Humans vs Robots I work in military AI. As in ordinary domains where AI is applied, we have two camps. One is smitten with the future of what AI can do, and foresee a day where nearly everything we do as humans can be done better by machines. Innovation to these folks is in finding… Continue reading Wandavision (2021)
Category: Threes
Films rated three stars out of three
Overboard (2018)
Organic Endearment This is formulaic in the basics: two people repel each other, fall in love, have a complicating development, profess love in some public, dramatic way and are reconciled. Such things usually depend on the appeal of the characters and the supporting comedy. But I think this has something else going for it. It… Continue reading Overboard (2018)
David Bull: The Great Wave (2015)
A Hello Now that I am free from posting on IMDB, I can watch films and study alternative film sources that matter. Movies emerged from a context. I understand that context in the West well enough for my purposes. The narrative devices I study are inherited from literary traditions, but I need to spend more… Continue reading David Bull: The Great Wave (2015)
The GrandMaster (2013)
Uppercut I’ve been in training of a sort and unable to view serious movies, so it was difficult to arrange for this, and the anticipation built. Now I regret not having prepared better. Filmmaking for me is calligraphy on water. A filmmaker’s art can be in the shape of what is written. Nolan, for example… Continue reading The GrandMaster (2013)
Jodorowsy’s Dune (2013)
The Exuberant Eye I am glad the man is alive and still making films, though they don’t drive my soul the way some work does. I like that he is aware of parallel narratives, is visual and fearless. His notions of sex and oppression are decoupled from the physical, and that is remarkable. For my… Continue reading Jodorowsy’s Dune (2013)
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
Head Space I really disliked the first one. The world building, in retrospect, was very impressive, building on a number of strong cinematic conventions that were ripe for evolution. But all the backstory and parallel plots, all the character development was within a single testosterone paradigm. I thought it a one-note elaboration on something dumb.… Continue reading Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
Unmistakable Child (2008)
Unputdownable Tulku If you have not seen this, it documents from the cremation of a senior Buddhist monk to the certification of his reincarnation by the hierarchy though to the Dalai Lama, and subsequent installation in a monastery at about three. We follow the quest by the old monk’s most loyal follower, a dear soul.… Continue reading Unmistakable Child (2008)
The Illusionist (2006)
Flight Club We know what’s coming with this and we even know how. At least I think most viewers will. It is a con movie, but with more explicit folding. In the usual con genre, there is a mark who is fooled along with us the viewers. In this version, the con is literally a… Continue reading The Illusionist (2006)
Amélie (2001)
Life, A User’s Manual I avoided this film for ever-so-long because of what I had heard about it. One would believe that this is a well-photographed simple sweet story. That somehow it has something to do with the adventures of a sweet girl-woman. Well, it is. But it is so much else, and that ‘something… Continue reading Amélie (2001)
Triangle (2009)
Spilled Blue Paint for Water I love this stuff. Making stories is at root a challenge of surfing between the expected and known and the ambiguous surprise. The further you go into the world of non-linear sense, the more control and skill is required. If the filmmaker and viewer can negotiate a space that works,… Continue reading Triangle (2009)