Perhaps a perfect popcorn flick for moviegoers who can close off their brains and enjoy a decent action story with some pretty good cinematography that also stars one of the most marketable movie actors of the last 25 years, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a movie that fails to capitalize on its potential. Outside of Maleficent, Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted, A Mighty Heart) hasn’t had the best decade in front of the camera. However, her fanbase is still tremendous. Her opportunity to return to the action-adventure drama helped solidify her career (Salt, Wanted, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). She may have done enough to secure future starring roles with her physically impressive performance as a Montana smokejumper named Hannah. She was the highlight of Taylor Sheridan’s (Sicario, Wind River) movie that otherwise failed to deliver.
Category Archives: Taylor Sheridan
Wind River (2017)
There are so many takeaways from Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River that I don’t even know which one to bring out first. Though flawed, this is the best movie of 2017 through the first eight months of the year. It is an epic masterpiece that might be missed by the typical moviegoer who is so overwhelmed with the commercialization of movies like Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and War of the Planet of the Apes that they might not even know it existed, let alone a movie that it might be interested in seeing. In a 2017 Hollywood that has seen a massive uptake in remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find originality in a story and then, if you do, for that originality to come out in a way that encourages you to see it again and, hopefully, has a lasting impact on your life. That is what Sheridan, an incredibly gifted screenwriter, has done in his first film behind the camera. The memorable Sicario and Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water are already to his screenwriting credit. It’s unlikely that Wind River will receive the same box office success as his first movie or the same critical acclaim come Oscar season as his second, but this is one hell of a directorial debut.