Oldboy

Much lighter than Chan-wook Park's demented bitter construct, Spike Lee's Oldboy is still illicit enough to provoke degenerative thoughts of decay, bathed in a regenerative yet psychotic ludic lotion, like a transgressive pantomime, cauterizing ruin.

Suppose this particular narrative inevitably comes across as dark.

Even if you throw in Ron Burgundy and his chipper news team.

The vindictive carousing of an insatiable werehyena.

A leather apron.

And a codified shield.

The game plan's the same.

Asshole. Locked in a room for more than a decade for no apparent reason. Suddenly released. Abounding tension. A set of clues. The diagnostic hammer.

Seismic atrophy.

The tension abounds but it lacks the all-encompassing sense of discombobulated dread cultivated by Park.

But I did prefer the new ending.

So dismal it brought a tear to me eye.

Why do people excel at imploding such vivid monstrous moral vivisections?

Vision. Goal. Cyanide.

The discipline of the Real.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Ron Burgundy lead an extraordinary extracurricular promotional campaign leading up to the release of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, thereby suggesting that it must be an exceptional film, surpassing its comedic predecessor in varying degrees of hilarity, while stretching the boundaries of both ridiculousness and applicability, a voluminous viscosity, asinine yet chaste.

I'm used to seeing American comedies that are around 90 minutes in length but Anchorman 2 comes in at 119 according to its IMDB surrogate.

An out of the ordinary promotional campaign.

An extra 29 minutes.

Released a week before Christmas.

And Anchorman 2 delivers.

Ron Burgundy proves himself to be a sturdy bumbling honest easily upset independent intellectually discordant emotionally secure visceral champion for the everyperson, continuously and undauntedly moving forward, apart from when he decides to hang himself after a randy exhibition at Seaworld (see Blackfish).

He has his own polite style and definition of appropriateness which lead to conflicts when expressing himself within unknown vectors, yet he confidently bounces back and keeps focusing on the positive, action, reaction, proactivation, thereby inspiring his loyal news team.

Some team members function as reps for some somewhat revolting tendencies towards violence, but these tendencies are made to appear ludicrous, kind of, as Burgundy consistently outwits them.

The bats were a brilliant idea. The scorpions, the bowling balls, the bra covered in cats, the details, it's like every line and every scene were eruditely vetted by comedic veterans dedicated to making the best American comedy in years, many of the scenes appearing as if they were haphazardly thrown together, but you don't achieve this level of rowdy unconcerned reckless jocularity without patiently reviewing and editing every aspect of the production, while keeping in mind the havoc of the finished masterpiece simultaneously.

Film editing by Melissa Bretherton and Brent White.

Should I mention the battle?

The greatest most unexpected battle I've ever seen in an American film, with the Minotaur and a werehyena, that's right, a werehyena, plus a Canadian news team, introducing a fantastic sporty religious scientific historical mélange of postmodern acrobatic intensity, Alterius, Maiden of the Clouds (Kirsten Dunst) commencing the romp with her exclamatory horn, Vince Vaughn (Wes Mantooth), arriving at a pivotal, game changing moment.

Or Dolby? His song?

The figure skating?

The parenting?

Never really liked car chases but I do love animal stories.

Even better than Machete Kills.

Written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.

12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is an outstanding film, cautiously yet confidently condensing over a decade's worth of lesions into a cruel, wicked, sensitive, combative humanitarian analysis of slavery's perverse apocalyptic logic, without simply establishing stock polar oppositions but still proceeding unambiguously enough for good to be clearly distinguished from evil, this willowing contrast patiently woven by a perceptive painstaking piecemeal punctuality whose periods and com(m)as aren't definitely placed, but rather gradually appear and fade as the years pass, flowing into one another while delineating crescents, conscious of the a/temporal confines of progressive thoughts shortsightedly dominated by racist hierarchical sludge, wherein Christian principles lie in ruin yet are ignorantly and emphatically pontificated nonetheless, this oppressive static systematic abuse inevitably engendering madness, this sustained a/temporal madness captured again and again by the unforgiving sadistic capricious misery inflicted on the suffering, McQueen's morose humble vicious living characters defining slavery's hopeless absolute perfidy, and the monstrous affects of its cultural applications.

12 Years a Slave unreels like a biographical film, but is anything but a simple chronological serialization of events.

Each sequence rather develops an affect of its own, united by the general tragedy, but separate animate pieces still, as if McQueen took the extra time and care to consider each component's vital individuality while crafting it, in order to formally elevate freedom's fluctuating fervours, a voice of protest unconsciously applied, for characters facing the whip for minor transgressions.

Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) has a small role but she stands out, having delivered the best supporting performance I've seen this year.

She doesn't appear often but when she does she affectively commands every desperate beaten nanosecond, as if, for a brief moment, the entire film solely concerns her, and will only make an impact if she performs second to none.

She also diversifies Solomon Northup's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) character by making a reasonable request which the memory of his former freedoms and hopes to one day regain them disables him from granting.

Thereby further intensifying the madness.

Acting as if it's nothing out of the ordinary.

Cinnamon

Adroit perplexing kitty cat
a nimble flexed judicious smack
across residual disdains
hypnotic stowed eph'meral strains
crepuscular aloed horizons
dissident faint hatched reprises
mewling frisky strident strums
in evergreens, emphatic humming
prehensile adhesive swipes
combustible entreated plights
awareness clasps holistic traits
in transitive allusive feints.

And how.

Frisky

Entranced, aligned, acute, alighted,
slingshot tears like feathered slighted
clashes of floral tip-toes,
peachy clean imbroglios,
a taut slice of ginger is introduced,
tempests gage the fragrant boost,
while steeped cascading ripe stipends,
in bitter, shrewd, assertive blends,
pontificate for points of view
with presents, punch, and jasmine too.

À la carte.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The quest to reclaim the treasure stolen then hoarded by the accursed dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) continues, one hobbit and thirteen dwarves audaciously adventuring away.

Bilbo's (Martin Freeman) steady unerring quick-witted agility saves them from many interminable ends.

Humanistic politics and economics enter the fray as they meddle in Lake-Town (Esgaroth), the pragmatic and the opportunistic squaring off in a heated debate concerning the potential fallout from pent-up dragon wrath.

Parochial wood-elve rulers are critiqued for occupying their thoughts too exclusively with the safety of their own domain, even though the forces of evil threaten neighbouring lands as well.

One of his subjects, the stunning Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), with long flowing red hair, breaks with tradition, and seeks the affections of Jacob rather than Edward, thereby securing a sacred trust, in pristine, alluvial pastures.

A new instalment in The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings narrative could focus primarily on her relationship with Kili (Aidan Turner), as the two are shunned by their respective cultures, eventually finding refuge with the skin-changing Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt).

(He changes into a bear).

Bilbo, in possession of the ring of power, could stop by to spy on them from time to time.

The Desolation of Smaug is a fast-paced thoughtful energetic sequel.

Loved how Thorin (Richard Armitage) dematerialized the imposing gold statue in his attempt to defeat Smaug, thereby symbolizing his own surmounting of the Scrooge-like pretensions akin to the acquisition of limitless wealth.

Kind of cheesy in the final moments.

Nice cliffhangers nevertheless.

Out of the Furnace

Direct multilayered sociocultural oppositions contend, contrast, and coalesce as unpredicted vilified variables resuscitate/implement ancient/contemporary retributive, abysmal, and vindictive plaques, steady as she goes, reap the whirlwind, orderly disciplined straight and narrow paths, wild wanton adventurous tracts, unambiguous bucolic depth, heartbreaking rules, honourable clefts, Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace, reasonably welding an ethical framework for subverting the law, according to a specific social set of incendiary standards.

The key to my interpretation comes from the fact that Russell Baze (Christian Bale) may lose his job at the mill, the very same mill where his father worked for his entire life, due to management's decision to move operations to China.

The film's villain, Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), has lived off-the-grid selling narcotics in the hills throughout his life, as his father presumably did before him.

DeGroat's survival suggests that an income can be earned out of the furnace, characterized by an alternative set of non-traditional denominators.

Should the mill close and no alternative well-paying job not requiring an education present itself, Baze will still have to earn an income.

Taxes from such well-paying jobs can be used to create sustainable public schools, hospitals, and transit systems.

If well-paid jobs not requiring an education continue to disappear and aren't replaced, and prices don't suddenly decrease significantly, the tax base required to support public schools, hospitals, and transit systems will decrease significantly as well, thereby increasing public deficits.

Food, shelter, and automobiles will still be sought after, however, and DeGroat's character demonstrates that they can indeed be gathered.

Now, Baze outwits DeGroat in the end, and likely doesn't go to prison, thereby suggesting that if North American workers who find themselves regrettably jobless must embrace underground economics to continue to provide for their families, then they can adopt the strategies but not the methods generationally applied for centuries by DeGroat's contemporaries and descendants, potentially replacing their narcotic provisions with more wholesome contraband goods and services, divergent ecotours catered by moonshine for instance, using portions of their profits to fund schools, hospitals and transit systems, as respectable industrialists (the good bourgeoisie) find ways to once again supply strictly legal employment, at home as opposed to somewhere in Asia.

From one Christmas to the next.

Incisive film forged with coruscating interpretative flames.

Disposable incomes that won't result in jail-time build thriving communities.

It's an old idea, I know.

But it still steeps an effervescent collective brew.

You know, there is a silver lining to Rob Ford hanging around, although it's sad that he hasn't resigned.

The thing is, if you listen to what he's saying, and he's in the news regularly saying outrageous things, trying to pass them off as if they're legitimate points, without recognizing his/their rather flagrant shortcomings, you can't help but think, if you're on the Left in Canadian politics, that the longer this yahoo remains in the public eye, the more and more ridiculous the Canadian Right appears.

He's like the excessive unleashed wanton byproduct of the Federal conservative party's tendency to operate incognito.

If he's still around during the next Federal election, it could bode well for Left-Wing Canadian politics, featuring the NDP.

Although in the meantime, it's quite unsettling.

Violette

The drive for publication, honest controversial fearless prose, risks taken, contacts established, unerring syntactic strides, desires unfulfilled, sacrifices, tormenting, longitudinal allusive reins, interactive bucolic strains, prohibited friendships lamented, unsettled confrontational muse, pluralizing her stricken sentence, substantive, and disobeyed.

Didn't think Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain) would like Proust.

Perhaps she did momentarily.

Making the short-film in the middle broke up the traditional chronological categorizing well, hilariously lightening while intensifying the sombre desperate elegance.

Tough life decisions.

Rewarded.

The countryside provides a nourishing wellspring of seductive solitude whose tranquil rhythms encourage profuse flourishes.

Difficulties associated with maintaining prolonged professional literary acquaintances are amorously and quasi-hierarchically socialized.

She just does what comes naturally, boldly sharing her relevant thoughts which create intellectually diverse yet accessible cultural markets for millions who were otherwise forced to unconsciously contemplate the patriarchal.

Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos).

Groundbreaker.

Innovator.

Writer.

Philomena

An out-of-work atheistic professional journalist teams up with a devout confident assertive mother to write his first human interest story in Stephen Frears's Philomena.

The two work well together.

I wouldn't be able not to say that (lol) because Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope's script has created two wonderful characters, one with elite qualifications, the other comfortable within the kitschy continuum, the kitschy elite and elitist kitsch notwithstanding, both successes in their respective domains insofar as they've groomed themselves well over the years, brought them together to conduct investigative research, and given them both enough humanity to be able to work as an effective team, both partners listening to one another and making related adjustments throughout which demonstrate facets of humble active listening, snide though it may occasionally be, their power relations not being strictly governed by a master/slave dichotomy, but rather a constructive allied argumentative breach, which playfully and dismissively gives and takes on both sides.

Martin Sixsmith's (Steve Coogan) intellectual capacities are higher than Philomena's (Judi Dench) and he has trouble refraining from expressing this fact, especially before 9 am (why do you have to pretend to be in a good mood before 11 am?), which is to be expected, but they're also high enough to recognize their own particular shortcomings, their exclusive ornate prejudices, which helps Martin learn to accept Philomena's difference, her loves, her passions.

Philomena doesn't shy away from defending her values and even though she's likely never studied advanced rhetoric nor frequently schmoozed in realms where it's condescendingly applied, she holds her own when Sixsmith criticizes her beliefs, breaking through his sound observations (with which I tend to agree) with cold hard forgiving faith.

How she could continue to believe after what certain religious authorities put her through is beyond me but she does and justifies her position coherently enough.

The metaphorical extract (the breach) distilled from their colourful exchanges is a fluid effervescent bourgeoisie, competent mediator of the clashes, comprehensive, cogent, chill.

First time I've briefly forgotten it was Judi Dench acting for awhile, her divergent performance creatively testifying to her dynamic multidimensional strengths.

Not that I've seen most of the films she's been in.

Nebraska

Stark patient self-sacrificing unconditional love idealizes David Grant's (Will Forte) compassion in Alexander Payne's laid-back Nebraska.

A road trip.

Family bonding.

Grievances aired.

Irrationality, coddled.

The film contrasts sympathetic understanding with grotesque blatant greed to generate a gentle hardboiled eccentric microbrew whose earthy hops boisterously blend with its down-home sense of whispered wonder.

Drenched reprieved latent reactive emotion.

It takes a good look at honesty as several close family members state that Woody Grant's (Bruce Dern) misguided claims lack sanity, yet due to their enriched aggrandizing interests they're treated as cold hard facts regardless nonetheless.

These interrelations produce a series of depressingly comic wisps.

The aesthetic modestly criticizes while humbly elevating aspects of rural life and formulates a fecund quaint sterility which gymnastically disables pretentious categorical judgments.

The film seems laid-back and calm even while characters express themselves aggressively but you don't achieve this kind of distinct reflective vacant simplicity without meticulously focusing upon its underlying romance.

Great ending.

Great film.

Delivery Man

If you loved Ken Scott's Starbuck, you may not appreciate his Delivery Man as much (the contents of the films are too similar), although Vince Vaughn (David) reimagines the character well enough, in classic screwing-up while excelling Vince Vaughn fashion, putting in another great performance, confident personality generally unconcerned with consequences, überfatherhood thrust upon him, a life changing salacious shock, a languid lecherous illustrious lighthouse.

(Still prefer Patrick Huard's performance).

Not going to read what I wrote about Starbuck until finishing this review, for curiosity's sake (I did duplicate the tags however since the film's are so similar).

The narrative is a treasure for those adhering to discourses of hereditary multiplicities, even if it's fictional, since David's offspring possess sundry talents and seemingly limitless flexibilities, when considered as a whole.

I'm assuming there's a group who adheres to discourses of hereditary multiplicities.

I mean, what would happen if you had 534 children with 534 different women and then set them loose on the streets of New York or Montréal?

They aren't all going to end up in the same profession.

They aren't all going to look the same.

They will likely react to various stimuli differently.

Some of them, may even listen to, Tigermilk followed If You're Feeling Sinister followed by The Boy with the Arab Strap then Aladdin Sane after their favourite CFL team loses the Grey Cup.

534.

It could happen.

It's tough for me to write that critically about Delivery Man because, as I mentioned earlier, the film's too similar to Starbuck, which is why I didn't want to see it in theatres but I woke up too late that day to see Heli at EXCƎNTRIS.

It was a late night.

Great translation.

Just too familiar with the story so my reactions were always mitigated by encumbering memories which prevented me from being surprised by the sequences.

Surprise is important.

Good surprises.

Screw-off sadists.

Marshmallows.

The Book Thief

A struggling family adopts a young girl (Sophie Nélisse as Liesel) in pre-World War II Germany as the fascists's political agenda rapidly spreads throughout the country.

Ideological indoctrination confuses intelligent youth who can't understand its narrow-minded discipline.

The focus is on the good Germans, the ones who were simply trying to make ends meet during difficult economic times and were forced to come up with survival strategies ad hoc as repugnant discourses gained social traction, followed by war.

The Book Thief unreels from a child's point of view and the film is primarily geared towards children.

I'm used to finding more depth in children's films, meaning that they're sometimes more engaging for adults, but that's not necessarily a criticism, insofar as the kids in the audience were likely fully engaged, and it was made for children.

Still, it accentuates the senses of fear and helplessness conscientious citizens feel when trying to express themselves within oppressive environments dominated by violence, but in an oddly inconspicuous way that leaves the impression that nothing could possibly go seriously wrong, even while war breaks out and the hunted desperately seek shelter.

This explains Death's (Roger Allam) avuncular yet cumbersome narration.

The importance of reading is at the forefront, an individual's desire to expand her mind contrasted with what happens when highly aggressive fanatical groups who never had any desire to expand theirs suddenly control the military.

Nazi Germany was responsible for destroying Europe in the first half of the 20th century, but, according to practically every article I read about the European Union, they're currently saving Europe from total financial disaster, playing a much stronger role than either France or Britain, no doubt due to the strength of the good Germans depicted in The Book Thief, their environmental concerns, and resolute calm.

Viewing The Book Thief in this way helps to detach unconscious direct correlations between Germany and Nazism, which, after you've seen around 100 World War II films and read many books on the subject, is an unconscious direct correlation that's tough not to make (like Mexico and drug cartels [more {some?} American films with Mexican characters who aren't labourers or members of a drug cartel would be nice]).

These correlations can then be replaced by less volatile caricatures, as Germany's contemporary status suggests it deserves.

Thus, when you think of Germany, try not to immediately think, Nazis, a period of their history that more or less ended in 1945, but think, getting rid of nuclear power, focusing on green technologies, economy remains strong even after the integration of East Germany, saving the European Union, fiscal responsibility, which are aspects of what's happening now.

Not so easy to do, I know.

But I've done it. So I know that it is possible.

Kill Your Darlings

John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings enlivens the fortuitous meeting of a group of experimental writers including Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) in New York City during their youth.

Not sure how much of the film is based on rhythmic verge (the facts).

That doesn't really matter.

It offers generalized insights into their introductory methods and innocently stylizes a literary ethos of sorts.

It focuses primarily on Ginsberg's infatuation with fellow student Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), whose being pursued by an obsessed thinker (Michael C. Hall as David Kammerer) who simply can't detach and withdraw.

Ginsberg grows and changes over time, Burroughs and Kerouac do not.

Kerouac's stasis is quite lively.

The film itself is sort of like a lively stasis, like a successful Not Fade Away.

The main problem's formal.

While wild moments and coming of age initiations are present, it's still easy enough to follow, like a crazy countercultural clutch, a warm and fuzzy bourgeois blanket.

More like the classes Ginsberg stops attending than something by Godard or Cassavetes.

Had high expectations. Loved reading most of these authors in my early twenties. Thought the filmmakers would have taken a more poetic approach.

Radcliffe excels as Ginsberg, reminding me at times of a younger Joaquin Phoenix, moving beyond the Harry Potter persona, establishing greater depth and personality.

That's good.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Having won the previous year's Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) return to District 12 to attempt to resume their normal lives.

Trauma terrifyingly affects them both as haunting memories short-circuit various pastimes.

President Snow's (Donald Sutherland) fascist ideology continues to crush workers throughout the Districts but Katniss and Peeta have given them something to believe in.

That belief steadily intensifies throughout the progress of a mandatory nationwide tour during which they must demonstrate their loyalty.

But fascist kings stack fascist decks, not really even a deck, and an unforeseen revised savage sewer augustly swells, threatening to tether the people's momentum, to a coerced, despotic, desolate, plain.

Upon which obedience is the only option.

There's a lot happening in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Katniss and Peeta's aforementioned trauma adds depth to Haymitch's (Woody Harrelson) character, justifying his excessive drinking.

Rob Ford is not Haymitch. Rob Ford is being legitimately criticized for drinking and driving and smoking crack cocaine. These are things responsible Mayors don't do. These are things responsible people don't do regardless of occupation.

You almost feel bad for Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) as she makes the best of an abysmal situation by seeming to genuinely care about teamwork.

As one of the participants dies during the Hunger Games's Quarter Quell, the sun rises, thereby symbolizing that there is only freedom in death when living under extreme forms of government.

Protests at the highest level do nothing to dissuade Snow's executive, similar mechanisms existing in Canada before Baldwin and Lafontaine introduced Responsible Government.

Katniss's formidable resolve resplendently radiates as if her just constitution was forged by Barton Street Steel.

A crucial moment during which the expediencies of her predicament neurotically test her herculean will exemplifies this in/dependence (beautifully dependent on championing the rights of the helpless).

Trust becomes a critical factor.

The parts which necessitate action don't focus on the violence but rather the obstructions of the civilized combatants.

The film depicts what it could be like to live somewhere where 1% of the population hold 99% of the wealth and there isn't a democratic system in place guaranteeing fundamental freedoms.

Where one size fits all.

Should probably read the books too.

Carrie

A shy young sheltered girl is tormented and humiliated by her insensitive classmates due to her unfortunate unawareness of nature's biologics.

But these very same biologics possess specific hereditary gifts that to the uninitiated appear legitimately demonic.

Prom quickly approaches and commendable do-gooders attempt to ease the heightened tension.

Their efforts fail to pacify a spoiled jealous spiteful thug, however, whose mad cruel retributive act, ignominiously ensures that all goodness is in jeopardy.

Reason cannot be maintained.

Liked the new Carrie. 

Suppose a lot of people already know what happens in Carrie.

Nevertheless, a resilient inclusive dimension can be found within, the snobs still abrasively __cking around as they so often do, the immediate transformation of pure bliss into incarnate rage blindly affecting all, the shock hemorrhaging Carrie's (Chloë Grace Moretz) ethical splice, thereby further encouraging understanding inclusivity.

It's a shame Carrie rampages, for, thanks to the resources available in her high school library, she was just beginning to learn how to develop a strong sense of self, conscious of the ways in which her own individuality fit within larger social cohesivities, book after book after book potentially strengthening both her resultant inchoate confidence and sense of belonging.

But she does rampage and if she didn't the narrative's impact would have perhaps been less catchy.

Couldn't work a debate into the end of this one I guess.

Or Professor X?

Imagine Professor X had shown up?

Unprovoked conflict abounds.

Thor: The Dark World

The new Thor film, Thor: The Dark World, takes too many liberties in its preparations for battle.

Its clumsy approach to the construction of its foundations begets a gurgling perfunctory stale flaccid belch.

Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) restoring order to the 9 Realms, not choosing between cotton candy and caramel corn.

But this is a film, not a skyscraper, and after the, sigh, Dark Elves, invade Asgard, it picks up steam and successfully delivers an action-packed dialectic twisting shifting scorn, eccentric citizens of Earth scientifically counterbalancing the religiosity, with glasses, humour metrically romanticizing the miscues, the hammer, pounding and pulverizing away.

Go __ck yourself Loki.

Still, the Convergence could have been more lavish.

As it stands, it's an alright Convergence, but if it only happens once every 9,000 years or so, perhaps Thor: The Dark World could have spent an extra 10 to 15 minutes exploring its quasiphantasmagorical interrelations, multiple entities from manifold worlds gravitating towards these shocks, intertwining piquant interplanetary processions, coordinated cataclysmic chaos, tantalized and transitioned through Thor.

I usually don't recommend that things be more lavish, but in Thor: The Dark World's case, they may have had some extra money to spend.

In a situation like this you don't need to set everything up beforehand.

And you can intermingle select forthcoming synergies within.

All the Wrong Reasons

Solid beginnings for All the Wrong Reasons.

Chummy quotidian banter, an elastic sense of low-budget self-aware elusion, characters who seem relatable but have enough cinematic distance built-in to problematize their realistic preoccupations, polish, tragedy, helplessness, grit.

Facial expressions provoke chuckles.

Background details add flavour.

Surveyed departmental legacies.

Evacuated evasive everyday elevations.

It doesn't hold together well as things become more serious however.

It's not that I didn't like the development of Kate (Karine Vanasse) and Simon's (Kevin Zegers) affections.

They're strong characters and their interactions curve and merge.

But as the intensity of the wry melodrama increases, and morality becomes a potent factor, the comedy disintegrates, and austerity commands.

I liked some of the scenes and the resolutions, but the general air of upright tension in the second half suffered from a lack of contrapuntal displacement.

Unsuccessful juxtaposition.

Solid beginnings though, solid beginnings.

Jungle Sands

Random crisp torched sundry phrase
within which beings brightly craze
its vines and spherical hecates
secrete a resin's bifurcate
through courtships cries credulities
fidel forecasts flippant seeds
its refined delicate forays
illuminate a guilded haze.

On the outskirts.

Dallas Buyers Club

When confronted with the gripping prospect of death, Dallas Buyers Club's Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) cursively refuses to back down.

Economically finding a way to prolong his counterintuitive friction, he proactively rides the bull, adjusting prejudicial preferences in the meantime, gesticulating, matriculating, stanced.

This ___ker knows how to rock a library.

He does his research, finds alternatives, makes hard decisions, goes into business, and proceeds to assist those who had been condescendingly written off.

The butterfly scene boils it down.

The film's straightforward yet punctual and provocative, brazenly tackling hard-hitting browbeaten issues of gender and sex, not to mention the pretensions of the American medical establishment, friendships and partnerships metamorphically blossoming, underground economies, financing the bloom.

Once again we find economic justifications for a more inclusive sociocultural dynamic, more customers, more profits, sustainable social programs, this time in the heart of Texas.

One of the most unlikeliest humanitarian activists I've seen.

His interests are initially individualistic, but he reaches higher ground throughout his transformation.

Possible oscar nomination for McConaughey?

Twin Seabed

Labyrinthine steaming cymballines
inverted entailed crusts,
exchanged clasped celebritease
nutritive ventrile thrusts.

Throbbing crooned communities
ecostalactites,
an elegance fondly retrieved
through oceanic heights.

El Cuerpo

Stubborn protrusive reason flaunts a cryptic allegiance with supernatural impulses as Oriol Paulo's La Cuerpo seeks to retrieve an embattled corpse, evidently contravening its diagnosed paramortal slumber.

A corpse has disappeared.

It is sought after.

The search excavates murder.

A question of feeling, evoking, fury.

At the risk of sounding disingenuous, a clue is provided where it is least expected.

The flashback motif, used extensively, at one point proves exhausting, but it is within this kitschy exhaust that an emaciated ember balefully stows, teasing, fleecing, tormenting, breaking down dismissive pretensions in full-fledged fleeting embalmed mockery.

Endearing ending.

Slowly evolving to become something greater than the sum of its parts, La Cuerpo revels in its formal debauchery, to triumphantly emerge a ravenous satiation.

Burned.

Totally burned.

The reason.

The Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate's cold calculated construct of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) maintains that he's a driven well-meaning intense prick whose inability to bend resolutely cost him dearly.

Guilty of high-tech intractability.

The portrait's possibly unfair.

It was a simple matter of redacting articles posted on WikiLeaks so that the names of covert individuals mentioned within them would not appear and the individuals themselves would likely not be violently punished (murdered) afterwards.

Not such a simple matter for Assange, according to The Fifth Estate, however.

He was determined to publish leaked articles in full on principle to demonstrate that he wasn't doing anything to hedge the truth.

I respect this on principle, but when people's lives are at stake I do have to agree with The Fifth Estate's condemnation of the practise, Assange being unable to recast his image as his freedom fighting persona gained international traction.

The problem in the film is this.

Assange rightfully despises tyranny.

It's what he fights against.

Tyrants tend to kill people.

In The Fifth Estate, as WikiLeaks's reach exponentially extends, it becomes clear that Assange is a general of sorts, more of a supreme commander, and that by releasing unredacted documents, he has the power to sacrifice troops for what he considers to be the greater good, but he still sacrifices troops nonetheless, somewhat carelessly, I might add.

So on principle, he makes decisions that could have cost people their lives, people who may have been fighting for the same things using different methods, when he really didn't have to, he could have redacted the documents without ruining them, which causes him to become tyrannical himself, an unfortunate development for such an heroic person.

What I loved about The Fifth Estate was its examination of history, contemporary history, how many of its characters are aware of the monumental changes the internet has brought about, like Gutenberg's printing press on hyperactive culturally enlivening intergalactic booster juice, The Guardian's Nick Davies (David Thewlis) offering some notable insights, moving the film away from the severely intensifying interactions between Assange and Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl).

Looking forward to reading/viewing what other biographers have to say about Assange over the upcoming decades.

Compelling person.

Brilliant colossus.

Complicit Environs

Rawhided planetoid riffs
scorched tendryllic incense
scooped fletched adrift
focal crafting coral

L'autre maison

Serene lakeside pastoral tranquility's cumulative regenerative assertive grace tantalizingly taunts a troubled convalescing alcoholic in Mathieu Roy's L'autre maison, a man struggling to overcome his sundry jealousies and youthful longings, his inability to refrain from hostilely instigating comparative packs compounding his skittish alarm, a lost unattainable sense of consistent security haunting his unconscious, alcohol no longer an option, but peace, present, partout.

Flying off the handle quickly, abrasively, and confidently, Eric's (Émile Proulx-Cloutier) destructive instincts reflect the stormy endearing tract of the frightened everyperson, his counterproductive soul-searching trail blazed by Proulx-Cloutier's strong performance.

The film periodically focuses on his distracted bemusements, intermixing and contrasting his viewpoints with more successful and less coherent supportive family members.

Its calm enduring inquisitive patience forges a tight urban/rural familial dialectic whose curative emphasis boundlessly allures.

The late night swim is an important moment.

Ah, dinner is served.

Love permeates.

With raccoons.

Amsterdam

Three close friends, living in a small town, married and settled, habitual and unsuspecting, routine linear sturdy timber, off for an expected excursion, wives, nothing to be worried about.

But a salacious drug and alcohol fuelled binge replaces their traditional fishing trip, in none other than fabled Amsterdam, during which an adulterous peculiarity comes to light, ushering in a new set of incongruous relational vertices, discordant complexities, whose devastated heartbroken pinpricked clutches, deceptively destabilize a longstanding foundation of trust.

It's a morality tale.

A classic case of conjugal infidelity crushing one's sense of purpose and well-being.

The crush is perhaps too limiting as its despondent affects prevent Sam (Robin Aubert) from taking part in most of the film, exploratory analysis sacrificed for betrayed obsession, Amsterdam examining the detonation of reason, as thoughts of forgiveness abandon.

His friends are left trying to explain his absence after he chooses to remain in Europe, their cover-up exacerbating the situation, lies, trauma, incompatibility.

They didn't hire Columbo to investigate this one.

Old school yet relevant, Amsterdam substantializes conceptions of loyalty and friendship, refusing to disqualify their guilt, hardboiled chaotic remorse.

But it really boils down to childishness.

Whose the more childish, Sam or Jeff (Gabriel Sabourin)?

From right to left?

Machete Kills

Impressed by Machete Kills.

So many great lines in this film.

It's like Kyle Ward and Robert and Marcel Rodriguez really took the extra time and care a quality ridiculously sensational over-the-top film needs to be convincingly down-to-earth yet mesmerizing and decaptivating.

It sets a high standard for other filmmakers working along similar lines, and, much like Planet Terror, gives them something to aspire to.

Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) has her other eye shot out and then gets up to fight blind?

Fully loaded machine gun breasts?

The heart that refuses to cease beating?

It's the President on the phone?

El Cameleón?

No need for rhetorical explanations.

It's rare that a film so confidently and quickly moves from the improbable to the ludicrous to the exceptional, so sure of itself, so Machete (Danny Trejo).

Oddly, whereas I thought Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows faltered by situating Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) in an international scenario, Machete Kills excels precisely for this reason.

The Last Stand had a similar cast but lacked Machete Kills's sharp-edged artistry.

Pacific Rim had many great lines but I'm afraid it's no Machete Kills.

Let's just throw in Star Wars.

The next one takes place in space.

In space!

Like Star Trek II in terms of outshining its predecessor.

Not that I'm comparing Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Machete.

I'm wondering if Machete can somehow be worked into an Avengers film, either through reference or by making a direct appearance.

The Avengers could use some Machete.

A rugged old-school indestructible hero.

Going to see this film, again.

Happy to see that Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for literature.

I loved Friend of My Youth and Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You and look forward to reading more of her works throughout my life. 

For me, writing isn't about race, ethnicity, or gender, it's about the quality of the writing and how it fits with my own aesthetic preferences, which change over time, although I have yet to pick up In Search of Lost Time and not love it (I simply evaluate it differently over time). 

Some writers I love, some I don't, that's it.

To ignore a specific writer because of their race, ethnicity, or gender, ignorantly cuts you off from thousands of potentially inspiring voices, thereby limiting your own potential in the process.  

We live in remarkably accessible times. 

Why not embrace them?

Gravity

Trauma's debilitating cloaked severity haunts Gravity's heroine as destructive debris and interstellar circumstances threaten her very survival, necessitating the delivery of split-second correct decision making where the slightest miscue will accelerate her demise.

Her oxygen supply is running low.

George Clooney (Matt Kowalski) doesn't make it.

Perdition rests in the flames.

Of cherished, bygone, days.

The immediacy of her isolated predicament and its associated inanimate malevolence prevents her conscious reflexivity from being able to divert periodic onslaughts of asphyxiating plush, the situation requiring simultaneous internal and external synthesized orchestrations for her reliable future to independently portend.

The film's action reliably and boisterously builds as the bright and beautiful Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) approaches its climax.

Couldn't help but think of the ending of the first Alien film, and that Gravity is somewhat of a gem amongst science-fiction considering that it poignantly and thought provokingly stuns throughout, providing a brilliant exemplar of feminine strength, without introducing a bloodthirsty monster.

Science-fiction more concerned with the beauty of life than gruesome death?

That stands out.

Cloudberry Branch

And if you ever the time
to venture through bequested climes
and extend your sojourn's climatic shine
to prolifically rematch their rhymes

to rhythms accustomed to the seasons,
the choicest hops allumed, Parisian,
misplaced garnered priceless treasures,
emoticons and cyphered measures

displaced by cognizant teacups,
and ornamental fistacuffs,
the legends lay beneath the rust
incantating tragic trusts

electric condensed cyclic surges
rush to the ice for plucky purges
then wild reborn cross-pollinations
camp through Summer's embarkations

a canoe, some goods, a spry backpack,
a sleeping bag to pace the track,
well-timed delicious tasty treats
and packs of colts for smokey heats!

keep your sights both low and high
to spot the wildlife in its stride,
bucolic picturesque potential,
polytechnic plush credentials.

Runner Runner

Liked what happens in Runner Runner more than the film itself.

It's too generic for my tastes, not the kind of generic film that recognizes its shortcomings and works an awkward self-critical yet confident and bedazzling dimension into its reels, haughty and sporty, arrogant yet maudlin, but the kind that directly deals with a popular contemporary pastime (online gambling) by utilizing a straightforward style with all the associated bells and whistles, to maximize its take home without taking any serious risks.

Throughout the film serious risks are taken, the plot necessitates serious risk taking, it's just that it takes these serious risks leisurely and comfortably, straightforwardly, if that makes sense.

This aspect is best represented by the crocodile scene.

It still employs clever underground reversals however that made me glad I stuck it out till the end.

To avoid giving away what happens, imagine a situation where a brilliant statistical analyst has the worst possible luck and his financial situation dictates that alternative methods must be embraced if he's to succeed, like Inception's Cobb, the socioeconomic dice stacked against him in each and every sophisticated spin of the wheel, in/formal inter/national legalities stacking the deck, but tries to maximize his profits anyways, even though it could result in the loss of everything.

He makes his bet.

Doubles down.

Throws in the chips.

Undergrounds within undergrounds.

Proceeding delicately.

Bear Mountain, XO

Love Bear Mountain's XO.

Listened to it 5 times last night.

5.

Don't know if I've ever done that with an album.

A mix of songs:

Take on Me, Ah Ha
Back in the U.S.S.R, The Beatles
Dear Prudence, The Beatles
Girl, Beck
Für Elise (Kashmire Trance), Beethoven
Sleep the Clock Around, Belle & Sebastian
There's too Much Love, Belle & Sebastian
I Don't Love Anyone, Belle & Sebastian
Dans mon litte, Canailles
Ena Fee Alyne, Cirque du Soleil
Berceuse, Cœur de Pirate
Lady Grinning Soul, David Bowie
Soul Love, David Bowie
The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie
All Aboard, The Del McCoury Band
Postales, Federico Aubele
Les portes du soir, Indochine
Le Banquet, Jeszcze Raz
Through & Through & Through, Joel Plaskett
Rewind, Rewind, Rewind, Joel Plaskett
Precious, Precious, Precious, Joel Plaskett
Urami Bushi, Meiko Kaji
Garden Rose, Lavender Diamond
What's Ya Take on Cassavettes, Le Tigre
Ma vie à l'heure (La toune de l'ouest), Les Respectables
This Magic Moment, Lou Reed
Étienne d'aoȗt, Malajube
Combat Baby, Metric
It's Working, MGMT
Just Can't Get Enough, Depeche Mode
Carve a Name, Mother Mother
Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Hymn to Freedom, Oscar Peterson Trio
Any Colour You Like, Pink Floyd
Brain Damage, Pink Floyd
Eclipse, Pink Floyd
Have a Cigar, Pink Floyd
Sweet Mama, The Respectables
Sweet Virginia, The Rolling Stones
You Got the Silver, The Rolling Stones
Sway, The Rolling Stones
Neighbours, The Rolling Stones
She's a Rainbow, The Rolling Stones
War Paint, Rush
Don't You (Forget About Me), Simple Minds
You Went Away, Tegan & Sara
Pressure Drop, Toots & The Maytals
Blah Blah Blah, Toots & The Maytals
Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down), Ween
The Mollusk, Ween
Baby Ran, 54-40
Ocean Pearl, 54-40
Dr. Who Theme, Orbital
French Disko, Stereolab

The Butler

Periodically piecing together various volatile historical tracts, intergenerationally sketching a people's hard beaten path, sustained successful service slowly evidencing sophistication and ingenuity, facets which for some archaic reason required proof, proof that wasn't that easy to come by due to multileveled systemic oppressions, which persist, and committed confrontational activism, manifesting different variations on a theme, familially questioning particular forms of engagement, Lee Daniels's The Butler functioning as a practical ideological switchboard, easy to follow yet deep and hard hitting, well suited to wide audiences, proper.

Considering the potent surge of what's being described as the new racism, this is an important film.

The Butler's a good starting point for young secondary students interested in learning more about 20th century American history as well, since it broadly condenses many important developments and personalities, thereby making them accessible, while setting them up with oppositions to avoid having things appear too simplistic, these elements serving to encourage further study.

It also demonstrates that your occupation or income doesn't necessarily limit your ability to play a role in the world at large.

Imagine what could have been done with web 2.0 back then.

Out of sight.

Don Jon

A sexually active male whose interests and activities generally correspond to a popular idealization of traditional masculinity finds himself attempting to conform to what at first seems a model relationship, in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's feature length directorial debut Don Jon, seduced by a perfect 10, then willing to abide by related sociocultural courting mechanisms.

There's just one problem.

Well, a couple of problems (she's very bossy).

But the main problem is pornography.

Porno, porno, porno.

This guy's addiction to porn knows no limits and he even prefers it to sex, completely and utterly obsessed, strategies, a psychological playbook, on his phone while waiting for class, always on his mind, no holds barred, wild uncontrollable excessive lust, instantly activated at each and every opportunity.

His new partner is unimpressed and it causes friction in their relationship.

The film intelligently and comically exaggerates a controversial phenomenon to its extreme, lusciously and ironically opposing it to an obstinate depiction of perfection, interspersing familial dynamics at well chosen intervals (best Tony Danza performance ever!), while patiently revealing a workable solution.

It's fun, the script (written by Gordon-Levitt) providing every character with solid lines and developmental motions, firmly rooted in what's often considered to have been normal in the 1950s (with more swearing), subtly launching a raunchy prorated convalescent case-study, whose sustainable solution vivaciously stylizes.

Jon's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) internal turmoil is expressed through road rage.

The pulsating gender based intertextual clashes work well.

Surprisingly tame considering.

Swear those were CFL clips.

Ti-Cats!

The Ghosts in Our Machine

Liz Marshall's new documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine follows the beneficial risks taken by photographer and animal rights activist Jo-Anne McArthur as she snaps heartbreaking shots of the animals enslaved in various industries.

Grim statistics numerically accompany her outputs, providing troubling realities with cold hard facts.

The fur industry's profits are increasing, for instance.

Scientific laboratories have actually bred a beagle to maximize its docility.

Dairy cows generally give milk for three to four years before they're butchered, even though they could have lived a much longer life, their utters no longer being profitable.

Facilities like those chronicled in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Blackfish are sprouting up all over the world.

And the practices adopted by many organic farmers aren't that different from their large-scale competitors.

Animal rights are the focus and discourses which justify animal abuses are contradicted through a wide range of compelling photographic and cinematic images.

The film is informative without being preachy, evocative but not sickly sentimental.

It's not sensational, relying more on the integrity of its illustrations than the volatility of its message.

When they visit the Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York and show close-ups of their resident cows, pigs, sheep, etc., intricately capturing their emotions and personalities, it's truly moving.

The film should be airing on the CBC's documentary channel on Sunday, November 24th.

Finding funding to support your work, an artist's dedication, and historical revelations are featured as well.

Here's an article about animal rights in Switzerland.

This is what I think Ms. McArthur is referring to when she mentions bears.

Farm Sanctuary's catalogue and its value added information are remarkable.

Living an ethical life.

During question period after the film, an audience member asked how Ms. Marshall and Ms. McArthur manage to continue pursuing their goals in the face of so much suffering (paraphrasing), and Jo-Anne recommended Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World as an aid.

Sounds like a good read.

Girl Looking for the Washroom

And to the left I look and see
a sweet surprising saunt'ring spree,
inquisitive, inopportune,
holistic heights in earthen blooms

Yet hesitate I did indeed
rememb'ring strict calamities,
doubting drole decreed directions,
acritical reprieved inspections

of what may have been created
or could simply be what then was stated
this fetching feline's assertive act
confounding versatile concats!

And as the basic plot collided
with my thoughts above confided
a designated heartfelt crush
produced a softened starlit hush.

In the evening.

Then back at it.

Broncos!

Gabrielle

As love's vitalistic harmonies musically surge, ecstatically flourishing for the curious young couple, condescending and encouraging conceptions cut-off and receive their rapturous transmissions, best interests taking shape in both evaluations, the scurrilous and the sanctified, amorously pressured.

To imagine that someone would attempt to prevent something as beautiful as Gabrielle (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) and Martin's (Alexandre Landry) feelings for one another from joyously entrancing is beyond me, as if love is solely reserved for the prescient and the punctual, rather than for anyone caught up in its (initial) emancipating embrace.

Louise Archambault's Gabrielle does visually and pensively craft several scenes which explore the dangers facing Gabrielle should she choose to live on her own, practically and remorsefully nuancing their breadths, while nurturing her bold explorations.

Better to seek than to writhe.

Love's highly impractical anyways, regularly striking at inopportune moments, to which the application of hindsight can strive to sear logic, and succour an empirical spirituality.

Gabrielle and Martin cogently access their mutually supportive luminescent crunch, the unfortunately partially transgressive aspect of their unity only serving to further strengthen their resolve.

The film's progressively cautious competing rationalities motivate a conjugal oscillation, an illustrative illumination, stabilized through bliss.

Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster)

Reluctantly impenetrable, hesitant yet incomparable, Wing Chun Grandmaster Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) invincibly materializes his compact modest integrity, within, flexibly counterpoised, internationally driven.

Kar Wai Wong's Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster) celebrates his life, highlighting both monumental challenges and athletic altercations, some likely coaxed from oral and written records of his legend, complexly diversifying the phenomenon of martial arts, woefully positioning a seductive feminine element.

The film's temperament complements his psyche as an invasion commandeers his financial resources and he's forced to relocate to Hong Kong, having refused to collaborate.

Confident, reticent, and didactic, it unreels as if silent while biographically contending.

His post-invasion love interest forges the film's romantic counterbalance as her tragic commensurable conception of honour unwittingly tantalizes.

A Master of the martial arts herself (Xingyi and Bagua), her farsighted father having permitted her to train, thereby breaking with tradition, her devotion to her admirable related vow therefore remains a point of principled controversy, unable to release her desire, celestially sustained.

Yi dai zong shi's final message reflects a pluralistic pedagogical ideal, one which emphasizes study and traditional fluctuation, without betraying one's sense of concrete socioindividualism.

An action-packed wise accessible film, poignant without reference to the austere, insurmountable and unfathomable, tenaciously breaking through the ages.

Camille Claudel 1915

Attaching a strictly temporal dimension to the passage of time, wherein a brilliant delicate artist's psychological sentence is thought to be perennially relapsing, her in/direct encampment in the Real having seared an ominous dread, intransigent incarnate interference, a burning flame shrouded in darkness, no companions, no recourse, no distinctions, hospitable exclusion, reclusively aligned.

She can't break free.

Powerful performance by Juliette Binoche (Camille Claudel).

She is provided with the chance to convalesce and her ability to reason traumatically cloisters logical probabilities whose unrequited lesions awoke excessively paranoid delusions.

Her loved ones remain condemnatory, acting in accordance with principles which they consider to be charitably Christian, imprisoning her for life in an asylum, proudly refusing to listen.

The authoritative sanctioned madness is regally revealed as two differently abled persons are rebuked for not rehearsing their play with the requisite depth of emotion.

Mme Claudel is obviously disturbed, not possessed, and may have benefitted from more suitable surroundings, pharmaceutical aids, and/or an understanding listener.

That's not to say pharmaceuticals should have definitely been administered.

If pharmaceutical companies are run like a business who seeks to see revenues increase every quarter, and they rely upon people being diagnosed with particular characteristics in order for their products to be sold, a rather disreputable culture could resultantly emerge, if specific diagnoses are not cross-referenced.

Pharmaceuticals may not have been required in Camille's case as her self-diagnosis indicates, her hypothesized cure seeming reasonable enough, affable, sane.

A different time; Camille Claudel 1915 examines a different set of historical rationalities.

A patient, helpless, conspicuous film, judiciously stark, the sound and the fury.

Ekstra

Taking a humanistic approach to the production of soap operas, focusing primarily on the arduous routines followed by their hope-filled extras, digging in real deep, opportunity jostling with obsolescence, divas, directors, and delays, a rigid overworked tawdry hierarchical continuity graciously swoons to sycophantically accommodate, while viciously displacing its retributive wrath.

The extras take the heat for egocentric conceits, yet flexibly flow in bleached toiled caprice.

Irony abounds as the stars and high ranking members of the crew act like precious progenitors of substantial stakes while creating horrendous gaudy cylindrical refuse.

The cigarette burn improvisation.

A tasteless product placement.

The insertion of an automobile.

Cinematically fell for Loida Malabanan (Vilma Santos) as she attempts to breakthrough, her roles functioning as metafictional realistic vindications as she fantastically battles the wicked, heartbreakingly symbolic, cold, and unforgiving.

Ekstra is also filled with congenial moments of accidental amicable trust, tightrope walking starstruck stalking vests, multiple different angles, competing operational perspectives.

On the fly.

Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (Vic and Flo Saw a Bear)

Callous direct confrontational cheek infused with rehabilitated romantic longing curiously cohabitates with its surrounding community, comfortably nestled in a formerly saccharine sugar shack, problems with those they encounter, there are problems with those they encounter, in Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (Vic and Flo Saw a Bear), wherein an elderly ex-con whose formative years were likely filled with anger, the film being unconcerned with historical details, an emancipated secluded parareactive present, reunites with her luscious love interest, whose fermenting fugacious boundless wanderlust, delicately soothes, and traumatically glistens.

There are those who are seeking revenge.

Those who vitriolically interact.

The sedate, the facilitative, the confused.

And trusty, tight-lipped, do-gooding Guillaume (Marc-André Grondin).

The sequence where he takes Vic (Pierrette Robitaille) and Flo (Romane Bohringer) to the aquarium and the museum is invaluable.

The film's form itself mischievously mirrors Vic and Flo's grizzled disregard, their justifiable frustrations with their roles in the order of things, as displayed by the rapid fire hyperactive opening credits, overflowing with kinetic energy, setting up a cerebral symphony, as if Denis Cȏté is saying, "yes, I could have done more, but isn't what I have done enough to still warrant critical acclaim, which doesn't concern me anyways, je m'en fous?"

I've only seen Vic et Flo ont vu un ours and it's good enough to make me want to rent the rest of his films, quickly full-speed ahead, this guy is awesome.

The same applies to Guillaume Sylvestre.

They don't actually see a bear but the moment where you're thinking, hey, maybe the title isn't metaphorical, couldn't be more dysfunctionally discomforting.

Jackie (Marie Brassard) looks a bit like Wild at Heart's Juana Durango (Grace Zabriskie) at one point.

Pourquoi? Pourquoi!

Riddick

After a lengthy hiatus, Riddick (Vin Diesel) returns, once again stuck on a desolate hostile planet, forced to battle and befriend to survive.

The film appeared to be a rip off to me in the previews, The Chronicles of Riddick having ended with Riddick sitting atop the Necromonger hierarchy, having vengefully transitioned from irrepressible individual to potentially influential figurehead, but I thought I would ignore Riddick's retrograde decision (and bland title) to focus more intently on Pitch Black, worrying about what could have been created seeming futile, wasteful, and unproductive, Riddick still featuring Riddick, iconic bad ass, incontrovertible anti-soldier, that being okay.

But Riddick does explain how he came to be isolated once again and the explanation lacks credibility, considering how easily he consistently outsmarts his adversaries, and the obviousness of the trap he falls into, although he does acknowledge his moment of weakness through narration, and was dealing with quixotically clever foes.

Still, how did he fall into that one, seriously, come on?

Also, when he transmits his presence on the planet to the universe at large why didn't the Necromongers come after him? If he's still alive, he's technically still the Lord Marshal, and should have therefore been cravenously or ceremoniously sought after, by those with an interest in logistical legitimacy. Perhaps they wanted to wait and see if someone else could handle their mess for them, but if anyone knows how agile Riddick is, it's the Necromongers, meaning they likely would have wanted to settle the score personally, as the crow flies.

S'pose this sets up the next sequel though, fingers crossed.

At one point during Riddick, I thought he might quickly outmaneuver the two sets of Mercs intent on his capture and escape to reinstate himself within Necromonger lore, but as it became apparent that this would not happen, I begrudgingly acquiesced.

There are some classic Riddick moments, some classic Riddick lines, some classic Riddick obstructions, and the beginning which focuses on his survival tactics is arguably the film's best feature.

Some key developmental diagnostics flaccidly fluctuate, however, leaving a strong, explosive, crystalline character searching for better material, a fitting ending for this film, now that I think about it.

Really loved the edited version of The Chronicles of Riddick. Waited for this film for years.

The World's End

12 pubs.

12 pints.

5 friends.

Grievances.

A youthful night of rambunctious drinking whose objectives were not achieved is revisited later on in life after 4 of 5 friends have embraced occupational stability, its chaotic contours representing the other friend's liveliest memory, after a lifetime of nurturing mind-altering nullifications.

The goal is to finish The Golden Mile, drinking a pint at each of Newton Haven's 12 pubs, sticking together as a team, revitalizing a wayward sense of indestructibility.

Gary King (Simon Pegg and Thomas Law) somehow manages to quickly convince his old friends to join him, once being the leader of the pack, compassion, pity, and camaraderie functioning as motivating factors, the beast gassed up and ready to flux capacity.

But a paradigm shift has occurred in peaceful Newton Haven, and although familiar faces remain, things are no longer quite what they seemed.

A challenge to the evening's nostalgic embroileries unravels a sinister intergalactic plot to colonize the Earth and eat organic food, against which the 5 friends must then contend, while continuing to pursue their dipsomanic agenda.

To the World's End.

Is The World's End a diabolical delusion taking place solely within the demented mind of Mr. King, or have people indeed been replaced with glad handing automata, in search of healthier lifestyles?

The improbability suggests the answer is a simple yes, but the film's extracurricular exhibitionism begs the question, if this is merely obstetric, why does it revel so collegially within its confines?

It does function as a response to Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright examining their own encounters with the aging process.

Functions too similarly to Hot Fuzz.

Contemporary kings they may be, I didn't see This is the End, and don't want to compare them to anyone else, my intuition transmitting that these comedic constabularies have intercepted an apocalyptic discourse.

Smart script though, the situations themselves often funnier than what takes place within them, which, I suppose in my case, is also a sign of age.

I would probably only be able to drink 8 pints.

If I didn't have to work for the next two days.

And had several cans of minestrone soup available at home.

Cool article.

Cool song.

La vie domestique

What a prick of a day.

The bourgeois baggage bumptiously builds up in this one, as 4 housewives reflexively mold their materiality.

A picture perfect life, complete with good schools, automobiles, and giant houses has been secured, yet aging has reintroduced theoretically antiquated distinctions between feminine and masculine, whose casual unconscious biases and restrained level-headed counterbalances (the dialogue keeps a cool reserved yet provocative head) suggest that La vie domestique can be thought of as a prolonged micromanifested scream, each of its nanofrustrations minimalistically implicated in the stifling restrictions of gender based economically reinforced comments, along with the gut wrenching crunch of ostensible opportunity.

The aforementioned predominantly applies to Juliette (Emmanuelle Devos) as she struggles in her role of supportive wife and mother, providing extracurricular guidance to underprivileged youth while trying to find work in the publishing industry.

She's strong, confident, capable, and aware that time lacks its former robust capacities, alarming amplifications assiduously absorbed.

Her husband (Laurent Poitrenaux as Thomas) tries to comprehend at times but keeps saying the wrong things, seeking to control rather than comprehend, turning domineering near the end.

The ass at the beginning directly establishes the rage.

The rest multilaterally multiplies it.

And the 2013 NFL season begins with a Broncos victory.

That's best case.

Fènix 11-23

A young child's fascination with Harry Potter leads him to create The Army of the Phoenix online, dedicated to promoting Catalonian language rights, and defending the culture of Catalan.

Due to recent terrorist bombings, however, his activism runs afoul of Spain's anti-terrorism laws, and he's soon absurdly disciplined and punished.

Recalling Jason Buxton's Blackbird, Èric Bertran (Nil Cardoner) makes the mistake of responding to a threat with threatening language, hostilely mentioning a controversial underground organization in his reply, naively behaving as youngsters often do, unaware of the legal ramifications of his rapid fire inflammatory comment.

Both films examine the resulting social consequences but in Fènix 11-23 a support network develops which eases the tension.

Èric's life undergoes monumental changes as his family, friends, teacher, surrounding community members, and love interest come to terms with their fears regarding the penalties, directors Joel Joan and Sergi Lara rationally unreeling these fears, slowly moving from the callous to the understanding, as concepts such as democracy become more tangible.

Fènix 11-23 doesn't maudlinly express its examination of free speech (it's a true story), nor engage in sensationalist practices.

Rather, it shows how sensationalism can be a political byproduct that can ruin the lives of the people politicians are supposed to protect.

You can't write about controversial issues without expecting the police to take note and place you on a list of some kind. They are concerned with fighting terrorism.

You can expect them not to harass children, or anyone, exercising their democratic rights, turning playful miscalculations into seditious intents, winning a few votes and/or budget increases thereby, while sacrificing the ideals they're supposed to uphold.

Èric's unyielding courage is an inspiration.

Talk about bold.

La fille du Martin

The passing of a loved one accompanies a young woman's thoughts as she travels to the region of her birth to mourn.

Unbeknownst to her, a free-spirited youth awaits to assist in the grieving process.

As she convalesces basking in the Lac Saint-Jean wilderness, cinematographer Ronald Richard sensuously suggests that its pristine pastimes strengthen her beauty (Catherine Michaud as Sara Leblanc).

That beauty is indeed strengthened, as young love ignites to cause problems for villainous poachers, headaches for parental guidance, undisclosed wisecracks for a fraternal rivalry, and campfire tales for local legends.

Samuel Thivierge's La fille du Martin unpretentiously lodges a romantic reel in the Laurentian filmscape, lightheartedly casting its luminescent lures, hooking urban and rural encampments alike.

Straightforward, freewheeling, and independent yet accountable, it amicably shifts from outstanding shot to outstanding shot, infusing its comedic relations with bucolic luxury, its health sustained by its spry self-restraint.

I'll have to visit Lac Saint-Jean someday.

Only 5 hours away.

Rent an ATV, do some fishin'.

Hey hey!

(Nice porcupine shot).

Lost in Laos

Alessandro Zunino's sly transformational obscurely poised Lost in Laos potentially situates a metamockumentary between two worlds, wherein survival is latticed with familial, relational, and biological vertebrae, adrift in the Laotian jungle, anxiously struggling at home.

On the bilateral, feisty student Daniela (Daniela Camera) sets out with her partner Paolo (Daniele Pitari) to intermingle inebriated and impressionistic filmic observations as part of a wild abandoned ad hoc international trance known as Lost in Laos.

She keeps in contact with her traditional parents until too many substances are consumed at once and she wakes up with Paolo miles from town, down the river, passports and related pieces of identification missing, no food, soaking wet, lost.

The credits set up the film's serious yet sardonic transitional identifications by creatively yet dazzlingly introducing each letter of the crew's names before the name appears in full, at that point in time each character possessing a stable conception of self developed over time, after which the full name breaks apart into its individual components, thereby foreshadowing the upcoming psychological turmoil by the letter.

The creative yet dazzling dynamic sets up the surreal metamockumentary exposition as well, Lost in Laos intellectually diversifying its subject matter while picturesquely percolating a piquant self-awareness, whose bright abnegations voyeuristically mystify.

The boundary between truth and fiction forms part of Daniela's thesis and this dialectical deployment caused me to wonder if the film was really about either an aging professional couple imagining what life would have been like if they had taken more risks, or a young adventurous couple theorizing on the benefits of a bourgeois life spent together.

At which point I had to take mockumentary itself into consideration, wondering if Zunino was eruditely lampooning this style of analysis to simply present a troublemaking voyage of discovery.

Difficult to say.

Blackfish

Glad I don't work for Seaworld.

Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.

And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.

But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?

Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.

Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.

Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.

For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.

The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.

They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.

Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.

Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.

Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.

It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.

Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.

Where people sit in killer whale trains.

And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.

We're the Millers

A cornucopia of unrefined protracted sleaze, non-traditional role models doing their best to advise, their chosen economic insignias problematizing their bourgeois endorsements, choosing questionable yet confident manners of expression, juxtaposed with professional counterparts whose assiduity assumes authority yet lacks respectability, the perseverance of youth humanely automatizing errors in judgment, so many errors in judgment, serendipitously sanctioned, incontinently divine.

The film struggles as its characters acclimatize themselves to each other.

All you really have to do is write about what happens and you're good.

Although you're really not supposed to do that.

There are so many good ideas worked into We're the Millers's script that thinking about what happens afterwards trumps actually watching the film, many of the jokes falling flat, not that there aren't hilarious moments.

For me, it's most significant flaw is a product of the enormous and commendable risks that went into its construction, an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct and build-up cherished yet occasionally hypocritical codes of conduct, the juxtaposition requiring a contraceptive consensus to export its value that never intangibly materializes.

Lacking stability, character development is sacrificed for references and in/direct pop cultural criticisms, leaving it blindly searching for a good episode of Family Guy, rather than focusing on Trailer Park Boys, season 2.

Elysium

Universal healthcare, workplace health and safety initiatives, and true love are spatially vindicated in Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, wherein the unsympathetic inprickacies of a totalitarian state create an orderly robotic despotic exactitude whose overbearing calculations encourage widespread temporal discontent.

A colony for the wealthiest has been created in space on a station known as Elysium, whose cloistered citizens enjoy incomparable privilege and general legal impunity.

On Elysium, everything is relatively perfect, advanced technologies guaranteeing ideal health and well-being, pools, mansions, extravagance, for all.

For the 99.9% still living on an overpopulated underfunded desolate and impoverished planet Earth, in the year 2154, the law is applied authoritatively and immediately, statistical automatons having replaced the potentially understanding, the struggling worker left with no harmless option but to silently obey.

But even though Elysium possesses enormous technological and financial superiority, Earth's population is too large to ubiquitously suppress, and a group of freedom fighters, whose poverty and encumbering lack of resources necessitates a frugal expedient expensive quid pro quo, covertly flourish in the rubble, using their brilliant hands-on luminosities, to keep a faint degree of hope alive.

Extremes abound.

With characterless villains.

Their attempts to degrade the system even further accidentally nourish an individualistic inductively altruistic messianic thrust, whose attempts to reform were systematically rebuked.

Emphasizing an egalitarian redistribution of resources, and citizenship and advanced healthcare options, for all, Elysium is quite the blockbuster, medically administering a sensationally practical ethical solvency.

Myriad sociopolitical dynamics are built into the script.

Which welds the human factor to the heart of structural change.

Blue Jasmine

Financial fermentations can require that lifestyle adjustments be made, Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine perplexedly yet malleably corrugating lead character Jasmine's (Cate Blanchett) descent into madness, competing economic logistics blending the blunt and the beautiful, comedically interspersing experimental affective influences, opportunity knocking, devotion concocting, bitterness imbibing, ripely spoiled.

The truth can be important.

Truths within truths etherealize.

The ethereal cherishes its material foundations.

Specific bases firmly rooted in itinerant psychohistorical discourses.

Jasmine drifts into the past as social interactions manifest a poppy madeleine effect, but their incremental narrative progressions problematize the device's distractions, the plot being secondary to the reflections in In Search of Lost Time.

I've got to find some way to work Proust into the cinema.

The device itself at first tore me away from Blue Jasmine's narrative thread, interrupting scenes which I was hoping would last much longer, at which point I was mildly frustrated by the intrusion, then lured in by the realism, but initially dissatisfied with the resolution.

Within the resolution, when the distraction's coordinated revelations reveal Jasmine's role as ethical agent, the two narratives synthesize then implode, a symbol for the equation of the imaginary and the real, drinking the water of life, causing her to lose her mind consequently.

Which makes the resolution satisfactory, albeit too neat and tidy, apart from the madness, I suppose.

The act of going with the flow is subtly and not-so-subtly lampooned throughout.

With Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), and Andrew Dice Clay (Augie).

2 Guns

Centripetally incensing two sharp sabre-toothed cynosures to shifting psychotic solipsistic syndicates, vengefully frothing from within and without, taking precautions which establish guidelines ad hoc, a weathered weaponized multileveled liaison, 2 Guns fires, 2 Guns fires back, a Fred Ward cameo keeps things intact, the script sometimes swoons, occasionally falters, through cutbacks monterey jack, transitional malters, but chemistry can be a wonderful thing, and Denzel and the Wahlberg flow smoothly, ching ching, learning to trust what they've often been taught, is foolhardy nonsense, born, to be bought.

They should seriously do more movies together.

Functioning in fraternal unison.

Excited for the sequel.

Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.

The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.

The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.

Strong female role models are lacking within.

Not much of a focus on technology either.

Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.

The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.

Yes, it does.

Fruitvale Station

Tragedy strikes a young struggling family in Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station, as a tough ex-con (Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant) makes the hard decisions necessary to turn his life around.

The film doesn't make him out to be a saint, rather, it delivers a down to earth condensed synopsis of the last few months of his life, during which he comes to terms with the potentially damaging consequences of his extracurricular economic pursuits, and decides it's time to stop selling drugs, find and keep a job, and start applying a higher degree of respect to his partner (Melonie Diaz as Sophina) and daughter (Ariana Neal as Tatiana).

Not so easy to do if you're used to working on your own for more money, but there's respect for working within the law, if you believe in yourself.

Oscar starts to believe but isn't given the chance to make good on his promises after an abusive cop (Kevin Durand as Officer Caruso) unnecessarily roughs up him and his friends one night, another police person then shooting and killing him.

The police had no right to drag them off the train so they were justified in actively voicing their criticisms.

If you do happen to run into a bad lieutenant, however, who has the power to make things difficult for you, and then they start to make things difficult for you, I recommend not saying anything, just keeping quiet, even if they try to provoke you, think of something beautiful, close your eyes after trying to catch their badge number and/or name, and resist passively.

Then they'll have no reason to detain you and if they do anyways just remain quiet until it becomes clear that they have no reason to detain you later on.

There are a lot of situations where this strategy won't work, but if you fight back, things will only get worse.

Freedom is more important than lipping off and the police can take that freedom away.

Or go so far as to take your life, as they did with Oscar Grant.

I'm assuming that in many cases what I'm writing here doesn't apply because the police aren't going to abuse their authority.

They certainly did in Oscar Grant's case though, he was justified in actively voicing his criticisms, and should be currently working and taking care of his family, in the land of the free.

The Wolverine

A critical plastic treatise on indestructibility, wherein the mighty Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) regenerative distinction is resolutely compromised, a family's billions intergenerationally contend with their honour, a seductive viper embodies intransitive antidotes, and an adopted perspicuity prognostically makes dire predictions, James Mangold's The Wolverine sentimentalizes Logan's recrudescence, as he reluctantly travels to Japan, to visit, a man whose life he once saved.

Not the best of X-Men films but full of intense scenes which decoratively dilate their doctrine.

Including a wicked-cool high-speed train workout.

For me, it wasn't the trip to the veterinary student that caused Wolverine to begin questioning his mortality, the look on his face as Shingen's (Hiroyuki Sanada) sword punctures his chest lacerating a more penetrating ageless lesion, combatively materializing his countless confrontations with death.

Which strengthens his own conception of honour, reminding him that if he is to die he should die honourably, his encounter with the grizzly earlier on, Wolverine, friend of the bear, laying the foundations of this theme, returned to often enough throughout.

While pointing out how cruel it is to hunt with poison.

But, don't read this if you haven't seen the film, how is it that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) lives again?

He blew up in X-Men: The Last Stand, blew up.

I'm happy to see him back, preferring his approach to Magneto's (Ian McKellen), and am wondering if he transferred his consciousness to Magneto's before his body shattered, and now has the power to create a projection of himself for those by whom he wants to be seen, only after he has stopped the passage of time, which provides a bilateral explanation for how Magneto was able to partially move the chess pieces at the end of X-Men 3, and a rather tight resolution to the Professor X/Magneto conflict, the powers of both leaders adhesively united as one.

Wondering how Mystique will fit into this one.

Her powers must have returned somehow.

Considering watching All of Me again.

Awesome bear scene.

The Way Way Back

A blunt invasive school-of-hard-knocks step-father imbroglio pejoratively and lasciviously attempts to assert control in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's dark The Way Way Back, as quasi-conjugal security and stability adjudicates the virtues of its commitment, the historical socializations of both partners and the ways in which they complicate their attempts to activate an ideal contentiously affecting their potentially idyllic summer vacation, a cool misunderstood reserved teen (Liam James as Duncan) struggling his way through, while the bumbling and the beautiful accelerate the malaise.

But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.

I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.

A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.

It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.

First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).

Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.

While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.

It could work people!

Dance Troupe I Saw at JazzFest 2013

Agile poised synchronizations,
juggling symptomatic stations,
as psyches broadly discuter
les choses qui swiftly ondoyer

The world belies its navigation
with lively choice hapless gradations
which require sundry responses,
reckless, reasoned, risky, staunches

inductively carve out a space
to which deductive pastimes trace
an active mobile cognizance
whose discipline inspires a sense

which spirals, shifts, soliloquies,
while winds will blow bends like a reed,
its tendons transmigrate pretexts,
spry locomotions shyly flex.

Hoping the Ti-Cats can stick it to the Roughriders today.

Go Cats Go!

Unfinished Song

Routine.

Rock solid routine.

Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.

Who sings in a choir.

But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).

And yes, this guy's a prick.

A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.

Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.

Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.

Bit of a tearjerker.

Kapringen (A Hijacking)

Pirates, sailing the seven seas, or the Indian Ocean in this case, in search of bountiful booty, navigate, locate, negotiate.

Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.

Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.

The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.

The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"

Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.

The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.

Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.