Chad Stahelski's John Wick: Chapter 2 is a gloriously fulfilling follow-up to its predecessor- a bigger, more explosive film that builds off the same principles that made the first entry so memorable, delivering another gleefully violent, self-aware hitman saga full of high-octane gunplay and intricately designed fight choreography.   Having more in common with ballet than most modern action films, John Wick: Chapter 2 wastes no time diving headfirst into its carnage-soaked dance of mayhem, finding our heroine thrust into action once again, this time by Italian Crime lord Santino D'Antonio, whom Wick owes a blood oath too.  Reluctant to accept at first, John eventually agrees to Santino D'Antonio's request, a decision which eventually leads to John Wick himself having a large bounty placed on his head when D'Antonio double-crosses him.  Fans of the first film are certain to enjoy Chapter 2, with this iteration doing even more when it comes to high-flying action choreography and gunplay than its predecessor, offering up a tight, fast-paced narrative that never lets up.  There are so many memorable action set-pieces, from the Paris catacombs, to the house of mirrors sequence, but perhaps the absolute standout is the showdown between John Wick and Cassian, played by Common.  The one-on-one fight between these two characters is a sequence that epitomizes this franchise, a sequence full of electric, testosterone-dripping violence, but also self-aware humor, which finds these two character's tumbling down a seemingly never-ending sequence of stairs, a scene in physical comedy that would probably make Buster Keaton himself stand-up and cheer.  Chad Stahelski's John Wick:  Chapter 2 is nonstop fun from start-to-finish, a worthy successor to the highly-entertaining original that offers yet another welcome reprieve from the currently superhero-dominated action genre.  

Taking place in a single location, the confines of a Park in the middle of summer, Damien Manivel's Le Parc is an enigmatic curiosity, a fable-like exploration of human emotion that follows two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who are meeting up for a first date in the park.  Le Parc is a near masterclass in the economics of filmmaking, a seemingly simplistic story which taps into the profound effect emotion can have on the overall psyche of an individual, delivering a dreamlike fable full of introspection and fascinating insights throughout this simple story of boy meets girl.  Early on, Manivel's Le Parc is tender and alive in its simplicity, exhibiting the hesitant fragility of these two characters who are feeling each other out, each radiating in their innocence, infectious in their curiosity towards each other as the promise of connection and/or companionship is very much a possibility.  The film's tone shifts quickly in the second half of the film, with the revelation that the boy himself already has a significant other delivering a striking blow to the girl, whose psyche full of optimism and exuberance finds itself dashed under the weight of this betrayal.  Through this impressionistic fable, Damien Manivel exhibits how fleeting life's truly joyous moments can be due to our emotional complexities, demonstrating the relativity of emotion in time and space, and how the weight of emotion, rather positive or negative, impacts our perceptions of time.  Minimalist in design, Le Parc's impressionistic cinematography gives the film a very dreamlike, fantastical feel, the visual design supplementing the internal emotions of these characters, through both the promise of love and the eventual threat of isolation and loneliness which is felt through this girl's introspective character arc.  The static photography gives the film a tranquil quality, with the sun-drenched green fields, and luscious vegetation of the park beautifully exhibiting the joyous nature of these two character's interaction, one where the promise of connection and possibility of companionship is expressed visually.  When these two character's share a kiss in a secluded area of the park, Damien Manivel's brilliant but simple decision to use a basic shot-reverse-shot of their faces, similar to the work of Eugene Green, pays off in spades, beautifully exhibiting the exuberance and shared intimacy of both these characters, who at least for a moment, are one.  The back half of the film, where the girl finds her promising romance shattered, takes place between dusk and darkness, the pitch black night expressing the emotions of a character whose illusion of romance and the possibility of love is shattered by the revelations that this boy himself has a girlfriend.  Tonally what was once vibrant and alive, is replaced with the piercing silence of solitude, with the open fields of the park, the expanding space of the visual design feeling far more prevalent as it evokes the feelings of loneliness and isolation being felt from our protagonist.  A dreamlike experience, Damien Manivel's Le Parc is a minimalist exploration of love, companionship, and human emotion, a film that through a simple date in the park, which starts out promising but ends poorly, manages to tap into they dynamic nature of emotion, and how its relativity to circumstance often shapes the world in how we experience it. 

Thematically complex while narratively simplistic, Nicholas Roeg's Insignificance is an imperfect, yet endlessly intriguing reflection on fifties America, which uses four 1950's cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph MacCarthy) to deliver a whimsical, yet dread-filled examination of cold-war paranoia that touches on the intrinsically fickle nature internal perception can have over all individuals, demonstrating how our relative perceptions themselves, fueled by personal circumstance and memory, shape our over-arching in the world.  Taking place over the course of a single night, Insignificance finds each of these character's struggling in one form of another, each haunted by their own relative issues.  Einstein is haunted by Hiroshima, wracked by the guilt associated; Monroe struggles with being perceived as nothing more than a sex object, craving intellectual credence; McCarthy is at the height of his red-scare, witch-hunting powers though behind closed doors he is a weak, impotent sleaze; Dimaggio is in the twilight of his career, insecurities related to his celebrity seep into his psyche, he has become self-obsessed with his wife, Marilyn, and prone to violent outbursts.  Each character, the mental state in which they find themselves, seems to have them barreling down a road of self-destruction, with their troubled circumstances/past experiences suggesting a questionable future.  The interplay between these characters is dynamic and lively, featuring strong performances from all involved, and while Insignificance can be a bit beguiling at times, each character's internal struggle, their obsessions, fuel this ideal that they will never truly find peace-of-mind and/or happiness.  Insignificance uses the 1950's American paranoia and Eisenstein's theory of relativity to comment on how perception is always defined by one's own frame of reference, as we gradually begin to understand that many of these character's are victims of their own psyches.  Events we believe to be significant in the course of the narrative begin to reveal themselves as insignificant in the scope of the grand-scale narrative- with the finale itself being perhaps the best example of this, where Einstein sees a nuclear holocaust erupting, only for the camera to pull back and reveal that this grand-standing paranoia is nothing more than another figment of his imagination, an insignificant event in the scope of the world that is perceived as apocalyptic by the relative introspection of Eisenstein, a man who is wrecked by guilt due to his association with the creation of the nuclear bomb.  It's through these character's unique frames of reference that Roeg's Insignificance applies the famed scientists' theory of relatively to cultural perception, with the personal issues of these characters being a manifestation of the fear and paranoia associated with 1950's America.  Featuring Nicholas Roeg's typical visual flair and kinetic editing, Insignificance is a delirious, beguiling, yet astute piece of filmmaking that uses 1950's American culture icons to touch on the destructive qualities of obsession, and how we all as individuals and as a cultural collective, can be victims of our relative experiences.