Glass

Mystery Men aside, I imagine superhero films would be less compelling (or less profitable) if they focused on the lives of people who don't defy scientific law, even if random acts of kindness or diligent commitments to stable routines also aptly reflect agile superheroics, in their own more modest less celebrated ways, inasmuch as many routines lack regular confrontations with mindblowing exceptions.

I remember briefly watching at work one day while a team of three people carried an awkwardly shaped new countertop up a narrow awkward flight of stairs, for instance, and an hour later I noticed they were still working.

In my foolish mind I thought, "why aren't they finished yet, it doesn't look that complicated," before reprimanding myself for assholism and listening in on their conversation.

They were patiently and rationally discussing how to move the heavy object up the stairs carefully to avoid injury, which of course made sense, and explained why they were taking so long.

It's rare when I move large heavy objects so when I do so I carelessly don't worry about injury.

But if you move them around for 40 hours a week for 10 to 40 years and you don't take your time to patiently think about what you're doing, you likely will sustain injury, and therefore it makes sense to proceed cautiously and think things through.

Always.

Nothing you learn in your youth really prepares you for middle-age and the routines you find yourself cultivating at times.

I'm lucky to have a lot of variability in my life and to work with cool people, as I have been for the last decade or so, but middle-age still isn't like school, you don't progressively pass from one grade to the next and have your whole life reimagined each year based upon pedagogic and biological transformations, different stages, it's more like a big 40 year block of time, an extended megastage that's full of change and diversity but at times is somewhat predictable.

But it's precisely the lack of exception that makes it exceptional once you figure that out, the ability to endure sure and steady predictability from one day to the next, to handle different variations while maintaining a reliable theme, and to do it for an incredibly long period of time.

Little things making a phenomenal difference.

Whether it's a film, a new type of hot sauce, a new dress, or ordering the same thing off the menu every time, it doesn't get old if you don't let it, if you let disaffection age you.

Everyone understands there's a big difference between carrying something up a flight of stairs and being a neurosurgeon, or a politician, but sometimes I think neurosurgeons and politicians forget how difficult it can be to carry awkward things up flights of stairs, for years, although I'm sure it's by no means endemic.

The end of Glass celebrates superheroics gone viral online, attempts to suppress them having been outmasterminded.

True, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Keven/Patricia/Hedwig/The Beast etc. (James McAvoy) do have otherworldly abilities, and it would have been cool if Dunn had turned out to be his/her father, but the ending's so like the genesis of Twitter and YouTube that I couldn't help thinking they were standing in for magical unrehearsed postmodern superheroics, randomly disseminated upon the worldwide net.

It's another superhero film that contemplates the nature of superheroics and therefore adds more philosophical finesse to the genre, with hints of The Secret History of 'Twin Peaks', Under the Silver Lake, and Iron Man peppered throughout, and nimbly unreels like a full-on indy.

I liked the characters and the plot and the ways in which Unbreakable has found a way to situate itself within the post-Iron Man maelstrom, and McAvoy's outstanding, but it was the ending and its Twitteresque reflections that I enjoyed the most, and seeing Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson (Elijah Price) at it again I suppose.

So many things you never would have heard about thirty years ago pop up on Twitter and YouTube every day.

It's a fascinating worldwide change.

As accessible as your local library.

Stable, steady, unpredictable variation.

Is there a project out there that's codifying YouTube?

Who's writing that book?

Could you finish a page without becoming obsolete?

Like you need a multicultural team of librarians working full-time around the globe just to capture Tuesday, March 8th, 2016.

Categorically driven inherent impossibility.

Infinity conceptualized.

There's nothing quite like it.

Vice

Why make a movie about Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) of all people?

Why?

Why do I have to write about this film?

Why!

With all the charismatic influential inspiring dynamic leaders out there, why choose to make a film about him, even if, in bizarro plutocrat lingo, those adjectives strangely apply?

The filmmakers admit they have little to go on yet revel in proceeding blindly nonetheless, and although they couldn't find much information about Cheney, they still stuck to that which they found, rather than creating a more balanced narrative, wherein which the speculative film, which they admit to making, takes imaginative precedence over headlined gossip and likelihood.

I'm not saying avoid what's supposed to be true or replace it with alternative fact, I mean that if you're imagining much of what took place anyways, imagine a more compelling film that narratively ties his different motivations together.

See so many Steven Spielberg films.

Vice is more like, "we know he did this, and it's believed he did that, and this is all we really have to go on, so we'll make the rest up but emphasize what we do know, or believe, even if the information we have writes a clunky story."

Not that it's a bad film, it's alright, and it's better than a lot of films that follow an individual's career over the course of a lifetime, but Cheney's just not such a bad guy for so much of it, in fact he's primarily depicted as a respectable family man who played by the rules for most of his career, and then suddenly he's this power mad mendacity prone borderline authoritarian, it's not that the facts aren't commercially presented, it's just that Vice hasn't much of a foreshadow.

If you admit you're making speculative pseudo-non-fiction why play your cards so close to your chest?, The Big Short certainly didn't and it made a more stunning impact.

As it stands, Vice isn't sure if Dick Cheney was a monster or just a fortunate hardworking man of self-made means.

It emphasizes that the second Iraq war was likely caused by him for self-centred reasons, but still goes out of its way to make him seem loving and kind, with prim bipolar whitewash, comedically applied.

It does explain where political obsessions with executive authority come from, and in the last scene Cheney appears like Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, boldly stating that many others would have done the same.

But many others wouldn't have done the same, and the bold speech at the end, which may win an Oscar, encourages stubborn self-obsessed self-aggrandizement regardless of communal consequence, and it's unclear if McKay is being critical of Cheney's ambition or trying to make it seem as wholesome as pumpkin pie.

He certainly makes his character sympathetic.

Spending more time coddling than criticizing him.

Bumblebee

At the transformative heart of Travis Knight's Bumblebee rests polarized misperception glacially endowed.

Cybertron is lost and the Autobots have fled, B-127 (Bumblebee [Dylan O'Brien]) tasked with finding them sanctuary, wherefrom they can regroup and plan, whereupon they'll be cloaked and hidden.

But the Decepticons have followed, three in fact, eventually, one at first, and if they're able to report their findings, his mission will end in failure.

He has landed upon Earth during its most exceptional decade, even if he's greeted none too kindly, even if he then forgets all.

The internet has yet to revolutionize everything planet wide, however, Cypertron correspondingly suffering from a lack of technological advancement, for even though the Decepticons know he is hiding on Earth, they cannot easily transmit this discovery.

As if Cypbertron and Earth are unconsciously linked through intergalactic evolution, and what happens on one planet contemporaneously takes place on the other, technologically speaking, even if humanity does not explore space.

Bumblebee is found by a defiant young adult (Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie) who is dismissive of her stepfather (Stephen Schneider as Ron) and seeks her own car.

Little does she know that her unassuming angst-ridden pursuits have opened a gateway to starstruck conflict, and that her newfound friend and confidant is sought after by mature disaffection.

The concern of her parents is augmented by the military's presence, everyone eventually rallying to her side, in tune with the spirit of the times.

Although the romantic dreamer within (John Ortiz as Dr. Powell) is depicted as a do-gooding lump, tough-as-nails Agent Burns (John Cena) standing out in sharp contrast, yet as the plot unravels the dialectic pretensions of the Transformers cause both individuals to reconsider, Powell realizing he should never have trusted Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux), Burns accepting he was mistaken about Bumblebee.

Charlie also learns she was wrong to malign her stepfather's goodwill, for even though he promotes compassion, he can still drive like Satan himself.

Functioning like a stern loving synthesis of sorts.

Thus, within this humble Bumblebee we find rudimentary political philosophy reduced to democratic elements, as predetermined judgment is actively critiqued by withdrawn yet impacting middle-ground motivations.

Perhaps not the best transformers film, but that doesn't mean the music and legend of a long past fabled epoch can't still ensure good times, or at least make up for the film's overstated grumblings.

Too much of the, "let's shoot before asking questions and make the guy who asks questions look like a fool" though.

Possibly the best soundtrack ever.

If Beale Street Could Talk

A young expectant mother celebrating the dawn of life encounters setbacks as she embraces riled uncertainty.

Her decision isn't an easy one to make and she's initially faced with righteous criticism.

Unfortunately, the father's (Stephan James as Alonzo Hunt) in prison after having been falsely accused of a monstrous crime, the victim having returned to her home country after suffering extreme indecency.

It's a disastrous situation that's rather difficult to discuss with the victim (Emily Rios as Victoria Rogers), although Tish's (KiKi Layne) mom (Regina King as Sharon Rivers) does her best to make contact and work things out.

Alonzo takes a plea.

Tish strives onwards, patiently waiting for his release.

A confident man, a resilient woman, a versatile couple, an engaging family.

Prejudice accosts them within and without.

But through self-sacrificing commitment, they holistically persevere.

Barry Jenkins's If Beale Street Could Talk laments cold realities by presenting resigned innocence forced to hustle, brand, and stray.

It deals in unsettling sociological facts the harsh conditions of which require sincere systemic change.

A different way of thinking.

A young couple's racial or ethnic background shouldn't effect their entire existence, I've met and worked with plenty of male, female, black, white, Jewish, Arab, European, South American, First Nations, East Indian, gay, straight and Asian people, and none of them were thieves or cons or zealots, and everyone worked hard and didn't put up much of a fuss.

If racial or ethnic stereotypes had pervaded these environments it would have been impossible to work efficiently, and otherwise composed diligent routines would have collapsed beneath the weight of ripe malice.

People didn't judge each other based on shortsighted stereotypical notions, but preferred to evaluate the quality and quantity of one's work, equal opportunity abounding for all, but they had to make sure to get the job done.

If you think the situation's hopeless it becomes hopeless pretty quickly.

You can't expect things to happen overnight, you need patience, endurance, tenacity.

Tish and Alonzo have all these things in If Beale Street Could Talk and because of stereotypical perceptions they come close to losing everything, yet they still dig deep and buckle down.

The film bluntly examines what's left unsaid and although it's somewhat overly emotional at times, it is presenting volatile subject matter, and its heart's definitely in the right place.

Cool sculptures too.

Vox Lux

Brady Corbet's Vox Lux wildly envisions tumultuous reasonability clad in disputatious aggrieved apotheosis facilitating chaotic calm.

Beware what transpires within, for it's a most uninhibited tale, executively brandishing dysfunction, perilously prophesizing unimpaired.

Like all stories, it begins, a school in a small town no less, where a distraught child assaults his classmates and takes many innocent lives.

It's appalling that lawmakers aren't taking measures to prevent such atrocities, especially after so many brave American young adults have appealed for political conviction.

So many years after Bowling for Columbine, these shootings still take place with horrifying regularity.

Mass school shootings or mass shootings of any kind are so obviously not acceptable and arming teachers to stop them is sheer utter madness, total insanity, extreme irresponsibility, just nuts, such events don't simply happen, they're the product of blind mismanagement, and legal steps should have been taken to prevent them many many many years ago.

Celeste (Natalie Portman/Raffey Cassidy) survives the shooting at her school and writes a song to express her grief, a song which capture's a grieving nation's attention, superstardom awaiting thereafter.

But with superstardom comes unexpected pressure, Vox Lux necessitating improvisation as the unanticipated interrogatively fluxes.

How to diplomatically respond?

When even her most humble words provoke sensation?

It's unhinged and perplexing and preposterous and disorienting when you think about it afterwards, Vox Lux's argumentative acrobatics and substance abuse fuelled rhetoric leaving a byzantine trail of grandiose unorthodoxy in their wake, realities so disconnected and otherworldly it's like they orbit the heart of an imperial pulsar, which radiates untethered brilliance partout, and neglects consequence with refrained spry spectacle.

Yet it's so real, the film seems so plausible, so concrete, so distinct, passionately yet prohibitively brought to life by Natalie Portman and Jude Law (The Manager), like a down to earth fairy tale that's as ludicrous as it is homemade, like a supernatural cookie cutter incarnated in mortal shade.

Bafflingly improbable yet so irrefutably sincere, Vox Lux resonates with raw animation as if a misfit god has awoken from eternal slumber, and what a performance she gives in the end, this former child star who's been nurtured by shock and scandal.

Exhilaratingly conjuring.

In visceral artistic balm.

Approach Vox Lux with caution.

Outstanding alternative mind*&%^ cinema.

Roma

I don't think I've ever seen a film with so many long scenes depicting active lives lived enriched with such vivid detail.

They aren't as multifaceted as those found at the beginning of Truffaut's La Nuit Américaine or Robert Altman's The Player or Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, but they continue to illustrate throughout the entire film and create a visually stunning communal aesthetic thereby, without moving, without moving hardly at all.

It's like Roma has thought provoking characters but they're secondary to the scene, the setting, the environment, like they're a part of a larger world, something much more subtle than that they're enveloped within, subtle yet pervasive, its predicaments and accidents adding pronounced depth without diagnosing psychology, as if their personalities are changing and growing within a fluid diverse realm whose endemic features encourage comment sans judgment, like the world's too vast to be analytically classified, and laissez-faire semantics breach like relaxed ontologies.

Living within.

Held together by a family's nanny (Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo) and the difficulties that arise after she discovers she's pregnant, a support network securely in place which is severely contrasted by blunt negligence, Roma follows her as she takes care of a family while trying to start one of her own, chaotic embodiments of structure ignoring her gentle inquiries.

The urge to classify, to make definitive political sense of life so that one can practically attach theoretical logic to their behaviour and be consequently rewarded or punished, depending on how virtuously they're deemed to have acted, functions like haunting destructive shackles within, inasmuch as it's speculatively associated with dogma, dogma which attempts to clarify, curtail, and control, violently, rather than existing symbiotically in peace.

Cleo's love interest Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) is therefore given an extended self-absorbed scene where he demonstrates his prowess, its stark lack of detail, its animated ferocious thrusts, bluntly contrasting the otherwise curious more robust less volatile shots, as if to intimate shocking austere extremities.

It's not the codes themselves that ironically produce chaos, it's the rigid discriminate attempts to puritanically follow them, even in situations where they clearly don't fit, and make others follow them, or classify others who don't follow them as undesirable, monitoring everyone at all times to make sure they're following them, bellicosely asserting them when faced with opposition, that make extremist variations on composed ethical themes like the ones found in Roma so terrifying.

Roma's a patient thoughtfully cultivated poised undulating ethos, whose undefined compassionate caresses humbly lament tragic imagination.

Calmly blending the search for meaning with unrehearsed existence, it finds purpose through improvisation, and critiques determinate codes.

Reminded me of Solaris.

The Favourite

Intrigue covetously schemes while fortune miraculously hounds, the enthused generosity of an imposing caregiver insolently betrayed by dissolute ambition, a lack of opportunity blended with flogged discourtesy no doubt encouraging rank desperation, and as circumstances ameliorate postures tempt then beckon, botanical connaissance herbaceously imploring, as Yorgos Lanthimos embroils The Favourite.

An odd mixture of innocence and ferocity emerges, Queen Anne's (Olivia Colman) impulses potently distracted, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) guiding them with discreet intention, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) recognizing habitual laidback verse.

To rest at play with one's rabbits on sunny afternoons as thrush critique, bray, and scold, evenings, inopportune.

What's overlooked?

What seeks cultivation?

What is she ignoring?

Devoutly genuine dissimulation.

Dark motivations speculate as calculation courts royal favour.

Ingratiation husked, unsettled.

Gratification crudely extolling.

Nevertheless, The Favourite seems to dismiss base flattery to uphold honest criticism, even if Duchess Marlborough (Weisz) isn't contentiously disposed.

In fact she blends blunt observation with composed praise in skillfully threaded admonishing coddles, poignantly yet starkly depicting stately decorum, ironically lost in assured security.

She's heavily relied upon, and has become somewhat stern, Abigail cunningly enacting a playful counterpoint, the Queen falling for her carefree license.

Who's to say, honestly, some people flatter to solely promote themselves, others have an agenda, some seek altruistic goals, some like to revel but still respect their obligations.

And personalities change over time and in different situations (Foucauldian Power).

The Favourite excels at providing mischievous illustrations of the upper echelons at play, presenting political duty more like an afterthought, or something someone considers when writing about such things.

For subject matter this multifaceted I would have preferred a larger cast, even if it's primarily focused on Marlborough and Abigail's rivalry, its political backdrop still lacks exploratory depth, for which we aren't adroitly compensated.

Lanthimos has created his own otherworldly tragic comedic bizarro aesthetic that brightly resonates with thoughtful disillusion.

But as profoundly melancholic as The Favourite may be, it still promotes poised bewilderment.

I'm assuming it's safe to say, "goal, achieved."

Brashly articulated.

Mary Poppins Returns

Fitting that Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) should return in an age where access to independent art has expanded exponentially.

The options everyone has to express him or herself locally/regionally/nationally/globally, free of charge, have perhaps clouded the master narrative's unconscious lucidity, and made alternative forms of peaceful expression more readily agreeable.

Notably animal videos.

Plus everything's accessible from a magical little device that fits in your pocket and is connected to the world at large.

True, because of this device you can be tracked by who knows who wherever you go, and you may be missing out on a lot of cool real world phenomena if you never lift your head up, but it's also like a cool informative instructive multifaceted tricorder, and if you like brainy stuff too, trust me, there's more than one app for that.

Mary Poppins Returns takes place in the pre-technological era, however, yet still provides fascinating insights into how creative people used to entertain.

Poetic or artistic inspiration isn't limited to the night sky or raccoon encounters you know, it's everywhere you look everywhere you go, as Poppins and Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) illuminate, and if you don't forget to observe whatever it is you happen to be caught up in, as you did when you were younger, you can turn a bowl discovered at a thrift shop into Ulysses, or a pinecone into Lost in Translation.

And you can share your observations on Instagram or Twitter or other forms of social media usually without having to make much of an effort.

Like the whole world's gone Barbapapa.

Nevertheless, I was worried when I heard they were making a new Mary Poppins film because the first one was universally adored by so so many, and it's always risky to make a sequel to such cynosures, even 54 years later, unless you dig in quite deep and draft exceptionally well crafted flumes.

Which is what Rob Marshall and his crew have fortunately done.

Mary Poppins Returns is phenomenal, a total must see, even if you don't have children, a celebration of creative minds and the positive effects of imagination, which also critiques zealous desires to foreclose, and lauds the symphonic harmonies of robust labour.

I may actually buy a copy.

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Emily Blunt are outstanding.

It collectively unites song and dance in a coruscating choreographed multidimensional cascading cloudburst, sensually exporting remarkably vivid exceptions while suggesting it's what anyone can do.

Just gotta keep those eyes open.

Draw a parallel.

Infuse.

Juggle.

Aquaman

Unbeknownst to surface dwellers who recklessly pollute its august fathoms, deep within the ocean reside 7 ancient civilizations.

Swathed in utmost secrecy, they flourish in blissful dissimulation.

Yet one king (Patrick Wilson as King Orm) has grown weary of land lubbing largesse, and madly seeks to start a war with the peoples above.

He requires the loyalty of 3 free realms to bellicosely embark, however, realms which have little interest in non-aquatic regal affairs.

But not all of his subjects believe his plan is conceptually sound, two of them hoping to challenge his legitimacy within reasonable lawful bounds (Amber Heard as Princess Mera and Willem Dafoe as Vulko), for a brother has he who was raised on land yet still commands creatures of the deep, and even though Aquaman (Jason Momoa) has never embraced his submerged heritage, they feel that he may, if he learns of its dire ambitions.

And that only he can thwart them.

His lighthouse keeping father (Temuera Morrison as Tom Curry) still awaits the return of his beloved Queen Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), each and every evening, and has since the day she was taken from him, and forced to marry against her will.

Aquaman can't remember her.

Although he's heard of her brilliant legend.

But his customs are not those of the aristocracy, in fact Aquaman playfully intertwines old and new world pretensions as it supernaturally decodes the throne.

With wild self-sacrificing purpose.

The seven realms could have each represented different philosophies more astutely had their lore been given more detailed narrativizations.

But Aquaman resists the urge to become overly complicated like Dune, even if it's still quite complex, its protagonist like a Paul Atreides who was raised amongst the Fremen, his charming rough adventurous spirit boldly holding the film together.

You don't have to suspend your disbelief to love Aquaman, you simply have to imagine you've never believed in anything before.

And let yourself be immersed in a chaotic world overflowing with innocence and curiosity.

The underwater worlds are incredible and it was soothing to imagine myself within them.

Swimming away.

Aspects of Aquaman may be so improbable that a degree of cynicism may surface.

But it's also saturated with ingenuous goodwill, reluctance and cheek diversifying its depths, uncertain outcomes delineating its contrariety, with objectives as lofty as they are foretold.

A choral cascade.

A mirthful maelstrom.