Pacific Rim

Can't decide if this film was brutal, interdimensional, or exceptional, meaning it was fun, if not ludicrous, to watch.

And write about.

A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.

They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.

But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.

It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.

By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.

The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.

Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).

After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.

Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.

An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.

Nice touch.

Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.

Quotable lines abound.

Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond)

Drifting through the French countryside, Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire) moves from place to place in search of a comfortable semantic translation. Unhappy working as a secretary, she sets out in search of a boss or a situation to whom/which she can easily relate. Refusing to accept anything else, dire circumstances occasionally present themselves to which she must spontaneously adjust. The acceptance of such adjustments produces a feisty tranquillity as she discovers sundry existential qualifiers from which she creates an ontological work in progress.

Agnès Varda presents Mona's story through a series of flashbacks from the final days of her life. She encounters a colourful cast of characters who offer advice and opportunities while reflecting on that/those presented by her bohemian lifestyle. A random cross-section of French culture is thereby curiously and interrogatively investigated as particularized observations are freely illuminated. Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond) lets its narrative subjectively moralize from multidimensional points of view without offering direct overarching evaluations.

The highs and lows of a transient lifestyle are mediated within as Mona consistently transforms from subject to object while remaining committed to her chosen path.

The film itself is in constant motion as ideas, constructs, and conceptions are tethered, liberated, confined, and released.