The Invisible Counterpoint

The Conjuring 
I don't know if contemporary filmmakers are aware of it, but if they decide to set their films in the '70s, some of the affordments of that time are going to make them have to work harder to simply get a good scare from us. Who would you expect to have a more tenacious hold on that house, for example? The ghosts from Salem, or us from 2013, who've just been shown a New England home just a notch or two downscaled from being a Jeffersonian estate, that a single-income truck driver with some savings can afford? Seriously, though it's easy to credit that the father — Roger Perron—would get his family out of that house as fast as he could when trouble really stirs, we'd be more apt to still be wagering our losses—one dead dog, a wife accumulating bruises, some good scares to our kids—against what we might yet have full claim to. The losses will get their nursing—even the heavy traumas, maybe—if out of this we've still got a house—really,

The Wolverine It may be that what Wolverine would need to recover from dealing with foes on the scale of a Magneto or a Dark Phoenix, is find himself amidst an environment where no one he comes across looks like he or she’d present much of a problem to that great big bear we encounter at the beginning. It’s a pisser that that venom woman can spit into him a spider that cancels his healing, because otherwise the movie looked like one for Wolverine to remind himself he could reasonably just vacation himself through an onslaught of angry swords, guns, and knives. Truly, other than this one deadly ability from the venom woman, mutants here seem so downscaled—any ordinary guy, good with a sword, would seem just as much a problem. So if all he needed to get past Jean, was to get some soothing attention from a humbled, lovely girl, who you know is incapable of even making a loud gesture let alone bursting into a fiery, taunting, red-headed demon-woman, then this trip to Japan was just w

Pacific Rim The movie Amadeus argued that when a protective, tolerant environment is nurtured, genius that otherwise might have been cowed from developing, can gain the confidence it needs to come to life. Pacific Rim argues the same. If Earth is up against an alien force that'll crush it unless it reaches the pinnacle of the one thing that has been instrumental in blocking it—the drift between two well-matched individuals—then relationships, deep bonds, are going to need to be given the allowance needed to develop and ripen. If it wants to die, that is, it would replace the one program that got humanity excited in its ability to match the adapting alien invaders—the Jaeger program—with one that feels anti-innovative rather than innovative, one that substitutes a you're-lucky-to-have-this-job environment for one where all humanity felt part of a team. You'd build a wall, that is, where people dying while working on it is both bad and good news (som

This is the End, and Summer Self-Surrender 
I saw This is the End again, and the thing I noticed more this time is how scary the film ends up becoming. The lady beside me twitched as if herself hit, when a car crashes through a guy on the street, flipping him rapidly upwards and away to pavement as but a smashed-up carapace due to be crunched into even more ignominious road splatter. The film picks up again into something really disturbing, when a devil with a massive spearing penis subjugates Jonah Hill into a rape victim. And afterwards it gets worse, when Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel find themselves without it realistically seems, any means to innocently show the kind of self-sacrifice and not-self love that would get them by surprise into heaven: Craig Robinson had seemingly claimed all possible avenue to demonstrate yourself sincerely repentant after knowing that this is the avenue to abscond yourself indulgently into heaven, with his amazing "take your panti

This is the End Emma Watson makes an appearance in This is the End , and it's to scold Jay Baruchel on his better-than-thouness, and subsequently later to axe off the top of a giant scrotum statue that camps mock-proudly in James Franco's fortress dwelling, as she goes raving femme-fatal on these jumpy boys. She isn't meant to come off badly; in fact the film wants to make it seem like it's  deferring to her. But basically she's one who can't be included within the boys' play; and it can, and sorta is, a way of revenging yourself on someone. Like Kate Middleton, she's become too high stature to be other than someone you part your way around, like a school of small fish around a shark, when she's predated herself upon your premises. This film's reminder of this status was probably invisible to her; in fact I think she thought she was including herself in with those expected to bear some of the ribbing, and therefore also part of the

The Bling Ring "Bling Ring" ends focusing mostly on Emma Watson's character, Nicki. When the enjoyable world she had participated in ends, she gets sucked back into her mother's embrace, her cult, that heretofore she had found successful means to quarantine as something only to be endured while at home. Her own escapades have ended with her mother having her back entire, and even if she talks back to her, gets angry at her for repeatedly insisting on inserting herself into  her  interview with the Vanity Fair reporter, we see she's due to become as much the harmless clown as her mother is. Harmless, because however much she might climb in this world -- her family is by no means poor or without resources -- they are made to seem so much trapped in a disassociated mindset, poor things petting their preciouses, they're more like pilgrims caught enspelled that the more sane world pilgrims may have to temporarily reckon in but mostly will shake their