The Post

One thing I teach in my composition classes at Delta College is how to evaluate a research source, how to decide whether or not an author, an article, a publication, a website, or news organization is trustworthy. In the digital age of information, it is more important than ever before in history to know how to tell which sources of information you can trust and which you can’t. One of the most unsettling things I hear from my students is “All news sources are crooked. You can’t trust anybody.” This is unfortunate first because it’s lazy thinking and second because it’s simply untrue.  To just dismiss all news sources out of hand shows no critical thinking, no investigation, and an arrogant lack of effort.

Beyond that though, there are news organizations with aggressive editors, fact checkers, peer reviewers, and a devotion to fact and truth that goes beyond party, politics, or bias. Yes, there are organizations out there that try to look like news but are nothing more than opinion, bluster, and propaganda, and yes, some legitimate news organizations may have a slightly more conservative or liberal bend in their interests, but to say that all news is fake is just wrong.

What’s more, a legitimate free press is as essential to our democracy as the right to vote or worship as we please. Without a free press, the United States of America wouldn’t actually have a democracy. And there have been times in our history when journalists have played roles as pivotal to the shaping of our republic as Presidents and generals.

One of these pivotal moments is recounted in Steven Spielberg’s latest, The Post. It stars Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the Post’s dogged executive editor. Set mostly in 1971, the film tells the story of Graham’s decision to let Bradlee publish and report on what became known as the Pentagon Papers. In essence, the papers revealed that four presidential administrations knew the US couldn’t win but kept sending soldiers to fight and die because no one wanted to be responsible for “losing” the Viet Nam conflict. It was damning evidence that, of course, no government official ever wanted to see the light of day, especially not when the war was still going on. The New York Times and then the Washington Post intended to publish and the government took them to court, accusing them of threatening U.S. secrets. If the government won its claim, everyone involved could have gone to prison.

All while this is going on Graham is trying to take her smallish, independent paper public to keep it from going under, and the slightest whiff of trouble could send her banker investors scrambling away. There was a tremendous amount at stake personally and professionally for Graham, Bradlee, and all the reporters, editors, and sources who worked to crack the story. More than that though, what was also at stake was the ability for a free press to remain free, to report the truth and facts as they found it unimpeded by a corrupt administration that wanted to dictate what could be reported, when, and by whom.

I trust it’s no spoiler to say that following a hearing before the US Supreme Court, the press won. The articles were published, the Nixon administration was enraged, and the Washington Post gained nation-wide prestige. More importantly, the American people were informed about the truth by skilled, principled journalists committed to uncovering what the privileged and the powerful sought to hide.

Spielberg’s film is uniformly excellent, but I particularly appreciate it because it highlights not just an important time in our history but an important profession. Real journalists, crabby, coffee-stained, and flawed though they may be, are crucial to the functioning of our government. Yes, there is fake news out there, but there is also real news and we should all listen to it.

Wind River

Wind River is the directorial debut of Taylor Sheridan, an actor and writer who penned the screenplays for the tense, atmospheric Sicario and the elegiac Hell or High Water. Wind River mines some of the same territory as Hell or High Water, another story of people in the American west trying to make their way against the unforgiving physical world as well as brutal social and economic circumstances.

 Set in the Native American reservation territory of the title, the film begins with Cory Lambert, a Fish and Game agent, discovering Natalie Hansen, a young Native American woman, dead in the snow of the Wind River range. Clearly, she was assaulted and then ran from her attackers, miles through sub-zero conditions until her lungs burst. It’s a grisly scene and is made worse by the fact that the young woman was a friend of Cory’s deceased daughter.

Jane Banner, the FBI agent called in to investigate, is based in Las Vegas and is unprepared for both the weather and the harsh realities of reservation life. Banner is played with intelligence and toughness by Elizabeth Olsen, and fortunately the film avoids all the easy, romcom, fish out of water jokes that could be made at her expense. It also avoids any romance between her and Cory who is played by Jeremy Renner. Instead, the two behave like professional adults who are simultaneously grieved by the murder and determined to solve it.

Lambert and Banner methodically track the clues back to the site of the Natalie’s attack where a flashback tells viewers how it happened. It is a difficult sequence to watch, and the shootout that takes place following the revelation only provides a glum, sad kind of satisfaction. This is no fist-pumping Death Wish-style revenge drama that glorifies violence and makes viewers feel better about the bad guys getting theirs. On the contrary, Wind River is a very sad film. While there are moments of great tension and it plays like a police procedural, it ultimately is about grief and how to process unimaginable loss.

For a first-time director, Sheridan is very confident. His style is neither showy nor flat. He has a confident, muscular style that compliments the rugged Western landscape where he set his story. The film is a little too slow and contemplative to be considered an action thriller but it’s also a far cry from just being some sad, slow moving indie film about being sad and slow. The sequence when Jane and her reservation sheriff counterpart are sprayed with mace as they try to enter a trailer full of drug addicts is terrifying and tense. The standoff between law enforcement and Natalie’s attackers is chaotic and agonizing. While not a thriller, Wind River has some legitimate thrills.

Jeremy Renner is an actor who sometimes seems bored with his roles but sometimes inhabits them and lives them completely. His performance as Cory Lambert is definitely of the second kind. His performance is organic and, at times, heartbreaking. It is the best performance I’ve seen him give since he first came to prominence in 2008’s The Hurt Locker. 

Elizabeth Olsen’s performance is smart and cagey. She doesn’t make easy, obvious choices and instead imbues her character with a prickly authenticity.  

Of course, there is the subject of having a white male director make a movie with two white leads that’s all about the difficulty of reservation life for Native Americans. The unfortunate fact is that the movie probably wouldn’t have gotten made without Renner and Olsen and that a Native director might not have even made it to a pitch meeting with this idea. Wind River really is a compelling film that moved me immensely. But it does make me hope for a time when a greater diversity of writers, directors, and actors can tell their stories themselves and get equal funding, attention, and treatment as they do so. 

But until that time, Wind River is worth seeing.    

Holiday Movie Wrap Up

Over Christmas break, I tried to watch as many movies as I could squeeze in between shopping, wrapping presents , eating, sleeping, visiting family, and walking the dog. It was the usual combination of new films in the theater, catching up with movies on disc that I missed during year, and streaming a few mystery films just to see what they were all about. I will discuss a couple of the movies I watched at greater length in the next couple of weeks, but for now, here is my annual post-Christmas, seven movie reviews in four minutes:

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is wonderful. Cool, exciting, sweet, funny at times, harrowing at others. The first ten minutes, the initial chase scene set to Jon Spencer Blues Explosions’ song “Bellbottoms” as well as the sequence of Baby getting coffee for his fellow thieves set to Bob and Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle,” are pure moviemaking genius.

The Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy has been one of the most surprisingly effective and poignant film franchises of the last decade, and it’s final installment, Battle for the Planet of the Apes is the best of them all. Again, Andy Serkis gives what should be a Oscar-nominated role as Ceasar, the wise, compassionate, haunted leader of a tribe of sentient apes, and the digital effects that transform him and other actors into their simian counterparts are literally flawless.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets reminded me a lot of 2015’s Jupiter Ascending – visually stunning with more detail and imagination than you can absorb in a half-dozen viewings, but narratively a hot mess from start to finish. It features a ridiculous script, bizarre performances, and a lead actor who, honest to goodness, seems to be patterning his character on early 90s Keanu Reeves. If you like beautiful sci fi and don’t mind the fact that everything but the visuals is a giant mess, this is the one for you.

Spiderman: Homecoming brings Spidey firmly into the Marvel Universe after languishing at Sony Pictures for years, and you can tell the difference. Snarky, slick, funny, and fast, it unfortunately loses some of the low-to-the-ground quirk and humanism from the Sam Raimi versions but fortunately loses everything from the Andrew Garfield reboots that sucked. Homecoming is fun, and Michael Keaton as the Vulture makes the best Marvel villain since Loki.

The Hero stars Sam Elliot as basically himself, an aging actor known primarily for his roles in westerns and his voicework in commercials for things like barbeque sauce. He’s at a standstill in his career and in his life, divorced, estranged from his daughter, and spending his time between commercial gigs smoking pot with his neighbor. Then two things happen: he’s diagnosed with cancer and begins a relationship with a much younger woman played by Laura Prepon. The film isn’t so much a story as it is a poem meditating on aging and mortality. Elliot is fantastic and certainly deserves more starring roles, especially in movies that actually have endings.

Detroit focuses on a specific incident that took place during the 1965 riots in our own beloved Detroit. A group of African American men and two Caucasian women were terrorized, brutalized, and some eventually murdered by Detroit police officers in the Algiers Motel. Director Kathryn Bigelow is a master of maintaining tension and a sense of structure throughout a story that is largely about chaos. It’s a harrowing film, not just for the events it portrays but for how timely the film feels over fifty years after these events took place.

I also watched Passengers with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. I heard it was garbage but wanted to find out for myself. The film is proof positive that even the most charismatic performers and the biggest production budget cannot overcome a script that is ham-handed, clunky, and without a satisfying ending. If you haven’t already, skip Passengers.