The Last Witch Hunter

Well versed in obligatory pyrotechnics, unerringly battling the forces of evil, Kaulder (Vin Diesel) middle-agedly sharpens his blades, to once again confront an ancient monstrosity.

Who condemned him to immortality.

Unacknowledged eternal pain.

Aided in his endurance by a vigilant religious order, he balances the supernatural while they chronicle his dispassionate deeds.

Beknownst to their principal antagonists.

Whose disrespectful taunting unleashes a visceral tirade.

Imposition.

The Last Witch Hunter seemed more like a television pilot than the first in a series of films, its quotidian spirituality (sparse character development fraught with mundane interpersonal relations) and lacklustre transcendencies (we're supposed to feel threatened by the return of the witch queen [Julie Engelbrecht] but the methods used to combat her are much too conveniently countered [it's easy to take her down]) making a better fit for the televisual realm (these issues would be addressed in subsequent episodes), in my bland and indolent opinion.

Its structure makes a coy comment on threats however, Kaulder having trouble defeating fierce Warlock Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) at first, then easily disposing of him as the witch queen regenerates, the increased level of competition functioning as a catalyst for Kaulder whose skills instinctually augment to face the more potent foe.

It could be a great television show, who knows, I usually just watch films these days, and Star Trek in winter.

I go to the cinema so often that watching films on a television or computer screen regardless of size makes them seem less fascinating.

Much better to see films in theatres.

Disappointed by The Last Witch Hunter.

Crimson Peak

I think Crimson Peak was meant to be funny, to be a dis/possessed take on an old style of filmmaking that used to relish in its mediocrity before succumbing to mass alterations in taste.

If this is the case, I didn't get it, and although it might have been paying tribute to a bygone era of gaudy enterprise, it doesn't change the fact that this film suppresses.

It's hard to write that, I usually love Guillermo del Toro's films, larger than life macabre matriculations fluidly dictating realities of the fantastical.

Crimson Peak's production design is on par with his earlier work but the story and its associated devices are uniformly unexceptional and consistently dull.

It seems to be taking itself seriously throughout, that's its greatest shortcoming.

And the intermittent bursts of graphic violence taken out on historical paradigms, the stricken aristocrat avenging herself on the rise of the bourgeoise for instance, seem out of place in a horror film that's so resoundingly not scary.

If it had seemed comic, like it was seriously making fun of itself, it may have corrosively triumphed.

It didn't seem that way to be me though, not, not, at all.

Jessica Chastain (Lucille Sharpe) does put in a great performance however.

She's got talent, and commands every scene she's in.

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.

Ville-Marie

Time, working, family, accidents, surprises, routines, love.

An emotion sustained for months or a lifetime, regardless passionate rapture eternally embraced, questioned, appealed to, reevaluated, censored, longed for by many, cursed by a few.

Guy Édoin's Ville-Marie intertwines several lives to examine love professionally, from occupational perspectives, working love into the working day, as it follows two mothers working in amorous domains.

Proust's madeleine can be confusing as you're sitting at work doing some everyday task that seems to have nothing to do with anything you've ever done, before you're then suddenly flooded with long forgotten memories.

The intensity of these memories can throw you off for a second or two as you readjust to whatever it is you happen to be doing, considerations of the madeleine then complicating things further, before you refocus, and plunge back within.

There's no time to dissect the correlation.

No time to illuminate the emotion.

You can come back to it later after the moment has passed if you have an inkling to do so, after which point the resonant intensity will have decreased, and you may have to rely on meditation to recover it.

It's this frame that I externally apply to Sophie Bernard (Monica Bellucci) and Marie Santerre (Pascale Bussières) as I consider their struggles with love, both having estranged relationships with their sons, both competent professionals haunted by their family lives.

Their predetermined roles.

Ville-Marie isn't that simple, rather, it's an intricate delicate yet harsh illustration of the devastating affects of unexpected consciousness altering collisions.

It isn't really delicate or harsh but seemed to be surreally moving back and forth within a continuum established between these qualifications, or perhaps within a spherical relation with love forging the z-axis, professionalism, relationships, family, honesty, and trust stylizing the encompassing bulk material.

The ponderous weight.

Dreamlike yet relatable, Ville-Marie maturely investigates unpronounced social phenomenons, tragically exemplifying the confines of material existence.

Caught within its relational void lie several struggling characters, unconsciously searching for meaning, madeleines within madeleines, awoken by shocking extremities.

With hints of Mulholland Drive.

Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre

It comes down to one man, his independence in jeopardy, democracy in motion, the deciding vote, will Canada or will Canada not go to war?, the Conservatives pro, the Liberals contra, local economic interests seeing opportunities both lush and lucrative, employment, outsiders, vehemently upholding ethical curricula, the pressure intensifying, he seems unconcerned.

Steve Guibord (Patrick Huard) that is, independent MP for a federal riding in Northern Québec, suddenly thrust into the limelight, suddenly given supreme authority.

It's a lighthearted comedy, Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre, heartwarmingly dealing with extraordinarily complex political issues with down home country charm, issues such as Aboriginal Rights, workers rights, big d Democracy, intergovernmental relations, ethical reporting, international sensations, war, and protesting, to name a few.

Haitian born Souverain (Irdens Exantus) endearingly humanizes these factors in an erudite salute to political philosophy.

Seriously contrasting Ego Trip's Sammy.

Obviously many of these issues are quite touchy, and they're momentarily resolved somewhat achingly, but the film does skilfully keep things local, perhaps accidentally addressing predetermined criticisms, by remaining blissfully aware.

Politically aware.

The geopolitics of the proposed war aren't really discussed, the in-depth analysis of war's impact out maneuvered by the prospects of economic growth, unfairly depicted protesters from Winnipeg failing to outwit, until Guibord's daughter's (Clémence Dufresne-Deslières as Lune) frustrated pleas begin to register.

I do find that many people I know are politically aware, but politics is a multidimensional continuum, especially in Québec where the dynamic is much more intense, and when you have a plethora of parties each advocating to specifically yet generally define political awareness, the concept sort of dematerializes, even if it's highly abstract to begin with.

Focus. Remain focused.

It's not that you can't expect an awareness of geopolitical agitations to be found in the North, but you can expect such realities to hold less weight than putting food on the table, on occasion, especially if a mine closes, government subsidies dry up, or tensions increase due to conflicting resource management agendas.

Guibord recognizes this, and playfully uses it to its advantage.

It's not just like that in the North.

But apart from its schmaltzy meandering, I really loved watching Guibord, being a part of the audience.

I didn't get some of the jokes, and didn't really like it, but, and the same thing happened while I was watching Ego Trip, the audience loved it and did get the jokes, and from their friendly laughter I found proof, more proof, that Québec really does have its own vibrant film industry, where citizens do really take their home-on-the-range domestic films seriously, a living breathing cultural conviviality, something that's missing from English Canada.

I haven't said that for years.

Did the Liberal party fund this film behind the scenes?

Questions.

*Who came up with the English title? Lame.

The Walk

The ultimate performance, unannounced and unanticipated, sheer indubitable factualized vision, confidently clinging to an irrepressible irresistibility, lights, camera, action, essential timing delicately stretched, sensational spotlights, a breathtaking parlay.

With the unknown.

The exponential.

High-wire walking between the twin towers.

Nitroglycerin.

At the break of dawn.

Again, a team, symphonic accomplices, taking great risks to accomplish the legendary, photographic amorous mathematical mingling, caught up in the surge, improvised precise romantics.

Hijinks.

It's an entertaining performance, The Walk, its subject matter providing inspirational added value, tenderly heightening taut peculiarities, the underground's apex, transcending on cue.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Philippe Petit) holds it together.

He exuberantly functions as both starving artist and master of ceremonies to conjure an athletic tribute to will and determination, like you're seated in the front row of a stealth big top, ideal showpersonship, nimbly navigating in stride.

In English and French.

Walking the line, North to South, back again, wild card or integral force?

You decide.

Although The Walk isn't exactly cultivating fallow artistic ground, it's still permeated by intense awe inspiring wonder, like gelatin or spontaneous friendship, swaying and blowing with the breeze.

It seems like Zemeckis was genuinely concerned with fascinatingly presenting a down to earth yet wily crowd pleasing sentiment, and with the cast and crew energetically on board, and the climax pressurizing the audacious, I found little to critique about this film, caught between two worlds, a Parisian New Yorker's lexicon.

Everest

A team assembled, leaders guiding both veterans and new recruits, with goals of ascension, summits, their lives held in trust, clutching the ropes, struggling with shock, slowly and steadily moving one foot forwards, circulatory stamina, keeling, as a storm sets in.

It's sometimes but not often the case that strictly adhering to every rule at all times doesn't encourage smooth workflows in the civilian domain, in work-a-day realms where your life isn't directly threatened, but Baltasar Kormákur's Everest warns that when engaged in high stakes adventuring, adhering to the rules is a best practice at all times.

Years of successfully leading the bold up Mount Everest have left both Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) feeling invincible, and although steps are taken to ensure health and safety, crucial factors are ignored, for which they pay a strict penalty.

One heart has grown too big.

Another simply thinks he can do anything.

Everest succeeds as a majestic unpretentious accessible quest, relying on will and determination to motivate its operandi, the rationality of the insurmountable, brashly grappling with its cause.

I was worried that it would unreel like a horror film, the mountain claiming its victims one by one, due to the ways in which it introduced most of its characters, but it isn't like that at all, the storm rather menacing the group as one.

As nature formidably contests, there's a sense of incomparable awe.

A force too omnipresent to dread.

Inspiring images of climate change.

Cinematography by Salvatore Totino.

Sicario

Revenge.

Obsession.

Law.

Order.

The big picture, international intrigue, drugs smuggled in from Mexico to the United States, 20% of the American population consuming them while the profits fuel domestic violence south of the border, the number of sequestered kingpins having expanded in recent decades, too many to control, too deadly to ignore.

Stats and info provided by Sicario.

The film indirectly comments on ISIL, on Saddam Hussein, the theory that he was the strongperson who kept the extremists in check, who maintained Iraqi order regardless of his methods, the vacuum created after his removal having led to ISIL, who is currently seeking to control much more than Kuwait.

Plutocratic blunders.

It's the same thing in Sicario, the Americans having had more success monitoring/controlling the drug trade when there was only one kingping narcotically nesting, according to the film, a multidimensional marketplace full of alluring alternatives working well for the sale of computers or jeans, but not for the trafficking of drugs.

Wolves eating wolves.

Victims menaced and menacing.

Sicario fictionalizes tough decisions, capital gains, as Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) seeks to assassinate a leading man, and Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) idealistically monitors his actions, the masculine and the feminine conflicting thereby.

A Mexican policeperson, a father, enters the narrative to ask the question "do Alejandro's methods justify his results, do his means justify his ends"?, the violent violently infernalizing social spheres, do as you're told or you'll never grow old, dig in deep and try to exist, extreme unlicensed ego, upheld by any means necessary.

No exceptions.

No limits.

No humour.

Behind the scenes kings and queens.

À la carte.

I liked the film; thought that it could have been more menacing.

Shades of Zero Dark Thirty. 

Trainwreck

Trainwreck provides an unconcerned look at players coming off the bench, of accompaniments, of value-added information.

The overt narrative kept losing me.

But throughout the film there are a remarkable number of scenes that suddenly pop-up and add unpretentious inappropriate callous cheeky depth, again and again, scenes which break through the tedium and nonchalantly confide, like writer Amy Schumer was aware that one component of a bipartisan entity (a relationship) sometimes finds romantic comedies unfulfilling, and cleverly came up with ways to keep them playfully amused.

Excalibur.

Enter LeBron James, who I thought performed well enough, commenting on this and that while exercising a pleasantly absurd frugality.

Brainstorming ideas for new articles at the office offers brief insights into minimalistic discourses of the hilarious.

Check out Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei.

Dianna's (Tilda Swinton) blunt obstinance proves fertile, like an egg pickled in stolichnaya.

And it's like these subtle snarky distractions are slowly building to a fever pitch, in the form of a well-played quasi-intervention, Matthew Broderick, LeBron, Chris Evert, and Marv Albert sitting in, expressing their interest while coveting the genuine, unexpected and well executed, a welcome late inning strike.

Reminiscent of Rance Mulliniks.

Asteroids.

Black Mass

Deadly and daunting, impenitent punishment, organized crime teamed up with the F.B.I., seduce the sociopath and secure the judgment, the incarcerations, the quid pro quo legitimizing his wrath, a potentially greater threat emerging in the flames, consolidating, stifling and murdering away, paranoid, wild and wrenching, James 'Whitey' Bulger (Johnny Depp) and John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), kids from the hood, severe yet sloppy.

Lavish lesions.

Like I, Claudius's Tiberius, when the restraints are removed, Bulger becomes increasingly morose, as Connelly begins to think he's an immaculate golden boy, beyond the reach of bureaucratic suspicions.

Earlier on Bulger's more like a loveable gangster, brutal yet principled, a caring family man.

Depp's performance is brilliant, I don't recall him ever playing a similar character, redefining himself after decades of invention, a salute to dynamic vision, to exotic escapades.

Keeping things local.

Black Mass works, simultaneously building tensions both above and under ground.

Loyalty tragically begets oblivion, living the high life neutralizing survival instincts.

Bulger's insanity malevolently menaces over steaks at Connolly's during one potentially enduring sequence, as he toys with the unsuspecting John Morris (David Harbour), and indirectly acknowledges Marianne Connolly's (Julianne Nicholson) foreshadowed contempt.

Bulger's brother is a senator (Benedict Cumberbatch as Billy Bulger) and the fallout of having a criminal brother is oddly overlooked until the end.

You occasionally see Bulger working or discussing his business but his organization still never seems like it's growing, there aren't any scenes that show him managing a dozen or so people for instance, but we know it has grown because he moves into gambling and buys weapons for the I.R.A.

Perhaps the idea was to make him seem small throughout regardless, thereby formally critiquing his actions.

Life and death, the perseverance of a team, Black Mass celebrates good times while hemorrhaging their foundations, improvised expansions, unsettling impermanency.

La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade)

A deadbeat returns to his family after hearing that his son is ill, having been gone for more than a decade, their struggles dourly contrasting his self-obsession.

Their home rests amidst acres upon acres of sugar cane, and they desperately rely on the income it provides.

But that income is not so easy to come by, as managers find excuses to withhold payments, and workers vigorously protest to ensure their compensation.

Alfonso (Haimer Leal) casts a troubled shadow on the plight of his former community, as he bonds with his grandson, and must yield to his wife's animosity.

An impoverished people attempts to garner respect meanwhile, struggling through the ages, making the most of their meagre opportunities.

Sadness, mourning, La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade) blesses the salt of the earth with a refined bittersweet caring perseverance, valuing conviction as opposed to derivatives, the integrity of the daily grind.

The juxtaposition between Alfonso and his family sombrely furrows the sorrow, while forgiveness considers the worth of his presence, like a welcoming balm, pleasantly mitigating despair.

It champions solidarity rather than dramatizing drifting, the gilded courage embodied in action, a location, a tradition, jobs, the oppressed and the obstinate, ageless timeless plunder.

Down home determination.

Inveterate will.

Straight Outta Compton

I may have just focused on N.W.A if I had written this script.

The group interactions are strong.

Characters enigmatically blossom and come together as a cohesive whole, an act, risks are taken then rewarded, popularity brings the pain, along with the elements, with honest explicit expressions, dynamically forging new artistic ground.

It works, but as the band breaks up and Straight Outta Compton begins to follow Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) separately, we're provided with more of a brief general overview than an exacting intricate thesis, celebrated historical events from their lives understandably ingratiating, still sacrificing substance for sentimentality, the incisive for the broad.

It works like well researched entries for Who's Who, not as a magnetic work of hard-hitting brazen fiction.

Due to the rapid pace, a lot of facets that could have built more cultural depth carefreely float away, such as the death of Dr. Dre's brother, the artistic paradigm shifting exhilaration of N.W.A's work, Ice Cube's method, a closer examination of the pressures they faced from the F.B.I, and a more intricate look at the politics of the groundbreaking.

These facets could all function as separate films, turning Straight Outta Compton into a fountainhead of sorts, perhaps.

It covers police brutality well, which would seem exaggerated if it weren't based on fact and backed up by myriad contemporary examples.

I support free artistic expression in most forms, it's only those that eagerly promote hate speech that I question, just remember, racism, violence and misogyny are often more closely aligned with America's Republican Party, with candidates like Donald Trump anyways, the Party who generally squashes minorities and caters to an oligarchic elite.

If you're speaking out against police violence in your music to make a point about how corrupt and unfair it is, that's one thing.

If you're writing songs that glorify misogyny and violence for fun, you're doing the work of the Republican Party for them, saving and making them millions.

You have a choice not to express yourselves in such ways.

And you're free to make that choice.

Félvilág (Demimonde)

Fair weather thickets, robust tumbledown, opulent rickety flush strings resound.

Erotic.

Instrumental.

Respect and fascination, a subject of the film, one diligently striving to detect an aesthetic hidden within musical provenance, thought allied with action distilling muses to kindle pluck, historical serenity, vixens and vertices, the other manifesting sensation in a shroud, aware of its immaculate presence, seizing and securing the moment's acceleration, ostentatious in its longevity, commanding, assured.

Time slowly transfiguring each one.

Elza Mágnás (Patricia Kovács).

Achievement and success, unconcerned with scandal or perplexity, like Odette de Crécy, she mesmerizes in swoon.

Kató (Laura Döbrösi) escapes life on the streets and is caught between the ethical and the spectacle, rigorously learning what she can to survive.

Quickly.

Visceral film, Félvilág (Demimonde), examining morality through an economic lens, poverty and poignancy luxuriously dissected, picturesque propriety, enabling restrictive plights.

A romantic poet, jealous servant, and coddling magnate complete the script, their attention devoted to Elza, who consequently revels in her agency.

Carefree leisure and desperate servitude liaise within, desire harmonizing their ambitions, dedication sterilizing their chagrin.

Court

A lifelong civil rights activist (Vira Sathidar as Narayan Kamble) who expresses himself through folk music is arrested once again in Chaitanya Tamhane's Court, which gradually exposes the corrupt nature of the case held against him, as it scapegoats his sacrifices to oligarchically keep the peace.

Troublemaker, rabble rouser, unyielding in his acrimonious critiques, dedicated to improving the living conditions of India's working poor, vehement virtuoso, brutally tethered while performing mid-flight.

Most of my knowledge of Indian film which is scant comes from Bollywood, and Court recently won Best Feature Film at India's 62nd National Film Awards, so please note that the following respects that decision and believes it was made due to the remarkable differences between Court and Bollywood, the former's stark meticulous litigation, to the latter's flamboyant charm, Court bringing the millions to one, Bollywood focusing on one in a million.

Paradigm shift?

Not sure.

Meghna Gulzar's Guilty, shown recently at the Toronto International Film Festival (many thanks CBC Montréal), also examines India's legal peculiarities however.

Kamble disappears from the film early on while his defence lawyer (Vivek Gomber as Vinay Vora) prepares his case, and the film then follows Vora at length before going through the same procedure with the prosecutor (Geetanjali Kulkarni as Nutan).

While going through this procedure, subtle and shocking features of Indian's cultural mosaic are quotidianly explored, over dinner, at a play, collegial conversations, familial fights adjourned.

I was somewhat frustrated that Kamble wasn't part of the narrative for so long. I wanted to see his character grow and develop, see him featured more prominently.

The tragic injury to his person is accentuated near the end, as he's forced to languish in jail over the Summer (he's 65), while the judge (Pradeep Joshi as Sadavarte) presiding over his case takes an exclusive holiday.

Where he scares the children who waken him as they play.

A painstakingly ponderous look at working within India's courts that loses sight of its feature, perhaps thereby postulating that such voices are often overlooked, Court theoretically diversifies India's cinematic palate, by kindling a genre more concerned with spice than spectacle.

Like Tom Mulcair.

He honestly does care about making things easier for Canadian families, whether they've lived in Canada for generations or have recently moved here.

I get that a lot of Canadians like Stephen Harper, but I really don't understand why.

He seems to divide the country into haves and have-nots and then govern exclusively for the haves, while in/directly supporting the Christian religion.

He also insulted Rachel Notley's democratically elected NDP government several times last night in the Globe and Mail debate, which is rather disrespectful of the choice Albertans made during their last provincial election, a fact that wouldn't sit well with me if I was living in Alberta.

What happened to mutual respect amongst politicians? I always thought that was one thing that positively differentiated Canada from the United States, even if the difference isn't giddy or glamourous.

Why isn't Harper trying to forge consensus? It's like you either agree with the Conservatives or you don't count, which is an odd way of trying to sell yourself as a potential Prime Minister.

Fear based.

Canada doesn't have to embrace an us versus them political dynamic.

Both Mulcair and Justin Trudeau seem interested in building a more inclusive understanding Canadian collective.

But this time it's the NDP who have experience on their side.

I've voted for the Liberals in the past before Jack Layton appeared on the scene because they always had the experience, they always had a stronger more tried and tested team, that seemed more reliable.

In 2015, it's the other way around.

I'd like to hear what Rachel Notley has to say about the way her government was referred to last night, a speech that could perhaps deal a significant blow to Harper.

Harper wants to prove that Republican style American politics can work in Canada permanently.

A vote for the Liberals or the NDP disproves his theory.

And the NDP currently has the stronger team.

*I like the Green Party and love Elizabeth May but there are already two parties splitting the left wing vote, 3 in Québec. A third/fourth one could lead to disaster. If you don't like either politics or Harper, note that by not voting for someone other than Harper you're indirectly assisting his cause.

A Walk in the Woods

Resonant revitalization, on the Appalachian Trail, two older mismatched friends braving the wild to reaccess their incontrovertibility, their lives having followed different paths, one ensconced in yet troubled with bourgeois accomplishments, the other on the run from the law, the trail acting like a synergizing synthesis, adventurously stylizing nostalgic grievances, a larger than life extremity, harmonizing any ontological playing field.

Tomfoolery and mischief blend with reflections on life and living to nurture the wilful and the woebegone as they interact with experts and randomly improvise along the way.

I found myself indirectly identifying with Bill Bryson (Robert Redford).

I suffered with him during his Fox Newsesque interview, as he said the wrong thing at the funeral, mentioned 2 ways that writers often matriculate, had trouble understanding the allure of video games, was frustrated when Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte) brought up embarrassing old stories at the dinner table, and took his first step on the Appalachian.

Although I wouldn't have commented about it.

A Walk in the Woods is a fun family film, like Planes, Trains & Automobiles meets Tracks, although not as strong as either of those films, comfortably offering im/mature commentaries, sentimentalized by 2 actors whom I've loved over the years.

With some cool contemporary and old school cameos as well.

It's also a bit rushed, it flies through a bunch of scenes which I thought could have been explored with more depth, and you often know exactly what's going to happen.

I'm sure two black bears rummaged through Bryson and Katz's campsite in the book, but I've never read about adult black bears foraging together, unless they're salmon bears, or two amorous bears who sometimes spend a week or more together in an affectionate courtship ritual.

They still could have been adult bears foraging together, it may happen, but I think it's more likely that they were cubs who had just left their mother, and the bears featured in A Walk in the Woods are massive imposing beasts.

It's still a funny scene.

Actually saw my first black bear in Shenandoah National Park. I'll always remember how incredible that was. I suddenly look up in the field my father and I were hiking through to see a bear 15 feet away. We backed off at a moderate pace just to be safe and then watched him or her from a distance for over an hour. It was one of the best wildlife experiences of my life.

Oh, and it's really obvious that some of the nature scenes in A Walk in the Woods were shot in a studio.

Bummer.

SanBa

Concrete stark determination, a neighbourhood fighting for its heritage, its future, but without a dynamic set of multidimensional opportunities, drugs and alcohol pervade, a young artist caught within the immoderate inebriated extinction, suddenly presented, with a muralistic escape.

Teamed up with a ponderous beauty, his outlook expands.

Even though his love lacks reciprocation.

It's gritty and pluralistic.

SanBa doesn't just focus on romance, but adds multiple layers of cultural depth by exploring hardboiled local viewpoints, brief reflective communal character building, hammering nails, shots sworn and ontic.

Form mirrors content inasmuch as the camera presents opaque images before curiously zeroing in, the process acting like a subconscious filter, which reflects the traumas associated with impoverished community development.

As well as the effects of substance abuse.

Resource management in flux.

Necessitated patchwork foundations.

Life's hard for Fabio (Fabio Grimaldi) before he finds motivation and income.

Fluctuating fortunes.

Ham on rye.

Borealis

Sean Garrity's Borealis hits and misses, struggling to cohesively grind its aesthetic, while occasionally brewing refined diuretics.

Structurally speaking.

It follows Jonah (Jonas Chernick) as he attempts to pay off massive debts through gambling, making one $50,000 bet too many, winding up on the run from a seriously angry old friend.

What takes place in the film functions as a warning to would-be risk takers, although, due to its consistent focus on the regenerative potential of a lucrative lucky streak, it also glamorizes the stakes, albeit in a downtrodden fashion.

Thus it appeals to card players and those who prefer board games alike.

J'aime les deux.

It tries to introduce the bizarre, a quaintly quizzical quandary, as a small vegetarian dog is offered an entire large raw steak on a golf course, logic unfortunately minimizing its impact, since the time it would take to eat the steak would more than likely disrupt the flow of their game.

The script viciously acknowledges this incoherency moments later.

I think a closer study of Twin Peaks is in order.

Jonah's daughter (Joey King as Aurora) is going blind and he convinces her to take a road trip with him (the getaway [she doesn't know she's going blind at this point]) to Churchill, Manitoba, to see the Northern Lights before she loses her sight, and even if arguments abound throughout their journey, their eventual coming together fuels the film's reckless fervour.

It's tough to bond with Jonah.

He is a huge screw-up, and I had trouble generating sympathy.

But the script does excel at slowly delivering personal historical details from his life which do in fact help to eventually generate sympathy, and reminded me not to jump to hasty conclusions.

The ending (spoilers) best describes my thoughts about the film.

After coming to terms with Jonah's creditors, Jonah and Aurora sit on Churchill's rocky shore, relieved about their reversal of fortune.

Jonah must have been freezing since he had recently been tied up and launched into the water, but, whatevs.

The Northern Lights suddenly appear and Jonah points them out.

It's cheesy that they suddenly appear, but then we discover that Aurora has gone blind and can't see them, which grates the maudlin slab.

Highs and lows, sinuous switchboards.

Liked the hitchhiking roadside imbroglio.

And the shots of rural Manitoba.

Almost went to Churchill once you know.

Way back when.

La isla mínima (Marshland)

Fastidious expediency, Mississippi's burning, clenched vicious smouldering license, eagerly applied, kept in check by stolid capacity, a team, an investigation, creepy crawlies eviscerating the night, extinguishing flames, chomping chomp chomp, youth and innocence curiously explore to their horror, the aged preying on them like craven vampiric necrocities, their tracks covered, their pastimes grim, flouting respectability with mechanized chagrin.

The monstrous hunting the monstrous by employing monstrosities to covet the truth.

Concealment.

Parthenon.

La isla mínima (Marshland) uses a sombre criminal text, employing politics and professionalism to smoothly and steadily increase local tensions, thereby critically examining post-fascist Spain, the survival of perplexing methodologies blended with contemporary romance to question means and bitter ends, crucially constructed, like hardboiled lucid dreaming.

Restraint abounds.

You get the sense that it could have been much darker, but level heads kept things neat to rely more on integrity than sensation.

It presents an ethical dilemma in terms of using violent policing methods to bring about social democratic ends.

I think what's happening in the film needs to be considered as a case, working within a system functioning on a case by case basis, still possessing many remnants of a society that applied such methods to every case, many of the cases likely involving peaceful people who simply didn't like Franco.

I want to see criminals such as the ones depicted in La isla mínima in prison.

But that doesn't mean I want to see every movement of the entire population monitored and scrutinized.

Pejorative panopticon.

Panoramically percolating.

If you monitor and scrutinize the entire population's movements then freedom itself becomes a prison.

If people can function on a case by case basis, while obviously still looking for recurring patterns of behaviour that forge a logical connection between crime and culprit, without employing them dogmatically inasmuch as each case is unique and individual, they will likely still catch many such villains, and learn to appreciate the distinction between reaction and restraint.

Isn't that what they often do already?

Know need for the CyberStasi.

If cooler heads prevail.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The lighter side of the cold war squares off in Guy Ritchie's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as the CIA and the KGB team up to hunt down nuclear weapons, polished and grizzly, both agents preferring to work alone.

An East German bombshell (Alicia Vikander as Gaby) tearjerks and tantalizes to provide them with cover, diligently driven, ready to cut loose.

What follows is fun if not formulaic, it's meant to be a good time, not striving for originality here, it's definitely not Snatch., Sherlock Holmes, or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a less explosive cross-cultural collision, still cocky enough to serialize fried snarky charm, pleasant, entertaining, like a seaside pitcher of lemonade.  

It's quite sure of itself, a much better A View to a Kill sans Christopher Walken, you keep thinking, "their cover should be blown and it's not, their cover should be blown, and it's not," before you just roll with it, sit back, consume.

There is one scene that stands out, and it unreeled just when I was thinking, "now is the time for an unexpected break from the predicability," Solo (Henry Cavill) then escaping death only to find himself seated in a truck accompanied by Dionysian delights, of which he partakes, while Illya (Armie Hammer) frenetically frisks and flounders (Ritchie's take on the [manufactured?] west/east antagonism?).

Solo smashingly rejoins the fight moments later.

I found it odd that we was drinking Johnnie Walker Black near the end, unless it was blue and I couldn't distinguish the colour, but Solo seems more like a JW Blue man, although the black is much more unconsciously accessible.

Harvesting trust.

Also, I was surprised by the amount of detail Solo learns about Illya during the night, claiming he read up on him.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. doesn't take place in the age of exponential information access.

How did he come across all the highly classified details?

What was read, shared, exposed?

*Hold on. Further research has proven that Johnnie Walker Black was a good choice. Still, Solo, Blue, Blue, Solo.

Le Dep

An ordinary day takes a turn for the worst when a crack smoking youth decides to rob the local dep in Sonia Boileau's Le Dep, a familiar face in possession of both lock and key, applying reason to his misguided plans, attempting to commiserate, while functioning as judge and jury.

Their dialogue takes an historical turn, their dialectic polarizing desperation and stability like trenchant tidal tripwire, a delicate balance required to soothe and mediate, the reality of the crime, harrowingly cautioning the nerve.

Ice cream headache.

Whiplashed fumes.

The film concerns contemporary First Nations issues, Lydia (Eve Ringuette) living the routine work-a-day life, PA (Charles Buckell-Robertson) suffering from issues of alcohol and drug abuse.

Stemming from childhood neglect.

And the legacy of the residential school system.

There's a powerful scene where their dialogue suddenly switches from the moment to the event PA's describing, the leap startling and profound, like the ending of Waltz with Bashir, a shocking heartfelt purge.

I may have just shown the child sitting alone on the ground at the party, confused and alone, for around 2 minutes, and then cut back to the present, although the extended scene provides added depth to the story, and helps Lydia's pacifying seem more maternal.

Both actors hold their own, commanding the bucolic script with parliamentary poise, not too brash, not too sentimental, in your face yet contemplative, disadvantaged youth, struggling to age with dignity.

Lydia stands in the middle of a shootout in the end, facilitating peace, rationalizing and peacekeeping, unafraid to voice alternative options, to find mutually beneficial solutions for two opposing factions.

In the thick of it.

Elle porte une tuque orange.

Dope

You take away belief and equal opportunity by cutting taxes to the point where public schools become more like a prison than a lightning rod, and you wind up with the situation Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his friends find themselves within in Rick Famuyiwa's Dope, an examination of three scholastically oriented (nerdy) misfits caught up in the harsh realities of brutal embittered hopelessness.

Remaining aloof is the key, but after Malcolm hesitantly agrees to aid a drug dealer's romantic pursuits, their lives enter the domain of high-stakes hustling, enlisting the resources of their technologically advanced connaissance to risk everything to remain afloat, buoying disparate domains, panic stricken, navigation.

Ingenuity, flexibility, impudence, sycophancy, and audacity guide their way, as they demonstrate why they're contenders, in a repressive system designed to annihilate innocence.

Agency.

Black lives matter.

The film excels at celebrating the skills immediacy engenders, while vituperatively condemning the structures which necessitate them, as gentle Malcolm's arm shakes when he pulls out the gun.

At the same time, its odd blend of the naive and the dissolute euphemizes shockingly destabilizing pressures.

The far right says, "don't complain, you're a whiner, we will do as we please and keep everything for ourselves while crushing your hopes and dreams because we find it amusing."

The moderate left diagnoses cultural maladies and finds systematic solutions, opportunities, middle classes, wealth, which it patiently introduces to ease sociocultural pressures.

These solutions aren't like ordering a pizza or buying a new pair of jeans, they take decades of sustained effort to develop, to flourish.

The far right makes them seem like impossibilities and when elected does what they can to halt their momentums.

If you think they are impossibilities, note that the social conditions in Europe and North America weren't that different from those present in many third world countries centuries ago.

The middle class is paramount.

It's not that simple of course, and human nature isn't a butterscotch sundae.

But, in Canada anyways, there's universal healthcare, many strong public schools, opportunities to learn more than one language, the possibility of a highly paid 40 hour work week which provides parents with time to spend with their children, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, free speech, freedom of religion, collective rights, the right to vote, to work in an non-discriminatory environment, to access clean drinking water, a general emphasis on health and well-being.

These things wouldn't be present without politics.

After ten years of seeing these features severely scrutinized, perhaps it's time for a different approach.

Change.

Sustainable development.

But you can't make change if you don't vote, voting being a right that generations fought for desperately in relatively recent times.

The far right will be voting.

At least in this century we don't have to fight our way to the polls.

For a new democracy.

Irrational Man

Hold on.

Situation critical.

It's been a long time since I haven't liked a Woody Allen film.

Curses.

Merry-go-round and around and around.

It seems like a joke, Irrational Man.

What I think happened was that Allen realized his script wasn't on par with his typical texts, and salvaged what he could by including recurring lackadaisically upbeat music, which consistently states, "whoops", while deliberately editing scenes too quickly, or including rather short scenes that could have been left out, to formally chide philosophy, mock the corporate tendency to pack too much information into too little a packet, and reflect on the emptiness of existence, when one never has time to calmly sit back and reflect.

When you take a bunch of philosophers and reduce what they're saying to a couple of trite statements, the engagement with philosophical texts is lost, Xavier Dolan making the same error with literature in Laurence Anyways, if they're not the focus, it's better just to leave them be.

There are so many banalities and clichés in Irrational Man, leap-frogging their way through the script like giddy platitudinous inanimate cockadoodles, inadequately developing character and then arrogantly assuming firm bonds between character and audience, that it's difficult to sit through, until the music picks up again.

Take the Russian roulette scene.

If a professor actually plays Russian roulette at a party with students, firing the gun several times, you would think it would have a greater impact on the story, but it practically disappears immediately afterwards, like it wasn't significant, like Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) was comparing prices on toothpaste or blankly examining bark on a tree.

Perhaps Irrational Man really is Allen's subtle satirical crack at corporate filmmaking.

It does co-star Queen of the Indies Parker Posey (Rita).

And Allen has stood outside the system for decades while generally still delivering high quality accessible thought provoking films.

I've heard people critically condemning Allen's examinations of relationships and he seems to be acknowledging their insights by exaggerating these faults in Irrational Man, the male protagonist's relationships within being way freakin' ridiculous.

There was an interesting critique of romanticism mentioned by Jill's (Emma Stone) Father (Ethan Phillips), however, that caught my attention.

Utopias, goodwill, fluffery, I admit that such ideas, when applied to daily life, often seem bizarre and out of touch, especially in the "we're all hopelessly craven so why don't we just act that way?" nihilistic disengaged pandora, but without them you leave yourself vulnerable to total and complete ethical unaccountability, because they set practical guidelines which apply foresight to fascination, in order to uphold something greater than common individuality.

One additional point.

In regards to my interests in action and science-fiction films, note that gregarious generalizations about literature and philosophy (etc.) in dramatic films often work more successfully disguised as character traits for monsters and heroes in action sci-fi, like in, one more time, Mad Max: Fury Road.

The action is the argument.

Surveillance, likewise.

The Look of Silence

The abysmal aftermath, intergenerational dialogues, between men forced to live with their crimes, and a thoughtful soul inquisitively vilifying them.

According to stats from The Look of Silence, a million communists were killed in Indonesia in 1965 after the military seized control and began executing its potential opposition.

Dark times.

Inimically ideological.

Fascist dogma.

Crippling legacy.

Gruesome testimony.

Many of those responsible for the systematic killings survived into old age, living a relatively comfortable life, still believing in the brutal cause they supported.

A gentle, ah, fellow citizen?, Adi Rukun, whose brother was butchered, interviews a sampling of them while Joshua Oppenheimer films their conversations.

The victims and the voracious, acknowledging they can't come to terms.

Many community members criticize Rukun for examining the issue, not wishing to see the same set of historical circumstances ignite again.

I suppose if you lived through the horror that would be a natural reaction, although ignoring/covering up history with egregiously inaccurate lies does little to compensate its concerned ethical descendants.

Silence.

The silence itself possibly creating the tension it hopes to obscure.

The circumstances likely wouldn't repeat themselves.

And acknowledging the truth, like acknowledging scientific truth, looks less internationally pathetic.

More questions than answers here.

Dangerous questions to ask.

Integral to social justice.

Mr. Holmes

Reflections on lives lived and current pastimes, a tripartite treatise, excavated thoughts on loneliness, the life of the mind, a life of service, three families torn by grief, Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen), sleuth, benefactor, cause, troubled later in life by hindsight's haze, fortuitous fog cutting, carving out a literary track.

Conducive.

One mother longs for her lost children, another takes care of her son, one son lost his father to empire, families surreally strung.

Bees with their honey, organized, assiduous, living a life of harmony and order, perniciously plagued par les guêpes.

With the aid of his housekeeper's (Laura Linney as Mrs. Munro) clever son Roger (Milo Parker),
Sherlock tends his hives while painfully looking back.

Has he done his best to promote unity?

Or functioned as unwitting predator?

Apicultural endeavours, interrogating the solitary life.

Mr. Holmes couldn't be more different than Guy Ritchie's films.

Or any other manifestation of the iconic detective I've seen.

A pasteurized yet potent clarification of the facts, Sherlock's existential longing, a search for wisdom's tranquility.

For rest.

For satisfaction.

He seems to embrace related impossibilities in the end, while finding what joy he can in thoughts prone to melancholia.

Sherlock the retired country gentleperson.

Taking care of a family.

Keeping his bees.

Paper Towns

The studious approach, diligent digests, a plan, a routine, generally adhered to in order to achieve goals later in life, like minded friends similarly striving, the goals they modestly pursue leaving them cast out of their high school's rigid social convective, commentating on the fringe, two-thirds of the trio romantically handicapped, steady textbook longing, The Stars of Track and Field, aloof in their unheralded excellence.

Chaotic casserole.

Quentin (Nat Wolff) has been in love with the free-spirited Margo (Cara Delevingne) since childhood, when they were close, and although their paths no longer frequently cross, she shows up at his window one night enlisting aid, to humiliate those who have unjustly wronged her.

Vengeance.

Competing ontological truths.

She disappears shortly thereafter, leaving behind a set of clues, clues which Quentin and his friends follow, in a salute to surefire Summertime spontaneity.

Can the wild and the timid synthesize their dialectic as one?

Or will alternative pressures crush their holiest of unions?

Paper Towns is alright.

Somewhat tame, but that fits with its bourgeois aesthetic.

But is the pursuit of high grades and professional success indeed tame?

Turning such pursuits into a riveting film is tough to do without seeming tame, but the rigour and dedication one has to apply to their life, the sacrifices they have to make, their tenacious time management, necessitates a factual fortitude, often not possessed by the purely tame.

To pass those tests achieving high scores demands strict obedience, to be sure, but without a resounding will to live, to succeed, predicated upon expansive desire, untethered in its imagination, such goals seem fleeting at best.

The hunger for knowledge.

Information hunger.

Boldness is a must.

The unacknowledged thrust of true stoicism.

Which also reserves time to relax throughout the week.

There's a wedgie coming on.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Cut-off from the IMF after the CIA critically rejects its equations, and the powers-that-be decide it needs an additional layer of oversight, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sets out on his own, relying solely on the immutable ingenuity that has reflexively guaranteed his elusive agility, his multidimensional brawn, to seek and destroy a terrorist organization, making the most of the tools at his disposal, while slowly falling in love.

His team gradually catches up with him.

It sounds standard, now that I think about it, but Rogue Nation's execution overcomes its contusions to put together an entertaining brain tease, an exciting extension of the franchise, somewhat weathered but still worldly, holding its own amongst the incredible number of sequels and the like being released these days.

Or being released always.

Perhaps I shouldn't write standard, I've just seen so many action/thriller/superhero films in recent decades that they're all starting to seem kind of standard, which shouldn't really be a point of critique, it's more like it's up to me to swim with the saturation.

And applaud Mad Max: Fury Road once again.

Whereas Ant-Man struggled to impressively mature, Rogue Nation acrobatically fascinates, minor characters given room to briefly grow, accept for Benjy (Simon Pegg) who's present for most of the action, "exabytes of encoded excrement," nice, more of a battle of wits than a provoked hyperaccelerated impossibility, it reacts to the facts and holds back on the cracks (sometimes the comedic dimension in such films can ruin them [not in this case]), while creatively diversifying intergovernmental collusions.

All prim and proper.

A British spy agency even foolishly creates a network of terrorists intent on dealing in death and destruction.

Aren't the roles governments play in the creation of terrorists forbidden subjects these days?

End transmission.

Ant-Man

How to be diplomatic about this one?

Okay, Marvel's bound to have a screw-up at some point, something that's so unimaginative and formulaic that it's profoundly painful to watch.

Yes, the Ant-Man idea is imaginative, but the surrounding details, the support network, the venom, the drama, must have been written for the really young of age.

Lure in the next generation.

Even they may have knew exactly what was going to happen, yet since they may not have seen dozens of similar films, they may not have been able to tell that this one never even attempted to try something out of the ordinary.

Just because the concept is extraordinary, it doesn't mean you don't have to exercise your right to preponderate.

Laziness.

Alright, I know Marvel films aren't artistic philosophical masterpieces, but that's not really what I'm looking for.

What I am looking for is something like Mad Max: Fury Road or Aliens, Terminator 2, Die Hard, an engaged thoughtful hyperactive multidimensional salute to passion and existence that symphonically agitates myriad disparate domains.

Methinks Mad Max: Fury Road will endure.

It's just disappointing because the Marvel films are earning so much profit.

It's possible, although I hope this isn't the case, that the people running things behind the scenes at Marvel are starting to follow the same strategies adopted by the Toronto Maple Leafs for the last decade.

Decade.

Say it ain't so Marvel.

Say it ain't so!

Self/less

The prospects of immortality, rearrange and shift, mutate, transform, galavanting through the epochs with illuminated historical flexibility, observing, unnerving, acting, forlorn fountainheads cartesian factotums, watching from the sidelines, taking direct roles, zigzagging away through the here and now like mesmerized counteracting resonance, a comment, a plan, an insight, a lyric, a strategy.

The choice is Damian's (Ben Kingsley/Ryan Reynolds).

Repercussions be damned.

Or not, as it soon becomes clear that the body he's purchased wasn't grown in a lab but was once inhabited by another whose consciousness still resides within, regular doses of potent pharmaceuticals required to maintain control, limitless ethics, the conscience of consciousness.

He was an extremely successful businessperson during his first life, erudite and invincible, this aspect giving him an advantage as he begins to unravel the crime, while highlighting the importance of retirement to give the next generation a shot.

He slowly comes to understand this, that he's already come into existence, that new ideas and fresh perspectives invigorate evolution, as his new body persists, still thrives with the ecstasy of youth.

A decision must be made.

A balance must be spiritualized.

Tarsem Singh's Self/less works as a thrilling contemplative digestible crucial reflexion.

Perhaps Ben Kingsley shouldn't retire (any actor looking to star in science-fiction or superhero films should study Kingsley's performance in Self/less).

Age versus youth, activism contra avarice, death circling everlasting life, the theatrics of a dream, the investment of a lifetime.

Agile mainstream science-fiction makes you think while plausibly delivering a steady stream of action.

Self/less embodies these synapses.

A touching examination of transformations within transmutations, it investigates the moral, to powerfully project and diversify.

Note: I'm still quite young.

*I like this Tarsem Singh. He also directed Mirror Mirror. I liked The Cell too when I saw it in 2000.

Réalité

Malcontent enabled extractions, meandering like constipated reflexologies, prolifically backed-up, essentials, blunt banalities, a study of purposeless toyed flanked robotics, the aimless and the asinine, fluctuating between two worlds, a groan's canonization, bewildered supine prophylactics.

Resisting closure.

Residual repose.

I think this is how Quentin Dupieux approached Réalité.

I'm probably wrong.

Often in bizarre films concerned with the pointless mundane aspects of existence there are still some exceptionally peculiar hooks that pull you in to consider attaching the cult classification to their inanities.

These aspects, while present in Rubber and Wrong, are largely absent from Réalité, it's hopelessly unconcerned.

Its firm contempt for any kind of interlinking commonality, for any kind of rapport with films other than those I've already mentioned, is bold and risky if not rash and burdensome.

Unfortunately, while this bold risk takes a rebellious stand, the hooks that made Rubber and Wrong so commendable are missing in action, and although it's possible that Quentin Dupieux is comically ripping himself off, thinking, I'll make this as obtuse as possible just to see if my reputation can still guarantee unconditional applause, there's nothing really present in the film that would make me want to see it again.

Unless there's a Quentin Dupieux night being held somewhere.

At which point I would give it another shot.

Big Game

In the remote unforgiving Finnish wilderness, a young lad must claim his manhood, the hunting of wild game demanding his assurance, that he'll respect his forefathers, and bring posterity home.

But evil descends on his quest for ascension, as terrorists shoot down Air Force One, seeking the President's blood, the breadth of a misunderstanding, to see that the party survives.

Accidents collocate immediate reactions.

The President (Samuel L. Jackson) would have found himself abandoned and helpless if it wasn't for Oskari's (Onni Tommila) vigilant eye, his strategic positioning, as if he was unaware of his tumultuous destiny, his unheralded calling, his instinctual expertise.

Bold expeditious horizon.

Fertile and counteractive.

Footsteps, l'Hexicon.

Jalmari Helander's Big Game delivers.

There's an intense sense of disciplinary procedure carefully balanced by the shock of the extraordinary which isn't over exaggerated to accentuate the sensation, chill, mellow, playful metamockery, working within a tradition, to resist definitive cookie cutting.

It's fun.

It's a lot of fun.

The überurban dependent on the rural to ensure its steady survival, the ridiculous scandalous yet tame, chiding while redefining the blockbuster, seriously cohesive corrugation.

It cuts down a lot of stereotypes throughout, details, details.

Perhaps I loved it because it celebrates the unsung, a cabin in the woods, a tree or rock somewhere, abounding with meaning for the initiated, isolated, unheard of, withdrawn.

Muskeg.

Campfires.

Work.

Laughs.

Infusions.

Ego Trip

Riches and success have spoiled a maturing talk show host to the point where his livelihood is threatened.

He built his career by connecting with people, and relied heavily on personal experience to humorously grind his convictions.

But since his experiences have become posh and lavish, his jokes have lost their charm, sowing contempt where once there was laughter, derision calibrated to applaud.

Yet hypothetical redemption presents itself in the form of a trip to Haiti, an engagement with humanitarian aid, a battle for surefire sanctity.

Age then counters youth, as his psychological economics, his current and past selves, egotistically contend, a confrontation worthy of Scrooge, a curriculum ripe with iridescence.

And errors.

Ego Trip's last half hour or so excels at delivering a finely tuned transformation, but its build-up is lacking in finesse.

I don't think the film's form was deliberately sabotaged to reflect Marc Morin's (Patrick Huard) temperament, I think there were too many people calling the shots behind the scenes, the result, messy and conspicuous.

You sort of know exactly what's going to happen, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as critical moments capable of developing character are cut short again and again, and subplots are introduced to struggle aimlessly or far too briefly, you kind of wish an additional 18 minutes weren't cut out, that they had taken more time to adhesively bind.

A lot of the scenes don't seem to fit as part of a whole, they're lacking in rhythmic sustainability, like a series of misplaced staccatos, rushing by far too quickly, at too choppy a pace.

Morin's life is choppy but Ego Trip's form could have found other ways to express this, potentially through a subtle infusion of self-awareness to metamalign his misplacements.

Much more could have been done with Sammy's (Gardy Fury) character.

Note: I didn't take to the urine jokes, but they did make me almost throw up, that type of humour often intended to generate such a response, good work.

Infinitely Polar Bear

Rolling, coasting, recoiling, roasting, stabilized ruptures fuel Cam Stuart's (Mark Ruffalo) days as he's prescribed more responsibility than he's used to levelling, medicated and somewhat unemployable, he begins looking after his kids el lobo solo when his partner moves to New York to study.

He's a handful, and not used to the innocent ponderings of his two young daughters, meticulous yet sloppy, steady while breaking down, he slowly learns to mirthfully manage, the acculturation of a wild renaissance man.

Refrained.

Eccentric and helpful, he tries to cultivate bonds with both his neighbours and extended family, occasionally succeeding, although his wondrous naivety does shake and bake from time to time.

Eclectic churn.

It's a lighthearted look at the strength of the human spirit, Infinitely Polar Bear, at second chances, the exceptional, the highly talented intelligent people who don't crave order or structure yet excel nonetheless at whatever it is they happen to be doing.

Also a heartfelt look at why medication can be good, and why too much can be harmful.

Maggie (Zoe Saldana) and Cam's relationship pirouettes like distilled spontaneous chuckling, working as a team to loving care, sorting it out, getting down to it, taking risks, believing in one another.

Inspired freeform flexibility, perennially youthful, ebullient leaps and bounds.

Because it's lighthearted, some of its cultural critiques, although direct and to the point, lack the stamina associated with more rigorous analyzes.

I would have left the seasons out. The film's too short to have four seasons and they seem like they're over as soon as they begin.

The frustrated wholesomeness still encourages further research, exploratory expeditions, nights out on the town.

Das große Museum (The Great Museum)

Times change, tastes, values, preferences, the integrity of the historical, timeless traditional structural dialogues, infused with contemporary stakes, striking artistic aggregates, emboldened through the maintenance of legacies.

Jockeying for position.

The decisions, the finances, the personnel, Johannes Holzhausen's Das große Museum (The Great Museum) blending various aspects of the Kunsthistorisches's management, its daily operations, linoleum, labour, preservation, advertising, executive inputs, some of which I would have found ridiculous if I didn't find myself having similar thoughts from time to time, through toil, mango, to converse, to generate dialogues with distinct publics, discourses of origins architecturally articulated, the thought, the detail, the work, meticulously cultivated to instruct and impress, with so many objects to enrich and tantalize, aesthetics of merit and truth bask in transitory permanence.

Intellectually gifted.

Delicately crafted.

The film illuminates a broad compelling practical yet highly abstract organism, budgeting its lucrative life blood with issues of power and control, while capturing moments of leisure and play, as a transformation strides and breathes.

In terms of mischievously yet respectfully examining the inner workings of a museum's perpetual motion, Holzhausen succeeds, but the sense of refined innocent yet aloofly didactic exuberance transports it to another level, Das große Museum wisely reflecting its subject matter.

You don't have to like museums to love this film.

There's also a tie covered in bears.

Terminator Genisys

Commencing once more, this time back where everything began, beginning again to inaugurate forlorn frontiers, Terminator Genisys reimagines its origins, to reflexively commentate, and consecrate anew.

The timeline has changed, as have the order of operations, Skynet incorporating both the personal and the domestic, along with its traditional military allies.

Nebulous nexus, motivate, guide, extend.

The dangers of having a lack of alternative options in the marketplace, monopolistic malfeasance, play an indirect role, Skynet having attracted over a billion customers to its Genisys device, prezoned, its ability to impact massively thereby enhanced, one platform, one strident mechanism.

Mired, fired, and expired, the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) continues to battle more advanced models, unyieldingly dedicated to protecting Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) doubting his reliability, after travelling back in time, to 1984.

The T-800's really quite touching.

He has an endearing way of expressing himself, and his comic aspects, notably developed in Rise of the Machines, productively flourish, theoretically postulating like STNG's Data, complaining about the shortsighted cruelties of belittling dismissals, and infiltrating a hospital with love in mind to bear.

How he came to love is a matter for the following sequels to discuss, his programming perhaps having become so used to Sarah's comforting presence, to the purpose and companionship with which she constantly provides him, that an artistic subroutine miraculously generated, a jet scream's genesis, Terminator Genisys.

Don't praise the machines Kermode.

Internally within the progressions of the franchise, within the growth of a character over a 31 year span, it does seem as if he loves, as if crying is something he somehow learned to do.

Perchance revolved excused and ruffled.

The franchise does progress, adding a contemporary dimension as previously mentioned, the Dysons (Courtney B. Vance as Miles, Dayo Okeniyi as Danny) showing up again, issues of fate expanding and contracting like predetermined infinities, the O'Brien (Wayne Bastrup/J.K. Simmons) character
functioning like a cooler Dr. Silberman, whom I still would have liked to have seen, they used him so well in T3.

Still shocked by what happens to John Connor (Jason Clarke), but it fits with the anti-monopolistic theme, even if it encourages a nuclear hemorrhage.

To be operated upon in subsequent films.

It's really aware of itself as a franchise now, the Terminator films, so this film relies heavily upon its legacy, there's a stronger sense of independence in the others, like they weren't setting up a trilogy, while still striving for uniformity akin.

Apart from number 4; events from Salvation are ignored.

It isn't that bad. I started liking it after watching it 3 times.

The duplicated scenes lack the intensity of the original.

The dread.

There's no Bill Paxton.

They should have spent more time on those.

Nice to see the franchise alive and kicking.

Tough to think of where it will go, without coming across as excessively dry.

Everyone's together in the end.

They might still be together at the beginning, next time round.

Unheard of.

The Wolfpack

Cloistered, set apart, the world elastically pacing and raging, beyond, locked up, snickering extremes, movements in the ice, creating worlds within worlds, distance in the existensha.

Homeschooled and isolated, never leaving their apartment, never, children of an authoritative man, The Wolfpack contemplates the outside world, forging conclusions from which to engage in exploration based on cinematic truths, subjective posturing, movie watching, the knowledge revealed within their reels both fascinating and peculiar, illuminated nascent charcoal, requiring heat, in which to yearn.

Arrest awaits one of them as he ventures forth for the first time, but soon they gather together as one, to curiously seek out the new.

Sensations, vibrations, and manifestations then delight, as sundry exemplars exceptionally keel.

Sonar space oddity.

Cut-off yet assured they can withstand the pain.

Father, restless, mother, supportive.

Their father's introduction was well timed.

He doesn't show up for awhile so you're stuck wondering if he's dead or refused to take part or was left out entirely.

Strange man, frightened and brutal, struggling to maintain, withdrawn from communal exteriors.

Hard on his kids, his wife.

The Wolfpack compactly chronicles his excluded impacts, thereby elevating the voyages of his adventurous children, tracks upon which to trust, blending a fledgling thrust of punished sequestered resilience, overcome and insert infinite variability, one imaginative step at a time.

Issues of socialization, acculturation, finding a job, other things, can be found within.

Intermingled non-compartmental pinpointed reflections.

Their observations surreally yet practically confide in the sociocultural.

Loved the trip to the orchard.

True story.

Aloha

Aloha deals with complex contemporary capitalistic and sociological issues in a seriously relaxed manner, smoothly stylizing an hectic chill work/life balance, while focusing on the big picture through a romantic lens.

Set in Hawaii.

The film follows Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper), who's down on his luck, has taken a new job, is quasi-interviewing for another, runs into the love of his life who's now married with children, and has to entertain the plucky go-gettedness of a conscientious captain, Emma Stone as Allison Ng, while trying to overcome his ennui.

It's about land rights and the weaponization of space, Indigenous Hawaiians not wishing to permit the launch of a new potentially war mongering satellite, Gilcrest having to convince them that it's safe, Ng having to convince him to live up to his word.

Indigenous and American Hawaiian culture fuels several of Gilcrest and Ng's exploratory exchanges, and there's a great extended festive scene where everyone lets loose, Cameron Crowe fluidly capturing the fever.

Oddball billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray) blames the American government for the country's troubled economic times, but I suspect it was companies who didn't care about the environmental integrity of their communities, American communities, that problematized things, preferring to rapidly expand without considering the costs to social infrastructures, looking for the green light to pollute freely, revelling in their blatant disregard for the sustainability of local health.

Spoiler.

He ends up in jail.

You wonder if the script is just a clever examination of the disasters of weaponizing space, or a subtle re/introduction of something lobbyists have been promoting behind the scenes for decades.

I'm thinking it's just a clever examination.

Odd that the military benefits from private funding within however.

Isn't that grossly irresponsible?

Corporate armies?

A love story?

Spy

Feet stompin' fist poundin' head boppin' finesse, dodgin' unlodgin', deke death's caress, the test swerving strenuous random incisions, athletic acumen, jocose renditions.

Cro-Magnon.

I wasn't expecting Spy to be so consistently funny.

Apart from the first 15 minutes or so, the comedy cleverly entertains, a study in rapid-fire instantaneous comebacks, mellifluous mouthpieces, agilely exchanging feints.

Channeling Archer.

It follows the emergence of a multidimensional spy, Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), as she leaves command headquarters and heads into the field for the first time.

She's the only one capable of successfully completing the mission because her organization's adversaries are familiar with all of their active agents.

Rick Ford (Jason Statham) doesn't trust her and hilariously errs critically, his outlandish tales providing ludicrous added depth, hardboiled yet klutzy, stumbling the whole way through.

Casting by Zsolt Csutak.

Modestly audacious, Spy blends the wholesome and the crude to frenetically fry and sensationally sizzle.

Cloaked like a reborn marbled masquerade, it excels at enlivening, while mischievously poking fun at gender.

Heartfelt.

Phoenix

Resplendent devoted unassuming submission, longing to be lovingly reunited with her heart's treasured panacea, her horizons leavened after having survived an incomparable hell, having survived to live once more, to return home, to rebuild.

World War Two has left her former life in ruins, a mad state of affairs, and after fortunate reconstructive surgery, her husband can no longer recognize her.

She plays it safe, overflowing with desperate joy, which she attempts to express, patiently waiting for the ecstatic moment of truth.

But he's a boor, and she can't accept it, a stubborn fool who refuses to listen, to logic, to reason, providing insights into the gender discriminations that likely played a part in lobbying for the war's eruption, played a part, in setting the world on fire.

A faithful information professional spiritedly stands by her side, but she's too familiar with the facts, and realizes they're beyond forgiveness.

She succumbs to the horror.

The war claiming yet another victim.

Christian Petzold's Phoenix is well done, a dark sombre juxtaposition of innocence and cowardice gracefully moving towards an abysmal redemption, the beginnings of a future, previously unbeknownst.

It's ending is exactly what I was looking for from Ex Machina and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, powerful closure, constitutional in its rebirth.

I had no sympathy for the husband who turned quisling when he could have countered.

But who knows what one would do amidst such savagery?

Death seems preferable.

Love & Mercy

Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy takes a touching look at gentle brilliance and the jealousy it unwittingly incites, the vindictive and the voracious perched to pounce, asserting themselves through dismissive abrasive cynicism.

Preying on the gifted.

The film romanticizes Brian Wilson's (John Cusack/Paul Dano) stealth, his steady patient creative orchestrations, the insights, the voices, the exacting yet understanding care playfully attached to his work, the fun humble spontaneous personality that nurtured love in those that could see his beauty, childlike wonder and awe maturely mastered to crystallize ecstatic movements, multifaceted maestro, coy imaginative visionary.

He faces three main challenges in his personal life, one that isn't too serious, another Beach Boy trying to (boringly) keep things simple, to move away from the experimental yet relatable path his force was cultivating (Brian writes everything so it's easy for him to ignore him although he becomes increasingly hostile), his father, who can't accept his exceptional success, who goes out of his way to brutally put him down, thinking he's regained control of the family by doing so, he can't let go, and a psychiatrist who traps him in a hellhole, controlling every aspect of his life, treating him like a spoiled two-year-old child, as opposed to a musical manifest.

There's a lot of pressure when it comes time for him to write.

A loving woman, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), then enters his life and seeks to turn things around.

The legalities are daunting.

But she's full of angelic zeal.

It's a solid film, entertainingly profound, smoothly mixing the provocative and the popular, paying tribute to Wilson's legend in both form and content.

Examining his trials, his genius, his humanity, elevating the individual, critiquing the callous and the cumbersome.

He wrote everything.

He added layers upon layers of complementary sounds.

His genius still shines like seductive sweltering serenity.

And he was rewarded with contempt and isolation because of a mental illness.

That makes no sense.

None at all.

*I'm no genius, but I always did well in school when I applied myself and like what I come up with a lot of the time.

Although there's always room for improvement.

It's cheesy, but the trick to avoiding the destructive influences of jealousy is to love what you have, what you're doing, while still looking to change and grow, at different speeds, governed by circumstance, and be happy when you see that your friends like what they're doing too.

Works for me most of the time anyways.

Popsicles.

Jurassic World

The miraculous theme park envisioned by John Hammond has become a reality, and profits are steady, but their future is theoretically in jeopardy, or they at least may not continue to increase, hence, a new carnivorous force of immaculate magnetism is required, the product, the indominus rex, a creature so malevolent it makes the fearsome tyrannosaurus look like a fluffy pillow, bred to dominate, severely shackled.

But it's highly intelligent and soon tricks its creators into setting it free, proceeding to rampage thereafter, as hundreds of tourists unsuspectingly stride.

Enter one Owen (Chris Pratt), adventurous pulsar, intimately aware of danger, his knowledge essential, his strategies, ignored.

His relationship with the velociraptors he trains forges the film's ethos in relation to the ways in which it examines the phenomenon of control.

He maintains a respectful attitude, looking at their relationship symbiotically, he controls aspects of their dynamic but only because he respects the team, and treats it with corresponding assertive humility.

He's indirectly compared with Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), who also finds freedom in letting go, a constructive truth in my opinion, variations on a theme, but he made the mistake of authorizing the indominus's creation without applying either oversight or foresight, for which he pays an incendiary penalty.

Too much progress.

You see a number of the park's features throughout and wonder how its profits could ever be called into question.

It looks mind-blowingly amazing.

How driving a spherical vehicle through a field of dinosaurs could ever become boring doesn't make sense to me.

Even the petting zoo could never become boring.

But future profits are called into question and the aforementioned apex predator is the solution, treated with foolhardy disrespect, and then hunted as it threatens their very existence.

Bad decision.

Small aggressive dogs can be difficult to control.

But aside from the appealing critique of the poor decisions that can be made when obsessing about profits that are already stable, and team leaders who apply too much or too little oversight to their vitalities without taking into consideration the agencies of their networks, found in Jurassic World, it's generally a chaotic enough blockbuster, romance blooming amidst the carnage, reckless youth suddenly coming of age.

B.D. Wong (Dr. Henry Wu) makes a welcome reappearance in the franchise; I always wondered what happened to him in the original.

My favourite character was Lowery (Jake Johnson), who likes to think of his working space "as a living system, with just enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy." 

Nice line.

There are some other nice lines.

Too much oversight is provided by Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), who wants to turn Owen's velociraptor team into a militaristic fighting force. 

His ideas are fast-tracked. 

Menacing progressions are critiqued, although their devastations develop character.

Those that survive anyway. 

Aloft

Isolated helpless superstitious promise, the only hope for a mother's incurable child resting in the hands of a weathered witch doctor, desperation, the unknown, an attempt to reach into wild undiscovered mystic knowledge potentially hosting scientific truth/s, cures, poetic miracles, gifts, afflictions, a reliance upon the yet to be explained medical hardware built into environmental consciousnesses, humanistic crucibles, penicillin in a beam of light, tactile chemotherapy, the mother refuses to believe only to find she has what it takes, tragedy tearing her family apart, a reluctant, crippling, emotional commitment.

To belief.

Trust.

The event's shocks leave her other son permanently withdrawn, difficult but stable, cultivating an archaic art.

The consequences of a devastating decision lay waiting North of 60, forlorn forgiveness, buried beneath the ice.

It's an incredibly dark film, Claudia Llosa's Aloft.

Well done though.

A depressing desperate joyless aesthetic meticulously matriculated like the resin of pure hopelessness.

Not very cheery.

Well acted, Jennifer Connelly (Nana Kunning) and Cillian Murphy (Ivan) given more room to manoeuvre than I'm accustomed to seeing, not that I've seen all their films.

Well structured.

It challenges you to believe or condemn, take a side, consider, which is always a huge risk, commendable in its execution.

I don't deny the existence of miracles, things that can't be explained.

I do believe they can't be explained because our knowledge still lacks the means to comprehend them however.

It may, always.

Trying to intuitively reproduce them is a sketchy calling.

They can't be explained.

That's why they're so fascinating.

Motivating.

The Age of Adaline

Coyly acquiescing to time passing, chronicling cultural rhapsodies like timid mellow echoes, epochs merging and diverging like predetermined burgeoned whiplash, photo luminescent filaments, spurned inchoate cracks, immortality strikes in The Age of Adaline, and with it comes frayed responsibilities, the importance of remaining impersonal, hesitant refusals to love.

Aloof highlander.

She can't get close, watch while others develop, like physically disinclined incandescence, engaged in lifelong learning, observant, patient, withdrawn.

But a suitor emerges who will not yield, and temptation entices her dormant romantic desires.

Euphoria exfoliates before fate steps in, a cosmic interpersonal strike, socializing sequestered surveillances, interdisciplinary constructs, radiance mesmerized in bloom.

Like father like son.

Maddening immersed fraternities.

A beautiful film, saliently capturing the awestruck, the in/visible, historically intensifying inflamed conjugal passions, a universal library, modesty in timeless curation.

I thought it was odd that the FBI eventually stopped searching for Adaline (Blake Lively), because it would have been so easy to find her by following her daughter, although, in hindsight, continuing with that plot thread would have added an irritating sense of oppression, whose lingering aftershocks haunt the film regardless, as it wisely focuses on romance, delicately arranging an iridescent jaunty bouquet, from securely self-imposed isolation.

Distant, tragic, torn.

Good decision.

Une nouvelle amie (The New Girlfriend)

A loved one passes, leaving distressed feelings of emptiness in her wake, both her best friend and husband struggling to cope, united one afternoon by an accidental revelation.

Puritan codes of conduct initially confuse grieving Claire (Anaïs Demoustier), who's somewhat shocked by her sudden discovery.

But curiosity and understanding soon replace her dismissive state, as she forges a playful friendship with David (Romain Duris), and the two embrace the wonders of exploratory gender identification.

Mischievously masquerading, prim intimacies sewn.

Une nouvelle amie (The New Girlfriend) seeks to expand consciousness, to normalize what is often regarded as a taboo subject.

I don't think it's taboo, but many still do, and the film recognizes this peculiarity through the expression of Claire's reservations, as mentioned previously, and the odd looks they receive au centre-ville.

Her husband has no reservations however, and represents the chill inclusive bourgeois mindset, a normalizing force in the film, even if he does make awkward statistical observations.

The opening moments reminded me of Mommy, and I wonder if Ozon was giving a nod to Xavier Dolan.

The film struggles for the next 45 minutes or so though, choppy editing covering too much subject matter in too little a space of time, like you're watching a film on Sunday afternoon in 1987, until Claire and David take a trip to the countryside, after which it opens up and excels, although the accident near the end was a bit overdone.

I think it's a device filmmakers use when trying to appeal to both sides of the political spectrum when investigating controversial material that shouldn't be controversial.

The exploration appeals to the left.

Negative outcomes appeal to the right.

That's somewhat too basic.

Still, what a world, what a world.

Welcome to Me

Individualized destabilizing pent-up regressive rage, vanity spiked with lavish tear-jerks, revenge, pretence, Sardaukar, like white water rafting while having an enema, serendipitously skydiving into reckless raw sewage, a tropical vacation during a hurricane, horseback riding through an excrement infused mine field, or effervescent diarrhea, stuck in the washroom with the runs for 90 minutes with a good book after having drank a glass of Johnnie Walker Red, laughing your ass off while occasionally glancing at what's written on the walls, it's well done, solid dark comedy, poignant pointless improvised puttering, septic serenity, caw, caw, caw.

86 million squandered insanity.

There's a raw sense of guiltless innocence that destructively vibrates like a ludic chaotic cello, devoid of any constructive purpose, strict subjectivism, too independently inclined.

Like Immortan Joe, Alice (Kristen Wiig) rules, although her domain isn't post-apocalyptic, yet remains symptomatic of what leads to Fury Road.

Welcome to Me isn't hastily thrown together, they took their time to apply added depth, simultaneously enthusiastic and ghastly, it smoothly maintains its aesthetic the whole way through.

Reminiscent of World's Greatest Dad.

Possibly funded by the pharmaceutical lobby.

Decadence.

Mega Maid.  

Poltergeist

I know I saw the original Poltergeist film, starring coach Craig T. Nelson, a bunch of times when I was a kid, and I'm not a kid now, so comparing my youthful impressions to those I currently prescribe isn't a viable option, but there was one scene from the original that still sticks out, near the end, when a hallway is featured and then its length hauntingly extends to augment the sense of desperation, there's nothing like that in the new film, nothing that memorable, although if I had been 8 while watching it I might have found it more shocking, more real.

I may have also found it not so shocking.

There seems to be a formula that's being followed here, which is adhered to too strictly, like they have i's to dot and t's to cross rather than innovations to disseminate and paradigms to shift.

They just seemed to spend more time building up tension in the original, it's patiently disorienting, which explains the switch from otherworldly supernatural investigator Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) to rough and tumble Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), the best feature of the film, due to his comic exchanges with glasses wearing ex-wife Dr. Brooke Powell (Jane Adams), and charismatic audacity, like he's running for 1,500 yards a season, which suggests that contemporary horror is more immediate than that dispensed in the 1980s, although I don't watch enough mass produced contemporary horror films to be able to make that claim with legitimate certainty.

It's a tough claim to make with legitimate certainty no matter how many horror films you watch.

That's what makes making such claims so much fun.

The other aspect of the film that I liked was its focus on the struggles of middle-class American families, represented by the Bowens, credit card debts without regret, no other choice, the poltergeists functioning like manufactured socioeconomic pressures, subconsciously harrowing burdensome manifestations.

They also wrapped up this Poltergeist film too quickly, which fits with what I'm saying, one of the strengths of the original being the shattered sense of calm explosively annihilated in the end.

Perhaps it was a warning that bourgeois economic prosperity was about to start facing tough times in America?

A precursor to the first Terminator film.

It probably wasn't that.

I like that the new Poltergeist film didn't duplicate the original's ending, but would have liked to have seen it replaced with something different.

They just abruptly end it.

Bivouacs.

Although it has some solid characters and themes, I remain loyal to the original.

The original sequels weren't that great though.

The new Poltergeist 2 could exponentially improve on The Other Side.