Samsara

2011's Samsara is a visual masterpiece that the best of it's kind I've seen since Powaqqatsi.  It was filmed over the course of 5 years in 70mm.  I loved this film as it explores aspects of life, the earth, and people then and now while still touching on how they relate.  You can't help but just to watch, listen, and meditate to it.

W.E.

W.E. is the true life account of King Edward VIII and his controversial love affair with American socialite Wallis Simpson that ended up costing him the throne.  It is also seen through the contemporary eyes of  the married and unhappy character of American Wally Winthrop, who becomes personally fascinated and obsessed with the story and the parallels to her own life.  First off, this movie directed by Madonna is way too far long.  I mean it looks good, the trailer I remember was very interesting and good, and it looks good throughout with the cinematography, costumes, and set pieces.   Yet, it took a while to really understand what what really going on in this film, as we're going back and forth throughout six decades between two different stories with annoying, infrequent intersections of the two women via the imagination of Wallis and Wally.  Throughout watching the movie, out of boredom and an attempt to understand, I found myself googling who the historical  characters were and their stories, as this film took forever to put the full context together.  Madonna, I suspect strongly like myself is a Wong Kar Wai fan, because this movie is drenched in what might be her very heavy handed attempt as an ode to his works; even  so far as to the similar cello theme of In The Mood For Love.  This attention to aesthetics  might be all well and good  and admittedly, I was intrigued with certain facets of it, but it only serves to further confuse the storyline and is far too excessive for a story of this kind.  What further divides and detracted from the film for me, was the contemporary second storyline of Wally and how it was even all that significantly relevant to the historical romance of  Wallis and Edward.  I mean sure, this girl needed some help and was unhappy, but to just sit around sadly and go to artsy galleries bidding on things related to a legendary love affair in such a obsessive manner...   Her storyline wasn't even needed, or at least could have be told better.  At least change her fictional name because the parallels only further confused me.  Initially, I was thinking who the hell are all of these Williams, Wallis, and Wally.  Are they related somehow?  What was meant to be uncovered by the quest of Wally, somehow throughout gets lost with too much length and Madonna's heavy handed direction.  If you do manage to muddle through this, there are interesting and relevant subjects that do come up for which Madonna is understandably aptly suited to helm, such as the role of media/public perception, privacy, living and loving on your own terms, and the price of celebrity for both Wallis and Edward that had many parallels to the life and death of Princess Diana.

Beast Of The Southern Wild

I was told on more than one occasion that this movie and it's plot were very hard to describe and indeed it is.  But I would describe it as a fantasy coming of age story that falls on so many life themes and subject matter, not the least of which would be the allusion to hurricane Katrina which actually serves more as a symbolic backdrop.  Through a young girl's eyes and imagination, realities of life and loss and the meaning of home and family are dealt with.  Young newcomer and Academy Award nominee Quvenzhané Wallis is quite phenomenal in her performance as Hushpuppy, a young girl abandoned by her mother and desperately trying to hold on to her father Wink, also played terrifically by first timer Dwight Henry.  My take on the title and it's meaning is that the beast in the imaginary mind of Hushpuppy are the extinct Auroch cattle, who serve as a metaphor perhaps to our stewardship to the earth and at the same time representing what's innate in ourselves. I really enjoyed this movie, as it was moving, refreshing, and yielded the spirit of real film making and the subject matter of universal humanity and survival.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

A figure like President Abraham Lincoln and the historical importance that he holds today, given the extraordinary times of that era, and his abrupt assasination would/could lend itself understandably well to taking fictional liberties.   But this movie has taken that quite too far.  Even if you can digest the notion of Lincoln being a vampire hunter, this movie certainly doesn't mesh the now well established genre of vampires/vampire hunters very well.  There are moments when it tries way too hard, and the filmmakers can't seem to be able to make up their mind.  It's kind of embarassing to me personally and seems to be saying a lot about this country and it's regards or disregard for it's own history.  I must admit that the filmmakers did do their research in applying many of the historically details to his life and rather deftly did insert a fictional vampire narrative that is almost plausible at least in concept and pre-production idea.  But again, the execution of  this seems to have turned out more comical and ill-meshed at times during the film.   I would argue that it needed to be more steady in it's tone, especially given the weight of this historical figure and the gravity of isssues like war and slavery.  From the Twilight to the Underworld series, it seems that everyone thinks that they can make a vampire movie now.  Don't get me wrong.  I didn't want to dislike it.  Part of me even thought it was kind of a cool idea, because Lincoln has always been to me kind of a cool and mysteriously aloof figure that was only really appreciated years and decades later.  I think that where the filmmakers really went wrong was in the over the top action and fighting scenes.  I mean they portray Lincoln as suddenly being able to do all this super martial art, gravity defying shit that you see in every other action film now, even after he becomes the President.  It's cool sure, especially to a young attention deficit, action loving audience who increasingly doesn't know or revere shit about history.  But turning Lincoln into a fuckin' Bruce Lee who killed vampires to win the Civil War seems to favor denigrating with action over educating with mysterious intrigue.

Safety Not Guaranteed

An assignment to find out why a quirky guy is placing ads seeking a companion for time travel, leads 3 magazine employees on a journey that changes their lives.  I must admit that I was a little skeptical about this one, but it is proof that a seemingly boring and stupid story can blossom into something quite touching and magical.  I was a bit tempted to turn it off, as it has a pretty slow start that only began to hold my interest after about 30 minutes.

The Souls Of Black Girls

The Souls Of Black Girls is a must see documentary made in 2008 from director-writer Daphne Valerius that brings to the discussion of the self image consciousness or lack of in women of color.  Along with commentary from celebrities like Jada Pinkett Smith, Chuck D, and Regina King, light is shed on the emerging image problem of young Black women, the historical plight of it, and how the media and entertainment images figure into contributing towards a potentially detrimental perception of it.

The Words

A young married writer (Bradley Cooper) in New York after some years of  struggling, suddenly rises to the top with his latest novel only to discover that the journey comes with a personal price to pay. Where does one even begin in describing this film?  In a word, no pun inteneded, it's just brilliant.  Not yet having seen Silver Linings Playbook, it's the best performance I've seen Bradley Cooper in so far.  Needless to say, the entire cast, consisting of Cooper, Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Irons, and Zoe Saldana, were outstanding in this remarkable drama, love story, and mystery that doesn't stop unfolding.  It's this unfolding of the story within the story and the ambiguity it rest on that leaves each viewer fully invested in the experience.  The Words sure enough is about writing and the rippling power of words to uplift, destroy, and manifest love.  But it's also about our humanity in pain and regret, survival, redemption, and healing.  In today's world, it begs the question of what does success and happiness mean to each of us and are we content in our choices of one or the other. For myself as a film blogger, it certainly was an innate delight to view this and be so viscerally affected in a refreshing way that these meager words will not entirely convey without being proceeded by a spoiler alert.  Rottentomatoes has given this film a meager 22% favorable review, but I sharply disagree as I did of their  77% rating of  Dredd.

Dredd

First off, why anyone would want to make a remake of a not so great film baffles me to no end.  Secondly, how anyone could make a remake of it even worse 17 years later is really disturbing.  Ok, ok, so it's not technically a remake in all fairness.  I guess it's technically a continuation of the adventures of the character Judge Dredd.  This time around the judge, jury, and executioner cop (Karl Urban) takes a psychic rookie judge (Olivia Thirlby) under his wing.  An investigation into a triple murder leads to them to try taking down drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) held up in a 200 story apartment.  Yeah, it's soo original a story. We've seen this type of story before and we've seen it done so much better and creatively in films like The Raid: Redemption and District B13.  I don't know what they were doing here in Dredd.  It was limp and all the cgi, special effects, sets, costumes, gunplay, and futuristic set designs couldn't get this film going or me even mildly excited about it.  Karl Urban is as wooden as his character throughout and for 95 fucking minutes, we have to listen to his cheap raspy one liners and watch him keep that stupid helmet on.  Might as well, have been watching Robocop.  Oh wait, they are actually making that as I write this.  The villain Ma-Ma is a psychotic killer and drug addict, who doesn't really do anything interesting or that smart throughout the film.  She just looks like a grungy crackhead ordering people to find and kill the judges and what she does manage to have up her sleeve when confronting Dredd, is equally weak in imagination or smart cunning.  The only slightly interesting facet to this movie was Dredd's trainee partner with her psychic abilities, that I was hoping would move the story along a more interesting path, in so far as character development or plot.  Of course, by the time I realized it wasn't to be, I was already numb with disappointment and boredom.  It was as if I had taken some of Ma-Ma's Slo-Mo drug and had a bad trip.  Dredd is quite dreadful.

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