelling the coal.

She's none too impressed, but dad (Peter Simonischek) keeps showing back up equipped with alternative personality.

She can't deny that he's funny.

Nor that he radiates goodwill.

But it's not really a comedic film, not really a drama either, Toni Erdmann's more like a brilliant presentation of the seriously awkward which patiently and articulately synthesizes different lifestyles to hilariously and sensibly simplify choice.

Films that are almost three hours long which cleverly clasp your attention the whole way through are a rare treat, especially ones which realistically examine so many different aspects of the human predicament without directly moralizing, judiciously justifying scenario after scenario instead which simultaneously intensify while lightening lives lost and lounging.

Material taken on the road.

There's a chill extended shot which builds Erdmann's character early on. He's sitting next to an elegant stone wall which resembles aspects of a wild ocean that's been thoughtfully tamed.

Throughout the film he playfully interjects harmless doses of character to sharply strung financially volatile vectors, character which appears wild at first, but he does so with such well-timed respectful controlled im/precision that nothing ever wantonly swerves out of control.

Chaotic stability critically conditioned.

The script reflexively blends hierarchical configurations with nimble finesse and stressed out soul.

The last 25 minutes are so freakin' good.