Get Santa

Santa's travels have led him on many a wild-eyed adventurous path, perhaps none so ritualistically disastrous as that trod in the feisty Get Santa.

Within, after accidentally encountering a grounding immobilized malignant encumbrance, he finds himself struggling to locate his cherished reindeer who have erratically dispersed throughout byzantine London.

He seeks to enlist the aid of a troubled soul just released from prison, but his bewildering roundabout strategy sees him scandalously incarcerated instead.

Unaccustomed to prison life, he awkwardly attempts to be disconcerting, but his natural magnanimous innocence ethereally precludes any bellicose mischief.

Meanwhile, the ex-con on parole (Rafe Spall) must help the legend escape, and with the aid and encouragement of his loving son (Kit Connor as Tom), sets about trying to zero-in on the flatulent beasties.

It's a rather complicated procedure considering the number of laws they must violate, on his first day of parole no less, the authorities unsympathetic and unamused.

And just as they reach fabled Elf City and find a new sleigh to break Santa loose, he's suddenly placed back in his cell, and must prepare to be transferred to another prison.

How could such a sociocultural imbalance lead to so distressing an incongruity, as one globally revered for earnest generosity can't enchantingly negotiate spiritual quarter?

As if during that grouchy year the Christmas spirit plunged to unprecedented depths, leaving the habitually wondrous and animately endowed with little recourse for upbeat revelling.

Get Santa captures the inherent disillusionment with woebegone unimpressed adamant criticism, while mischievously celebrating improvised conjuring along with lithe constitutional forgiveness.

In terms of its comedic vocation, the grizzly gaseous go-daddy gallows, maddeningly matriculate maladroit mayhem, with a classic salute to prognostic defiance. 

Seriously, it makes it seem like Santa (Jim Broadbent) has no chance of escape whatsoever, and lays the impossibility on super thick, while still engaging in traditional shenanigans. 

I immediately spotted the Michael Corleone pastiche and thought perhaps it was somewhat ill-suited to the season (the actual scene hails intense violence and heralds the emergence of an intelligent yet ruthless survivalist), but how can I not be forgiving at times such as these, especially when Get Santa fits so well with the '90s.

Classic goodwill and exceptional endeavours oddly uphold this offbeat Christmas romp.

As convincingly touching as many Christmas classics.

High stakes hi-jinx, convivial distaste. 

Predestination

Difficult to say what you would have done differently if you had possessed prescient knowledge way back when, would there simply have been more of an enigmatic emphasis, or would things still have proceeded without grandiose change?

A self-indulgent question to be sure creatively occurring if you've ever had time to consider the past, hypothetical degrees of forlorn or joyous intensities increasing, depending on whether or not temporal interventions could have facilitated alternatives.

But such alternatives would have opened up unforeseen potentialities which may have been more prosperous if not worse, manifold striking unpredictable variables accompanying sundry indefinite outcomes.

Such a perspective almost makes the act of engaging in trivial decision making, seem much more epic in light of the infinite imperceptible comic echoes. 

Would I have wound up teaching in Paris or exploring the bush laidback in Chibougamau, peacefully working away at the Granby Zoo or fishing off the coast of Sept-Îles?

Predestination introduces a time machine and a somewhat invariable interdimensional occupation, wherein which operatives monitor the past to attempt to hinder voltaic malfeasance. 

The rules are quite strict no nonsense the agents are watched with meticulous scrutiny, one attempting to improvise nevertheless after a lifetime of loyal service (Ethan Hawke as the Barkeep).

He befriends a recruit who's alone living a generally solitary existence, having grown up in an orphanage unencumbered by the temptations of bourgeois life (Sarah Snook as the Unmarried Mother).

Could she make a good agent who knows! theory's quite different from work in the field, but at least they have something to talk about over a drink at random one evening.

Even if you had a time machine and could travel back and forth to different ages, how would you ever settle in without standing out like a shocking oddity?

Would you be able to understand the dialect or codes of conduct with enough fluent ease, to do simple things like find lodging or food, and wouldn't the smell be repellent?

I suppose like so many things you'd have to proceed with trial and error, the first jump somewhat overwhelming the second and third perhaps less of a shock (if heading to the same location).

Could a thorough interest in Star Trek help to prepare one for such endeavours, as a kind of theoretical support, perhaps lacking practical value?

Predestination travels time like no other narrative I've seen before, much more concerned with characterized mystery than grandiose spectacle fantastic intrigue.

If you were to meet yourself 25 years ago have you any idea what you'd say?

Predestination has a unique answer.

It's really well done.

A must see for time travel fans.

1917

I like 1917's title.

It's blunt and non-specific, refrains from attaching nuance or particular, as if it chronicles events that took place during an extended incredibly bleak period, wherein which there was no end in sight to World War I, it must have seemed neverending, interminable, no matter how many battles were won or lost, with no choice if you were fighting but to endure, and make the most of the intrinsic chaos.

Both sides dug in, in command of vast stretches of ground, neither able to advance much further, yet still attacking with fierce resolve.

One battle transformed into hundreds, a colossal mass of composite correspondence, broken down into tens of thousands of crucial messages, their import daunting and ephemeral, so much unravelling with unpredictable fortitude.

Cool heads necessitated nevertheless, hold the line, maintain chains of command, proceed stalwart and unerring, as the unprecedented slaughter horrendously escalates, it's estimated that 40 million people died in the war, from 1914 to 1918, like unleashed menace meticulously terrorizing, survival, a precious miracle.

1917 unreels in the thick of it, and doesn't romanticize the horror, camaraderie thrilling against a background of shock, a lifetime of trauma in little over a day.

An hour.

Two soldiers head out with a message intended to save over a thousand people, but their destination lies across enemy lines, even if they're theoretically deserted, different message, different day, as the film states, best foot forward notwithstanding, into the forbidding treacherous rage.

It's a bold endeavour courageously undertaken, but what they encounter's by no means light, the film doesn't present something easy or relatable, its distraught bedlam grotesquely abhorrent.

With a touch of reason shining through, a noble purpose, heroic deeds, the knowledge that if the mission fails things will be even worse, even if the colonel's far from hopeful in the end.

I won't say there must have been thousands of missions like this one, because the brave soldiers who undertook them were unique, and the grave risks they took at extreme peril shouldn't be compromised through comparison, courageous acts truly like none other.

1917 assigns dignity to millions of lost lives, bold soldiers following orders handed down the line, speculative commanders rationally assailing the unknown, in fierce combat, nothing certain or stable.

War isn't something to be romanticized and you can learn this without having fought in one.

I was glad to see 1917's generally grim.

I'm more into scripts but the camera work in 1917's incredible, it pulls you in and epitomizes the helplessness.

The pressure.

I can't recall many films with better cinematography (Roger Deakins).

Reminded me of The Player, Touch of Evil, La nuit américaine, and Birdman.