The Butterfly Murders

After a period of great destruction, peace settles in Ancient China, the various factions and sects and clans tired of the senseless and brutal killing.

But unease remains in the troubled aftermath as simply getting along with one another requires effort, and extant tensions and widespread jealousies bitterly encourage internecine melodrama. 

Around this time, feverish and brittle, a tale of insects revolting circulates, indeed the emergence of killer butterflies outrageously terrifies the superstitious. 

A castle lies uninhabited except for the resident lord and lady and their maid, who, to avoid the slaughter of the butterflies, have taken to hiding underground.

Sternly visited by the upright leader of a different clan they lithely accommodate, yet mysteries abound delicately within the sombre lair frenzies notwithstanding. 

The legendary thunders are ceremoniously summoned after the strange death of the distant ruler, to see how he divided up his kingdom in stalwart deluge and unbecoming gore.

Their unique gifts are not enough to overcome the misguidance however. 

As unrest strikes and chaos descends.

With ruthless wingéd covetous metamorphosis. 

I haven't seen many old school martial arts films with a sinister focus on honour and treachery, I've never even seen Bruce Lee's films, it's a puzzling shortcoming I need to work on.

The Butterfly Murders, if indicative of a scheme, introduces a fast-paced in-depth action thriller, inherently necessitating suspicion and attention as it wildly indoctrinates incessant lesion.

Calculated mistrust and bewitching loyalties formally clash with inquisitive stewardship, unsettling murders and inarticulate chrysalids defiantly imploding sanctimonious stealth. 

An intricate script intriguingly accentuated with robust character and nondescript collusion, thrown together with ecstatic haste which at times leads to opaque delineations. 

I classically misunderstood the title and thought that butterflies (or transformative individuals) were being murdered, and although the latter does comes to pass, I was still surprised to find butterfly killers.

With such asymmetrical flight paths how could they ever be dispatched?

Similar to bats in flight.

Imbroglio misgivings.

Rigamaroller coaster. 

Mysterious Object at Noon

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Totally keeps things local.

Offering a slice of Thailand. 

Leads to The Iliad down the road. 

Conceptual inclusive mutation. 

Jacquot de Nantes

A young experimental film enthusiast concentrates on vivid storytelling, having instantaneously been mesmerized by the first live puppet show he went to see.

Growing up in Nantes in France with loving parents in a lively neighbourhood, his imagination roamed far and wide while often focused on the cinema.

Family life embraced the trades since his father owned a bustling garage, and wanted his son to become a mechanic and learn his catechism and keep things real.

Little Jacquot hesitantly obliged since he wasn't as rebellious as some, but still worked on creative independent films alone at night in their humble attic.

His mother and father had to admit that he had real talent when he showcased his films, every meticulous minuscule detail having been delicately crafted.

World War II breaks out and the family is briefly torn apart, dad working in a shell-factory by day, the children moving to the countryside at times.

But Jacquot never stops creating nor watching films with heartfelt awe.

Eventually directing agile tales. 

As part of the French New Wave.

Jacquot de Nantes proceeds with loving candour as it romantically illustrates its subject, dynamically directed by Jacque's wife the incredibly talented Agnès Varda.

She carefully links his active childhood with laidback material from his films, first imagining how the moments might have taken place before showing them depicted on the silver screen. 

Jacques Démy himself also comments to add more depth to the bold filmography, his poignant insights generating layers of intricate exuberant narrative detail.

Captivating to see a sincere exhibition of a thoughtful artist and his breathtaking work, lovingly shot by another auteur who genuinely loved him with innocent tenderness.

I've never seen one of his films which is a shortcoming I'll have to remedy. 

Such knowledge.

Such wild inspiration. 

Peacefully blossoming.

Limitless and free.

Transformers: The Movie

The famished malevolent Unicron proceeds uncontested throughout the Universe, devouring planets as he randomly travels destructively immersed within timeless space.

As he approaches Cybertron, the Decepticon leadership battles the Autobots, who have retreated to two of its moons and Autobot City upon planet Earth.

The battle is feverishly fought both sides taking heavy casualties, Megatron and Optimus Prime fearsomely opposing one another with embittered fortitude.

As the leaders tumultuously duel, they deal each other fatal blows, Optimus forced to give up the Matrix of Leadership, Starscream banishing Megatron thereafter.

Nevertheless, Unicron has foreseen that only one thing can possibly destroy him, the coveted heralded respected Matrix of honest and fair immaculate Leadership.

He finds Megatron drifting through space and begrudgingly transforms him into Galvatron, before tasking him with furtively retrieving the ancient Matrix foreverafter. 

Always crafty, Megatron decides that if he finds it he'll harness its powers, to defeat ye olde Unicron whom he rather dislikes for presuming omniscience.

But foolish Megatron ignorantly forgets that the divine Matrix only supports just leadership.

The Autobots also seeking to stop Unicron.

As their fight wages throughout the Galaxy.

If you happened to be born at the right time I doubt you'll ever tire of its soundtrack, Transformers: The Movie distilling a passionate craze of robotic rhythms and electro wavelengths. 

It abounds with versatile transformers as one product line replaces another, a trajectory perhaps not followed by other toy brand films after many audiences erupted in fury.

Noble proclamations exuding sublime paths of innocently-defined righteous leadership, embrace community or open-minded togetherness with characteristic sincere savvy. 

Age and youth within the continuum continue their wise and impulsive dialogues, as the reckless Hot Rod and the weathered Kup dispute various subjects throughout their travels.

As Optimus Prime graciously fades it's tough to imagine the Autobots without him, and somewhat frustrating that Megatron bounces back within the film while he does not.

Perhaps another feature that was widely criticized.

The animosity fading with age.

Love watching this film again and again.

Old school longevity, luminescent viscosity. 

Storm Boy

An ominous board meeting looms for the former director of a prosperous company, which may result in the industrialization of large verdant swathes of Western Australia. 

He's more or less retired and not that concerned with business as of late, his son leading the woebegone way to widespread inanimate environmental degradation. 

His granddaughter is quite concerned though and at irascible odds with her dismissive father, and as granddad listens to her passionate criticisms his mind begins to impressionably sway.

He begins telling an old school tale of his unorthodox childhood isolated on a beach, where he grew up with his father and three pelicans and a local friendly Indigenous neighbour.

The tale, much like the original, follows young Kingley as he raises the pelicans, his father and friend warm and pleasantly accommodating throughout the non-traditional animal husbandry.

The birds are an active lot whose jaunty forthright exuberant instincts, lead to the acquisition of thousands of pounds of increasingly larger delicious fresh fish.

Unfortunately, bird hunters are near who outrageously kill just to have deranged fun.

But as he trains them they thoughtfully respond.

And a bird sanctuary may be on its way! 🐦 

Plus the deal to alarmingly pollute so much vital Australian land, is suddenly challenged by the swift reemergence of a caring activist and his granddaughter. 

It's a heartwarming familial account of the spectacular bonds forged between different species, and the ways in which so many animals can forge lifelong ties with us if raised from birth.

Look to the energetic Moo Deng who recently captured the world's attention, or at manifold other online videos delicately telling similar stories. 

Not just when humans are involved, one video depicts a leopard raised by a cow, who still returns to visit her years later, intense congenial interactive love!

I didn't think this version of Storm Boy would be like a reimagining of the original, which I strongly encourage curious peeps to synchronously check out if you've got time.

The new version's good, don't get me wrong, but the original shouldn't be overlooked by any means.

It's much more independent and ingeniously realized a genuine masterpiece to be widely shared. 

🎄🎅🤶⭐

Predestination

Difficult to say what you would have done differently if you had possessed prescient knowledge way back when, would there simply have been more of an enigmatic emphasis, or would things still have proceeded without grandiose change?

A self-indulgent question to be sure creatively occurring if you've ever had time to consider the past, hypothetical degrees of forlorn or joyous intensities increasing, depending on whether or not temporal interventions could have facilitated alternatives.

But such alternatives would have opened up unforeseen potentialities which may have been more prosperous if not worse, manifold striking unpredictable variables accompanying sundry indefinite outcomes.

Such a perspective almost makes the act of engaging in trivial decision making, seem much more epic in light of the infinite imperceptible comic echoes. 

Would I have wound up teaching in Paris or exploring the bush laidback in Chibougamau, peacefully working away at the Granby Zoo or fishing off the coast of Sept-Îles?

Predestination introduces a time machine and a somewhat invariable interdimensional occupation, wherein which operatives monitor the past to attempt to hinder voltaic malfeasance. 

The rules are quite strict no nonsense the agents are watched with meticulous scrutiny, one attempting to improvise nevertheless after a lifetime of loyal service (Ethan Hawke as the Barkeep).

He befriends a recruit who's alone living a generally solitary existence, having grown up in an orphanage unencumbered by the temptations of bourgeois life (Sarah Snook as the Unmarried Mother).

Could she make a good agent who knows! theory's quite different from work in the field, but at least they have something to talk about over a drink at random one evening.

Even if you had a time machine and could travel back and forth to different ages, how would you ever settle in without standing out like a shocking oddity?

Would you be able to understand the dialect or codes of conduct with enough fluent ease, to do simple things like find lodging or food, and wouldn't the smell be repellent?

I suppose like so many things you'd have to proceed with trial and error, the first jump somewhat overwhelming the second and third perhaps less of a shock (if heading to the same location).

Could a thorough interest in Star Trek help to prepare one for such endeavours, as a kind of theoretical support, perhaps lacking practical value?

Predestination travels time like no other narrative I've seen before, much more concerned with characterized mystery than grandiose spectacle fantastic intrigue.

If you were to meet yourself 25 years ago have you any idea what you'd say?

Predestination has a unique answer.

It's really well done.

A must see for time travel fans.

Nightbooks

A thoughtful youth likes to write stories that are somewhat frightening if not supernatural (Winslow Fegley as Alex), his nascent creative literary endeavours misunderstood by his strait-laced classmates.

Unfortunately, on the night of his birthday party, no ones shows up to indulge and celebrate, his parents having gone to great lengths to materialize, a fitting festive otherworldly soirée.

They begin to doubt their motivations and callously vocalize their frustrated misgivings, Alex listening closely in the next room, he suddenly decides to run away.

Yet even more disastrous, he decides to burn his cherished books, a haughty witch intercepting him as he proceeds down (Krysten Ritter as Natacha), to his apartment's scalding incinerator. 

The witch is none too accommodating however and traps him inside her magical abode, demanding a new story each and every evening, happy endings strictly forbidden.

Due to his absolutist circumstances, he readily seeks wholehearted escape, with the aid of another resident child (Lidya Jewett as Yasmin), who had been hopeless for quite some time.

But a furless invisible cat watches their movements throughout the day.

And doesn't understand when they find: a spell encouraging slumbrous oblivion.

Nightbooks applauds the grim and macabre with sincere devout unlimited reckoning, securing spellbound enriched daunting fantasies for multivariable epochs to come. 

Firmly resolved to withstand criticism of the artistic desire to explore spooky realms, it champions bold incarnate conjuring perhaps with multidisciplinary respite.

If you're ever mundanely thinking that related genres are lacking forward momentum, I suggest checking out Montréal's Fantasia festival as well, where you'll find innovative stories from around the globe.

I have no idea at what age to start consuming frets and frights, they freaked me out when I was really young, but I was really into them throughout my teens and twenties.

Harry Potter offers fascinating insights into freedom of expression, within a robust world equipped with intricate complex plots and characterizations (what happened to J.K. Rowling?).

Nightbooks too, I really liked Nightbooks, and its stressful examination of writing.

If you're thinking of stories write them down.

Social prestige and criticism be damned. 

*The Dream Warriors was my favourite Nightmare on Elm Street film. I never saw numbers 2 or 5 however.

**Can't believe there's a Child's Play tv show/series coming out. That's mind-boggling considering how strict censors were way back when.

Fences

Friendship, family, filaments and filibusters, Denzel Washington's Fences (based upon the play by August Wilson) encloses dreams and protests and confrontations within a patriarchal shard, not that there isn't a willingness to entertain, as long as his fam remembers who's regally legion.

Potatoes and lard.

He's sacrificed a lot to responsibly take care of things, but his personal experience blinds him to the realities facing his youngest son (Jovan Adepo as Cory), who has a shot at playing professional football, even if dad had to spend his career on the sidelines (baseball).

The answer lies within the stories he dramatically tells, stories which enthusiastically explain how the United States changed over the course of the last 40 years (the film's set in the 1950s), meaning that if America's current composition is resoundingly different from that within which he wildly grew up, the tough lessons he learned through his trials may no longer directly apply to his son's struggles, a son who may therefore have opportunities that were cruelly denied him.

He can't understand the new, he can't comprehend change.

He's hard on his wife Rose (Viola Davis) as well, delivering a devastating blow just as their lives start to become less burdensome.

No settling into old age.

No moving on to greener pastures.

It's not as sad as all that when you listen to him telling his tales, nevertheless, when you watch as he multidimensionally exhales fiction, reverie, and fact.

Denzel (Troy) delivers a brilliant performance full of love, contempt, joy, confusion, understanding, obstinacy, fear, and courage, if you ever wondered why he's been so successful for the last thirty years, Fences offers distinct evidence, as Washington proves that he's far beyond playing typecast roles, that he can indeed competently display intricate multilateral e/motions.

While playing a regular guy.

Viola Davis excels as well.

The film's reminiscent of adaptations of Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee plays, an expansive, caring, sophisticated, realistically controversial examination of real people living hard lives, who aren't afraid to share extended thoughts and commentaries.

Lives being lived, power struggles crisp and bold.

Brief moments of tantalizing largesse.

Rustling through rhythms.

Struggles struck and starchy.

Electric portions.

Pete's Dragon

A child's imagination can limitlessly prosper as it infinitely expands if pedagogically nurtured like a flourishing free spirit.

In David Lowery's Pete's Dragon, we find a young child (Oakes Fegley as Pete) who has been living in the woods for several years under the watchful eye of a caring dragon.

Elliot's the beastie's name.

His existence is undeniable in the film, but, if he is thought of as representing limitless imagination and Pete has developed limitless imagination while growing up on his own in the wild, then after he is discovered by humankind, what becomes of that imagination in terms of future potential?

In terms of the options available in town?

Two brothers are presented, one (Wes Bentley as Jack) who owns a logging company and abides by the law when extracting timber, and another (Karl Urban as Gavin) who manages the company on the ground and breaks those laws in order to earn higher profits.

Either way Pete's imagination will have to adapt to human civilization, since both options extract wood from the forest.

Jack takes Pete in while waiting to hear from child services, after Pete befriends his daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence), and for the first time since the fatal car accident in the film's opening moments, Pete is surrounded by and immersed within nourishing comforts, comforts that can lovingly engage his imagination.

Meanwhile Gavin, having learned of Elliot's existence, hunts down and viciously traps him, thereby attempting to turn Pete's imagination into an estranged exploited sideshow.

Cunning and ingenuity, no doubt the reflexive byproducts of that imagination, enable Pete and his friends to free tethered Elliot, who is then chased by his would be oppressor, and forced to unleash incendiary objections.

Foes defeated and stability secured, in the end we see Elliot and Pete reunited, Elliot having found companions as well, or Pete having developed an in/dependent artistic/commercial sensitivity, nurtured by a disposable income.

Perhaps not the most well rounded layer of metaphorical interactivity, but if relativity is applied to expand upon the definitions of stability and comfort, as it should be if Elliot is taken into consideration, and these definitions proliferate within the realm of free choice, it's possible that everyone could have their own community of dragons, loveable in their specialized elasticities, curious to energetically explore.

Why the heck not?

As Summer is applied to the upcoming scholastic year?

It's a wikithing.

I can be cheesier.

The Lone Ranger

A naive child's material desires accidentally instigate a collusive capitalistic intercultural catastrophe, as contemporary conditionals refurbish historical hindsights with oratorical laments, and a story is told, details epically bulleted, questions, considerations, responses, internally and externally as the dialogue between listener and storyteller is narratively emboldened, and The Lone Ranger arrives incognito, possessing both lock and key, determined to develop a fair and equitable jurisprudent viaduct, even after it becomes clear that the canyon's been railroaded.

A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.

The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.

The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.

Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.

The mask remains.

Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.

While taking an interest in sport.

J. Edgar

Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar situates a cunning politico-ethical land mine deep within the socio-American filmic vortex which combusts a manufactured traditional market by highlighting the contribution of gay Americans to the creation of some of their most revered institutions.

According to this film, there is no doubt that J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) loved his country (or his conception of his country). His opposition to radical elements and disgust with the ways in which the media glorified gangsters is relentless as he pursues the incarceration of outlaws while demanding nothing but refined conduct from his employees. As director of the FBI, he significantly expands its agency through the acquisition of legal and economic resources while patiently and obsessively focusing on the cultivation of its public reputation. Deeply and resolutely committed to the idea that public figures must comport themselves with the utmost integrity, he sharply manages both the conduct of his agents and the public perceptions of the conduct of his agents while placing himself in the forefront whenever possible. Paranoid and power mad and willing to take down those whose popularity risks rivalling his own, he delicately balances the relationship between democratic efficiency and bureaucratic autocracy throughout the course of his lengthy career, agilely avoiding the sword of Damocles.

But there's one problem.

He has no interest in women and loves Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) who has been by his side for the majority of his career. His private life has been defined by the politico-ethical foundations of his public pursuits as undesirable, which encourages a significant degree of anxiety. This extra layer of anxiety adds additional pressure to his institutional position which already demands a heightened degree of caution.

Hence, paranoia.

But he still skillfully utilizes his considerable gifts to survive within a heteronormative domain wherein he succeeds in accomplishing remarkable feats, even though his memory of such feats may be somewhat exaggerated.

It can be argued that his achievements were the results of his repression and that he wouldn't have been able to survive in a cutthroat competitive professional climate without having had the added bonus of developing exceptional survival instincts through the art of concealment in his youth.

But who in their right mind wants to nurture a public sphere which necessitates the dissimulation of strengths when their cultivation could increase the intensity of said sphere's productive tendencies by enabling its representatives to energize their freedoms? There's no telling what else J. Edgar could have been able to accomplish had he been nurtured in an environment where sexual difference was respected and he didn't have to consistently expend psychological resources to distract attention away from the most beautiful parts of his personality.