Passionate logic.

Murder on the Orient Express

Possessing an inexhaustible gift for anaesthetizing extraordinarily complex behemoths, resolved riddles exemplifying multidisciplinary mettle, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) fittingly decides it's time for a vacation, and boards the lauded Orient Express in search of computational repose.

But just as he begins to exercise his literary imagination, a hardened degenerate comes a quizzically calling, in search of world renowned vigilance, to serve and protect his undignified exemptions.

Having already proven that dignity is something he regards philosophically inasmuch as he takes manifold vicissitudes into intellectual account before making variable judgments, he still refuses the thug's request and continues to seek solitude.

Only to awaken to discover that a fellow passenger has been, murdered, and that he must therefore astutely detect once more, to avoid indirectly condoning the free movement of violent criminals.

His voyage having been impeded by a serendipitous avalanche.

He flexes inquisitively.

As his investigation commences.

Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express condenses the famed detective's sleuthing into a series of short but meaningful exchanges, each fully charged with guilt and inculpability, cloaked details deductively electrifying a productive narrative gridiron.

With somewhat more formal spectacle (production value) than I'm used to seeing in stories concerning culturally elevated investigatory phenomenons.

I rather enjoy watching the great detectives/inspectors/private investigators/dudes piece together clues delineating nefarious acts, with my parents, but I'm more used to seeing them explore within televisual boundaries.

I'm happy to see the actors who haven't yet become heartthrobs, starlets, or characters on demand cut their chops in a well written episode (usually around 2 hours in length), and am often not that concerned with how much screen time they each receive.

Indubitably.

When this format is given a much larger budget, as it should be more regularly, with many more famous actors, I certainly appreciate the cinematography, along with corresponding cinematic eccentricities, but if it ends with one of my favourite actors not having been given a larger role, when they could have been, or if the pressures of having more critical exposure make it seem rushed, it can be somewhat of a disappointment, one which might have been dismissed had their been a lower budget with multiple unknowns.

That isn't to say I didn't enjoy Branagh's take on Poirot, the cunning nature of the collective revenge reverberating with vindicated compunction.

Poirot himself mesmerizes, and the eclectic yet cohesive jigsaw cast commands the puzzling scenes judiciously.

Another 45 to 90 minutes though, too much of a commercial focus (were Frost or Morse ever trying to make money?[the commercial approach worked more successfully for Guy Ritchie methinks]), how many more tributaries could have been navigated with that much more time?

Thus, I'm hoping there's an extended version coming out soon, which adds more depth of character to a film that's already highly thought provoking as it scintillatingly yet diminutively reprimands.

The Mountain Between Us

A sudden crash upon a remote mountain top shockingly affects three airborne strangers, plummeting just before achieving thunderous summit, no cellphone service available, no flight plan having been filed, destitute, forlorn, aerodynely abandoned, they classify, catalogue, conjure, and code, embracing logical risk to command desperate passion, blindly preparing for enigmatic descent, wounded yet versatile, adventurously impacting.

Seductive scorned survival.

One traveller planned to be wed the next day, an innovative photographer working for The Guardian on her way to Denver, she refuses to sit still and wait, thereby prompting diminutive exodus.

Another must follow, himself quietly suffering after having lost a loved one, the two slowly traversing frozen inhospitable lands together as one, struggling to limitlessly strive on, with the hopes of rediscovering civilization.

A persevering dog tenaciously accompanies them, spiritually guiding them along the way, enabling them to grasp, grip, and grind, well-placed throughout the film to devoutly distract and domestically foreshadow, his improvised excursions adamantly nestling, the parental and the preconditioned, precociously implied.

Roughing it stark and wayward, lost in the wilderness in the dead of Winter with neither supplies nor sustenance to trek their way through.

Can they endure like inexhaustible inclement feline prognosticators?

While exponentially cultivating, what is known as true love?

The Mountain Between Us metaphorically ices the unforgiving terrain the everlasting requires to harmoniously resound.

Amidst the jaded chaos of hopelessness and the disabling cynicism of despair, a would be couple sustainably compensates.

Cinematographically lacking considering their environment, and much more rich in woodland symbolism than death-defying dialogue, it still presents a tumultuously touching vision, unobscured by constant slights.

Imperative integrity.

Substantiated romance.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek, born again.

Was a bit disappointed that Star Trek was born again with the crew from The Original Series, but it's not like there aren't manifold versions of Hamlet out there, Batman will likely live to see another day, Hawaii Five-O is back (I've never seen either of the series), and Beatles and Rolling Stones cover bands will likely continue to sing for centuries to come. 

I was hoping to see the Rolling Stones in Montréal next month but the cheapest seat I could find near the rafters costs over 200 hundred dollars. I paid 34 dollars to see them in 1994.

Bring on the cover bands.

Star Trek Into Darkness confidently gambles that the success of its predecessor paved the way for it to take greater liberties with Star Trek's most sacred moments, and I'm assuming every Trekkie has already seen the film twice, and are already dividing into different fastidious factions, each with their own take on the reintroduction of Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the pastiche of Star Trek II's classic ending, so I'm discussing related plot details.

In my opinion, the new cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise were ill-equipped and unready to incorporate this classic ending, nor the famous Khan scream, and their sophomoric attempts to do so, more concerned with travelling at warp speed than taking the time to generate genuine emotion, even though the trap they fall into justifies this dependence, and within the film the new cast and crew is ill-equipped and unready to confront their adversaries, were, still, disheartening.

The cameo from Leonard Nimoy didn't suck me in. 

Giving Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) expanded responsibilities while leaving them primarily in the background heightened the tension.

The who-should-be-captain dialogue between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) was played out in the last film. 

And McCoy's (Karl Urban) all wrong (no offense to Karl Urban, he does his best with the material).   

Still though, if they hadn't touched Star Trek II's ending, and classic Khan scream, Into Darkness could have been quite different. 

And it's not that I didn't think the fight between Khan and Spock was awesome. It's always awesome when Spock suddenly fights in a Star Trek moment, since you suddenly remember that not only is he one of the phenomenon's smartest humanoid characters, he's also one of the toughest.

Giving Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a strong supporting hopefully continuous role was a great idea. 

Introducing consequential conflict amongst the senior staff, Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Kirk, went beyond the professional dynamics found in the films featuring the cast of The Original Series, and since this consequential conflict sees constructive results, it fits nicely with contemporary conflict management theories, while directly encouraging freewill.   

Benedict Cumberbatch impresses as Khan. 

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock's relationship reappears but isn't focused upon, rather, it comically ameliorates an otherwise typical shuttlecraft descension, accentuating the difficulties of sustaining romantic ties to people with whom you work, while giving Spock a memorable opportunity to advance his coherent logic. 

Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) provides a pestiferous dimension rarely seen within the Federation, thereby diversifying Star Trek's internal cohesions, while preempting a sequel, sigh, where there's a war with the Klingons. 

This seems more like Picard territory, where there's a possible war, but Picard finds a way to negotiate a peaceful settlement. 

Much too early for Picard however.

Perhaps the Borg will attack midway resulting in a sudden pact between Klingons and the Federation.

Kirk never fought the Borg.

Please don't revisit the Nexus. 

But a different ending. Something radically different. This would have lessened the cheesy kitsch factor and not caused me to immediately remove my 3D glasses. 

The Wrath of Khan is the only Star Trek film that can stand on its own outside the Star Trek parallax. 

Discourses of the sacred. 

Khan!