Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?)

A remote village in Lebanon remains technologically isolated from its surrounding politico-cultural environment which erupts in a religious war. Seeking to ensure that no more of their children are needlessly slaughtered, its Christian and Muslim female inhabitants unite to distract their masculine counterparts. However, regardless of the fact that they know nothing of the war, tensions between these men have been increasing due to sacrilegious activities that have inspired retribution.

Trying to covertly manage the vindictive violence proves challenging.

A challenge to which these heroic women stalwartly, respond.

Exercising a seductive mix of the expedient, the temperamental, and the divine, Nadine Labaki's Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?) fictionally verifies how destructive overtures can be pacified within pressurized time constraints.

Certain aspects of the solution they facilitate may have practical applications beyond said constraints, although reflecting upon whether or not their means justifies their ends pasteurizes acute ethical dilemmas.

Nevertheless, a powerful film with a progressive message, Et maintenant on va où suggests that a rural dynamic can play an influential role in the byzantine global mosaic, as a matter of perseverance as opposed to pride, or acceptance as the foundations of transcendence.

Tezz

Two men on different sides of the law intellectually and physically face off in Priyadarshan's sensational Tezz, one seeking personal justice for having been deported to India and separated from his family, the other coming out of retirement after having spent his life foiling terrorist plots for the British government.

With a perfect record. 

A bomb is attached to a passenger train travelling to Glasgow which will explode if the train's speed decreases below 60 mph. If 10 million euros are given to Aakash Rana (Ajay Devgn), the disaster will be averted. Railway Control Specialist Sanjay Raina's (Boman Irani) daughter is on the train, adding to the melodrama. Counter Terrorism Agent Arjun Khanna (Anil Kapoor) is intent on catching Rana before he has time to explain how to dispose of the bomb. 

And egos explode. 

Within headstrong passionate personalities definitively express their emotionally charged strategic points of view, having been forced into a rationalized chaotic peculiarity. Extremes and modes of transportation abound as controversial decisions are rapidly made.

When ambiguity seems as if it may gain a foothold within the narrative's denouement, the law moves in and shuts thing down (thereby accentuating the predicament of the disenfranchised).  

You would think there would have been other ways for Aakash to be reunited with his family. 

But when taking into account the terms of Tezz's stark portrayal of the law's callous non-negotiable dismissal of Aakash's respectability, a sort of absurd understanding can be applied to his over-the-top benign all-or-nothing approach, since the rational framework to which he had devoted his productive life suddenly and unconditionally collapsed, leaving him with no constructive alternatives within the existing legal framework.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Delicate operations requiring providential mnemonic triggers and creative conditional calculations present themselves to retired intelligence agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) as he attempts to identify a Russian spy. Having infiltrated the highest level of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), this spy is well positioned to discretely disseminate significant flourishes of information to his superiors in the Soviet Union. Tacit knowledge, social and institutional information management, and the threat of death play integral roles in Smiley's clandestinely profitable wagers. The stakes are high and the opposition fierce as he descends into the labyrinthine foundations of memory, availability, and time.

In the interests of precision.

Taking ordinary research and adorning it with a strict lethal sense of provocative immediacy, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tantalizes the inquisitive faculties while proceeding staggeringly from point A to point B in a laconic linear warp.

Like an indirect salute to editorial predilections.

Trying to unearth the hidden adhesive catalyst whose motivational propulsion will synthesize his pensive analytic re/formulations, George Smiley pursues his subject with a cunningly subtle rigour which wisely sublimates feelings of joy.

While occasionally permitting its ephemeral presence.

In order to thwart bureaucratic instabilities.

Skyline

I like what Colin and Greg Strause set out to do in Skyline. As aliens invade Los Angeles and start harvesting humans it only focuses on one small group of friends and a concierge who helps them out (David Zayas as Oliver). Arguments regarding how they should proceed are introduced, some wishing to stay put in a high rise apartment, others seeking to make a break for the ocean and escape on a yacht. With no means of communicating with the outside world and discovering the extent of what is happening, they need to employ their best judgment and rapidly decide what must be immediately done.

Before they're transformed into inhuman monsters.

And when the unknown zealously threatens your survival what should you immediately do? Remain hidden in your inconspicuous shelter, cowering behind a bookcase in a corner, or directly engage the unforeseen, if necessary, as you attempt to navigate your way through its treacherous set of destructive circumstances?

On your way to freedom.

Freedom obviously isn't guaranteed but its appeal generates a degree of unquenchable hope in the breasts of its proponents who think the aliens won't scour the high seas as vigilantly as they harvest the city.

Skyline's streamlined specific focus would have been smoother had the group's internal interactions possessed a greater flair.

For what lies beneath.

But I suppose that's the point. When a crushing external force prevents you from accessing your terms of reference, nothing but a suffocated trepidatious version of those terms remains, anxiously clutching the surface.

That's the point I swear.

Tower Heist

Was incredibly disappointed by Brett Ratner's Tower Heist. Generic films don't have to be terrible. If their writers try to at least create four or five unexpected witty provocative scenes wherein something distracting takes place they can be salvaged. But they have to hold our attention before they can affectively destream it. Tower Heist presents one boring mundane predictable scene after another, as if they were trying to mimic the aesthetic built into a swiffer wet jet ad in order to peddle jokes that make television's Whitney seem hilarious by comparison. It was like the inspiration behind this script was vacuuming or cleaning behind the fridge. Unmitigated stubborn concrete tedium disseminated by performances who are only noteworthy because they managed to successfully convince me that they were taking their work seriously, regardless of the fact that they must of wretched upon first reading over the material. There's one moment where Matthew Broderick at least looks as if he's aware that he's starring in an cup into which you spit but it's subtle enough for him to still be able to convince the powers that be that he's a team player.

I like films wherein rich assholes who steal from struggling workers are punished and I like that this happens in Tower Heist, but the execution is uniformly lacking in skill, insight and perspicacity, and the plot, racist in structure.

Don't be sucked in by the cast or the ads. Tower Heist isn't worth it and reminds me why I haven't wanted to see an Eddie Murphy film since Bowfinger.