Field of Dreams

August absurdity ludicrously smitten unassumingly attempts to fulfill salient dreams, a mysterious voice, haunting and tantalizing, non-traditionally invoking spiritual temper.

The flamboyant drive to lackadaisically imagine random initiatives and residual endeavours, at times resounding with emphatic simplicity so ritualistically clear it sincerely baffles.

In the age of science and reason caution should no doubt effectively guide, otherworldly ambitions fantastically delineated feverishly according to blinding sights.

Nutrient rich celestial reckoning at times practically and concretely frowned upon, literary anguish liberating in sermon creative liturgies divinely improvised. 

Resonant collectivity or "group dynamics" can customarily achieve abstract enlightenment, like Deleuze's bewitching ethereal entities gallantly awaiting throughout the cosmos. 

The acquisition of neighbourly support for goals and objectives interdimensionally transmitted, may lead to athletic industrious "leg work" as disbelief awkwardly materializes. 

Within the transcendental realm as moderately applied to books and film, more cultural leaning may theoretically syndicate poetic jive and cerebral exhibition.

If only a mutually inclusive sociopolitical playing field indeed adopted, harmonious respect for its philosophical counterparts in terms of conscience and inherent curiosity. 

Would asylums then be less committed to the regular detention of debatable "madness", and more efficaciously attuned to cosmopolitan alternative life?

More resources could be spent on the viably insane and they could live in greater comfort, transitioning from one unbeknownst psychology to another and another and another through mental exercise. 

The definitive embrace of elective alternatives seemed like the gold standard years ago, multivariably equating the seemingly incongruous with ephemeral substance and illusory charm.

Multidisciplinary integrity intergalactically fuming with geometric insight, never led to destructive wars or remarkable sudden increases in the price of fuel.

"Build it", indeed I say, "why not?", "there's probably nothing else to do".

Try to finish the project before December.

Then see what's up next year.

Could be fun.  

The Good Dinosaur

The adventure quest, out on your own, suddenly dealin' with inherent chaos, the wilderness hostile, your family long gone, evergreen boughs, improvised discipline. 

A young dinosaur falls into a river and is wildly washed away downstream, achingly awaking the next dismal morning to find his lonely self in a far distant land.

He isn't blessed with survival skills and is wholeheartedly fearful of everyone he meets, habitually shy and awkwardly candid he haphazardly strives on down the line.

Fortunately, a young "critter" whom his father tried to get him to kill, efficaciously rewards him for letting him go and industriously comes to his nimble aid.

Intuitively timorous, the young dinosaur recoils, but as time passes finds himself more at ease, life-threatening encounters consistently emerging which encourage growth and hearty mettle. 

With intermittent intervals of mischief and play, the adventure takes on open-hearted multiplicities. 

Debonair reflexes in bloom. 

On the trek through nebulous lands. 

Treeplanting was probably the closest thing I ever did to something like this, it was brutal and harsh and difficult a substantial challenge to be confronted. 

I planted around 75 trees on my first day and made around $7.00, and since it cost $25 to stay in camp (the food was bountiful and amazing), I was functioning with a serious deficit. 

I had spent $800 on gear and had to pay that off as well, and it rained every day for the first week, and after that the bugs were totalitarian. 

Thus, it was either do nothing, make no money, and sit around getting soaked or eaten by bugs, or learn how to do it and make some cash and return home with money for the winter.

I therefore worked while it was raining and resiliently defied the legions of mosquitoes, and planted 1,007 trees on my 6th day, hitting 3,000 4 or 5 weeks later.

I was 140 pounds forever before that spring but I ate so much I've never gone below 160 since.

Treeplantings like the army for environmentalists.

So many insane days. 

And cool animal encounters. 

*You can make a ton of money if you work hard. It's crazy tough though.

Ordet

Dishevelled madness emphatically accompanies a scholarly son who embraced study, and took grand imposing theological works to distressed soul and body and mind.

Even amongst an upright people from a severe age religiously endowed, this devout son seems neigh unreachable according to quotidian scripture. 

Upon the farm, one of his brothers is raising a family without faith, his wife dutifully reproaching him yet still conjugally resigned.

His other sibling wholeheartedly seeks the adoring hand of a tailor's daughter, who believes in different spiritual traditions his father scorns with vehement sacrilege. 

Yet united through familial bonds they nurture strength and disciplined fortitude, resolutely caring for one another with kind pastoral bucolic eagerness.

The little children believe their uncle who predicts the future and heralds spirits, with the sincere trusting uncorrupted eye of wondrous observant faithful innocents.

Complications shatter the harmonious simplicity when routine child birth welcomes constraint, and bewildering death despotically envisages humbling loneliness and stoic resolve.

The insane blunt stark reincarnation proclaiming sheer and utter disillusion.

Before objective patience and despondent synergies boldly reawaken slumbering ecstasy. 

Strange to see grim volatile criticisms awkwardly dividing a farming village, acquiesced demographic consistency effectively determining biblical denomination. 

So many divergent alternative faiths vicissitudinously claiming divinity, with fisticuffs and arguments and drills literately fusing spiritual discord.

Ordet's style of film is something I'm not used to a direct illustration of imaginative belief, wherein which archaic lecture and austere fervency generously coalesce with narrative affection.

Was there once a time when religious tales showcasing family life and exotic miracles, widely dominated domestic markets inquisitively inhabited by the faithful?

Was faith so strong that supernatural and otherworldly films created revenue, and were in a studio's best interest to modestly disseminate with robust vigour?

Like the western it likely faded with the secular passage of peaceful times, in the constructive wake of blinding wars which reduced humanity to so much rubble.

Discursive realities monumental trends enthusiastically enriching coffers.

Novelty to trend to anachronism.

Back to school.

Chapter and verse. 

The Milagro Beanfield War

Competing interests divergently envision the possible future of a rural town, one striving to see the local populace flourish, the other secretly leaving them behind.

A family man hardworking and fed up decides to irrigate his land with forbidden water, suddenly changing the fortunes of the town as the impoverished people line up behind him.

The water had been reallocated for the lavish construction of a new land development, many residents having already sold out to the vested interests and swiftly left.

So many people don't want to leave though and dig in deep to defend their rights, seeking employment and inclusive strategies which sincerely enable lifelong habitation. 

They're old friends and newfound companions who have already found where they want to live, there's no desire to pick up and go to a different town and then start over.

Why not find steady jobs for them and dynamically include them in strategic plans, finding a place for schools and hospitals the next generation of crafty citizens?

Those kinds of leaders deserve respect the ones who genuinely care for the people of their town, and holistically look far ahead to a future that substantially includes them and their families.

The Milagro Beanfield War offers a crash course in multilateral civil conflict (there's even a sociologist), when the interests of struggling people are smugly dismissed with hard-hearted unconcern.

A former lawyer who became a journalist attempts to lead them even though he's jaded, a determined feisty knowledgeable mechanic consistently encouraging his strict resolve.

Imagine cutting off the water supply from impoverished farmers trying to feed their families, it's a bona fide human rights disaster so often ignored with lofty disgrace.

The well-financed powers-that-be are hoping they'll ignore the distressing changes, and won't exercise their democratic rights to firmly hold onto their courageous town.

Mutual respect for the townspeople and the developers can lead to sustainable economic interests, if people aren't trying to cheat one another and honestly agree to progressively work together.

Too bad so much of everything is inefficiently structured along distrustful lines, conversation, books, the cinema, religious differences, shopping, the news. 

There are times when things are less bitter and collective involvement leads to great change.

Like public schools and universal healthcare.

Democratic governments. 

Universal dynamism. 

Chez les beaux parents

The tender affection delicately shared between the loving members of a heartfelt couple, routinely generating awestruck accolades through the nimble art of jocose spontaneity. 

Living together in New York Sophie cooks and Gordon teaches, their sturdy union a fluid cascade bearing versatile witness to collective enchantments. 

She's an exceptional chef and one day her ex appears out of the ethereal blue, to offer her a coveted position managing food services at the Château Frontenac.

She has to compete for the job but since her family lives close by, she'll be able to re-establish contact and spend cherished hours ensconced à la ferme.

Gordon is up for the challenge and generally supportive of his partner's endeavours, although when he discovers that Sophie and her potential new boss were once lovers, he responds with critical animation.

The challenge goes well it crucially seems like the brilliant chef may land the position.

The family farm still in financial jeopardy. 

Gordon increasingly unable to stay cool.

I never spent much time reading great romantic works of fiction, or even paperback melodramas effectively disseminating romantic visions.

Romance does immaterially blossom in many classic science-fiction films however, technologically endowed on interplanetary scales intergalactically inclined to diplomatically blossom.

Chez les beaux parents presents an alternative style of Québecois filmmaking, an international collaboration no less with prominent filmmakers from the United States.

It's not Babysitter or Mommy or Tom à la ferme or Quand l'amour se creuse un trou, it's something much more tame more zoological more glad-handing more mainstream.

It's not that it doesn't mean well or that it doesn't try to incorporate more rugged scenarios.

Which probably worked for many people who saw the film.

Who most likely loved it.

Don't listen to me.

The filmmakers still love Québec and that's plainly evident throughout the film.

And I can't critique such ingenious preferences. 

Especially on an international scale. 

Cane Toads: The Conquest

The old invasive species tale creatively told once and again, this time a' flourishin' down under, with a fresh democratic imaginative take.

Know then that grubs were destroying Australia's versatile sugar cane crops, so they sought an efficient way to stop them, and subsequently introduced a non-native toad to their robust environment, with the unabashed dogged hopes that it would bravely devour them.

Unfortunately it didn't, and they reproduced abundantly in incredible numbers, and soon starting spreading across the continent as their natural instinct accelerated forward.

If considering whether or not they became a tasty treat for endemic wildlife, believe that their natural fluidic poisons were a problem for local beasties and pets alike.

Many communities were rather annoyed by the massive unrelenting expansion, and inaugurated ways to curtail their progress across the massive fecund land.

Others industriously capitalized on public fascination with the phenomenon, and created products and fertilizer and roadside attractions flouting the new lifeform's integrity. 

I know I would have a good time just sitting back and watching them hop by.

Australia sounds so amazing for wildlife.

The Crocodile Hunter was such a cool show.

As is Cane Toads: The Conquest, it's unlike any nature documentary I've seen, a unique twist on a fascinating genre inherently abounding with camp and craft.

It's a truly democratic account that interviews peeps from multivariable walks, without judgment or pervasive hierarchies pretentiously upsetting the creative balance.

The variety is impressive as he zigzags his way through his inclusive exploration.

If no video footage exists of the cane toad related story, director Mark Lewis engages in dramatic recreations in order to reanimate the yarn.

Perhaps not serious enough for some sterile objective puritans, or people who really don't like the toad, it's difficult to say. 

But I imagine kids and families and audiences around the world would love Cane Toads: The Conquest!

The multiple close-ups and inspired invention.

Producing bona fide unfiltered wherewithal. 

Omohide poro poro (Only Yesterday)

Childhood memories of elementary school mischievously haunt Taeko's adult life, even if she's rather well adjusted to the industrious working world.

Notably daunting math tests which caused sincere social and familial distress, many others rather patronizing in their evaluations of her natural difficulties by the numbers.

Young romance confused and startled as an innocent lad accidentally declared his affections, and her classmates erupted with furor and the two really had no idea what to do.

Now she's in her late twenties and the marriage police are moving in, friends and family wondering why she's still single in a city full of millions of people.

Her characteristic independence habitually dismisses their domestic appeals, and she continues to earnestly authenticate by harmoniously proceeding with novel planning.

Which includes working trips to the country where she helps out on versatile farms, taking part in the daily labour while enjoying village life at night.

Soon an amorous lad shyly falls for her big city ways.

Others noting they get along well.

Taeko taking to the ways of the country. 

Omohide poro poro (Only Yesterday) presents alternatives to urban trajectories, as bucolic pride historically enraptures through inquisitive endeavour and cross-cultural daring.

Few films provide such an affectionate road map to countryside life through animate accords, complete with clear explanations regarding age old farming practices and the steady cultivation of the surrounding landscape.

Farming is often overlooked in the hyper-reactive accelerated narrative, but it always will be evidently necessary as long as we require tasty nourishing food.

You wonder why it isn't more respectfully regarded when multivariably compared with other professions, farming actually provides something durable when presented alongside abstract calculations. 

It's a shame how such abstractions at times drive a wedge between practical people, why is it preferable to have no relation to nature and pretend we can exist immaterially zoned?

A healthy environment ensures the multigenerational matriculation of posterity through fecund diversity, the more polluted the environment becomes the less likely crops will attentively flourish.

Perhaps it will never come to that although the dismissive outcome seems highly unlikely.

Working vacations can be fun in countryside regardless, may be worth checking out sometime. 

Zatôichi rôyaburi (Zatoichi the Outlaw)

Supernaturally gifted with impeccable swordpersonship, a humble sightless outlaw wanders the volatile countryside, in search of incarnate justice virtuously beheld with moral reckoning, convinced of honest trust, and willing to lend a hand.

The ambitious in the village he frequents own a lucrative gambling den, which attracts the hopeful farmers who till the nearby fertile soil.

A bold person of the people peacefully warns them of their folly, once a valiant samurai himself now having embraced age-old non-violence.

Zatôichi (Shintarô Katsu) hears his amicable words freely delivered amidst hardboiled controversy, the local chieftains rather inhospitable regarding farsighted cultural counsel.

Much more sustainable for them to see hard earned wages carefreely lost, in a game they always win, as long as their clients suspect nothing. 

Zatôichi heeds the words of a rival boss who claims respectability, then eliminates his rivals, before heading off to a new town.

Until word reaches his modest ears that his friend's greed outweighs even that of his predecessors. 

The village folk on the brink of losing everything.

Virtue requisite animate sprawl.

The enduring everlasting narrative wherein which the modest thrive, with hopes of less stern reprisals for simply longing for fiscal fortune.

The powers-that-be vouchsafe possibility only at rare evocative intervals, to generate irrepressible interest in interminable decorum.

Yet the ethical still widely promulgate resounding wisdom begetting verve, their sure and steady dependable advice eventually leading to civility.

The desire to gamble remains strong and can't be vanquished with heartfelt speeches, opposing narratives cultivating instinct insisting they represent spiritual clemency.

The women of the village clearly understand the proactive message, and quietly long for zealous endurance and brave determinate consistent yields.

Zatôichi upholds aggrievéd rights and swiftly defends them with holistic levity.

Unsatisfied with inherent vice.

He upstandingly quells unhinged dishonour.  

Minari

The sudden move from California to humble landlocked Arkansas, abundant land awaiting cultivation, intrepid vision, audacious yields. 

Without even a well to speak of they settle in and get down to it, sexing chickens during the day, otherwise pioneering.

Jacob (Steven Yeun) wants to succeed and move beyond habitual happenstance, to have something of their own to fluidly manage, intense labour, fecund independence.

Monica (Han Ye-ri) is less enthusiastic with the abrupt uprooting move, her new house not what she'd expected, their land far away from suburban life.

Their son (Alan Kim as David) has a troubling heart murmur which generates solemn worry, even if childhood proceeds unabashed full of resounding pluck and curiosity. 

A rough and tumble grandma (Yoon Yeo-jeong) comes to stay to help out with the kids and general chores, but David and Anne (Noel Kate Cho) are somewhat perplexed by her vibrant striking unorthodox manners.

Local life flourishes around them as they cautiously reflexively adapt, remarkable difference ample opportunity hauntingly clouded by latent doubt. 

The film endearingly showcases family honestly interacting through uncertain times, making the most of its newfound intricacies while mild-mannered arguments periodically erupt.

The supporting cast introduces enough novelty to poetically distract from quotidian alarm, as granny teaches the kids to play cards, and their helpful farmhand (Will Patton) reacts sans inhibition. 

Minari itself is a compelling crop which robustly fertilizes apt immigration, generally healthy and easy to grow it instinctively blends in manifold surroundings.

Democratically attuned minari elevates the agile passionate immigrant spirit, the vital resilient resonant difference that passively shakes up concrete routines.

The Yis struggle at times as competing dreams manifest in dispute, optimistic overtures and belittling misgivings conjugally clashing with traditional uproar.

But in terms of multidimensionally presenting a well-rounded look at dynamic life, Lee Isaac Chung's Minari impresses on disparate levels without ever seeming holistically fond.

Nice to immerse yourself in a meaningful story cleverly intermingling so many chill aspects. 

A celebration of America's potential.

Along with practical dreams. 

Big Top Pee-wee

Immoderately immersed in mirthful grand performance, Pee-wee (Paul Reubens) sleeps the sleep of angels, peacefully awaiting another day, after having taken up farming.

Things run smoothly throughout the day as he cares for his many animals, who enjoy beneficial loving novel caring warm down home attention. 

Pee-wee also conducts advanced research into curious crop cultivation, having created an experimental formula which smoothly encourages rapt abundance. 

Unfortunately, he's not well-liked by the suspicious surrounding townsfolk, who critique his unorthodox ways and general flip alternative wherewithal.

They're even less impressed when a mighty storm blows a circus to town, which lands on Pee-wee's farm, and decides to put on a striking spectacle. 

Pee-wee makes new human and animal friends as the artists passionately rehearse, and even finds himself enamoured with a newfound trapeze expert (Valeria Golino as Ms. Piccolapupula).

But will Pee-wee's heartfelt accommodation be enough to encourage the distressed townsfolk, to abandon their strict routines for a night out under the nearby big top?

So much time spent trying to logically deal with rational exploits reasonably accrued, that impromptu absurd acrobatics present odd vital sincere parity.

Not just the hotdog tree or the supple pioneering pig (Wayne White as Vance), but the lucid sense of compelling wonder that drives wild ludicrous imagination.

Perhaps they shouldn't be in charge of stern prosaic determinate consistencies, so much requisite quotidian reckoning modestly attuned to predictability. 

But shouldn't such manifest grain not be adorned with counterbalancing nuance, to promote extemporaneous serendipity at times throughout the working day?

Thus as the routine despairing delineations approach concrete banal immutabilities, the bizarre shocks and unsettles somnambulism to sustain lighthearted active metamorphosis.

Just as it's nice to have reliable routines when shocks turn to harrowing frights, responsibilities generating forthright designations seasonally aligned to nurture balance.

Big Top Pee-wee brings these spectrums together in animate judicious active definition, to demonstrate holistic productive health, thoroughly enriched through compassionate understanding.

As unequivocal rewards endearingly impact age old ambivalent inquisitive uncertainties, the wolf howls and the dragonfly zings with erudite sonorous sprightly melody. 

Like Dale Cooper's daily treat it can be something never encountered before.

Beware if it happens to be smoking.

Even 4 months later, it's tough to quit.

It'd be cool to have a farm where you just grew crops to feed local wildlife.

It would almost be worth being ambitious.

Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer)

Two brothers work their hearty ancestral farm, gathering nutritious wholesome food from their abundant fertile land.

But they live close to a feisty village and have many trusted neighbours, who rely on their generous spring to kindly irrigate their crops.

One day the older brother decides to dam their fluid fountainhead, and keep all the water for themselves until they've saturated their bounty.

The younger senses danger and knows the villagers will be furious, especially since there's been no rain and none is forecast on the horizon.

Meanwhile, he's fallen in love, and soon he's wed to a carefree lass, their innocent sweetly flowing union effortlessly nurturing the countryside.

But the villagers have responded in fact retaliated with blunt antagonism, the older brother choosing to fight rather than share their rich good fortune.

Soon he's committed murder and is worried about prison life, so he convinces the younger to claim wrongdoing, by tricking him into believing he won't serve much time.

With his younger brother sentenced to 8 years he turns his sights on his distressed bride, who has thoroughly misjudged the man, and virtuously suspects nothing.

Soon he's told her husband's passed alone and forgotten within the prison.

And it seems as if purest malevolence.

Will prosper through disillusion.

The potential for collegial congruity is bellicosely menaced in Erksan's Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer), as greed disproportionately decides to simply take care of its own.

Sharing no doubt would have created interactive social prosperity, not to mention a wide range of goods and services respectfully provided free of charge.

Lazy laidback Summer evenings flush with wine and delicious food, convivially relaxing with friends and acquaintances while the copious harvest manifests.

Instead there's violent disparity and habitual conflict and confrontation.

The loss of a loved one, no time for sleep.

Constant vigilance, prescribed paranoia.

I'm no expert in running a farm but you can't starve everyone else, and refuse to share the Earth's lifeblood as has freely been done for communal millennia. 

Excessive pride and limitless avarice have been condemned throughout the ages.

Susuz Yaz brings them to light.

With toxic mad solipsistic atrophy.

I guess one way to save the planet is to grow meat in labs that tastes identical to farm raised meat and then substitute it for farm raised meat in burgers etc. around the globe, without telling anyone.

While amply compensating effected farmers and helping them transform their farms into ecotourism venues.

Could work.

Les mauvaises herbes (Bad Seeds)

An unlikely trio of mismatched screw-ups ironically discovers health and well-being after one of them forces the other two to help him cultivate his marijuana crop, alone in isolation, on a rural Québecois farm.

The low down.

Simon (Gilles Renaud) has an estranged son with whom he wishes to make amends by leaving him land after he dies. He's been hired by bikers to grow weed to make this dream a reality.

Jacques (Alexis Martin) has crippling gambling debts due to an uncontrollable slot machine addiction and although he lives the life of a cultured actor, has little knowledge of rough impoverished mannerisms.

Francesca (Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez) is much younger than Simon and Jacques and prone to passionate outbursts of justifiable rage. She's lesbian and her parents no longer talk to her and she has trouble relating to others. Her youth dynamically contrasts Jacques and Simon's odd older couple and the film is at its best when her wrath is unleashed.

Les mauvaises herbes (Bad Seeds) is like watching your favourite sports team struggle to win a game. In the end, victory is achieved, and some outstanding plays are made, but there's a fumble here and there, blown coverage, a break away, 12% shooting for half a quarter, a run walked in, calico.

It unreels with two sensibilities, one naive, innocent, and unsuspecting, the other harsh, vindictive, and punitive, like its three principal characters, misfits who haven't had the best of luck (their innocence has led to harsh reprisals which in turn has caused them to be somewhat harsh when they aren't seduced by naivety).

It's funny at times, the introduction of the barn for instance, or Jacques running through the countryside dressed like a French aristocrat, but stalls at points, especially when Simon and Francesca start developing their bond, or when Jacques and Simon are initially juxtaposed (Renaud and Martin don't have much chemistry[Martinez compensates]).

Eventually, after Simon becomes Francesca's surrogate father, and she his lost child, it does work, pulls at the heartstrings without seeming contrived, but the process of getting there has some hiccups, like a running game that doesn't take off till the 4th quarter.

The two sensibilities are sharply contrasted when thug Patenaude (Luc Picard) comes to collect his debts. He's in the barn with Simon searching for Jacques and at first it's too light, he doesn't seem threatening, but then after discovering him hiding beneath a table, it takes a wicked turn and is suddenly frightening, the film becoming more dramatic thereafter.

I still don't see why Patenaude drove the stolen snow mobile over the ice instead of hitting the road, but that's just me.

Jacques makes huge plays in the film's final moments, generating an affective harsh innocence.

He courageously applies his acting skills to the real world to make a deal with bikers before meeting Simon's son (Patrick Hivon as Alexandre).

Some of it comes up short, but Les mauvaises herbes still thoughtfully provides its misfits with room to gently or furiously explain themselves, even Patenaude, its tender moments like spoonfuls of cookie dough, its fury like animated hellspawn.

It blends the immiscible with bizarro good cheer while detonating its intersections with genuine self-righteousness, in the oddest of situations, bad attitudes slowly fading.

There's also a great shot of falling snow.

La famille Bélier

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

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

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

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

With comic un/characteristic aggression.

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

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

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

It's quite patriarchal.

Tough to say what galvanizes his backbone.

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

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

Which playfully flirt.

While remaining tantalizingly afield.

Note: the focus is on Paula.

Far from the Madding Crowd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jupiter Ascending

Jupiter Ascending could have been better.

It's like they're trying to condense three to four hours worth of material into a 127 minute film, and the resulting action suffers from athletic overexposure.

Everything happens too quickly.

Because they cover so much ground, they're constantly placing characters in new hyper-reactive scenarios, and rather than taking the time to calmly build-up tension while diversifying character, bam, another battle begins, whether it's physical, bureaucratic, or conjugal, and it's like the fighting never stops, yet there's no sense that something could go wrong.

Spoilers.

Okay, the film points out how millions of people, in this case entire planets, can be exploited to increase the riches of a few, in this case a plan is in place to harvest humans to create an expensive highly coveted youth serum that prolongs life indefinitely, but the film also naturalizes royalty, which indirectly suggests that royals should have access to benefits denied to their subjects, like a youth serum for instance, even if the royal in question doesn't want to have anything to do with them/it.

The bee scene is one of Jupiter Ascending's coolest moments, but it doesn't fit well with the film's ethics.

And in the end Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) doesn't try to use her new position to break up the intergalactic obsession with the serum, she just goes back to her old life, chillin' with the fam and new partner Caine Wise (Channing Tatum).

Who are also both cool.

It's fun watching Caine fly around on his jet boots, like he's figure skating through time and space, but he does it so often there's a cloying affect, which significantly decreases the cool factor.

The fights he's in are usually full of people hired to do things which involve firing weapons, who obviously never learned how to shoot them.

Also, when Jupiter confronts arch-rival Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) in the end, his dominion disintegrates far too quickly.

Here's one of the wealthiest people in the universe, and his defence grid seems like it's made out of lego.

A lot of corny dialogue.

Love the Wachowskis, but not Jupiter Ascending.

War Horse

Trudging through the war torn European countryside, using skills learned from a forgiving instructor to survive, a horse alertly struggles through World War I, making the most of his talents as he's haplessly acquired by different armies. Functioning as a valuable fortuitous representative of pluck, he resignedly forgoes his wild instincts until circumstances demand their acceleration. As a consequence, he becomes inextricably entangled with imperialist hostilities, an indelible illustration of apocalyptic freedom. External forces most then intervene to secure his release, employing logic and chance to facilitate its realization.

Steven Spielberg's War Horse successfully depicts the brutality of war without glorifying its retributive catharsis (without accenting the accompanying felicity that results from crushing jingoistic calamities). Simplified scenes exemplifying sincere trust or pastoral serenity (the French grandfather [Niels Arestrup] and granddaughter [Celine Buckens]) are juxtaposed with militaristic might to highlight the sharp distinction maintained between these domains. The concept of order is resultantly polarized as well since war represents an extreme form of total mobilization (organization) (you will be shot if you don't follow orders) while the trust built into an idyllic existence organizes necessity (you must work to continuously reproduce your quality of life) in relation to the imagination (it's still possible to enjoy yourself once the work is complete). One approach necessarily tethers fantasy to a definite specific goal while the other leaves it free to roam and discover/create concrete or abstract objects.

The discovery of these concrete or abstract objects may or may not relate directly to your work at hand but in War Horse's opening moments they certainly do. Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) decides to outbid his landlord for a riding horse which he cannot afford. In order to make the payments, the horse must plow a rocky field that the village has dismissed as unmanageable. Ted's son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) teaches the horse to pull a plow and the land is thereby tilled. Thus, Ted's imagination allows him to believe that he can procure something which can then assist him in earning his living while also providing him with the means to pursue other interests (in his case, drinking, in his son's, horse riding). Unfortunately, a storm ruins his crops forcing him to sell his horse to the military.

And his son signs up for war.