Ocean's 8

Alone in prison, with nothing but time on her hands, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) masterminds a plan to steal over a hundred million in diamonds, immediately acted upon after her release, old and new contacts forging a daring team assembled, multiple components carefully coaxed and compacted, efficient intricate undaunted elasticity, subtly stretched to briskly bounce back, executing envisioned flawless features exfoliated, requiring patient expertise, and cultivated spurned suspicion.

She also plans to see her ex who betrayed her incarcerated for her crimes, her uncompromised love having been outrageously cast aside, her scorn left with abundant time to exhaustively scheme and cypher.

Meticulously so.

The team's an eclectic mix of independent spirits each existing beyond the clutches of patriarchy, thriving individually with highly specialized skills, collectively blended to secure legendary salutations.

As Debbie explains her plan.

Enormous risks taken to facilitate freespirited acclimations.

Proceeds to be evenly split amongst them.

Exacting details.

A group of friends.

Ocean's 8 takes this group of remarkably skilled individuals and lets them intelligently showcase with care.

Seductive they may be, but the film focuses on brains rather than beauty and doesn't sexualize its crafty heroines.

It's strictly business.

It moves at a fast pace as the plan dispassionately pursues its objectives, everything smoothly falling into place without much strain or fallout.

The plan's clever and it's fun to watch but if there had been more conflict throughout it would have been grittier and edgier, even if it's still appealing as it stands.

Could have used more Constance (Awkwafina) too.

She doesn't get much screentime.

Precise and polished yet somewhat too perfect, Ocean's 8 outwits expectations with crystalline charming tact.

Keeping a level head as it executively chills, it puts theory into practice with brilliant regenerative exclamation.

Free State of Jones

Raw recruits hopelessly unprepared for military service, the people starving to support a lost cause, reprisals and punishments suffocating the countryside, whispers of emancipation enflaming formerly despondent fuels, a small racially mixed group of men and women set out to constructively challenge confederate rule, imagining a state where everyone profits from the fruits of their labours, during the American Civil War, in Gary Ross's Free State of Jones.

Odd to see a film that investigates militaristic insurrection as opposed to strict cohesive unified martial ubiquity, concerned citizens attempting to establish concrete constitutional reforms, exercising intellectual abstractions, with communal dignity, and auspicious flumes.

Eventually declaring their own fundamental principles.

Their group itself still fraught with internal discord.

The film has a progressive message inasmuch as it promotes racially diverse communities working together to flourish and succeed.

It was obviously shot in haste though.

Matthew McConaughey (Newton Knight) eclipses the other participants and delivers a great performance (bit overwrought at times), excelling in the lead as pivotal protagonist with the most critical speeches, but since no one else really stands out, Free State of Jones's formal aspects are at odds with its content's focus on diversity.

There can be more than one.

Not enough takes blended with sloppy editing that covers a lot of time and space without generating any visceral momentum.

There is a valuable subplot however that takes place in a not too distant future where one of Knight's descendants is on trial for marrying a caucasian woman even though he may have African blood, mixed race marriages being ridiculously illegal at the time.

By jumping back and forth between past and present, Free State of Jones coaxes its audience into critically examining contemporary racial injustices, which unfortunately continue to abound with incendiary abusive flagrancy.

A clever move, manifesting the present while remaining situated in the past, backgammon.

It's sad to think that the American Civil War ended 151 years ago and the same bigoted preconceptions still disharmoniously complicate the daily lives of so many people.

Do you remember when you were really young and there weren't black, white, Asian, Arab, Native . . . . . peoples, there were just people, living in communities together?

Those were great times.

Chill you know.

Peaceful.

The Hunger Games

Suppose most people are familiar with what happens in The Hunger Games so I won't spend too much time expanding upon the plot.

An uprising was launched by 12 impoverished districts which was crushed by the powers-that-be. In the aftermath, in order to brutally humiliate their subjects even further, they then created the Hunger Games, a competition wherein a youthful male and female representative from each district is selected to take part in a vicious fight to the death.

24 combatants are chosen and by the end only one remains.

The combatants, referred to as tributes, travel to the capital where they're elaborately decked out and paraded in front of the well-to-do in an ancient romanesque spectacle that's designed to showcase the oppressed and impress potential sponsors. These sponsors can provide you with assistance during the Games thereby enhancing your chances of survival. Ratings are provided to each contestant and they have their chance to prove their worth in front of a select group of interested parties and on television as well.

President Snow (Donald Sutherland) makes it clear that the Games were designed to instil a sense of hope within his destitute subjects, a sense that even though your chances of survival are slim, you still might win and be showered with riches forever after.

Obviously the hope he intends to cultivate isn't seen quite so romantically by the citizens of the districts.

Or the participants of the Hunger Games.

But those who have lucratively profited by the current composition of the state cheer and laugh at the hopeless in a disgusting exercise of affluent vanity.

Refusing to participate in the Hunger Games ensures your death.

Participating in the Hunger Games almost assuredly ensures your death.

So you have an extremist government that castigates the poor and suppresses any form of rational descent, demanding strict obedience to its self-serving whims and designs. Its supporters revel in the bloodthirsty celebration and the families of the participants forlornly sit back and watch.

But sponsors can assist you, give you critical support if you put on a good show.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) put on the best show they possibly can.

By falling in love.

Love in its true form enables them to change the rules of the game to the vouchsafed delight of their begrudgingly suppliant benefactors.

Thereby suggesting that true love saturated with sacrifice can momentarily defeat the agents of tyranny.

Or that true love fictions are at the heart of the tyrannical enterprise.

Working within a sensationalist frame to provoke a tear jerking deconstructive critical strike disseminating subliminal democratic aftershocks.

Perhaps I expanded upon the plot ad nauseum.

I can't figure out if the end justifies the means.