8-Bit Christmas

A different time known by many only through festive fable and resolute reanimation, during which new technological developments proliferated, along with the age old tried and true.

In fact inherent resonant syntheses at times harmoniously hastened, newfound revelatory reckoning hitherto unheard of in sundry millennia. 

With such abundant novelty elucidating ingenious spirits habitually distilled, random fluid intermittent auspices risibly attuned to salient synergy.

Within this unsurpassed decade, 8-Bit Christmas shares its tale, with laudable attempts to appear authentic, throughout the incumbent childhood reminiscence.

For one youngster within the neighbourhood has received every newly released toy, and his surrounding covetous playmates seek to be chosen to actively play.

They longingly gather en masse while young Mr. Keane (Chandler Dean) treats them contemptuously, his haughty dismissive cheeky flaunting generally tolerated with tranquil reticence. 

But 'lil Jake Doyle (Winslow Fegley/Neil Patrick Harris) has had enough and after a haunting disturbing incident, sets out to buy a Nintendo of his own to freely accommodate nimble gaming.

The initial plan involves the Scouts and the accumulation of commodities sold, wreathes indeed to communal stalwarts ceremoniously accustomed to symbolic tradition.

If his sales reverberatingly reach sought after insurmountable superlatives, it is thought he will receive a new Nintendo gaming system.

But something's not quite right and his friends may have been misinformed.

Thus inspiring strategic improvisation. 

With the aid of friends and family.

Not merely a history lesson for contemporary enthusiasts intent on study, but also a blueprint for high-stakes shenanigans as once conceived sans online technologies. 

For there was indeed a time when intricate detail was interactively worked into thoughtful recreation, and playful meetings were held in person to freely negotiate what lay outside.

It was called conversation wherein which curious peeps expressed different points of view, and if the answer remained uncertain what were known as books were readily consulted.

I really enjoyed this film and will likely check it out again next Holiday Season (along with works by Raymond Briggs [I have a huge list of shows and films to watch every year {and it just keeps growing!}]). 

It has a classic Christmas ending (love you dad).

Applicable throughout the ages.

Beast

A bit lost, torn up, unsure of yourself, bored, appointments still kept, job held down, favourable impressions made, rules followed, suddenly an X-Factor chants out unassumingly, confident and determined to whisk you away, parental disapproval augments the intrigue, raw wild magnetism beckons, rugged unscripted romance unconsciously makes waves, formless indefinite turmoil, voluptuously forbidden.

Imaginative frontiers.

Realistically crushed.

Small town sociology, all nighters and country clubs, stratified daylight reckonings, prohibited ambiguity, tight collars buttoned down, assertive adolescent angst, high fives and pats on the back, phantasmagorically crossed streams, courting conspicuous challenge.

Once thought to be deconstructed.

Not that long ago.

Still are of course, there might even be someone conducting a widespread statistical analysis of global openminded sociopolitical economic constructs right now, more than one person, complementary tributaries crafting poems and plays, cartographies and lexicons, flourishing partout beyond one-dimensional obsessions, where youthful hearts still maturely animate wise non-violent pastures, radiating shifts accrued, soaking up the great beyond.

Just gotta look for it.

Beast contemplates in the intermediary zone, two lovers sticking together regardless of class based prejudices, their path fraught with judgemental blockades, and it still remains unclear if one of them is a vicious murderer.

Jessie Buckley (Moll) delivers a remarkable performance showcasing variable emotions with versatile authentic command. Multiple distinct scenarios enable her talent to luminescently blind, a raw spirit full of self-generated harnessed energy.

Sturdy yet flexible.

Calisthenically driven.

She's bluntly situated with Beast's cold narrative trauma, a member of an well-known family irresistibly drawn to a heartthrob with no name (Johnny Flynn as Pascal), one who doesn't mind the snobbery but won't back down either, a resilient freespirit who's been knocked around, both lovers mistrustful of codes, both reactive when confronting injustice.

Yet one remains level-headed and focuses their rage directly upon the foolish perpetrator in question (civilization), the other, unable to strike back at those who hurt them, takes their pain out randomly upon the world (madness).

A tragic comment on a class based state which gives no quarter to the unestablished.

In this case, however, they must be punished, the first two-thirds of the film unreeling like a profound psychological thriller, the rest descending into typical stereotypes high and low, a surprisingly stark ending, for an otherwise stunning film.

Moonlight

Locked-down in isolation but technically free, young Little (Alex Hibbert/Ashton Sanders/Trevante Rhodes) moves between drug abusing mother (Naomie Harris) and violently dismissive classmates as gracefully as he can, finding refuge with a childless local dealer (Mahershala Ali as Juan) whose guilty conscience and ironical good nature suggest he accommodate the boy.

An oasis helplessly haunted, Little still attends school, and the bullies still bully as he ages, as he grows, as he matures.

One way to stop bullying is to fight back but they travel in packs in Barry Jenkins's Moonlight.

Cowardice.

Little (now Chiron) does bash the most vicious of them in one day with a chair after which the police take him away, suffer in silence or respond and go to prison, not much of a childhood for the peaceful gay fatherless African American kid.

Moonlight is a sad film, a resilient film, a crucial film, a sophisticated film.

A simple story on the surface which fluently presents coy critiques of cultural codes without recourse to sentiment while patiently blending in focus, asking why is difference so frightening?, why do so many instinctively suppress it?

Difference spices things up to add alternative flavours which merge and diverge with eye-opening wonder.

Adventure.

It's as simple as bread.

Different types of bread.

White bread tastes good but one day you might try brown, then rye, then pumpernickel, then multigrain.

Then you have 5 options rather than one for making a sandwich, and can experiment to find out what tastes best, for you, on each different type.

If you have to prove you're tough by forming a group to violently suppress another or an individual, you aren't tough, you're pathetic.

If you're afraid of difference ask yourself why?, and try something new, something startling, like blue cheese or a strawberry shake.

Overcoming fears is what Men and Women do.

Took me a while to start loving olives and hot peppers.

Now I eat them all the time.

A lot of the gay people I've met are chill with a great sense of humour.

It makes for good conversation.

Not many films make as serious an impact as Moonlight while just simply presenting a story.

It's profoundly chill considering the tale it's telling.

The highs and lows.

The emptiness.

Crack ruins communities, ruins lives, makes a sewer of superlatives, which otherwise may thrive.

There's no simple solution.

Besides giving up crack.

And refusing to sell it.

If that's the economy something's seriously wrong.

It does not have to be that way.

And takes courage to turn things around.

Bravery.

Dedication.

Understanding.

Will.

In the great wide open.

Moonlight states this without saying a word.

Blessed.

The BFG

The crafters of dreams, inaugurators of imagination, humbly humanizing heaven and earth with tragic humour and comedic complaint, magically transforming the mundane and the mechanical into mirthful exhilarations of sprightly cerebral rustic metropolitan whimsy, intergalactic anchovies, pepperoni principalities, the promotion of laughter, cheek, good luck and fortune, legendarily discrediting desperation and doubt, the blending of sundry scintillating elements, diversifying banalities, with intergenerational honeysuckle, and iridescent eclectic salience.

Giants!

There be giants in Steven Spielberg's The BFG and one has taken a shine to slumbering humanity (Mark Rylance as BFG).

He literally gathers dreams and then chooses to altruistically share them.

Smaller than the other giants however, his knowledge an insult to their blunt aggressive disdain, when he encounters others of his kind punishments must be endured, and humiliations ritualistically accommodated.

A young orphan girl (Ruby Barnhill as Sophie) spots him one night as he travels through London and is kidnapped shortly thereafter so that he can avoid detection (an odd way of going about things).

In order to save her from his invasive famished brethren (there aren't any female giants) back in giant land, he must employ stealth and dissimilitude, while she teaches him to be more confident, and to be proud of his clever achievements.

Innocent in its elevations and timid in its temerity, The Big Friendly Giant shyly sticks it to bullying while invigorating artistic expression.

Aside from some peculiar structural elements, it enlightens while it entertains and elucidates while it underscores.

Hey, I read Nicholas Nickleby way back when in school.

Loved that book.

I took flack for reading the whole thing.

And almost produced tears while reading aloud the chapter where _______ dies.

Recommend The BFG for children and adults alike.

Bullying really is the worst.

Peer pressure.

I thought these encumbrances would disappear during adulthood but they remain, oddly enough.

Not in my current job or social life, but I read about them regularly enough to remain intermittently flabbergasted.

Sigh, I could never pretend to love soccer or roller derby.

Or not complain when asked to do something unsafe.

A strange state of affairs this 21st Century.

Not so bad with JT at the helm though.

He doesn't seem like he possesses any bullying instincts whatsoever.

I keep agreeing with the things he says.

It's unprecedented. Uncharted. Uncanny.

Agreeing.

Peppermint.

Wakolda (The German Doctor)

An ingratiatingly intelligent financially secure monstrosity suavely earns the trust of an unsuspecting family in Lucía Puenzo's Wakolda (The German Doctor), a Nazi war criminal having fled to Patagonia to continue conducting his medical experiments, preying on local families, and their innocent children.

Lilith (Florencia Bado) instinctively trusts the doctor, who is in possession of experimental knowledge that can help her grow.

She's growing at a much slower pace than the other children at school, and they've taken to bullying her as a consequence.

Her father refuses to allow the treatment, thinking, "who is this person who shows up out of nowhere, with neither references nor credentials, saying he can help my daughter, with medicine that the local doctors have never heard of"?

There's no cross reference.

Josef Mengele (Àlex Brendemühl) proceeds nonetheless, pursuing his perverted conception of science on the available human resources.

But his presence is detected.

The film's focus on Lilith and her beautiful curious wondrous spirit, seeking friendship, ignoring her tormentors, using the library, adds additional depth to the repugnance of the Nazi, to whom she's simply a T to be crossed, a doll to be played with.

The film doesn't directly condemn, rather, it uses character, setting and confidence to vilify the doctoral aberration, suffusing viewers with an idyllic subconscious revulsion, to passionately overcome the ambivalence.

There have been films in recent years highlighting the fact that many German citizens were themselves caught up in the Nazi's terror, during which time they felt like they had no choice but to follow the party line.

Wakolda's ambiguity acknowledges this, while using emotion to appeal to the intellect, to present a compelling exemplar of the guilty.

They only care for the individuality of the exceptional.

For everyone else, there are no exceptions.

Blackbird

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's just a kid.

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

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

Disturbing, demented, dissonance.

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

Carnage

Propriety is caustically deconstructed in Roman Polanski's Carnage as two couples meet to discuss a recent altercation between their contentious offspring.

And inadvertently try to get to know one another.

The situation is this: one kid was confronted by a group of kids mouthing him off so he picked up a stick and hit the leader of the group in the mouth, damaging his teeth. The parents of the former make an effort to apologize to the parents of the later by stopping by their apartment in a show of good faith. They discuss things amicably and the parents of the former are about to leave but one thing leads to another and their conversation is extended.

As the mother of the later (Jodie Foster as Penelope Longstreet) becomes more and more intrusive in her comments and suggestions, the father of the former (Christoph Waltz as Alan Cowan) becomes increasingly defensive and irate. The resulting polemic pits two couples from different socio-demographic backgrounds against one another and the children are soon forgotten as the animosity intensifies.

But each couple has their own internal struggles as well and the genders eventually square off while enjoying another round of afternoon scotch.

Known for its transformative curations.

Carnage works as a deconstructive piece which champions open honest airings of grievances over uptight formal indisputable appearances. Tearing away at the veneers which constitute a wide variety of social interactions, it finds catharsis through confrontation while productively disrupting and recasting established codes of conduct.

As everyone remembers their youth.

This could have been an exceptional film but there's something missing from its bitter tranquil blend. While I respected its formula, I couldn't find that cohesive regenerative spark which would make me want to wholeheartedly engage in subsequent viewings.

Some sort of kinetic catalyst.

Everything's reputably in place to make Carnage stand out and I think that may be the problem. This script may have found more life with a less successful cast and crew looking to make a resounding impact.

As they fight for recognition.

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) offers a discursive examination of exclusion which awkwardly yet agilely provides a malleable definition for the phenomenon. Little Eli (Lina Leandersson) has been 12 years old for some time and ensures her longevity by drinking the blood of the living. Little Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is picked on in school and must find a way to fight back against those who bully him. The two strike up a strange friendship full of silence and short conversations, Oskar learning to speak with girls, Eli reminding him that she is not one. As bodies pile up throughout town, Oskar strikes back against his foes, Eli's supplier of blood dries up, and a group of cats embrace their bellicose instinct. Friendship becomes vital to Eli and Oskar's perseverance as they duel with their enemies and carve a place for themselves in their culture's underground.

Awkwardness abounds in Let the Right One In and the film effectively examines what it means to be an outcast. Oskar's parents are divorced, he's thoughtful and quiet, bullies pick on him, and he doesn't have any friends. Hence, when he meets Eli it's awkward, especially since she possesses the confidence and personality he lacks, the two functioning as social and communal opposites. Alfredson captures the maladroit nature of a child's first encounter with a member of the opposite sex well and the sensibility that governs their interactions flows through the rest of his film. The teachers have awkward relationships with their students. Eli's discussions with 'guardian' Håkan (Per Ragnar) are awkward. The group of strangers Håkan tries to ignore are awkward and their awkwardness incrementally increases as the film unreels. All of this awkwardness never allows us to feel comfortable for more than a millisecond as it agilely transmits itself from scene to scene, developing a frustrated interminably visceral aesthetic whose parts shift to align and forge a chilling climax which detonates its disenfranchised integrity. Being a teenager can often be awkward, as can being a vampire. Let the Right One In distills said awkwardness into an irresistible piece of dexterous disenchantment, delegating its vanquished restrictions for days to come.

Summer Book (Tatil Kitabi) (World Film Festival, Montréal, 2008)

Seyfi Teoman's Summer Book portrays the complicated dynamics confronting a Turkish family after their eldest son (Veysel, played by Harun Ozuag) decides he no longer wishes to study at a military academy (an action which will likely ensure the stability of his future). Veysel fails to convince his father (Osman Inan) to let him continue his studies elsewhere and his supplication is supported by his less prosperous uncle, Hasan (Taner Birsel). Veysel's father eventually suffers a massive brain hemorrhage after which his uncle rethinks his position. During this time, Veysel's younger brother Ali (Tayfun Gunay) travels about town, suffering the abuse of older, nastier classmates (one of whom steals his highly cherished Summer Book). The slowly-paced and meandering cinematography effectively accentuates his lonely saunter, enabling its audience to both relive long forgotten youthful haunts and feel the pains of his sensitive spirit. As Veysel discovers the dangers facing Ali, he begins to realize those which will confront him outside of the academy as well, and is forced to question his idealistic goals. However, the idealistic life presented by a secure future is subtly lampooned, as dogmatic governmental proscriptions are consistently shown to be humbug, thereby frustrating the matter further, as Veysel's adolescence flutters away.

Summer Book's patient pace fittingly adorns its content, although the overall aesthetic is somewhat drowsy. Further, its realist style works all to well, at times, making me wish, I'd just, gone for a walk, through Parc Lafontaine, in order to read Benjamin, while thinking about gardening, swimming, festivals, and celebrations. But Teoman's uniform design fluidly captures a summer of change whose currents will be permanently tendered, simultaneously demonstrating the problematic nature of ideals and the complex social matrix maintaining their appeal.

Ben X

Nic Balthazar's first feature film Ben X looks at life through the eyes of a tortured autistic teenager. Ben (Greg Timmermans) doesn't say much or do much to defend himself. Consequently, his rotten classmates do their best to make his life even more miserable. Ben has retreated deep into himself and rarely leaves his cocoon because whenever he does (outside of the presence of his family) he is greeted with derision and contempt. His world consists of online gaming, odd encounters with religious iconography, and split-second glimpses of obscure pieces of reality which no one else is capable of seeing, his particular disposition rendering them personally objective, saliently shot by cinematographer Lou Berghmans. As things deteriorate, a girl (Scarlite played by Laura Verlinden) enters his online domain who challenges him to speak, to bloom. His resultant desire brings about a remarkable metamorphosis which demonstrates how one moment of extroverted introversion can trump millions of hackneyed catch phrases, objectifying the eternal beauty of peace, brought about through social castration.

Whether or not any of this occurs is a matter for debate, and Balthazar is no slouch when it comes to layering the ambiguity. While this ambiguity may leave you feeling ill, its presence is likely a by-product of every instance in which you partake in acts similar to those engaged in by Ben's classmates, an encounter with the other side, the disenfranchised, the consequences. Ben X unravels the ironic dimension of militaristic bravado, pointing out how easy it is to be brutal and follow cantankerous commands.

While showing how much stronger the people are who peacefully, critically, and artistically stand up against it, the stentorian courage found within the coward who rebels, the derelict strength of a disembodied, ethereal, event.

Filmed in Belgium in Dutch.