The Five-Year Engagement

A couple is in love.

Their first meeting is adorable. They are living in San Francisco. One of them finds a job in small-town Michigan. They move. The other's career is resultantly set back but this is sacrificially taken in stride.  Attempts to acclimatize to small-town life are heroically made but an undeniable despondency cannot be persuasively concealed.

A break-up is imminent, the couple goes their separate ways, and new partners are found. But a kernel of love remains which new arrangements cannot disintegrate and it's possible that the two lovers will restructure their efficient and profitable means of production. With the future and age pressing in and standards of compatibility becoming less and less idealistic, a decision must be definitively made.

According to what I know about romantic comedies anyways.

The Five-Year Engagement has some funny scenes and introduces a broad range of distracting characters. Bill's (Chris Parnell) sweaters and Vaneetha's (Mindy Kaling) toast stand out and I enjoyed listening to the ideas of both Ming (Randall Park) and Tarquin (Brian Posehn).    

Individuals working in intellectual and culinary markets are juxtaposed and members from both groups are made to appear ridiculously profound.

Rather than consistently sentimentalizing the romantic love that often results in marriage, the film introduces argumentative points of combative relational diversification during the engagement, thereby instructively applying quasi-conjugal conflicts to prenuptial amicable operations while installing a degree of collaborative critical conditionals as well.

Sweet but trashy, mildly melodramatic, and pretentiously inclusive, The Five-Year Engagement offered more insightful observations and humorous interjections than I was expecting (after the film shifts to Michigan), which helped me get over the snickering directed in my direction as I entered the theatre on my own.

And if donuts have yet to be eaten, why purchase new ones? That's wasteful.       

The Light Thief

As Krygyzstan adjusts to post-Soviet realities and workers continue to enjoy their lives even though basic food items are difficult to come by, one person of the people continues to function as a link between the haves and have nots, risking his prestigious position to faithfully restore the light. A courageous film from director Aktan Abdykalykov, The Light Thief presents an impoverished rural town struggling to maintain its identity as political currents redefine the ways in which its country is managed. The mayor who fought for the rights of his people is dead and those seeking to obtain their land have replaced him with a naive relative whose loyalty is individualistic and up for sale. Those with capital are willing to potentially finance experimental projects but strict respect must first be paid to their patriarchal order. Svet-Ake (Aktan Abdykalykov) holds his ideals close to heart and isn't willing to sacrifice them. If a family can no longer pay their electric bill, he reconnects their system to keep them attached to the grid. When offered the opportunity to establish a wind farm, he discusses his plans in a state of respectful disbelief. But its creation is necessitated upon the retooling of his ethical code, a personal transformation he is unable to make.

Old World meets New World in The Light Thief's subtly turbulent narrative. Capital is required to refurbish but the only source of its generation is the only asset the people have left. The outlets for negotiations and collaborations are destabilized as technological advances role in. The voice established by the working class is in danger of being silenced.

Boldly championing the dignity of the people while sharply pointing out what's at stake if that dignity is sacrificed, The Light Thief accentuates what it means to take risks as a matter of principle. Focusing to much overt attention on Svet-Ake and not enough on developing minor characters, it still slyly highlights the ingenuity of the town's impoverished youth while suggesting that that ingenuity is threatened.