Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Wind River

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“Wind River” opens with an intense moment: a young girl running barefoot in the bleak Wyoming snow.  During the course of this engaging movie, we find out who she is, where she is, and why she is running.  This is a great crime drama, along the lines of “Hell or High Water”.  Taylor Sheridan wrote  both movies and has tried his hand at directing this one.  What a great job at that!  This is a character driven drama with gut wrenching performances by Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene and Jon Bernthal.  Something horrific has happened on the Wind River Reservation and rookie FBI agent Olsen teams with game tracker Renner who is haunted by a past tragedy.  There are no annoying subplots or even periods or comic relief, just a well-told story.  If you liked “Hell or High Water” you are going to enjoy this one too.  Don’t look for a sweet happy ending, as this movie will show us, on the reservation there are no happy endings, only a kind of redemption.  This is a little Indie movie though, so if you want to see it on a big screen (and you really should) HURRY!

Arrival

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Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, will not be everyone’s cup of tea.  In a sea of  super hero and action movies, it is relatively subdued and almost quiet in tone.  The story involves some unnamed aliens who come to earth and stay put in their impenetrable spaceships.  We don’t know their language and they do not know ours.  Do they come in peace?  Are they here to invade us?  We don’t know because we can not understand each other.  This is where Amy Adams comes in.  Her character is a language expert and she has been tasked with figuring out how to communicate with these potential invaders.  Jeremy Renner is the scientist who has been assigned to help her. What I didn’t expect was an Inception-like ending.  When the movie is over, you will be wondering, what just happened here?  If you have been reading my reviews these past 8 months, you know I love movies that make me think or leave me wondering.  Arrival does just that.  With all the political overtones of the past election, this movie also gives me hope for the future – these days,  a rare and welcome  distraction indeed.