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
No comments:
Post a Comment