It Happened One Night

Surrounded by luxury, everything you desire at hand or accessible, no need to work, struggle, justify, elucidate, toot toot, the gravy train, chugs onwards ever after.

Yet within the boundless infinities of grand ostentatious profound torqued hebetude, the imposition of paradigmatic pressure still traditionally refrains, and blasé prim prognostic propriety banally beckons with callous call, as gender roles crafted by ancient custom reemerge to contend and classify.

Ellie (Claudette Colbert) breaks free casts off the bonds of disquieting matrimony, swimming away from her father's yacht to life on the random exuberant road.

Meanwhile, a freespirited journalist castigates his editor's hackneyed rebuke, standing up for the integrity of free-verse, sweetly flowing unfiltered, unpasteurized (they're old friends) (Clark Gable as Peter Warne).

They wind up on the same lively bus heading south through carnivalesque cascades, an understanding reluctantly reached as lacklustre finances briskly balk.

Her father's enlisted the press and manifold detectives to track her down, fellow travellers on their communal steed eventually figuring their story out.

Escape is necessary to actively deconstruct the limits of their sly emancipation, so they vigorously font du puce and have soon procured their own automobile.

Lost indeterminate flux wildly drives their spontaneous momentum.

It's possible they'll never return.

Unless they fall in love.

It's solid rebellious romance firmly frenetic in loquacious languor, earnestly exercised enigmatic ursine, otherwise known, as begrudged true love.

He's not after wealth or prestige and like Lone Starr, he doesn't take the million, yet a kindred and quaint yet quizzical clutch still clasps in clamorous cuddle.  

Even though I love It's A Wonderful Life and watch it every Holiday Season, it never occurred to me to watch something else by the oft lauded sincere Frank Capra. 

And the genuine concern for chillaxed common dignity found in his yuletide yarn, is intriguingly present in rambunctious rapture disgruntled dispute heartfelt happenstance.

Several scenes don't end quite so quickly, they're much longer than one might expect, the cultivation of clandestine character acclimatized patient demonstrative depth.

It must have been a wondrous time when people still believed in dignity beyond wealth or station, when there was perhaps cultural support for public education and widespread constructive activism.

Otherwise, how do you explain the nimble bus scene where its passengers burst forth in song, unconcerned for rank or nobility, simply laidback, relaxing, resting?

And its focus on spirited improbability rooted in frank materialism?

Where things suddenly work out.

As they often do.

Widows

Left behind after a job gone wrong, a widow (Viola Davis as Veronica) weighs her unsettling options.

She's not alone, her husband's (Liam Neeson as Harry) entire crew having perished under hot pursuit, although she's a little more willing to embrace unorthodox ideas than her fellow despondent sisters (Michelle Rodriguez as Linda and Elizabeth Debicki as Alice).

After she finds plans for another heist.

And is coercively emboldened.

It's election time in her riding as well, the heir to its political dynasty (Colin Farrell as Jack Mulligan) not as ruthless as his jaded father (Robert Duvall as Tom Mulligan).

Realigned boundaries have cost him thousands of relied upon votes, however, and his strategy must broaden homegrown horizons.

His opponent's (Brian Tyree Henry as Jamal Manning) more familiar with his constituency's grievances, but runs into financial difficulties after his nest egg's ripped off.

Uncertainty ubiquitously abounds.

While goodwill beckons, lightly.

Multiple pieces composing a high stakes puzzle lacking definitive images agitate throughout Steve McQueen's Widows.

Roles, objectives, risk, and betrayal, highlight disingenuous motivations as tempting freedoms advocate.

It's as if those who were stealing everything assumed the people they were stealing from were stealing it from them anyway and therefore had no misgivings.

Serendipitous strategies aligned.

Suspended cause.

Expediency permeates Widows's calling with robust grim integrity.

As long as you only seek change for those who are only helping you, millions of supporters who don't know how or are unable to assist are left assuming everything's vague.

That no one cares.

Widows's ethics may be bleak but its script's still profound and it demands your strict attention.

Left in such situations it's difficult to imagine what one might do, but McQueen crafts several striking hypotheses which provocatively grill emulsion.

Grizzled and real.

Multilayered and invested.

Birthmarked

Two brilliant scientific lovebirds decide it's time to prove, once and for all, that the strategically planned nurturing of children can void natural dispositions, three unsuspecting young ones deliberately chosen for their experiment, unaware of their historical familial traits, ready to grow up embowered in predetermined invariability, secluded in the country far away from constant distraction, homeschooled with amorous calculation, in Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais's Birthmarked, wherein science observes with religious fervour.

A family blooms within the carefully constructed unabashed bucolic laboratory, as two brothers and a sister innocently contend with that which remains unknown, mom and dad stubbornly sticking to the prepped script, hilarity ensuing, as youth spontaneously intervenes.

Malheureusement, if the desired results are not obtained, Catherine (Toni Collette) and Ben (Matthew Goode) must reimburse their patron for every dollar he's spent financing them, and everything that's taken place has been meticulously recorded by live-in Nanny Samsonov's (Andreas Apergis) weekly summaries, and another family from Portugal seems close to publishing their comparable results first, thus, as the pressure exponentially aggrandizes, psychological stabilities contiguously implode.

Bizarro intellectual contraceptive schematics.

Yet also an endearing comedy.

Nourished in a state of nature.

Disciplined in/sincere curiosity.

The parents aren't horrible or anything, but they do use questionable methods as time runs out.

Raising someone in isolation doesn't prove anything anyways.

In regards to living, you have to let complex organisms develop immersed in the unexpected to obtain results that have even the remotest chance of being spread far and wide.

Or so I've thought.

A tiger is generally a ferocious animal.

If you remove it from the jungle and beat it mercilessly it will either die or start to perform tricks for you.

But if you monitor it in the jungle throughout its life you can obtain untainted results.

The tiger left alone to its own devices.

Natural and free.

Unencumbered by prediction or shock therapy.

Birthmarked isn't about tigers, it's about science gone wrong in its quest for objective truth.

Fortunately, it's generally okay if a scientific experiment doesn't achieve miraculous results.

It goes without saying that science is about the slow and steady application of generally agreed upon principles which are constantly scrutinized themselves in order to maximize the universal applicability of its discoveries.

Funding scientific experiments which must produce results is bullshit.

Birthmarked recognizes this and therefore doesn't seem insane while focusing too intently on the adults at the expense of the children.

Novel to see such a narrative reflected through a comedic lens which elevates independent scientific research with no strings attached, since its subject matter so easily applies itself to drama, fantasy, and horror.

Yet by proceeding comedically, the other three genres still generate critical combustions, as formal narrative diversification examines experimental contents.

Strange film.

Eye on Juliet

Love blooms in the North African desert as two romantics meet in the hills surrounding a sleepy town.

Uninterested in following the paths prudently yet sterilely groomed for them, they agree to spend everything they have on secret passage to Europe.

A lonely American, who just broke up with the love of his life, remotely observes them from a small surveillance robot he's tasked with operating, their innocent devotion saliently touching his heartfelt grief.

He decides to do everything he can to help them.

Yet trials belittle their imagination as knowledge of their plans reaches Ayusha's (Lina El Arabi) parents, who have already made arrangements for her to marry another.

She's locked up and forbidden to protest, austere calculation, in full-blown concerned restriction.

Kim Nguyen's Eye on Juliet playfully sculpts traditional and technological raw materials to present a passionate tragic embrace which caresses love requited.

Revitalizing age old themes with clever contemporary contents, it celebrates choice without mocking tradition, and risks that resiliently bloom.

Myriad abstractions block amorous integrities from ascending within, yet belief in oneself matched with mutual warmhearted understandings generates spiritual synergies which strictly transcend obedience.

By confidently wielding the spontaneous, it critiques cynicism while dismissing naivety, offering emotional appeals to the mind which stimulate soulful thought.

Tragedy does indeed strike after which responsibility makes amends, mistakes generating amicable relations, alternative options creating something new.

Loved the blind man in the desert (Mohammed Sakhi).

*That makes 1000 film reviews on this blog.

Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade)

Germany was a ruin at the end of World War II, rubble and ash produced by insane bigots who thought they were incarnated Übermensch playing out predestined roles.

The Russians crushed them.

The Allies dealt them crippling blows.

Tens of millions dead, goals unachieved, millions still mistrust and vilify Germany to this day, and even if postmodern Deutschland sets the standard for environmental sustainability and multicultural inclusion, and Nazi Germany was governed by brutal thugs who terrorized many into submission, when you watch World War II documentaries about Nazi death camps, or see how they slaughtered local populations when retreating, it's still difficult to separate the horrors from contemporary wonders, the scum, from the conscientious.

I do separate them, Germany shows up in the news doing something incredibly advanced so often that I can classify Nazi Germany as an aberration, and 21st Century Germany as a triumph, but watching those videos provokes latent passions that can't simply be reasoned away with vigour or ease, they were so systematically brutal, so void of compassion or humanity.

It's happening again elsewhere.

Atrocities that shouldn't have been forgotten have been forgotten and new generations of violent racists are once again politically active, have been for years, unconcerned for the lives and futures they would ruin, unconcerned with anything but themselves.

Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade) presents a loving family whose husband is a model of rehabilitation after having served his time in prison.

He's devoted to raising his son, loving his wife, and doing his best at work every day to provide for them.

Their multiethnic family is thriving and making positive contributions to greater Germany, but this offends a Neo-Nazi couple, who detonate a bomb in front of their multitasking business.

The husband and son are killed, and the wife is left suffering ad infinitum.

The film hauntingly focuses on her grief to accentuate the extreme hate crime's malevolence, the eventual trail of the murderers an exercise in sheer torture, as a victim must directly face the impenitent killers of her family.

What is reasonable doubt?

It must be incredibly difficult to make such decisions.

Reason isn't a blue sky or a shining sun.

As many others have pointed out, the vicissitudes of reason rationally articulated can logically drive someone insane, especially if they're the victims of a crime.

And the perpetrator's guilt is obvious.

Aus dem Nichts moves from despondency to hope to vengeance as it desperately seeks retribution.

Patience is an aspect of the sublime.

But how does one keep a cool head when forced to contend with total chaos?

With inflexible ideology?

Does logic apply to the actions of victims of terror?

Rationally?

The Circle

Omnipresent technological observation, every detail from everyone's life infinitesimally revealed with omnibus macroscopic composure, the triumph of the public sphere, no more secrets, no more subterfuge, real time rhapsodic synergistic respiration sucking in surety and exhaling plots, sandlots, polka dots, buffets, aeronautic knowledge in plain microcosm, mountainous metaphoric immersive munchy meadows, cross-referenced cursive equations, auspices, permanent honesty.

The Circle seeks to reveal everything ever recorded, every piece of data historically accumulated, every whisper, every slight, while turning everyone's life into a networked primetime extravaganza, constant pervasive awareness, monitoring each and every aspect, like itsy-bitsy circus shows.

Prophetic in its potential, sage in its revelations, James Ponsoldt's The Circle critically examines the ways in which social media has significantly transformed human existence in less than ten years, like the printing press of old, exponentially exemplified.

Within the film, an employee's (Emma Watson as Mae) responsibilities gradually increase after she's hired by the aforementioned, an innovative business that has combined several popular online sites into one übercolossus, until she goes transparent and everyone begins following every moment of her life all day everyday as it happens online, and she suddenly finds herself with an unprecedented degree of influence.

She's chill though, cool, she's not really into all that sort of, in the film anyways, the film is quite different from the book, although she realizes she possesses a perky ability to monumentally game change.

She digs.

She excavates.

She constructs.

She reveals.

If everything about all and sundry was accessible online the world would certainly become a different place.

A lot of pricks would be forced not to be huge dicks, unless some kind of sadistic sensational saga prevailed, for a time.

It might end up being like true democracy, things like starvation and violent crime slowly (perhaps rapidly) disappearing, the exaltation of the ephemeral, new variations of Star Trek compellingly illuminating the variations, slavery ending, endangered animals given a fighting chance for survival.

Imagine the pizza.

The long weekends.

The orations.

But if a select group controlled it things likely wouldn't change much.

And it would be super hard on those who didn't want their lives to be transparent, not just the unscrupulous but regular people as well, unscrupulous regular people notwithstanding.

Seems to be heading in that direction regardless.

Not really sure if The Circle's prophetic or simply just a comment on the times.

Makes the art of creating genuine surprise all the more intriguing either way.

*Another film could be made based on the book that could offer deeper reflections.

The Age of Shadows

A Korean resistance movement viscerally dissimulates to conflagristically adjudicate Imperial Japanese rule, as a conflicted police captain chants out between two antagonistically united worlds, his identity in flux, his loyalties confessing, cyclonically circumnavigating leveraged windswept extractions, comforts and crucibles psychologically contesting dignity, the oppressors intent on trumping, freedom fighters contacting hillside.

Indigo.

The Age of Shadows sticks to the point.

Betrayals and trusts exfoliating allegiances, time generally isn't wasted discussing the sociopolitical.

Rigidly focused on the goals at hand, it pulls you into its sidewinding struggle unfortunately without blending additional layers of historical commentary.

Its explosive immediacy contentiously compensates, although further insights into its temporal dynamics would have levelled the terrain when it hit bumps in the road.

The chaotic action's well-timed and some of its characterizations stylize penchants of the authoritative and/or the emancipatory, but it drags at points which likely held more meaning for domestic audiences (familiarity with the cast etc.).

Was Lee-Jung-Chool (Kang-ho Song) a brilliant strategist or simply someone who could remain calm under excruciatingly stressful circumstances?

Asylum.

Guts react.

Serpentine suspicions.

Active truth.

Proof of tyranny would have built-up the resistance, although its leader Jung Chae-San (Byung-hun Lee) still offers compelling synchronistic insights.

Nothing breaks his spirit.

Warm blooded will.

Sweetly flowing.

Now You See Me 2

There's a lot of potential for this film/subgenre.

Magic's wicked awesome, and taking a bunch of slick magicians and hypnotists and troublemakers and having them Robin Hood their way into the international slipstream, ultimate performance magnetizing the ephemeral everlasting, works well as an idea, an hypothesis, a vision, like Harry Potter sailing Ocean's Eleven, tricks, concentric metrics, the benevolent bedazzle, the wisecracking wherewithal, elevated conceptual catharsis, it would be fun if this style of film caught on, like kung fu or biker movies, seriously, don't you think?

Nevertheless, although Now You See Me 2 sets out to viscerally mesmerize and existentially impress, it doesn't really move past its age 8-14 target audience.

I wanted to love this film, I tried to love this film, a compelling premise brought to life by many of my favourite actors, enjoying themselves and revelling in their dissimulations, so loving, so caring, but the action isn't multidimensional enough (too slow), and, unfortunately, the accompanying social interactions are far too stitched and corny.

If I was still 12, I would have loved it however.

I kept thinking, that was almost really cool, that nearly transcended what's taken place so far, that could have been mind blowing, I was close to applauding that, only to be unable to sublimate a reverberating no no no no, no no no, no no no no no no no that was generated deep down within.

Hoping no. 3 adjusts for its target audience's change in age as did Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

But is there another subgenre at play in Now You See Me 2, of which Ex Machina and Criminal might also be exemplars?  

I know you've got it, the contra-Snowden scripts have been given the green light, the counterconscience is prevaricating, time to forget, time to let go, don't worry about the cyberstasi, sit back and enjoy the show.

Order some cheesecake.

Collect some minted coins.

It's kind of neat how America introduces critical controversy if the aforementioned theory has any applicable validity.

It doesn't tell you to believe something and threaten you with imprisonment if you should speak out against it.

Mistake!

Rather, it slyly establishes an alternative narrative within select films and lets the subconscious subtlety generate its own in/credulity.

The power of being tapped into every cellphone and computer on the planet.

The knowledge.

You used to have to laboriously sift through mail, establish an intricate network of loyal spies (an hydra), or apply for warrants to learn someone's intimate private secrets.

Now they're all readily available in a tantalizing format that's impossible to stop using due to its inherent multifunctionality.

Omniscience.

It's like the ring of power (consider the invisibility factor), so powerful no government would ever give it up, ever stop using it, ever sacrifice their resounding advantage, ever refrain from accessing its invincibility.

Bizarre.

In terms of linguistic diversification, the development of complex undecipherable codes, it could perhaps be a golden age.

Unless, I don't know, a hobbit can arise, and, say, cast this ring into molten hot magma, thereby giving up the greatest advantage any government in history has ever had, in turn reinvigorating a civil society which respects an individual's legal privacy.

Is there, out there somewhere, an extremely hip and cool politician who would do this, someone so beloved of everyone they would remember the ways of the 1980s and decide that constant eavesdropping, even if picturesquely packaged with impressionable pizzazz, is invasive and undesirable, afterwards promoting old school law enforcement techniques to guarantee the preponderance of justice, and maintain order with discreet compact impregnable luminosity?

Is there, can there be, is it still possible to believe, that one day, in the not too distant future, we will meet, and come to love, an honest and exceptional charismatic leader who lives according to the principles his or her government upholds, and therefore doesn't choose to spy on each and every one of its citizens?

In the ether, amidst the flotsam and jetsam, perhaps already elected, perhaps already triumphing daily, is this man or woman enlivening the globe with his or her eclectic charm and undeniable whimsy déjà, and can this man or woman, this colossus, this supernova, be thought of, herein and forever after, in the annals of interstellarosity . . .

. . . as Prime Minister Frodo?

As Prime Minister, Frodo, Baggins?

It could happen you know.

It could!

*Loved the eye staircase. Cool staircases also in Criminal.

Criminal

Shockingly discarded as an infant, an incarcerated sociopath is given a second chance to live, but in order to do so the consciousness of another must be creatively grafted onto his soul, so that he can discover the whereabouts of an unwilling terrorist, and terminate the dictations of armageddon.

Does the soul have anything to do with consciousness? Does it exist? Is it an eternal regenerative quintessence that innocently survives death regardless of the ways in which an individual lived his or her life, radiating thereafter in a transitory state able to embrace different forms of illumination with permanent subjective clarity?

No clue.

Bill Pope's (Ryan Reynolds) soul/consciousness becomes an integral part of Jericho Stewart's (Kevin Costner) in Ariel Vroman's Criminal however, enabling him to feel for the first time, as he's covetously hunted for instinctively seeking freedom.

There were aspects of Criminal I would have changed had I been given final edit, but I loved the film's laid-back sensationalism.

An anarchist seeking global rule can unleash the apocalypse if he gathers the information he seeks.

But the film's lack of stunning visuals, Kevin Costner's chill performance (even if he's constantly fighting), and unconvincing poorly written villain (Jordi Mollà as Xavier Heimdahl), deflate its grandiose pretensions while smoothly levelling-out the inherent absurdity.

I would have changed the beginning and ending even if they celebrate redemption (there must have been another way to do this), Jericho does remember highly advanced details at times that seem at odds with his brief sudden visual intuitions, and when he's on his way to take on Heimdahl, I would have cut the scene where Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) asks him to stop (hardcore cheese).

Nonetheless, it's like watching a film from the 90s, direct and to the point, kinetically intermingling the unapologetic and the angelic with wholesome rash rage, I actually felt like it was the 90s while viewing, well done well done.

Criminal blends the violent and the gentle with dramatic comedic indifference that leaves you anticipating what's to come in terms of the consciously conscientious.

The world could end if an unrepentant criminal doesn't act on lessons internalized from a disparate personality living inside him and challenge those responsible for his eclectic demise.

It uses the surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden to disable a mad terrorist yet keeps George Orwell in the loop to critique those very same surveillance techniques, slyly playing a clever double game.

If you take the film seriously, it seems like it's naturalizing ubiquitous surveillance.

If you appreciate the ludicrousness, it's like it's championing Orwell.

Jericho was under constant surveillance but in the end he's a free man, potentially with both job and family.

Thought provoking.

Bunch of great actors delivering modest performances that help procreate the film's unconcerned momentum (apart from Gary Oldham [Quaker Wells]) who has to be livid).

I think it's pastiching The Terminator. The villain wants to be responsible for Judgment Day. Jericho is like a Terminator. And someone says, "get out," at one point.

There's a great shot from the top of a stairwell looking down on Jericho as he looks up, the shot accompanied by a platter of apples on the first floor.

Solid character names.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

In/directly contextualizing striking pre-emptive phenomenons, Captain America: The Winter Soldier bravely condenses controversial polarities, from which it extracts a democratic essence, sentimentally sublime in its naiveté.

Perhaps beating Transcendence to the punch.

The issue of brilliant Nazi war criminals finding sanctuary in the United States after World War II is acknowledged, diabolical agents of HYDRA having nested themselves within S.H.I.E.L.D, whose limitless technological resources have given them free reign to menace.

They hope to take out millions of enemies in one extremely precise swoop, the ultimate pre-emptive strike, internationally derailing syndications of law and order, egregiously ignoring the global human factor.

The infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D partially vindicates Eric Snowden and Julian Assange as their methods are proactively defended by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).

Radiantly representing today's youth.

The key to the relationship between these plot threads and the film's subconscious depiction of America's current identity lies in the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) himself, who has no identity, who was revived to serve HYDRA and serve HYDRA alone, the memory of who he once was having been shattered into oblivion.

He is recognized by Captain America (Chris Evans), however, who is also having identity issues, yet he remembers why America (and Canada) fought during the second World War, thereby earning the trust of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

Like Thor: The Dark World, Winter Soldier struggles to find itself during its first 40 minutes or so, although in this case such disappointments fit perfectly.

It's important to remember that when great actors aren't performing at the top of their game, it's okay to ask them to do additional takes.

I don't know how you'd go about doing this.

Just don't go Godard on them (see Richard Brody's Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard).

What follows is a thrilling politicized retrocrazed rush, Steve Rodgers outshining Themistocles, another captivating Marvel film, oh what a world what a world.

All the Wrong Reasons

Solid beginnings for All the Wrong Reasons.

Chummy quotidian banter, an elastic sense of low-budget self-aware elusion, characters who seem relatable but have enough cinematic distance built-in to problematize their realistic preoccupations, polish, tragedy, helplessness, grit.

Facial expressions provoke chuckles.

Background details add flavour.

Surveyed departmental legacies.

Evacuated evasive everyday elevations.

It doesn't hold together well as things become more serious however.

It's not that I didn't like the development of Kate (Karine Vanasse) and Simon's (Kevin Zegers) affections.

They're strong characters and their interactions curve and merge.

But as the intensity of the wry melodrama increases, and morality becomes a potent factor, the comedy disintegrates, and austerity commands.

I liked some of the scenes and the resolutions, but the general air of upright tension in the second half suffered from a lack of contrapuntal displacement.

Unsuccessful juxtaposition.

Solid beginnings though, solid beginnings.

The East

Professional integrity lands itself a high-level covert assignment, full of danger and risk, wherein it must clandestinely adjudicate its broad range of astute sociological reflexes to infiltrate a stealth pack of humanistic hyperreactivists and expose their audacious whereabouts.

She finds them far too easily, but after coyly yet adhesively nestling, finds herself inductively considering their proactive cause, which seeks stricter much more effective regulations regarding the ways in which big business generates profit.

She works for a rather big business herself and must come to terms with its motives as she becomes increasingly integrated in both domains.

Her partner is frustrated.

Her conscience is bifurcated.

Friendships coalesce.

She is neither arrogant nor weak.

The East melodramatically yet crucially materializes the dissonant underground social dynamics of altruistically pursuing game changing objectives (the comments made by the underground collective occasionally seem at odds with their ethical ideals), bringing some of Terry Eagleton's arguments to life, without shying away from juxtaposing economic with ethical impoverishment.

The scene where Izzy's (Ellen Page) estranged parent jumps in the toxic sludge works well.

Laws can be made to correspond to the goals fought for in this film.

Made and enforced.

Check out Vincent Lam's Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, and find out what the CCF party did for ordinary hard working citizens of Saskatchewan in a relatively short period of time, when a lot of people thought nothing could be done.

They enacted social democratic change while balancing the budget.

They proceeded cautiously and soundly to legitimize their movement's thrust.

Not that easy to do of course, but there are people all over the world who become rather upset when their water supply turns carcinogenic.

It's just common sense.

Zero Dark Thirty

Accumulation. Asseveration. Evisceration.      

Kathryn Bigelow's bureaucratically bitchin' tenaciously pitchin' Zero Dark Thirty nonpartisanly coordinates the clandestine predications of a resilient stalwart team.

In/directly lead by Maya (Jessica Chastain).

Militaristically maneuvering from the collection of data to the formulation of hypotheses to the execution of ideas, they uniformly act like the production of a covert thesis.

Perhaps this thesis asks, "can we successfully fabricate a concrete entertaining internationally provocative blueprint which periodically articulates anti-terrorist protocols which seem bona fide yet cleverly dissimulate each and every event that took place, apart from the lengthy ending, thereby functioning as overt espionage (and trumping Argo)?"

This question may be a bit much considering that what takes place seems to follow a logical asymmetrical pattern the fabric of which conceals/reveals both sides (as depicted in the film) regardless.

Nevertheless, even though its bravado is qualified by stats and potentialities, Zero Dark Thirty impresses practical unrelenting retributive necessities across its apolitical spectrum, collocating resourceful avatars with seductive sentiments, in a potent, charismatic, collection.

Red Road

Andrea Arnold's Red Road unwraps the hidden obsession lying dormant within its heroine. Kate Dickie plays Jackie who monitors a number of cameras which watch over a run down neighbourhood in Glasgow. One day, Jackie discovers a criminal who is inextricably linked to her past upon one of her screens and becomes obsessed with locating him. Her focus upon Clyde (Tony Curran) soon becomes destructive as she begins to spend more and more time viewing his life and less focusing on the community around her. Within Jackie's quiet desperate desire Arnold paints an intriguing portrait upon an ethical canvas, skillfully interrogating morality while deconstructing the dichotomy established between criminal and security officer, her finished product highlighting the difficulties one experiences in keeping the peace from psychological, communal, economic, and familial viewpoints. Sanity is for the sane and Red Road subtly and playfully challenges the concept of the normal while Dickie's poignant Jackie reminds us of the consequences of absolute loss.