Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Lightning Round: When Seasons Roll on By




Such an oddly coincidental theme of parenting gone wrong.


When the Wind River Indian Reservation Indian Reservation in Wyoming sees the rape and murder of an 18 year old girl whose death by exposure to the elements prohibits thorough law enforcement investigation, a local federal wildlife tracker, an FBI liaison, and the reservation sheriff move quickly to close the victim’s case before the perpetrator can successfully elude the law with unintentional assistance from an over worked and under supplied law enforcement staff struggling to uphold the law in a territory to large for them to cover even if nature and the weather actually were on their side.

“Wind River’s” simple premise betrays a tale rife with emotion and the malleable nature of the human spirit in an emotionally investing murder mystery in which every life carries with it a particular weight and empathy between characters of several different walks of life carrying across cultural boundaries.

Although the mystery in and of itself resolves itself in a way that feels a little bit anticlimactically and at odds with the humanity captured across the rest of the film, Taylor Sheridan has firmly cemented himself on my list of favorite film industry creators currently working, taking the sensibilities of modern day westerns he demonstrates a clear mastery of in his previous screenplays for “Hell or High Water” and “Sicario” and displacing them into a visually gorgeous and creative setting rich with thoroughly explored opportunity and themes that we don’t regularly see in mainstream storytelling.

It doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel or reach the same as the aforementioned films that have both landed on my best of the year lists for the last 2 years but Sheridan’s directorial debut packs emotion, suspense, heart, enlightening dialogue, sincerity, and some of the best performances of these actor’s careers in a lean hour and half-ish feature with almost no fat to trim whatsoever and I have a hard time believing that he won’t end up pulling 3 for 3 when I have to start talking about the best of this year in about 4 or 5 months.

8 Frozen Wasteland Westerns out of 10



Steven Soderbergh returns to the director’s chair to do what he does best; take a cast of talented individuals hungry to stretch themselves and show off their range in a well rounded film whose legacy won’t be any real greatness of the film itself so much as that movie in which Kylo Ren basically played a West Virginian Dale Gribble from “King of the Hill.”

A bank heist with true hillbilly flair, focusing on a pair of brothers and their associates attempts to rob a vault of NASCAR earnings, Soderbergh assembles in ensemble of the film industry’s best for a caper flick that has a lot of sincere laughs with country culture but, to the benefit of the movie, not in a mean-spirited fashion at the expense of its subjects.

The sincerity of “Logan Lucky’s” lens through which it views the state of West Virginia without picking the low hanging fruits for its humor go a long way in elevating the efforts put in by the cast, along with triple A direction to flesh out a setting and crew of characters that feel substantially real and all the more compelling.

As is occasionally the case with Soderbergh features however, the world and characters set up there in become more fascinating than the actual circumstances that they find themselves in. While the heist takes twists and turns that lead to several funny pay offs, it’s not quite as interesting as simply watching these characters bask in their everyday lives, leading to a post 3rd act wrap up that starts to overstay its welcome.

Even though “Logan Lucky” could benefit from some much needed trimming, its hard denying that the most fun part of the ride is worthwhile despite the mildly and forgivably duller portions

7 Silly Hillbillies out of 10



Art house director Darren Arronofsky’s psychological bottle thriller about a husband and wife’s unintentionally abusive relationship about the dichotomy between artistic beauty and vanity framed through biblical allegory is one of the most immaculately produced, beautifully directed, masterfully shot and edited productions of recent history with a cast showing the utmost conviction to every second of the surreal insanity demanded by the material of their showboating director that is sure to have damn near no audience whatsoever.

While it would be easy to breakdown the problematic areas of its allegory with the lack of a tangible and cohesive plot thread anchoring the image to an infinitely more relatable circumstance, it would be for naught, because that level of relatability was clearly not the intention of “mother!”

And that level of showboating without any sort of true audience beyond spitballing it out to the public to see how things stick is really the core problem with “mother!” that simply can’t be ignored; with what little plot that can be discerned layered within insurmountable layers of abstraction, the movie makes no effort to appease the mainstream crowd that it has been released to.

Too arrogant and audacious in its intent and content, including a third act of such disturbing makeup that it gives me plenty of essay fodder for why the MPAA is so worthless as an organization, yet too perfectly executed and sincere to the ends of its own means to be pretentious, “mother!” occupies a bizarre space for films that are profoundly moving yet nigh impossible to recommend for the very reasons that it did move you.

Tearing out my hair as I write this to the very second,  I can only reach 2 conclusions with the movie; watch it if you dare and at your own risk for nothing I say can sell you on it nor should it and I’m glad I was able to experience such a film once in my life time because I have no intention of sitting through it again anytime soon.

I also can’t figure out if any of those factors are praise or condemnation.

5? Life Questioning Experiences out of 10

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