Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night)

The blunt tiresome imposition of exacting extremist cacophonous doctrine, inflexible coercive stone totalitarian limited unimaginative codes.

With everything narrowly prescribed with short-sighted grim oppressive tidings, the threat of harsh dismissive punishment leads to absent playful recalcitrance. 

With people fearing for their lives the tension palpably pervades, otherwise constructive interactive harmonious multidimensional communal initiatives. 

It's difficult to courageously refuse when facing tenacious organized opposition, even if that's what must be done to preserve inherent lithe vitality. 

Two characters in Démanty noci (Diamonds of the Night) see an opportunity to break free, from a train taking them to a concentration camp during the carnage of World War II.

Youthful and free of guilt and alertly aware of their people's innocence, they flee through a nearby wood with the hope of finding food and warmth.

Director Jan Nemec captures their frightened thoughts as they beg at rural lodgings, deprivation producing uncharacteristic distracting wild unwholesome rumination.

They hold it together however and don't act on their destructive impulses, making their way through the inclement climes while others gather to track and hunt them.

The desperation is manifested through shocking visceral lamentation, as others seeking to maintain their freedoms incoherently give chase.

Divided the country's people do the work of their oppressors for them, everything they're forced to do against their will an abomination.

What country understood Nazi oppression more than the routinely terrorized Soviet Union, who lost millions of its own citizens before it outmatched Hitler's armies?

Who was more deserving of a hero's welcome in contemporary legend and heraldic song, after the war came to an abrupt end and Nazi Germany was reduced to ruin?

Yet who now uses the same brutal tactics to subdue a country against its will, to force the peaceful democratic Ukraine to abandon nation, hope, and freedom?

Historical street cred valiantly gained as Russia fought off Berlin, now lost to their embrace of fascism and imperious monstrous violent aggression.

Who would have ever thought it would come to this twenty odd years ago when amicable thoughts, were disseminated far and wide as the world sought widespread peaceful accords?

It has though nevertheless and the people of Ukraine bravely fight on.

Unwilling to yield once more.

United together as one.

*Written last winter.

Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)

A French resistance fighter is woefully captured during World War II, and sent to a brutal prison from which escape is notoriously challenging.

Not one to give up hope he correspondingly applies himself nevertheless, and goes about acquiring tools to help him furtively break free.

The rules within are rather strict so conversation remains quite limited, but he's still able to learn requisite facts from his locked down brethren through stealth and cunning.

Warnings abound regarding improbabilities and potential stool pigeons messing things up, most residents resigned to their fate yet still encouraged by the lieutenant's (François Leterrier) bravery.

His neighbour timorously worries that his escape plans will be detected, and the entire block punished for such ambitions, his fears brought upon by age.

Another prisoner attempts to escape but is unfortunately caught while attempting to do so, his maladroit efforts still supplying the officer with helpful intel regarding necessities.

There are still Nazis to fight and France needs him to secure liberation.

He continues to gradually progress.

Increasing his speed, when he's sentenced to death.

Patiently awaiting the miraculous day when he constructively frees himself from his prison, director Robert Bresson slowly builds up the tension as he meticulously choreographs each struggle.

The palpable concrete uncertainty drives the resonating raw desperation, as hope and logic still efficiently marshal remarkably high spirits considering the circumstances.

The painstaking steps the laborious plan effectively contravenes instantaneous postures, while the cold calculating inhuman pressures chaotically motivate exacting rigour.

Mixed with brief candid exchanges lies irrepressible undaunted light, resplendently illuminating inherent audacity through exoteric recourse to fathomless plight.

Attempts are made to rob prisoners of war of any desire to do anything but, simply follow a severe routine absolutely obscuring identity and purpose.

But the enlivening knowledge of the pervasive injustice recalibrates ethical strides and intuitively guides them.

A prison break film which follows a plan and authentically labours from dusk 'til dawn.

Memorable scenes clandestinely crafted.

Distinct deliberation.

Ecstatic pause.  

The Plague Dogs

A clandestine facility isolated in the English countryside conducts research into the bubonic plague, and subjects dogs to abhorrent endurance tests, with no concern for their distraught feelings.

But one night after the cleaning of a cage, an infernal latch is left unlocked, and two dogs bravely escape forthwith, into the nebulous realm beyond.

Attempting to reconstitute their latent wild survival instincts, they venture forth with determined vigour, but the lands are unaccustomed to roaming beasts in search of food, unfortunately for Snitter (John Hurt) and Rowf (Christopher Benjamin), the domain is inhospitable. 

A sympathetic fox (James Bolam as the Tod) takes them into his care however, and guides them from place to place as they intuitively adapt.

Soon their presence is detected, after an innocent man is accidentally shot, and local farmers notice sheep missing, the dogs are identified by their collars.

Soon the research facility is taken to task for its inherent wrongdoing, and even though people remain compassionate, a scathing hunt panoramically begins.

The dogs and fox furtively evade their ostentatious blunt pursuers. 

But the net becomes too tight.

They must reach the limitless ocean.

The Plague Dogs vividly captures the barbaric stresses animals undergo, while subjected to heartless scientific experiments, whose results are possibly often inconclusive (do conclusive results lead to less funding?).

If you sign up for emails from PETA you'll receive an abundance of notes chronicling animal abuse, with everything from mice to pigs to owls, it's important to sign their petitions, even if they're tough to read.

The Plague Dogs playfully showcases interactive wild and domestic behaviours, as the fox and dogs share thoughts and survival strategies, with interspecial communication.

The bold animals wisely care for one another while encouraging incarnate stealth, but their convivial trials and errors prove too much for surrounding commerce.

Do we really need to research how long an animal can swim before it drowns?, do tax payers pay the bills for such experiments?, critical inquiries must be applied (as many others suggest every day).

I initially thought research into the ways in which many bear species hibernate may generate interesting results.

But who knows how many bears may die to obtain them?

One is far too many. 

*Patrick Stewart has some cool lines. 

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.

Escape Room

Love the new escape room phenom.

Not the sadistic life or death adrenaline pumping puzzles presented in Adam Robitel's film so much, not that they aren't thoughtfully crafted, but I imagine their less punishing brainiac counterparts would make for some practical team based orchestrations, with incumbent inclusive broadly themed variable melodies perhaps juking catchy lyrics downsized?

As provocative as they are tantalizing, do professional sports teams and debating clubs use them to build trust amongst team members, in order to make dependency upon one another seem less forbidding, more fancy free, even if trivial minutiae may indeed be universal or paramount?

The defence could study an opposing team's strikers and then try to break free from several related escape rooms every Wednesday night before upcoming games.

Wide receivers could outmanoeuvre secondary hypotheses.

Pitchers and catchers could set up a semiotic home base.

Third and fourth lines could grind their way out of the box.

A versatile bench could adjudicate appellate courts.

Improvised polemics could disputatiously prorogue.

Perfect for the offseason.

Or for offices where no one plays sports.

If escape room team building exercises haven't already become blasé, there are still at least 18 months before they fade into commercial oblivion.

Even though they seem theoretically sound.

Proof.

What a job for arts majors.

Eat your heart out crossword puzzles.

Nevertheless, Escape Room, apart from its clever escape rooms themselves, provides a pretty standard entertaining distraction.

It was easy to guess who would bite it first, highly probable who the first three to die would be, somewhat tricky to discern which of the final two males would be first to go, until hindsight provided a populist frame within which it came down to the less imposing.

Bad attitude.

At the same time, to its credit, Escape Room doesn't feature jaw dropping aesthetics, relying more on brains than sensual embellishments, a cool aspect materially conceptualized.

Perhaps, as ______ (______ _______) and ______ (______ ______) discuss their plans in the end, populism takes on more scholarly responsibilities, in preparation for the upcoming sequel.

I never saw any of the Saw films so I don't know if Escape Room is the new Saw.

If you ever find yourself thinking the word "quintessential" is supercilious, Escape Room might fundamentally challenge your point of view.

Or not.

Popcorn is essential.

But is butter quintessential?

Real butter?

Think about it.

😧

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World, back at it.

Dinosaur-related shenanigans, check.

Some dick trying to cash in on the genetically reincarnated beasties: you got it.

Those who care about preserving both the independence and integrity of dinosaur kind, primed, and ready to go.

Consistent death-defying escapes mixed in with a ludicrous plot that unravels like a particularly intriguing series of Bazooka Joe comics?

Yuppers.

Although the dinosaurs, as in the actual dinosaurs, having been left alone to exist freely on Isla Nublar, still make for a stunning cinematic extravaganza, their wild unpredictable prehistoric codes of conduct generating thrilling exceptional naturalistic exhilarations, that make the unrelenting poaching of elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, bears, and others, seem even more horrendous, as even more are illegally deprived of life each day.

A UN army to stop them?

I'd greenlight that idea.

Yet, for the next Jurassic World sequel, might I suggest 25 minutes more pure dinosaur, and 25 minutes less human interaction?

Still include plenty of Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda), Franklin Webb (Justice Smith), Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), Claire Deaning (Bryce Dallas Howard), Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), but take it easy on the maniacal conspiring.

Plus, the ending, spoiler alert, suggests dinosaurs will be proliferating partout in Jurassic World 3.

Considering how many were saved from the island, that's a bit ridiculous, unless all the dinosaurs who jumped off the cliff to freedom swam to land and survived, the numbers simply don't add up.

Not including those who can fly.

Methinks more time should be spent on the script for future instalments as well.

I was super happy to see James Cromwell (Benjamin Lockwood) but then he had to deliver the worst dialogue imaginable, over and over again.

He deserves so much better.

Even the first half of Ian Malcolm's speech isn't that tight, although his statements at the end of the film make an impact, as if they reserved the best writing for the last 2 minutes, hoping the rest would be overlooked as a consequence.

Even with the impact, they still make you think the world will be overrun with dinosaurs in the next movie, when those who were shipped off the island weren't exactly handpicked by Noah (I assume dinosaurs lay a bunch of eggs at a time, but how often do they breed and how closely do they watch their young? [elephant moms carry their young for 22 months{mama turtles lay then take off}]).

What happened to Lowery (Jake Johnson)?

He didn't die in the first/fourth film.

He was cool.

The Indoraptor may be a prototype, but it's also a highly refined predator bred to kill and kill.

And kill again.

I don't think turning the lights out would fool it.

Plus, the auction doesn't make much sense.

None of the dinosaurs they're selling apart from the Indoraptor prototype have been genetically conditioned to follow commands, and a bunch of them are herbivorous by nature.

How are you going to turn something that eats grass and plants all day and isn't violent into some strange breed of instinctual vegetarian mercenary?

And how could you trick elite arms dealers into thinking that's a great idea?

Even if it'd make a funny Will Ferrell movie.

And wouldn't one sniper bullet put a dinosaur mercenary out of commission?

If you could weaponize herbivores wouldn't a deer be more suitable option?

I can't believe I'm thinking about these things.

Plus, if Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) is managing the fortune that built Jurassic Park etc., why would he take so many idiotic risks to pick up what probably amounts to spare chump change?

The payouts he had to make after Jurassic World fell apart weren't astronomically high in speculative comparison.

A fun movie to watch lacking in structural cohesion, perhaps Fallen Kingdom's writers made internal and personal sacrifices to narratively lampoon the miserable ethical foundations of global weapons manufacturing, deliberately not thinking things through to sharply critique plutocratic ambitions, while betting on making a shit ton of money meanwhile?

The do-gooders are still awesome.

And the dinosaurs too.

My favourite dinosaur: the stegosaurus.

Always has been.

😌

Room

A different kind of malevolence, like a sick experiment a demented philosopher would subject his or her family to in order to study the isolated innocence of the nascent imagination.

Solitary semantics.

Ontological incarceration.

A mother and son locked away for years in a shed, never leaving, never seeing the outside world.

The child, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), having spent his entire life in the shed, imaginatively tries to make sense of existence, while his Ma (Brie Larson) attempts to define the outside world.

It's difficult for him to comprehend, and his creative energies, as applied to his confined explorations, idealize the passionate curiosity of youth, his desire to learn more stifled by a lack of resources.

Escape cunningly presents itself and the real world suddenly emerges, but emerging into a hyper-reactive media sensation contrasts monstrous plans with excessive exposure.

It's too much for his overwhelmed mom, as it would be for anyone, but familial strength steps up as required, to cuddle in consultation, and placate emotionally complex obsessions.

Tough film, Lenny Abrahamson's Room, juxtaposing different pressurized extremes and their belittling affects on a severely traumatized family.

Those are the tough questions you don't ask.

Jack's lack of knowledge saves him from the psychological torments disintegrating his mother, his attempts to simply be profound in their hesitant wonder, the compassionate easing the transition for both of them, trust contra control, revelations of an inchoate spirituality.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Accelerated omnipresent pressurized pulsation, strict violent fanatical allegiance, the strongest suffocating to prosper penultimately, commanding the collective will, autocratic anarchy, order established where there was only suffering, fierce frantic fallout, old world technologies mechanistically motivating, the power to recreate them exhausted in the flames, control what survives, post-apocalyptically yield and burn.

Tyrannically.

Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), ruler of his domain, is challenged by the free thinking Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who audaciously seeks escape, from his unleashed sands of thine.

The film irresistibly functions on a need-to-know basis.

Little is directly explained, it's a filmic theorist's broadbanded El Dorado, compelled to advocate and wager, within absolutism's clutches.

While enjoying a chaotic chase which minimalistically yet compellingly develops multiple marooned mindsets, simplicity functioning on a complex sociological level, artistic in its expansive brevity, enhanced by stunning complementary visuals.

The people, the elite, the executive, their competitors.

You get a sense of what the film will be like early on, when Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) attempts to flee his captors, boldly leaping to what would represent freedom in so many action films, only to fail in his attempt, and be overcome by the frenzied horde.

He could be the most unfocused upon heroic figure I've seen in a strong action film, he's not the main character, rarely says anything, his actions have beneficial repercussions for those claiming individuality, but so do those of others involved in the same blind maddening quest.

Direct absolutism, indirect social democracy, levelled out blunt mysterious jagged character development mired in an unending conflict which intuitively yet intellectually assaults tyrannical preconceptions.

I'm placing Mad Max: Fury Road on my list of favourite action films, with Aliens, Robocop(1987), and Terminator 2.

There's no need to impose rank.

It demands that you find the definitions.

Immersing you in its world thereby.

Providing clues.

The Congress

A thought provoking hypothesis concerning the future of acting descends into dystopian banality as Ari Folman's Congress transforms its initial personal conflict into a convoluted cultural malaise, the leap from the subjective to the universal itself profound, its execution entangled in histrionic thickets.

Computer generated cults and combines engulf the narrative's characterization in a co-opted corporate/revolutionary temporally and physically unbound constraint, which dialectically plays with animation and the corporeal to enticingly comment on a general contemporary lack of concern with poverty and alienation, the individual escapes or s/he suffers, and/or escapes and suffers, with no plan in place to improve downtrodden standards of living.

The relationship between selling your character to a studio through the process of having it duplicated by a complex array of computational codes thereafter used in whatever film the studio sees fit, regardless of whether or not you approve of the role, seems to have been commercialized en masse, individuals escaping to an animated realm to avoid finding solutions to real problems, this realm, probably representing current obsessions with the internet, which can be a remarkable tool for activism and engagement, enables individuals to become their own ideal self on the upload, leaving everything behind in the construct.

Or not. I don't know. This film's a mess. I felt like I had the flu watching its second act. I like complex takes on the byzantine nature of sociopolitical dynamics, but the acts don't communicate well with one another, there's no chrysalis, they just happen.

Without this communication, the film needs to stand tall on its own thereby encouraging you to see it again, like Mulholland Dr. or Lost Highway, and The Congress, with its misplaced animation, becomes too melodramatic and opaque, its structure obfuscating its outputs.

As an obscure piece of relevant cultural commentary it succeeds.

As an enduring film, I'm not so sure.

Barbara

Declarative desire dedicatedly persists after state sanctioned seclusion silences its volatile temerity.

Another, resigned yet combative, is enamoured.

The fate of a rebellious young adult becomes a decisive tangible consequent as the Stasi's invasive pressure deliberately dehumanizes.

A doctor, emphatically refuses, to be muzzled.

Carefully contextualizing different varieties of tension, while diagnosing risk with surgical precision, Christian Petzold's Barbara internally serenades freedom of expression, and externalizes a crisp courageous spiritualization.

An extensive reactive multilateral engagement furtively negotiates an honest state of affairs.

Its interconnected inextricable professional, personal, romantic, governmental and (inter)national relationships foment a forlorn fugitive firmament wherein influential forces collaborate and contend.

Interrogating what it means to pursue.

Attempting to have their voices heard.