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The Terminator (1984)
Action sci-fi techno-horror.
"You go naked." ~ Action sci-fi techno-horror. The best. Future terrors of Artificial Intelligence arriving today in the form of an unfeeling and indestructible hulk programmed to do one thing perfectly well. Arnold is the mythic Golem, but designed without error and sent through time to ravage an unprepared world. The concise, perfectly looped plot pits man vs. Machine; Reese, the human, like his cybernetic foe is similarly programmed for constant warfare by the dystopia he was born into. But he fights for something beyond himself, for love. And through he and Sarah Connor's death-defying travails against the Terminator, the exact future Skynet works to prevent is born. Top notch cinema. Next to the xenomorph and Michael Myers, the Terminator has got to be the best, most relentlessly terrifying cinema villain ever.
First Blood (1982)
Rambo is America's Shadow.
"When in doubt, kill." ~ First Blood (1982) is, in my humble opinion, a concise, near perfect film. Action-packed and laced with more meaning than you may realize. Well-paced @ 93 min. And well-shot. An intriguing premise, realistically plotted as far as the responses of the parties involved, in America. And in the end, a tragic film because of that fact.
Rambo is America's post-war Shadow, all our sins abroad in the 20th century come home to roost, to shock and awe us. Altogether, anti-imperialist, anti-war, a.c.a.b. Through lines permeate First Blood. Creates a meta war between two major classes of American cinematic hero: soldiers and cops. All through its run, makes you ask *why* the fight is happening. Why are they chasing John Rambo? Shows small-town cops as a gang of tyrants, who see themselves as a hammer and treat every disturbance as a nail, every ounce of noncompliance as an absolute challenge to their authority, a capital offense. They are more than willing to fight and kill over vagrancy. And they have the resources and manpower to hunt their petty quarries to the very end, with violence constantly in hand. The police want blood. And usually, before long, they get it.
Not with Rambo. The lone special forces veteran, on the other hand, with his war over and full of real horror he cannot forget - just wants peace. But all he knows his war, all he has are broken dreams. Rambo does not draw first blood; but he is more than willing and capable of giving last.
In a sharp anti-war, anti-police state subtext, there are no *good* guys in First Blood, there's no good reason for these cycles of violence to be happening. It's all a waste of time, a waste of life. Egos and bullets are traded in this small fictional town of Hope, Washington for nothing at all.
An action flick but also survival with strains of horror. Its plot reflects how, after Vietnam, our respect as a nation transferred from the military to the police, from soldiers to cops. And so did their power raise. Modern police forces wield the law with impunity, often placing themselves above it. In their marks, Rambo is a disdained survivor going from one hell to another, an enemy abroad and at home. He has no friends, no place to belong to. A forgotten and uncared for vet. Followed orders, murdered for his state, watched his friends die, all in a nihilistic war that we lost. All for what? To get killed over vagrancy by some fat dudes with choppers and machine guns in "Jerkwater, USA"? Awful. His fear and rage are justified. Hunted by the cops, civilian hunters, even national guard, over nothing. Rambo's abilities are transcendent, but he suffers from psychosis and is fighting another meaningless battle. He's full of loss. And yet he still wants to win, to live. And he *can.* Because we trained him to. His war is our war. We own it.
What an ending. Moving and realistic performances by Stallone and Crenna. A movie about war and masculinity and death, about America. In the end, makes you feel real sorry for our babbling, broken Shadow...
{If there's any movie that didn't need a franchise, it was this jfc 😂 the existence of cash grab, high octane sequels undermine this movie's whole message...}
[also, Rambo didn't kill anybody in the film.]
The Godfather Part II (1974)
Vito and Michael are duplicitous killers. But they love their families.
"If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone."
~ The ultimate American Dream story: enterprising immigrant orphan coming from nothing builds multi-generational empire of power and wealth in New York City via CRIME. The midway of Michael Corleone's hero's journey parallels the true origins of his father Vito's, starting from the shore of Ellis Island, 1901. ~ In the rise of his og godfatherhood, Vito uses love instead of strictly fear to win the hearts and minds of the community, enough to build his family's 'enterprise' from the ground floor and on up. Meanwhile, Michael continues his evolution as the next gen Don, waging a shadow war to protect his interests with a war veteran's stone-cold gaze, his soul already sold, Death an intimate acquaintance within his rulership. Killing and loving with less than equal force, he wins the war but loses his family, gains the world but loses his. Vito's integrity is inherited by Michael, but cannot survive the accelerations of modernity or the pathologies of power. ~ Ultimately, a story about family, their complex hierarchies and relationships, and what things - bloody and beyond good and evil - must be done for the sake of them. In our world, they will inevitably break our heart, either in what they do to us or in what we have to do for them. Vito and Michael are duplicitous killers. But they love their families. They may lose them, but not for want of trying to secure them a future. They are the gods of the underworld, and they are the heroes of America: Underclassers that made it over, nobodies that became somebodies, by any means necessary. / Transcendent performances from De Niro and Pacino, their stories well-woven together, fading into each other like wayward rhymes in a song. Every scene stays precise and realized, as though it is being stripped from the Real of another universe. You gotta love these films! I mark Part two as better than the first.
Kaze no tani no Naushika (1984)
"...To restore mankind's connection to the Earth that was destroyed..."
"...To restore mankind's connection to the Earth that was destroyed..." / "The Earth knows it's wrong for us to survive, if we have to depend on a monster like that."
~ Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's founding vision. Precursor to the fierce action, environmentalism and princess bada**ery of Princess Mononoke (1997), Nausicaa depicts a post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of humanity are *still* at war, still polluting a phantom planet already toxified by pollutants past, still trying to conquer the Earth after it has nearly conquered us. Traces of beauty can be found by reconnecting with nature, finding the truth of a transformed world ever seeking homeostasis, even amidst ancient weapons of annihilation, and an "atmosphere saturated with anger."
~ Weird fungi x jungle world provides some majestic sights; giant mythic cicadas as Gaean gods; cool airships; Yupa is goat'ed. Solid English voice acting, especially P-Stew's Yupa. Great soundtrack.
~ The Ohm are the bees - their decline signifying the planet's - if bees were gigantic revenging god-beasts capable of wiping us out because we threaten all life. Both p cute :)
~ What a hopeful ending. The world can still be saved, we can still throw down our weapons, we can *still* plant seeds that will be able to grow!
WandaVision (2021)
Part comedy, part mystery, part sci-fi, all love story.
"What is grief, if not love persevering?" / "When you let us sleep, we have *your* nightmares!"
~ Creative psychological exploration in the aftermath of the Infinity War upon Wanda. Part comedy, part mystery, part sci-fi, all love story. What happens when one of the most powerful people in the world becomes grief-stricken and depressed? Beyond heroics, clearly what Wanda wanted most of all was a family with Vision. And when that is taken away, for the first time she is willing to tap her full powers to make that dream a (un)reality. The result is a mind-bending - and at times, profoundly sad - journey into the heart and mind of the Scarlet Witch, born from the darkness of death and despair. {I mean c'mon who doesn't rewrite reality a little to cope with trauma..?}
Overall, the mini-series is structured as an inventive way of introducing the Marvel universe to episodic content, with a meta-commentary on the art of the TV sitcom itself through the years. Riffs on their zany gags, too-perfect plot circles, and consistently heartwarming resolutions. How about the fact that the side characters are lifeless and unmoving beyond the sphere of the mains, as tulpa-Vision discovers on the Halloween special. Or how even in the midst of all the chaos, the half-hour runtime is promised, no one ever dies, and no inter-episode trauma is really carried... All things Wanda desired with her life shattered into pieces. With the mind control, amnesia and rewinding, the sitcom paradigm twists to surreal horror.
Along the way, Wanda manages to inadvertently revive the conception of the American small town community from the mid-20th's ashes. {Somber to consider that it will take literal magic to bring such a thing back..} The Westview incident also unites two small-time MCU favorites, Darcy and Woo, with a new addition in Rambeau, to chase Wanda toward her destiny. Also, Kathryn Hahn as nosy neighbor Agnes/Agatha Harkness was great.
By the end, an emotionally satisfying arc for Wanda, easily among the best in the MCU thus far. Looking forward to the chaos magic wherever in the multiverse it all goes next!
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
American duo take on the conflicted geopolitics of The Blip.
Sam and Bucky spar over Captain America's legacy while doing battle with the Flagsmashers "terrorist" org and good, old fashioned American imperial consent-manufacturing.
Good action and some solid plotting. Adequate performances by the mains; suffers from rushed pacing and some odd special FX at times. Last two episodes are the best, with the fallout of Wyatt Russell's 'Bad Cap' and Karli Morgenthau's ill-fated revolutionary campaign being dealt with in intriguing fashion. Altogether, America's international power and past become stark themes that are better handled {criticized} that I would expect from Department of Defense-funded Marvel. {And yet, is that not why it is so effective?}
Ultimately, Sam's message to the Senators / UN personnel tasked with voting on refugee repatriation post-Snap - "If you ruling classers don't get this stuff figured out, then people are inevitably going to rise up and try to take what is theirs. People like Karli, who have nothing to lose, who in their hearts fight for equal parts vengeance and righteousness, and who will thus try to win their objectives by any means necessary. Therefore, from your immense positions of governing power, understand *why* the "terrorists" / revolutionaries are rising up to fight, and then - within the systems of power as they currently are - rectify the population's demands before they take matters into their own hands in these ways." {i.e. Rational Technocracy before Radical Populism, because populism inevitably flirts with revolution which threatens the whole game!, "game" = status quo neoliberal capitalism}. Can't say I agree with the underlying reasoning of everything Sam put down there in that final speech, but I'll be damned if it didn't sound good. In this tale, Sam is undoubtedly "special", as Isaiah proclaims later in the finale.
+ Sam Wilson's Captain America suit looked good.
++ Great, great final scenes between Bucky and Ken Takemoto and Sam and Isaiah Bradley.
+++ Final cookout scenes show us what we really wanted all along - Sam and Bucky smiling and happy together, as boyfriends-that-are-not-boyfriends {or are they?}
Meng long guo jiang (1972)
"Violent movement to honestly express oneself."
"It doesn't matter what style if you can use your body well even in the midst of violent movement to honestly express oneself."
~ A jump into Bruce Lee's mindscape. Lee directed *and* wrote the screenplay of this action story himself, centering his starring role foremost from his lived experience as a Chinese American traveling abroad in modern day. The plot has Tang Lung as a stranger in a strange land, in Europe, caught between the Americans' interests, and his own countrymen's disparate plights and betrayals. He becomes the defender of the working man, and opponent to the owners and their hired {70s-mustachioed} goons. An artful sense of patience to the action, the comedy, and the scenery permeates throughout. The kitten watching Lee and Norris flex and warm up in pleasant silence before their bout, then later enthralled in deathly anticipation. The wide shots of Rome, the streets and the ruins. The perfect focus and confidence within every close up of our hero. Lee carried a precise vision for the beauty and flow of movement, in the fights, in his body, in his persona. It shines in every scene he's in. What a talent.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Stellar sci-fi horror with a transcendent leading Man in Heston.
"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" ~ Stellar sci-fi horror with a transcendent leading Man in Heston. An eerie look into a twilight future, a film that will make you think and smile and despair all at once. The far future rise of the apes and the apocalypse of Man on Earth make for bleakly ill-defined musings upon present pitfalls. Proverbial 'Last Man' Taylor is the perfect representation of the human species, as we know them / as the ruling class apes fear them / as the underclass apes aspire to understand them - smart, dangerous, cavalier, relentless. Drifting through the cosmos, in firm command of his hypersleep crew and interstellar machines - Taylor's ego is "squashed", his words honied and profound; naked in the brush and on the run from an alien foe - he is methodical yet feral, patient with perforce manipulation and potential murder. He is the paragon "glorious paradox" that alights the 1960s hope for a true Space Age with his competent yet cynical command, still making war and still on the run from facing Himself. Taylor faces his pair of destinies with that time-honored duality: one with stoic, even eager, embrace {that of being alone and stranded in a faraway land}, and the other, his truer fate, with hysterical, useless lamentation. ~ "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
Invincible (2021)
Invincible lets their Supermen go all out. To bloody and brilliant effect.
Shockingly good show. Inventive, impressive story. Another subversion of the superhero tale, ala Watchmen, Superman: Red Son, Kick-Ass, Injustice: Gods Among Us, The Boys, etc. With the ultraviolence, potential tyranny and mass death that would take place in a world with such monsters and gods flying about. Boasts some great animation + action sequences.
A satisfying overall watch, with many interesting threads and characters beyond the core story surrounding Omni-man and his son, Invincible. Balances the high stakes and low stakes, the conventional and the highly, violently unconventional - Omni-man's mysterious quest and his battle against the Global Defense Agency vs. Mark's coming-of-age beginnings as the hero Invincible and his romantic / identity struggles as a young man. And there is so much lore! So many questions and partial explanations and world-shaking implications regarding certain heroes, powers and technologies. Damien Darkblood, demon detective! Robot and Monster Girl. The Mauler twins and their cloning tech. The cat warrior from another dimension that gives all the supers the work and then peaces out!! All of the technology of the GDA and Cecil's knowledge and past... And finally, the true motive of the Viltrumites and Omni-man as their representative on Earth.
Invincible creates a big world that still manages to be small and personal where needed, such as Mark's disparate relationships with his dad, mom, Amber, Will, Eve, and Titan, which is an impressive juggling act, managed well through the season's run.
More than anything, the success of this show perhaps indicates what we want more of from our {semi-saturated} superhero entertainment: real blood and guts, the real ramifications from superpowers played out to their sometimes thrilling, sometimes horrifying ends.
Dunkirk (2017)
DUNKIRK'S CINEMATIC SIMPLICITY
~ short review-essay on Dunkirk (2017)
STORY STRUCTURE
Christopher Nolan loves to employ complex story structures. In his style, the narrative puzzle becomes its own character. The development of his plots hinge on how he methodically chooses to craft scenes, interweaving them to grander designs, recursively raising their tensions. His characters are revealed by the minutia within their psychological environments as much as their mission, an untimely betrayal, or the explosion of a bomb. Mayhem alongside concise yet meaningful dialogue unveils his heroes and villains. But always, the narrative remains the principal mover. The characters, the scenes, situations and locations within these stories are all enmeshed with multiple arcs, bounded in modern myths {the showman vs. The artist, order vs. Chaos, emotion vs. Reason} and psycho-symbolisms {memory shapes who we are, and is inextricably attached to simple objects - photos, bouncing balls, cards, masks, spinning tops, etc.} The environments around the characters, advanced by choices in the story structure itself, make a Nolan film.
There is a common thread to all of Nolan's narratives: a use of layers, of both time and space. In a pivotal Nolan scene, the action spans several salient yet seemingly disconnected things happening at once. He gives the audience eyes and ears over initially disparate situations to build tension. By giving you at least a few of the puzzle pieces, it leads you to scrutinize how everything might play out as you barrel towards climax. Audiences like a mystery and they enjoy trying their hand at solving one even more. This is a challenging feat to pull off well; the satisfaction of the solution provides offsetting value to tales often being told in the shadows of violence, insanity, and death.
All to say: the nature of the story's conveyance in a Nolan film is just as dependent upon structure as it is upon subject matter. And this exquisite use of structure is on full display with Dunkirk (2017).
The Dunkirk Evacuation, a surprisingly untold tale in cinema, was a comprehensive mass movement of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, relatively early in WWII, over the course of only 8 days. The operation featured Allied soldiers trying to escape certain doom at hands of the approaching German army, with backs against the sea. There is no telling how much the war might have changed given a different outcome here. It represented a military disaster for the Allied Forces which in turn, spurred an extraordinary effort by the English people out of necessity. In telling his story with this particular film, Nolan chooses singular focus. He wants to tell the grand Dunkirk story, with all its turns and significant meaning for the English, but within a narrow field of view.
The audience is placed right into the action of a few key players. One week on the Mole, where we run, swim and inevitably wait alongside a young man on a harrowing journey homeward bound towards simple survival. One day across the English Channel, where a civilian boat captain and his son heed the call of duty to save their stranded countrymen. One hour in the skies above the battle, where two RAF pilots dogfight against German bombers to make way for the evacuation below. Land, sea, and air - the symbolic representation of the mediums in which World War II was fought, all coinciding to tell a story fraught with peril and heroism.
Nolan manages to capture both the methods and locales onto which the battles were waged, wielding his signature use of timing, to weave it all together in the end. The plot, on paper, is not too complicated; the ingenuity comes in the presentation. This added wrinkle of all the elements of the canvas ultimately leading to the hero pilot > protecting the duty-bound civilian boat > which rescues our intrepid young hero, is an excellent use of story structuring to turn a simple, confined storyline into a connected narrative, and a supremely entertaining film.
CINEMATIC EXPOSITION
Some criticisms I heard about this film was a lack of character development. I disagree with this sentiment, and my reasoning follows. Aside from the fact that it depicts story based on true & known events, Dunkirk is a film that is more about the landscapes, physical and geopolitical. In these shots of vistas, of the city, the beach, the sea and the sky - a certain 'cinematic exposition' is conveyed. The film features a profound view into the actual geography and logistics of what this evacuation entailed. We see along the beach, the last bastion of safety for the English soldiers, as the French hold the line against the marching German army. We are shown very clearly the perils of trying to evacuate masses of soldiers onto giant ships, the Destroyers, to make it back across the Channel. These ships represent easy targets for German bombers; in their runs, they are able to kill swaths of the English army while also destroying valuable military assets for future battles in the war.
We see the problems from all angles. Most significantly, we see all the life-and-death action through the eyes of the young private. He is seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of the war's operation, but nevertheless fighting to survive the ordeal before our eyes. After multiple large ships are sunk during attempted evacuation cycles, stress for his life and for the success of the procedures as a whole rise in tandem. Witnessing these smaller disasters alongside the English command (and Kenneth Branagh's transcendent face-acting), we face the larger situational dilemma of trying to organize and execute this effort to save the army.
The primary 'character' being developed throughout the course of this film is The Dunkirk Evacuation itself.
In following the life-or-death escapades of the individual human journeys, do we really need some lines of dialogue or flashback exposition showing parents back home or even a name, for the soldiers on the beach, to care about them as characters and want them to survive? No matter who they are, we give a damn about them because they are going through hell and are human beings.
The captain and his son, and poor George, take their duty to sail to Dunkirk, armed only with life jackets, as a moral obligation. We see that they won't be deterred by the peril they know awaits. Farrier, the ace pilot (played by face/eye-acting savant Tom Hardy), is a hero who gives maximum effort, and ultimately sacrifices his own safety in order to save as many of his fellow countrymen as he possibly can in the sea and on the beach. The human characters are all developed via action, no words necessary.
As Farrier's gaze glided over the cheers of the beachfront after returning to down one more enemy plane, I honestly experienced more emotional poignancy in such a moment then I have in many films in their entirety.
KNOWING THE STORY
The Dunkirk Evacuation, even amidst severely disastrous circumstances for the Allied forces, was a triumph of human effort. Given the cause of saving hundreds of thousands of soldiers along the beach, pinned down and running out of time, the English civilian force back home rose to the occasion. The story highlights the prodigious flexibility of the vital civilian role in war times. Those back home, the elders, children and women, are expected to ramp up the means of production and ration their own supplies in an organized movement to aid the soldiers out on the front. However, given extraordinary circumstances, Dunkirk showcases the admirable response to a a more direct call for action from the populace; the extraordinary efforts those on the homefront can and will take in order to protect their countrymen and save lives is necessarily inspiring.
Mark Rylance's character, Mr. Dawson, puts the responsibility he bears into simple terms, "Men my age dictate this war. Why should we be allowed to send our children to fight it?"
In the end, I think part of what makes this film so remarkable is that Nolan knew exactly the kind of experience he wanted to impart to the audience. Being British, he is fully aware of what this story says about the communal endeavor of war and how meaningful this story still is for the English people. It is required learning in the U. K. for all students. At the time, and like the movie shows, many of the young soldiers returning home might feel shame upon merely surviving the ordeal. However, given the circumstances, the English countrymen back home, galvanized by Churchill's speech, give thanks to the fighters and proper context to the importance of living to fight another day. Survival was enough.
In the film's finale, you can't help feel a sense of exultation at seeing all those boats arrive on the shores of Dunkirk in deliverance. I am not of British heritage, I can only imagine the feelings that shot elicited in those that are. ~