Chasing Rabbits ... 2017 ... or whatever year edition

I don't remember if I wrote or not a "Chasing Rabbits" entry last year. What I recall is that I wrote one in 2015, in the same hotel near Otopeni airport where I'm now, also having a flight scheduled next early morning and few hours to sleep, but not having much sleep... I don't know what I wrote back then, but I know that this time I'll try something maybe a bit more concise than in the previous.

Fact: some (apparently random) stuff happening in life can be really stupid and maybe unfair.
Idea: fix that.
Tool: time machine.

We can go on forever talking about "playing God" or "messing with the karma". I said concise - and to be concise... karma has its way to get stuff balanced. So, if "the fact" + "the idea" are not fair enough when they're put to work... karma will hit back... at least that's what I think will happen. Now, let's chase the main rabbit = "the tool" ...

I could start rambling about the few tiny bits of physics that I know, but I would probably stop not too far, and no matter how quick that might be I would probably put out still enough bollocks to make this entry really stupid. So, instead of "how to build it", let's try approaching it from the other side. For the sake of argument: let's suppose that tha "the time machine" already exists (that's why is a time machine, right? should abstract away the time around it). Just that I didn't hear anybody reporting any "Terminator" coming from the future through a magic electricity bubble. So, if it exists, its mechanism is probably a bit more... discreet.

There are some options here - depends on how rich is your imagination :) ... But let's just take one: let's put an equal sign between "time travel" and "send a message". In this context "time travel to the future" is something trivial, and enough well developed: from a letter, to an e-mail, and so on. There's still the question about the past. How could you do it at least at a minimal level. 1 bit. An electrical impulse generated at time t that can be interpreted at t-1. If you solve this, as limited as it might be as expressiveness/efficiency, there would be enough to have the "time travel to the past" part = there's "the time machine".

How can you do it?... Don't know :) If I would, life might have been more fair - at least in my eyes. What I know is that I wasn't really in the mood for movies this week, but yesterday at some hour and x minutes, browsing the TV channels I stumbled on "Deja Vu" and a line said by Denzel referring some hour and the ... same x minutes. Now, browsing again some TV channels I stumble upon "Timecop", probably Van Damme's movie that left me the strongest impression when I was a kid. Coincidences can be funny :)... Anyway, what I also know, is that's enough food for thought until the next rabbit chase, whatever year edition might that be...

American Made (2017)

"The man who always delivers" (or something like that) keeps repeating in various lines of "American Made". And I guess it's somehow also a reason why the story seemed depressing in the end, but I wouldn't elaborate on that here... Barry Seal was a real character, an airline pilot who in the beginning of the '80s ended up working for both CIA and Medellin cartel trafficking weapons and drugs respectively. What we have in the movie is a slightly romanticized version of the real deal, but catchy enough to make lose an extra 5-10 minutes to quickly parse the Wikipedia article and a couple of external links for finding more (= where the conclusion of "romanticized" came from actually). Spoiler alert: don't do this before watching the movie! In brief, what we see here is how our main character advances from a TWA pilot position to owning a local airport and a little airplanes fleet for keeping his business running. Which business makes enough money to draw the attention simultaneously of FBI, DEA, ATF and the state police. But you'll get more details in the movie... where I must say that details count a lot. From the tiny different threads of an almost incredible story, the style of delivering it which emphasizes clearly the idea of keeping your sense of humor in the worst situations, up to technical details as the pale-yellow filters that sort of bring a documentary tint to the camera work. All these keep somehow a generally relaxed feeling - I can't think on anything else than "Wolf on the Wall Street" now as comparison, which might not be the best. All in all the way the story unrolls is quite enjoyable to watch. And still, the ending comes a bit like a cold shower that makes you think... does it really worth to always deliver?...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dave Made a Maze (2017)

Dave is jobless. Dave was bored. Dave made a maze. In a weekend. From cardboards. In the living room. And he's stuck in the labyrinth. Which is larger on the inside... Dave's girlfriend + some of his buddies try to get him out. Complicated ordeal, because the labyrinth has traps. Some die. Some escape. That's pretty much what we have in this movie: 90% of it is completely absurd. Unfortunately it's a repetitive type of absurd, which gets boring. Besides, it also tries to throw from time to time towards the viewer also some metaphors on which provides also most often the direct interpretation (now, what's the best way to ruin a metaphor?...). To wrap this up - if the trailer gives you a vague impression that you'll get something close to "Cube", well... that's a wrong impression. More likely, the feeling you get after the end credits is closer to the most sloppy movie made by Terry Gilliam (let's pick "Tideland") to which we can add some puerile comic note. And even so, I think the result on that combination might end up better than what we have here...

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Dunkirk (2017)

I've seen "Dunkirk" around a month ago, but I really wasn't in any mood for blogging (personal reasons). Now = late night, no sleep => I decided trying a short entry with what I can still remember... When I heard about this movie I asked myself how can you fill up two hours with a subject that's in the end a bit limited as... narrative amplitude, I can't find a better term now. The evacuation from Dunkirk might have been a miracle during WW2, but let's be fair... as story for a movie it doesn't have much potential. As historic fact, what we have is a mass evacuation lasting about a week - how can you get a movie out of that? I thought I'll see again the recipe applied in "Pearl Harbor", or "Titanic", or even "Hacksaw Ridge" (keeping the distance to the other two) including a romantic story + more stuff in background. Well... I got an example that you can do without that.

First of all, a movie doesn't need to last two hours - something that most directors seem to forget these days. "Dunkirk" has a bit more than 90 minutes, in which we effectively have the evacuation of the Allied troops from the French coast. There's not even much of the historical context - how did it get to this, and why the German army let enough time for it to happen (sorry, but I'm not in mood for details - check Wikipedia). Second, you can see one more time that Nolan knows how to do a movie - what keeps you there is not necessarily the story, where we just have a couple narrative threads following a few simple people involved in the event. It's a movie with few dialogues, which already says something. What got me from the first scenes were the visuals, the audio, and the editing, which are at a really high standard. Everything is put together so well that this time I can even get over "the shepard tone", which I think nobody abuses so much as Nolan does in his movies. The only part I can nag about is maybe the time interleaving of the flashbacks that might lose you a bit. Besides that... is a lesson of movie making. Enough said.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Short entry: "Atomic Blonde" is an atomic mess... What looks to be an action movie in the trailer, and if you check the production team looks like the female version of John Wick, starts like an adaptation of a John le Carre novel. And when I say John le Carre I'm referring to "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" material with all the intricate heavy-entangled intrigue. The atomic blonde is a undercover MI6 agent sent to retrieve a list of spies from the Berlin of late '89 just when the wall is about to fall. Russians want the list too. And starting here we have a story told in an interrogation room in flashbacks, which in its first part has so many lengths that you lose track on who's planning what exactly. Ironically or not, we even have at some point an exchange of lines where our agent is blamed of losing time in Berlin with no results (or something like that). Anyway, probably the best part is the twist coming after the ending "twist"... the first being predictable from miles away. Although after you get the real twist, you have to explain yourself why the other one needed so much preparation... Better don't lose time with that. Just enjoy the '80s music - the second best part in the movie. Nena - 99 Luftballons still sounds good...

Rating: 2.5 out of 5