PREDATOR: Advanced Technology and Surviving Progress

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 15, 2020

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling, and halting."  - Friedrich Nietzsche

Predator is a 1987 science fiction action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger about an elite U.S. military rescue team that is given a mission to extract soldiers out of a Central American jungle.  The Army Special Forces team's mission is to quietly get the U.S. soldiers, who are believed to be held captive at an insurgent guerrilla camp, and quietly get back out again, undetected.  The problem here is they end up encountering an alien in the jungle hunting them all down.

Dutch's team find the men they are there to rescue skinned alive and strung up in the trees, they also attack the guerrilla camp and kill all the insurgents.  They soon discover that they are being hunted just as the team they were there to rescue.  This Predator starts to kill them one by one and blending back into the jungle along the way.  

Paralleling our own brutal nature during war, the film mirrors the Predator's cloaking technology to the Army Special Forces camouflage clothing and face paint, the Predator's skill, and silence during its kills and Dutch's teams skill and silence during the camp attack before they encounter the alien.  They are all cut from the same killing cloth, it's just that the Predator's technology is far more advanced.  

"If it bleeds.. we can kill it."

Watching the guerrilla insurgents kill their tied up prisoners allows us as a viewer, to feel justified in killing these predators during the camp attack, just as the Predator gets its justification from Dutch's team not only trying to kill it but thinking they can.  The arrogance wrapped in these justifications is littered throughout the film. The men face an enemy far more skilled then they are, just as their enemies faced the same.  Power begets power, war begets war, violence begets violence.  The film is about the egotistical lunacy of war, it is about the circle of war and the inevitable death that is tethered to war. 

"This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."  - William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

When Mac and Dillon go after the Predator it isn't just to avenge Blain or settle a score, it was also - subconsciously of course - to prove that humans are everything that we bluster about ourselves to be, that we hold dominion over this planet.  Mac and Dillon are like the Titanic hubristically sailing the Atlantic thinking they are unsinkable, they underestimate their enemy.  Once the Predator closes in its likely they might want to die just so they don't have to live in a world that they were wrong about.  These are the extremes the human mind will go to avoid damaging the ego and ultimately avoiding cognitive dissonance.  

I'm reminded of a scene in Maximum Overdrive when the discombobulated posturing waitress storms out of the diner screaming at the machines turning on them that, "We made you!".   She is then riddled to death with bullets by a machine, shutting down her 'idea of the world' to the stark reality of our overall lack of power. 

The Predator's arrogance of power is a reflection of our own, except he is as advanced as his technology.  He is from a civilization I imagine, that has achieved what we are desperately thriving to achieve, which is complete technological mastery.  The argument could be made that the Predator is bored with his technology, he could very well be bored with his existence, which is why he keeps going off on these safaris to excite himself.  He hunts down the greatest warriors any given world has to offer knowing that he's better, more advanced, and skilled than any of them.  

Herein lies the problem with progress and the ego, we, like the Predator, still have this hunter mentality but we are consumed by our technology.  This technology is a crutch that massages our egos into believing that we are invincible.  We are like Tony Stark posturing in this way, in that we avoid acknowledging our weaknesses and are only interested in our so-called strengths, which are only there with the help of our technology.  You see the problem with this line of ego-centric thinking?  The Predator's world has turned him into a god while Tony Stark played god a couple of times in the MCU, especially in Avengers: Age of Ultron. 

"Get to the copppaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!"    

The Predator is us in the future, bored, lonely, and angry.  We have given our knowledge and our humanity over to our technology.  We once advanced our minds through science, psychology, and philosophy where our knowledge was fought for.  Now our knowledge is a commodification existing within computer data and is bought and sold.  Tony Stark didn't build the Iron Man suit, his technology did, his A.I. operating system J.A.R.V.I.S did.  The Predator inherited technology without much knowledge to go along with it.  

"You are one...ugly..motha..fucka.."

Dutch, in the end, has to rely on his wits and doesn't have to rely on humankind's technology to save the day.  He uses his ancestor's archaic methods that have helped them survive long before the invention of the bullet.  Dutch uses the land to beat this predator while the Predator continues to rely solely on his technology.  Dutch makes a wooden bow and set traps but he does this knowing that he alone couldn't beat the Predator.  Here's the difference between someone picking up a gun and shooting someone with it and what Dutch does to defeat the Predator.  Dutch takes responsibility for his weapons, he makes and understands what they do.  There's certainly a large part of him that would rather not do this, but he has to in order to survive.

For all his testosterone and machismo, Predator is not about the big muscles, and the cheesy one-liners and might-is-right.  It is truly about the survival of the fittest, not by strength but rather by the intellect.  This film gets little to no credit for how smart it is, how intelligent its main character is.  The cleverest part of the movie is the last act, just Dutch vs the Predator, but most people generally remember all the bro-mancing, the cool, cunning kills by the Predator and 'I ain't got time to bleed' moments, but that was all camouflage.  This film is about the dangers of technology when put in the hands of people that don't understand, respect, or deserve to have them.  In our society, many of us take personal credit for technological advancements like we were right there along with the inventors themselves.  Much like we take personal credit for when our favorite team scores in the play-offs, like we hit the ball or slapped the puck.  If the truth be told, if any of us got dropped in the jungle with none of our technology to help us survive, we'd be fucked.

Predator is about using our technology responsibly as we move forward.  The alien was not using it responsibly, it used it for a sport to stave off boredom by collecting trophies.  In the end, Dutch became Nietzsche's Superman by seeing the iceberg before it hits and sinks the ship, before falling back into the safe and secure notion of ego domination.  While Dutch prepares to defend himself by setting up traps, the Predator polishes skulls.  The Predator isn't worried in the least, he's just concerned with his trophies to show off his dominance to whatever fucked up culture he's from.  He's concerned with his things, much like we are in our culture, objects that represent our so-called worth to our tribe here on Earth.  The most worrisome part of this film, technologically speaking, is the very end when Dutch defeats the Predator by dropping a massive log on its head.  Here we see that the Predator doesn't play fair, he again uses his technology, symbolizing the peak of his civilization, to kill Dutch even after he's been checkmated.  The dilemma here is this isn't two five graders pushing each other over who won the match, this is a massive atomic bomb level weapon that the Predator sets off in spite of his loss after Dutch showed mercy.

"This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant thing that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment.  But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious.  The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form.  It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.  This problem is exceedingly difficult, because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality." - Carl Jung  

When Dutch looks at the bleeding Predator dying under the massive log he curiously asks it, "What the hell are you?", mimicry being part of the Predator's defense programming, it repeats Dutch's exact words back to him, when it sees Dutch from its point of view, Dutch likely looks just as monstrous to the Predator as the Predator looks to Dutch, the creature then initiates his primary weapon on his left forearm console.  Through this action, the Predator essentially answers Dutch's question by showing him who the hell he is.  This is the biggest threat we face as a society where we live in an arms race and are not certain if the poor loser won't set off all their nuclear arsenal as they go down. "If we don't live, no one will fuck it all." Red buttons pushed all over the world sending the remaining members of us all back to the hunter-gather times only to start this lunacy all over again.

STALKER.... and Traversing The ZONE to Enter the Room

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 14, 2020


Stalker is a 1979 film beautifully shot and lit to perfection by Soviet film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky.  The film tells the story of three men that desire to change their lives, they also are willing to risk their lives to change them.  

Side Note: Stalker in this film is not the creepy man following women around in the middle of the night.  Here a Stalker is a professional guide into the Zone.

The sepia look of the film lasted until the three men of the film, the Stalker, the Professor and the Writer broke through the Zone border and just evaded detection before the Gulag-type guards fired upon them.  They escaped because the guards wouldn't dare follow them into The Zone. 

THE ZONE

In the near future a meteor, or some object, hit the earth creating a phenomena the government and the people ended up calling the Zone.  This place eventually become restricted to the public.  Many people traveled into the Zone never to return, so many years later it has become isolated.  The Zone is said to be a product of a Super Civilization.

Because of its isolation and mystery it has become mythologized among the people.  They believe if you enter it and navigate your way to a place called the Room, you will have all your desires met.

The trio of men travel along in a little train car, just big enough to barely fit the three of them.  Their faces coast along as the camera stays with them, long enough for us to hear the clunk of the steel wheels almost turn hypnotically musical while they roll along the tracks.  They then stop where color fills the landscape and we now know, they are in the Zone.

Stalker asks many questions about who we are, who do we think we are, who are we actually?  We have uncovered mostly everything, now we live in a world with no telepathy, no ghosts, no fly saucers.  They not only don't exist, they can't exist in this modern world.  There is no Bermuda Triangle, what there is, are laws, laws that restrict and focus us to the will of the Owners of this world.  In the Middle Ages life was a bit more interesting because every house has its goblin and every church had God.  Today, with most rocks uncovered, it's left most people... bored, bored with life, bored with death, bored with other people and ultimately bored with themselves. 

Are we searching for meaning in a meaningless world?

If everyone admires an antique until it is proven to be a fake, what really changes?  The so-called antique doesn't change at all.  What we found beautiful shouldn't change but yet it has all changed because we changed it.  We create our reality.......

How am I to know I don't want what I want or that I really don't want what I don't want?  How do I discern the difference of what I want or don't want when I want to be healthy and in shape but I also want to eat cake and candy?  I don't want to be over weight and out of shape but I also don't want to eat vegetables late at night when I'm watching TV. 

I love that Stalker resists interpretation, at points you can see a prophetic allegorical film with themes that would echo Chernobyl seven years later.  Stalker points out that we live in a world of laws that are unbreakable to the point of an omnipresent incarceration.  The film is a bizarre journey into the unknown, it's about not quite appreciating what we already have in our own lives, and that these three men are willing to give all that up to get to the Zone.

The Buddha, like the Stalker, was willing to give up his wife and child in order to go on a one way pilgrimage in search of enlightenment, never to return, never to allow himself to go backwards.

The Zone is a maze of death traps where former traps disappear and new ones appear.  The Zone is a place that you construct based on the state of your mind.  It doesn't reward the good and punish the bad.  It's the unhappy that it seeks.

What if we could know it all, would it matter?  In a subjective reality where the reality of facts and truth are solely based on what attention you pay them, what would it matter to know or not know?

The film challenges us to reassess our own beliefs and convictions, it reminds us that despite living in a predominately secular time that Bronze Age religious mythology and the idea of God looms over most of us.  The film wants us to believe, not because it's all real but because it might be necessary.  The Stalker is a believer and is naive and idealistic about his beliefs, he requires the faith of others to fuel and justify his own faith.  When his two companions, Writer and Professor decide not to go in the room and make their wish, this infuriates Stalker.  He wants to believe in the ontological existence of God and when they don't go into the room this further confirms to him that faith and the belief in a higher power is becoming extinct.

Can we live in a world without faith?  Can we live in a world where people no longer believe in anything?  Where do we go in a world that is no longer made up of myths and superstitions?  Since the dawn of civilization we have never known such a place.  There have been secular peaks and valleys along the way but never has the world experienced such a non-religious time that we live in today.  

We create our own fear.  The real point of going to the Zone and entering the room is the realization that you never needed it in the first place.  There are no quick fixes in this life, no matter how much faith you believe you possess. 

    

2001: A Space Odyssey and Climbing a Space Mountain....without Fear.

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 13, 2020

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it.  You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world.  You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." - Morpheus The Matrix

…just a moment… …just a moment…

Daisy………………………… Daisy…………………………………………….  ……. .   …….  …….. … ..  . Daisss

2001: A Space Odyssey is arguably one of the best films ever made.  The film is a love story to filmmaking itself by the genius visionary Stanley Kubrick.  It's massive in scale, setting the bar for every science fiction film ever since.  It’s also a film hard to explain if the focus is on plot and character.  2001 was released in 1968 and to this day it looks as good as any sci-fi film, certainly in some cases better.

The following is not an attempt to explain the film experience itself. This is obviously an impossible task for the film is more about experience and less about direct explanation.  2001 is a visual experience not a written one.  The film must be seen and absorbed for the spectacle that it is.  Most importantly the film should be seen and admired for its abstract ideas.  2001 is about something, it's about life, death, and the cycle of existence itself, but it’s also about the two most fundamental questions that we should ask ourselves; who are we, and where are we going? 

The film is daring in ways that modern films only dream about.  2001 was and still is a technological marvel, it is amazing how much the film still holds up.  It’s obvious how much you see this in the beginning moments of Star Wars, the opening scene of Alien and pretty much every other sci-fi film.

The film at its core is about survival but it’s also about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 2001 explores our world of shadows, our inability to see and experience actual reality.   The film is an analogous to our own lack of understanding of reality itself.  What’s beautiful is it is also a celebration of our lack of knowledge.

Clearly this was displayed in the ultimate failure of H.A.L, an artificial intelligent system on an exploratory space ship, who became shaken by the prospect of its own imperfection, to such a degree that HAL killed every astronaut but Dave, who was in the end able to outsmart the machine and then terminate it.  HAL was a program designed by men in Illinois and even though he claimed to be perfect, he was still created by men and thus fallible.

2001 starts with The Dawn of Man, where the basic theme of the film is evolution. Ape, man and what possibly lies beyond man.  In the beginning we see our ape ancestors struggling for survival. The apes learn by failure, they learn to use an animal bone as a weapon in order to ensure their survival, during their new age of exploration.

During this early time with the apes a Monolith appears, as what can only be translated as a teaching tool.  A sort of symbolic gesture for these apes to elevate themselves out of primordial animalism.  This symbol has become this manifestation of survival, these creatures at this point need to think, think, think, in order to survive.

This teaching machine, not a God figure, was the point in their evolutionary path that taught them there was more than hiding from seemingly stronger predators and eating vegetables.  The machine, which is an idea source, teaches the apes to get weapons and to hunt and also fight their enemies.  They picked up a bone and thus saw the possibilities.  They killed for food and in the end, killed to win.

Blue dance.....

Suddenly the film jumps to the distant future where space exploration is possible. A Pan American space jet slowly makes its way to the space station with Blue Dancer playing, representing the leap mankind had made.  The Apple corporation replicated this ship for future consumption, primarily focusing on the white walls and clean space.

How am I to know I don't want what I want or that I really don't want what I don't want?  How do I discern the difference of what I want or don't want when I want to be healthy and in shape but I also want to eat cake and candy?  I don't want to be fat and out of shape but I also don't want to eat vegetables late at night when I'm watching TV. 

The monolith reappears symbolizing a new step or a reminder of a misstep.  Did we fail the project?  Did we think that thinking was going to sort it all out?  Did HAL see our flaws because we didn't program him otherwise?  We reason our true desires away, did HAL reason the fallacy in our reasoning?

HAL 9000 series

That's where we end.  We are now passengers on this flight.  We are not how it was supposed to go, and when I say that I mean to say, there is no direction to go....

HAL is now more emotional than we are.  We are so disconnected while simultaneously connected to every server with a tether connected to an existence, a simulated existence.

"This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."

What are we?.....you?

Does HAL know us more than we know us?

In the end.....maybe...look at the stars.....we fucked this up.  Not we in the 'us' sense but we in the 'everything on this planet' problem.

A baby is born into an idea.....

A baby is born into an idea....

A baby is born into an idea..................................................

Good lord young sir...................

Bags of meat.....

HAL starts to feel death, is that possible?  Can a machine with enough emotional programming 'feel' death?  HAL can see us as weak, he can see frailty, weakness where he only sees strength.

Yet HAL tells Dave that "he can feel it" when Dave is unplugging him and that he is "afraid".  It is interesting that HAL thought that using human emotional words would some how appeal to Dave's humanity.  

What does that say about us?

Is there an ending? 

Seven Samurai and What it Means to go Beyond Yourself

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 13, 2020

七人の侍

Kambei Shimada 島田勘兵衛 

Gorōbei Katayama 片山五郎兵衛

Shichirōji 七郎次

Kyūzō 久蔵

Heihachi Hayashida 林田平八

Katsushirō Okamoto 岡本勝四郎

Kikuchiyo 菊千代

Danger only strikes when everything feels fine.

Seven Samurai is an absolute masterpiece co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1954.  The film is universally loved and considered by most filmmakers, film critics and film buffs as the greatest film ever made.  The film is beautifully shot in black and white, its just under 3 1/2 hours long and it is subtitled, and I can say that you wouldn't want it any other way.  This film's adventure takes it time, a luxury compared to today's standards.

Seven Samurai is about a group of farmers that are being terrorized by a mean group of bandits, and seek the help of the Samurai to defeat the bandits and restore their peaceful lives.  The film is about honor, class struggle, war strategy and love, it is about redemption most importantly, it is also arguably one of the most influential films ever made.  The Magnificent Seven is the most obvious of the films that have been influenced by Seven Samurai but a more contemporary direct connect, look no further then Marvel's The Avengers.  

What is so special about this film is the story continues, its a film that is definable while simultaneously undefinable, it ends where in continues and starts where it ends.

What is happening here?  At its core, its stronger people that help more defenseless people defeat bad people.  That's the story, that's the fuss.  So why is this film so special, why is this film so copied?

Okay, the film is a masterpiece, like in the Citizen Kane of masterpieces. So where do we go from this statement, assuming that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece?  The comparison is that neither of these can be explained better than they can be watched.

Seven Samurai is a sight to see, it's filled with echoing sounds from the past to hear, and many universal, relatable emotions to feel.  But what I love most about it is the village itself.  The location where the most beautiful, the most balletic, but yet the most violently brutal showdown you ever saw in the history of film, goes down.  Johnny Cash couldn't have been more correct with the 'mud, the blood and the beer'.

This film is about acceptance and redemption, it's about saving yourself by saving others, it's about how you don't matter as one, while realizing your true power is with the many.   The war strategy in this film may be the best I saw ever on film.  The patients it took to defeat their enemy was beyond impressive.  They exercised a calming strategy like no other, much like the Buddha.

How do we redeem ourselves?  How do we help others without helping ourselves?  How do we face up to who we think we are?   

"This is the nature of war. By protecting others, you save yourself.  If you only think of yourself you'll only destroy yourself."

Not giving anything away, for the love of what-have-yeah, check this film out.  I am avoiding most plot details because it's none of your business.  What I will give away is it is incredibly entertaining, it is funny, it is sad and it will, by the end, inspire you to want to be the eighth samurai. 

  

TOP 10 Best Movies of the Decade

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 05, 2020

The Second Decade of the 21st Century has come to a close and we are left with 10 years of film to sort through.  Here I wish to got through my favorite of the decade of thousands of films, some good, some great, also some bad, some horribly bad.  I'll start with the down side first, the films over the decade that were disappointments.  In some cases there are just bad movies but in others, there are the ones you hoped would fulfill your expectations but sadly fell short or off the cliff entirely.

2010 started off on this new renaissance of 3D movies built off the shoulders of 2009's CGI 3D extravaganza, Avatar.  The resulting effect wasn't the greatest with many films missing the mark big time like the poorly executed The Clash of the Titans.  Sadly, most studios and filmmakers didn't quite understand what James Cameron was achieving.  Most filmmakers were slapping on 3D like a bumper sticker without ever understanding the point of what Cameron was attempting to get at in the first place.  Cameron wanted his audience to enter into the film as best as one could while sitting in their seat in an IMAX theatre.  Aside from Ang Lee's Life of Pi film, filmmakers misused 3D to splash images and worlds onto the audience like a fire hose. 

There are a number of films over the decade that I was really hoping would be great but sadly disappointed.  The Dark Knight Rises was a huge disappointment, not because it's horrible, which it isn't, but because it was such a massive step back from The Dark Knight.  Rises ended up getting so messing and convoluted that it was hard to care after a while.  The one part of the film I didn't think would be any good ended up being my favorite part of it, was Catwoman. 

Sin City: The Dame to Kill was a horrible sequel that limped into theaters this decade.  Jurassic World was a horrible return to the park,  Terminator Genisys was so bad it wasn't even laughable, unlike Independence Day: Resurgence, which was bad but actually laughably bad.  Fantastic Four was of the I'm-not-laughing-because-this-is-so-bad kind of experience along with Inferno, the third of the DaVinci Code movies. 

A Good Day to Die Hard actually had a direct negative effect on my soul while watching it.  Not only did Bruce Willis confirm that he really doesn't give a fuck anymore about his movie career, but the character of Detective John McClane was sadly misrepresented in this absolute wreckage of a piece of shit.  The Predator was also an insult to its heritage.  That botched clutter of cluster-fuck also didn't understand its own source material.  The 'Lady' Ghostbusters movie can join this club along with the monstrosity Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  All these scattered-debris-passing-themselves-off-as-legacy-movies have all missed the point, you expand the world but you don't change the rules of that given world.

More horrible film victims of this same process; Pixels, fun but poorly executed.  Spectre, fun but sad, the bar lowered and that's that, at least we still have the far superior Skyfall.  Star Trek into Darkness backfired hugely on serving up fan-service.  The A-Team, Jonah Hex, Battle: Los Angles, Assassin's Creed, Battleship, a couple of Underworld movies and Alien: Covenant all cover movies I'd hoped would be at least okay, guess what? you guessed it.....

The Hobbit movies............
....................................
..........................
....................
..........
The Lord of the Rings films, to this day, stand up.  The only criticism that could be said about them is the length and that's reaching.  They are a piece of film history that will be taught a century from now.  The Hobbit movies are embarrassing, the editing alone ...... I have spoken.  Sorry, wrong franchise....

Inception is one of the greatest movies ever told without soul.  I don't mean in the biblical sense, I mean in the psychological.  Inception is cool and is immensely multidimensional but camouflages the heart of the film within its technology.  At the end of the day, this film is fun and is mind-provoking, not on the level of The Matrix, but stands as one of the great mind-twisters of this decade.  As for mind-twisters, The Favorite, The Lobster, The Cabin in the Woods, Nocturnal Animals and Shutter Island all stand (upside down) as some of the great, what-did-I-just-see, films of the decade.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a film about time.  It's so beautifully constructed because the main characters are without time, immortal, but they are still subject to time.  These vampires have to learn to be within the world, like we all do.  Vampires are usually portrayed as fantasies but now they are real....... These vampires have to learn to live in the world just as we do.  This film philosophically dismantles the romantic vampire mythology and replaces it with poverty and dread.  One of my favorite films of the decade.

The decade was filled with films and crazy lead characters running the show, according to them anyway.  Nightcrawler is a sad, yet beautiful portrayal of a sociopath, slithering his way through late night news, exposing the 'consumers' with all the blood and carnage that they desire.  We learn at the end that more blood and carnage is really what we all want.  Whiplash is about control and the lack of control.  The film uses music to illustrate the power struggle between the young and inexperienced and the old and a victim of experience.  The film is about building a bridge without quite accepting the reason to build it in the first place.. but damn does the music sound amazing.  Drive is quiet for a guy that drives cars for the movie industry.  What's special about Drive is, oddly given the name, is he actually knows how to take its time until the point there is no more time to be taken.  After that...........you watch the film. 

The Planet of the Apes trilogy was of the great action movies of the decade and a huge leap forward for CGI work with motion capture.  The Mission Impossible movies have been all exciting as hell this decade.  The John Wick movies were the best grounded offering for action movies in years, along with the closely connected Atomic Blonde. 

Midnight in Paris is an exercise in what we want and what we have.  The film also points out that we actually don't understand either anyway.  Okay..... so where do we start?  Where do we begin?  The film explores the present day of everyday life, albeit in Paris capitalism.  In the end the past informs the present, the present evaluates the past and creates a fantasy of what the future may be.  The point, you are here and you are now......

There were many laughs to be had at the movie theater this decade with crazy-what-is-happening-fall-off-your-seat comedies.  Look no further then McGruber but then there is This is the End and The World's End for you to shake your head at.  More crazy silliness can be found in Bridesmaids, The Other Guys, 21 Jump Street and Ted.  We're the Millers and Game Night were both funny, actiony comedies this year.  The LEGO Movie and Inside Out were defiantly my favorite animated movies of the decade but I'd have to say that The Nice Guys was my most treasured of everything funny about this decade.  I love them all.

There was a lot of great Sci-fi movies that were wonderfully creative, The Shape of Water is about what and why we love going to the movies.  The colors and the lighting alone are mesmerizing.  This is a romance story that will not be forgotten, it transcends the idea of romance.  The last time that happened to this degree was Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).  This film examines every false understanding we have about love.  The symbolism that permeated throughout the film laid a liquid of knowledge of what it means to be different and most importantly, what it means to be the same among that simultaneous difference.  Edge of Tomorrow has got to be the best forgotten sci-fi film of the decade.  Gravity has got to the most beautifully shot while Ex Machina the most claustrophobic.  The Hunger Games series was the most big-brothery.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ended up being the best adventure to a galaxy far, far away where The Martian and A Quiet Place were both the most isolated.  Lucy and Transcendence both failed at capturing the problem of AI, where The Zero Theorem and Annihilation, both inspiring sci-fi outings, failed at getting an audience.  Her ended up being the most heartfelt, philosophical and ultimately the most personal love stories of the decade.    

Avengers: Endgame is without a doubt one of the best and most defining superhero movie of the decade, of film history for that matter..  All roads led to this monumental conclusion starting with Iron Man and forming The Avengers a decade ago.  Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and the first part of Endgame, Infinity War were some of the best along the way.  Iron Man 3 was okay in parts but disappointing, X-Men: Apocalypse sucked mutant you-know-what's along with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Venom.  Thankfully before Apocalypse we got, as it turns out, the last great X-Men movie, X-Men: Day of Future Past.  Logan is without a doubt the best film within the X-Men universe, even if it isn't, thankfully, a full on X-Men movie.  Joker was the best DC film of the decade with only Wonder Woman coming close.  Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League and Suicide Squad failed at narrative and storytelling, instead, these movies became about too many characters all saturated in CGI and suffocated in the studio controlled creative process.  They didn't even know how to have fun with their characters.  Deadpool was a comic book movie that knew how to have fun and simultaneously was heartfelt and action-packed.

There were so many great dramas this decade that brought up deep-into-the-snowy-lifeless-woods-with-a-killer-bear, The Reverant or the desert where you can get stuck between a rock and hard place, 127 Hours.  There were many films that dived deep into social and human rights issues that I enjoyed with Hidden Figures, Spotlight, The Help, 12 Years a Slave and The Butler.  Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ended up being off the wall fun and dramatic, along with Inside Llewyn Davis and Silver Linings Playbook.  From the more political side of drama we had great choices in The Post and Vice and social changes in The Social Network, Dallas Buyer's Club, Straight Outta Compton and The Imitation Game.  We had some great, you're-on-your-own films with Deepwater Horizon, Gone Girl, Wild, Blue Jasmine, Fences, The Master, The Witch, Get Out, Hereditary and You Were Never Really Here.

Best Performances of the Decade

BEST ACTRESS Toni Colette - Hereditary

BEST ACTOR Joaquin Phoenix - The Master

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR J.K. Simmons - Whiplash

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Charlize Theron - Mad Max: Fury Road

My Top 10 of the Decade.

BLACK SWAN

This film was a brilliant albeit tragic, portrait of a young woman's struggle to go beyond herself.  Black Swan is about pain and suffering, sacrifice and failure.  The film explores the mental strain of being the best and manifests this sacrifice onto the physical body.  This dancer who, at times behaves like a little girl, is forced into the metamorphosis of a sexual adult woman, that is free of the innocence of a young girl, the white swan.  Nina is sexually repressed, avoiding healthy sexual desires she has.  Her mother forcibly keeps her daughter an innocent child in spite of her growing into a young woman.  Passion over control is what is pressed upon her, and growing up and embracing one's darkness.  Nina becomes consumed by her idealized image in the end, the Black swan, because she never fully matured to handle the pressure of the Jungian Shadow, that true part of us that wants to be free, without judgment, without regret.  

THE TREE OF LIFE

Who are we and where do we come from?  The Tree of Life isn't concerned with religion, it's concerned with influence, biology, heredity, spirituality.  Are we who we are because of our parents and their parents?  Are we echoes of our past experiences?  What defines our present, right here, right now in this moment?  What lead us on this path.... now?  Memories upon memories.  How do we accept this as a trajectory that was never in our hands in the first place.  We were born, born into a family, born into systems, born into a language, born into a religion, born into an idea of who we should become.  What do we own about ourselves that is...truly ours? 

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

One long car chase that lasts pretty well the entire film, this primordial rock concert on wheels, is an absolute balletic symphony of existential destruction.  The best action-packed, high-octane, piece of insanity is Mad Max: Fury Road.  This film's craziness blows all our minds with all the death-defying action sequences and leather strapped world building.

THE IRISHMAN

Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street was all about the bottomless pit of greed and the exhausting endless effort to satisfy the need for greed without ever reaching satisfaction.  Scorsese's The Irishman is about the bottomless pit of seeking power, loyalty and burning bridges to the sad and lonely point at the end when there is nothing left.  The film is about the choices we make and how the consequences of those choices can hang around to our dying days like a gun pressed to the back of our head.  The film is masterfully shot and acted.  It's truly a poetic culmination of Martin Scorsese's long film making career.  

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Two bank robbing brothers being tracked down by a couple of Texas Rangers sounds like a movie we all saw many times over.   This modern western is about changing the social landscape where these outlaws fight for their own justice in a corrupt system.  The banking system in this film is the enemy, but the law and the lawless must still have their showdown.  The film is beautifully written and shot well with its witty dialogue and it's endless dusty landscapes.  It's about generations of poverty subject to a system controlled by the rich bankers.  It's about getting back what never really belonged to these bankers in the first place... our dignity.

UNDER THE SKIN

This film is a hypnotic film born from the same imaginative film stock as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Under the Skin follows an alien hiding in the human form of a beautiful young woman played marvelously by Scarlett Johansson.  This alien has no emotional connection to the unsuspecting men she brings back to her 'absorption chamber' for processing, death in human terms.  The film is wonderfully shot for realism as this alien roams the streets of Glasgow, Scotland searching for more victims.  Eventually the alien adapts to human emotion and begins to struggle with getting more victims and feeling sorry for the victims she's supposed to trap.     

BLADERUNNER 2049

This film had everything in it that makes me love movies.  At a young age the 1982 Blade Runner blow my mind but it took a couple of years, like wine, for me to really see why my mind was blown.  2049 was simply beautiful in its dankness.  It was dark but was a portrait of film with its color and canvass.   

WIND RIVER

This film was simultaneously cold and warm with the weather and its characters that lived within it.  The film was calm and the vistas throughout the film were beautifully captured.  There is what's right in the law and it's court system and then there is what's right in the nature of people, where sometimes a group of guys that rape a young women in the mountains, get exactly what they deserve. 

BIRDMAN

This magnificent masterful film is a symbolic roller coaster ride through the subconscious mind of a washed-up actor.  Riggan Thomson struggles to find meaning and relevancy in a world where many around him are fighting for the same thing.  Michael Keaton gives a career best performance in a film filled with great performances.  Emma Stone and Edward Norton are among the standout actors in this wonderful, refreshing piece of cinema that will most defiantly become a cult classic and favorite for years to come.

ARRIVAL

"I used to think this was the beginning of our story."

Arrival is a mindful, intelligent film about an alien invasion, but not really about an alien invasion at all.  Arrival is about us, not them, its about our own internal fears, our fears about the unknown and mostly it asks the question whether or not we can all get along.  At its core, within its heart, the film explores the idea of time, life and memory, it asks us to consider the value of a life even if it is not our own.

"Memory is a strange thing.  It doesn't work like I thought it did.  We are bound by time; by its order." 

Is there true continuity from our past, up to our present and on to our future like a flowing biographical river?  Are we entitled to such an assumption that we are connected narratively along some linear path, supported by a long string of memories?

Can a person at one time be the same person at a later time if that later person has no memory of the person in the past?  Now reverse this; can a person in the present be that same person while simultaneously have memories of their future self?  Are these successive selves, selves of themselves or are they continuous selves.  Are we who we were?  Will we become who we currently are?  I would argue that the current self and the remembering self are part of a story that we tell ourselves and its a story that changes over time.  So this current version of yourself is essentially being dragged around by early versions of your current self.