Jacob's Ladder

*Spoiler Alert.

Secret army experiments covertly composed and athletically executed, leading oblivious hardboiled soldiers to wanton acts of outrageous cruelty. 

Alone and isolated wasting their time with harmless shenanigans and lighthearted horseplay, the chosen unit suddenly erupts with insane bellicose bloodthirsty determinacy. 

A soldier's hit, a bayonet to the chest, and he wakes up back on the subway, years later in a different life with sights unfamiliar and newfound trajectories.

Things go well a lot of the time as his supportive partner seems chill and helpful, and things typically run well at work, his life advancing without hindrance or incident. 

But he starts to notice odd random things that look like demons spawned in hell, his mind unable to rationally explain them as their frequency intensifies.

At other times, he gleefully awakes in an alternative life he once closely knew, where he's married with three nimble sons who sincerely care for his clever witticisms.

As he drifts from one realm to the next he distressingly starts to lose touch with reality. 

Until he meets up with old friends from the army.

Who have been experiencing the same freakin' thing.

A fine example of a chilling psychological thriller effectively blending religion with reality, as a soldier ventures through ye olde purgatory after having been seriously wounded.

It isn't preachy or overly sentimental it just presents a man's life as it is, as he wildly contends with heaven and hell as his fluid mortality grotesquely fluctuates. 

In a rare class of religious films that aren't sensational or over-the-top, the grim world it slyly presents gradually unreeling while seeming quite real (like The Omen or on television, The X-Files).

Definitely a shame to see experimental drugs blindly field tested on faithful soldiers, who had no idea they were part of an experiment clandestinely conducted by the army.

A different time when the soldier's viewpoint mattered as much as higher ranking authorities. 

With democratic vision.

And wholesome subjectivity. 

Exuberant life.

Universal calculi.

Trucks

Machinery has on awkward occasion posed philosophical questions while at work, the consistent use of fuel-powered-entities blended with distraction leading to hypotheses. 

Such theories no doubt imaginatively aided by consistently observing different narratives throughout life, the uncanny ludicrous application of televisual conceit to work and play.

But if oil and gas is eventually created as life inevitably dissolves, it was therefore once indubitably alive in possession of thought and spirit and appetite (Plato).

Machines inarguably seem inanimate when not turned on when lying dormant, with no fuel warmly generating power to encourage motion and requisite function. 

But when active does the fuel they burn once composed of life once again draw breath?, ontologically igniting ancient schematics blueprints attuned to reanimation. 

As the reignited organic material takes hold of the metallic construction, it nurtures different kinds of behaviour, which is why machines seem like they have personalities. 

Thus, one takes it easy with older machines less intimately acquainted with flexible immediacy, while it's fun to reasonably play with brand new constructions recently made.

Trucks takes things to the next level and gleefully removes the human factor, the trucks indeed suddenly turning on their once unsuspecting masters.

As they take over the small town of Bridgeton there's little that the lords can do.

Besides try to find a way to get out of there.

Before machine-kind embodies absolute rule. 

*Isn't this what you'd call crackpottery dad, machines coming to life and killing everyone?

**That's certainly an argument you can make son, although the off-kilter theory still mystifies.

*Tough to stop your mind from wandering when doing boring stuff, isn't it dad?

**It's helped to make so many cool stories.

*I still don't think machines are alive.

**You're probably right. But, really, who's to say? 

*Sigh. Okay, maybe driverless cars are a bad idea.

**Good to keep humans in the loop son.

*No doubt. I don't know what I was thinking.

**A.I can't freakin' drive cars. 

*Loved the station wagon. 

Malone

Endurance.

Strength.

Confidence.

Reliability.

The airtight Malone sees the introduction of a hard-boiled trusted dependable soldier, who's worked covert operations for many a year and finally decided it's time to retire.

But it's a job you can't walk away from he knows too much and is much too valuable, his old school no-nonsense management team unwilling to simply let him go.

He's been in the service for decades and has finally started to find murder distasteful, even if he's taking out scurrilous atrocities he's no longer thrilled to surgically discombobulate. 

Unfortunately his car breaks down in a beautiful small town as he tries to disappear, a town which is slowly being bought up by a jingoistic millionaire with fascist dreams.

The people were initially glad when he arrived because they thought he would reopen the mine, but after he pushed so many off their land grand disillusion distressingly set in.

Malone just tries to peacefully exist but the plutocrat's goons try to push him around.

Even after they realize they're far outmatched.

Bring on the classic 1980s ending.

Malone offers an entertaining case study in different conceptions of the man's man, the one brutal and monopolizing, the other fierce but kind at heart.

With good intentions, the well-meaning man seeks integration within his community, and to peacefully exist alongside others generally seeking communal development.

He's confident and trustworthy but can still be hurt if caught off guard, diligent and steady, rigorous and bold, but not full-on invincible.

Thought to potentially be a huge dickhole by people worried he'll seek absolute control, but more attuned to mutual cooperation and the democratic rights of the individual.

Not such a bad ideal to live up to if you ever consider tempestuous codes.

A cool old school traditional action film.

Modest and endearing.

Inherently wild.

Beau Travail

A group of dedicated soldiers is professionally assembled in Eastern Africa, and taught to efficiently train in the time honoured art of balanced routine.

The locals curiously regard them as they exercise within their lands, the Legion's regimented solemnity a modern spectacle deriving pathos. 

It seems somewhat innocent and harmless as they freely stick to their upbeat selves, and build a harmonious continuity within their sombre intense ranks. 

With no wars to occupy their time and a general desire to remain aloof, the offbeat focused isolated unit peacefully co-exists with the world around them.

Unfortunately, where many find peace there are still those who cultivate conflict, and the uptight fastidious sergeant finds himself bitterly consumed by jealousy.

A new recruit proves quite remarkable and effectively demonstrates natural talent, in the eyes of their commanding officer he has great potential for a soldiering future.

The sergeant can't rationally stand it and desperately seeks to halt his progress. 

Unable to mediate his contempt.

Or accept the calm endearing tranquility. 

Once again, the evocative Claire Denis crafts a multilayered sensual tale, with a small budget in a foreign land while dealing with potentially volatile subject matter (not often you see thought-provoking low budget independent army films).

Startling to see such a tender take on formidable concrete durable masculinity, emphasizing brotherhood and camaraderie from a mutually self-sacrificing reliable vision.

The consistent observations of the inquisitive locals add so much humanistic depth, as you lightheartedly think along with them, what are they doing there?, while peace envelopes the land.

It starts off with intermittent savvy and congenially blends several different scenes, realistically invigorating the tragic tale with inherent foreign spiralling multiplicity.

Details of the plot are cleverly interwoven to the point where it seems secondary like a distant vision, the conducive galvanizing merry imagery awe-strikingly dismissing imperial entanglements.

I was hoping the entire film would continue to progress in this dreamlike fashion, not that the principal narrative is dull or uneventful, 90 plus minutes of the former would have just been incredible.

Too bad so much grief has to pass before the concluding moments fashionably exemplify, a welcoming world not so timorous or severe presenting alternative manners of masculine expression.

Stentorian peace exotically exclaimed with celebratory festive inhibition.

Rare to see anyone make this point.

Especially with such ingenious visceral exhibition. 

The Thing from Another World

Finally watched the original film depicting John W. Campbell's story Who Goes There?, which is much more of a lighthearted romp than the chilling masterpiece hewn by John Carpenter. 

It's Science vs. The Military in 1951 and in The Thing from Another World the army reigns supreme, the resident scientists made to look like fools who can't reasonably understand the imminent danger.

In fact the scientists take great risks in the pursuit of knowledge to save the monster, who rebukes their heartfelt efforts with morose haughty intergalactic derision. 

They even have foreign accents and are much more internationally inclined, facets which latently upset the good old commandos who quickly take charge of the distressing scene.

The pursuit of knowledge is indeed not nearly as reckless as its dismissively portrayed in this film, which came out as ruthless McCarthyism was ignorantly spreading across the U.S.

The Thing is even organic in this version it comes from a far off vegetal world, where veggies evolved to become the dominant lifeform as humanoids did upon our own (although I'm starting to think bees are a higher form of life [they have wings]). 

In the film the military worries that the highly advanced commie vegetable from space, will eventually take over the entire planet and no doubt unleash ubiquitous environmentalism. 

The scientists look like mad unAmerican conspirators as they struggle to save the alien.

Imagine a time when this kind of thing proliferated.

Hopefully it never comes to pass again.

At least one scientist must be crazy in Who Goes There? since one of them loses it in The Thing (1982) as well, although his data makes hysterical sense considering how much more adaptive it is in Carpenter's film.

Whereas The Thing from Another World is happy-go-lucky sci-fi within which you'd never expect anything to go wrong, Carpenter's Thing is a chilling opus where it's tough to imagine anything going right.

If you watch monster movies throughout your life because they exist and you're sporadically curious, it's tough to find ones you want to watch again, since a lot of them just seek to make quick casholla.

But every once in a while visionary directors roguishly emerge to offer something different.

And take their time to craft memorable metastases. 

With alarming accuracy.

And emboldened vision.

*It looks like Carpenter was fun to work for. It seems like some of his casts really enjoyed working together when you watch his films. That kind of thing can add so much to an aesthetic, or ironically create a friendly dreamlike counterbalance to the mayhem. 

The Philadelphia Experiment

Probably best not to sign up when the army asks if you'd like to take part in a secret experiment, where they mention there may be potential side effects, and they aren't even offering that great a sum.

Jacob's Ladder and The X-Files make compelling cases for avoiding such initiatives anyways, the enthusiastic recruits permanently damaged after their courageous embrace of enigmatic science was forgotten.

The Philadelphia Experiment doesn't examine trial and error as it relates to medical research however, it's initially concerned with cloaking ships so the Axis can't detect them during World War II.

It's quite an elaborate set up the production impressive from a laboratory standpoint, so many lightbulbs and wires and connections that it seemed like a bona fide realistic test tube.

The special effects are classic '80s too indubitably impressive if you like that kind of thing, the transitionary phase from pioneering early sci-fi to the technological wonders we have today.

The experiment goes awry or the cloaking works too well you might say, the ship itself lost in temporal recesses two confused servicepersons transported to the '80s.

It's cool to imagine the electronic innovations of the early '80s as the height of technoendeavour, or to have been part of the audience intuitively revelling in the bewildered shock of the time displacement.

We still use one of the microwaves we bought at that time it's still in working order, although it takes awhile, knock on wood, hopefully it isn't slowly radioactively poisoning us as time goes by even if we rarely use it.

I don't know if I'm as blown away by time travel films that take place in the present, even if it happens to be around 40 years later, isn't the point to contemporize historical difference?

The Experiment still contains the classic startling moments when the different characters come to terms with their ahistorical authenticity, through the eyes of the time travellers and those they encounter alike, I'm a huge sucker for this kind of storyline.

Perhaps those old school computer graphics look as antiquated to today's youth as the monsters of '50s and '60s sci-fi did to me when I was younger, although some of those yesteryear vampire and Frankenstein films still seriously impress in this cynical day and age (horror not sci-fi I suppose).

Things are so tense politically at the moment, is it far too risky to make films where people travel to the future?

Will it seem like the ancient past?

AI ironically introducing the solution environmentalists seek.

Wavelength

An artist facing the void seeks reanimate resuscitation, and discovers a curious lass seeking to hold back observant recon.

The two enjoy spirited fledgling manoeuvres while invoking inquisitive complimentary frolic, before an eerie mystery bewilderingly emerges which leads to experimental enthused investigation.

Voices-in-trouble are being transmitted telepathically from a secret location, the sleuthing of which leads to uncouth jail-time at the hands of the unamused military.

Who have encountered an alien craft and clandestinely moved its survivors accordingly, unable to communicate with the touristic humanoids who've been placed in pandemic style lockdown.

It becomes apparent that whoever contacts them soon suffers biological entropy, their bodies radiating inhospitibility, although they are able to cure corresponding ailments.

The couple desperately seeks their freedom just as the operation is sternly locked down.

But not without having provided emancipatory leeway.

For those involved to romantically break free.

It's classic low-budget sci-fi complete with narration and a romantic hermit, the hidden base in Los Angeles no less, having striven for ironic concealment. 

Perhaps the less prominent filmmakers were indirectly drawing attention, to a movie-making militaristic plot to control hearts and minds through mass produced film.

What percentage indeed of the various budgets of the diverse film companies a' reckoning over yonder, are factually spent on valourizing conflict with sincere hardboiled exceeding lament?

The novel imaginative aliens therefore generate unheralded song, the orthodox clique ensuring rehabilitation with no choice but to dynastically schism. 

Alas look to the ingenious French and other robust agile continental visionaries, who celebrate the diversity of their tribes with harmonious distinct eclectic inclusion.

Continuing to accelerate and zag they seek cultivation of genius as well, to salute nothing universally in particular, at times without resolute agenda.

The telepathic artists within ye olde Wavelength help the aliens escape beyond categorical compunction.

Hewn so long ago.

Manifold viewpoints, multilateral trajectories. 

Foxtrot

And an exemplar was disseminated, wherein which individuals expressed themselves extemporaneously even though they had observed strict routines throughout much of their bourgeois lives, tradition and structure briefly withdrawing as overwhelming desires to alternatively communicate built up deep inside and triumphantly exhaled, a fluid gesture of harmless defiance joyously reverberating across uninhabited terrain, passing by unremarkably, the absurdity of his post and its accompanying limitless wastelands failing to generate correspondingly desolate emotions as underdeveloped independent curiosity refuses to acknowledge the austere, revellers brazen enough to pass by in good cheer suddenly transforming codes that had been youthfully displaced into bloodshed, paranoid precedents instantaneously shocking generally carefree lives, the error rapidly covered up thereafter, buried for archaeological posterity, denoted with novel graphic agency.

The drawing generating metaphorical comment.

As mourning subsides.

And love reemerges.

Making light of solemnities has sombre consequences for the denizens of Samuel Maoz's Foxtrot, as if the temptation to relax one's guard is as dangerous as it is emancipating.

The natural world countermands privileged influence within, as tensions between freedom and discipline maddeningly shock obliged quotidian necessities.

The commodification of ancient heirlooms disastrously curses the present, as tantalizing postmodern accessories addictively dominate the senses.

Extreme grief is benevolently replaced by joy before the utmost cruelty coincidentally descends.

Historical repercussions infinitely bewildering.

Combative contiguities.

Subjective cries.

The film excels at presenting free spirits tormented by regulations that must be upheld, accentuating the blasé to manifest torrential tears while cosmically suggesting there is no reasonable alternative.

The conjugal rapprochement which characterizes its concluding moments abound with blissful acquiescence.

Nevertheless.

As a couple audaciously expresses itself by sharing truthful thoughts.

What they still have rich in wonder.

Integrity, variability, mystery.

Adventure imaginatively narrativizing.

Mindfully.

After work finishes up.

G. I. Joe: Retaliation

Better than the first G.I. Joe film.

And a good episode of G.I. Joe.

Cobra's back and still tryin' to take over the world.

The Joes are betrayed and have to head to the underground for cover.

They're able to find this cover quite easily and confidently stroll around in broad daylight even though the American government, whom Cobra has infiltrated, is looking for them.

But like I said, it's a good episode of G.I. Joe, following a format which employs improbability as a cogent asset in order to conceal their recruitment tactics.

There is a clever scene which neutralizes attempts to analyze the film following the opening credits, wherein Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) are found playing militaristic video games, a scene whose immediacy implies that the film has been made in good fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Message received.

Other highlights include the best poppy condensation of a strategical debate I've seen in a while, which is simultaneously bland, comic, disconcerting and instructive, plus Roadblock and Duke consistently dissect their discussions while conversing.

Agents of Cobra do not.

Cobra's not hip to Web 2.0 applications.

Adam Reed is hands down the master of humorous observational conversational commentary.

Adam Reed did not write G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

And would not have ruined the affect by introducing a remark endemic to the Terminator series in the film's concluding moments.

In such moments, you synthesize your intertextual research into a franchise specific all-encompassing one-liner.

Ad infinitum.