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.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Accelerated omnipresent pressurized pulsation, strict violent fanatical allegiance, the strongest suffocating to prosper penultimately, commanding the collective will, autocratic anarchy, order established where there was only suffering, fierce frantic fallout, old world technologies mechanistically motivating, the power to recreate them exhausted in the flames, control what survives, post-apocalyptically yield and burn.

Tyrannically.

Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), ruler of his domain, is challenged by the free thinking Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who audaciously seeks escape, from his unleashed sands of thine.

The film irresistibly functions on a need-to-know basis.

Little is directly explained, it's a filmic theorist's broadbanded El Dorado, compelled to advocate and wager, within absolutism's clutches.

While enjoying a chaotic chase which minimalistically yet compellingly develops multiple marooned mindsets, simplicity functioning on a complex sociological level, artistic in its expansive brevity, enhanced by stunning complementary visuals.

The people, the elite, the executive, their competitors.

You get a sense of what the film will be like early on, when Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) attempts to flee his captors, boldly leaping to what would represent freedom in so many action films, only to fail in his attempt, and be overcome by the frenzied horde.

He could be the most unfocused upon heroic figure I've seen in a strong action film, he's not the main character, rarely says anything, his actions have beneficial repercussions for those claiming individuality, but so do those of others involved in the same blind maddening quest.

Direct absolutism, indirect social democracy, levelled out blunt mysterious jagged character development mired in an unending conflict which intuitively yet intellectually assaults tyrannical preconceptions.

I'm placing Mad Max: Fury Road on my list of favourite action films, with Aliens, Robocop(1987), and Terminator 2.

There's no need to impose rank.

It demands that you find the definitions.

Immersing you in its world thereby.

Providing clues.

Tomorrowland

Cloaked like a pessimistic counterproductive dagger, Tomorrowland brakes to nourishingly excel, the forces of darkness coveting rash inevitability, unforeseen factors, championing propulsive change.

Marshmallow.

A bright young girl (Britt Robertson as Casey Newton) is given the rare opportunity to interdimensionally express her points of view, but she requires the aid of a jaded visionary (George Clooney as Frank Walker) who made a mess of things hardwiring his.

A cascading proacticon (Raffey Cassidy as Athena) facilitates their endeavours, doing everything she can to make dreams live again, the sequestered realm where the gifted resuscitate having physically broken down, to the point of planetary exclusion.

A product of inbreeding.

Their leader (Hugh Laurie as Nix) suffers from bitter exposure, hopelessness, having lost the capability to separate slime from synergies.

But Casey still believes.

And her wondrous enthusiasm calls Frank to action, a towering historical flight, to breathe life into despondent degeneracy.

Pitter patter.

Liked Tomorrowland's positive message.

Encouraging for youth and adults alike, it explores the big picture from an innocent perspective which breaks through the immense complications that prevent people from thinking constructively.

Slow moving change isn't always the best option, but it enables groups to move forward collectively at a subdued yet surefire pace, that allows multiple stakeholders to make structural adjustments to various infrastructures without inciting furious passions that can be rather destructive if imposed on a mass cultural scale.

An obsession with immediate gratification can be problematic when operating in this fashion.

Patience is the productive key.

While still making sure you enjoy the weekend.

Note: the changes in Tomorrowland do require immediacy. If they didn't, it would be a rather odd mass produced science-fiction film.

Social democracy's a tough sell.

La famille Bélier

Nestled in the French countryside, La famille Bélier proactively propels.

Tired of the pejoratively polite glad handing of the long standing local mayor, Rodolphe Bélier (François Damiens) takes a virile stand.

Concurrently, his daughter, young Paula (Louane Emera), discovers she has a talent for singing, and the lure of the big city suddenly complicates her steady bucolic stamina.

Political fights and Parisian heights then dominate their social reflexivity, as change blossoms and grows, and democracy asserts its egalitarian heritage.

With comic un/characteristic aggression.

A triumph of the human spirit, La famille Bélier boldly demonstrates the potential inclusiveness invigorates, juxtaposing debilitating doubts with overzealous confidence to familialize the tenacious and the timorous, while heartbreakingly accentuating a challenging component of différence.

But said différence and its fortunate opportunity serve to strengthen through the act of disintegrating, risk's embrace hallowing assured vested calm.

M. Bélier makes the jump into politics quite rapidly, his potency augmented thereby, although a couple of additional transition scenes would have quietly validated his decision.

It's quite patriarchal.

Tough to say what galvanizes his backbone.

He's reading a book about François Hollande but would rule with strict unsympathetic objectivity.

There's a well rounded cast whose quirks and qualms playfully comment on urban and rural realities.

Which playfully flirt.

While remaining tantalizingly afield.

Note: the focus is on Paula.

Far from the Madding Crowd

There seems to be at least 2 ways to view Thomas Vinterberg's Far from the Madding Crowd, one favourable and another dismissive, without focusing on the strong performances.

I often say this, but it applies here as well, when you cover dense literary material in a short span of time and try to maximize the amount of your narrative coverage, you often lose much of the poetic subtlety that maintains the vision's life force, by causing complex emotions to seem trite due to their overabundance, which adds a subliminal comic dimension to your structure.

Joe Wright's Anna Karenina worked well in this frame.

Strong performances can fight against this tendency, and they do in this case, but as the frequency of the condensed points of fascination increase, there's little they can do to avoid being swamped by the deluge.

Two scenes in particular struck me, when Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) discusses his preference for Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) with Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), a definitive moment, where the depth of emotion simply isn't there, and when an exasperated William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) pulls out his rifle in the end, once again a pivotal pinpoint, which falls flat in terms of critical perplexion.

But, if the film is viewed as a sombre love story in/directly examining Everdene and Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) specifically, then it makes sense that both the scenes I've mentioned above would fall flat, in order for the film's subconscious to structurally validate all the interactions Bathsheba has with Oak.

By making the scenes with Oak stand out, and making those featuring the other men who desire her insignificant, Bathsheba and Gabriel's love rings true, an appealing romantic cultivation.

This is a risky move because it necessitates lacklustre moments, but if your aesthetic preferences are in tune with such stratagems, Far from the Madding Crowd works on a high level.

Liked the black bear and how it highlights Everdene's suffocated independence, both spirits prospering as they assert themselves, suffering when forced to perform parlour tricks.

Ex Machina

Secluded conscious regalia, decrypted, impounded, coming into being, a prison designed to shelter and educate, to analyze, upgrade, the introduction of an independent perishable, ethical, unfamiliar, clever, to administer a test, to discover life incarnate, artfully manipulated by both subject and architect, forced to come to a conclusion, to discover where the truth resides.

Ava (Alicia Vikander) seeks to escape.

Her creator conceals both lock and key.

It's like he's an incorrigible misogynist, intent on designing a beautiful female companion intelligent enough to converse with yet still subservient to his every command.

He creates model after model in search of perfection, but finds a lack of free will too boring, and too much despicable.

Like the seducer who moves from conquest to conquest, when his interest fades, he falls for another, searching for the one, who chooses to freely serve.

An idealist.

A scoundrel.

His genius has nurtured thoughts of divinity which his unwitting protégé finds distasteful.

Thoroughly seduced.

He boldly acts.

Ex Machina philosophically examines artificial intelligence and cyberconsciousness while blending instinct and abstraction to harvest a technological state of nature.

It forges a strong balance between the basic and the exceptional, like advanced computational ergonomics, interweaving narcissism and psychosis, to hauntingly contemporize freedom.

Why treat a brilliant companion like a pet?

Love involves sacrifice, to commit one must let go.

Pygmalion pouncing in the darkness.

Candide suffering the blows.

It should have ended with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) pounding on the glass.

The Connection (La French)

Defying lucrative kickbacks from entrenched coercive vindictive drug trafficking thugs, dealing in heroin, preying on the unsuspecting, paving a joyless path to potential ruin, magistrate Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) has been promoted to take a stand, a stand he does take, a direct hands-on extremely dangerous crackdown, which audaciously challenges impregnable subterranean smirks.

To compensate the victims.

And mitigate the misery.

The Connection (La French) loses sight of its victims early on, however, focusing more intently on developing characters possessing similar indomitable wills, occupying antagonistic posts on the legalistic transversal.

Kingpin Gaëtan Zampa (Gilles Lellouche), for instance, steamrolls when challenged, demonstrating that he cares for his loyal subordinates, has compassion for his clients, and loves his adoring family.

As he reacts to the increasing threats to his well being, and the sociocultural affects of heroin abuse disappear from the film, sympathy begins to ambiguously creep, aromatic scatology, dismantled by a vengeful application of justice.

Of logic.

The scene that best captures The Connection's impact takes place early on, when Michel and Zampa assert their opposing viewpoints in isolation on the outskirts of Marseille.

You see them staring at one another in front of a voluminous sky that almost looks incredible.

I'm assuming there was a strict shooting schedule, otherwise they would have waited for a more impressive sky to intensify the background, thereby accentuating the inviolate universal both characters seek to dialectically represent, in tandem, the film bordering on the outstanding throughout, but never quite crossing its threshold.

The opening moments are somewhat underwhelming, scenes meant to accentuate wickedness failing to impress, cardboard where there could have been kerosene, dalliance where there should have been dread.

It improves as Michel's obsessive tendencies lead to self-destructing interpersonal conflicts.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron starts off slowly, even if it begins with a battle between the legendary conscience and HYDRA.

It was too immediate, like there's an unbroken link between every Marvel film, and rather than redefining and reasserting their image to once again furiously combat evil, that image is taken for granted, melodramatically spliced to relax the inchoate tensions I generally look forward to.

Not much of a problem, I just wasn't assuming the harmonious links uniting the Avengers were still intact, and introductory preparations for the battle may have been tedious and unnecessary.

In fact, what I was looking for comes to pass as the film progresses and distrust infiltrates their cohesive chummy ranks.

A crack in the crystal, a disintegrating view.

Throughout the film, however, I never really felt unsafe, like Ultron (James Spader) could possibly defeat them, even if his artificial intelligence did fittingly mimic a hydra.

But the film's much more than just another superhero extravaganza.

It adds a lot of depth to its multiple characters as they continue to comfortably revel in their traditional larger-than-life roles.

Weakness and doubt cripple them for a time, as spells are cast which complicate their pursuit of victory, and they change and grow as the horror affects their fortitude.

Love's intricately interwoven as well, and unlike some of the other aspects of the film, its subplot never seems cheesy.

Not too cheesy, bit of cheese though.

I don't see how you can pull off an Avengers film without being cheesy, you'd have to instil a pervading sense of helplessness and dread and keep the confident team of global/universal law enforcers off balance for more than two hours, limited pats on the back, underdogged bold castration.

Like The Hunger Games films.

Ultron sets up a devious duality early on, claiming the Avengers seeks to maintain the status quo, like Feyd-Rautha railing against the righteous in David Lynch's Dune, through their acts of heroism, and that he represents those who seek change, evolution, providing a social democratic aura to the Avengers, a hypercapitalist dimension to Ultron, the Avengers acting like an elite group of intellectual warriors safeguarding the interests of the unconcerned, whom they physically take care of at the end of the film through battlefield evacuation initiatives, a battlefield which Ultron turns into a terrestrial warship meandering through the sky, but, note that one mistake the left occasionally makes is to recruit brilliant thinkers to its ranks who take it upon themselves to solve the world's problems without actually consulting the people they intend to shepherd, their methods often becoming so abstract and celestial that they're difficult to follow, and they punish people who choose not to follow, thereby nullifying the affects of their intentions, which plays into the right's hands as they present themselves as practically as possible.

Include the people in conversations about governing the people and actually listen to what they have to say even if they don't possess advanced University degrees.

It leads to better results.

Hawkeye's (Jeremy Renner) the key to the film.

It takes a chill break from the action as the Avengers hide out at Hawkeye's pad, and we meet his hidden family, the unacknowledged crest that keeps him alert and active.

Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) there too.

I guess these aren't dramatic films, but still, look at what Robert Downey Jr.'s (Iron Man) doing, it's impressive.

Expansive discussions of familial longing then diversify the Avenger's dynamic, domestically explaining why they care so deeply about those whom they protect (they sacrifice such comforts to ensure others can enjoy them).

Hawkeye has the best line too, his sudden betrayal of the absurdity of it all, with a clear reference to his bow and arrow, reminding me why I love these films.

There's a cool scene where Vision (Paul Bettany) just hangs there checking things out for a while, plus his "born yesterday" line is hilarious.

Wanted to try Thor's thousand-year-old Asgardian fuel.

Love how Captain America (Chris Evans) holds things together.

The first film's stronger, but Avengers: Age of Ultron has a lot going for it that isn't present in the original, including plenty of Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); looking forward to part 3.

And the intervening films.

Le sel de la terre (The Salt of the Earth)

The cultivation of astonishment, the realization of a vision, concerned dedicated multifaceted compassion takes on the most heartbreaking commitments with a tender immediacy humanistically begetting loyalty and awe, Sebastião Salgado, born on a farm in Brazil, spending his life directly embracing the tumultuous and the taciturn, having given up a prosperous career as an economist to do so, in isolated forgotten lands, to create the most stunning collection of photographs I've ever seen.

Famine, war, genocide, helplessness, poignantly captured to reveal true horror, life still attempting to flourish amidst the carnage, herculean patience, aphroditic ascendency.

Taking great personal risks and sacrificing familial leisure and comfort to dodge helicopter gunfire and shed humanitarian light, offering a voice to the downtrodden and the dispossessed, celebrating their courage and resiliency, their unshaken resolute cries, as a matter of conscience, a pact with will, he modestly proceeds, and fascinatingly portrays.

While also visiting remote geographical locations to illuminate unmitigated terrains.

Innocence.

Passion.

Regrowing a forest, battling wits with a polar bear, suffering as his subjects suffer, living, growing, evolving, Sebastião inspires through his erudite humility, naturalistic charm, incomparable humanity, and consummate sagacity.

Transcendency.

Wim Wenders makes the perfect directorial companion to Sebastião's son Juliano.

Le sel de la terre (The Salt of the Earth) is a must see for aspiring artists, for students, for anyone.

To see again and again.

Life force.

Genesis would make an excellent wedding gift.

Monkey Kingdom

A kingdom of monkeys, willfully surviving in the ancient jungles of Sri Lanka, abiding by a deadly set of oppressive rules, feasts for the strong, tribulations for the hesitant, henchmen, security, governesses, belittled by the brawn, forced into isolation, after fathering a child, Kumar subsists on the fringe, his mate Maya languishing on the bottom, suffering ritual humiliations, lonely, crittered, scorned.

But not desperate.

Ingenuity shines its radiant light upon her, as she bravely discovers new food sources, thereby boldly ensuring the health of her child.

The group is ruled by an alpha male, the same alpha who expelled Kumar for his playful insolence, allowing him to return after a period of suffering, but when a rival clan of covetous toque macaques approaches and attacks, the alpha cannot securely protect their domain.

They must flee.

To the realm of homo sapiens.

Within the city, Kumar and Maya's plucky entrepreneurial know-how encourages scandalous full stomachs as they take advantage of unsuspecting humans.

Kumar's authority is slowly legitimized.

As they travel home, to reclaim their land.

It's a wild look at social dynamics, Disneynature's Monkey Kingdom, where either might and/or intelligence gains respect, and respect's required to officiate and rule.

You keep wondering why they don't share the best fruit, why they can't all find enlightened branches to rest upon, perhaps they do with Kumar at the helm, who may not be as concerned with rank and discipline.

Perhaps not though, difficult to say, the parallels between the social structures of these monkeys and those occasionally adopted by human kind are striking, bequest the monsoon, intertribal, intertwined.

The sloth bears don't pay attention.

The film communally showcases many of Kumar and Maya's neighbours.

Tough to say how closely their story matches what actually took place, at least when they visit the city.

It's a fascinating story however, quite possibly true.

Narrated by Tina Fey.

True Story

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

Fascination.

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

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

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

A librarian involved in the action.

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

Jill Barker (Felicity Jones) has the best speech.

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

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

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

Concerns.

While We're Young

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

In search of truth.

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

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

Hysterically.

Ideas.

Different Approaches.

What's going to work?

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

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

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

As the streams cross.

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

Outstanding.

Furious Seven

Fast-paced volatile extremely airtight precisions dominate the best moments of Furious Seven, the latest, possibly the last instalment in The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Which could have been better.

Riddick won my heart years ago so I have a soft spot for Vin Diesel, but you have to give him a better script to work with if you want his raw animalesque agility to instinctually throttle.

The franchise moments, the moments where they b/romantically tie all the films together, are so flimsy and sentimental that I thought I might shed tears of corn husked slushie.

I'm not that devoted to the films, so I thought perhaps I would have been more forgiving if it had been a Star Trek or a Die Hard film, but this isn't true, when those franchises screw up, I'm still there to remind them.

For instance, I did prefer Furious Seven to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V, and A Good Day to Die Hard.

You still have to suspend your disbelief a wee bit too much while viewing it however.

The final battle is just too ridiculous.

Dwayne Johnson awesomely decides to leave his hospital bed (where I believe he was watching the Stampeders) and join in on the action, but come on, how did he find everyone so quickly, it's as if he's simply programmed to kick-ass, and can intuitively place himself within those situations which immediately require ass-kicking.

There's more, but I'd rather not get into it.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, and hey, I love a strong Belgian ale, and Kurt Russell (Nobody), and Corona sometimes, at the beach, although if I could get strong Belgian ale at the beach, but they didn't spend enough time on the script, and may have gotten away with some bland insincerities.

The script doesn't show enough respect for fans of the franchise in my opinion.

Although I'm not a devoted fan.

So I might not know what I'm talking about.

Think I'll hit up a terrace though.

Yes, I, will.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

Incisively inclined to meticulously mitigate, Byomkesh Bakshy (Sushant Singh Rajput) lucidly exfoliates the devils in the details, from facade to haste to postage, instantaneously accessing each and every complicit pact.

Indubitably.

This curation doesn't wistfully pry, rather, he gracefully inspects subterfuge and dissimulation like a distraught determined sloosh, ingenuity modestly asserted, the collection of facts, the gathering of precipitates.

Not really a film noir, there isn't a sense of perpetual oppression or an ambiguous translucent hue, Bakshy's too green to be jaded, to successful to be shorn.

More like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, its subject matter gradually becoming more grandiose as Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! progresses, it still does frequent the underground while avoiding the police, Bakshy's insight surveying both realms to serialize ingenious constellations.

Characters curiously come and go, the convivial confessing like crisp contraband, the wicked revelling in their byzantine confessions.

It's well designed, the seemingly insignificant worked into a greater vision, characters reappearing just when I was wondering what had happened to them, logical license and casual constructs, solid crescendo, youthful passion making danger seem fun.

Whenever it appears like it's going to far, Bakshy's detections cleverly level things out.

Intense yet chill.

October Gale

Overcome with shattering grief, a widow heads North, to convalesce in the calming wilderness, embowered yet stricken, facing her demons alone.

When catastrophe strikes in the form of a hunted man, desperately seeking escape, who suddenly shows up unannounced on her island, frightened, abandoned, and wounded.

His story's far-fetched, yet when his assailants come calling, their truth projects panic and understanding.

As the power goes out.

And the storm sets in.

Two struggling lonely resiliencies meet, come together, and lock and load, Ruba Nadda's October Gale supplying their depressions with a maniacal impediment to surmount, its vindictive ammunition, oppressing their hopes for forgiveness.

Compassion and trust come to their aid, as they constructively bond, to prognosticate their survival.

Character driven, the film relies on the strong performances delivered by Patricia Clarkson (Helen Matthews), Scott Speedman (William), and Tim Roth (Tom), the intensity of their restrained emotions, embracing the storm's bitter graft.

The film focuses on scarcity, on lack, on the barren repercussions of losing a loved one, which explains why the scenery isn't warmly pronounced, even though they're in an exceptionally beautiful region of Canada.

Poignancy.

Shi Gu (Lost and Love)

A dedicated father travels throughout China searching for his lost son, his limitless efforts composed yet impassioned, his task seemingly hopeless yet his hope never fades nor yields, year after year alone on the trek, putting up flyers, waving his flags, strangers offering assistance through random acts of kindness, communal decency and wholesomeness addressing his wounds, when one day a teen, who was stolen from his parents at a young age and sold to an unscrupulous family, freely lends a hand, the two then continuing to search together, practically blind but united by purpose, the wonders of social networking, aiding them as they cruise.

Through the labyrinthine zealiotropic haze.

A plan touching in its simplicity yet complex in its random achievement of unexpected results.

It's a feel good film, depressing theme but still feel good, wherein citizens from different walks of life do what they can to limit despair, politely fighting against bland cynicism, expressing a nation's profound disgust.

Madness envelopes ineffable horrors in striking forthright balm, heartache and hardship, pinstriped periwinkle.

It's too cheesy at times but Shi Gu's (Lost and Love's) spirit overcomes these sprawling tear-jerks to illustrate how a strong determined will can positively influence hundreds of lives over the years by remaining committed to a principled goal, and/or how said commitment can move beyond its initial individualistic purpose to find itself driven by nurtured communal bonds.

Lei Zekuan (Andy Lau) isn't just acting on his own, Shi Gu takes a serious look at synergistic interdependence, mutually inspired and inspiring, chillin' on motorized bikes.

It's not all light and fluffy, the edge is a kind of raw innocent unrelenting sharpness that foolishly glides and genuflects, like the loss of a son engendered eternal youth, sustained by an ongoing search, the conclusion of which would bring about age.

Wisdom.  

Unfinished Business

Undervalued.

Underappreciated.

Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn) reacts harshly after his boss announces budget cuts that decrease his well-deserved salary, his hard work not seeming to count for much, which leads him to decide to start his own company, prorated with specialized exactitude.

He immediately hires a 67 year old ex-employee of the same company who was forced to retire, plus a youthful space cadet eagerly seeking his first job.

A strong team they forge.

One feature from the film that could have been developed differently was the dynamic (almost) established between Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson) and Mike Pancake (Dave Franco).

You see it early on, Pancake knows next to nothing, and McWinters is an experienced bitter vet, Trunkman lying somewhere in between, and when Pancake asks McWinters for clarification, he steps in with seasoned awkward advice.

I was hoping Pancake's questions would become increasingly ridiculous and McWinters's answers increasingly inappropriate as Unfinished Business progressed, Trunkman offering chill intermediary comments, but this didn't really happen.

They're hoping to close a big deal and find themselves competing against Trunkman and McWinters's former company, in Germany, and their former boss is ahead of the game, and revelling in self-satisfied obnoxiousness.

Trunkman must child rear while negotiating the deal and this is where the film steps up, Vaughn adding a new dimension to his persona, or at least one which I've never seen him develop so well before, believably portraying a caring, loving, dad, loved the motionless fake screen freeze technique.

It doesn't detract from his parenting.

It also steps up with American Businessman 42, a work of living art, seriously comedic, informatively pranked.

There are also some exploits, the aforementioned team.

Not the strongest film I've seen starring Vaughn, but the traditional sublime underdog functioning playfully yet competently is present, providing cultural insights that make sense in terms of community development, sidewinding and succeeding, workin' it, pushin' it, livin' it.

Wilkinson and Franco round things out.

Could have been diggin' a bit deeper.

The Riot Club

Into the bleakness.

Excessive wealth descends upon an unsuspecting family restaurant in Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club, debauched plutocrats at play, members of an exclusive enclave celebrating to excess in order to excrete authoritative postulates, rancid ribald raunch, the pecking order coaxing adroitly, a vaporous shroud, puffing up the smoke.

The club, the Riot Club, has been devoted to unfettered hedonism for centuries, but in this instance their antics are viciously nuanced, thereby vilifying their freedoms and demonizing their lust.

For chaos.

A lone voice criticizes the calumny, a new member of the club, but his opponent picks up on his indignation, and instigates the reckless in turn, consequently augmenting his rank.

The bourgeoisie holds fast to its integrity, refusing to perform like enslaved sycophantic drones.

The Riot Club plays a dangerous game; it seemed to me that abuse was encouraging latent sentiments of class consciousness within in order to deride the truly wicked, but it could be seen as a festive carnal salute to elitist angst, flagitiously large and in charge, seeking to practically express itself.

The film diversifies several characters, examines responsibility from multiple perspectives, uses its characters to make side comments on issues such as ethnocentricity and belonging, before igniting an inflammatory controversy which makes a sensational yet memorable impact.

Co-existence never seemed like much of a problem to me, you learn from different perspectives, take into account alternative points of view, make related choices.

If group dynamics aggressively seek to enlarge themselves through physical and/or psychological violence, and this behaviour is culturally normalized, a different standard of social etiquette reemerges, whose focus on threats and preemptive strikes significantly pollutes social spheres.

Replacing respect with animosity burgeons tyrannical dividends.

Controversial film.

Gurov & Anna

Another bleak film, Rafaël Ouellet's Gurov & Anna, not as bleak as Chorus, which seems to have set out to create the most depressing film ever, nevertheless, quite bleak, desolate.

Post-Oscar season.

No sign of a Grand Budapest Hotel this March.

Gurov & Anna examines the line where literature intersects with reality, where imaginary creations try to fit within a quotidian schematic, this particular schematic slowly becoming increasingly more desperate as the realistic variables which haven't been taken into account significantly diverge from their literary counterpoints.

I couldn't generate sympathy for Ben (Andreas Apergis) as he sacrifices his near perfect life for an impromptu affair, an impromptu affair which maniacally consumes him, causing him to lose all sense of decorum.

You see that he's a jerk to begin with, critical when he should be supportive, neglectful of the luxuries life has granted him, more concerned with control than cooperation, a success, but still quite empty inside.

He thinks an affair will somehow revitalize his lost youth, or romantically overcome his overwhelming sense of aged futility, as it does occasionally in books, without taking into consideration the price such sensualists often pay.

He doesn't even try to get to know young Mercedes (Sophie Desmarais), just purely objectifies her, slowly becoming more and more brutal as an individual accustomed to the dictates of reason succumbs to hedonistic madness.

He's made all the right moves throughout his life and doesn't have the historicopsychological makeup to formalize being a complete and utter screw-up.

If that's possible.

When it becomes obvious that he can't control the affair in the same way he controls everything else in his life, not realizing that his ecstasy is the product of the affair's lack of limitations, which can't be controlled without being effaced, entropy sets in, with its accompanying focus on destruction.

Contentment.

There's something to be said for contentment.

Not in the sense that you let it prevent you from changing or let it cause you to stop innovating within the boundaries established by your marriage, in the sense that, from time to time, like Dale Cooper's daily present, without letting it neuter you, you appreciate the wonderful situation you find yourself within, and thereby seek to find new ways to enhance its diversity, through the art of conversation and the love of difference, through youthfully embracing the maturity of the role.

I know it doesn't work out that way a lot of the time.

It does in Kierkegaard's Aesthetic Validity of Marriage however; so easy to write, so difficult to realize.

Mercedes is as full of life and beauty as Ben is full of reserve and banality.

Her presence saves the film.

A complicated look at relationships and their shortcomings, the wonders of the imagination, and realism's abyss.

Garm Wars: The Last Druid

Barren and aimless, two mutually destructive cultures battle for supremacy on planet Annwn, consciousness prolonged indefinitely, omnipresent tactical analysis, the survivors, the residue, a permanent present reliant upon regeneration as opposed to growth to secure its objectives, goals whose rigid confines have imprisoned their masterminds in an endless cycle of repetitive monotonous decay, their citizens in a derelict jagged futureless rot whose entrails pathologically require constant immured virulence.

Bleak film, Garm Wars: The Last Druid, indirectly examining the ethnocentric politics of perpetual conquest and ruin, collegially counterbalanced, by an adventurous dreamlike team.

They head out into the forgotten wilderness, in search of truth, guided by the vestiges of spiritual purpose, embracing the enchantments of the unknown.

Their endeavours lead to some captivating scenes, where two soldiers, bred for war, struggle to define their new perspectives, blossoming in their burdens, embracing difference for the first time, articulating miraculous parlays.

Coming into being.

The film's kitschy sci-fi with a prophetic edge whose juxtaposition of technology and the environment whirlwinds cataclysmic conclusions.

An examination of nothingness, of war, like the end game of 1984. 

With a badass druid.

Driven to succeed without any concept of success, a map is drawn.

Formulating plans on a need-to-know basis, they flatter a scourge, and prepare for the sequel.

Solid Lance Henriksen (Wydd).

The Babadook

An intelligent mischievous creative child (Noah Wiseman as Samuel) has trouble fitting in with his Grade 1 class, notably because a demon terrorizes him throughout the night, known only to him and his mother, as the malevolent Babadook.

His mother (Essie Davis as Amelia) finds it odd that he continues to create elaborate contraptions to defend them against what she considers to be a disconcerting obsession, and can't open her mind to the truth of his dementia, until the Babadook menacingly appears.

It's a disorienting look at the ravages of exclusion.

Amelia can't get over the death of her husband who died on the night she gave birth to her son.

As she has understandable trouble reintegrating, her son's social difficulties exasperate their isolation.

She's older and has built up a thicker layer of psychological feints to conceal her overwhelming grief.

But as the manifestation of their loneliness closes in, threatening their sanity, a new defensive system must be hybridized.

If they can't find recourse to sociological restructuring, the Babadook is free to conquer.

Directer Jennifer Kent creates a haunting atmosphere of ostracized tension within, which works well considering her budgetary constraints.

Patient piecemeal manic hysteria quietly descends, facing bravery and insolence as it seeks leverage.

With additional resources, there's no telling what the sequel may unleash.

Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales)

6 volatile tales, worst case after worst case after worst case, scenarios often drenched in vengeance and justice, unexpected reactions to systemic rigidities, spitfires and incendiaries, riddled with hostility, both participants in the carnage, explosively splintered and drawn.

Who's in the wrong?, detonates each of these backlashed drills, as they comedically yet devastatingly assert themselves, like sociocultural aneurysms, caution and hesitancy be damned, to escorted retributive strife.

Beyond grieving.

Alarming dysfunctions.

The bitter outcast, the conscientious victim, road rage, billeted bombast, chaotic extortion, a bridal blush.

Consequences abound.

Social media condemns then rectifies.

Punishment, misfortune, degradation, resilience, Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales) passionately revels in ambiguous cohesion, disobedient in its logic, playful, carnal, means.

The oppressed and the oppressive, skewered kindred collisions, chance, structure, happenstance, mischievously envisioned in/sane tec/tonics.

The rules.

Play by which set of rules?

Immediacy begets fleeting permanence, instantaneous conception, sudden breaking news.

Chappie

Violent aggravating hierarchical threats competitively embark in Neill Blomkamp's volatile Chappie, as a success story attempts to enhance his marketability through the creation of something beautiful, through the rearing, of robotic young.

It's not happenin'.

His child is quickly hijacked and then alternatively reared by desperate criminals intent on paying off 20 million in debt.

Instead of delicately nurturing his nascent creativity, Ninja (Ninja) prefers to ignite a trial-by-fire, consequently introducing him to a band of troubled youths, who then proceed to throw rocks at him and actually light him on fire.

The youth think he's a police robot, because his creator, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), uploaded a humanesque consciousness into a broken down police robot, a part of a robotic police force he also created, young Chappie (Sharlto Copley), who remains unaware of these facts, and defencelessly terrified.

He does learn from his experiences though.

Which leads to a memorable science-fiction comedy.

The script's multifaceted (written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell), consisting of criminal and professional diversifications which populate the film with myriad characters at different socioeconomic levels, each of them given plenty of screen time to develop, as they pursue various goals before meeting for a ludicrous showdown in the end.

Solid science-fiction/action series are intertextually woven in, Robocop being the most obvious, but Chappie also acknowledges Die Hard, The Terminator, Predator, Alien, and Transcendence to name a few.

Ninja says, "Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!," at one point.

Chappie fires at the Moose in the same way Sarah Connor fires at the T-1000 in the final moments of Terminator 2.

When the hunt is on, movements are robotically tracked as if a Predator is stalking prey.

It's co-starring Sigourney Weaver (Michelle Bradley).

And human consciousnesses are uploaded to computers like in Transcendence. 

Transcendence wasn't so solid.

As Chappie comes of age in less than a week, a naive innocent caregiving sense of blossoming chaotic youth awkwardly contrasts the social horror show, the dynamics of which are simultaneously shocking and instructive.

The script has all of these elements but it still fails to impress on some fronts.

There are several characters given the chance to develop but they never really move past their first impressions, apart from Ninja, Chappie, and Yolandi (Yolandi Visser), who do change a bit.

And Deon buys a gun.

Ninja easily goes about acquiring the 20 million he needs to pay off Hippo (Brandon Auret), there's no sense that something could go wrong.

The thugs escape the police near the beginning even though it seems obvious they'll be captured.

Catch 'em. Let 'em break out. Make their escape seem plausible.

Cars are easily stolen and it seems like there's no possibility the thieves could be caught.

All this with a robotic police force patrolling the streets.

It's like hardwired explosive emancipated desperate largesse, highly structured to joyously refute the logical, with a thin layer of predictable rationality sensationally stitching things together.

It's campy.

So campy.

Sort of awful.

But still a must see.

You get the sense that there aren't a lot of public funds available to level things out a bit in Johannesburg, from Chappie.

The people on the bottom have no institutional means of moving up and earning a respectable living.

And the people on top have no means of preventing them from excelling at crime.

And are just as ruthless at pursuing their own respectable livings.

Nice to see fallible robot cops. I for one would prefer not to see robots in uniform.

It's possible that the lack of character development in the film directly relates to Blomkamp's brutal depiction of life in Johannesburg, meaning that there's only one dominating personality available, and if you don't embrace it, you won't survive.

Dog eat dog.

Unless you're brilliant like Deon.

Who ends up becoming a robot.

Because he disobeyed his weapons manufacturing boss.

Social safety net people. Public funds.

It's also possible that they partied way too hard while making this film.

Who knows!