Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad worked for me.

It unreels like a tight graphic novel, short critical scenes packing poignant particles of plot into pyrotechnic proclivities, action-packed definitive melodrama fetchingly refurbishing the forensics.

Films such as these often fall apart if the writer(s) hasn't taken the extra time to ensure that her or his lines often seamlessly synthesize the kitschy and the poetic, and Will Beall's script creatively accomplishes this task, no doubt with assistance from Paul Lieberman's novel, commercially perspiring the artistic.

Gangster Squad blows Not Fade Away and The Last Stand away.

The ending, while jurisprudently brandishing a brash scarred face, wasn't as electric as that from Iron Man 2, and the Squad's supporting members would have benefitted from more screen time (throughout).

They do receive plenty of screen time (throughout) and there are a bunch of supporting characters but it's more like Star Trek: The Original Series than Voyager or The Next Generation, frequently focused on leading persons.

If Django Unchained attaches a commercial dimension to the artistic, I would argue that Gangster Squad adds an artistic dimension to the commercial.

Both are hyperviolent but I likely wouldn't have noticed Gangster Squad's if it wasn't for Django Unchained.

If Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) and Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) were both running backs, it's tough to imagine who would pick up more yards per game.

Methinks Mr. O'Mara has the edge.

Straight up the gut.

Love how Ruben Fleischer's career is progressing.

Half way through I was hoping for some Gary Busey. Shook my head when I remembered that it co-stars Nick Nolte.

Trouble with the Curve

Trouble with the Curve.

Trouble with the Curve is a nice story. It situates a complicated familial dynamic within a competitive professional atmosphere which is adorned with collegial and asinine interactions that polarize the continuum established between youth and age.

Relationships and ethnocentric tendencies are examined as well, and after an explanation is provided, the resultant synergies mobilize the disenfranchised.

And the multidimensional nature of experiential competencies collaboratively contends with electronically generated statistics to offer an holistic approach to the practice of forecasting.

It's presented in an easy-to-follow and understand format, potentially photosynthesizing a modest kernel of truth.

All of these things, are good.

Clint Eastwood's character could have been more diversely differentiated from that whom he played in Gran Torino however.

Not that I don't love the old curmudgeon, but not enough time has elapsed between the two films.

And it's tough to find shelter from the narrative's after-school-special-like style, which, while cultivating a strong inclusive yet combative framework, lacks the creative virtuosities needed to motivate a wide-ranging reception.

Not that it's trying to do that.

True Grit

Revenge. Determination. The Law. Bold teenager Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is determined to hire a lawperson in order to bring the man who murdered her father to justice, and she possesses the stubborn constitution and iron will necessary to do so. Refusing to allow the stereotypes regarding her age and gender thwart her, she convinces the grizzled alcoholic U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to pursue, and accompanies him along the way. The bumbling Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon) is also in search of their quarry and the ensuing relations between the three roughhouse traditional conceptions of law and order. Cogburn and La Boeuf are like a rugged cantankerous reflection of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and their argumentative dialogue complicates matters before the Coen Brothers round up their complementary strengths and weaknesses (it's as if they've taken a "good" standard lawperson, separated him or her into two, provided both personalities with piss and vinegar, and then used [in this case] feminine strength to bring them together). Mattie saves them from themselves and maintains a firm influential grip, perhaps suggesting that as patriarchal conceptions of the good drink and qualify themselves to death, strong young women will revitalize and recast their semantics, maintaining a prominent place for men while creating one as equally influential for women, thereby manifesting true grit. The fact that her efforts are only substantialized through a stroke of somewhat random good fortune suggests that an egalitarian feminine and masculine distribution of power may be generated both legally and politically and treated as if it was evolutionary publicly, if and only if the actual composition of its resonance is dependent upon frustrated logic reinvigorated serendipitously, i.e., the introduction of and capitalization upon a paradigm which oddly corresponds to and uplifts its socialized framework, something formally similar to Lafontaine and Baldwin's use of restraint in the 1840s. A catalyst, a cyberstone, something from within. Good film.