Wind Review: Chilly Truths

Wind River : Chilly Truths

The moody, bleak cinematography along with the desperate tone in Wind River, definitely reminded me of Unforgiven (1992), one of the great westerns of all time. It’s a chilling solid mystery thriller with some good acting performances, and a stellar story set on a Native American Reservation for Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes in the Central Western portion of Wyoming.

   The US Wildlife Fish and Game tracker, Cory Lambert (played by Jeremy Renner of Avengers, Mission Impossible and Arrival), stumbles across the body of Natalie Hanson, an eighteen year old resident of the area. The FBI suspects foul play and sends an inexperienced agent, Jane Banner (played by Elizabeth Olsen), to find out what’s going on. Hanson and Lambert team up and discover the truth.

Wind River is a film that succeeds mostly on the strength of its atmosphere. It’s a very bleak-looking film matching the film's story very well. As mentioned already, Wind River is not exactly a “happy film”. It’s a very slow-burner thriller, and as such, may not be for everyone, but I appreciate the film’s endless shots of winter. Setting the story in Wyoming, was a smart decision on, director and screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan’s part (screenwriter of Hell or High Water and Sicario), as there is a great sublime sequence, completely in silence, where Lambert follows random footprints in a just wonderful winter atmosphere before he discovers the body. The film also has a memorable sequence involving a mountain lion. Helping the film tremendously is Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s musical score. Like a lot of their other film scores (Hell or High Water, Assassination of Jesse James), it’s short, but anytime the music appears, it’s meant to convey either a tone of despair and melancholy, or it can sound warm-hearted during the more reflective scenes.

   It’s nice to see Jeremy Renner in a leading role, especially in a part that fits him: a serious, mostly humorless, US Fish and Wildlife Service tracker. There’s an especially good scene where his character reflects upon his past and features some terrific subtle acting. There is nothing over the top about his work, at all. Elizabeth Olsen (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Civil War, Godzilla), may seem miscast as a FBI agent, and even, while in character, admits to being out of her element, is really good in her part. The rest of the supporting cast is filled with some familiar names, such as Native American actor, Graham Greene (The Green Mile, Dances With Wolves), whom is always a pleasure to see, plays a friend of Lambert’s named Ben, and Jon Bernthal (The Wolf of Wall Street, Sicario) plays a small, but significant part, as Matt Rayburn.

   If there’s any issue I had with the film, it’s that it feels like it’s the work of an inexperienced director. While this isn’t Sheridan’s directing debut (he previously directed a horror film named Vile), it may as well be. He's had significant prior success as a screenwriter, but screenwriting is very different from directing. He didn't do a bad job, but if he decides to just stay a screenwriter full-time, and only occasionally directs, I wouldn’t be surprised. Wind River is a solid chilling thriller, with some effective atmosphere, and certainly a good and very watchable film.

Now playing at The Nugget Theater, Hanover: 4:20, 6:50, 9:15 and Claremont Cinema 6:  4:10, 7:00, 9:30.

Dunkirk: Review

War movies are often violent and heroic, or either of those things. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, on the other hand, is a film that literally gives the audience the true feeling and experience of the actual war as it depicts the battle of Dunkirk (Dunkerque, France), during World War II. It’s not a traditional war film, and it certainly doesn’t follow a traditional story structure either. Dunkirk is an amazing film that deserves to be seen in the best IMAX theater possible.

The battle of Dunkirk was a military operation fought between the Allies and the Nazis. Nolan’s film takes an interesting route for a war film, as there is no protagonist, and none of the biggest characters in this film are played by well known actors. Nolan intentionally cast unknown actors, while most of the supporting players are portrayed by better known actors, like Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, & Mark Rylance. Although Tommy (played by Fionn Whitehead), a soldier who  gets top billing and opens the film, Dunkirk’s storytelling is centered around three specific stories in a Memento-esque, out of order fashion, and are referred to as the Mole, the Sea, and the Air. One story begins on land and covers a week; another story begins on sea and covers a day; and the final story begins in the air and covers only one hour. The three stories involve the soldiers of Dunkirk fending off enemy attacks: a private ship that ends up in the middle of the battle and picks up a wounded soldier played by Cillian Murphy, and a pilot named Farrier (played by Tom Hardy), trying to take two other spitfire pilots across the English Channel.

If there was really a word I could use to describe Dunkirk as an overall film, it would be relentless. The film will literally have you on the edge of your seat. Dunkirk is as if you took the first act of Saving Private Ryan and stretched it out over a 100 minutes runtime. It’s that intense. It’s not super-bloody (rated PG-13), but it is more violent in how bombs, dog-fights, and guns are blasted. Helping the film is Hans Zimmer’s intense musical score, which, in his typical fashion, serves as both sound design (you can hear a recurring beeping tick tock noise in the background), and creating a sense of constant dread.

While most of the performances in Dunkirk are fine, including Kenneth Branagh as a Captain who spends most of the film waving his hat, Mark Rylance as a ship owner named Mr. Dawson, Hardy’s Farrier pilot (my favorite character), and even singer Harry Styles surprising me in a decent way as a young pilot, it’s really the experience that takes center-stage. Even though the story is simple, the scale of Dunkirk is huge, with real battleships, real planes, and real weapons, in typical Nolan fashion, the use of CGI (computer generated images) is limited. This makes the film’s intensity all the more successful.

Dunkirk is an intense, brutal war film, because it literally makes the audience feel like they’re actually in the battlefield with the use of sparse dialogue in certain scenes helping. Once I came out of the cinema after seeing Dunkirk, the first thing I said was “They weren't kidding, it is the real deal. I'm glad it was only an hour and forty-five minutes, because otherwise I may have felt pure dread just like those soldiers.” This film is not for the faint of the heart or those who don’t like their films loud. It is, however, a superb piece of filmmaking.

Spider-Man: Homecoming Review

Marvel Makes Spider-Man Relevant Again

Spider-Man: Homecoming - A Film Review

Daniel Davis

July 11, 2017

            It’s been a rough ten years for Spider-Man. Aside from Sony’s refusal to sell the film rights back to Marvel, attempts at creating a cinematic universe like Marvel, and a bunch of somewhat poorly received films, everyone seemed to have given up on the poor web slinger, Spider-man, until now. After Sony made a deal with Marvel, and Spider-Man made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Captain America: Civil War, played by up and coming British actor, Tom Holland, the first teenager to actually play Spider-man. Holland’s portrayal of Spider-man was so well-received, a spinoff was announced, and Spider-Man: Homecoming, starring everyone’s favorite, friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man is fun, fast-paced, and above all, heroic. Marvel works its magic again.

            Spider-Man: Homecoming, in essence, is probably the purest Spider-Man film I’ve ever seen, because it’s the one that gets the character the most. Not having to adhere to the typical origin movie standards, Holland’s Spider-Man is very witty, while also being very geeky at the same time, taking the best aspects of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s previous Spider-Man performances and combining them together.

Unusual for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Spider-Man: Homecoming features a fairly strong villain in the form of Adrian Toomes, aka The Vulture, played by Michael Keaton. (The former Batman is playing another Birdman this time.) What makes Vulture work as a villain is his presence is treated as a true menace and his motives are clear. The first scene even opens with him, as we (the audience), see Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) being fired from his job. This is done to set up his reasoning for becoming a villain. This is different from other Marvel villains, who are generally given little screen time and more pushed to the backburner of the film, so as to not outshine the hero. The film also cleverly alludes to other Spider-Man villains by having three of Vultures’ henchmen being Mac Gargan, aka The Scorpion, Phileas Mason, aka The Tinkerer, and Herman Schultz, aka The Shocker, potentially setting them up to return for a sequel.

In addition to Tom Holland’s outstanding lead role, the supporting cast in Spider-Man: Homecoming is fairly strong, as well. Marisa Tomei plays the youngest and hottest Aunt May yet, who is fairly understanding, but at the same time, worried about her nephew, Peter. Peter’s high school schoolmates, in New York City, are diverse and include: Jacob Batalon as Ned, his sidekick and someone he can talk to; Laura Harrier as Liz Allen, his love interest in this particular installment; Disney star Zendaya as Michelle, a geek girl; and Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, whose whiny, bullying, rich kid persona is one of my biggest gripes with the film, though, thankfully he’s not in the movie much. Robert Downey Jr. also shows up as Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, but he does he take over the film, not making this “Iron Man 4” in spirit. In fact, Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan, Iron Man’s assistant, has more screen time and gets his biggest role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date.

The production in Spider-Man: Homecoming should also not be swatted at either. Marvel films are generally called out for their weak or dull cinematography (something that I don’t entirely agree with), but Salvatore Totino’s cinematography in Spider-Man: Homecoming is very bright and colorful, representing the character and the film’s tone quite well. The film’s production design is also superb, bringing New York City to life. While Michael Giacchino’s score suffers from the same problem that most Marvel scores and modern scores, in general, suffer from, that is, a lot of noise, it does feature two fine themes, and the film’s music becomes very appropriately heroic sounding during the right moments.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a fun, fast-paced, superhero action film, and is one of the very best from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I don’t know if this film is my favorite Spider-Man movie yet, but it’s certainly tied with Spider-Man 2 (2004) for the title. It gets just about everything right about the character and his mythos, and it’s loads of fun as well.