Onibaba

The miseries of civil war afflict a nation with desolate abstemious dereliction, crops having failed people starving while the thund'rous death machine brings moribund destruction. 

An older woman awaits the return of her conscripted son with increasing desperation, as does her daughter-in-law their resolute team struggling to survive the scurrilous agency. 

To find food and maintain their health they murder stray samurai who show up in their swamp, and sell their armour and swords and trinkets to a dissolute profiteer flush with millet. 

One day the son/husband's friend whom he left with long ago appears, with a sad tale denoting the end of their imagined saviour heads hang low.

But he takes a shine to the widowed maiden who is far too destitute to deny her will, their resultant coupling enraging the elder who sees starvation as her only future. 

She pleads with the worldly opportunist to let her partner in crime live free.

He loves her far too much however.

To deny his innocent jouissance. 

A sordid examination of despondency as dismally applied to wanton logic, people struggling to find food while others flee through reckless innovation. 

Grim realities to thoughtfully consider the frugal basics embracing thrift, if you value your life it's best not to join although there's no telling what desertion may aggregate. 

The atheist basks in comfort after escaping the feckless bloodshed, living day to day even hour to hour but remaining certain of his scorned trajectory. 

The elder employing supernatural tricks to convince her compatriot not to leave, the eventual extensive forlorn irony as unexpected as it is deceiving. 

Lost in the luscious swamps of medieval Japan driven mad by hunger.

Enabling strategies accidentally emergent.

Ethereal endowments.

Spiritually embalmed.  

Through the Trees

Itinerant industry flexibly enabled as resourceful families seek continuity, their newfound country strange and mysterious in haunting possession of otherworldly customs.

The sudden realization that you're actually there and need to learn a new language, simple things like buying groceries much more confusing at the startling outset. 

Finding work also a difficult task as cultural and linguistic barriers demotivate, yet perseverance and determination eventually lead to modest earnings.

Lodgings also tough to come by as rental negotiations require knowledgeability, yet with compassion and understanding rooms are eventually to be found. 

Community contacts are gradually made as the enthusiastic immigrants settle, local networks providing help as they seek to learn more about their neighbourhood. 

Other people in similar circumstances lend a hand and offer friendship.

But hostilities also emerge.

As communities struggle to get along at times.

The difficulties of learning a foreign language while simultaneously finding a job and somewhere to live, aren't lost on the filmmaking team as they showcase several scenes of inherent disillusionment. 

The manifestation of sympathetic people seeking to lend a helping hand also works well, people noting the newcomer's courage and keenly responding with tips and aid.

The focus on how things start to level out as more time passes is skillfully done, the not-so-smooth-at-times integration effectively facilitating highs and lows.

The scenes at work help to diversify the narrative as several different characters tell their tales, immigration stories from all over the world humanistically told with hardboiled eloquence.

Communal celebrations add a festive touch as the years pass with energetic resolve, the coming together of various traditions sewing resilient interactive multiplicities.

The humble transference of their origins and customs fruitfully enhances local cultural narratives.

Adding transfigurating depth. 

While keeping in mind local industry. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Pink Floyd was in a bind after their leading member became incapacitated. But they regrouped and dug in deep and years later wrote Dark Side of the Moon (and Atom Heart Mother and Meddle).

I can't think of another band that held it together after their leading person sort of passed, and even went on to improve upon his work, not that I still don't love listening to Piper.

In a similar way, but under much different circumstances, Marvel's Black Panther lost Chadwick Boseman, and likely had to make considerable adjustments to keep things real to narratively excel.

And I couldn't believe it.

Flabbergasted, if I'm not mistaken, is the word.

Wakanda Forever is like limitless joy radiating infinite happiness in a never-ending ocean of strength, illuminatingly upheld with fluidic fortunes nascently enabling elaborate forum. 

A major takeaway for anyone whose ever been pissed off about what happened to Indigenous South and Central America.

I try not to think about it because it's so uniformly frustrating that it obscures clear thought, and opens doors to distressing depression especially when you see it happening again.

Nothing can be done about it, but fiction doesn't play by the same mortal rules, and in Marvel's Wakanda Forever, Indigenous South Americans are a potent factor.

They survived thanks to a special flower the existence of which was revealed to them by their god, which transformed them into vibrant merpeople, who then made their home far beneath the open sea.

Not just a home, there's so much respect, like the respect given to African Americans through the creation of Wakanda, the extant versatile Mayas and Incas having built a formidable civilization under the sea.

They also ride whales and admire turtles Wakanda Forever totally jamming with Whale Rider, not only by introducing integral whales but also by championing prominent female characters.

It's like a monumental Indigenous/Feminist/African inherent feat of incredibility, with total respect given within, in terms of equality, ingenuity, and innovation.

Nature isn't forgotten as well the miraculous existence of any given species, is venerably compared to Wakandan and Talokonil technology, the cultures prospering through cultural symbioses. 

Like Pink Floyd, Marvel held it together and created another action packed inspiring phenom. 

The ocean is undeniably vast. 

Who knows what lies underneath?

*If Namor wants to buy Black Panther Shuri a present, I recommend picking up a really cool bike.

**Wrote this on Friday night after having a swim. 

***I know humpback and orcas get the most press because watching them jump is amazing, but don't forget about all the other whale (and turtle) species out there. They need representation too!

****There are a lot of bad things happening in the ocean, considering the infamous garbage patch and the intense underwater sound disturbances. The Talokonil (and the Metkayina) could tackle some of those issues in these films. I can't believe how much I love them. 

Dune

The Indigenous inhabitants (the Fremen) of a barren world (Arrakis aka Dune) once flourished unobstructed, until its only resource became the most coveted in the galaxy.

This spice mélange allows gifted navigators to alter the fabric of space and time, while others use it to mutate consciousness, attaining heightened spiritual states.

Different planets within the interplanetary union are governed by an Emperor, who is obsessed with maintaining control, and possesses a massive formidable army.

The rights to mine the spice engender astronomical profits, and House Harkonnen of planet Giedi Prime has obscenely enjoyed them for quite some time.

But House Atreides of planet Caladan has become remarkably popular in the union, as led by its level-headed Duke (Oscar Isaac), and the Emperor has grown jealous of its meteoric rise, and seeks to dishonourably annihilate them.

Thus, he takes Dune's mining rights away for the barbarous self-obsessed Harkonnens, and gives them to House Atreides, who can't refuse the magnificent honour, even if they suspect a trap.

The Harkonnens who hate the Atreides seek to attack them after the transition, supported by several legions of Sardaukar, the Emperor's ferocious spartan troops. 

But the Fremen hold a prophecy that a messiah will lead them out of darkness, and will come from the outer world, and know his ways as if [he's] born to them.

Duke Leto's son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) possesses extraordinary abilities and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood admires them.

Could he survive the Harknonnen's sneak attack?

And find discreet refuge amongst the Fremen?

That's a working general snapshot of Frank Herbert's complex plot, which is difficult to simplify in a film, so this one' stretched into two instalments.

Denis Villeneuve cultivates isolation as a matter of intergovernmental intricacy, so many fierce independent characters collegially united through distinct cause.

Dignified solemnity is no laughing matter as the Atreides accept monumental responsibility, in a fluctuating volatile stern vortex, augustly magnified through intrigue.

The imposing offer freely shared sombrely cloaked in grand deception, the refusal of which would lead to acknowledgement of a rival's mean-spirited intent.

A love so great it leads to trust in the most duplicitous of foes, whose autocratic snide contempt is thoroughly condemned throughout the galaxy.

The belief in prophecy spiritual import patient intergenerational stratagems, producing widespread derelict skepticism as highly invested as it is dismissive.

An oppressed people tired of colonialism and their exploitation by another.

Prone to passionate belief.

Projected reified agility.

The Atreides and the Fremen still find compassion amidst the gloom.

With staple simple pleasures.

The sustainability of life.

*Love the changes Villeneuve made with Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Dr. Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster).

**Loved the palm tree scene as well.

***It's very respectful of David Lynch's Dune and there are many similarities between the two films.

****Loved the dragonfly ornithopters. I was reaching for a cigarette last Summer and a dragonfly landed on my finger, obviously suggesting I should stop smoking, which I'm going to try to do next week, many thanks to dragonfly kind. 

Angel Heart

Chillaxed and calm, smoothly going with the flow, a laidback private detective steers clear of complications, preferring to investigate matters unrelated to serious crime, he saunters around Brooklyn, in fluidic flâneur (Mickey Rourke as Harry Angel). 

When suddenly one Louis Cyphre (Robert de Niro) requests his offbeat services, to locate a suspicious missing person, who owes him a significant debt.

It seems harmless enough initially so he follows what leads he can, finding his way to a care home for the critically ill, then to the abode of a drug addicted doctor.

But the doctor shockingly passes shortly after their brief discussion, which leads him to want to move on especially because he's a likely suspect.

Cyphre is determined however and offers him a crisp $5,000, to keep pushing to dig in deep at home in New York then off to Louisiana. 

You would think he would drop the case considering the insanity that follows, but he's hooked on solving the mystery even if it leads to nihilistic oblivion.

The local cops are on to him and he's been followed and encouraged to leave town, but it's like he's more involved then he ever would have imagined if he had stuck to his not-so-strict routine. 

Something drives him to keep on sleuthin' as the mayhem wildly intensifies. 

Mr. Cyphre keeping close tabs.

On the enigmatic spiritual contention. 

It can be important to critically review the ways in which you conduct your affairs, to develop worthwhile working evaluations as I was taught to do in school.

You have to be careful not to be too scathing in order to avoid entropy, but a healthy dose of vigilant self-criticism can help you adjust to phenomenal frenzies.

If no one else is doing this however and you seem to be the only one making adjustments, and your adaptations are generally ridiculed, it's perhaps a best practice to seek novel change, or peeps more amenable to lateral communication.

Fluctuating between the two paradigms in alternative realms or even within the same structure seems par for the course, each day bringing forth newfound surprises along with immutable recapitulations. 

When working life incorporates both self and well-meaning constructive criticism, it's great to stay and tough to leave.

Too much self-criticism is suffocating.

A constructive balance generates calm. 

*With Charlotte Rampling and Pruitt Taylor Vince. 

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Transcendently calculating with pure artistic spirituality, rarefied inspiration, crystalline caricatures, an East Indian genius leaves loved ones behind to study mathematics abroad, challenging racial and cultural stereotypes to do so, undeniably unique and innocent, picturesque prognostic in plume.

A gift beyond reason, like Proust, Shakespeare, Dickens or Joyce, he miraculously finds a patron at Trinity College, who sets out to formalize his spry romantic methods.

Malheureusement, academic rigour has its own contentions, and G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons) and his jealous colleagues initially distrust/dismiss Srinivasa Ramanujan's (Dev Patel) revelations.

Obsessions with the genuine.

Could he be the one?

There is no one, but mathematical proof is required (Ramanujan writes mathematical formulas at the highest level like squirrels climb trees or cheetahs swiftly accelerate), but would Srinivasa have written more profusely had Hardy sat back to obtain those proofs himself, giving his correspondent more freedom to think, thereby preventing the sterilization of genius?

Training Ramanujan to become an academic would have transformed him from dust devil to tornado, but in terms of both knowledge and refined intuitive creativity, it may have been better to leave him be, with a stipend, to maximize his unaccounted for mystifications.

These thoughts loosely reflect conversations held between Hardy and Prof. Littlewood (Toby Jones) as The Man Who Knew Infinity examines detections of the exceptional.

I thought it was a great film, comfortably blending brilliance and banality with modest poise and tenacious dignity.

Even at that level, amongst what Bowie called the elite and first, racist attitudes still obscure understandings, enviously orchestrating a fermented xenophobic squelch, as opposed to idealizing grand authentic freedom. 

Curious this 1729.

A modest proposal?

*Saw Alfred everywhere in this film.

El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent)

Serpentine seductions, recoiled recollections, imposed civilization, the Amazon, stratus immemorial.

A German ethnologist (Jan Bijvoet as as Theodor Koch-Grunberg) falls ill in the jungle and only one man knows the plant that can cure him.

He's reluctant to help however due to the ways in which Europeans have invaded and ravaged his lands.

Indigenous knowledge, they hadn't created firearms or printing presses, but their wisest knew everything about the land, the creatures and plants and seasonal harmonies, symbiotic symmetries, psychoencyclopedic utility, what to use and what not to use, how to co-exist for millennia, neither stewards nor supplicants, living with nature as one.

From their point of view, European culture may have resembled a serpent, a massive anaconda, sanctimoniously suffocating their people, with intent monstrous gluttony.

From that of the European, the serpent may have been symbolized by the Amazon river itself, terrifyingly labyrinthine, spiritual yet unaware of the Christian God.

These inadequate reflections haunt Theodor and Karamakate's (Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar) hostile interactions as a Christianized Indigenous person (Yauenkü Migue as Manduca) mediates, fully aware of rubber plantation horrors, with the scars on his back to prove it.

There's a powerful scene where a crippled Indigenous rubber labourer begs to die after he's discovered alone by them, their dialogue affecting divergent moralities, as acculturation marches on.

The three travel through the jungle in search of a sacred plant (yakruna) and Karamakate's lost people whom he thought were dead, encountering the destructive path of progress along the way.

Old and new worlds clash as they struggle to forge an understanding, another plot following their path decades later, as a young admirer of Koch-Grunberg's work enlists Karamakate's aid to find yakruna after having read Theodor's diaries.

Throughout this plot thread, Karamakate worries that he's become a chullachaqui, an empty shell, a void, as his memories slowly start to return.

El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent) values environmental wisdom, culture, immersion, gradually heightening colonialist tensions, as they move closer and closer toward medicinal convalescence.

Progress itself is Ciro Guerra's unwilling target, as the dark side of rapid commercial expansion clashes with the remnants of holistic worlds.

A cautious pace lures you into the narrative and lets its unveilings speak for themselves, while mesmerizingly intuiting dreamlike fascination and cultivated dread, a wild consciousness, harnessed, revitalized, exclaimed.

What a world it must have been.

The moon and the sun coaxed interactive eternity.

Blessed embowered succulence.

Transcendent joyful sorrow.

Zoolander 2

Lost in the wilderness, hard-earned accomplishments reduced to ash, ever evolving fashionable escapades firmly embedding debilitating doubts, two men once experimentalizing their flair with unconcerned immaculate retention cast out to cower shamefully in oblivion, suddenly once again required to indubitably vanquish the wicked, a sultry almost swimsuit model guiding their investigations, into the deaths of the innocently unfathomable, extracurricular intricacies, defiantly orchestrated by a fragile bested foe.

Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) must return to the limelight to reassert their exploratory finesse, for a criminal mastermind has targeted the world's most good looking people to fulfill a prophecy contraceptional in its cunning.

Shenanigans and blundering complicate their inquiries yet naivety and credulity reward their perseverance.

Derek's son Derek Jr. (Cyrus Arnold) must play a primary role, as it becomes apparent, that he may be the chosen one.

Exglamatory.

Providing laughs and hilarious situations with endearing supporting characters and a profound respect for its origins, Zoolander 2 succeeds at extending the franchise, but doesn't eclipse its starlit predecessor.

It terms of ridiculousness, it does surpass the original with ludicrous lubricants and transitional rebounds, but, even though it's a lot of fun to see the old characters back at it once again, mixing with new additions who socialistically and religiously spice things up, I wasn't as captivated as I was with Dumb and Dumber To, Anchorman 2, or 22 Jump Street, although I did prefer it to Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Airplane II, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Hangover Part II, and Ghostbusters II.

I loved how it validated Hansel and Derek's professional competencies and juxtaposed them with the errors they sometimes make taking care of real world demands, like cloistered vestals suddenly fending for themselves.

Hansel and Derek's dynamic reminded me of that cultivated between Ricky and Julian in Trailer Park Boys.

Could there possibly be a Trailer Park Boys/Zoolander crossover shot in Montréal, one of North America's most beautiful cities, with Mugatu (Will Ferrell) teaming up with the one and only Xavier Dolan to kidnap Céline Dion and antiquate Cirque du Soleil?

I'm thinking, best idea, in the history of ever.

Ever.

Ever . . .

2 Days in New York

The artistic, political, familial, conjugal, critical, social, quizzical, spiritual, sexual and psychological creatively intermingle in Julie Delpy's 2 Days in New York, wherein free-spirits lackadaisically/audaciously/petulantly/mendaciously contend with both the pretentious and the vituperative, in the pursuit of playing a specific role.

These roles themselves, when abstracted, transformed into symbols, placed within a fluctuating in/determinate semantic matrix, in/determinate depending upon the rhetorical convictions of the urges to clarify (and the resultant multi/bi/lateral counter-clarifications), fluctuating inasmuch as difference guarantees the establishment of multiple points of view (many of which temporally fluctuate within themselves [unless you write this kind of thing]), can produce multilateral takes which nurture an inclusive body politic wherein manifold outlooks survey their surroundings, i.e., Web 2.0.

The film itself isn't really my style but I appreciate the dynamic complexity within which it's exoterically expressed.

Employing the spice mélange.