AGORA : The Hand Of God Is Atheist

The time is 391 years into the 'A.D.' experiment. The place is Alexandria, Africa. The problem is ignorance at least some 440 years after the biggest library in the Mediterrian started burning. The internets are in conflict. Let the Science Fiction Begin!

In an age where everybody loves a crowd, some men control crowds of men. These men are hard. They walk through fire but they respect wood; they ridicule statues but they attend to dead bodies; they wear black; they joke; some are even accomplished public speakers. They carry rocks and they administer the stoning. They're the mob. Their patron is Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, people that walk around in sheets with metal plated muscles amid irrigated temples of stone, altars of marble, and statues of exquisite realism continue to fail to recognize that a circle is an impossible concept and only a metaphor for a fucking ecosystem.

A street fight is brewing and the mob of unemployed carpenters - called christians - are gaining on the mob of unemployed masons - called pagans. The smartest person in the city is the principal's daughter. She's the headmistress of the pagan university. She knows how to plot parabolas, hyperbolas; she knows what an ellipse is and she even describes a circle as two impossibly close foci which totally blew my mind. But she spends most of her time talking about circles and the people who've used the most circles to describe the world. She teaches kids geometry and more than a couple of Mel Gibson's secret languages. She can predict the appearance of the night sky and foretell stuff. She's like a website - an oracle. But she's continually frustrated because she wants to explain the movement of the bright things in the sky through circles and nothing else.

(Sigh).

Now this is a time when 'witch' is a serious accusation. If a witch was an embezzler of state funds to prolong her tenure in balmy Greek inspired, Roman administered Alexandria, then perhaps Rachel Weisz is playing a witch, because the heros who do all the hard work in the city understand life to be a grinding stone and therefore define two impossibly close foci as being ground by the stone. These socially awkward christians who flourish in times of misery and live under clear night skies should be able to speak at great length about the manual cycles of long symmetrical movements and compare them to the fucking stars in the sky but the state pays a fucking woman who has figured out that the sun gets larger in the summer and smaller in the winter without caring to invent sun glasses for everybody. On top of that she still can't communicate the fact that the our planet earth spins while it rotates around the sun and the rotation looks like an egg with the yolk off center, making the planet's proximity to the sun, our fucking yolk, variable. Damn. If god wanted us knowing things he wouldn't have made so many of us such terrible story tellers. Rachel Weisz is not alone, there have been many failures in the world, and the things that make them similar are far greater than the things that separate them. 'We are all brothers,' says the headmistress Hypatia, or we are all slaves to ignorance. The common language determines how great the ignorance. This English speaking foreign film from Spain raises many interesting questions. The least of which is if I'm the hand of god do I touch myself?

COP OUT: Captain America In New York

What in the name of Thirdly Beverly Hills Cop?! For crying out Hudson Hawk!!! For the love of Kevin Pollack what happened to Tribeca! Stop Jason Lee! Ay Carramba, Sean William Scott is brilliant. The people on screen robbing me of my conquistador language experience actually burst out laughing as they're trying to 'act.' This all so 3 d. Everybody's trying so too hard to be serious but Sean William Scott is just so funny. Cop Out must be the prequel to Captain America. Kevin Smith is one smart cookie to make such a comedically b movie out of such an expensive icon given the political environment. People with guns these days just can't make jokes the way they used to on the screen in any kind of effective timing. To do it, it used to be, they had to be deranged by previous top secret heroic circumstances; they had to be psycho or they had to be the bad guy. But now a retarded mood unbecoming anybody who values their job somehow passes for funny because of the sucky premise of sucky gun wielding. Did Charlie Chaplin ever got a gun? No, Charlie got poverty and the world laughed. But still, Kevin Smith stands up for the freedom of speech, the power of a union, and provides the news flash that, yes, reality is potentially still stranger than a terrorist's list of demands. It's true. Captain America is jacked, demented, and on hallucinogens but he mostly trains cops in his hours out of underwear, which he wears to blend in with mob leaders who wish to wear underwear everywhere. There is a red meat movie here for people who understand guns protect a man's right to control alt zany whenever he wishes, but meat lovers must know how to negotiate pork because not everyone can stage a chase scene in a cemetery without golf carts and pretend he's totally invested in making a comedy and not a stirring cameo of Steve Rodgers on vakay.

GREEN ZONE : Calling All Warrior-Poets

Some people have a lot to learn. Matt Damon doesn't. That's a lot of difference and that's why the Born is back. Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon combine as force to prove that truth, sooner or later, allies itself with the omniscient if only because, 'The reasons we go to war are always important.' So Green Zone is a god fearing film. Righteous!

It's 2003 and George 'Double V' Bush declares victory in Iraq. Step Two: decommission the disbanded Iraqi armed forces and hope all professional soldiers will sit on their hands while the Americans continue misunderestimating the reality of WMD's in the large diggable desert local known as Iraq. Matt Damon seems to believe that war in Iraq without WMDs is a fraud. Matt Damon, Democrat, is conservative. An unfeeling liberal might ask a man with one leg, 'When did your leg turn to plastic?' Not Matt Damon, who simply asks, after picking up a prosthetic, 'What happened to your leg?' It's true, Matt Damon may be a bit too preoccupied with being the best conservative he can be, but so long as he's not a warmongering cheater he's a great hero to film, which brings us to the title, 'Green Zone.' It does not necessarily mean the area without stinger missiles. It took a lot of manual labor, magic bullets, and under armored hummers to fortify that fact. So if you enjoyed the bloody chess match of Spartan, the David Mamet noir, you'll get off on this day in the life of a Chief Warrant Officer trying to be the best detective he can be. The call to action is non-stop, the obstacles are many, and the morals are, well, preconceived notions.

In the end, Damon believes surveillance to be the answer to international police actions. Perhaps if the News Corp. was forced to pay the poor soldier on the front lines to wear a video cam to interview an occupied populace, reporting could end the debate over facts, save conscription, take over the entertainment industry, and elevate conversation in the land once again. But the incorporated private interests would be thinking above their pay grade by selling live armed dialogue as democracy to the public, because 'Democracy is messy,' and no one wants to be caught condoning the second amendment just to insure the primacy of the first amendment. After all, in Iraq, the US wasn't staging an imperial coup so much as a temporary hostile takeover and a public buyback replete with youtube razzies. 'What's going to happen the next time we need people to trust us,' asks Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller - perhaps someone with generations of combat interest in the US's aversion to war. If our best is second rate, suggests Green Zone, a humbling lesson in the manifold nature of urban warfare.

A PROPHET : A Miserable Terrorist Learns A Living

There's not a lot of English in this film. But the subject of ignorance needs to be treated in foreign languages too. So it's a good movie to entertain a humbling experience without pain.

Tahar Rahim, in yet another fish out of water, growing up story, plays yet another sensationalized terrorist who bucks the system and refuses to commit suicide via explosive mass grave. Which makes this hero sympathetic - he just wants to be normal terrorist and aspire to assassinship. Let's give it up for the grinders. There are so many filmmakers identifying with the explosive ignoramus, let it be said that grinders make the world explosively contrasty.

A Prophet highlights the growing pains of the technical education. In the case of the destitute Malik El Djebena, played by Rahim, he must honor his mixed Corsican parentage to become proficient at French, Italian, and Arabic while plying the given trades of seamster and occasional doomed (expected) assassin to exit prison a hardened criminal after beginning as a misunderstood punk. If you need to be bitch slapped out of a lifestyle, a Zack Morris episode, or any concept of self-importance whatsoever, check out this flick, it's better than anything De Niro's done in ages. There were plenty of colorful characters and impressively hairy moments to make up for the lack of spiffy monologues. There was even a couple of cool gimmicks like a grin and a ghost that helped save our hero from death and dementia.

Jacques Audiard puts on a James Cameronesque performance as director of cinematographers and actors alike; the film is intimate and investigates humanity in the most dehumanizing of places, prison, by stressing knowledge and its deficiency at all times. Even the shadows seem natural! Audiard is the king of the world! He doesn't waste his time reviewing one prison to trivialize the entire system of incarcerated labor with some moralistic trail, instead the hero's trail allows us to enjoy the transformation of a character, El Djebena, out of ignorance :

 Warden: What do you want to do here? Work?

 Hero: Of course.

 Warden: Do you know how to do things?

The hero's silence is met with prison and the time to afford himself a profitable education in some six years of mortally dangerous prison solitude. The lesson's simple: life's a bitch, but at least miserable terrorist can learn a living in jail.

EDGE OF DARKNESS : Stockholm Syndrome Is A Roiling Boil

Mel Gibson's a detective stuck in the world of international nuclear spies because his daughter gets killed for making a video about dumping in the nuclear arsenal business that features her team. 

Mel Gibson, aka the director, 'Martin Campbell,' is not fooling anyone. He's going to kill the right person and collect his salary all at the same time. This is a good story because sometimes it just comes down to killing the right people. This is hard to conceptualize without an historical context so Mel Gibson tends towards besworded executioner justice because the world of guns is a dirty place where a few innocent eggs get wronged because of radiation. 

So you see, 'Martin Campbell.' 

Someone has to admit that there are many stories about people with nothing to lose but their near perfect executioner tally. 

From time to time Mel Gibson 'Doesn't know if he can make it,' but he is very hard boiled. The water is roiling even though someone spilled the beans already there's a lot of spilt milk. Mel Gibson can't crack or run, which only happens in tabloids - a very cranky business. 

All in all, not even the Robin Williams could have pulled off this caper so well. Mel Gibson's a good director and a funny man in revenging circumstances where getting even leaves the whole world blind, because we live in a world of 'fucking persons,' where the sentence 'Your daughter was flagged as a personel target,' means a lot of things to a lot of people. This a fun movie to see people who pass the buck get capped for being 'eco-savages' because the people who stop the buck get the 'comeupings.' Which is why this is a Mel Gibson picture because he's the guy with nothing to lose and it's a tough job so somebody's gotta do it.

BOOK OF ELI : Eli And Eli's Better

This one is good. Waking up dead with a six shooter is how the smart ones encounter the darkness lol! An atomic bomb is like an arrow : await sugar and battery acid and the all knowing righteousness to fast because surviving megatonnage is the metaphor for bullshit. It's lyrical how bad some people need to know how barbaric their children act! We all prefer the desert. The desert is our target right? Denzel chop suwing wang saki fashion detritus is better than Road House with the inimical performance stylizing of the dancing Patrick Sawyze lol! The Denzel Washington makes a fine keeper of the book of peace and violence and the atomic bomb. The slow motion shots are heart warming. And the mercy showed by the King of the Bomb for his fool - the reader of too many books - is heart warming. Denzel Washington is a fine actor pulling off 'it's been 30 years since the flash,' with old school flair. 

Old School is totally post-apocalyptic. 

Denzel Washington keeps the world save from his wrath so long as there is enough miracle, reading, teaching and bartering without any raping or pillaging. What do you want? He's only one man. When times get tough, he combines his sword, his quotable bible and his martial art into some kind of exponential super power that intimates the piecemeal boy scout. He reads a lot and doesn't seem to believe in the practicality of an all powerful air force. Nice guy. Single.

UP IN THE AIR : An Existential Guide To Firing

KAPLOWY! George Clooney must be trying to win his way into a Scorsese flick or ingratiate himself anyplace north of Washington D.C. where sacrifice can be measured by pathos and not teeth. According to my hosts here overseas, this flick could easily unite the likes of Biggie Smalls and 2Pac Shakur, 'for certain.' To twist a euphemism, this one’s strictly for the terrorists.

‘Why don’t you just burn everything and imagine waking up tomorrow w/ nothing?’ Feel relaxed? Capable? Do you recognize that, ‘there’s nothing cheap about loyalty,’ and that ‘cheap is a starting off point?’ Welcome to Dallas, hub of American Airlines, the evident host of the gorgeous opening credits sequence that features undisturbed, clear weather air reconnaissance of the major cultural center of America’s BreadBasket quadrants. Liberated American women familiar with male companionship may also herein be collected as cover if not whole hearted character witnesses.

We begin in Omaha, the de facto capital of Nebraska, the corn husker state. Know that here the terrorist has a home: ‘Retail’s down 20%, auto is in the dump, and the housing market doesn’t have a heart beat – this is our moment,’ to fire people. Here a truly macho insecure compatriot may be procured to aid and abet your quest to fire as many MidWestern Americans as possible. This journey really begins in Tulsa, which historically has served as, ‘the Oil Capital of the World,’ and houses many worldy, understanding speculators home for the winter before Tornado season starts in earnest. But be careful, Tulsa is a family oriented city and many American women fear mortality and may swipe at a ‘free wheeling’ man eager to collect enough skymiles to gift to his friends. So only one steak per meal or your cover's blown! Which takes us on to St. Louis, home of the Spirit of St. Louis, and Wichita. ‘There’s just one thing from keeping [Wichita] from being totally fucked!’ That's correct, the corporate hub of Pizza Hut's fucked if not for Learjet, Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft, and Spirit AeroSystems; both Airbus and Boeing maintain a work force in Wichita too, so anybody that enjoys a comprehensive engineering education may earn their god given right to fly there.

Be warned, the director has not - has not - stressed that the Kansas City landing pad is not in Kansas. And should you be breaking US morays by now, like harmonizing with suicidal tendencies in Wichita by suggesting that an unemployed person keep their suicidal tendencies to themselves rather than share them with you, you may become embroiled with Federales. At which point, you may grumble, in American, 'one should always promote shared feelings – especially suicidal ones!' Why? Because there are more sturdy fountains in Kansas City than Rome, coupled with a fairly empty urban center and Metropolitan News Radius of 2 million persons, so you wouldn't be disturbing too many people with your negative attitude so long as you never raised your voice.

By now you may have noticed all of the firing targets to be along mighty American rivers. Des Moines is no exception and officially means, ‘of the monks,’ in the US. It marks the beginning of the Presidential election process every four years and is the insurance capital of the States.

You have now earned a trip to a den of sin without any self-resptecting target to fire - Miami. Here, you may act socially retarded at ease and let your body fortify your ambitions with plentiful music, alcohol, power boats, and god knows what else.

Now it’s time to get down to business and fire people in Detroit. These people are notorious alcoholics and if you can fire them joyously, America is surely available for your own brand of wake up call. Which is why a venture to the den of sin called Las Vegas is in order, because, 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.' There are pyramids and it is known for being lucky to spend money. But you must press on to your first coastal city - Milwaukee – where you must grow accustomed to the strange affects of sedentary living by the sea. It is in Milwaukee that one may truly learn the power of earnestness in all your future endeavors: ‘I’m such a fuckup but I love you so much will you be my copilot,’ is a line that will open doors in places such as Milwaukee, which boasts 13 Fortune 500 companies and a love for capital. The Santiago Calatrava miniature wing may also prove most interesting study for anybody interested in suspension bridging.

That is all, good luck and know that in America, all may be blamed on 'human nature' - the big #1.