“Ýou got a lot of words, but you don’t say nothing. You gotta learn to listen before you can see. Listen to this old man here.” A white writer is summoned by a Lakota elder to visit him on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The elder wants him to take his various notes about life and… [Read More]
Give Me Liberty – Van Load of Chaos
As Give Me Liberty opens, we hear and then see a bedridden man who tells of being told he would never walk again, and finding that it was true. But he goes on to say, “Life, it is what it is. Life is wonderful. It’s beautiful. I love life. I love everything about life, even… [Read More]
Blinded By the Light – Words Matter
“Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man, and I believe in the promised land” (Bruce Springsteen, “The Promised Land”) In Blinded by the Light, Javed (Viveik Kaira), a Pakistani young man growing up in a town outside of London, struggles to find his place in the world. He wants to be a writer,… [Read More]
Kingdom – Japanese Telling of Chinese History
If you strip away the sex and dragons from Game of Thrones you have the story of trying to unite warring factions into a single kingdom and bring the period of warfare to an end. Kingdom (based on a seinen manga series of graphic novels, and later a seventy-seven episode anime tv series) is a… [Read More]
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – A Tarantino Fairy Tale
When I first heard that Quenton Tarantino was going to be making a movie that involved the Manson Family killings, I assumed the violence and blood would be overwhelming. But Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood turns out to be his least violent film. All of Tarantino’s films have an aspect of… [Read More]
Light of My Life – A Father’s Love
Light of My Life opens with a father and daughter camping in the woods as he tells her a bedtime story that is peripherally connected to the story of Noah’s Ark. The story is one of rescue and protection of a young female fox as the world if facing destruction. The scene is shot in… [Read More]
Piranhas – Loss of Innocence
Gangster movies – The Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, Scarface, et al. – are often a blend of malevolence and nobility. People act cruelly and violently, but often see themselves (and we may see them) as doing so for a good cause – family, community. Piranhas, directed by Claudio Giovannesi, fits into that narrative thread, but by… [Read More]
The Peanut Butter Falcon – Heart of a Hero
Road movies such as this are usually about the change the journey brings to the characters. The Peanut Butter Falcon is not so much about transformation as it is about revealing what might be hidden in rough or seemingly broken exteriors.
The Mountain – Are We Sane?
It’s difficult to put The Mountain from writer director Rick Alverson into a familiar category. Drama doesn’t seem to say quite enough. It borders at times on surrealism, but there is also a strong sense of reality
The Price for Silence – Pain More Than Healing
The emotional ghosts of the past are the driving force of the melodramatic The Price for Silence. Our first images of protagonist Kira Flynn (Lynn Mancinelli) make it clear that she is suffering PTSD centered in the emotional wounds of rape. It is not just her recurring dreams about the rape, but also her behavior,… [Read More]
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