The Invisible Counterpoint

Kick-Ass 2 When Roger Ebert reviewed the original Kick - Ass , he wasn't primarily taken aback by any one single incident—Hit Girl's being shot, with the audience having to take a moment to remind themselves about her bullet-proof vest, for instance—but by the fact that people behind the movie were so comfortable exploring a whole terrain of something which had pretty much taken him off stride upon first occurrence. He couldn't believe that a movie primarily involving kids could be so comfortable with people dying, being butchered, all over the place, coldly, bloodily, humiliatingly, with this not counting it as beyond fun and games. "This isn't comic violence," he writes, "These men, and many others in the film, really are stone-cold dead. And the 11-year-old apparently experiences no emotions about this. Many children would be, I dunno, affected somehow, don't you think, after killing eight or 12 men who were trying to kill her?" ...

Blue Jasmine One thing I was not really fair to, to my experience of Elysium , is how impressed I was by how it accurately conveyed, that if you're not amongst those essentially expected to live as if there is no constraint upon them—all smiles, celebrations, new restaurants, and "isn't life the greatest!"—are outside the fortuned 1%, if you ever dared offering up any sass, any reflection about how you truly feel, you'll follow it with a thousand embarrassing surrenders to whatever authorities might expect of you, hoping that way to abet an executioner's suddenly raised strike from tilting to ultimately fall down on you, and cast you out from a life that still has the bearing of relevance, however spit upon and dim a one. There's a worse fate than being a factory worker at a job-place that truly believes not a one of them is particularly valuable in what he does, each one to be replaced by another, if need be, as can any newly purchased tool ...

Elysium When Matt Damon's Max encounters the kids who surround him hoping for money, there's a tiny bit of tension in the moment, like what we've got is a wildlife encounter between a mature bear and a curious pack of wolves, which should end with maybe one nip or a loud roar, or maybe some mutual entertainment, but could potentially go horribly wrong. But as soon as Max drops them a bit of money, we understand that in this movie, if you're of the dispossessed kids, are elderly, or a woman, you'll understandably do what you can for a bit to eat, but you're all earnest and good, even if choked down some for being so always scared. Guys can get rangier, but are not more interesting for it: unless of course that they'd get a kick out of an exoskeleton being drilled and bolted into you is going to make you look even uglier and cause you a great deal of pain, is for you a show that they're "complicated." So there really is nothing abou...

Only God Forgives If you've suffered from being used incestuously by your mother as you became a young man, Ryan Gosling's character Julian shows what you might do in recompense. One, get away from your mother, like a long way away— Thailand 's good. Two, find yourself in structures that seem as if a bunker and are labyrinthine, and where the wall patterns are like compact shelves of ancestors, or warding glyphs, scary to those who aren't used to them, and maybe even partially in your favor, so you couldn't possibly be unwillingly dragged away, and where any intimacies you might entertain within have the protection of carapace around yolk—they will have their time. Three, have boys around you about the same age you were when you were abused, and instead give them encouraging pats of support—from this, some good to others, as well as some assuagement of your own hurts. Four, re-explore relationships with women, but where if you're the one submitting...