Eye in the Sky

Speculation.

Strategic planning.

Cold calculation.

The human factor.

A peaceful Kenyan family who loathes yet fears extremists lives day to day in a militarized zone, embracing their loving routine while terrorists plot suicide attacks in the compound next door.

The British military has waited years to either capture or eliminate these fanatics and is ready to strike but requires direct authorization.

At the perfect moment, extraordinarily complicated and dangerous steps having been taken to ensure legalistic legitimacy, the adorable daughter (Aisha Takow as Alia Mo'Allim) of the family begins to sell bread within the proposed airstrike's targeted area.

Eye in the Sky hierarchically examines the politics and ethics of proceeding with the mission, humanistically stylizing the decision making process at executive, legal, operational, and civilian levels, internationally evaluating torrents and tributaries to disputatiously justify the repercussions of its actions, debate clad in detonation, textbook points on cue.

Interrogating the greater good.

The crucial unknown.

Millions have likely been spent leading up to the moment and preventing suicide attacks which will result in dozens of casualties seems like the logical decision.

But the peaceful family, if their daughter is killed, may then turn to extremism, convincing friends and relatives to join in the call.

I'm surprised this point wasn't mentioned in the dialogue which otherwise intellectually explores several hypothetical perspectives.

Conditionally, there are too many variables to confidently predict certain outcomes, and it is known that the terrorists are preparing to launch suicide attacks, and that dozens of deaths are more serious than one.

Painstaking steps are taken to ensure the girl's survival and a brave clever conscientious objection is even made by the soldier responsible for launching the strike.

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), eager to terminate her target, eventually takes matters into her own hands and lies about the girl's survival odds in order to secure the right to annihilate.

The audience is left to decide whether or not she made the correct decision.

The concluding moments, reminiscent of speeches made by Jean-Luc Picard, suggest director Gavin Hood thinks she did not.

War laid bare.

Unforeseen probabilities.

Possibility obscured.

Eye in the Sky rationally supports opposing viewpoints with argumentative clarity yet is somewhat too neat and tidy and at points I thought I was watching television.

It still boils down incredibly complex structures and their inherent departmental checks and balances to an accessible narrative replete with critical controversies.

Open-ended investigations.

Well thought out yet too polished at times, Eye in the Sky materializes the imaginary components integral to the ethics of fighting the war on terror, to lament both conscience and innocence, while statistically analyzing bursts of compassion.

Pleasantly lacking in sensation.

Loved the Alan Rickman (Lieutenant General Frank Benson).

Monkey Kingdom

A kingdom of monkeys, willfully surviving in the ancient jungles of Sri Lanka, abiding by a deadly set of oppressive rules, feasts for the strong, tribulations for the hesitant, henchmen, security, governesses, belittled by the brawn, forced into isolation, after fathering a child, Kumar subsists on the fringe, his mate Maya languishing on the bottom, suffering ritual humiliations, lonely, crittered, scorned.

But not desperate.

Ingenuity shines its radiant light upon her, as she bravely discovers new food sources, thereby boldly ensuring the health of her child.

The group is ruled by an alpha male, the same alpha who expelled Kumar for his playful insolence, allowing him to return after a period of suffering, but when a rival clan of covetous toque macaques approaches and attacks, the alpha cannot securely protect their domain.

They must flee.

To the realm of homo sapiens.

Within the city, Kumar and Maya's plucky entrepreneurial know-how encourages scandalous full stomachs as they take advantage of unsuspecting humans.

Kumar's authority is slowly legitimized.

As they travel home, to reclaim their land.

It's a wild look at social dynamics, Disneynature's Monkey Kingdom, where either might and/or intelligence gains respect, and respect's required to officiate and rule.

You keep wondering why they don't share the best fruit, why they can't all find enlightened branches to rest upon, perhaps they do with Kumar at the helm, who may not be as concerned with rank and discipline.

Perhaps not though, difficult to say, the parallels between the social structures of these monkeys and those occasionally adopted by human kind are striking, bequest the monsoon, intertribal, intertwined.

The sloth bears don't pay attention.

The film communally showcases many of Kumar and Maya's neighbours.

Tough to say how closely their story matches what actually took place, at least when they visit the city.

It's a fascinating story however, quite possibly true.

Narrated by Tina Fey.

Ekstra

Taking a humanistic approach to the production of soap operas, focusing primarily on the arduous routines followed by their hope-filled extras, digging in real deep, opportunity jostling with obsolescence, divas, directors, and delays, a rigid overworked tawdry hierarchical continuity graciously swoons to sycophantically accommodate, while viciously displacing its retributive wrath.

The extras take the heat for egocentric conceits, yet flexibly flow in bleached toiled caprice.

Irony abounds as the stars and high ranking members of the crew act like precious progenitors of substantial stakes while creating horrendous gaudy cylindrical refuse.

The cigarette burn improvisation.

A tasteless product placement.

The insertion of an automobile.

Cinematically fell for Loida Malabanan (Vilma Santos) as she attempts to breakthrough, her roles functioning as metafictional realistic vindications as she fantastically battles the wicked, heartbreakingly symbolic, cold, and unforgiving.

Ekstra is also filled with congenial moments of accidental amicable trust, tightrope walking starstruck stalking vests, multiple different angles, competing operational perspectives.

On the fly.

Keyhole

Where to begin.

We've broken into a building that's surrounded. Some of us have passed on. A search must be conducted. The patriarch is in charge. Part of his family is in attendance. Memories are temporally fluctuating.

Clocks ticking, imperious and constant. Joy revels in an immediate departure. What's to be made of these meaningful incursions? Electronic fissures resonating incorporeally.

And there's need of wallpaper.

Guy Maddin harnesses a permanently detached constructive sensibility to his productively ironic surreal cheeky familial incandescent aesthetic in his new film Keyhole, and this time there's no foundation to which one can directly cling, other than Ulysses, or David Lynch's Black Lodge, perhaps.

Few filmmakers can successfully unleash structured serpentine points of disjointed transient distinct significations through the popularized lampooned esoteric intellectual constituency as multidimensionally as Maddin.

We are provided with clues to what in fact might be going on. From these clues, depending upon the ways in which they are strategized, specific arguments (rhetorical facts) can be generated. Supporting evidence can be gathered from interpretations based upon hypotheses framed by logic, inasmuch as they fit into the whole, insofar as they cohesively belong.

To this precise moment.

Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) is in charge. This much we know. His authority is paramount to Keyhole's flexibly united incongruity as he tries to comprehend the motivations of the other.

He is also invincible.

He is trying to return to his family, some of whom he doesn't recognize. He seeks answers to questions he is in/capable of asking. The high seas have become his house as the internet minimizes geographic exploration. His omniscience is tempered by his forgetfulness as he struggles to determine what has been substantially dematerialized. An idea becomes pragmatic when historical echoes align themselves with its potent focused intent.

For the time being.

Leap frogging from estimation to realization for genuine enigmatic jaunts, from which catalysts instructively and divergently testify, while pliantly managing internal disruptions, his allegiances deteriorate as the hierarchy pulsates, made all the more hauntingly vivid by its enduring staggering lack.

It's about generating inextricable mysteries from which manifold dimensions (jurisprudence, politics, science) can find practical applications after mining their way through the discursive data.

And a good old-fashioned game of catch.