Category Archives: Survivalism

Based on a Swedish film that itself was branded a shameless rip-off of Groundhog Day, Michael Tiddess Neflix production Naked feels stiflingly plastic-wrapped and freeze-driedan example of an elevator pitch literally becoming an elevator pitch. Beyond being retrograde, its anachronistic in the context of its distribution format. If streaming services offer the opportunity for filmmakers to explore their own freaky muses free from the expectations of mass crossover appeal, why does everyone here feel like theyre stuck on an assembly line? Sure, its a thematic mirror of the main characters plight, but that only makes the audiences journey toward the final credits feel as interminable as the main characters struggle to break his time loop.

Rob Anderson (Marlon Wayans) is a part-time English teacher at a swank prep school, asking his students to choose between The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies because he knows his students are far more likely to identify with the highly entitled form of rebellion of Holden Caufield than admit to wanting to kill Piggy, and loves throwing Lord of the Fliess island survivalism back in their faces. And yet, he doesnt have a thing in his life in order other than the fact that hes heading to the altar with Megan Swope (Regina Hall), a successful pediatric doctor with a formidable business-mogul father, Reginald (Dennis Haysbert), who, needless to say, looks at Rob like something sticking to the bottom of his shoe. Megan heads out for a day-before-the-wedding bachelorette party, and Rob and his best man head out for a quick nightcap. Then Rob wakes up naked on the floor of an elevator.

Right from the very beginning of Robs cruel cycle that sees him repeatedly returning to the floor of that elevator every time the church bells at his wedding begin to ring, Naked besmirches the reasons that Groundhog Days Mbius-strip construction worked. The 1993 film laid a trap out of mundanity, not extraordinary circumstances, highlighting the silently crippling weirdness of modern lifes patterns. Or, if youre particularly high on Groundhog Day writer-director Harold Ramiss intentions, it represents the spiritual journey toward the ultimate goal of self-transcendence in the Buddhist sense. Naked, on the other hand, doesnt suggest purgatory so much as hell, with Rob being punished by the universe and being forced to decipher the reason why.

Actually, its not even that abstract. Its rapidly clear that Rob needs to solve a mysteryhow did he end up naked on the floor of an elevator?in order to stop ending, as per the unofficial theme song from special guest star Brian McKnight, Back at One. And so, in contrast to Bill Murrays Phil Connors, Rob isnt tasked to become a better version of himself. Hes challenged to be the person his fianc and father want him to be, and the universe itself wont let him explore the very real possibility that he may simply be in the wrong relationship. Then again, in a world in which McKnight is the supreme muse, who are we mere mortals to question the vagaries of true love?

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Naked - slantmagazine

Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation is as sprawling as it is empty. It's prone to blizzards except for when it's too cold even for snow. It's a hell of a place to examine an ignored America and a fitting setting for a noir thriller.

In the directorial debut from Taylor Sheridan (writer of Sicario and Hell or High Water) a game tracker (Jeremy Renner) discovers the frozen body of a young Native woman. A hardscrabble investigation unfolds, and the tracker joins forces with an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen), the tribal police chief (Graham Greene) and myriad snowmobiles.

Sheridan excels at simple turns of phrase and leading us into a rat's nest of violence. But Wind River meditates on loss more than it burns through plot, and it occasionally feels heavy handed. We get itRenner's character has a backstory that makes this crime personal. There are constant references to predators and prey, and it's fueled with male aggression and female pain.

But while those pitfalls are common, Wind River's unexplored geography, depth of spirit and honoring of survivalism are not.

CRITIC'S RATING: 3/4 Stars

Rated R. Bridgeport, Division, Tigard, Vancouver.

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Noir Thriller Wind River Examines An Ignored America - Willamette Week

Image: tristan quinn / bbc

By Jamie Bartlett2017-08-06 16:55:52 UTC

Until a couple of years ago, Antonio Garcia Martinez was living the dream life: a tech-start up guy in Silicon Valley, surrounded by hip young millionaires and open plan offices.

He'd sold his online ad company to Twitter for a small fortune, and was working as a senior exec at Facebook (an experience he wrote up in his best-selling book, Chaos Monkeys). But at some point in 2015, he looked into the not-too-distant future and saw a very bleak world, one that was nothing like the polished utopia of connectivity and total information promised by his colleagues.

"Ive seen whats coming," he told me when I visited him recently for BBC Twos Secrets of Silicon Valley. "And its a big self-driving truck thats about to run over this economy."

Antonio is worried about where modern technology especially the twin forces of automation and artificial intelligence is taking us. He thinks its developing much faster than people outside Silicon Valley realize, and were on the cusp of another industrial revolution that will rip through the economy and destroy millions of jobs.

"Every time I meet someone from outside Silicon Valley a normy I can think of 10 companies that are working madly to put that person out of a job."

Antonio estimates that within 30 years, half of us will be jobless. "Things could get ugly," he told me. Its very scary, I think we could have some very dark days ahead of us."

Think of the miners strike, but in every industry. People could be be driven to the streets, he fears, and in America at least, those people have guns. Law and order could break down, he says, maybe there will be some kind of violent revolution.

So, just passing 40, Antonio decided he needed some form of getaway, a place to escape if things turn sour. He now lives most of his life on a small Island called Orcas off the coast of Washington State, on five Walt Whitman acres that are only accessible by 4x4 via a bumpy dirt path that just about cuts through densely packed trees.

Instead of gleaming glass buildings and tastefully exposed brick, his new arrangements include: a tepee, a building plot, some guns, 5.56mm rounds, a compost toilet, a generator, wires, and soon-to-be-installed solar panels. It feels a million miles from his old stomping ground.

Former Facebook executive Antonio Garcia Martinez at his remote island hideout, ready in case automation causes social breakdown

Image: tristan quinn / bbc

Antonio isnt the only tech entrepreneur wondering if were clicking and swiping our way to dystopia. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and influential investor, told The New Yorker earlier this year that around half of all Silicon Valley billionaires have some degree of apocalypse insurance. Pay-Pal co-founder and influential venture capitalist Peter Thiel recently bought a 477-acre bolthole in New Zealand, and became a kiwi national to boot.

Others are getting together in secret Facebook groups to discuss survivalism tactics: helicopters, bomb-proofing, gold. Its not all driven by fears about technology terrorism, natural disasters, and pandemics also feature but much is.

According to Antonio, many tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are just as pessimistic as he is about the future theyre building. They dont say it in public of course, because whats the point. Its inevitable, they say; technology cant be stopped. Its a force of nature.

Even just a couple of years ago, this would have sounded like just another exhibit in the long-tradition of American dystopian paranoia. But the robot jobs apocalypse argument is starting to sound more reasonable by the day.

"Ive seen whats coming, and its a big self-driving truck thats about to run over this economy."

The Economist, MIT Review, and Harvard Business Review have all recently published articles about how the economy is on the brink of transformation. President Obamas team suggested driverless cars would dispense with 3 million jobs pretty soon. According to the Bank of England, as many as 15 million British jobs might disappear within a generation.

I blame Hollywood for our lack of preparedness. Thanks to Blade Runner, Terminator, Ex Machina and the rest, artificial intelligence is now synonymous with sentient robots taking our jobs, our women, or our lives. Forget all that.

The A.I. revolution comes in the less sexy form of machine learning algorithms, which essentially means giving a machine lots of examples from which it can learn how to mimic human behaviour. It relies on data to improve, which creates a powerful feedback loop: more data fed in makes it smarter, which allows it to make more sense of any new data, which makes it smarter, and on and on and on.

Antonio thinks were entering into this sort of feedback loop. Over the last year or so, various forms of machine learning technology, teamed up with robotics, are making inroads into brick-laying, fruit-picking, burger-flipping, banking, trading, and driving. Even, heaven forbid, journalism and photography. Every year will bring more depressing news of things machines are better than us at.

New technology in the past has tended to increase markets and jobs. In the last industrial revolution, machinery freed up humans from physical tasks, allowing us to focus on mental ones. But this time, A.I. might have both covered.

Machine learning can, for example, already outperform the best doctors at diagnosing illness from CT scans, by running through millions of correct and thousands of incorrect examples real life doctors have produced over the years. Potentially no industry will be untouched.

Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, 27 year old founder of Starsky Robotics who are using $5 million of investment to develop self driving trucks.

Image: tristan quinn / bbc

The latest wave of machine learning is even smarter. It involves teaching machines to solve problems for themselves rather than just feeding them examples, by setting out rules and letting them get on with it. This has had particularly promising results when training neural networks (networks of artificial neurons that behave a little like real ones), using an approach called deep learning.

Recently, some neural network chatbots from Facebook were revealed to have gone rogue and invented their own language, before researchers shut them off. These simple chatbots were given a load of examples to spot basic patterns in human communication, and then conversed with themselves millions of times in order to figure out how negotiate with humans. What followed appeared as a stream of nonsense:

Bob: i can i i everything else.

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

No human, with the possible exception of one Chuckle Brother, talks like this. But the failed experiment proved an important point. It seems these chatbots had calculated, within the parameters of their task, and without human intervention, a more efficient way of negotiating. This is the essence of deep learning: coming up with new ways to tackle problems that are beyond us.

In the same week, Elon Musk (who believes A.I. is a great threat to humanity) and Mark Zuckerberg (who does not) got into a public row about the risks of letting A.I. like this loose. Zuck said Musk was irresponsible. Musk said Zuck's understanding of the subject was 'limited.' But this misses the point.

A.I. is not about to go Skynet on us. These chatbots hadnt developed some sinister secret language. But mega-efficiency or neural network problem solving might be just as disruptive. True, some of the recent fear about the coming age of the robots is probably overdone. Were not all about to be turfed out by bots. And weve always had disruption: people were warning about a jobless economy 50 years ago too. Weve always found new jobs, and new ways to entertain ourselves.

Around half of all Silicon Valley billionaires have some degree of apocalypse insurance.

Let's not forget the wonders of A.I., such as dramatically improving how doctors diagnose, which will certainly save lives. It will stimulate all sorts of exciting new research areas. Replacing people with machines will have other benefits, too: driverless lorries would almost certainly be safer than exhausted driver-full ones.

The most likely scenario, reckons Antonio, is a gradual dislocation of the economy and an accompanying escalation of unrest. David Autor, an MIT economist, reckons we could be heading toward a bar-belled shaped economy.

There will be a few lucrative tech jobs at the top of the market, but many of the middling jobs trucking, manufacturing will wither away. They will be replaced by jobs that cant be automated, in the low paid service sector. Maybe there will be new jobs who imagined app developer would be a profession but will they be the same sort of jobs? Will they be in the same places, or clustered together in already well-off cities?

Drivers alone taxi or truckers make up around 17 percent of the U.S. adult work force. Taxis are often the first jobs for newly arrived, low-skilled migrants; trucking is one of the reasonably well-paid jobs for Americans that are not highly educated. What are they going to do instead? Are the cashier operators, and burger flippers going to retrain overnight, and become software developers and poets?

At the very least it seems economic and social disruption and turbulence as we muddle through are likely. The whole shape of the economy could change too. Some worry about the possibility of growing inequality between the tech-innovators who own all the tech assets and the rest of us. A world where you either work for the machines or the machines work for you.

What does that mean for peoples sense of fairness or agency or well-being? Or the ability of governments to raise taxes? The Silicon Valley survivalists fear that, if this happens, people will look for scapegoats. And they might decide that techies are it.

Jamie Bartlett outside Apples new $5 billion HQ

Image: Tristan quinn / bbc

One of the questions I asked as part of this programme is whether we are prepared. We dont even know how little we know; and our politicians seem to know even less. I found one mention of artificial intelligence in the 2017 party manifestos.

When asked recently about the future of artificial intelligence and automation, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin replied that its not even on our radar screen and that hes not worried at all. A couple of months back his boss climbed into a huge rig wearing an I love trucks badge, just as nearly everyone in Silicon Valley agreed that the industry was about to be decimated.

Antonio told me in the race between technology and politics the technologists are winning. They will destroy jobs and economies before we even react to them.

Still, guns and solar panels? Survivalism seems like overkill to me. "What do you have?" Antonio asks, fiddling around with a tape measure outside his giant tepee. "Youre just betting that it doesnt happen."

Before I can answer, he tells precisely me what I have: "You have hope, thats what you have. Hope. And hope is a shitty hedge."

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Silicon Valley luminaries are busily preparing for when robots take ... - Mashable

by Jeremy Kirk July 22, 2017

When it comes to telling a story about war, the filmmaking game has been hitting many of the same strides for a couple of decades now. Ever since 1998's Saving Private Ryan and the opening scene set on Omaha Beach, war movies, especially those set during World War II, have been satisfied retreading that same water, rolling with similar tides, giving us much of what we've already seen before. It takes a true craftsman in the game to deliver something fresh but still maintain a sense of scope, compassion, and intensity. That craftsman, apparently, is Christopher Nolan, who has been reshaping genres and defying expectations since his 2000 thriller, Memento, floored audiences with its disjointed structure. Nolan is the craftsman, and Dunkirk, a WWII movie unlike any seen or experienced before, is the stunning result of his craft.

Told over the course of one week in the extremely early days of the Second World War, the film quickly brushes over the necessary exposition setting the stage with simple narration through title cards. In the town of Dunkirk in the North of France, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were trapped and surrounded by the invading, German forces. In May and June of 1940, these Allied soldiers were evacuated from the area with what little resources Britain, France, and Belgium could spare at the time. Needless to say, the evacuation was a long and arduous process with many Allied troops believing help and their salvation would never come. For many of them, it didn't before it was too late.

With the setting established, Nolan drops us right into the thick of it all: the constant barrage of attacks against the troops lining the beach from the fighter planes buzzing around above them. Nolan, who also serves as the screenwriter here, isn't satisfied letting this play out in the typical way either. His screenplay is broken up over three, separate stories showing the events as they play out from the land, the sea, and even the air. Not satisfied with telling these individual stories in typical fashion, either, Nolan jumps between them, sometimes at the expense of straightforward continuity. The weeklong attempt of survival for the soldiers on the beach is edited along with the day-long trip it takes for the boats to reach the island from the mainland and the hour-long trip for the planes in the sky. It all comes across as somewhat confusing at first, but, once the timelines are established and begin to be fleshed out, it all moves together in a beautiful and riveting symphony of survivalism and heroism.

Nolan's film is completely stripped of needless exposition or even the typical developments commonly found in films about war. We aren't given any backstory for any of the characters, and, oftentimes, we aren't even given a name to go along with the character. While this may appear to keep the emotion at an arm's length, the very notion of surviving an impossible situation and the bravery of those who faced it down comes through crystal clear. Dunkirk allows these ideas to speak for themselves without being bogged down by explanation. This may come across as awkward for some, but Nolan's structure here is deliberate and ends up benefiting the stories as a whole as well as the war film in which it makes up.

The moments of silence are few and far between with Nolan inundating us with the constant dangers that surround these characters. He also utilizes Hans Zimmer's throbbing score as a character, itself, hardly ever falling away completely and constantly serving as a reminder that there is no rest for those involved. Likewise, the choices made in the film's narrative structure only help to amplify the harrowing task of those attempting to rescue these men, in particular the story of a Royal Air Force pilot (Tom Hardy) whose hour in the sky is a constant onslaught of bravery and danger.

Hardy, to his credit, gives a resonating performance despite the simplicity of his story. As with many of Hardy's previous performances, his eyes do most of the talking, what they are saying giving off as much emotion as many, straightforward performances of this ilk. Likewise, the story of soldiers on the beach, particularly those played by Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles, are filled to the brim with emotion despite the lack of commonly found narrative beats. The story told at sea, however, is the most powerful of them all with Mark Rylance giving an incredible performance as a civilian mariner en route to help with the evacuation. Rylance is rock steady and perfectly informed even with the lack of typical emotion to drive him, and it's this story that Nolan could have easily turned into a feature-length film all by itself.

Christopher Nolan has quickly established himself as a filmmaker who is always looking for the road less traveled when it comes to the stories he tells. With Dunkirk, he has once again shaken up a genre and delivered something that will likely become the new establishment for future stories. Hard-hitting and wrapped in the inherent emotion that comes from stories about war, Dunkirk is an experience of World War II unlike any we've seen before. It has quickly become a wonder to guess where Nolan's career will take him next, but, with Dunkirk it will be even more interesting to see where war movies go from here.

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Review: Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is as Riveting as it is Groundbreaking - First Showing (blog)

CBN News spoke with Dr. Larry Horton, a pastor and author, about what it means to be a Christian survivalist. Watch the full interview above.

In a time of crisis, do you know how to survive? What does it mean to be a Christian survivalist?

CBN News spoke with Dr. Larry Horton, a man who has spent his life studying and practicing spiritual and professional survival and has now written a fictional diary to demonstrate what it means to be prepared for the worst.

"A Christian survivalist is an odd combination," Horton said. "Most people today think of survivalists as hard-core preppers, hard-core people who come out of a military background, maybe, or a back woods background."

"A Christian survivalist believes in the depths of their heart that their eternal survival rests on Jesus Christ," he continued. "They believe that the one missing piece in traditional survivalism is that faith in Christ that will guide and direct people for whatever the future holds for them."

Related: Doomsday Ready? More Americans Becoming 'Preppers'

"They totally put their lives in the hands of the Lord and follow Scripture, and through faith, believe that Christ will guide them to the place they're supposed to be in this life," Horton added.

Horton's book is called The Final Journey: A Diary of Survival, and is the first in an intended trilogy taking readers into the lives of fictional characters facing what could someday be a reality for Christians.

The story follows two Christian survivalists, a husband and wife who, during a time of political chaos, set out on a 1,500-mile journey to safety.

"They have identified signs that they will look for in society, in politics, the international world, business and so on that will be their triggers to let them know that it's time to head for the hills so to speak to get to a place where they believe they can build a new life and be safe from the breakdown of society and the world as we know it today," Horton explained.

But aren't Christians supposed to take it one step further and not only survive, but thrive as well?

"To me, thriving is to be as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as possible," he told CBN News. "And putting our lives in his hands, putting our future in his hands."

"That doesn't mean that we renege on our responsibilities, our intellect, our strength, our integrity, our ethics, the basis of our humanity and walk into life without any involvement personally on what happens to us," Horton continued.

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Do you Have What it Takes to be a Christian Survivalist? - CBN News

Stopping our economic obsession with more stuff gives us a chance to save our planet and transform our societies, writes ALAN SIMPSON

THE Canadian journalist Naomi Klein recently came to interview Jeremy Corbyn. Afterwards, she gave him a copy of her latest book No is Not Enough.

Jeremy should read it alongside Ian Sinclairs most recent Morning Star article Labour must put more focus on climate change (July 12) then treat himself to an evening watching the 2015 film Tomorrow, directed by Cyril Dion and Melanie Laurent.

What the three have in common is probably the most important message of our time. Forgive the pun but climate is going to trump everything.

The unfolding debacle that is Brexit deflects parliamentary attention from a far bigger European conversation that should be taking place. It involves a recognition that economics, as we have known it, is finished. The obsession with growth based on ever increasing production and consumption is absolutely incompatible with avoiding a climate crisis.

Sustainability has to turn economics on its head, putting work, wellbeing, security and inclusion at the centre of a different economics, one which treads more lightly on the only planet we have.

It was a massive achievement that Labour offered an election manifesto as uplifting as it was. But energy and climate proposals did struggle to get past Labours internal interests. Many of the most far-reaching ideas never reached the starting line.

But the ticking clock of climate science (and the sea change in public mood) now demands that Labour, like Star Trek, must boldly go into hitherto uncharted spaces.

Climate security will not be found in a new round of free-trade agreements. This is self-delusion land, chasing cheapness into spaces blind to the climate destruction that comes as its handmaiden.

Concepts of growth will have to be redefined in quality-of-life terms, not quantity of consumption.

Circular economics will displace outdated growth models, with more localised consumption and supply becoming central to how we radically and rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of everyday life.

Internationally, it must be underpinned by resources that allow others to do the same.

This is a world away from the America first, and sod the rest of you policies of US President Donald Trump.

When historian Edward Thompson plunged into the European peace movement campaign of the 1970s, he talked about solidarities that crossed national frontiers, citizens carrying their cargoes of intellectual contraband, exchanged freely in the dead of night. It was the notion that we could live, non-threateningly, alongside each other in ways that belligerent political leaders seemed unable to grasp.

What it called for was a different mindset, and then new institutions that might build common security upon different foundations.

Todays European institutions were never designed to deal with flood-tides of forced migration. The poorest parts of Europe carry a disproportionate part of its consequences, with next to none of the resources needed to do so.

Britain pulling up the drawbridge even if we werent massively dependent on migrant workers to run the NHS; staff our universities and research institutes; pick our foods; run our care homes and build and repair our houses would solve nothing of this bigger crisis.

Nor would it address the turbulence of emerging food uncertainties. Spain, Greece and southern Italy are in the middle of a drought and heat wave that will massively reduce their harvests.

Farmers in the US are not doing much better, with warm spells in the Arctic stunting their summer crops.

British farmers might be enjoying bumper harvests from the milder weather we have had but it is a momentary distraction. Britain is anything but food secure.

Nearly half of the food Britain consumes is imported. In 2016, nearly 70 per cent of this came from the EU.

One way or another, the world has to begin a new conversation about buffer stocks of food.

Europe is an ideal place to begin. It is where we could all discover the new relationships needed to link the local with the supranational, the defining of a new common wealth. This is where Dion and Laurents Tomorrow comes into its own.

The film takes viewers to a host of localities (across different continents) already moving into circular/sustainable economics. It doesnt matter whether this is urban food production within US cities, Indian low-carbon housing or European agro-ecology programmes. The key is that localities (the likes of you and me) are becoming the practical and political drivers of change.

The film includes UK examples of sustainable food programmes and local currencies, but the real challenge is to take all the global examples from 100 per cent recycling schemes to zero-carbon homes and turn them into todays mainstream thinking, putting sustainability and accountability at the heart of everything.

Britains Asda, Morrisons and Co-op supermarkets have made a start in this, committing to only sell British meats. It is a step short of the European slow food movement which attempts to locally (and seasonally) source most of its food products but it is a start. The real gains, however, are to be found as much in reduction as production.

The charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) estimates that Britain currently throws away 10 million tonnes of food and drink a year. Seventy per cent of this is household waste, while around eight million people in Britain live in food poverty.

What we throw away also adds to the annual trade deficit in food, drink and animal feed (22.5 billion in 2016). Much of this could be sourced domestically and (preferably) organically.

None of this makes the case for a Little Britain, pull-up-the-drawbridge mentality.

Britains 70 per cent of food imports that come from the EU could be a partof a resilience programme, providing British surpluses also form part of the buffer stocks. But to do so sustainably, such programmes must also be required to restore the levels of organic carbon stored in European soils. Therein lies the difference between a common wealth of Europe and a more rudimentary common market.

Exactly the same applies to energy. A European grid (preferably owned by national governments) can offer transmission security for the whole of Europe. But the revolutionary changes will come in more decentralised systems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution and in markets designed to sell less consumption rather than more.

The battleground is democracy, whether old energy oligarchies can be replaced by more inclusive energy democracies. These are the bigger issues that Britains political leaders should be raising with European partners (and beyond). We have much to share, and much to learn in the narrow window that climate change leaves open.

Climate will shape tomorrows economics of water, energy, housing, transport and goods. Work and skills will be at its centre, but essentially we must write a new economics of stuff, with the emphasis being on circularity rather than unlimited extraction.

Such a vision is not hair-shirt survivalism; its anything but. Apply it to energy and you race into Germanys transformation economics where two-thirds of the jobs are now in energy saving, not generation.

Apply it to transport and you shift into clean systems that might free 40 million people in Britain from health-destroying air-pollution levels.

Break the shackles of how money itself is created and new ways of financing renewal (and real jobs) unfold in front of you. Give localities carbon budgets to live within and an economics of recycling more and using less will have to follow.

The starting point, as Ian Sinclair demanded, is that we accept that yesterdays economics is dead.

Old free-trade agreements and growth obsessions are a race towards the abyss. Security and prosperity will be found within broader solidarities. Forget the illusions of sovereignty. Security, real security, is when we rediscover how interdependent we really are.

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Morning Star :: No growth but lots of opportunities | The People's Daily - Morning Star Online

Published 1:10 PM, July 18, 2017

Updated 1:10 PM, July 18, 2017

FINAL CHAPTER. Caesar (Andy Serkis) faces new challenges in 'War for the Planet of the Apes,' Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Matt Reeves War for the Planet of the Apes is a triumphant and fitting conclusion to a trilogy of films that deserves much more fanfare and acclaim than it already has.

Evolving apes

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

The franchise, which started with Rise of the Planet of the Apes back in 2011, saw the landscape of blockbuster cinema in a constant state of flux.

While other franchises latched on to treating the movie-going public like visitors of a theme park who are just in it for the roller coaster-like spectacle and experience, the Planet of the Apes reboot keeps on evolving without necessarily straying from the story of Caesar (Andy Serkis), the ape who evolves from being a laboratory experiment into the leader of intelligent simians who are out to dislodge humans as the dominant species in the world.

Rise suffered from being an origin story, and while competently directed by Rupert Wyatt, its pleasures relied on its ability to mold the beginnings of an apocalypse that will connect to the horrors of Franklin J. Schaffners original Planet of the Apes (1968) or Tim Burtons 2001 remake. Reeves took over for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), proceeding to craft a tale of Shakespearean consequences out of monkeys eking out an organized society amidst persecution from surviving humans.

War continues Dawns tradition of reshaping pop culture to make more overt allegories that reflect very current realities.

Cruelty and faith

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Opening with a battle between human soldiers and defending apes deep within the forest, the film immediately slows down, treading forward with a deliberate pace, utilizing familiar tropes of various genres in pursuit of its vivid exploration of both human cruelty and faith.

War stretches Dawns metaphors to near biblical proportions.

Caesar, from the rising and benevolent leader ruler of the previous film, is dealt with strife that forces him to expose a humanity that is even more compelling than before. He becomes a Christ-like figure, a symbol of hope for an enslaved people. He is even granted imagery reminiscent of seminal moments from the bible.

He is hung on wooden beams, almost crucified before being quenched of his thirst by a little girl (Amiah Miller) that his people are supposed to hate in a sequence that sparks hope amidst such stark cheerlessness. He is provided moments of doubt, where he questions his own morality after facing dilemmas that compromise his own rules.

Faith is clearly a persistent theme.

As the film paints the burgeoning apes as distressed by humanitys abuse and oppression and the remaining people of the world as desperately clinging to their diminishing superiority, they rely on solitary figures of differing charismas. While Caesar plays the role of his peoples savior with obvious ease, the surviving humans only have the Colonel (Woody Harrelson), a crazed authoritarian who thrives in discrimination for self-preservation. They hold their positions in their respective groups with doctrines like survivalism and exodus that are all akin to religion.

Portrait of inequity

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

At this point, War has pushed the franchise as far as it could from Schaffners iconic sci-fi film.

The original Planet of the Apes, with its ending Charlton Heston lamenting the fall of humanity feels like a cautionary tale, a work that feeds on our collective fear of being inferior as what that films hero has suffered through at the hands of civilized primates.

Rise, Dawn, and now, War, with their diligent effort to humanize the animals that have previously been depicted as villains, and create a world of abject division that results in atrocities that may have been inspired by real history, are portraits of the recurring inequity that has besieged society since the beginning. Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas 'Tirad Pass.' Since then, hes been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.

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'War for the Planet of the Apes' Review: Finale of biblical proportions - Rappler

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (2017)

The set-up: Despite being the cowl with the scowl who triumphs over Gotham Citys criminal element, narcissistic Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) is a lonely individual without love or family in his life. Now his world is turning upside down: new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) wants to hamper his vigilante behavior, The Joker and other criminals have turned themselves in, and he has unwittingly adopted a young orphan Dick Grayson who idolizes him and his alter ego Bruce Wayne. But its not all puppydogs and rainbowsthe Joker is up to something big that Batman will not be able to handle alone. Can the Dark Knight overcome his isolationist stance to work with others and save Gotham?

The breakdown: The Lego Batman Movie is a blast. A sharply satirical take on Christopher Nolans Dark Knight trilogy and the superheros long-running cinematic history, Chris McKays animated adventure is crammed with one-witty liners, DC Comics in-jokes, and guest appearances by non-DC villains like Sauron, Voldemort, and the Daleks. Its also the most over-the-top, ridiculous, and family friendly Batman rendition ever, and one that could never be done convincingly in live action. Thats why it soars in this format. The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack includes five additional LEGO short films, a look into the making of the movie, deleted scenes, and more.

XX (2017)

The set-up: The first ever horror anthology of entirely female writer/directors (hard to believe its taken this long) presents four eerie tales from Jovanka Vukovic (The Box), rocker St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark, The Birthday Party), Roxanne Benjamin (Dont Fall), and Karyn Kasuma (Her Only Living Son). It also features animated interstitial sequences from Sofia Carrillo featuring a living doll house.

The breakdown: Despite their varied themes, most of the XX stories tap into a strong emotional core. In The Box, a young boy mysteriously stops eating when he peers inside a gift box held by a mysterious stranger on the subway. The Birthday Party for a young girl becomes complicated when her mother finds her father dead in his study then tries to hide the body. The visceral Dont Fall dishes out demonic vengeance on young campers who unwittingly invade a dominion of evil, while a mother grapples with the reality of her teenage progeny embracing his devilish roots in Her Only Living Son. While these are all good stories, Vukovics The Box is the most enigmatic and compelling particularly because it stirs your imagination and avoids spelling things out. You will likely ponder and re-watch it, a feat that great horror achieves. The bonus materials take us behind the scenes of each entry in this creepy quadrilogy.

LOGAN (2017)

The set-up: In the year 2029, mutants are essentially extinct. Now an aging, deteriorating alcoholic who drives a limo, Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is squirreling away cash so he and the sickly Professor X (Patrick Stewart), who is hidden away south of the border, can escape to a safe place. But his already depressive life gets disrupted further when he gets caught up in a pursuit of a young girl with abilities by a devious military agency bent on using her for nefarious purposes. Now Logan must make a choice between survivalism and rescuing a young mutant who needs his help.

The breakdown: Hugh Jackmans final turn as Wolverine is one of his most compelling. Co-writer/director James Mangold, who helmed Wolvies previous installment, boosted the franchise and has delivered a gritty, unglamorous, existential superhero film that is highly intimate and personal amid the intense battle action. It is the most vicious weve seen Logan onscreen (and the closest to his comic book alter ego). The black and white Noir version is also included, but the film works quite well in color. It is the best of the three-film series.

THE LODGER (1927)

The set-up: At a time when a mysterious murderer is offing fair-haired women in London, a weird lodger shows up at a familys house. His furtive, late night outings, strange quirks, and gradual romancing of their daughter, who is the intended bride of a local cop, not only ruffles their feathers but hints that he may indeed by the killer on the loose.

The breakdown: While this silent black and white film was Alfred Hitchcocks third film, the Master Of Suspense reportedly considered it his first real movie. Some of his trademarks began to emerge heredramatic camera angles, shadowy set-ups, an urgent sense of paranoiaalthough much of it plays like a film of its time. Hitchcock aficionados will enjoy this early work featuring a compelling new score by Neil Brand. Criterion really stocks up on the bonus goods, including his next full-length film with the same star, Ivor Novello, entitled Downhill which also features a new score from Brand.

LASSASSINO (1961)

The set-up: After his mistress is murdered, an unscrupulous antiques dealer (La Dolce Vitas Marcello Mastroianni) falls under the glare of the police spotlight. The investigating detective seems convinced of his guilt, despite the protestations of the potential culprit. But is he really innocent or has he convinced himself that he is?

The breakdown: Directed by Elio Petri, who helmed the off the wall caper film Property Is No Longer A Theft, LAssassino (The Assassin) is a crime thriller that plays out more like a melodrama, with flashbacks to moments in the lovers life that may or may not illuminate the murder mystery. The point of the film is not necessarily to ratchet up the tension but rather show the stern process by which the cops try to break down their prime suspect. The film is as much about indicting the Italian criminal system as the dubious behavior of the beleaguered suspect, and it scrutinizes the moral fabric of many of its chief characters. Petris work is further analyzed in the bonus features, which offer great insight into a career not as well known to American audiences.

GHOST WORLD (2001)

The set-up: After high school ends, a listless punk teen named Enid (Thora Birch) struggles to find a clear path in her life. Stuck taking a summer art class to graduate, she becomes alienated from her ineffectual father (Bob Balaban) and his girlfriend, starts to drift apart from her best friend (Scarlett Johansson), and befriends an older lonely man (Steve Buscemi) whom she initially plays a mean prank on. But as the lives of those around begin to progress and she becomes stagnant, Enid battles growing despair over her uncertain future.

The breakdown: Based on the indie comic Eightball by Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwiggoffs Oscar-nominated film is both enlightening and irritating. On the one hand, the rich characters and their very real if modest quandaries are easy to relate to and go deeper than stock movie caricatures. On the flip side, Enids self-jeopardizing attitude and purposeful detachment from her environment becomes overbearing at times. The rebellious teen in you can relate, while the mature adult in you screams, Snap out of it! (Ghost World explores that gray area well.) The 41-minute bonus feature with Birch and co-stars Johansson and Illeana Douglas delves into the films core, while the accompanying, art-heavy booklet and small-scale reproduction of an Eightball story pull us deeper into Clowes source material.

SPOTLIGHT ON A MURDERER (1960)

The set-up: A dying man plays a trick on his greedy heirs by locking himself in a hidden room in his expansive chateau to die. At the reading of the will they learn that without the body of their patriarch they must wait five years to claim their inheritance as well as maintain the grounds during that time. While they transform the chateau into a tourist attraction, bodies start to pile up as desperate family rivals seek to claim the future fortune for themselves.

The breakdown: This lesser seen film from director George Franjus (Eyes Without A Face, Judex) serves up an unusual murder mystery that underplays some genre conventions while cozying up to others. Instead of exploiting a noir-like atmosphere, Franjus executes this like an intense family drama with a generous helping of homicide. It is quirky fun, and the bonus interviews from the actual filming show how much fun the cast had while they made it.

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Queued Up: 'The Lego Batman Movie,' 'XX,' 'Logan,' and More - Aquarian Weekly

Cast

Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn

At some point, the balance of our planet turned, and everything down to the title ofWar for the Planet of the Apesmakes this abundantly clear.Where Earth was once a human planet, and the time of apes rose and dawned, now the tide has shifted. Now humanity must affirm itself against a civilization sliding away from it by the day. If the first two films argued for mankinds inability to restrain itself from pursuing a final reckoning, this is a film about what happens when mankind gets everything it asked for and more still. This is no longer a planet of humans, it is a planet of apes. Each encounter simply inches both species further beyond the rubicon theyve already crossed.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a bleak summer blockbuster even by the increasingly nihilistic standards of the last two installments. One film envisioned a world in which humanitys desperation to stave off old age begat something dangerous, and then another saw man blow past a series of final exits on its way to obsolescence. Much of humanity has perished by the time the film begins, and the majority of those remaining have been driven mad by survivalism, enlisted into military tribes of ape hunters. Where the apes once lived in fear of humanity, now humanity lives in fear of its own future.

In this same way, Caesar (Andy Serkis) worries about what will come of the apes. Mankinds numbers may be dwindling, but their desperation has made their armies vicious. Even at the beginning of War, Caesar still attempts to reach some kind of armistice, knowing how futile his attempts will likely be. When a squadron of humans moves hazardously close to their long-held encampment in the woods, Caesar sends them away with a clear warning: Leave us the woods, and the killing can stop. But for The Colonel (Woody Harrelson), there is no end as long as a single ape continues to walk the Earth. Soon the bloodshed of so many battlefields follows the apes home, and Caesar is forced to deal with the displacement of his kin, and the violent road to any future they might have.

The terror of Planet of the Apes as a concept was always borne from mans anxiety about its end. From its birth during Vietnam to its post-apocalyptic echoes of a nuclear holocaust, the series has long been rooted in the possibility of man destroying itself as a matter of natural course. War takes that concept to its logical ends, but one of director Matt Reeves many bold choices (alongside co-writer Mark Bomback) is to frame much of the pivotal human drama in the films background. There are only two notable human characters in the entire film, and one of them is Harrelsons Colonel, a Kurtzian type who believes that humans as they once existed cannot peaceably coexist in a world with the evolved ape. The other is a young girl, Nova (Amiah Miller), whos been left silent by forces that War takes its time in teasing out.

This is a patient film, so much so that War feels nearly radical by modern Hollywood standards. As with Dawn, the apes preferred communication mode of sign language allows for Reeves to build the films power out of conspicuous quiet. When the film spends extended periods of time unfolding its tale with little (spoken) dialogue, the remarkably acute sound design lets the auspicious presence of silence dominate the mix. Where once the sounds of ape-human strife could be heard off in the distance, or dominated the screen, Reeves imagines an emptier world, where the absence of death and the accompanying vacuum of sound fosters its own kind of dread. Accordingly, when fighting does arise and the film grows more hectic, its all the more deafening for Reeves keen manipulation of these dynamics.

Even the new introductions have an aura of sadness around them. Nova is only discovered in the wake of tragedy, and her kindness to the apes is understandably returned with a mixture of empathy and looming unease. Bad Ape (Steve Zahn) offers another perspective on the war, from an ape left to fend for himself without the close-quarters decency of Caesars tribe. That hes rattled to the point of constant alarm is hardly surprising, although Reeves finds a handful of lightly comic moments out of the character throughout. Those are few and far between as the film goes on, however, given that Caesar eventually finds himself captured and pulled behind enemy lines, along with the majority of the remaining apes. His torture and suffering there, compounded by his guilt over his necessary slaying of Koba (Toby Kebbell) in Dawn and the us-or-them reality of the ongoing situation, forces Caesar to question what more he can possibly give to save himself, and his kind.

The thoughtful continuity between films plays another notable role in Wars unsettling portrayal of a conflicts waning days. Central to Caesars arc in this film is Serkis continuously astounding work in the role; whatever debate might have remained about the actors role in the series boundary-pushing motion capture work should hopefully be laid to rest here. Caesar is not just a marvelous creation of special effects (the work on his and the other apes design, by Weta Digital, remains groundbreaking), but a character whos evolved from the star child of a dominant new species to one of the last beings on Earth capable of remembering mankinds onetime decency. Much of that complexity emerges from Caesars gaze, and its not ultimately a VFX who finds it. Its Serkis, and his work here is as powerful as any hes done.

Like any great villain, this ethos is mirrored in the Colonel, who has more than enough reason to fear what might come next. War for the Planet of the Apes may be part of a trilogy thats always taken a sympathetic stance about mans treatment of the apes, but Reeves introduces a moral conundrum that asks far more difficult questions than before. At what point can two opposing groups truly fail to coexist? What is the morality of one beings survival over another? Can there be morality in a binary life-or-death scenario? Harrelson plays him as a man who abandoned such questions and answers long ago, whos chosen the brutal simplicity of genocide or extinction. His fear is real, and this makes it all the more palpable. If the actor has played roles like this one before blithely deadpan in the face of the unimaginable Harrelson nevertheless lends the Colonel a tremor that seethes under his crueler moments. Hes a man who chose to accept savagery out of necessity, and expects no less than the same from those following him.

The most remarkable accomplishment of War, then, is how the film seeks to articulate both sides as clearly as it can. Reeves visualizes the waning human world as a despairing progression of hiding places and mercenary strongholds, where the apes fret about where a migration would even take them and the humans cling to their last bolstered prison encampment as tightly as they can. Caesar is forced to endure the worst of one species to protect another, and the combination of Serkis resonant work and Reeves unflinching direction cement War as one of the more thoughtful and unyielding blockbusters of its time.

As with the previous films, Caesars entire mission is defined by the idea that all beings have a right to live, and live well, and that someday they will. Here its reflected in Bad Apes daffy commitment to goodness, or in the apes protective kindness toward the Nova. (One of the films loveliest scenes features one of its only vibrant swatches of color, as she shares a flower with one of her protectors.) But its also a film with an astute understanding of how cancerous vengeance can be, and how even the best among us can act hideously when pushed to the limits of anger and need. In its way, War also makes a painful case for how avoidable inter-faction violence usually is, and how quickly thats forgotten when such violence erupts.

Reeves and cinematographer Michael Seresin juxtapose the purity of the vibrant white snow surrounding the encampment and the exhaustion of the gunmetal-dark human territory to breathtaking effect. The films color palette may be muted, but War is an impeccably shot film, the uncanny CGI fitting perfectly against the films unforgiving environments. At times the production design is truly eerie, suggesting a world where man exhausted itself and was slowly, quietly replaced. Between the lustrously shot expanses of untouched land and Michael Giacchinos nervous, sometimes dominant score, War builds a world made frightening by its absences.

The humans are so ultimately secondary that some of the films only questionable narrative decisions have a diminished impact. A good bit of the films prison section is built upon some suspect-to-unlikely human decisions and errors; for a legion of futuristic Marines, theyre inept as prison guards to the point of audience distraction. That said, even the panic and indecision of the soldiers can still be tied into into Wars thesis about scared, under-trained warriors who never asked to be placed in their position. Regardless, War has predominantly moved beyond its human characters, for better or worse. (Well argue its the former.) Wartime has no true victors, and War never cheats on its established stakes, and those of the series to date, by attempting to comfort its audience.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a formidable conclusion (if indeed it is) to one of the more well-considered modern series to date. This is a film of difficult, lingering questions and painful revelations. Beyond that, its also a film where a beloved CGI creation is tortured onscreen for dramatic effect. This is pop filmmaking nearing its darkest heights, but verging on its artistic heights as well, a movie that will undoubtedly have its place as long as two nations somewhere around the world are struggling over land or hubris or, as it is here, to endure. It treats the end of the world as the apocalypse weve always been racing ourselves into, and the one we wont be able to prevent even as we see it coming. Yet there is still always another way forward, no matter how much blood is shed. Theres always a new horizon, and a new tomorrow. The only question, then, is how many get to see it.

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Film Review: War for the Planet of the Apes - Consequence of Sound (blog)

PUBLISHED: 08:49 07 July 2017

Michael Joyce

Joel Edgerton as Paul in It Comes At Night. Picture: A24

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It Comes At Night (15)

****

As the title suggests, this is a scary film; it just isnt the scary film that the title suggests.

A virulent contagion, which manifests as pus-filled boils, has swept the globe, pitting neighbours against one another for survival in Trey Edward Shults slow-burning psychological thriller.

Paul (Joel Edgerton) and his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) decide to ride out the storm with their son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr) by living in a fortified shack in the middle of the woods, monitoring each other for signs of infection.

One night, the family wakes to noises in the house and Paul realises to his horror that someone or something from the outside has gate-crashed the sanctuary.

This is a reflection on the great myth of survivalism. Edgerton has barricaded his family away and behind a locked red door, the rest of the world is a great unknown.

Its like 10 Cloverfield Lane, but with reasonable people, trying to deal reasonably with an unreasonable situation. Its impressively tense and the air of paranoia is magnificently sustained, with a minimum of incidents. The music score by Brian McOmber works wonders and the nighttime scenes of lamplight against wood panelling are ineffably creepy.

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Review: Paranoia thriller It Comes At Night is impressively tense and ... - Norfolk Eastern Daily Press