Chikyû kôgeki meirei Gojira tai Gaigan (Godzilla vs. Gigan)

Godzilla finds himself fiercely dwelling on the sensational Monster Island, far away from the technobustle of old school contemporary Japanese life.

But as he rambunctiously resides a new threat from outer space descends, and intergalactically infiltrates unsuspecting Tokyo and proceeds to set up an amusement park.

Two local citizens become concerned when one of their siblings is mysteriously locked-down, and adventurously gamble on discovering his whereabouts while learning more about the corporation.

They're assisted by an emerging artist who was just commissioned to design the park, who's also able to prove the captive's existence, but not without resulting in their incarceration. 

They soon discover that upon another once verdant planet similar to our own, the primary lifeforms polluted too recklessly and eventually destroyed their fertile world.

Correspondingly, extant insect species were remarkably able to utilize their technology, and even build their own interplanetary spacecraft, to plan the bitter conquest of our precious Earth!

To aid in their colonialist endeavours they've macrocosmically enlisted Ghidorah and Gigan, who fly through space to our innocent planet and proceed to take out Tokyo.

Godzilla and Anguirus quickly arrive to boldly face the enraged duo. 

The alien species diabolically surmising.

That conquering Godzilla will bring about world peace!

Tough to logically situate ye olde Chikyû kôgeki meirei Gojira tai Gaigan (Godzilla vs. Gigan) within inelastic parameters, its traditional reliance on militaristic methods seemingly in conflict with its environmental ethos.

But perhaps as it enlists the army to bravely duel with the bellicose monsters, it also encourages it to tactically listen to its clairvoyant message regarding the environment.

Indeed it reasonably predicts the eventual downfall of our industrious species, as brought about by unchecked pollution pestiferously contaminating both oceans and land.

I wonder if Japan responded and what their environmental footprint's like these days, islands often take their environments much more seriously due to the lack of habitable space.

When you see that messages such as these were even to be found in Godzilla movies over 50 years ago, and much of the world still lavishly pollutes, it's easy to see why postmodern day environmentalists are increasingly becoming more and more prominent. 

Initiative and resolve game-changing macroalterations could creatively cultivate enduring neoharmonies.

Harris and Walz seem likely onboard. 

Which would probably nurture constructive movements worldwide. 

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.

Iron Man 3

Adding a surprisingly human dimension to Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) Iron Man, through which relatable stresses such as panic attacks are relativistically normalized through recourse to the exceptional, Iron Man 3 finds him suffering from the aftershocks of his debut with the Avengers, aftershocks which force him to begrudgingly confront his mortality.

Kind of.

At first, he compensates by stretching his extroverted insignia to the limits by trash talking a terrorist who then uses his arsenal to obliterate the Stark residence, leaving him theoretically helpless after he barely escapes.

He is exceptional however and thanks to an avenue of inquiry established by his prior research, fortunately lands himself in a crucial situation wherein his gifts are practically vetted.

Screenplay writers Drew Pearce and Shane Black (who also directed) do a great job here of rationally justifying a seemingly highly improbable scenario.

Colonel James Rhodes's (Don Cheadle) dialogue with Stark is used to rationally justify another seemingly highly improbable scenario later on as well.

They also play with the device which sees franchises seeking to extend their limits by introducing youth (something remarkably different more generally) to nurture a newfound pluralization.

Yet shortly after doing this it becomes clear that the Iron Man films will not be (heavily) relying on such devices, as Tony harshly yet avuncularly explains.

Excellent confident synthesis of the particular (the Iron Man films) and the universal (movie trilogies generally).

Some of the minor characters shockingly receive a lot of depth as well as comedic components of Machete's narrative unreel.

The film makes it clear that experimenting on humans is unethical by attaching this component of its narrative to the villains, villains who were created by Stark's callous self-obsession.

In the end, Stark perfects their methods, however, thereby leaving the film in an ambiguous domain wherein which it's difficult to discern what it's clearly stating.

Clarity is important regarding such matters.

The protagonists use technology to differentiate themselves, the villains, experimental performance enhancing pseudodrugs.

These drugs themselves were developed using nefarious methods, and in my opinion, the film would have been stronger if Stark had destroyed everything having to do with them, even though he was indirectly responsible for their creation, in order to find an alternative cure for his condition.

I understand that this is highly improbable, but having an exceptionally gifted iconic individual not use said gifts to actively create an ethically acceptable alternative by overtly employing different tactics while directly acknowledging said differentiation doesn't make sense to me.

Not using research obtained through such means to pursue beneficial ends does make sense to me.

The ending would have been stronger had Iron Man acted accordingly.

The Avengers

Prominent Marvel characters begrudgingly unite in Joss Whedon's The Avengers to battle the tyrannical intentions of the recently freed Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Loki travels to Earth in order to commandeer the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D for the Other (Alexis Denisof) who promises him an army of Chitauri warriors in return (with whom he can launch an invasion).

The Tesseract is an extremely powerful and seemingly limitless source of energy.

The overt film's explosive enough, as superegos convincingly clash and physically exhibit their prowess. Their introduction's are concise and pinpointed, their initial meeting contentious and energetic, their conversation's confident, inquisitive and challenging, their commitment during battle self-sacrificing and unwavering, and so on.

Approaches and tactics are intently scrutinized before the necessity to act demands a united counter assault.

Much like any given Sunday.

This business of naming the overarching villain The Other is quite troublesome, however, insofar as this can be viewed as external difference financing and supplying Loki's imperialistic ambition.

Which is xenophobic.

And sucks.

After a nation engages in imperialistic activities a degree of underlying cultural paranoia is retroactively generated which can be thought of as manufacturing a subjugating unspoken psychological incision, an example of this incision's profusion being even more excessively manifested in A Song of Ice of Fire.

The Avengers themselves are exceptions overflowing with otherness as is S.H.I.E.L.D and the film's final confrontation takes place in New York.

These are local irreplaceable others, however, produced on planet Earth, apart from Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

As these special local others combat the 'extraterrestrial' forces of the Other in a metropolitan other the military's solution (the closest possible [ludicrous] representation of the people's voice in this film) is to send in a nuke and unabashedly obliterate all forms of difference.

But the narcissistic techno-other who cannot be somnambulistically subdued by Loki's sceptre catches that nuke and directs it into space, thereby using his 'idyllic' individualistic entrepreneurial ingenuity to simultaneously crush the threat of colonization and prevent a government sponsored homeland nuclear disaster.

He is then saved by brute force as he helplessly falls back to Earth (there's a disturbing image for labour relations [corporate fiefdoms anyone?]).

Thus, not so pleased with what's going on behind the scenes in The Avengers.

Thor does chastise Loki for considering himself to be above his potential subjects.

Thor who is from another planet.

Nice to see Harry Dean Stanton nevertheless.

Spider Man 3

I was surprised that Spider Man 3 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm usually weary when I hear people claim that a film is good according to what it is because this comment often denotes that the film is a successful piece of crap. I like the odd crappy film, but when a big budget sequel extravaganza like Spider Man 3 gets the crap plug, one wonders if it's worth the time. But after viewing it, I have to admit that it is in fact good according to what it is, the third melodramatic installment in a teenybopper comic book franchise that skillfully juxtaposes the maudlin with the macabre, the morality with the mystery. The film is fun and entertaining and is not really trying to deliver any profound philosophical message so searching for one outside of the symbolism is likely unfair. And the way in which it skillfully employs its plethora of minor characters really helps maintain one's interest throughout, notably Bruce Campbell's scene as well as the interactions between Peter Parker and his landlord's family. Spider Man 3 lasts for almost two and a half hours but the pace is tight and when the final reels had played I felt like I'd just seen a typical 90 minute flick. And wow bob wow, J. Jonah Jameson steals the show, adding beautifully crafted stylistic breaks which briefly send one's perception into a ridiculously sublime filmic wonderland.