Elle

It doesn't get much darker than Elle.

A great companion piece for The Lobster if you're craving an evening of total anarchy.

This January.

In the film, a highly functioning potentially psychotic successful businessperson conducts her affairs with extreme emotional detachment, unless her ex-husband's involved, she's trying to help her emotionally abused son (a bad relationship with another potential psycho), or hoping her mother won't marry a coddling gigolo.

Even as she's raped at home and then thoroughly humiliated at work, at her own company, which produces sexually explicit video games, she still generally proceeds as if nothing's wrong and manages to accomplish an extraordinarily diverse number of tasks, pure robotic efficiency, as if she's been there and done that for every possible scenario, stoic impeccability existentially exonerated.

Unfortunately, in her youth, she accompanied her father as he proceeded to murder most of their neighbours, the story becoming a nationwide sensation, her life quite strange at all times forever after.

That's not all, it's even more dysfunctional, the eclectic cast of diverse oddballs even congregated for Christmas dinner, a scene that could have transported Elle into unapproachable contemptuous infinities, had it been even more sinister, had it sought after true infamy.

Therein lies a play for someone else to write.

Adam Reed? Mitchell Hurwitz?

Sadomasochistically submerged in ineffable grotesque hypotheticals, Elle's bourgeois community still must interrelate, it can't help it if that was how it was written.

Like pure misogyny masquerading as a caring caricature of feminine strength, Elle is as undefinable as it is cold and direct, its unmuzzled licentious agency, its pristine putrefaction, calculated to deafeningly depreciate, in gross inherent disillusion.

Not to say that it isn't well done.

It's quite well done in fact.

A sensation.

Pathologically speaking.

Crimson Peak

I think Crimson Peak was meant to be funny, to be a dis/possessed take on an old style of filmmaking that used to relish in its mediocrity before succumbing to mass alterations in taste.

If this is the case, I didn't get it, and although it might have been paying tribute to a bygone era of gaudy enterprise, it doesn't change the fact that this film suppresses.

It's hard to write that, I usually love Guillermo del Toro's films, larger than life macabre matriculations fluidly dictating realities of the fantastical.

Crimson Peak's production design is on par with his earlier work but the story and its associated devices are uniformly unexceptional and consistently dull.

It seems to be taking itself seriously throughout, that's its greatest shortcoming.

And the intermittent bursts of graphic violence taken out on historical paradigms, the stricken aristocrat avenging herself on the rise of the bourgeoise for instance, seem out of place in a horror film that's so resoundingly not scary.

If it had seemed comic, like it was seriously making fun of itself, it may have corrosively triumphed.

It didn't seem that way to be me though, not, not, at all.

Jessica Chastain (Lucille Sharpe) does put in a great performance however.

She's got talent, and commands every scene she's in.

Nightcrawler

This film's way too heavy on the psycho for me.

It follows a creative innovative narcissist on his rise to the top, as he tenaciously works to excel, diligently researching his subject to gain a strategic edge, maximizing his manipulations to leverage a precise position.

A competitor recognizes his strengths and offers him opportunities which he ignores, trusting to his own professional instincts, obsequiously going at it alone.

The small fry.

The competitor winds up seriously injured.

The troubled succumb to his designs as he continuously provides them with material to advance their own interests, graphic shots of increasingly violent disturbances, communal misery, cracked and capitalized.

No ethical considerations, just raw carnal base savagery, risk, action, advantage, success.

Murder.

Films like The Talented Mr. Ripley pulled this off in the past, but they usually contained a potent ethical element, a sense that the psycho is brilliant yet deranged; Nightcrawler celebrates Louis Bloom's dementia (Jake Gyllenhaal) like it's some kind of demonic virtue, the fact that he breaks the law repeatedly while abusing unwritten professional codes more of a high-five than a diminution, a harvester of death, moribundly reaping.

Without a sense of impending doom, Nightcrawler becomes a sadistic shock-and-awe jitterbug, he obviously would have been arrested, the ending like a strychnine-laced lollipop.

Gyllenhaal's performance is strong and his confidence inspiring but it's like the rest of the world is an infantile blush, possessing no agency, after the opening moments anyways.

Too focused on the individual.

Lacking the threat of consequences.

Revelling in exploitation.

The unregulated flow of capital.

Gone Girl

Just what goes into sustaining a successful marriage, what is that secret critical ingredient for ensuring the preeminence of your conjugal bliss?

Mad blind overwhelming desire may wear off, especially if the couple in question doesn't role play or at least dress-up from time to time, possibly as their favourite Star Trek character, and if the initial hard-pounding insatiable craze dissipates, the arduous work necessary to recapture its incandescence sets in, both participants required to reimagine its stringency, dedication and commitment, adhered to as pluralizing factors.

In David Fincher's Gone Girl, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) refuses to abide by such an adherence, succumbing to adulterous lechery, slowly destroying the love of his spirited partner.

Mistake.

Or mistakes, seeing how he's been ignoring her for years while living a life of sloth off her trust fund, after having moved from New York City (where he worked as a writer) to Missouri, much to wife Amy's (Rosamund Pike) dismay.

He's a jerk, he blames it on her, total jackass.

But he has no idea that Amy's pure psycho.

The film's divided into two halves, one focusing on Nick as he comes to terms with his inextricable predicament, the other which brings Amy into the mix, focusing on her troubles on the road, until a crucial accidental resurgence, of the romantic love which at one point defined her.

Kierkegaard style.

At first I thought the introduction of Amy was an unfortunate twist.

I figured the film would slowly continue to suffocate lacklustre Nick, his tension inimically increasing, a high-wired harrowing stench, accentuating paranoid asphyxia.

Amy's introduction eliminates this tension, replacing it with alternative constraints which infernalize her psychotic scenario, which is rather excessive, considering that she could have just left him.

But her passion demands vengeance, vengeance which she seeks eruditely, revelling in the media's saccharine sensationalization, before rediscovering that lost kernel of youth.

There's a great sequence where she's robbed after letting her guard down, the sequence diversifying the film's wedded hysteria by injecting minor seemingly ineffectual characters, who become common denominators in the subsequent action.

Gone Girl has plenty of variability, strong major and minor characters, ridiculous yet plausible logistics, competing disastrous degenerations, polarities within polarities, a sympathetic coach, an amorphous yet easy-to-follow blend of media, family, legality, and law enforcement, Proust is mentioned twice (in uncomplimentary fashions however), desperate strategic planning, and a non-traditional take on victimization.

The ending's solid, a bizarre reversal of what's-to-be-expected, the film's myriad depressions, sentimentally sanctified.

Quite dark.

Quite good.

Not my favourite David Fincher film, but you still see why he's one of America's best.

The Raven

A mildly entertaining inconsistent romantic horror, James McTeigue's The Raven situates Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) within a demented psychotic murderous tribute to his work and demands that he creates within. As a madperson kidnaps his love interest (Alice Eve as Emily Hamilton) and uses materials from his texts in a homicidal homage, Poe assists Detective Fields (Luke Evans) in his desperate corresponding investigation.  Anticipation leads to discovery but they vexingly remain one step behind the sought after killer and his or her realistic portrait of the literary dead. The time required to psychologically digest the enormity of its impact is vindictively denied as the narrative quickly shuffles from one grizzly chapter to the next.

And the unacknowledged trauma sinks in.

Lying within this structure lies a hidden master/slave dichotomy. If you find yourself working within a environment in which your labour is continuous, giving you little time to think about anything else, and your efforts fail to result in better working conditions, as this pattern is reproduced, and your debt load continues to climb and your forbidden subject of desire becomes increasingly unattainable, an underlying current of motivated pointlessness emerges when the shape-shifting face of capital presents itself, exalting a moribund elixir.

This could explain why The Raven's dialogue possesses a timeless quality which utilizes both 19th and 21st century forms of expression.  By quasi-atemporally refusing to abide by a linear conception of verbal predictability, it subtly manifests this motivated pointlessness while elevating an unconscious ethos which revels in the disruption of contemplative leisure (the 60 hour work week).

Lockout

Never thought I'd see Guy Pearce playing a John McClanesque trash talking tough guy, but this is precisely what he does in the new science-fiction action flick Lockout, and he does it rather well.

An excessively violent turbulent purveyor of mitigated anxiety, Lockout's carefree kinetic hyperactive machismo doesn't fail to impress as it consistently delivers cheesy stubborn sarcastic lines with a heightened awareness of their formulaic frivolity.

It knows it's ridiculous and doesn't stray far from its commercial purpose while refusing to take itself seriously and seeming as if it's delivering its product reluctantly, thereby overflowing with the same rash confidence Snow (Pearce) needs to break into a maximum security prison located in space and save the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) from the recently escaped inmates.

The same daughter who was trying to improve their quality of life.

Not exactly the most socially progressive film, as many of its characters are seconds away from meeting their death or losing a loved one as they try and carve out a place for themselves within their culture's coercive climate (by taking extreme risks), but in terms of its own internal chemistry it works well as a blunt form of unabashed entertainment which willingly provides that which you would hope to expect with neither pretension nor a lack of effort.

In outer space.

We Need to Talk about Kevin

Demon spawn is birthed in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin and provided with access to a vindictive bow.  Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) isn't the most outwardly loving mother/person and Kevin (Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rock Duer) is by no means a happy responsive son. Seen through the lens of Eva's guilt ridden memories, being alive and eventually having to contribute to the continuing development of a community seems to have caused Kevin no end of pain. As he ages, this pain transforms into wickedness as he finds ways to disruptively take part. Possessing a bleak miserable cynical outlook, he flagitiously predicts the outcomes of various interactions with mom and does his best to ensure they flourish repeatedly.

All the while getting along well with his father (John C. Reilly) and enjoying the comforts of a suburban lifestyle.

The film itself is cunning, cutting, and challenging, generating pathos and humour within its sardonically stark yet traumatically playful frames. It juxtaposes parenting methodologies with communal judgments while stoically capturing a subject's helpless resolve as she formulaically attempts to domestically enact a traditional characterization of a mother's role while remaining unable to convincingly fake the requisite emotion. Kevin seemingly makes her pay for her dispassion by doing everything he can to provoke her rage. After one significant miscue, she retreats into an apathetic posture with the intent of never displaying her reckless anger again. Little Kevin becomes increasingly sinister, his dad maintains that boys will be boys, and dread tempered with disbelief crystallizes deep within her psyche.

We Need to Talk about Kevin uses the opposition established between demon spawn and reluctant mother to comic effect while making you feel guilty for finding parts of it funny. The bits of dark humour are intermittently interjected between the aftershocks of Kevin's calculated psychotic rampage which display Eva's unfortunate neighbourly predicament from multiple interpersonal angles. Hence, the mood shifts frequently and is orchestrated with a subtle expertise which disables one-dimensional attachments while still managing to sustain an appealing fluid uniformity (the mood creatively changes but as each scene takes on a life of its own they become united through the act of continuous non-chaotic formal diversification), these mood shifts reflecting the internal psychological dilemmas publicly banished from Eva's complacent demeanour.

It's well done.

Hall Pass

Two sex crazed men get a week off from marriage in the Farrelly Brothers's Hall Pass, a mildly entertaining comedy that can't decide if it's a James L. Brooks film or an episode of Family Guy. Some of the scenes are hilarious but their affects don't travel well beyond their borders, which results in a sticky, disjointed, shapeless mess. This mess aptly reflects the psyches of principle characters Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) as their desire continually confuses their conscience. They simply can't decide whether or not they're trying to revitalize their youth, actually want to pick up, or enjoy being married, and having a hall pass (a week off from marriage) tricks them into having to categorize their feelings. The wives responsible for setting this trap (Jenna Fischer as Maggie and Christina Applegate as Grace) find themselves in a similar situation and have to decide if they're going to play it faithful or make some spur of the moment adjustments.

Pot brownies, Nicky Whelan, psychotic baristas, this film could have been so much more. Its principle problem is that it tries to have a point while nonsensically cavaliering. While Kingpin cavaliered nonsensically, the point was secondary to the slop, and the slop was frenetically flavoured and recklessly spiced, never dishing itself out with clumps of thoughtfulness. Some of the thoughtful points, like the lines regarding hiring uttered by Wilson, settle sharply while dispensing suburban grit, and break up the maudlin motivations. But when so many solid scatological jokes are mixed with these attempts to be poignant, I couldn't help but want to throw up, in a bucket somewhere, and then go relax with Ugly Americans. Which is no longer on on Fridays at 9:30 on the Comedy Network. Which sucks.

Boys Don't Cry

Finally saw Kimberley Peirce's Boys Don't Cry and was impressed by how many profound statements were worked into its gritty low-budget frame. You're transgendered, the majority of people surrounding you are not transgendered, many of them are hostile towards you because you're transgendered, and few are willing to listen and try and understand the cultural problems associated with being transgendered. Hence, things are difficult, maintaining a job is difficult, and making friends, keeping in touch with family, and being consistent, is difficult, if not impossible. Lies are necessary, depression is immanent, complications are manifold, and friendship is required, not only to help one deal with the psychological disruptions inherent in such a disposition, but also to firmly establish an enduring sense of normalcy. Because being transgendered is perfectly natural and any son of a bitch who goes around religiously promoting some kind of homophobic rhetoric in regards to such physiological features is an abusive, hate mongering, fucker, whose voice should be silenced, period. Such fuckers abound in Boys Don't Cry and the results are ugly. Peirce's film doesn't shy away from providing provocative evidence concerning the abominable affects of mainstream stereotypes, and precisely points out the reprehensible nature of normalized conceptions of the good, adequately illuminating whose ethos is irrevocably out of line.