movie, margaret, kenneth lonergan

it is no easy task to do what’s right, and that task becomes insurmountable when what is right changes with the passing of time during which one goes from being collectively praised as a preconceived adult to a fully chastised and individual one.  Paquin’s character of Lisa, or Margaret, depending on how the film works in the viewer, is given narrative at first through a series of events and then through a series of fringe characters so bloated with unrealized dreams and sadness that they become occupiers.  the film went through a protracted release and a contentious editing process, but all criticisms that include this fact are surface and superfluous.  the film is magnificent and whole, and it speaks to the integrity of Lisa as written and acted that the scenes considered too bright of foreshadowing can be defended both character-wise and story-wise.  this is not a world where people tell each other anything on time.  all are late, and though armed with facts such armor does not stand up to scrutiny’s current inflation.  Lisa embellishes often and is praised for it, and when momentarily truthful she is berated as operatic.  but this is no dramatic reading listing the litany of wrongs done to the young;  Lisa is hard to believe and hard to root for, even though the viewer knows it would be mostly right to do so.

poems

the ghost of bill murray     for Mike

other than

its ability

to lean

on a wall

and things like that

the ghost of bill murray

is wholly

ghost-like.

the ghost of jim jarmusch

     a thought

a ballerina

might have

of smoking.

the ghost of michael shannon

has this look

it’s had

before-

white wall.  snow’s double.

the ghost of richard farnsworth

spoon-trembled

as sugar

the ghost of richard farnsworth

imagines

coffee, a chair, a hospital

nursery-  the infants and the future

coats

it could take.

the ghost of vera farmiga

how sad, my cheeks, to fight

for shadow.

the ghost of willem dafoe

awards itself

a porn name

would make

Lazarus

love life.

movie, kill list, ben wheatley

there are men in movies doing secret jobs for secret people.  the men have guns we are not surprised to see and hammers we are.  there are worse people than these men and we will see first their grins that curtain evil and then we will see their brains.  we are used to it.  in ben wheatley’s ‘kill list’, it is not the surface violence that rattles but instead the violence of the underlying.  there is a home life rendered in such detail that its residence is carried by the main male character to far away places not far enough.  his female counterpart keeps home in a performance worthy of wife; she is keeping her man a man with kisses, encouragement, and cuts.  he must remain real.  their child is salve, and they both hover over not to protect but to be momentarily healed.  the film is kitchen sink but only.  humor and camp are not employed as décor.  in its final scene, the lesson is clear that if one wishes to eat something, you kill it first or have it killed for you.