Menteur (Compulsive Liar)

The material fabric of ethical reality is fraught with drastic peril, its mystical binding extravagantly unravelling, as falsehood and slander tax baseless appeal.

Possessing no qualms concerning much of anything at all, Simon (Louis-José Houde) lies ad infinitum, never admitting even the most harmless of truths, deriding body and mind beyond limitations, with exasperating recall, and peerless raging bull.

Those caught up in his labyrinthine web of lies have grown accustomed to his disreputable blather, but since they're less serpentinely disposed, still slurp it up with torrential capacity.

For he's still a family member, and a high ranking valued employee, and as distraught as everyone else may be, they still rely on his frank indiscretions.

Like Loki in a way, yet less destructive, less obsessed with universal domination.

Even if that very same universe, within its terrestrial confines, authoritatively takes vengeful note, and punishment suddenly wildly decrees, that all his lies become sincerest truth.

Indubitably.

In the aftermath, he must find a way to reverse manifold adverse effects, with the aid of a suffering sibling (Antoine Bertrand as Phil), and the potential of bold shrewd romance (Catherine Chabot as Chloé).

Much like a world where fake news turns out to be real, Menteur (Compulsive Liar) waxes chaotic with rationed logic abruptly aggrieved.

As if all the tricksters out there who simply make sensational things up had to make amends for their viral charlatanism, Menteur playfully critiques the flamboyant fausses nouvelles, through recourse to cosmic justice.

Shyly merged with joyful repentance.

Publish or perish can produce its own varying degrees of irrationality, especially if struggling non-tenured journalists or academics can't come up with an appealing idea (and hate being boring), but if they transform speculation into fact or theory into reality without evidence, a competitor will most likely call them out, and most of them don't wish to have damaged reputations.

Fake news seems to be more like the spawn of malicious junior high shenanigans (école secondaire niveaux 1 et 2) expressing themselves maturely, and what used to be the respectable madcaps of Saturday Night Live or genre fiction, has become mad rational high-jinxed tabloid discourse.

When the comedy fades you are left with horror, like witch hunts and inquisitions, rumour used to be widely looked down upon.

Don't ask yourself if the rumour is true, ask yourself what whomever you're speaking with has to gain by spreading the rumour.

There's usually something in it for them. Especially if they use a malevolent or all too friendly tone.

And aren't simply hooked on gossip.

Menteur has a remarkable ending.

Could things in fact be that simple?

With mutual respect, I'd wager they can.

Flourishing with laidback synergies.

As demonstrative as they are symbolic.

As industrious as they are simply chill.

Flatliners

I suppose Flatliners passes as a chilling representation of mainstream sci-fi/horror, its 5 med students adventurously engaged in supernatural experimentation, recklessly bringing about their own deaths to pioneer forbidden im/mortal disciplines, risking their coveted careers to entertainingly tantalize, while unwittingly materializing vengeful sociohistorical menace.

It excites eager film lovers by affixing its characters with ingenious analytical and creative abilities, real world superpowers which delineate discriminate diagnoses, yet simultaneously terrifies them by monstrously calling into question the means by which they obtained them, metaphorically speaking, "say no to drugs."

It's as if after flatlining everything they've ever done, read, intuited, or considered, is computationally available, capable of being accessed and applied with immediate inspirational virtuosity, however, since each character has effectively ruined, even ended the lives of others, their genius is maddeningly guilt ridden, and their aspirations spiritually overwhelming.

Like Limitless meets Final Destination, Flatliners packs a potent cerebrally stunning punch, but it gets down to it a little too quickly for my tastes, instantaneously invigorating its narrative without having thoughtfully justified why it's bothering to do so.

Perhaps an additional 15 minutes spent clarifying why the characters are so willingly embracing death enriched with a reflective dialogue concerning the merits of their moribund undertakings would have been too cumbersome, too boring, too intellectual, but it's not like they're thinking about taking a road trip here, or heading to the casino or skipping class.

Or making out in the library.

They be killing themselves to suicidally synergize prohibited prognostics and vivacious versatilities, and methinks that deserves a bit more discussion as the story unfolds, even if it unreels contemptuously thereafter.

Is that middle-aged bias?

Wait, Flatliner's religious underpinnings suggest explanations are unnecessary, so the rash undiscussed experimental adolescent death drive is therefore subconsciously sustained.

However, they're all med students using science to make breakthroughs within earthly realms, and should therefore be questioning everything they do.

Perhaps the soul searching yet practically attuned Ray (Diego Luna), who, unlike his colleagues, worked his way up through bold honest labour, presents a way out of this deadlock, for he's the only character whose past doesn't haunt him, and he's also the only one who doesn't flatline.

But doesn't the person of the world who never seeks to comprehend occult mysteries function like Indiana Jones and Marion at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, never seeking to understand the divine even if it is bluntly presented, out of unacknowledged religious humility, or existential acculturation?

And therefore can't assist?

Beats me.

*I watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull again last night for the first time since it came out. I liked it a lot more the second time although things get pretty ridiculous near the end. And suggesting aliens taught ancient cultures everything they knew is ethnocentric. Our superbrains created the internet. Theirs created the Pyramids, the Great Wall etc.

**I wrote this last February and forgot that I had mentioned Indiana Jones. I didn't read it again until tonight, the night I had planned to post it on last February (well, I had planned to post it on a Monday in November). And I just recently finished watching all the Indiana Jones movies again.  As in yesterday. Weird.