Never Let Go

I suppose there are so many cool films from so many old school actors I've never seen, Never Let Go notably showcasing Peter Sellers (Lionel Meadows) in a rather unique uncharacteristic performance, in fact in full-on rank compulsive wickedness this one's shocking to say the least, certainly not ye olde Pink Panther, it may be a bit hush-hush. 

As it should be, the wretched villain knows no decent ethical limit, lovers of turtles and tortoises beware, for he takes his anger out on Testudinal kind, which left me most distressed indeed. 

I sought out the film to see more of Mervyn Johns's work, I had never seen him in anything else besides A Christmas Carol (1951).

Never Let Go is from 1960 and it looks like Johns may have been typecast post-Scrooge, for within he plays a similar character who's fallen upon even harder times.

He has what was known as a newspaper stand (or newsstand) where he sells a variety of papers, journals, and magazines, and lives in a rather modest apartment, his most cherished possession a pristine aquarium. 

He's even more mild-mannered than Cratchit and has unfortunately found little reward, even less after he witnesses a car theft and names names to local investigators. 

The car belonged to a cosmetic salesperson (Richard Todd as Mr. Cummings) who's hellbent on retrieving it, but he's never had much luck when bluntly asserting himself, and initially encounters snide disrespect. 

I can't recall anything else I've seen Todd in and may seek out more of his films, he's like a cross between Richard Burton and Russell Crowe, both of whom I've never seen in film noir. 

Sellers finds him a craftier competitor than he thought he would be at first, and slowly loses his ferocious temper as he comes aggressively calling again and again.

I always hope the Scrooge/Cratchit working relationship will pay dividends for commerce come January, and there's no doubt that for many it does while many more can't comprehend the message.

It was still nice to see Mervyn Johns back at it with that fiery loving habitual strife, but whereas Scrooge can never stifle his passion, the cruel Mr. Meadows befouls indignantly. 

An excessively grim morbid tale scandalously excelling through onerous confrontation, Never Let Go provides unruly disillusionment as everything within is tenaciously crushed.

Strong performances outweigh the lugubrity but still leave fair little preponderant hope.

That poor little innocent turtle.

How could anyone ever be so ruthless?

🐢

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.

Last Christmas

Carefree actions solipsistically proceed provoking criticism from friends and family, as an angelic ingenue can't adapt to grown up surroundings, yet still seeks age old immersions, repercussions notwithstanding.

Plus a place to crash for a while.

She could be doing well if she focused a bit more intently, but she's mastered everything at work (not me, Emilia Clarke as Kate), and doesn't realize she's full-on bored.

The dating scene provides nightly distractions replete with unpredictable highs and lows, but everyone she knows is pairing off, and don't have time for young adult shenanigans.

Yet as she flounders and misperceives a kindhearted beau comes a sweetly calling, appearing at opportune times, looking for more than just random repartee (Henry Golding as Tom).

He's nice so he's initially ignored but that doesn't mean he's not making a good impression, something reliable like grandma's home cookin', the Parc 80 bus, Cinéma du Parc, or Parc Jeanne-Mance.

Yet even as things start to seem perfect, and realignments lead to deep rapprochements, something bewilders anon beyond expression, with otherworldly immaterial spirit.

Could it be that the stars have aligned and Kate's begun to accept motivational absurdities, work fuelling her bright recrudescence, with biodegradable salubrious levity?

That she's rediscovered longlasting momentum?

Just in time for Christmas?

I can't say for certain, although Last Christmas is a very cool Christmas film, reimagining traditional themes with endearing revelation, stratified with delectable felicity.

Evaluating a Christmas film according to less festive criteria, misses the supernatural sentiment, inasmuch as it's something different from standard verbose ephemera, that's enthused with yuletide counterpoint.

The supernatural elements in Christmas films arise from less contemporary ingenious distillations, elements that can still dazzle and innocently sway, if they aren't considered realistically verifiable.

If you take a vibrant culture aligned with realistic endeavours and wipe out all its predilections for fantasy, you risk the same errors a theocracy generates as it uniformly glorifies legendary impossibility.

The Holiday Season adds a bit of harmless realistic fantasy to a world that's often obsessed with logic, and it's not that logic's a bad thing, but without fantastic distractions it can breed depression.

There's a book there.

Last Christmas blends reality and fantasy with charming even hardboiled engagement, introducing multiple relatable realities, enlivened through tangible spirit.

It's not hard to let loose and enjoy traditions that may indeed seem somewhat absurd.

Is it better to always laud materialism?

There's too much coincidence to suggest that's all there is.

Even if it's foolhardy to try to classify it.

Happy Holidays everyone, whatever you celebrate this time of year!

I hope you're enjoying time with friends and family.

Chillin' a bit with elastic cheer.

The Founder

The idea was to make a lot of money.

A lot of money.

He'd been at it for decades and had secured a modest living but still sought that vast immaculate neverending revenue stream, a potentially permanent enriching strike to help him bask in abundance and stretch-out bemused, selling milkshake machines meanwhile as he drifted thoughtfully from state to state, never ceasing even in decade number 6, nimble and agile, eyes open wide.

Catatonics.

Suddenly it was right there in front of him, the idea, the market, a tantalizing prospect replete with multidimensional opportunities for everyone involved, but his shortsighted eventual partners lacked his commercially expansionist vision, clutching their original take too tightly with static dismissive unshakeable vanilla.

Dubious discrediting. 

If Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) was about to go national and create wealth for sundry individuals seeking greener pastures it made sense that he couldn't be shackled by ideas which crushed his bottom line.

Turmoil.

John Lee Hancock's The Founder asks whether or not he was a warm generous individual intent on seeing others prosper or a cold calculating self-obsessed insatiable prick.

I would argue that he tried to work within the codes established by partners Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac MacDonald (John Carroll Lynch) but as his impact on the business gradually transformed it from burger joint into national sensation, he slowly gained more clout, which enabled him to wisely challenge the principles of his hastily signed contract.

Dick and Mac did nothing to expand the business and consistently blocked reasonable attempts to increase revenues not just for themselves, but for the hundreds of people who worked for Kroc's franchises.

According to the film, Kroc was finding jobs for earnest people looking for a break and as McDonald's expanded from one location to dozens nationwide new ideas were bound to challenge the design of the original concept.

But Dick and Mac didn't support Kroc, at all, they couldn't grasp this aspect of the business, and he in fact chose the good of the many as opposed to the few, and therefore wasn't being monstrous when he hostilely took over.

Still, always take the 1%.

His analysis of the name McDonald's within the film adds a cerebral characteristic to a chain whose intellectual merits are not often highly regarded.

Ensuring that the animals who are eventually sold at McDonald's restaurants live comfortable lives beforehand and that hard-working employees are capable of earning enough income to support themselves does make a big difference to me as an occasional client, however, even if it means less profits.

McDonald's has taken steps to clean-up its supply chain in recent years, a potential reality which is quite impressive.

During a crazy 60 hour work week two years ago, I even stopped in for lunch and spent 20 dollars. 

That's a lot of McDonald's.

It may have been awesome.

Apart from all this, the film's good too, an accessible thought-provoking examination of a phenomenon I loved in my youth, which held my attention the whole way through thanks to its strong argumentative character driven paralysis. 

McSolid.

Driven, direct, frank, and bold, it never rests on its laurels, cleverly introduces new characters, and breaks things down with energetic distinction.

Make those burgers more healthy.

And it's crazy win win. 

A Most Violent Year

Patience, hard work, and skill, transferrable knowledge calmly and efficiently presented, threats, competitive thefts assaulting bottom lines, disrupting morale and distribution, fermenting internal disputes, fear and uncertainty corrupting the working day, factions, a lawsuit, thugs, insert stoicism, by the books, leadership, an impenetrable reliance on a sense of fair play cultivated through years of shrewd progressive expansion relied upon during its darkest yet most definitive hour, revenue streams collapsing, worst case options relied upon, an unwavering commitment to the law, like Michael Corleone, if he had started from scractch.

Law and order.

Concealment.

As Abel Morales's (Oscar Isaac) business expands, his competitors employ desperate tactics, their livelihoods threatened, pathological pyrosthetics.

A Most Violent Year resists the urge to fight back.

It keeps a level head.

Distinguishing itself from other films in the genre.

It was odd watching it, I kept waiting for the eruption, the countermeasures, the explosion of pent up rage, disastrous regimens of revenge.

But its aesthetic honours goodwill as opposed to vindication, composure rather than frenzy, its blueprints shackling threats of reprisal, steady assured confidence, in the methods that have ensured success.

It's like the feeling you get when you work hard for something, enjoy the rewards, stay true to a vision, accept professional challenges, and continue to modestly achieve.

Like graduating from high school or being promoted.

Staying in business for decades.

Thoughtful innovations.

The Internship

As versatile exploratory eclectronic dynamics instigate widespread structural changes within the American economy, two salespersons, two heroes, must reconfigure their occupational allegiances, adjusting their garrulous genuflections to an in/directly interactive domain, sticking to their guns while leaving room for error, boldly entering a new domain where Vince Vaughn (Billy McMahon) has never gone before, wherein past general approaches must swiftly absorb sundry divergent nodes and particulars to fasten new understandings to a previously non-existent fluctuating multifaceted computational interface, psychologically constructed on the fly, after which previous sustainable reflexes find themselves transfigured yet productively cogent, as youth and age contend in a transfixed multiplex.

Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.

I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.

I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.

The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.

Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.

Owen Wilson, also good.

What a feeling.

Promised Land

Similar to Django Unchained inasmuch as it doesn't hold anything back, Gus Van Sant's Promised Land provides a polemical analysis of fracking (shale gas exploration), giving ample fictionalized room for proponents and critics to have their say.

Set in a struggling small town, attendantly polarizing economic privilege and historical continuity, differing relationships with land, identity, community, the film persuasively establishes prominent competing practical ideological personalities, each competently nuancing myriad aspects of the debate.

It frankly and freely conceptualizes choice and accentuates the risks associated with maintaining principled stances in opposition to enormous reserves of capital.

And allows each individual viewer to determine their own verdict.

I like taking risks.

I'll go to a casino once a year willing to part with $200 dollars. If I lose it in twenty minutes it's quite difficult to stop playing.

But I do.

I'll try new cheeses, beers, tartares, films, expressions, novels, sauces, ideas, try and predict the outcome of playoff games . . .

But water supplies are not something I like to take risks with. They are critical features of communal environmental well being.

Profits generated from fracking do enable the construction of schools etc. while decreasing a nation's dependency on natural gas imports.

But the likely resultant carcinogenic contaminations will increase medical dependencies as well, thereby placing a further strain on the public purse.

You could get lucky and the procedure may not result in any harmful environmental side effects.

If you don't, you're completely screwed for generations.

The decision seems clear to me.