Wind River

Wind River (2017)

Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan

Stars:  Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Kelsey Asbille, Apesanahkwat, Gil Birmingham, Tantoo Cardinal, Tokala Black Elk, Martin Sensmeier, and Tyler Laracca

When I mentioned Frozen River on Twitter, a user recommended this movie to me. I am unfamiliar with Taylor Sheridan's movies. Seeing this movie, I want to dive into more of his filmography.

A Wildlife officer, Cory Lambert (Renner) is out in the wilderness when he discovers the body of a young woman, Natalie (Asbille). Since the body was near the Wind River Indian Reservation, the FBI sends an agent, Jane Banner (Olsen) to investigate what happened to her.

The main mission of this movie is to bring to light the plight of Native Americans in reservations. I know the statistics. It is staggering. There is a disproportionate amount of missing women. There is an exorbitant amount sexual assault, domestic abuse, unsolved murders, drug abuse, suicide rates, etc. It's scary. The average American will not know about the rates.

I'm glad that Sheridan made one of the characters be the eyes and ears of the audience with Jane. The way things are done are not the same as it is on the reservation. It has its own set of rules.

I enjoy movies that center around the characters, fleshing them out. Making the environment its own character. Setting the mood throughout the entire movie.

The one big gripe about the movie is a certain flashback scene. I understood why it was there, but I wish things were more ambiguous.

Rating: 8/10

Arrival

Arrival (2016)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Screenplay by Eric Heisserer

Based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang

Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O'Brien, Tzi Ma

I'm trying to catch up to the movies that I missed out on during my hiatus of watching movies. This is one of them. I heard nothing, but good things about it. It's Denis Villeneuve. I would expect an experience and it was. 

Louise Banks (Adams), a linguist professor from an unknown university is having a normal day until the Earth is visited by twelve spaceships positioned around the world. She is summoned by the military to make contact with help of theoretical physicist, Ian Donnelly (Renner) at one of the sights in Montana.

When you go into a Villeneuve film, you know you are going to get eye candy. The visuals, the sound, the cinematography are top notch. The action is a slow burn. I like a slow burn. It doesn't have to be us versus them mentality that other movies have done.

Amy Adams went through it in the movie. I was surprised that she was not nominated for an Oscar for this. She was the anchor. It hinged on her being perfectly in the moment. She was. Mind boggling.

The things that hindered this movie was the ending. I did not care for the ending. It felt like a cop out. You gonna go this route. When all is revealed, you felt like the ending is a slap in the face. You are on this journey and rug is pulled out from under you. Eye rolling moment. 

The other thing is Forest Whitaker who plays Colonel Weber. More importantly, his accent. His first scene, I thought that Weber was South African. Nope. Apparently, he was going for a Maine/New England accent. Some of the words that came out of his mouth were hard to hear. Who made that choice? It was the wrong one.

Rating: 8/10

The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

Directed by Tony Gilroy

Screenplay by Tony Gilroy & Dan Gilroy

Story by Tony Gilroy

Based on the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum

Stars: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Donna Murphy, Michael Chernus, Corey Stoll and Zeljko Ivanek

A fellow LAMB Dan reviewed The Bourne Ultimatum recently, I remarked on his post that I loved the trilogy, but I thought that the movie I am reviewing would be meh. Slap a turban on my head and call me Miss Cleo.

The storyline coincides with the events of the second half of what happened in The Bourne Ultimatum. If you haven't seen that movie, I might spoil that movie for you. Don't read any further. Jason Bourne has exposed Operation Blackbriar and the Treadstone Project where Bourne was trying to see what happened to his identity. An Outcome agent named Aaron Cross (Renner) is holed up in the Alaskan wilderness, survive the elements and popping pills provided from his superiors.

Meanwhile, when the shit is about hit the fan, the FBI and CIA want to destroy the program and eliminate all of the participants of the projects which include the agents the doctors that supplied the drugs. Somehow, they got Dr. Donald Foite (Ivanek) to shoot up the people in the lab except for Dr. Marta Shearing (Weisz) who manages to survive. Cross needs to find Shearing to keep him alive and out of the hands of the people that are trying to kill them.

I was doing research on the movie that the title did come from a 2004 Bourne book called "The Bourne Legacy" after original author Robert Ludlum died in 2001 from Eric Van Lustbader. The book was a complete story about Jason Bourne. Since Matt Damon didn't want to do the movie without Paul Greengrass, we get this movie.

The trouble with this movie is that movie feels unnecessary. There is a character that knows his true identity from the get go and we are supposed to be on this journey with him. I felt like it is one of those "message movies" that Hollywood crams down our throats like Traffic, The Constant Gardner, Syriana or Blood Diamond. We get it! Big business = bad, everything else is good. I don't want to hear Renner or Weisz talk about making drugs that change your DNA. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't give two shits about it.

There were less car chases in movie with more phone tag with everybody being one phone. Let's get that onscreen. Track them down. Here is some surveillance photos. Who cares? I want to see action not long polemics about drug dependency and all that. The original trilogy were solid because they were based on Ledlum's books. Deviating from the books to tell a side story about a rogue agent with the Bourne is insulting to me.

My Rating:

The Avengers

Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

Directed by Joss Whedon

Written by Joss Whedon

Story by Zak Penn & Joss Whedon

Based on the comic book series by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johannsson, Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård and Tom Hiddleston

Currently #31 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting.)

Can I just say that I love being a geek? I love being a geek. I have getting into comic books in the past couple of years. I know the lore of the Marvel and DC characters. When I heard that The Avengers was coming. I literally had a nerdgasm. Further, when I heard that Joss Whedon was directing the film, I shouted, "Hallelujah." I will make this claim that Joss Whedon is God to me. There I said it. Being that I was busy with my unpredictable work schedule, I had time to watch the film yesterday. I made me giddy like a schoolgirl.

I wanted to say this upfront, I did not see Captain America before seeing this film. I knew the lore already and I didn't want to be disappointed in the lead up to this movie like I did with Thor or Iron Man 2. Going into the movie I did not want to be spoiled by anything that happened in the movie. I avoided the internet, review shows, anything. I wanted to go into this movie drawing my own conclusion.

Here is the setup, after Loki's (Hiddleston) defeat by the hands of Thor (Hemsworth) he is sent to deep space where he tries to harness the powers of a magical cube called the Tesseract that would lead a race of alien warriors called the Chitauri to destroy the Earth. In order to do that Loki teleports to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters to take it with the help of controlling Hawkeye (Renner) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Skarsgård) to make his escape. Nick Fury (Jackson) determines that it is an act of intergalactic war. He needs to reinstate the Avengers Initiative which would be Earth's mightiest heroes together for the defending our planet. Black Widow (Johannson) and Agent Coulson (Gregg) search the planet to bring together, the egoistical genius Iron Man (Downey Jr), the demigod Thor, the Hulk (Ruffalo) and the First Avenger Captain America (Evans).

My honest opinion is that this movie is awesome. I would say that it was like the first Iron Man movie where my mouth was open in awe. There were some cool things that happened in this movie that I can't give away, but you'll know them when you see them. The team had there moments to shine and everybody had a purpose to be there. I'm glad that Loki was more evil in this movie than he was in Thor, because he was a whiny idiot that cried about being in Thor's shadow. He became heartless against humanity. The movie is almost two and half hours long. I thought that there were some moments that could have be cut out. Other than that, I had a blast with the movie. The small tease after the credits go me going about what will happen next.

My Rating: