So here’s a thing about movies with suspense/twists/illusions/magic: People don’t like to be fooled, nor do they like stuff that is predictable. So the big question is: How do you keep the audience intrigued and absorbed into the story while avoiding frustration or reactions like “there's no way that’s possible”. I certainly don’t have an answer for that, but I do know that movies like The Prestige have been able to pull that off with success and that it is not an easy feat. Focus is an offering from this category of movies and let us have a look if it emerges Prestigious (pun intended).

“It’s about distraction, it’s about focus.” That’s what Nicky tells Jess, while he looks into her eyes, touches her shoulder with one hand and grabs the ring off her finger with the other. Focus is the story of a con-man, Nicky (Will Smith) and his romantic endeavors with his apprentice Jess (Margot Robbie). In the world of shams, Nicky is a prodigy who leads a team of thieves, scammers and other criminals in large organized scams. Looking to grow his empire Nicky lures Jess, an amateur con artist, to join him on a gig. Jess turns out to be an immaculate student and blends in with the team as a natural. The heat turns on, sparks fly and the inevitable happens; Nicky and Jess fall in love. But the world of cons is a world of lies and of course “love” is built on trust. So Nicky abandons Jess only to meet her again after a few years. Nick still has feelings for Jess but she is now romantically involved with his new employer. What follows is an inordinate amount of plot twists to keep your mind busy with figuring out who’s playing who for a fool!

To start with, this movie has a lot of eye candy. It’s got Will Smith, who keeps getting in better shape as he ages (or maybe he doesn’t age!) and then there’s striking Margot Robbie (you cannot not like her if you have seen Wolf of Wall Street). The chemistry between the two stars makes it an interesting watch in itself and then there are tricks, parties, races and more. Even though it seems that this makes for a good reason to pull you to the big screen, the movie does need to offer more to keep you seated. To my relief, the movie was not predictable (phew!). For the initial half of the movie, the twists keep you tuned in by surprising you. But as the movie progresses, these surprises kind of start to get on your nerves. It’s really hard to explain the extent of plot twists used, without letting out spoilers, but let’s just put it like this: imagine Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory appearing on screen every 15 minutes to say ‘Bazinga!’. Too many plot twists spoil the… you know how it goes.

But don’t throw this movie down the gutter already. Like I mentioned earlier, the lead actors have given great performances. And there are some notable contributions by others like Adrian Martinez (American Hustle) as Nicky’s tech guy Farhad and BD Wong (Jurassic Park) playing a brash and funny multi-millionaire. The movie also offers something fresh as it’s not a generic heist/con movie and no it does not involve “that one big con where you get so rich that you retire… ”. So if you do not feel cheated every time the movie proves you wrong, this movie makes for quite an interesting watch.

Grade: B/B+

In 1995, Production I.G. released what would become one of the most influential anime movies of the last 20 years: Ghost in the Shell. Based off the manga series by Shirō Masamune, its pioneering mixture of a cyberpunk vibe, noir look, and transcendental ending would come to define science-fiction anime, as well as introduce a generation of westerners to the medium for the first time. Its effects even bleed over into American cinema, with the Wachowskis citing the film as a major influence on their blockbuster Matrix Trilogy. So, it comes as no surprise that Production I.G. decided to expand the film into a highly successful media franchise, the first of which is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (its second season is called Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd Gig).

The year is 2029, and the world has become heavily interconnected and wired into a ubiquitous, next-generation version of the internet. Technology such as cybernetic limbs and cyberbrains improve life for the fortunate who can afford them, while also blurring the line between human and machine. Japan managed to survive the Third and Fourth World Wars, but the government has become oppressive and society is beset with crime and terrorism. Tasked with managing this potential powder keg is Section 9, an elite counter-terrorism unit of the Japanese government. They specialize in cybercrime, such as brain-hacking and memory editing. Under the overall command of Chief Aramaki and commanded in the field by Major Kusanagi, they are called in to manage everything from cyber-terrorists stealing from banks with computer viruses to rebel groups intending to tear down the government to counter-espionage of spies from the American Empire.

Although it is based on the same setting and characters present in both the 1995 film and the original manga, Stand Alone Complex does not exist in the same world as either of them. The series, while drawing on the cyberpunk and Noir influences of its earlier iterations, blazes its own path by injecting influences from cop shows into the mix. As such, while the show does occasionally touch on the big-picture, “how do we know if we’re human?” questions the film and manga focus on, SAC in general focuses much more on the combative and investigative side of Section 9, meaning this often feels more like an American police show rather than mind-bending science fiction.

Both seasons of Stand Alone Complex give its episodes different designations depending upon whether or not they are connected to the season’s overarching plot. In the first season, independent episodes are called “Stand Alone”, while “Complex” episodes follow the members of Section 9 as they attempt to track down the elusive cyber-terrorist known as “The Laughing Man”. In 2nd Gig, episodes are given one of three designations: “Individual”, “Dividual”, or “Dual”. “Individual” episodes are tied into Section 9’s conflict with a terrorist organization known as “The Individual Eleven”. “Dividual” episodes are stand-alone episodes. “Dual” episodes connect to Section 9’s relations with a rival organization of the Japanese government, the Cabinet Intelligence Service. However, 2nd Gig’s designations are mostly cosmetic, as the two story lines are highly interconnected, and even most of the stand-alone episodes relate to the plot in some way.

Combining the best aspects of cyberpunk, neo-noir, and police procedurals, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the best science-fiction animes and one of the best police animes all in one. It has the awesome action of a police show, the gritty future world of cyberpunk, and the distinctive visual look of Film Noir via way of Blade Runner. Whether you’re a fan of classic cyberpunk, neo-noir movies, or police shows such as NCIS, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has something for everyone.

This lyric from the final song in Django Unchained is probably the best description of Django, the main character, and of the movie as a whole. Quentin Tarantino has long loved the spaghetti Western, and Django Unchained is his love letter to the genre.

Django Unchained is a unique twist on the spaghetti western genre, as it takes place both in the Wild West, and the Deep South, featuring gun duels and slavery equally. The movie follows the path of Django Freeman (Jaime Foxx), a slave in Texas, who has been separated from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Django eventually encounters Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter who frees Django, since Django knows the location of three escaped criminals that Shultz needs to kill. Django turns out to be an incredible marksman, and Shultz takes him under his wing as his apprentice bounty hunter. Shultz and Django become fast friends, and Shultz decides to travel to Mississippi to help Django free his beloved Broomhilda from the clutches of psychotic plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). His journey to save her is a long and difficult, filled with death and destruction.

DiCaprio, Waltz and Washington all did wonderful jobs playing their respective characters, but I was most moved by Jamie Foxx’s performance. He plays Django brilliantly, able to show both the profound despair of a husband separated from a beloved wife, and an amazing amount of rage and determination. More importantly however, Foxx is able to make Django, for the lack of a better word, cool. Foxx spits out one-liners without batting an eye, and stares right at explosions without flinching. Django is a great character because he is willing to do anything, and kill anyone in order to reunite with his wife, all with great style, sass and lots and lots of one-liners.

Django Unchained is more of a stylistic look at the Wild West and the Deep South, rather than a gritty historical movie, like 12 Years a Slave. Tarantino however, does not sugar coat the brutality of slavery, featuring a horrifying whipping scene in the first act of the movie. Despite all the horror and violence, Django Unchained is a work of art, with a beautiful soundtrack featuring classic spaghetti western tracks, rap music and neo-soul, combined with perfectly timed close-ups and tense confrontations. At the same time, Django Unchained is hilarious, with ridiculous outfits, bumbling villains, and Samuel L. Jackson playing a house slave who likes saying a particular swearword a lot.

My only complaint about this film is that the plot feels kind of choppy. Django Unchained is an unusual Tarantino film, as the events in the film actually proceed chronologically. The movie’s plot is extremely simple and powerful as it follows a man who is willing to go to any lengths to save his wife. However, the transition from the Wild West to the Deep South feels a little bumpy, and there are occasional extraneous scenes that I feel could have been eliminated to reduce the two hour and 45 minute runtime. Overall, Django Unchained is another tour de force by Tarantino that will both disturb and entertain moviegoers.

Grade: B+

We all know Hollywood likes celebrating itself, and this film was good enough that no one's going to be too ruffled if it wins. Recall, this isn't about what MY vote would be .... but this one's a no-brainer for Hollywood.

Julianne Moore's won almost every award in this category across all the other awards shows; deservedly, I've heard.

It's between Eddie Redmayne and Michael Keaton (sorry, Benedict Cumberbatch -- close but no Oscar). My guess for the winner is Eddie, whose physical transformation was so transfixing that at times I questioned how much he must be in pain from holding such unnatural positions.

This movie was fantastic and deserves any and all accolades for its ability to convey intense emotions without feeling sensationalized. 

It gets exceptionally foggy at the Foxcatcher Farm. Fog, literally and figuratively, represents a clouding of vision in director Bennet Miller’s latest film, Foxcatcher. At its core, it’s about the unpredictability and the impaired vision that accompanies living in this fog. Miller (Capote, Moneyball) invites you to stay at the prestigious Pennsylvania horse farm during the reign of mutli-millionaire John Eleuthère du Pont, a literal enigma portrayed by comic actor, Steve Carell, who makes an impressive leap into drama here. Foxcatcher Farm, settled in a rural landscape just outside Philadelphia, is home to generations’ worth of equestrian awards, as well as the eccentric and terrifyingly complex du Pont. Despite the 800 acre estate being peppered with grandiose stables, cottages, and impressive athletic facilities, you’ll want to make only a short visit. Du Pont aspires to see America’s renewed dominance through the vessel of Mark Shultz (Channing Tatum); an Olympic Gold Medalist wrestler. Why him? Why through wrestling? Only du Pont really knows, which provides for a tantalizing study. It’s a darkly enjoyable stay that will have you asking all sorts of questions after, and be warmly satisfied.  
The film opens with a Ken Burns-esque archival montage of Foxcatcher Farm, presumably during its prime. Little flickering film clips from the early 19th century showing Ivy League-ers preparing for a fox hunt. Fast forward to an elementary school parking lot in 1986. Sitting in a tiny beat up junker of a car is the quiet, hulking Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum). He’s there to give a speech to a group of less enthused grade schoolers about wrestling and America. He may be an Olympic Gold Medal winner and at the top of his athletic career- but he’s still the alternate, filling in for his equally if not more impressive older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) who couldn’t make it.

Dave, played with such a blue-collar, American heartland charm by Ruffalo, turns out to be quite the saint to Mark. He’s his trainer and only friend. Both meet everyday to train mercilessly for the next Olympic games and at this level of professional athletics, you get the impression that all Mark really knows, breathes, and lives is wrestling. Hence the uncomfortable silence he seems to bring anywhere that calls for social interaction.

So where does this enigma du Pont work into all of this? There’s no bump into, no stop and chat, nothing to foreshadow these two men ever coming together. It’s a call out of the blue. Du Pont asks for a meeting to discuss Mark’s future, but when they do meet face to face, they only skirt on the topic of wrestling. They move into vague terms about America; its lack of role models, its lack of appreciation for its heroes, and their goals to, “make it great again.” They’re only real overlap in character is a shared vision for America, which they don’t really come out and say. This is your own fox hunt. Finding out what’s really going on inside their heads.

Miller’s niche character is the lonely misfit. Truman Capote and Billy Beane in his previous films were loners with a drive to do something they felt was bigger than themselves; something that nobody else really could see or understand at the time. In this one it’s Du Pont. Although unlike Miller’s other protagonists, du Pont’s mission is hazy. To really understand du Pont is impossible.  Raised by money, not a friend in the world, presumably a genius, mother’s boy- he’s really is a mixed bag with many erratic personality changes. He strives to be a “leader of men,” but doesn’t have the slightest idea how. He has a spectator’s love for wrestling, but without the technical expertise to coach, he’s only able to position himself as an ominous benefactor. Regardless, he still holds the ego-stroking title of “Coach”. One day he’s like a father to Mark. The next it’s like he’s never even seen him before.

Comic actors are almost always equally great dramatic performers. Think Jim Carrey. Think Bill Murray. These guys, under the costumes and jokes, usually have hearts filled with darkness that they can tap into every once in awhile. This has the added caveat of Carell using heavy prosthetics and makeup, which could easily be a distraction, but it really doesn’t. It helps it. The personality and choices of du Pont are so outlandish; the portrayal of him visually needs to match that. Receding hair line, blotchy skin, face with a freakishly beak-ish nose. But Carell isn’t the only one who made dramatic physical changes. Tatum contorts his face with a massive gorilla-like under bite and goes through bulk and lean periods that give the film a visual timeline to follow. Ruffalo walks around with a hunched wrestler’s posture that looks strikingly real.      

Don’t consider Miller’s style slow for a second. He balances the long periods of stillness so well with harsh, abrupt moments- like the wrestling matches that appear to be shot at a higher frame rate. The sound of bodies colliding after long silent exposition puts you within sweat’s reach of the mat. He makes history cinematic with a marriage of film and photography. He’s a lot like Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Elizabethtown); always making sure we notice the pictures hanging on the walls.

There have been a lot of fighting movies in the last couple years, sort of grittier rebuttals to the Rocky franchise which has become laughable at this point. They’re getting better, and this one raises the standard no less than Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and David O. Russell’s The Fighter did. As those movies said, there are fights in the locker room and there are fights from within. The same is true here. The air between the trio working towards their overlapping goals leads to grave decisions by all parties. Mark being best in the world vs. Dave’s support of family vs. du Pont’s ambitions for America. Each man’s goal narrows their vision until they can’t see what’s right in front of them. And most of all, du Pont’s own vision gets distorted by his unlimited resources in his little world of Foxcatcher Farm. Can our most precious ambitions cloud our sense of reality? Cloud the definitions of right from wrong? Sane and insane? What about America itself? Films in this genre make it very clear that the real fights take place outside the ring. In this case, it’s in the fog.    

Grade: A-

Matthew McConaughey is currently one of my favorite Hollywood actors, thanks to his amazing role as Cooper in Interstellar. Watching Mud, which was created near the beginning of the “McConaissance,” made me appreciate his talents even more. Mud is truly a hidden gem among the many popular and profitable movies featured on Netflix.

McConaughey plays the titular character Mud, a wandering vagabond, who is found hiding out an abandoned boat, on an island in the Arkansas River by two 14 year old boys: Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neck (Jacob Lofland). Ellis and Neck are from De Witt, Arkansas, and spend their free time cruising the river in their rickety little riverboat. Mud has only two possessions: a pistol, and a lucky yellow shirt with a wolf’s eye sown on the sleeves. Mud tells the boys that he will give them his pistol if they help him repair the abandoned boat on the island, so he can escape to the Gulf of Mexico. Ellis and Neck are enchanted by Mud’s mysterious nature and immediately agree to help him.

Mud can almost be described as a collection of little vignettes, told by Mud. He and the boys bond as Mud tells them stories of past adventures, past loves and future hopes. McConaughey is at his best in this movie, using his rustic Southern accent to tell the boys stories of his childhood adventures in De Witt. McConaughey is a convincing mentor to the boys, as he tries to guide them through the perils of adolescence. Tye Sheridan does an excellent job playing Ellis, a young boy dealing with his parents’ impending divorce and his growing romantic feelings for a fellow classmate, while his friend Neck is an orphan who lives with his uncle. Mud, an orphan with no remaining family, becomes a surrogate brother to Ellis and Neck as they work together to repair the boat, and they bond over their similar struggles.

Mud is a magical film in that it doesn’t really fit well into a single genre. There are elements of action or adventure movies, a romantic subplot, coated with harsh realism. Mud can best be described as a remake of Stand By Me for the modern era, as both movies follow the adventures of young boys as they learn about life and mature. What makes Mud truly unique is McConaughey’s performance as Mud, an adult who plays an active role in the boys’ lives. This movie is perfect for viewers who want to watch a special coming of age adventure in the Deep South.

Grade: A-

“I’m fifty shades of fucked up,” Christain Grey proclaims in reflexive frustration to a persistent Anastasia, as a multitude of audience members chortle in response. Why reflexive, you ask? Because that statement verifies the chortles and acts as a mostly complete summation of the entire film.

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 50 Shades of Grey, based on E. L. James’ novel, fails to transcend the poor source material and titillate while exploring the topic of BDSM. The movie opens to stunning wide-sweeping shots of Seattle set to Annie Lennox’s “I Put A Spell On You,” which instantly sets the tone and mood of the story familiar to everyone who engages in American pop culture. Anastasia Steele’s (Dakota Johnson) roommate has the flu, so she sends Ana to fill in for her in an interview with billionaire business tycoon Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). And then he takes a liking to her, asserting control over her life and later showing her his “play room.”

While Taylor-Johnson succeeds in visually capturing the world of 50 Shades as one would imagine it and Johnson and Dornan are good in their roles, almost everything else fails. The biggest issue to me: the flawed story. It’s weird: there were superfluous scenes, yet there were too few scenes. The dialogue and story tools were schlocky and trite. There was no motivation (at least on Ana’s part), and there were no stakes, or at least I certainly didn’t feel any. There’s nothing in the film that pulls you along with the story, nothing that keeps you in your seat other than making it to the end just so you can say you did it. Even then, the sequel set-up ending was so stupid, it was laughable.

The next glaring issue: the sex. There was not enough of it! At least the whole 20 minutes of sex certainly didn’t feel like enough for the book that is supposedly the steamiest thing that happened to 2012. And you would think, that since there is so little sex happening, that there would be enough room for interesting subplots and storylines to take place. Well, you would be wrong. Moreover, the sex scenes were so tepid! Maybe I’m ruined from having watched Kink (2013), but this is freakin’ BDSM people! It should make the viewer at least a little uncomfortable! It should be a little rough! They just weren’t bold, in content or shooting style/choices. The movie failed to deliver the literal single thing it should’ve delivered on.

I felt nothing. Zero of the things. I wasn’t turned on. I wasn’t swept up in Ana’s supposed fantasy. I tried, but the movie didn’t paint the fantasy effectively or much at all. I didn’t really feel Grey’s power, passion, sexiness, control, or dominance. I didn’t feel Ana’s ambivalence, curiosity, infatuation, submissiveness, or intrigue. This wasn’t the actors’ faults (they did pretty well with what they were given, which wasn’t much, in terms of dialogue or development of content for the potentially interesting characters); rather, it was the fault of the filmmakers, editors, and writers. This was really such a missed opportunity.

Rating: C-/D

Over 300 years ago, an English scientist and philosopher published what is arguably one of the most influential pieces of philosophical and political literature ever written. His name was Thomas Hobbes and the book was Leviathan. It famously declared that human life in a state of nature is “nasty, brutish, and short”, and that the only way to remedy that situation was to create a monolithic and all-powerful state, using techniques that would could be called repressive at best. In Hobbes’ view, this was the only way to create a stable society and civilization. His thoughts were so influential that political scientists and philosophers are still arguing about his beliefs today. So, it is only fitting that a film bearing the name of Hobbes’ masterpiece would come from that land so familiar with dictatorial governance: Russia. Crafted by Andrey Zvyagintsev, Leviathan (Левиафан) is a dark parable of power and corruption, with influence from everything from Hobbes’ masterpiece to the Book of Job.

Leviathan is the tale of a man named Kolya (played by Alexei Serebriakov). Kolya lives a hard life in the far north of Russia, in a small village on the coast of the Arctic Sea. He lives with his son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev) and his second wife Lilia (Elena Lyadova). He makes a living repairing cars, especially those of the corrupt local police. But his simple life is threatened when the local mayor, Vadim (Roman Madyanov), attempts to unjustly evict Kolya from his family’s land. Kolya brings in an old army buddy and now lawyer named Dmitri (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) to fight the mayor in the courts, but it’s an uphill battle; Vadim has the judges, the police, and every government employee neatly in his pocket. As the story plays out, Kolya discovers that the corruption within the government is only part of this dark and sinister tale.

The first act of Leviathan focuses on the corruption surrounding the characters, that of the external world of politics, laws, and authority. Zvyagintsev paints a damning picture of modern Russia in the form of Vadim, who is not only unjust but petty, cruel, and an alcoholic. He uses every dirty trick and legal loophole to try to evict Kolya, and threatens, coerces, and blackmails anyone who gets in his way. He is a man intoxicated with power and surrounded by the sickly sweet smell of corruption. This first aspect of the film most clearly resembles a political drama, or maybe more accurately a crime drama. But here, the criminal is the one responsible for representing those he’s exploiting. Although the film takes aim (sometimes quite literally) at Russian politics and society, you don’t have to stretch your imagination far to imagine the same things happening in any society.

But the second half of Leviathan shifts. Where the first half is about governmental and societal corruption, the second section looks inward and details corruption of a much more personal sort. The moral decay and abuse perpetrated by police and judges on the outside is darkly mirrored by the rot and degeneration within each individual soul. It’s a subtle and quiet sort of decay, where each person slowly falls apart and is helped by no one. While the first act of Leviathan is despicable, the second half becomes simply horrible, as these people we have been rooting for fall to temptation, sin, and despair.

Leviathan is one of the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and rightly so. A masterpiece of writing and acting, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s twisted tale of a crumbling society is terrifyingly real. In fact, it’s so real that the Russian Ministry of Culture has now put forward rules that would ban movies which “defile the national culture” such as Leviathan. It may be that his film, an incriminating portrait of corruption and abuse, hit too close to home in the political aspect. But in its painting of that same nasty and brutish human nature Thomas Hobbes was so afraid of, there is no doubt that everyone will see some facet of themselves, their loved ones, and their society in Zvyagintsev’s dark mirror.

Grade: A

Film at-a-glance: 
Genre: Fantasy
Creator: Yoshiura Yasuhiro
Studio: Purple Cow
Length: 99 minutes
Year: 2013
Highlights: Classic tropes fused with a unique concept

In the future, humanity lives underground in dark, cramped towns and cities, living out their difficult but happy lives. Among these people lives a young girl named Patema. Every day she likes to go exploring the caverns, particularly in the dangerous forbidden zones the community members are barred from entering. Despite being constantly berated by her guardians for putting herself in danger, she can’t resist indulging her curiosity, mostly because no one will ever tell her why it’s so dangerous. One day, while skulking around her favorite spot (a seemingly impossibly deep pit) she encounters one of the mythical “bat men”, so called because they seemingly hang from the ceiling. Patema runs away, but loses her footing and falls into the pit, and plummets into the sky.

She manages to catch herself on a fence, and is rescued by a boy on the surface named Age. He helps her to a shed, where she is able to sit on the ceiling. Although she is constantly in danger of falling into the sky, Patema is fascinated with the endless blue, the sun, and the stars. While Age teaches Patema about life on the surface, and she tells him about life underground, the two begin to develop a tentative romance. But Age’s world is dominated by a totalitarian police state, who believe that those the sky swallowed up were sinners and evildoers, and Patema is soon captured by the “bat men” (policemen). Age must find out a way to save Patema before she falls into the sky.

Created by writer and director Yoshiura Yasuhiro as his second full-length film, Patema Inverted is a fantasy film which lives up to its name. Patema spends the entire film quite literally “inverted”; gravity is reversed for her compared to Age. This creates the unique circumstance of Patema being forced to cling to Age as her only solid ground, as it were. It also creates some absolutely stunning shots as Age and Patema interact while inverted compared to each other, and as Patema plummets into the limitless blue beneath her feet.

Yoshiura then melds this unique concept with all the trappings of a classic fantasy story. There is adventure, romance, vile villains, and dark secrets to uncover. It is a traditional story of someone thrust into danger by circumstances beyond their control, forced to become the hero the audience wants and expects. It’s a story we all know quite well, the province of countless movies and fairytales told to us as children. Yet by changing just one minor detail, the orientation at which the story is told, it becomes new and fresh.

What’s so important about Patema Inverted is the way it shows us how locked into traditional thinking we are. When you think about it, what Yoshiura changed is a very small thing, merely how the characters view each other (and, in turn, how we as the audience views them). It shows us how much we can change an archetypal story that we have all heard countless times just by altering one little thing none of us would ever think to change. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that a movie like this has never been made before, but who would think to invert gravity? Patema Inverted is a movie that reminds me to think about the simple, dependable things I’ve not thought about in far too long. Because now, I can’t help but wonder what life would be like inverted.