Monthly Archives: August 2017

Movie Review: Wind River

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: A riveting and compelling character driven drama. From the same guy who brought you “Hell or High Water”, which was also awesome.

Despair, grief, loss, and the absence of hope. Welcome to “Wind River”. This is not a happy film, but my god is it beautiful. It is set in the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming, a rough and rugged land where, as they say in the movie, you sometimes have to travel 50 miles to get 5 miles away. The movie is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan who also wrote the excellent “Hell or High Water”. Like “Hell or High Water”, it is a crime drama, but only as a vehicle for portraying desperate characters in desperate situations.

The crime in which this tale is wound around is the death of a young Native American woman under suspicious circumstances. A Native American dying under unusual circumstances on Reservation land triggers a call to the FBI who have jurisdiction under such circumstances. The FBI, unfortunately, doesn’t give two shits about a woman dying on Reservation land. Luckily, the FBI sends Jane Banner (Elisabeth Olsen) who is both competent and has a heart even if she has no idea what she’s getting into. She asks Fish and Wildlife employee Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who found the young girl’s body, to help her find out what happened.

Through this young girl’s death you get a glimpse into life on the Reservation. All the Native Americans know that the rest of the world has forgotten them and it shows in their disdain for Jane. Cory is divorced with a son who stays with his ex and lost his own daughter under similar circumstances and never found out exactly what happened to her so he has personal reasons to help Jane in her investigation. Martin (Gil Birmingham) is the father of the dead girl, Natalie (Kelsey Asbille), who was his last thread on sanity having to live with a son who has lost himself in drugs and a wife who is mentally ill. You can see that this is not a happy movie.

The Wind River Reservation may be rugged and unforgiving, but it is picturesque. That, along with the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack make “Wind River” even more compelling. It is also very sad. If you don’t like sadness, stay away. Other than that, this is a movie you should definitely go see.  Then see “Hell or High Water” after it.

Book Review: This Side Of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jean-Paul’s rating: 5/5 stars

Man, can F. Scott Fitzgerald write. Often, when I read books, I have delusions of grandeur that I could have written that book. With Fitzgerald, I fee like a complete hack and illiterate.  There are so many moments of absolute prosaic brilliance in this novel. There are definitely parts where my mind wandered, only to be shaken into stark clarity by what I was reading. Kind of like you feel when you jar awake while dosing behind the wheel.

“This Side of Paradise” is a novel for wanderers and travelers, both of the soul and of the body. It’s not quite a coming of age story as much as it’s a discovery of self story. The novel revolves around Amory Blaine, which is appropriate because Amory Blaine thinks the world revolves around himself. He is every spoiled rich kid you have ever met. He spends much of his youth disdaining everything and coming up with simplistic ideas about society, always with him smack dab in the middle of the spiderweb. Basically, take any teenage with time on his hands to think profound thoughts with little guidance and you have Amory Blaine. Here’s the trick, though, he’s actually likeable. Fitzgerald has a way of making deeply flawed, obnoxiously rich people very likeable. As Amory grows older, his methods of questioning the world mellow, but even to the end he is a selfish person, but by then he knows that of himself.

Fitzgerald’s prose is very scattershot in this novel. It’s much of the reason I enjoyed it so much. He switches often from long paragraph prose inside Amory’s mind to back and forth banter between friends to poetry to a play format to a weird question and answer session with himself. At times, especially the long periods inside Amory’s brain, it can be difficult to focus, but the journey is well worth it. I especially loved the play format where Amory’s love Rosalind enters the picture. It had such a delightful, almost Jane Austiny feel to it. It was an “I can’t put the book down” moment that is difficult to recapture these days. Second favorite was the back and forth banter between Amory and some random rich dude about socialism. These moments all just kind of come out of nowhere and are almost short stories thrown into the middle of a novel, but they are wonderful.

Many people will probably be upset with the ending, but I think it is perfect. I will not say what it is, but it’s almost like Amory has come full circle. A little wiser, perhaps, but just as directionless and just as despairing. At the beginning of the novel, I really disliked Amory Blaine. By the end I had to ask the question: oh my god, am I Amory Blaine? Was I like Amory Blaine when I was in school? We are all Amory Blaine. Well, without the money.

I have a theory about Amory Blaine. I didn’t really know what the book was about when I started reading it and reading it doesn’t really help you to know that answer so I was kind of searching for meaning or direction in a directionless and meaningless novel. There was a part when Amory was in Princeton where he sees a ghost of a friend who had died. Many pages are used describing this period of time where Amory sees this ghost. At the time, I thought that this may be a story about a young man who develops schizophrenia and here was his first episode. There were some holes in this theory. A friend saw the ghost as well. But maybe that friend was part of the schizophrenia as well. Amory did seem to only see this “friend” in his house. Then other friends saw the ghost as well and the premise started to get ridiculous. Nothing was mentioned of the ghost after that, which is pretty par for the novel. But then, there was this really weird question and answer period between Amory and himself. It was almost as if two distinct personalities were talking to each other. The rebuttal to that, of course, is who doesn’t have conversations with themselves? But it didn’t feel quit like that was what was happening. Then you take into consideration the fact that his wife, Zelda, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and I have to wonder if there were any other hints that this might be what was happening to Amory. I guess we’ll never know.

You’re Defending A Monument To Slavery 

       C           F           Am
You're defending a monument to slavery
  C        F                 G
I know you disagree but it's true
       C           F           Am
You're defending a monument to slavery
C             F              G
Please read a book and get a clue

     C        F              Am
Sure you can claim that it's history
    C              F            G
And that we should remember our past
        C              F            Am
But the source of that past ain't a mystery
     C      F              G
That statue commemorates a caste
     C            F         Am
That liked to own humans as property
    C         F            G
And started a war for that right
      C         F          Am
Until they were pushed out to the sea
      C           F         C    F    G
Never forget that the south LOST THAT FIIIIIGHT

       C           F           Am
You're defending a monument to slavery
       C           F           Am
You're defending a monument to slavery
       C           F           Am
You're defending a monument to slavery

 

Movie Review: Detroit

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A disturbing look at a disturbing period of history. Could have done without the last half hour of the movie.

“Detroit” follows the events of the 1967 Detroit Riots with a focus on the Algiers Hotel incident. And by “incident” I mean the abuse and murder of Black people by police officers. You know how this ends. I came out of the movie angry. Not because of the injustice of the events in the movie, though they are infuriating, but because I can see no progress from 1967 to 2017. What happened at the Algiers Hotel can happen today and does happen today with worrying frequency. And when a movement springs up to try to combat those injustices, they’re equated with Nazis. Welcome to America 2017.

The events surrounding the Algiers Hotel incident are confusing and the movie does a really good job of portraying that while also keeping a very close hold on the truth of what happened that night. You will leave the movie with questions and that’s a good thing. My biggest question of all was who is this Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega) character? He was a security guard hired to guard a nearby store and somehow got tangled up with everything that happened at the Algiers. The police just seem to accept his presence there, which is weird. My best guess is he was a police wannabe, the security guard industry being filled with them. Boyega portrays him as a decent fellow, but there’s just a wrongness of him being there and abetting some really bad police/national guardsmen. I wonder if there is more to know or if that’s all we really do know about him.

The last half hour of the movie is a puzzle to me. First, it’s pretty boring. The main story has been resolved and it just follows Larry Reed (Algee Smith) who quit The Dramatics because of the events of that night. Second, it takes away a lot of the impact of the movie. It’s as if they didn’t want to leave the audience feeling like crap so they tagged on this feel-goodish ending as if to give a bit of a feeling of hope. It would have been much more powerful if they ended the movie with the not guilty verdicts being read and the murderers walking free as the entire police force cheers them on.

“Detroit” is a compelling movie and should be watched by all. It is often not easy to watch, but it should be known and said out loud frequently that this stuff happens even to this day and we should not stand for it and silence is complicity.

Movie Review: Dunkirk

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: An enjoyable war story but not worthy of the hype.  Beautifully shot.  Strangely edited.

The evacuation of Dunkirk was an undertaking of immense proportions the likes of which may never be seen again.  Over 300,000 people were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk over the course of about a week.  Over 800 ships, mostly civilian, helped in the evacuation.  Over 200 of those ships were sunk.  300 airplanes went down, equal amounts German and British.  This movie only captures rare glimpses of the depth and breadth of this undertaking.

I will admit that “Dunkirk” is absolutely beautiful from start to finish.  The cinematography is out of this world.  Every scene, every camera angle is chosen with exquisite care.  And I didn’t even see it in the glorious 70mm format, which is probably absolutely breathtaking.  But that’s Christoper Nolan for you.

And speaking of Christopher Nolan, boy has he Christopher Nolaned the crap out of this film.  It is broken up into three parts: land, sea, and air.  The land part takes place over a week.  The sea part takes place the last day of that week.  The air part takes place the last hour of that day.  He takes them and puts them into a blender so that the timeline is all mixed up.  There are air parts before land parts and sea parts before air parts and land parts before sea parts.  You get introduced to characters from the future before you see them for the first time in the past.  It is quite the jumble.  I assume this was in order to project a sense of chaos into the war environment that wouldn’t necessarily translate well to a film with no epic battle scenes and death coming from a surprise torpedo to the side instead of human to human contact.  Otherwise, you’d be stuck with a bunch of people sitting on a beach for a week occasionally getting strafed by planes or a ship going down as it races home with a full compliment of soldiers.  I get that, but I think the real reason is it covers for the fact that the enormity of this event is kind of given short shrift.  There is some semblance of enormity seeing all the soldiers lined up on the beach waiting to be rescued, but the air portion follows only 3 planes and the sea portion doesn’t come close to the epic level of ships used to rescue 300,000 soldiers.

“Dunkirk” is a story that needed to be told and Christopher Nolan does a good job of telling it.  He should be commended for making a beautiful movie.  But a beautiful movie does not a great movie make.  It’s good.  it’s worth seeing.  Maybe even a few times for those that appreciate the movie making art.  It’s just not the “ooh, you HAVE to see this” level that it seems to be getting portrayed as.