Long Shot

A passionate writer (Seth Rogen as Fred Flarsky), dedicated to pursuing social justice, finds himself unemployed in protest, after a multinational swallows his resolve.

A close friend (O'Shea Jackson Jr. as Lance) sincerely sympathizes and soon they're out about town jocosely revelling.

Finding themselves at a decked out chandelier soirée, Fred notices his old babysitter, who's morphed into the U.S Secretary of State (Charlize Theron as Charlotte Field).

And as fate would have it, she remembers him, is looking for a new speech writer, isn't put off as he lambastes another guest (the owner of the multinational), nor after he engages in further awkward spectacle.

He joins her team, much to the annoyance of other team members, and must quickly adjust his independent style to something more suited to delicate black tie repartee.

He sort of does, although he eventually doesn't have to, as Charlotte falls for his charming rough edges, and the too craft an uncharacteristic bitterly critiqued political brew, less concerned with image and pork barrels, more attuned to environmental embyronics.

The result's like a Disney film written by a John Waters fan who watched too much Family Guy, love driving a highly unlikely scenario, the raunch gaseously scandalizing atmosphere.

But it's still too polished for its lascivious underpinnings, and even if what takes place is ideal, its biodiversity remains somewhat undernourished.

It seeks a less corrupt political sphere wherein which politicians can enact laws beyond the influence of the plutocratic lobby, but it doesn't present a complex narrative that cultivates alternative pastures and therefore fizzles when it should be flourishing, as if it's more concerned with making clever references and sleazy comments than developing a convincing plot, while relying on truest romantic love, alone, to justify its wild ambitions.

It doesn't need much, just a few more scenes explaining how a novel political approach could successfully lead to a less top heavy political spectrum, plus a couple more depicting Fred becoming more accustomed to political life, and more that profoundly explain how playing the maverick card could produce sustainable initiatives, by contradicting long established evidence-based mainstream convention.

But Long Shot is somewhat of a mainstream conventional film that prefers instinct to logic inasmuch as it celebrates action without thought, unconsciously arguing true love's enough indeed.

True love may indeed be enough, but Charlotte is still a remarkable woman, and if she had been given more remarkable lines and had made more remarkable arguments, Long Shot would have seemed more like the validation of a remarkable woman, than the ascension of an ethical man.

Politicians around the world do seem to be making careers for themselves based on instinct, however.

Perhaps traditional parties need to embrace populist bravado to reestablish less reckless international relations?

Bernie Sanders comes to mind.

With his genuine charismatic appeal.

Clara

Vigorous contemplation astronomically acclimated objectively focused on enigmatic night skies.

The loss of a loved one, the end of a marriage, caught up in one's work, cold obsession wears thin.

Pedagogically anyway, those are the kinds of unimaginative questions purposeless fools think up in bland appeals to flippant provocation, having nothing that drives them themselves they seek recognition in blasé slander, as they rigidly capsize then flounder away.

No matter.

Perhaps Dr. Isaac Bruno (Patrick J. Adams) did need a break, but his uninterrupted logical obsession does lead to prosperous discoveries.

With Clara (Troian Bellisario), an independent spirit emboldening itinerant fascination, having travelled the globe she applies to work with Dr. Bruno, bringing passion and impulse and style to their studies, cooly adopting romantic methods, warmly embracing emotions age old.

Imaginary numbers.

Heart.

Spawn of the universe interdimensionally abstracting to practically envision passage, spiritual transference incorporeally transmitting commensurate extraterrestrial caches, juxtaposed entities interpreting as one coyly generating crinkly bifrost, the bond of the inexplicable reciting interplanetary sun drenched dawns.

Sci-fi love, intergalactically conceptualized, resoundingly researched, indiscriminately developed.

This Clara, Akash Sherman's Clara, true synthesis of art and science, like a seashell or desert haze.

Posing questions with no reasonable response, intercessions padded feasible parlance, cool realistic bonsai that values stoic discipline, charmed cogent romance which denotes with precision.

With academically inclined composed characters well suited to dreamy wild cards, Clara contrasts teaching with research, the lab with the world at large, objective analysis with inspired intuition, and dismal grief with resilient hope.

Dr. Durant (Ennis Esmer) and Dr. Bruno's approaches to higher education complement each other well, and even though misfortune has ended Dr. Jenkins (Kristen Hager) and Dr. Bruno's marriage, they still maintain a professional relationship as time slowly goes by.

Alternative thinking and experimental readings lead to rational conclusions which reclassify ontological taxonomies.

I have no idea how to find them, or contact them, but there must be other lifeforms out there.

I don't know how much should be spent trying to find them.

But hopefully some's spent on dolphins, improbability.

The sea.

1991

An unanticipated spontaneous exotic academic excursion adventurously unravels in sarsaparillic miniature, lighthearted yet fascinating inchoate escapades, romantically acculturated with pioneered social pause, randomly convivializing spades, hearts, haze, clubbing not focused upon although zesty quaffs do saturate several scenes, Ricardo Trogi's 1991 playfully depicting spirited leisure studies in autodidactic swoon, as Jean-Carl Boucher (Ricardo Trogi) recalls familial legends, and mischievously departs for his ancestral patria.

Could Ireland have been worked in?

Yes, definitely, and I'm puzzled as to why the Emerald Isle, in its everlasting effervescent temperate ginger majesty, was left out, although perhaps a less circuitous focus on Italy and France was more apt, even if such evocations overlooked Europe's authentic heartland.

Jean-Carl proceeds through the unknown cultural wilderness, meeting spry eclectic denizens along the way, transported by train across sundry frontiers, regionally speaking, elastically compiling histoires robust and brittle.

In search of truest love.

Studiously awaiting in Italy.

Troji's funny, clever, charmingly observant sojourn overseas presents ambassadorial serendipity in rugged improvisational catalyst.

Mom (Sandrine Bisson) and dad (Claudio Colangelo) still adorably co-ordinate conjugal theatrics, and the aforementioned legends add a touch of outlandish dynamism.

A series of imaginative encounters between Troji and love interest Marie-Ève Bernard (Juliette Gosselin) are particularly appealing, like you're magnetically transported into mock-Antonioniesque dire pragmatism.

It'd be cool to see them crafted into a feature length emulsion (just make sure it's better than Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid [which I may have been too young for when I saw it {and probably has nothing to do with Italian cinema]).

Troji's gifts for creating cool relatable yet quirky characters are cheerfully pronounced as he showcases interpersonal invention by briskly interweaving lost, ambitious, established, curious, and defined souls.

I'd love to see him hit le Saguenay.

With some Tante Tricotante.

And a night out in Tadoussac.

*Not as good as 1987.

Maïna

Intertribal relations bellicosely deteriorate as a restless megalomaniac seeks control of his clan, the Nearly Wolves, the aftermath of his ambush of the Men of the Land of Ice leaving Maïna caught between Innu and Inuit worlds, wherein misunderstandings and revelations communally mingle, devastatingly enlightening in turn, chasing the wind, in the land without trees.

The unknown presents an invigorating sense of bewilderment as Maïna (Roseanne Supernault), daughter of the Nearly Wolves's Chief Mishtenapeu (Graham Greene), protecting young Nipki (Uapshkuss Thernish), must join a group of Inuit travellers on their voyage home, one of them, bold Natak (Ipellie Ootoova), known to Maïna through her dreams, a new language, new customs, new lands, viscerally vivifying, as she adventurously comes of age.

Natak and Maïna fall in love but challenges face their union as she acquaints her new neighbours with the traditions of the Innu.

At a critical moment, her continuing survival having been jeopardized, Nanook embodies the unknown's extreme malevolency, understanding and support being required to integratively overcome the hunger, and peacefully initiate the flowering of difference.

Maïna comprehensively blooms love's emotional omniscience, artfully blending the confrontational with the mesmerizing, navigating clasped distances, flourishingly mused.

Petulance and prejudice challenge its tumultuous tranquility, as Maïna demonstrates that she too can hunt, and Natak must balance divergence and docility.

Cinematography by Allen Smith.

Teddy Bear

A tough, trusting, reserved, youthful 38 year-old bodybuilder, unfamiliar with the feminine sex and generally unable to generate first contact, spontaneously departs to an undiscovered country, having no desire to insurrect a moral nemesis, or the wrath of dawn, where, too upright to cross the final frontier, he sticks to his game plan, hits the gym, and serendipitously discovers that for which he has been searching.

In Teddy Bear, the motion picture.

The film's a calm, patient, joyful, timorous study of a caring athlete, dedicated to his calling, possessing practically no knowledge of worldly affairs, coyly proceeding from one day to the next.

If you've no interest in celebrating a strong contemplative investigation of ageless dreams or oedipal blunders, you may find that Teddy Bear lacks the flexibility continuously recycled in many a phantasmagorical flick.

But if you desire to humbly enjoy a robust quotidien reflection which elevates the passive struggles of an underexplored muscular happenstance, or any of the other things I've already mentioned, it just might work out, with multiple rep potential, without making much of a stretch.