Junebug

A couple basks in enriching romance their union potentially a success, effervescent wondrous innocence characterizing their lithe shenanigans. 

The wife (Embeth Davidtz as Madeleine) runs a caring gallery which genuinely looks after its unsung artists, discovering unknown local talent then helping to find an adoring audience.

Her work takes her to the down-home town where her agile husband (Alessandro Nivola as George) was curiously raised, which means it's time to meet the fam while engaging in bucolic expenditure.

George's brother's (Ben McKenzie as Johnny) become somewhat nasty having grown tired of his steady routine, even though his chill wife's (Amy Adams as Ashley) pregnant and looking forward to starting a family.

He has no time to reminisce but his better half's still warm and friendly, Madeleine sincerely responding to her lack of conceit and freeform enthusiastic reckoning.

There could be more cutting tension arising from prejudicial misconceptions, but thankfully observations aren't frequently shared within the offbeat household's public sphere.

In fact Junebug creatively presents endearing heartfelt loving characters, thoroughly interested in the lives of others as they go about their interactive quibbling.

The arts devoid of stout pretension and destructive distasteful foul snobbery, search freely far and wide for newfound novel uncanny yens.

At the same time homegrown peeps hold back none of their natural spirits, a husband certainly most distressing, his wife like an ebullient summer's bloom.

The buzz around Amy Adams's performance is bang on like nothing else I've seen, her facial movements and inherent fascination far beyond what's oft described as memorable.

It's like there's a range of depth within which multidimension nimbly materializes, and her zags and cascading zigs ethereally flow towards its striking zenith.

Davidtz shouldn't be overlooked either I hope her character has persuasive fluency.

They're an incredible combination.

In a film that promotes compassion and understanding.

Roma

I don't think I've ever seen a film with so many long scenes depicting active lives lived enriched with such vivid detail.

They aren't as multifaceted as those found at the beginning of Truffaut's La Nuit Américaine or Robert Altman's The Player or Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, but they continue to illustrate throughout the entire film and create a visually stunning communal aesthetic thereby, without moving, without moving hardly at all.

It's like Roma has thought provoking characters but they're secondary to the scene, the setting, the environment, like they're a part of a larger world, something much more subtle than that they're enveloped within, subtle yet pervasive, its predicaments and accidents adding pronounced depth without diagnosing psychology, as if their personalities are changing and growing within a fluid diverse realm whose endemic features encourage comment sans judgment, like the world's too vast to be analytically classified, and laissez-faire semantics breach like relaxed ontologies.

Living within.

Held together by a family's nanny (Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo) and the difficulties that arise after she discovers she's pregnant, a support network securely in place which is severely contrasted by blunt negligence, Roma follows her as she takes care of a family while trying to start one of her own, chaotic embodiments of structure ignoring her gentle inquiries.

The urge to classify, to make definitive political sense of life so that one can practically attach theoretical logic to their behaviour and be consequently rewarded or punished, depending on how virtuously they're deemed to have acted, functions like haunting destructive shackles within, inasmuch as it's speculatively associated with dogma, dogma which attempts to clarify, curtail, and control, violently, rather than existing symbiotically in peace.

Cleo's love interest Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) is therefore given an extended self-absorbed scene where he demonstrates his prowess, its stark lack of detail, its animated ferocious thrusts, bluntly contrasting the otherwise curious more robust less volatile shots, as if to intimate shocking austere extremities.

It's not the codes themselves that ironically produce chaos, it's the rigid discriminate attempts to puritanically follow them, even in situations where they clearly don't fit, and make others follow them, or classify others who don't follow them as undesirable, monitoring everyone at all times to make sure they're following them, bellicosely asserting them when faced with opposition, that make extremist variations on composed ethical themes like the ones found in Roma so terrifying.

Roma's a patient thoughtfully cultivated poised undulating ethos, whose undefined compassionate caresses humbly lament tragic imagination.

Calmly blending the search for meaning with unrehearsed existence, it finds purpose through improvisation, and critiques determinate codes.

Reminded me of Solaris.

Tulip Fever

Fortunes scripted, ventured, improvised, inherited, youth and innocence nimbly characterized with cascading credulous streetwise spiritual tenacity, the frenetic pace complementing risks with elegant acrobatic smoothly flowing brisk tremors, the resultant emission subconsciously generating wild resonating exhilarating cerebral undulations which extranarratively converge in a whisking amorous three-dimensional dance of serendipity, illustrative soul ecstatic choreography, breaking waves basking beachheads seductive surf immaculate maelstrom, calmly executed with the delicate argumentative poise of a parlour room chat at high tea, which discusses obsessions with authentic splendour while staking suppositions with audacious rapt sincerity, spurred momentary inspirations lucidly identifying integral ephemerals with substantial sage elasticity, blossoming concerns burgeoned through wager, foresight, chance, bidding, marketed stratified sociocultural immersions, tantalizingly blended with cherished sympathetic assumption.

Religious figures often make a muck of communal virtues but Tulip Fever's Abbess (Judi Dench) and Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz) do exemplify with resounding magnanimity.

Sheer beauty, unafraid to revel in perpetual genius with unconcerned in/discreet hesitant bold symphony, like lunching at an ill-defined French bistro it pauses, reflects, manoeuvres and mystifies to romanticize a psychology well worth perceiving.

Overflowing with life.

Materializing mercy.

Like the ideal and the practical were courting for millennia and suddenly found themselves conceptually synthesized for 105 begrudged minutes, during which they purified raw tranquility before separating everlastingly once more.

The omega directive.

Heartstrung honeysuckle.

It makes you wish you weren't too prone to love for postmodern romance.

Take your hand in mine.

And vanish.

Goon: Last of the Enforcers

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized there was something odd about fighting in hockey.

I began to slowly notice that other sports enforced much stricter penalties on athletes who decided to fight during a game, and that professional hockey's pugilistic characteristics were often regarded with astonishment by those hailing from far distant lands.

I admitted that, in comparison with football, basketball, baseball, and soccer, (okay, it wasn't until I was much much older that soccer was included in the list), it did seem strange that regularly squaring off during a game was culturally applauded, although, having matured within that very same culture, as a spectator, I found I didn't evaluate this aspect of the game that negatively, and instead tried to teach newcomers words and phrases such as, "bruiser," "goon," "toe to toe," "left hook," and "got knocked/laid the fuck out," in order to encourage their Canadian acculturation.

Some of them were also familiar with boxing, which made me think their transition to Canadian life may indeed be smooth, like learning to skate on a well-groomed ice surface.

Perhaps it was.

If they were still searching for more information concerning Canada's love of hockey fighting, I would certainly recommend Jay Baruchel's Goon: Last of the Enforcers, and also Goon, which I'm afraid I haven't seen.

Goon 2 uncritically captures Canada's love of enforcing the game, and a close study of its combative emphasis can likely assist roosted travellers in finding cozy ways to relate to their newfound Canadian brothers and sisters.

Had Mr. Baruchel known that his film would be functioning as an ambassadorial aid, he may have hired Mike Smith, Rob Wells, and John Paul Tremblay to help out with the script (they recently started writing new Trailer Park Boys seasons themselves and have scripted some of the best TPB episodes yet), which, although funny at times, struggles to generate long-lasting comedic momentum.

It does excel at emphasizing teamwork, family values, commentating, and friendship, absurdity bellicosely bromancing f(l)ights fantastic, but more time and care will be required to shoot Goon 3 into Don't Legalize It territory, not that it wasn't fun to watch, or hilarious at times.

Picnicface could play an opposing team coached by a scandalized Mr. D.

Erica from Being Erica could challenge Doug (Seann William Scott) and Eva's (Alison Pill) relationship by coquettishly introducing herself on the road in Moncton.

Bruce Greenwood could play the doctor with the magical cure.

Fred Ward's not Canadian but he could play a villain of some sort.

It's win win win.

Win win.

Win win.

With recurring curious comments from the recently moved Little Mosque on the Prairie family who at one point run into Ron MacLean in the stands who cheerfully explains everything?

What could function as a better unacknowledged integrational family friendly feature?

Like a grilled cheese for breakfast.

With blueberry crêpes on the side!

What to Expect When You're Expecting

It's not the multiple storylines in Kirk Jones's What to Expect When You're Expecting aren't cleverly woven together or some of the observations presented within transferable.

It's just, well, I've never seen a film before that more closely resembles a 110 minute Hallmark card.

My apologies if you like Hallmark cards. They're not really for me but it's not like I turn my nose up if I receive one.

Like the best feature of What to Expect When You're Expecting, the group of fathers who get together to privately discuss the challenges of parenting, I'm not judging.

But this style of film is simply one that I have trouble relating to.

I was going to make an extended comparison to John Carpenter's They Live but think I'll just leave it at that. 

Skyline

I like what Colin and Greg Strause set out to do in Skyline. As aliens invade Los Angeles and start harvesting humans it only focuses on one small group of friends and a concierge who helps them out (David Zayas as Oliver). Arguments regarding how they should proceed are introduced, some wishing to stay put in a high rise apartment, others seeking to make a break for the ocean and escape on a yacht. With no means of communicating with the outside world and discovering the extent of what is happening, they need to employ their best judgment and rapidly decide what must be immediately done.

Before they're transformed into inhuman monsters.

And when the unknown zealously threatens your survival what should you immediately do? Remain hidden in your inconspicuous shelter, cowering behind a bookcase in a corner, or directly engage the unforeseen, if necessary, as you attempt to navigate your way through its treacherous set of destructive circumstances?

On your way to freedom.

Freedom obviously isn't guaranteed but its appeal generates a degree of unquenchable hope in the breasts of its proponents who think the aliens won't scour the high seas as vigilantly as they harvest the city.

Skyline's streamlined specific focus would have been smoother had the group's internal interactions possessed a greater flair.

For what lies beneath.

But I suppose that's the point. When a crushing external force prevents you from accessing your terms of reference, nothing but a suffocated trepidatious version of those terms remains, anxiously clutching the surface.

That's the point I swear.

The Help

Boldly displaying the ugly dimensions permeating a culture whose social fabric is thoroughly racist, Tate Taylor's The Help situates us in Jackson, Mississippi, and demonstrates how difficult it was for African Americans to either express their points of view or hope for a better life within.

Not to say that it's any easier now, Taylor just situates her narrative in the past in order to mitigate the shock of investigating current pervasive racist realities, thereby making her message easier to digest while enabling it to reach a broader audience.

This strategy works effectively for the aforementioned reason but it also ignores the fact that there are still systematic racist discourses influencing sundry public and private spheres whose destabilizing affects are as vicious as they are subtle. It's not a matter of thinking that things were like that 50 years ago and they're fine in the present, it's a matter of reexamining the present in order to discover the ways in which racist attitudes continue to disable so that 50 years from now our cultures will be all the more inclusive, and so on.

The film presents an aspiring writer, 'Skeeter' Phelan (Emma Stone), who finds the ways in which her African American compatriots are treated revolting, seeing how their wages are low, there is no possibility for advancement, they are treated like slaves, and have basically no means by which to defend themselves. She seeks to disseminate their voices in the form of a book which collects and transmits their stories. This is no easy task due to the legal ramifications of challenging Mississippi's segregated society, so said stories must be collected clandestinely, pseudonyms must be employed, specific geographic locations cannot be identified, and during the collection process appearances must be kept up as usual.

Two maids, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), agree to share their stories at great personal risk and as the Civil Rights Movement intensifies many of their friends sign-up as well. The book is released, it has an impact, there's a happy ending.

I found one aspect of the ending troubling, however, in regards to the ways in which Minny is offered full-time employment with the Footes (Jessica Chastain as Celia and Mike Vogel as Johnny). Internally, the ending works insofar as Minny's career had been threatened by a rumour spread by her former employer and she now no longer has to worry about putting food on the table. But she's offered full-time employment within the same set of circumstances within which she was previously employed, albeit with a much more enlightened couple. Obviously one book isn't going to magically uproot and transform decades of oppressive practices and suggesting that this had happened would have made The Help seem somewhat flippant. But if the Footes had made a stronger commitment to trying to redefine things so that Minny didn't have to work as a maid for the rest of her life, thereby suggesting that they were trying to open up a broader commercial space for her within which her talents could flourish, The Help would have packed a stronger progressive punch into its already sturdy, innovative, repertoire.

The stifling nature of being any married woman in a culture defined by strict patriarchal gender roles is intelligently illustrated as well.