JFK

The level-playing field, inherent sportspersonship, in a democracy is change not necessitated by the inquisitive will of honest people?

When someone is elected whose outlook contradicts entrenched lacklustre routine, such contradiction embodies the emboldened principles upon which the nation was founded.

I'm not referring to a situation when someone seeks to rearrange the constitution itself, and make monumental adjustments which indubitably favour absolute power.

Democratic governments persevere because they aren't despotic.

If you think the suppression of despotism is in fact despotic, you need to reevaluate your political outlook, and perhaps study historical examples of various monstrous mechanistic despots.

It was indeed an unsympathetic government astutely equipped with monarchical pretensions, that led to general dismay within the American colonies, and the creation of a country unconcerned with kings.

The political system contains remarkable checks and balances designed to prevent the reassertion of autocratic discord.

But they rely on a sense of fair play.

Which the founding fathers took for granted.

According to Oliver Stone's JFK, President Kennedy wasn't interested in war with Vietnam, and was taking steps to move the country in a different direction, which likely led to his assassination.

He genuinely cared about and forthrightly sought a more peaceful world without violent conflict, a world less lucrative for the sale of weapons, as Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) resolutely points out.

I often call Biden Michael Moore's president when I listen to him speak at length, he's a genuine person of the people and obviously cares deeply about general fair play.

From a distance, it seems like the only way to get ahead in the U.S if you're not well off is to join the army, and hope you never have to fight somewhere without a legitimate ethical reason (fighting Nazis).

When confronting the startling statistics regarding gun violence in the U.S, I'm clearly surprised it's still so easy to buy a gun, so I asked myself, what kind of country do the people who sell all these weapons to their own people want to maintain?, and the answer is most disturbing, and passionately supported in many circles.

Weapons and violence, the assassination of presidents because they uphold alternative points of view, unravels the fair-minded fabric the founding fathers holistically created.

Is it that hard to work together to achieve productive common goals?

It works so well in so many countries. 

And has often worked in North America too.

Don't Look Up

Adam McKay's Don't Look Up picks up on a pesky political particular, the unfortunate despotic aspect of truth, as applied to commercial controversy.

As it's become plainly evident during the pandemic, at times truth does enter politics, void of cunning or incisive angles, just raw clear unimaginative data.

For the people willing to accept the truth value of the data, things remain rational and balanced, proceeding with impediments perhaps, but still reasonably and logically composed.

For those who doubt its legitimacy, or the well-meaning intent of the cultural guardians, the truth takes on a tyrannical aspect, however, and can effectively problematize polls and predictions as it honestly reveals frank shocking exposure.

The people in possession of the truth, in Don't Look Up's case two astronomers who discover a massive comet is going to crash into the Earth and destroy everything on the planet (Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy and Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky), may be somewhat confused when they attempt to share their findings, and discover a virtually impenetrable network of ridiculousness, wholeheartedly designed to fight off tyranny. 

You see, when people attempt to spread mass lies on an enormous scale the system usually works, and generates enough doubt and troubling dismay to prevent rampant mistruth from mendaciously enabling.

But what happens on the other end of the spectrum when something both serious and true genuinely emerges, and has to pass the elusive litmus which initially regards it as obnoxious madness?

The people in possession of the knowledge may not be media savvy, and may have difficulty with their newfound designations, like the scientists in Don't Look Up.

And as the media crushes their dreams and makes them appear like snake oil salespeople, it also crushes blind ambition seeking widespread banal influence.

It makes any effort to sincerely pursue anything seem dispiritingly grim (besides being a part of the media), and it's no wonder alternative websites have im/moderately matriculated. 

But I suppose most stories aren't adamantly concerned with doomsday, it's just a byproduct of the pandemic that can't help but transmit that aspect.

I thought Don't Look Up was a brilliant take on truth in media, or the commercial politics of truth, as applied to the less media savvy.

I'm wondering what people will think of it 50 years from now down the road.

It seems like it has a timeless quality.

Made by Netflix no less. 

Ace in the Hole

A versatile reporter, who's worked for the biggest papers in the U.S., finds himself writing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after having burned too many bridges.

He's still accustomed to glitz and glamour and has trouble settling into small town life, unimpressed with natural phenomena, he works hard but can't get used to it.

Sent out one day to cover a far off rattlesnake hunt, he picks up a scoop while attempting to gas up, which leads to a man immobilized deep within a mountain, and the human interest story he's been longing for.

Realizing what he's got and ready to milk it for all it's worth, he convinces the local sheriff that he can get him re-elected if he helps push the story just a little bit further.

So rather than rescuing the chap in 12 to 16 hours, an elaborate drill is employed with a 6 day timeline, and as the story blows up across America, concerned citizens flock to their locale.

But as Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) continues to write copy he finds himself starting to care for Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), as he suffers locked down below, and has harsh interactions with his wife (Jan Sterling as Lorraine) who wants to move back East as well.

New York comes calling and soon he's back up to a $1000 a week, but it becomes apparent that Leo's dying and he's the man directly responsible.

Conflicting attitudes polarizing soul and sensation dig contentious woebegone roots, as grim mortal reckonings shock aggrandizements, and Tatum suddenly considers morality.

The ensuing spectacle gaudily encourages accusations of the exaggerated, but seeing how ubiquitously Trump used to dominate headlines makes me question assumed hyperbole. 

Contemporary news certainly is rather drastic and seems catastrophically disposed, not that there isn't quite a lot to worry about or take note of or dismiss or applaud.

Years ago I had a thoughtful boss who told me he didn't watch or read the news, and I wondered if they were missing out by deciding to not stay in touch.

But as I age and the world becomes more volatile, sometimes it seems like their approach has merit, inasmuch as peace of mind is something to be desired, and more easily attained by ignoring revelation (there are so many disasters right now, including environmental, economic, and social/racial varieties, not to mention the plague [it's insane how depressing the news is]).

Ace in the Hole is a fascinating film whose message is enduring, reliable.

Where should the ethical line be drawn?

What happens to a world where there no longer is one?

Wrote this long before Biden won the election, around when the first wave hit in fact (edited today).

Hopefully a willingness to at least try and forge a consensus emerges. 

It's gotten so far out of hand.

*Point of clarification: I mean that a significant percentage of Americans seem to love sensation, and sensation was Trump's bread and butter. Therefore, it's not surprising that Chuck Tatum's able to generate sensation regarding his scoop in Ace in the Hole, even though at first it seems unrealistic.

Reversal of Fortune

Snap judgments based upon agitated reckonings lead to pejorative sensationalized repute in Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune.

How to make someone appear guilty without making it look like you're attempting to make someone appear guilty, if they are in fact not guilty?

If they are in fact not guilty, how do you convincingly make it look like someone has attempted to make them look guilty without looking as if they were attempting to make them look guilty, before cold judicial verdicts descend?

It's basic Columbo, the televisual and cinematic world worse off without a regular dose of Columbo, and its freewheeling composed articulate dishevelled discourse, perhaps channeled by Professor Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) and his team in this inclusion, which asks if maligned bourgeois sentiment has predetermined an aesthete's obituary?

It's certainly quite the team.

It's incredible how many people can come together to defend or prosecute, many of them working pro bono, out of devoted respect for the law.

Engrained malfeasance.

People in positions of power exploit that power since no one holds them to account, but then someone does, it seems obvious that they're guilty, and justice adjudicates, condemning the reckless individual.

But it's still quite the task, the required reading voluminously dissonant, to transform every link into a succinct gripping narrative no small feat albeit thrilling for a motivated legal team, in possession of the facts, and interpretive plausibility, expert testimony, meticulous mechanics, it must be like playing a stable integral role in a constantly shifting production, not improvised, still rehearsed, but unaware of specific counterarguments, the speculation part of the fun, bold jurisprudent research and development.

Reversal of Fortune takes place in such a frame as Claus von Bulow (Jeremy Irons) seeks legal counsel, he's been convicted once already, and his lawyer's none too sympathetic.

He takes the case though, assembles his team, and finds evidence which contradicts his assumptions.

Upon appeal, another round of judicial observation considers the alternative facts, and the second reading makes Claus seem as innocent as he was once thought definitively guilty, differing detailed composite accounts, instructive rhetorical consommé.

People observe thousands of minute details distilled into an accessible format that leads them to make claims which back up narrative threads.

Hoping there isn't some technical distortion.

While theatrically duelling in shades.

Official Secrets

Back to Coventry again and the question of whether or not there are instances where it's in a government's bests interest to mislead the public, in order to cut down on panic and/or mass hysteria.

Letting the Nazis know their enigma codes had been compromised would have likely delayed the end of World War II significantly, but it was still known that Coventry was to be bombed, and with that information hundreds of lives could have been saved.

Seems like you could have kept the information on the down low and simultaneously achieved both objectives, the only serious hindrance being spies, or a lack of knowledge of whom to trust.

Why the ambitious stubbornly think the freewheeling are prone to mass hysterics as opposed to order and discipline (when kept fully informed) is a most unfortunate prejudice, and even though twitter and social media quickly shoot down clandestine pretensions, such pretensions still calculate with austere breadth, exposed hypocrisy notwithstanding.

This period of time has become frighteningly ludicrous inasmuch as clearly exposed political plots move forward regardless of blatant corruption, the character of the people who expose them awaiting ruin, large portions of the public choosing to applaud the plots regardless.

It's like we live in the age where the public is incredibly well informed but large swaths prefer non-traditional sources to orthodox journalism, and as the postmodernists continue to deconstruct sincerity and truth, the charlatans amass fortunes adhering to Bacon's negative instance, and the left's doctrinal relative truth.

An age of sensation, where anyone can run a story online, the irony, and many don't critically evaluate what they're reading, or even care when it's obviously false.

Fake news is like alcoholism, actual fake news, not The New York Times or The Globe and Mail or The Guardian.

You know you shouldn't have another drink, you know the same misfortunes await if you do, but after you have that drink, and deal with those very same misfortunes the next day, the only way to make the repercussions go away is to believe that one more drink won't hurt, or if I keep reading this yahoo some day his or her lies will make sense.

I still spend a lot of time reading traditional news outlets who hire people who function according to a code that upholds honesty and integrity.

Sometimes I think I'm out of touch.

Until I see Sanders beat Trump in the latest poll!

And the Brits stickin' it to Boris Johnson.

I actually saw the poll on Instagram, posted by Team Sanders. The mainstream news isn't that hip to Sanders yet.

Sanders!

If aliens existed and we had definitive proof I'd let the public know. I prefer to see what happens and trust in general reasonability.

If all the data demonstrated that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, as it does, and something needs to be done to cool things down, I'd let people know and implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if it would take 200 years to feel their effects.

In Official Secrets, true story, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) discovers that government officials in Britain are intentionally misleading the public to gain support for the Second Iraq War, and she boldly lets the people know.

Takes a lot of flack in the aftermath.

But totally does what needs to be done.

The film's direct, factually predisposed, but still presents a tale of heroism as noteworthy as it is endearing.

Characters are criticized within for being anti-war, as if such a viewpoint is undesirable.

I always thought it was the other way around.

But I'll never work for the secret service.

Phew.

Could you imagine?

Unarmed Man

Harold Jackson III's independent Unarmed Man presents an impassioned interview taking place after a man was killed.

Shot dead even though he was unarmed by a trigger happy policeperson, all too willing to shoot first, none too prone to asking questions.

At least not to African Americans.

He has to give a statement, provide routine answers, in the fatal aftermath, and he's sincerely eager to participate, as long as the script is strictly followed.

But his interrogator's in search of truth, and doesn't play things by the book, asking tough questions that need to be asked, even after he's sharply reprimanded.

The film's fictional content is saturated with verisimilitude, its situations and legal ease striking chords all too familiar.

When does it end?

It happens so often.

Why are unarmed African Americans shot multiple times so often, even though they've done nothing wrong?

And why are the offending policepersons soon back to work without consequence or repercussion, how can they possibly be protecting and serving the black citizens upon their beat?

The racist system's as revolting as the answers to those questions, so many innocent lives cut short, so much potential recklessly shot down.

But Jackson's film doesn't simply preach, it provides a well-rounded argument. Its strength lies in its investigation of alternatives, the policeperson's point of view, which is refuted with upstanding logic.

Unarmed Man lays it out, explains why some policepeople are trigger happy, the stresses associated with their jobs, the fears such stresses naturally produce.

I've often thought about what it must be like to work full-time as a policeperson in a neighbourhood overwhelmed with crime, whether it's white, black, asian, or first nation, and it must be extremely difficult to do so day-in and day-out, especially when your colleagues lose their lives, having made the greatest sacrifice in the line of duty.

But policepersons still need to be trained to distinguish between different scenarios, one obviously threatening (a robbery, a drug bust, domestic violence, gang conflicts), another relatively textbook (pulling cars over for no reason).

If they can't distinguish between these scenarios they should be transferred to less demanding jurisdictions, or perhaps find work elsewhere.

Black people shouldn't have to put their hands on the steering wheel and make painfully slow movements if asked to show something every time they're pulled over.

But it seems like that's what they have to do to objectively avoid being shot.

Since it's clear that policepersons target black Americans.

Time and time again.

Unarmed Man's argument is well worth seeing and passionately brought to life by Shaun Woodland (Aaron Williamson) and Danny Gavigan (Greg Yelich).

Definitely tough subject matter.

Which will hopefully seem antiquated one day.

The Wife

The world's rather oddly constructed, some of its pretensions anyways, the idea that female writers can't sell their work for instance, which I imagine was much more prevalent 50 years ago, Foucauldian analysis pending.

The world certainly seems like a much more open place for men, and when you think of the thousands of psychological, financial, political, and ethical barriers preventing women from expressing themselves, the gross injustice of it all makes you wonder why people who are supposed to be fearless are so utterly afraid of a little femininity?

Women make good storytellers, are capable of doing anything men can do really, and cultural codes that prevent them from selling their work under their own name therefore don't make much sense, especially since they have so many compelling stories to share.

Longer explanation in a book some day.

I don't like everything I read or watch or listen to that's written by women, I don't like everything I read or watch or listen to that's written by men, I didn't realize you were supposed to prefer the one that matched your gender when I was really young, and was severely reprimanded, still am I suppose, but since I live in a theoretically free country I should be free to pick and choose who I like, even in my forties, as long as they aren't spreading hate intended to curtail freedoms, and I don't see it as a feminine and masculine artistic continuum, but rather one composed of stories I like and others which I don't.

I'm much more forgiving with films.

If I wrote about music or books I imagine people would criticize me for being too harsh instead of enjoying what I do.

In The Wife we find a literary married couple who's been given the Nobel Prize for literature even though only one of them is being recognized.

Wife Joan Castleman's (Glenn Close) painstaking imaginative endeavours are hailed for their genius, and husband Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) is given all the credit.

He's a bit of a brute, living a life of freedom and ease that's absolutely dependent on his wife's devotion, and rather than reciprocating her heartfelt sacrifice he consumes countless luxuries and never stops womanizing.

The golden ticket.

You'd think that if you had the golden ticket you wouldn't openly mock its charitable foundations or colonize its endemic struggle.

You'd think you'd respect it at least, especially if its purchase had nothing to do with you.

Value it.

Not the case though in The Wife, as Joe recklessly gorges at the trough (things become more complicated as a mischievous biographer [Christian Slater as Nathaniel Bone] inquisitively stirs things up).

The film examines a fed up spouse's desire to be recognized for her brilliance in a patriarchal world prone to overlook essential feminine contributions.

It's quite direct for a movie focused on award winning literature, although the point it makes shines more brightly since it isn't buried beneath sundry literary filmic devices.

The unacknowledged heroine, the burly bumptious brute.

Like he had no leg to stand on so he went out and bought stilts.

He doesn't even consider sharing it.

After so so many years.

The Post

Legal complications threaten the existence of The Washington Post after they publish government documents concerning executive American lies relating to the war in Vietnam, and the ways in which the unsuspecting public was scandalously misled about its necessity, in Steven Spielberg's The Post, wherein which the truth is jurisprudently vindicated.

A bold conscientious writer risks everything to photocopy and transmit the documents to the press, hiding out in a nondescript hotel room as the information first hits The New York Times.

The Post, also in the business of selling newspapers, 😉, is caught off guard without a competitive headline, and immediately seeks the clandestine source while Nixon's administration litigiously responds.

But its owner has recently taken the initial steps of transforming her paper into a public company, and controversial eruptions misclassified as shady dealings could seriously jeopardize the prosperity of its future (Meryl Streep as Kay Graham).

Her longtime and trusted friend Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) manages The Post's daily outputs, however, and is dead set against letting those who started a war, even though they knew it was outrageously unconscionable, unlike fighting back in World War II for instance, off the public hook.

Thus, you have ethics, the correct move in this situation obviously holding the government to account for its domestic and international abuses, versus economics, or the possibility that making the correct move could result in both jail time and the loss of an historic voice, an historic newspaper, omnipresent politics overshadowed by the courageous stand.

Debates abound as to what course should be taken, and multiple opposing viewpoints passionately have their say.

Mrs. Graham is haunted by her patriarchal conditioning and the misogynistic paternalism that has dominated most of her life.

But it's still her decision to make, the bold reckoning resting on her magnanimous shoulders, and wisdom is applied when she makes it, bold risk in the extreme, altruistically disseminated.

The Post's a good film, a dynamic multifaceted script introducing and diversifying sundry distinct personalities as they lucidly dispute big picture questions within scant pressurized time constraints, with the interests of encouraging a more peaceful world, the freedom of the press, and more mature public debate.

The debates are convincing, differences and alternatives characteristically narrativized, determined brash eloquent strengths qualified with reasonable compunction, professionalism, journalism, prison, and friendship, perforating the discussions with apt interrogative logic.

A bit cheesy at times, but I think that's just how Spielberg brilliantly crafts intense complex potentially boring films that can be thoroughly enjoyed by adolescents and adults alike.

With Bob Odenkirk (Ben Bagdikian) and David Cross (Howard Simons).

Reading the news online is convenient but definitely not the same as sitting back with a paper.

Sometimes with online news it's like you have to know what to search for, regardless of whether or not it exists.

With the physical paper you can move from page to page and find compelling articles you never knew you were searching for, as easily as if you're browsing at Indigo or the local independent bookstore.

Come to think of it.

Bridge of Spies

I remember reading a comic about Pink Floyd in my youth to learn more about the band.

It was fun and informative and one of its frames still sticks out in my mind.

It concerned the creation of The Final Cut and depicted David Gilmour exclaiming something like, "most of these songs were cut from The Wall."

Harsh times.

The band only ever reunited for one show.

Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies made me think of that moment due to its similarities to Lincoln.

Similar themes, a similar pursuit of justice, of truth, a principled man upholding fundamental rights amidst an onslaught of professional and cultural criticism, doing what's right, consequences notwithstanding.

But it's a pale comparison of Lincoln, whose robust multidimensional political intrigues made me recommend it for best picture in 2013.

To its credit, Bridge of Spies does stick to a particular aesthetic throughout, jurisprudently maintaining constitutional continuity, it's just that this aesthetic, no doubt cherished in my youth, is overflowing with trite sentimentality.

You know exactly what you're supposed to think and feel in every scene.

It's like Lincoln focuses directly on the American community with a large cast and myriad staggering displacements, while Bridge of Spies clandestinely curates a lawyer's objective search for counterintuitive yet ideal vindications of the American individual, in a blunt straightforward concrete crucible.

No bells and whistles here, just a basic introduction to American liberty provokingly stylized for today's film loving youth.

It does advocate for a remarkably logical and upright attitude concerning the sociocultural politics of espionage.

I can't behind this one though.

Way too formulaic.

True Story

The truth pounds and pontificates, asserting its virtue like harvested sunlit ascension, but politics and the law prevaricate in turn, truth remaining their raison d'être, placated as a matter of posture, taste, illusion.

Fascination.

The truth becomes more variable as time passes, and you continue to read, and it slowly becomes apparent that there's at least a critical correspondence between the truth and what actually happened, depending on the subjects involved, left wing truth, right wing truth, and their relationships to profit and manipulation.

If the right's too powerful there's no worker truth, if the left's too powerful there's no management truth, the bourgeois bullseye.

Rupert Goold's True Story truthfully examines truth from truthful perspectives, a journalist confusing factual writing with fictive, a murderer seeking to innocently sway.

A librarian involved in the action.

It perspires as it illustrates the truthful, manipulative, and profitable dynamics of legalistic sanities by having the journalist (Jonah Hill as Michael Finkel) meet with the suspect (James Franco as Christian Longo) to battle cloaked blistered scripts.

Jill Barker (Felicity Jones) has the best speech.

Something's missing from the middle of the film, at first Hill and Franco's interactions provocatively move things along, but without anything to disrupt their discussions for a time, an image, an armadillo, bark, the film sags, until the disruptions return.

Also intermingling credibility, reputation, and popularity, True Story still sombrely reflects on the forbidden, stark carnal peculiarities, vivacious choral runes.

Great companion film for While We're Young, insofar as both films adopt different attitudes regarding the expression of truth, one celebrating charisma, the other delegating consequences.

Concerns.

While We're Young

Predictable contained pleasant enough maturity is injected with spontaneous jubilance as two couples at different stages in their lives start chillin' in Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, the art of documentary filmmaking bringing them together, one filmmaker trying to launch his career, another having been interminably editing and collecting new footage for a decade, cradling Borg perfection, creating an abstruse tome.

In search of truth.

The truth isn't necessarily fun, however, and the presence of youth rejuvenates struggling Josh (Ben Stiller), although a well groomed stubborn and proud persona still obfuscates, his outlook rigid and exacting, unable to incorporate the new.

When it becomes clear that Jamie (Adam Driver) isn't a student looking for a mentor, but a competitive force trying to gain access to Josh's more successful father-in-law (Charles Grodin[!] as Leslie Breitbart), the reclassification intensifies.

Hysterically.

Ideas.

Different Approaches.

What's going to work?

In terms of diligently orchestrating a text that's both fun and informative for a variety of different audiences anyways.

Which is what Noah Baumbach has done, again, with While We're Young, love his films, he diversifies this text with multiple characters playfully representing different sociodemographic domains, uses the differentiations to mischievously yet instructively comment on relationships, ethics, and art, the good sides, problems, making manipulation seem fun, just in time for a classic Ben Stiller freak out.

It's not just the couples who are contrasted with one another, but each couple pluralizes a dynamic of their own, within which each partner complements while contradicting the other.

As the streams cross.

Naomi Watts impresses again, don't see her in anything for years, then she shows up in 3 exceptionally cool films back-to-back-to-back.

Outstanding.

Gone Girl

Just what goes into sustaining a successful marriage, what is that secret critical ingredient for ensuring the preeminence of your conjugal bliss?

Mad blind overwhelming desire may wear off, especially if the couple in question doesn't role play or at least dress-up from time to time, possibly as their favourite Star Trek character, and if the initial hard-pounding insatiable craze dissipates, the arduous work necessary to recapture its incandescence sets in, both participants required to reimagine its stringency, dedication and commitment, adhered to as pluralizing factors.

In David Fincher's Gone Girl, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) refuses to abide by such an adherence, succumbing to adulterous lechery, slowly destroying the love of his spirited partner.

Mistake.

Or mistakes, seeing how he's been ignoring her for years while living a life of sloth off her trust fund, after having moved from New York City (where he worked as a writer) to Missouri, much to wife Amy's (Rosamund Pike) dismay.

He's a jerk, he blames it on her, total jackass.

But he has no idea that Amy's pure psycho.

The film's divided into two halves, one focusing on Nick as he comes to terms with his inextricable predicament, the other which brings Amy into the mix, focusing on her troubles on the road, until a crucial accidental resurgence, of the romantic love which at one point defined her.

Kierkegaard style.

At first I thought the introduction of Amy was an unfortunate twist.

I figured the film would slowly continue to suffocate lacklustre Nick, his tension inimically increasing, a high-wired harrowing stench, accentuating paranoid asphyxia.

Amy's introduction eliminates this tension, replacing it with alternative constraints which infernalize her psychotic scenario, which is rather excessive, considering that she could have just left him.

But her passion demands vengeance, vengeance which she seeks eruditely, revelling in the media's saccharine sensationalization, before rediscovering that lost kernel of youth.

There's a great sequence where she's robbed after letting her guard down, the sequence diversifying the film's wedded hysteria by injecting minor seemingly ineffectual characters, who become common denominators in the subsequent action.

Gone Girl has plenty of variability, strong major and minor characters, ridiculous yet plausible logistics, competing disastrous degenerations, polarities within polarities, a sympathetic coach, an amorphous yet easy-to-follow blend of media, family, legality, and law enforcement, Proust is mentioned twice (in uncomplimentary fashions however), desperate strategic planning, and a non-traditional take on victimization.

The ending's solid, a bizarre reversal of what's-to-be-expected, the film's myriad depressions, sentimentally sanctified.

Quite dark.

Quite good.

Not my favourite David Fincher film, but you still see why he's one of America's best.

Uvanga

A single mother and her son travel from Montréal to Igloolik, Nunavut, after the passing of his father, so that young Tomas (Lukasi Forrest) can meet said father's extended family for the first time.

The midnight sun illuminates their visit as familial expansiveness and jealous grudges acquaint him with a different set of cultural codes.

He's curious and chill, open-minded and active, these factors enabling a productive immersion in the North's différence, supportively kindled by his loving relatives.

And problematized by hostile trouble makers.

Uvanga frankly blends the harsh with the heartwarming, synthesizing the fearful and the awestruck in a diverse communal intergenerational resiliency.

Tomas's father's death is a subject of controversy.

His mom's (Marianne Farley as Anna) decision to leave is questioned.

Her return instigates adversarial purges.

A curative step, for the advancement of healing.

At first, I thought the scenes were passing-by too quickly, but this technique allows Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu to densely pack their multifaceted narrative with a varied cast from different walks of life, motivations and realities resultantly receiving accentuated depth, thereby directly rebuking any claims of oversimplification.

Situating a mother's grief and a son's acculturations within a lively mosaic of piquant reach.

To-the-point easy to comprehend consistently sharp conversation.

That's not so easy to pull off.

Jagten (The Hunt)

An asphyxiating altercating articulation of innocence incrementally fuels fratricidal flames until an upright loving gregarious educator's life lies holistically in ruin.

Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.

The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.

Nowhere to go.

No reason to run.

The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.

Difficult and controversial subject matter.

A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.

And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.

Blackbird

Examining the abysmal side of small town teenage individuality, as the newer kid, a goth stranger from the city who can't adjust to hushing up, hunting, and playing hockey, falls for a girl who likes him but also makes sure to attend every game.

Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.

Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.

Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).

The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.

But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.

It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.

It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.

And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.

He's just a kid.

You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.

In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.

Disturbing, demented, dissonance.

A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.

Kret (La Dette)

Familial misfortunes beget treacherous tenements whose paranoid genuflections produce pernicious pensions.

The issue of guilt permeates a media sensation whose adherence to the sacred threatens the individual liberties it upholds.

Key players in a pivotal Polish event scramble to defend their prevarications.

And trust is brought to the fore as Rafael Lewandowski thoroughly upends what it means to syndicate.

The film keeps a level head.

Life goes on.

Appointments are kept. Business is transacted. Most friendships remain warm and friendly. Social value appreciates.

Kret's (La Dette's) lack of emotion represents both its greatest strength and most serious weakness as its logic reaches ascetic heights while its emotional depth is stiffly squandered.

Like legal spirituality.