Inspired by actual events, Susanna White’s (Our Kind of Traitor, Nanny McPhee Returns) Woman Walks Ahead is a pretty good movie, but one made worse by its Hollywoodization. The film takes true events and changes them for no real reason. The general moviegoer would never have known the difference between what transpired and what was fictionalized. But the fact that there was a differentiation between fact and fiction didn’t do anything but cheapen the movie. One of the hardest things for me to do when reviewing a movie is trying to determine if the liberties that were taken to strip a film of its factual basis while still claiming to be based on a true story truly advance the movie past the point where it would have arrived to if it had just followed the facts.
Category Archives: Inspired by True Events
The Mustang (2019)
Roman Coleman, the career-defining role that journeyman Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone, The Drop) has been waiting for, does not disappoint. Finally, the 42-year-old actor you’ve seen in the background here and there and everywhere gets his opportunity to truly lead a movie. As the hardened felon-turned-horse trainer proves, anything can happen to anyone, given the right circumstances. The Mustang is a brilliantly directed movie by first-time director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Roman seems to desire to serve his time quickly and with as little human interaction as possible. He is nearly unrecognizable with his shaved head, as well as chiseled, tattooed body. But his problem with the latter leads to a longer than expected stay, and his explosive anger to go with that machine of a body suggests that he might not be going anywhere anytime soon.
The Rider (2017)
Simply stated, the best thing going for Chloé Zhao’s (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, Nomadland) The Rider is its authenticity. The plot is not that different than hundreds of other movies you’ve seen before. Yet, it feels refreshingly new and real at the same time. This is due primarily to the vision of the young and talented Zhao as well as the decisions that she made along the way. This includes her hiring of locals to play all of the characters in the film, her choice of setting (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation), her hiring of cinematographer Joshua James Richards to capture the exhaustive landscape of the South Dakota reservation, and her decision of filming this to almost feel like a documentary. Every decision she made worked. Film purists will love this. Those who need the flare or those who need to need forced attempts to bring out the sentiment might be disappointed. I found myself to be somewhere in the middle. The film has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (83% audience rating). That feels about right for the critics and a little high for the audience score. I will say early that I likely would not have seen this movie if it hadn’t been recommended to me by a longtime friend. While I didn’t like it as much as she did, it was a very good recommendation and a film that I’m glad that I saw.
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The Greatest Showman (2017)
I’m not going to lie. The only reason I watched Michael Gracey’s The Greatest Showman was that it was the topic of one of the sermons at my church. Each year we have a summer movie series (In 2018, the movies were Forrest Gump, Good Will Hunting, The Princess Bride, The Shawshank Redemption…I had seen all four, of course, and watched all of them again before that week’s service to refamiliarize myself with each of these amazing films. Then on Labor Day weekend, we have our Family Weekend, where the children of our church sit with their parents rather than going to the classes that they usually go to. We show a truncated version of a movie, and this year it was The Greatest Showman. So I added it to my Netflix queue. It arrived two days before my church service, and I watched it the night beforehand. I’m not a fan of musicals, although I will say that the incredible La La Land has, if nothing else, allowed me to consider that I could potentially enjoy a musical. And, while it certainly wasn’t my cup of tea, I did enjoy The Greatest Showman and would actually consider watching it again one day with one or more of my three young nephews.
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The Hurt Locker (2009)
“The rush of battle is a potent and almost lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” – Chris Hedges, author of War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning.
2009’s The Hurt Locker is absolutely one of the finest movies ever made. It was completely gripping in its year of release and is a movie that will remain relevant until the end of time. It was monumental that director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty) became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director and the first woman to direct a Best Picture of the Year. It only took 80 years…Just as impressive, and a large credit goes to Bigelow, was the breakout performance for two future Hollywood A-listers in Jeremy Renner (The Town, Wind River) and Anthony Mackie (The Adjustment Bureau, Triple 9). Ironically, both have landed themselves as Avengers characters, something I will touch on later in this review. There have been many excellent movies about the war in Iraq (Stop-Loss, The Green Zone, The Messenger, Grace Is Gone, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, Jarhead), The Hurt Locker is second, falling just behind Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. And it’s close. Each is a film that showed be watched multiple times. Each had a lead that hit his performance completely out of the park, each had incredible direction, and each had a chilling score that could be listened to on a quiet night on the couch at home. It is, without a doubt, a movie that should be viewed by anyone who enjoys/appreciates war movies.