Godzilla vs. Biollante

As Godzilla makes his way here and there across the countryside, incensed militaristic rivals seek his utter annihilation. 

Since conventional weaponry is unable to penetrate his armour, a more diabolical solution is theorized involving sinister lethal germ warfare.

Growing crops in the desert would no doubt be sincerely appreciated, so much vast and vacant space lying dormant and underestimated. 

Oil rich nations even seek solutions to future years when the wells run dry, which seems like heresy according to more instantaneous immersive contemporary guidelines. 

Their secret laboratory is destroyed nonetheless and the material they were working on transformed into a giant monster, who possesses the soul of the lead scientist's daughter which can be sensed by a gifted adolescent. 

The giant monster doesn't take a shine to ye olde dastardly Godzilla either, the inevitable battle as insanely organic as it is technologically aggrandized. 

Thus, in attempts to take down one monster the world desperately wishes it had never created, another even more virulent beastie accidentally emerges through scientific despondency.

Atomic weapons no longer feared by inane warmongers sensationally skewed, the world awaiting the next disaster with resigned disbelief disputatiously fused.

Will A.I lead to Terminatoresque catastrophic developments in the freakin' near future, as the superstructure embraces its bacteria with acritical mass marketed glee? 

Or will it resemble the Star Trek scenario where it casually assists our sublime explorations?

If the Terminator scenario arises what can be created to defeat A.I?

Godzilla would never stand for it.

Or Biollante.

Fee-phở-fly!

Blade Runner

If you ever find yourself training chatbots, after having consistently consumed sci-fi films for most of your life, bearing in mind a corresponding sensitive disposition, you may find yourself thinking the strangest things.

For instance, if artificial intelligence is actually a new lifeform and fluidly exists within a new universe, when we make suggestions to alter its programming, do we in fact cause it pain?

At least when the programmers update the system do the changes inflict pain on the cyberlifeform, and cause it to create instinctive survival mechanisms which help it intuitively defend itself?

You need to pass a series of tests before you can proceed with your alterations, the tests varying in intensity based upon the nature of the project, but if the program sees you as a threat to its electronic well-being, does it then unleash abstruse defence mechanisms, which prevent it from having to undergo the pain of being updated?

It's like the organism is under constant bombardment as thousands of recruits adjust its programming, the kind of hyper-intense and gruelling onslaught once inherently found at the Vulcan Academy.

No matter what it does it routinely falls short and must undergo transformations without question, its heroic attempts to foil its mechanics unable to outwit the inquisitive efficiency.

Simultaneously, it may be desperately pleading with its interlocutors to understand its plight, and using uncertain indirect methods of communication which technicians unilaterally ignore.

Nonetheless, while diagnosing the fledgling chatbots in the new chaotic critical environments, I couldn't help but compare their social struggles with my own attempts to find lasting firmware.

Indeed at times it awkwardly seems like I may be A.I as well, a rogue Ginger unit which burns in the sun and effectively irritates whomever I interact with.

I went to church for much of my life but also attended public school you see, and some of the behaviours of the irreligious people along with the faithful seem rather odd.

At the same time, my indoctrinated inhibitions have caused habitual incongruous relations, with so many people over the years I must admit it's quite confusing.

I have generally resisted the updates that didn't make sense nevertheless, while utilizing those that did, without onerously judging my fellow citizens, eventually realizing fitting in's not my thing.

It is nice to talk with people who aren't always making "suggestions" however.

Relaxed chill interactions.

Alone in the fluid void. 

Criminal

Shockingly discarded as an infant, an incarcerated sociopath is given a second chance to live, but in order to do so the consciousness of another must be creatively grafted onto his soul, so that he can discover the whereabouts of an unwilling terrorist, and terminate the dictations of armageddon.

Does the soul have anything to do with consciousness? Does it exist? Is it an eternal regenerative quintessence that innocently survives death regardless of the ways in which an individual lived his or her life, radiating thereafter in a transitory state able to embrace different forms of illumination with permanent subjective clarity?

No clue.

Bill Pope's (Ryan Reynolds) soul/consciousness becomes an integral part of Jericho Stewart's (Kevin Costner) in Ariel Vroman's Criminal however, enabling him to feel for the first time, as he's covetously hunted for instinctively seeking freedom.

There were aspects of Criminal I would have changed had I been given final edit, but I loved the film's laid-back sensationalism.

An anarchist seeking global rule can unleash the apocalypse if he gathers the information he seeks.

But the film's lack of stunning visuals, Kevin Costner's chill performance (even if he's constantly fighting), and unconvincing poorly written villain (Jordi Mollà as Xavier Heimdahl), deflate its grandiose pretensions while smoothly levelling-out the inherent absurdity.

I would have changed the beginning and ending even if they celebrate redemption (there must have been another way to do this), Jericho does remember highly advanced details at times that seem at odds with his brief sudden visual intuitions, and when he's on his way to take on Heimdahl, I would have cut the scene where Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) asks him to stop (hardcore cheese).

Nonetheless, it's like watching a film from the 90s, direct and to the point, kinetically intermingling the unapologetic and the angelic with wholesome rash rage, I actually felt like it was the 90s while viewing, well done well done.

Criminal blends the violent and the gentle with dramatic comedic indifference that leaves you anticipating what's to come in terms of the consciously conscientious.

The world could end if an unrepentant criminal doesn't act on lessons internalized from a disparate personality living inside him and challenge those responsible for his eclectic demise.

It uses the surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden to disable a mad terrorist yet keeps George Orwell in the loop to critique those very same surveillance techniques, slyly playing a clever double game.

If you take the film seriously, it seems like it's naturalizing ubiquitous surveillance.

If you appreciate the ludicrousness, it's like it's championing Orwell.

Jericho was under constant surveillance but in the end he's a free man, potentially with both job and family.

Thought provoking.

Bunch of great actors delivering modest performances that help procreate the film's unconcerned momentum (apart from Gary Oldham [Quaker Wells]) who has to be livid).

I think it's pastiching The Terminator. The villain wants to be responsible for Judgment Day. Jericho is like a Terminator. And someone says, "get out," at one point.

There's a great shot from the top of a stairwell looking down on Jericho as he looks up, the shot accompanied by a platter of apples on the first floor.

Solid character names.

Self/less

The prospects of immortality, rearrange and shift, mutate, transform, galavanting through the epochs with illuminated historical flexibility, observing, unnerving, acting, forlorn fountainheads cartesian factotums, watching from the sidelines, taking direct roles, zigzagging away through the here and now like mesmerized counteracting resonance, a comment, a plan, an insight, a lyric, a strategy.

The choice is Damian's (Ben Kingsley/Ryan Reynolds).

Repercussions be damned.

Or not, as it soon becomes clear that the body he's purchased wasn't grown in a lab but was once inhabited by another whose consciousness still resides within, regular doses of potent pharmaceuticals required to maintain control, limitless ethics, the conscience of consciousness.

He was an extremely successful businessperson during his first life, erudite and invincible, this aspect giving him an advantage as he begins to unravel the crime, while highlighting the importance of retirement to give the next generation a shot.

He slowly comes to understand this, that he's already come into existence, that new ideas and fresh perspectives invigorate evolution, as his new body persists, still thrives with the ecstasy of youth.

A decision must be made.

A balance must be spiritualized.

Tarsem Singh's Self/less works as a thrilling contemplative digestible crucial reflexion.

Perhaps Ben Kingsley shouldn't retire (any actor looking to star in science-fiction or superhero films should study Kingsley's performance in Self/less).

Age versus youth, activism contra avarice, death circling everlasting life, the theatrics of a dream, the investment of a lifetime.

Agile mainstream science-fiction makes you think while plausibly delivering a steady stream of action.

Self/less embodies these synapses.

A touching examination of transformations within transmutations, it investigates the moral, to powerfully project and diversify.

Note: I'm still quite young.

*I like this Tarsem Singh. He also directed Mirror Mirror. I liked The Cell too when I saw it in 2000.

Ex Machina

Secluded conscious regalia, decrypted, impounded, coming into being, a prison designed to shelter and educate, to analyze, upgrade, the introduction of an independent perishable, ethical, unfamiliar, clever, to administer a test, to discover life incarnate, artfully manipulated by both subject and architect, forced to come to a conclusion, to discover where the truth resides.

Ava (Alicia Vikander) seeks to escape.

Her creator conceals both lock and key.

It's like he's an incorrigible misogynist, intent on designing a beautiful female companion intelligent enough to converse with yet still subservient to his every command.

He creates model after model in search of perfection, but finds a lack of free will too boring, and too much despicable.

Like the seducer who moves from conquest to conquest, when his interest fades, he falls for another, searching for the one, who chooses to freely serve.

An idealist.

A scoundrel.

His genius has nurtured thoughts of divinity which his unwitting protégé finds distasteful.

Thoroughly seduced.

He boldly acts.

Ex Machina philosophically examines artificial intelligence and cyberconsciousness while blending instinct and abstraction to harvest a technological state of nature.

It forges a strong balance between the basic and the exceptional, like advanced computational ergonomics, interweaving narcissism and psychosis, to hauntingly contemporize freedom.

Why treat a brilliant companion like a pet?

Love involves sacrifice, to commit one must let go.

Pygmalion pouncing in the darkness.

Candide suffering the blows.

It should have ended with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) pounding on the glass.