Napszállta (Sunset)

Dreamlike exploration observing radical tradition, patient determined movements discovering reticent clues, modest celebrity cultivating passage instinctual grace establishing ties, temperate precipitation intuitively encompassed, like Napszállta (Sunset)'s surreal backgammon, and curious Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab) keeps rolling double sixes.

She would have been an heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's most prestigious millinery shop if grand misfortune hadn't necessitated alternative fortunes.

The new owner still supplies elegant hats to fashionable royals, and one of his resident artists will perhaps serve at court one day.

But it's not that simple, not quite so clear cut, so homely.

It's a different time, just before the outbreak of World War I, and the aristocracy and the people are expressing themselves confrontationally, neither group willing to accept the other's terms, destructive conflicts having arisen consequently.

The film and myriad other sources truthfully suggest the upper crust was none too kind to its workers of the day, and the people had no means to hold them to account.

Írisz's brother, in hiding and displeased with the corruption, has abandoned peaceful methods of persuasion; she's caught between his anger and the traditions of her artistic heritage.

She's just moved to Budapest and doesn't understand what's happening, wandering somnambulistically between the two parties, accessing highly secretive and exclusive realms without censure, maladroitly assured that peace is ecumenical.

Even though her family was well thought of, and her name is widely known and respected, it's still quite improbable that she would be able to proceed so freely, to go wherever she wants at whatever time.

Thus the dreamlike qualities of the narrative, the intense nightmarish revelations accentuated by obsessive close-ups.

Napszállta's more like grim realistic fantasy than lively magical realism, its chaotic combative testaments composed in dismal haunting fairy tale.

Mátyás Erdély's cinematography creates sombre phantasmagorical confusion that asymptotically incarnates horror, thereby reflecting the terrifying nature of the times, wherein which nothing seems concrete or stable.

But it's still loosely grounded inasmuch as you know where you are and what's transpiring, or at least know as much as Írisz, who knows close to nothing at all.

The total absence of concerned mediators intensifies the conscious anarchy, as does the lack of conversation or explanation, as if a child's on its own for the first time, lost and leading in Twin Peaks's Black Lodge.

Napszállta's bewildered sincerity magnetically draws you in, substituting nausea for lucidity with morose desperate conjecture.

The effect is nauseating at times so it's difficult to take the whole way through, but that doesn't mean its aesthetic isn't uniform, nor its ambivalence, inarticulate.

Bold filmmaking.

Grizzly style.

Mad Dog Labine

Left to fend for herself after her family takes off for the bush, Lindsay Labine (Ève-Marie Martin) shyly chills with her closest friend.

Things are quite lax in their small Northern town, since most of the residents are in fact gone.

A certain carefree yet hesitant innocent composure qualifies Lindsay's investigations, as if she's upset yet sure and steady, and finds herself generally unsupervised.

Free to explore what she will.

The people who have stuck around forge an eccentric free form instinctually unorthodox eclective of sorts, sincerely expressing themselves beyond the cold master narrative.

Unrestrained movements and cheeky proclamations intermingle with articulate considerations, as if the particular is joyously asserting itself unobserved, and it's not just the adherents of discipline and punishment who claim to respect alternative lifestyles decompressing, they're gone too, in fact it's more like the people actually living alternative lifestyles are no longer weighed down by generic prescriptions, at all, as if gasoline's been replaced with bird song, or the poets gracefully control The Republic.

Temperate freelance watershed inkling.

Like everyone's self-employed.

Or things are way more raccoon than cat or dog.

Labine's town's suddenly like an unscripted curious jocose home on the range, with a library for city hall, its stories blooming with vibrant life.

Traditional outlets for order and authority no longer unconsciously coordinate, as random ideas seek novel justifications.

A peaceful sense of lighthearted relaxation begins to permeate concrete conditionals, as if experimentation can creatively sojourn, regardless of old school superstition.

Lindsay's somewhat shy but actively takes part.

It's quite sad when she's tricked in the beginning, but she's resilient, she bounces back without hesitation.

Look for the moment when she overcomes her shyness and joins in with the revelry around the campfire.

You'll see a beautiful, timid, elfin spirit, who has trouble fitting in, wondrously expressing herself.

The moment's rich with belonging.

Like electric jade.

Compositionally ground with hug power.

Cool film.

*The situation in Mad Dog Labine is quite different from that which may arise from a flood. In the case of a flood, if authorities do suggest you leave your home, it's probably in your best interests to do so, since they likely know what they're talking about. And floods can be very dangerous.

Shazam!

Spoiler alert.

As adventurous superheroic narratives continue to unreel ad infinitum, DC's Shazam! humbly presents starstruck ascension in virtual refrain.

Thus, since most Marvel films and the like don't widely showcase young adult contributions, at least not with Shazam!'s degree of potent unsupervised agency, Shazam!'s heroes embolden a raw sustainable niche, complete with role models you don't have to look up to.

Most of the time.

Youth can therefore restrain from imagining themselves as Iron Man or Captain Marvel, fighting villainy at some far off date in the foreseeable future, instead they can consider themselves as one of Shazam!'s tightly knit group of youthful warriors, magically endowed with metamorphic maturity.

It's a wicked-cool ending from some perspectives, even if you do the math beforehand, and the group's a chill multicultural eclective, abounding with awkward foibles, as unsure of themselves as Clark Kent, embracing their alter egos with equal degrees of self-determination.

In terms of friendship and camaraderie and do-gooding and teamwork, Shamzam! moderately excels and convivially matriculates.

It's fun to watch while Billy Batson/Shazam (Asher Angel/Zachary Levi) learns to use his new powers as the aggregate character of the supporting cast develops.

But of course there's a villain and a plot and dastardly deeds and ancient demons, and they must duel with one another outside of lunch and recess.

In the end, as multiplicity inaugurates a rather flimsy final showdown, the power of Shazam instantaneously teaches the team of shocked generally non-violent youngsters how to instinctually battle their combative foes, whom one might think would have an advantage in such a scenario, being the clear incarnations of diabolical vice.

But they don't, and neither does principal villain Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong/Ethan Pugiotto), and although it's cool to watch the grown-up kids kick-butt, it's a little too laissez-faire for such a death-defying imbroglio.

Still, the aged Shazam Wizard's (Djimon Hounsou) search for a successor bears thought provoking fruit, which relates to something Barack Obama said recently about avoiding "a circular firing squad."

He was more or less referring to the ways in which discourses of purity can prevent peaceful agendas from ever gaining momentum, as relied upon potential retinues coldly cut down promising candidates who don't magnetically generate uncompromised perfection.

The last of the council of wizards makes this mistake in Shazam!, and almost perishes without having passed on his powers.

The Wizard's dying, and gives young Batson the power of Shazam in radical haste, and could have wildly and chaotically erred if Billy wasn't indeed someone honestly genuine.

He wouldn't have had to proceed with such haste if he hadn't been such a puritan for so many years.

If he had been a little more chill about sharing his remarkable gifts.

Rather than obsessing about messianic instincts.

There's really no such thing you know.

Although it can be fun to believe.

Within reason of course.

If that makes any sense.

Shazam!

Us

Spoiler Alert.

A family attends a local carnival in Summer, and as the father claims a winning prize, his daughter blindly wanders off.

She takes in the sights and sounds with quaint innocent wonder, before finding herself on the beach, approaching a mysterious funhouse.

Undaunted by her lack of adult accompaniment, and curious to see what amusingly jests inside, she boldly enters comma one two three, then delights in both razzle and dazzle.

Yet, ominously awaiting in the house of mirrors, as unaware of its fateful reckoning as its unsuspecting daylit lifeblood, is a startled provocative doppelgänger, who's never known true warmth or joy.

What happens next is concealed as time travels to the present day.

Upon which a family has returned to the same destination, without concern for its treacherous echoes.

Which they have often done, it appears they have often travelled there before, Jordan Peele's Us revelling in auspicious tradition, overflowing with romance embalmed.

People are somewhat happy.

There's cheer, mirth, goodwill, adventure.

They often get along well with one another.

A community, a pact.

A team.

But what if every inhabitant of the Earth, rich or poor, black, white, Asian, First Nations, in fact had a covetous doppelgänger, and they didn't exist in an imperceptible alternative dimension, but lived somewhere deep within the Earth indeed?

And what if the delineations demarcating the ontological zones dematerialized in chaotic rupture, and being became inherently combative, as neither group attempted to understand the other?

Us examines this dilemma through the lens of sedate horror, macroscopically manifested in stark haunting menace, improbability rationalized through dismal absurdity, disquieting comforts, confrontationally invested.

Like Star Trek's Mirror, Mirror if it was somewhat zombie.

More cerebral than it is terrifying, it still harrowingly gestates mayhem.

But without reasons explaining its dire conceit, apart from the mention of abandoned networks of tunnels at the beginning, sparse dialogue, clunky conversation, its narrative is somewhat comic, although the film isn't really that funny.

It's well-crafted nevertheless, and doesn't rely on sensation to tell its tale.

But its apocalyptic ambient cunning falls short of Get Out's daring shocks, a gripping tale in the moment no less, but not something I can't wait to see again.

The Mustang

Why people have to round up wild horses is something I don't understand?

Aren't they just chillin' in wide open unoccupied plains, doin' their own thing, not worryin' 'bout other people's business?

Does someone own the grass they eat?

Are they trespassing in the middle of nowhere?

Must they all be tamed and forced to work, to quietly perform without as much as a recalcitrant neigh, as they're rewarded for doing tricks they can't possibly comprehend, when they could have simply been roaming the forgotten wilderness, wild and unconcerned, harnessed to unbridled freedom?

I don't disapprove of The Mustang's horse rearing program, inasmuch as it exists after the fact.

It's actually a brilliant stroke of enlightened rehabilitation, that teaches hardened criminals genuine kindness, love, and compassionate understanding.

The remarkable benefits of animal therapy can easily be found online, which leads me to think that if prisoners were given stray cats and dogs to care for, things might lighten up in some tense environments.

Training a frisky rebellious stallion certainly helps The Mustang's Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) to feel again, for after years of unmanageable self-imposed isolation, he suddenly opens up to his gentle daughter (Gideon Adlon as Martha).

Soon after he enters the program.

He doesn't take to it so well at first though.

He's so tightly wound he can't listen to anyone other than himself, even when people freely share valued helpful information.

But why is he so tightly wound?

Where does his obstinacy come from?

It could have perhaps been generated by an all-too-encompassing psychological focus on the individual, a shocking inability to calmly listen to an other.

Anyone else, it's as if he's adopted a god-like persona that fails to heed any alternative viewpoint that doesn't match his predetermined will.

His predetermined will alone.

He's likely encountered wicked tricks, people who claimed camaraderie but only sought to cheat him.

But that doesn't mean there aren't others out there providing judicious counsel, lively inspiring goodwill, or that everyone you meet is trying to screw you.

Just have to give a little.

Be willing to let others in.

The Mustang slips up at times and probably could have left out a lot of the violence, and Roman certainly convalesces rather quickly, but it still presents a caring heart that truly seeks honest redemption, after having given up on everything it loved, after having succumbed to total silence.

If the horses can't run free why not train them with similar initiatives?

But I don't see why they can't run free.

They aren't hurting anyone.

And they make nature all the more wild.

Indubitably.

The Hummingbird Project

Cantankerous competition, bitterly motivating high-stakes vitriol, necessitating vast fluid resources whose liquidity lubricates mass, encouraging dynamic cerebral calculations the practicalities of which harness synergy, theoretical computations duelling in concrete enterprise, boldly navigating luscious landscapes in hard-driven entrepreneurial schism, ingenious thought desperately relied upon as if novelty could be canonically conjured, and instantaneously set in motion, to quickly generate multi-millions.

The improbabilities surrounding Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton's (Alexander Skarsgård) attempts to drill a thousand-mile tunnel between the New York Stock Exchange and Kansas, within which they plan to lay fibre-optic cable that will outperform their former employer's minions, are astounding and truly incredible, especially considering Anton has yet to figure out how to save the plutocratic millisecond, and mountains, malcontents, miscues, and maladies lie mischievously waiting, before they ecstatically break ground.

The confidence required to move forward with such a plan is mind-boggling to say the least, yet Vincent's undaunted and inspiring enthusiasm still persuades financial managers to invest.

Mark Vega (Michael Mando) and many others sign on to build the tunnel, their subterranean expertise as lively as their adventurous spirits.

But Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) unleashes pure fury after Anton quits, and boldly sets about to ignominiously destroy him.

With vast resources at her enraged disposal, and an alternative theory which Anton disputed, she sets out with devoted crews, to disenchant his blind flexible resolution.

It's as if Kim Nguyen's Hummingbird Project takes ludicrous Marvel heroics, rationally exclaimed in their own fantastic realm, and practically applies them to the world at large, a more fragile world wherein which failure is a possibility, superpowers are strictly relative, you do have to consult people, and the opposition isn't quite so evil.

Most of the time.

In fact, Anton and Vincent were doing rather well when they worked for Torres, not millionaire well, but well enough, regardless.

Nevertheless, Vincent emphatically believes in his enviable idea as if he possesses bold superpowers, and willfully embraces godlike responsibility with the daring conceit of courageous miracle.

It's a solid film, complete with the coolest chase scene I've seen in a while, and it wouldn't have been nearly as chill if Vincent had been questioned more critically in the beginning, if doubts had disabled his radical undertaking.

Legalistic and tunnelling superheroics combatively abound within, with no sincere guarantees, no legends, no magic, no assurance.

Cultivating the great beyond.

Great cast.

Realistic enough.

Through Black Spruce

A family grieves the disappearance of a loved one, as a distraught daring twin sister (Tanaya Beatty as Annie) heads to Toronto in search of answers.

Uncertain if she'll find anything, and proceeding without much to go on, she follows her only leads, and soon meets her sister's last contacts.

Last known contacts.

Back home her caring uncle (Brandon Oakes as Will) has problems, for he's angered a group of thugs who tend to express themselves viciously.

He's trying to unobtrusively get by, but finds himself branded a person of interest.

He's soon hiding out on a remote island, while his niece runs into troubles of her own.

Rough, gruelling, dire anxious realities, jurisprudently stitched, in tragic combative song.

The characters in Don McKellar's Through Black Spruce find themselves living in contrasting environments, one chill and peaceful, the other harsh and violent.

Living within them tragically bewilders, as conflicts which they had nothing to do with assault wholesome fun initiatives.

An act of healing, a gentle harmless letter sent off to put minds at ease, provokes extreme tension, and disrupts otherwise blooming friendships.

And a career.

The film athletically unreels with hard-edged sophistication, presenting diverse accessible scenes with a tough gritty concerned sensibility.

A fireside chat in Toronto, hunting together in James Bay, introductions to the art world, with specific takes on the discipline of photography.

For instance.

The blend of the two storylines could have been smoother though, as extended time intervals separate the tales from one another.

But since one storyline's urban and the other's set far away, the different paces, the different immersions, may have produced unsought after shocks, had they been edited and merged more consistently.

The lengthy immersions do creatively pull you into different aspects of Indigenous life, notably the non-toxic bug spray, and the extended time gives each of them their own lifeforce, lifeforces which may not have blossomed had they been cut more regularly.

It's nice to see long patient scenes.

And stories about First Nations people that aren't filled with violence.

What happened to Annie's twin remains a mystery, another sad story in an extreme crisis that effects all of Canada and elsewhere.

If the same percentage of woman of European descent disappeared or were murdered as often as their First Nations Canadian sisters, I imagine governments would enlist armies to find a solution to the problem.

To the extreme crisis.

This is no exaggeration.

The statistics are plain as day.

There needs to be a strong will to make Canada safe for these women.

The racist realities of which should be considered.

Good film.

Love Brandon Oakes.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Alternative dimensions, co-existing in immaterial symbiosis, parallel narratives unconsciously confabulating interdimensional repartee, no first contact, no apparent links, nothing organically orchestrating symphonic resonance, yet conceptual substance fantastically resides, even though manifold possibilities disenchant synthetic theses, corresponding primordial corporealities existing in fluid gurgle, perhaps by accident, perhaps extrajudicially, although their ontological synergies suggest otherwise, as if they're ethereally co-dependent envirosketches.

They're clearly independent inasmuch as each realm reverberates with distinct novelty, complimentary orthodoxies stretched out like multilateral scripture, naturalistic pretensions conflicting in universal bewilderment, as dogmas that seem tried and true are virtually lost in emancipating infinities.

Multivariability.

Emphatically groomed.

But they're clearly dependent insofar as each distillation is characterized by the same peculiarities, compelling factors from each resembling one another, even though their matrices may be innately avant-garde, from the outside looking in, they're still inhabited by the same constituents, still constructed with the same schematics.

What incorporeally organic material binds them?

What's responsible for their biodiverse resolve?

Star Trek examines the concept from different angles, Inception taking a more introspective approach.

If people hear voices who's to say they weren't multilaterally conceived by invisible ecological beings whom they're capable of phantasmagorically translating?

As if physical constructs like iron could be spread like Nutella, as if they could see and transform matter with tectonic credulity, crafting portals out of thin air with geological finesse, like aged astronomical alchemists, intergalactically demure yet cheeky.

Vortex.

Multiple alternative dimensions wildly present themselves in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, some of them demanding their own agile features, in unacknowledged tantalizing Grindhouse.

And as one Spider-Person perishes, another must heed the call, although he's somewhat shy and  bluntly nervous, and distrusting of his coveted newfound gifts.

Spider-Peeps make for a rambunctious roll call, as diabolical technological largesse seeks to cheat mortal temporality.

Paradigms of popularity dynastically converge in the superheroic postmodern, grating the spice mélange, blending ye olde everything.

So so love film noir Spider-Man.

Plus anime Spider-Woman.

And jaded middle-aged Spider-Man.

A cool collection of Spider-People.

*Still no Mirai no Mirai.

Mirai no Mirai

An imaginative cloister at rest or at play sharply asserts itself in aggrieved upright tantrum.

For the solitary world within which he was ensconced has been definitively altered by the presence of another.

Attention that was once solely centred on him must now be shared with a sister, and even if she's somewhat adorable, he still can't fraternally conduct.

Strange forces align within his domestic playground to provide him with familial aid, and soon, through recourse to animated historical visuals, he's swathed in verbose fluent didact.

But he still may be too young to absorb his interactive lessons, and whether or not he can accept little Mirai (Victoria Grace) remains truly and innocently uncertain.

As dad (John Cho) learns the domestic arts.

And mom (Rebecca Hall) settles back in at work.

The child (Jaden Waldman) creatively explores pasts and presents to embrace Mirai no Mirai, the film excelling at presenting tactile evidence while he struggles to grasp and comprehend.

A wonderful film, rich with effervescent showcase, abounding with nimble tutelage, proceeds to generously foil and viscerally cascade, like windswept rains intermittently drenching the tropics in inclusive instructive echo, it proceeds with a friendly light heart playfully immersed in soothing reprimand.

Revelations must be hidden in order to avoid conflict as mom and dad wonder what's happening in their unassuming nondescript back garden.

As Kun embarks on journey after journey, it's as if luminescence has been seamlessly disseminated, the film's insouciance mysteriously matriculating, in nurtured inculcated frisk.

Deconstructing disillusions of age.

Enveloping unpasteurized wonder.

The scenes aren't boring or risk-fuelled or death-defying or controversial, they're way more chill, like they aren't working within a systematic production slyly cultivating grass-is-greener ideologies.

Thus, with intergenerational independence and particularized unique charm, they offer alternatives overflowing with paradigmatic initiative, laidback, like childhood storytime.

Categorically unconcerned.

You try to keep your eyes open as you age so you don't miss life passing by, like Ferris Bueller, and from time to time you still notice something novel for which you're totally unprepared.

It's like Mirai no Mirai harnesses this outlook in narrativized jazzy melody, which it thoughtfully focuses on itself, to compose something calm and collective.

A must see.