Lucky Logan

Disreputably discharged, scintillating strategy, fraternal fervour, impenitent perfidy, perfecting the penetrating pardon piecemeal, a brother creates a plan to holistically heist, recruiting resins and residents and siblings and stealth, his team patiently exercising precise pitch adjudicatively, jigsawing the jabs and jettisoning apprehensions they not-so-delicately divide up the labour, differing divergencies conditionally coordinated with concise collocation, the moment of truth ascends, departures and infiltrations seismically systematized, they shift into high gear, and tenaciously tear up the track.

I imagine Lucky Logan will find a supportive audience.

It's one of those films you can't help but love even if you really don't like it.

The situations and sequences and shivers and synergies are certainly well thought out, but it's like it blew a tire during the first lap yet continued trekking round and round, aimlessly sans objectif, the idea being much stronger than the execution, which is unfortunately resoundingly flat.

It has its moments, notably scenes with Daniel Craig (Joe Bang) or those involving a distressed warden irreverently operating in isolation.

It's fun to watch while the thieves engage, plus it's super Robin Hoody which is awesome.

But there are so many exchanges which seem like they should be hilarious, like you should be boisterously busting a gut, but it never really happens, it's just too plain, too dull.

Just my opinion though.

And I don't get it sometimes.

Love Lucky Logan, excel and thrive.

Daniel Craig does have multiple scenes.

I'm bloated.

The Journey

A bold impromptu countryside drive bears diplomatic fruit in Nick Hamm's The Journey, as two polar opposites combatively discuss Northern Ireland's historic divisions along the way.

One is as unyielding in his convictions as he is appealing (to his flock) in his integrity, a cold hard person of the cloth who cites scripture like he's exhaling the divine to justify whatever it is he happens to be upholding/considering/refuting/condemning.

The other's less austere, a person of the world who's made tough decisions to challenge unsettling realities. He's tired of fighting and seeks a mutually beneficial resolution, a tie that binds, an end to the bloodshed.

The tension's thick as they depart side by side to travel to the airport, but the ostensibly naive inquiries of an undercover chauffeur slowly but surely facilitate dialogue.

Obviously enough, it's difficult to have a conversation when a participant is unwilling, when someone trades jibes and insults rather than reflections and well-reasoned respectful counterpoints.

Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) isn't easily dissuaded, however, and his resourceful concerned conciliatory olive branch gradually impresses the much older Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall).

What follows is a light but sturdy passionate yet restrained account of a brilliant diplomatic act, of a political synthesis replete with sympathy and understanding that significantly changed things and reunited integrities estranged.

Inspirational.

The ideological and the practical ingeniously combined, Northern Ireland's example as presented in The Journey provides leaders of all stripes with constructive hands on principles which can promote consensus as opposed to carnage, community rather than chaos.

A tiny country isolated on the edge of Europe which found a working solution so many more cosmopolitan realms never seem to discover, the lasting peace which McGuinness and Paisley embraced resolutely resonates to this day.

As many others have pointed out, the study of history is integral to a nation's identity, but bearing grudges about things that happened long ago can clog things up in the present until there's absolutely no moving forward, history blindly and stubbornly obscuring innovation.

Cynicism breeds contempt if not romance, contempt fosters alienation if not community.

If politicians can constructively clarify innovations at any given moment, contemporary conceptions can progressively promote change, as long as there's a willingness for different cultures to make concessions, or simply recognize the potential of how truly wonderful things can be.

Unfortunately, that's too easy, according to my rudimentary understanding of cultural obsessions with novelty.

Too predictable, too boring.

Perhaps you need that wild unpredicted spontaneous stroke of heuristic genius that brought Northern Ireland together to encourage cultural respect amongst peoples.

Or perhaps peoples really do respect one another as long as tensions aren't politically riled up every six months or so.

That could be it.

Annabelle: Creation

Horror awaits a group of female religious orphans in David F. Sandberg's Annabelle: Creation, as they find sanctuary with a childless family whose husband once made a living crafting dolls.

Unfortunately, his daughter was lost in a tragic accident, and emphatic prayers for reanimation were made to whomever would mercifully listen.

Yet in their desperation, Mr. and Mrs. Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) accepted the aid of Satan, and one of his unholy minions was unleashed upon earthly realms.

Eventually captured and incarcerated within biblical shackles, it malevolently waits for ingenuous release, calling out to the unsuspecting, as they attempt to innocently slumber.

Why was there no exorcism?

Why was pure evil so lackadaisically contained?

Seriously, an exorcism and a wild grizzled priest would have added a lot to Annabelle: Creation, which performs some rudimentary tricks but by no means stands out as a testifying treat.

An exorcism perhaps would have made the film seem too derivative, but it's not like it represents supernatural authenticity in its current threadbare confines.

Many episodes of The X-Files are more frightening and thought provoking for instance.

If Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman) had boldly and resonantly stood against the demon and dealt it a discombobulating blow, feminine strength would have been more actively asserted.

Thus, in its current state it's little more than a light bit of distraction, whose latent thematic potential might resonate more profoundly in subsequent instalments.

Detroit

Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit examines a horrific event from America's past that took place during the explosive Detroit riots.

As the twitterverse and the video technology built into postmodern cellphones vigilantly documents contemporary life, providing unburnished blueprints of power being abused, the prolonged illustration of police brutality found in the film seems shocking yet all too familiar.

How do you bring these two groups together, African American communities targeted by the police and the trustworthy police officers committed to treating them fairly?

If one group targets another for decades and becomes more like a bully than a protector, it's difficult for the victims to trust that group or assist them when their help is needed.

That targeted community deserves the same protection other communities enjoy and it would be terrifying to think that the very people hired to ensure public safety were in fact hostile and unwilling to assist.

The positive forces of progressive change are often overlooked within a sensationalized frame that predominantly focuses on violence.

They must be working together behind the scenes to fight both crime and police brutality, with stricter penalties for police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

It must be difficult to trust if you see innocent members of your community killed by the police, and then the offending officer is set free with a slap on the wrist.

It must be difficult to trust if the authorities generally think you're troublemaking.

Decade after decade, no respite in sight.

Despair contending with animosity, historically nuanced to permeate strategic plans.

The African Americans I've worked with were first rate, working hard throughout the day while relaxing and having thoughtful and fun conversations during lunch and breaks, like the other people I've worked with over the years.

There's no difference unless you ignorantly approach the situation with destructive preconceived notions that turn a typical interaction into an eggshell extravaganza.

Detroit realistically and bluntly presents a racist tragedy perpetrated by those who blindly consider violence to be an effective tool.

Hemorrhaging and monstrous, it openly investigates that which remains unimagined, hopefully teaching confused individuals and communities just how horrendous miscommunication can be.

I suggest never pulling a prank on the police, rather, it's best practice to listen and do what they say.

Even if it makes no difference when they do that in Detroit.

There are thousands of police officers out there who care and are there to protect and serve.

Hopefully they can surely remove the racist motivations from the force, which encourage unrelenting tension, and replace trust and friendship with contempt and conflict.

The Big Sick

The one night stand that blossoms into something bountiful.

Lighthearted carefree revelling evoking humorous injunctions.

Pakistani and European Americans embracing mutually inclusive tactile artistry.

Fanciful floodgates flummoxing.

As exclusivity spoils the fun.

And traditions tumultuously tether.

The Big Sick was much better than I thought it would be.

I only went to see it because I had seen everything else besides The Emoji Movie.

It wasn’t generally wishy washy or trashy or ridiculous or tough to take, rather, it was a well thought out multifaceted intergenerational romantic comedic dramatic account (I’m not writing dramedy) of restless young adults credulously craving each other’s clutches, caught up in interstitial exuberance, with feverish judicious nourishing insatiable impress.

The wild.

The exhilarating.

But Kumail‘s (Kumail Nanjiani) age old customs complicate things and there’s a devastating break up around two-fifths of the way through.

The film struggles for 15-20 minutes afterwards as Emily (Zoe Kazan) falls into a non-related coma, but just as it seemed like it was turning into a write off, her parents Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Romano) show up, and as guilt ridden Kumail gets to know them, the film’s transported to a much deeper level of interpersonal awareness, their steadily shifting interactions developing themes from one perplexity to the next, notably as Kumail learns how many familial problems they had after they married, and how strong they had to be to fetchingly confront them.

Holly Hunter steals a bunch of scenes. I’ve never noticed her like this before.  She owns the role with feisty delicacy and ponderous pluck and delivers a performance to recall. 

Best supporting actress?

It’s still pretty early, but wow, I was thoroughly impressed enough to place her on the list, like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise or the late honourable Bill Paxton in Aliens.

Kumail keeps performing throughout and the conversations he has with his fellow comedians ir/reverently round things out.

It also respectfully examines classic intercultural exploration.

Culture and tradition are certainly important. 

I don't care if people wish to live within their culture’s religious or secular guidelines.

Whatevs!

As long as the choice to mix and blend with other cultures still exists as well, to forge dynamic communal hybrids multigenerationally composed of differences from around the globe, to marry whomever the hell you want to marry, and if that choice is taken away, even if your family has lived somewhere for hundreds, thousands of years, I’m afraid that’s super lame, period.

It’s fun to date people from other cultures. You’re constantly learning new things.

Forgive yourself and ask for forgiveness if at times you learn a new cultural feature and happen to uncontrollably start laughing. 

Sometimes traditions you’re not familiar with seem funny until you understand how important they are to the new person you’ve met.

If you love them, you’ll feel bad. 

And if they love you, your punishment won’t be to dishevelling.

Blushy face.

*Nanjiani and Kazan work well together. I was thinking a sequel set in Brazil. I loved Ray Romano's "opened my mouth hoping something smart would come out" (paraphrase) line. The late at night sleepy conversations. "Tell me a story!" Oh man! 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

A peaceful life, a planet in possession of an indigenous miracle, its inhabitants living harmoniously with their environment, excelling at sustaining life in symbiotic exhilaration, pure simplicity matched with subtle eloquence, resplendent tranquil nimble mores, Fiji!, Endor!, Pandora!, Europa?!, falls prey to expansionist greed, victimized to the brink of extinction, the memory of its free people quickly fading, into refined contested disputed intergalactic lore.

Adherences to historical records formally tricked into officially believing nothing happened, the survivors fittingly conceal themselves in emptiness, the possibility of their existence unconsciously haunting their betrayer, on a bustling multidimensional metropolis nestled in neurasthenic nevermore.

Whereupon young love is burgeoning, two youthful recruits risking everything to obtain mission objectives, competent and respected enough to brave seeking evidence that will condemn a superior officer, athletically gifted and intellectually endowed, capable of infinitesimally infiltrating while still pausing to appreciate art, a serendipitous synergy pursuing altruistic cardioaccruements, they generationally contend with that which is forbidden, mineralogically setting sail, into cyclones Vedic honed.

As a matter of conscience.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets heats up virtually, technologically, terrestrially, and subterraneanly inclined environments, metaphorically synthesizing a lifetime engaged ensemble, through the provocative art of proactive pioneer.

Within a multicultural conglomerate safely harbours species at risk, if they aren't systematically sought after, and can steadily remain undetected.

A compelling look at the evolution of social media, Valerian ascends to olympian symbolic heights while occasionally stalling on paths taken to reach them.

Recalling that fair solutions do present themselves when cultures negotiate in good faith, it celebrates youthful fair play backed up by regulatory checks and balances.

The naturalization of animosity grossly misrepresents cross-cultural social relations.

People often don't take comedic applications of glorified negligence seriously.

If they think about the situation.

Separate the sleaze from the discontinuity.

The Dark Tower

A monstrous evil, scurrilously preying on the gifts of the innocent, intent on unleashing a frenzy of chaos upon worlds existing within worlds, rigorously assaulting their towering quintessence, transporting between realms with exuberant malicious discontent to capture a child and exploit his powers thereby inaugurating bedlam's unconstrained malevolence, after he desperately escapes his minion's demonic clutches, landing in a western world thereafter wherein which hope still communally emancipates.

Like a University professor who tyrannically bends the wills of his or her grad students to her or his own, or a teacher conjured by a shrieking nightmarish Pink Floyd soundscape, the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) feverishly seeks young Jake (Tom Taylor), who fortunately manages to obtain aid through opposition (Idris Elba).

In the fantastic dominion of Mid-World.

By the light of a despondent Sun.

As crudely cavalier nauseous malcontents continue to flourish in Trump's grossly irresponsible political construct, The Dark Tower disseminates multilateral luminescence, illuminating paths upon which to sublimely tread, during the villainous nocturnal onslaught, and the promulgation of sheer stupidity.

While artists are abandoned within, violence is recreationally devoured, leaders remain isolated and drifting, and attacks wildly increase in ferocity, an undaunted team slowly assembles, afterwards casting utopian firmaments anew.

Not the best fantasy film I've seen this Summer (I'm wondering if that's why Spaghetti Week at the Magestic [or something like that] is advertised near the end [lol]), but still a cool entertaining traditional yet creative sci-fi western, even if I'm unsure how I would have reacted to it if I were 15, I certainly find it relevant enough these days to imagine that I would have loved it.

The magical power of rhetorical/literary/political/interdimensional/. . . metaphor gracefully comments and forecasts, providing young and aged minds alike with plenty of rationales to reify, while still bluntly emphasizing the truth of scientific fact.

Focusing on the good of the many.

As contrasted with unilateral obsessions.

Manifesto

Sizzling with cerebral sanctified spunk, a crisp calisthenic collage of artistic movements (manifestos) comedically condensed and maniacally applied, a bit of witty amusing marcochotic minimalism, envisioned extrapolated bizarro encapsulations, diabolic discombobulation, ebullient disillusion, Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto is the most intelligent film I’ve seen in years, but it’s not just an abstruse display of eviscerating conceit, it’s funny too, a rare gift, to transform material as serious as that which Rosefeldt creatively lampoons into a series of critical reflections upon the nature of active being in a manner that chuckles as it castigates and drizzles high and dry, isn’t that easy to do at such a high level, sort of like Monty Python on steroids contemporizing credulia with Žižekean cheek and Derridean poise, a deconstructive magnum opus whose only failing is inherent within its repetitive structure, still, if I was in school I’d like to write essays about it, that would be irresistible, or teach it I suppose, Malcontent Manifestos: The Embroiled Baker's Slather, may pick up a copy regardless, Cate Blanchett’s incredible.

I’d have given her the oscar nod although I’m not sure whether or not you can be nominated for 13 short distinct performances as opposed to one lengthy one.

If that’s an unwritten rule, it should have been rewritten.

As far as manifestos themselves go, I don’t really know what to make of them.

I’ve learned that people like to take part in movements, organizations, hierarchies, even highly independent people, I’ve even found great comfort within unabrasive hierarchies which gave me room to maneuver as long as I respected the levels myself, but in terms of directly following one creed exclusively and abiding by its principles unyieldingly, well, I find that to be quite difficult, unless they aren’t sadistic and I’m being paid an enormous sum that allows me to travel and own property.

It’s like I’m judiciously applying French civil law without a Napoleonic code while bearing in mind precedent based upon what I’ve experienced, read, heard, seen, and created, a lot of the time.

That makes its fun.

Ecstatic extracts.

Conciliatory conscience.

Beware the manifestos that promote violence. If things are despotic and millions are starving, that’s, starving, while an elite few flaunt their wealth that’s one thing, but revolutions often wind up with millions dead, that’s millions of dead people, and the new system often resembles the old eventually with different families occupying the same positions of power.

Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is a must read for those with revolutionary sympathies.

Read it 'til the end!

Peaceful revolutions, quiet revolutions, can remarkably change things however, gradually creating a cooler state of affairs that makes daily life much less desperate for the impoverished.

Not a perfect solution by any means, but democratically moving forward step by step towards something more meaningful, something less cruel, for human and animal kind alike, manifests progressive change that doesn’t rely on monstrous bloodshed.

Keep the non-violent manifestos coming. 

You couldn’t do better.

People like to follow things, get involved. 

I like the idea of following things and getting involved.

Even do get involved from time to time.

Take part. 

Emphasize. 

Atomic Blonde

If this is the mainstream cinematic age of fantasy and action, it’s fascinating to see how different directors are imagining themselves franchised in the genre(s), as they create hyperreactive propulsive enterprising incinerations which vehemently ponder conundrums cloaked in smarm.

Brainiac brawn.

Succulent seduction.

King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword, John Wick, and Atomic Blonde do this anyways, offering jousts and jinxes to challenge unconcerned juggernauts.

Atomic Blonde is borderline brilliant with its kinetic complications and extensive improvisations, multiple characters each playing integral roles as a beautiful deadly agent thrives on information hunger.

The cold war is about to end (that’s end!) but not before a coveted list of pejorative players appears for sale on clandestine markets which seek to see its content temporally manifested.

French, Russian, British and American operatives desperately clash to obtain it on the streets of a divided Berlin, double-crossing, combatting, entertaining, conjoining, keeping track of who’s in first simmering hardboiled whats and I-don’t-knows, as it becomes clear that everything’s obscured, and only those who can proportionally balance the incisive with the bellicose have a chance at emerging unscathed.

The judicious exchange of bodily fluids a portentous exemplar of trust notwithstanding.

Or slightly scathed.

Quite scathed perhaps.

I didn’t see Ghost in the Shell so this statement may be incorrect, but Lorraine Broughton's (Charlize Theron) altercations (perhaps) set a new standard for tenacious females furiously and potently defending themselves.

Cool title, cool action, cool interactions, icy wherewithal, David Leitch's upcoming films may be some of the best espionagesque cerebral thrillers to ever gladiatorally grace American cinemas, notably if he keeps working with Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir (editing) and Kurt Johnstad (screenplay).

The music’s fantastic too and creatively mixed with the action.

Not for the feint of heart but essential to establish glacial bearings, Atomic Blonde exfoliates in overdrive to romanticize tranquility.

And calm.

Leitch used to be a stuntperson apparently. Has a stuntperson ever gone on to direct before?