Friday, June 29, 2018

12 Strong

Good cast,  action, and true story, but it so lacks in character development it's not even funny.    It just feels like a formulaic and overly obvious, patriotic film that is overzealous in it's execution, confusing in it's plot, and wooden in it's acting.  I can appreciate the historical and military significance, but somehow all of that just gets lost in the sauce and 12 Strong is instead reduced to just decent action movie at best.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Hostiles

Goes without saying the acting is great in Hostiles.  You've got Christian Bale, Wes Studi, and Rosamund Pike among other equally riveting actors.  Like The Revenant, it's a visually stunning film with a beautiful landscape that plunges into the realities of the early American indigenous peoples and the inequalities and complexities.  Films like this that look at our past to understand our present situation, are very meaningful.  In doing that also, Hostiles elevates the the western genre to something simultaneously beautiful, complex, soul searching, and with some measure of hope.