Ski Patrol

A dependable crew gathers once more with the intent of facilitating safety, thoroughly concerned with bucolic camaraderie and old school resilient friendship.

Their trusty leaders are full of welcome as the new sought after season begins, the team strengthening its agile bonds with animate allied airtight adaptations. 

But trouble is brewing upon the slopes as crookedly conjured within the town, a local magnate hoping to acquire the resort's lease from the park authority.

Loveable Pops (Ray Walston) has managed the summits for decades with bold reliability, ship shape and tried and true yet still supportive of unorthodox thinking.

Mr. Maris (Martin Mull) indeed thinks he's soft because he gets along well with his staff, and mistakes trustworthy understanding for misguided glib incompetence. 

He convinces a local ski pro to cruelly engage in duplicitous sabotage, and he scandalously sets about ensuring equipment will no longer function.

Law enforcement is there to note when haywire happenstance hawks holistic, disquietingly keeping swooping track of each maladroit infraction. 

Things look grim distress piles up laidback cohesion flexed in jeopardy.

But age-old time-honoured testaments still transact with tactile turbulence. 

But such a synopsis perhaps exaggerates Ski Patrol's dire inherent conflict, without promoting the rambunctious antics festively erupting with carefree vigour.

The film may contain macromachinations which frenetically fuel financial frolics, but you can also count on extensive celebration un/ceremoniously accumulating.

Every 15 minutes or so an inspired fresh salute to improvisation, passionately serenades le joie de vivre with acrobatic lithe ir/relevancy. 

Never spent too much time myself engaged in alpine amusements, on skis in the winter anyways, didn't really start embracing winter again until recently.

But you get so much more out of the year if you remain active in January through March, and there's still so much to do, if you dress warmly, and come prepared.

It's really amazing what so many athletes get up to in the wintertime, suppose I'm more into snowshoes myself, but wow, the Winter Olympics impress.

As does ye olde Ski Patrol at times with its lack of pretension and freeflowing humour.

Liberating to be shenanigan prone.

When the world isn't so strict and serious. 

Downhill

My apologies if Downhill was meant to be taken seriously, if it wasn't a clever attempt to make fun of itself for being so, um, unavailingly unorthodox. That's what it seemed like to me for a time but perhaps it wasn't meta-Will Ferrell (Pete) at all, perhaps it was a serious Will Ferrell film that was meant to be taken literally as a serious comedy? It seems like that at times. If so, I apologize for the misinterpretation. If I hadn't expected it to be purposely self-defeating after the scene where Pete and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) eat room service together early on, perhaps I would have been less likely to say anything positive, meaning if I did misinterpret the film that misinterpretation has lead to something more productive, not that much more productive, but I'll at least smooth out a silver-lined missed opportunity. It's like directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (two directors can be a bad sign) were trying to make a Will Ferrell film with an indie aesthetic that subtly lampooned Will Ferrell films generally while still making another Will Ferrell film, like they can't decide if this is a film making fun of Will Ferrell films or is in fact another one of his traditional films. For years I've been meaning to suggest that Ferrell should make a film about making a Will Ferrell film but haven't found the right moment. Downhill is something different yet still embodies that same spirit. It's like the directors know it struggles and they're making fun of that struggle (was a second director brought in to save it?) as suggested by the stock mountain images that keep showing up, accompanied by jaunty lighthearted doodles, as if their idea was to make an appealing comedy for mainstream audiences where a family vacations at an adult-oriented ski resort with non-traditional staff (perhaps traditional for the resort in question), but then realized their idea was much more independent and wouldn't catch on, leaving them caught in the crossfire as they sought to blend everything, and couldn't reasonably orient the resulting disharmonies. It becomes clear that Pete is a huge douche for multiple reasons so I started to think, wow, this is what Ferrell's usually like (or used to usually be like) in his films but he often has no responsibilities so it's kind of funny, but with the added responsibilities it seems grotesque, so it's like the film is trying to make older Will Ferrell films seem grotesque as he continues to act the same way even though he has a family, and it accomplishes this goal but then still seems like it's also making his predicament seem tragic, as if it's tragic that he's had to take on responsibilities, and can't continue to randomly drink, fight and fornicate whenever and with whomever the moment unwittingly presents. The key moment comes when Billie is propositioned by her ski instructor before she remembers her marital commitments and they head off on their separate ways. Meanwhile, Pete is getting drunk with a friend that he invited to meet him during their family holiday and revelling in the assumption that women still find him appealing, until he discovers he's been mistaken for another and then tries to punch him in a drunken stupor. If Billie had gone further, not much further but further, Downhill would have asserted itself as a master of just reckonings, and the ways in which it made fun of itself for being a bit lame would have become much more appealing. But she doesn't and Pete returns drunk to his family to have an awkward dinner where everyone's disappointed in him and he has trouble eating his red meat. Soon Billie finds a way to help him reestablish his respectability in his children's eyes (he bailed on them earlier during an avalanche and then engaged in critiqued horse play at a family-themed resort), and their marriage moves forward with Pete still regarded as patriarchal liege. For a moment it seems like Downhill really is sticking it to lifelong juvenile shenanigans, but in the end there's no consequence, even though it's clear there should be. Perhaps it's saying that the fact that there's no consequence is awful, and there should have been a consequence resolutely, but since there often aren't consequences for such behaviour in real life, they decided to mundanely lampoon this reality instead. But why go for the mundane lampoon? Why not have the strong female character assert herself instead? The answer lies in the response she's given after she complains about the avalanche: a man tells her, "it was done perfectly". So it's like Downhill uses the indie aesthetic to suggest there's something more while still giving juvenile shenanigans a free pass. Difficult to watch consequently and lacking the courage to go further, it falls flat in the face of Me Too, and leaves you wondering, why? For what purpose? Ding dong.

2 frogs dans l'ouest

Leaving behind her structured life in Montréal, Marie Deschamps (Mirianne Brulé) travels to Whistler in pursuit of adventure and the acquisition of the English language. Things don't progress smoothly in the beginning until the angelic Jean-François Laforest (Dany Papineau) steps in to save the day. With a job and a place to stay, Marie's transition steadfastly accelerates and good previously unimagined times present themselves. But the predetermined all encompassing capitalist master narrative is still seductively ready to pounce, just as bohemian alternatives become all the more tantalizing.

Dany Papineau's 2 frogs dans l'ouest salutes the pursuit of non-traditional lifestyles while highlighting corresponding difficulties as well as those associated with learning a new language. The scene where Marie attempts to order something to eat in English near the beginning of her journey reminded me of similar personal outings in Québec, where you can't help but feel prostrate due to the fact that you can't communicate or don't understand the simple linguistic distinctions that you need to be able to comprehend in order to function, although the percentage of Québecors who speak English is much higher than that of English Canadians who speak French, a fact that many English Canadians should take into consideration. Sport is central to 2 frogs dans l'ouest's vision and the cathartic affects of activities such as snowboarding play a central metaphoric role. Is living in a beautiful place like Whistler or Canmore in order to pursue the artistic life while consistently engaging in exhilarating activities amidst the continuous inspirational presence of breathtaking scenery a good decision?

Yes, yes it is, although I suppose everyone can't live in such places, only the committed few.

Some of the coming of age reflections in 2 frogs dans l'ouest are a little tough to take at times. Papineau develops a lot of sympathy for Marie's father (Germain Houde) who made many sacrifices so that she could go to school as well. But he also didn't make those sacrifices so that she would give up her dreams.

And she doesn't.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Was looking forward to taking a dip in Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine but found it's waters far to tepid. It's fun watching three old friends reinvestigating their youth back in time at their favourite ski resort, but I never developed a bond with any of the characters, felt its crude emphasis was often nasty, couldn't get into most of the "reliving their youth with a 21st century twist" bits, and patiently waited for a montage that never came. At the same time, watching John Cusack (Adam) get ridiculously wasted on multiple substances while pining for a lost love was funny, the humour's dry yet over the top like a well mixed self-aware chocolate martini (so self-aware it's aware that being self-aware is becoming cliché unless you conceal your self-awareness), going back to the 80s for a romp including John Elway's famous Drive caught my attention, and it was nice to see Crispin Glover (Phil) heroically stealing scenes. My "make-it-or-break-it" Hot Tub Time Machine factors came down to Chevy Chase and the dynamics of time travel. I often like integral non-sequiturs and the ways in which they complicate things, but I couldn't help being annoyed by the repair man's babble and the fact that he didn't simply lay things out like Back to the Future's Doctor Emmett Brown. The answers were probably there, cleverly encoded with idioms and innuendo, but I found them as confusing as Adam's accidentally-along-for-the-ride-nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), and potentially will never see their mysteries revealed (something deeper than the forbidden substance found in the Russian red bull). Unless in twenty years I travel back in time and have to see Hot Tub Time Machine again in order to maintain the integrity of the space/time continuum. If that happens, I'll search for the hidden meaning while making sure to hit the gym and eat solidified carbohydrates.