With WIND RIVER, Taylor Sheridan writes and directs another fine where's-the-justice? movie

One of last year's best films, Hell or High Water, turns out to have been no fluke, as its first-class writer, Taylor Sheridan, is back this year with another top-notch movie that is again all about trying to obtain a little justice from people and things -- think corporations, society, America -- that are quite unwilling to provide it. Hell or High Water tracked the banking industry in Texas, while Sheridan's new one WIND RIVER, which the writer has also directed, is set on an Indian reservation in Wyoming, where the malfeasance has dribbled down from another sort of corporate entity into its employees.

If Mr. Sheridan (shown at left, who also has had quite a lengthy career as actor) is not quite up to the level of the two directors who have filmed his other screenplays -- David Mackenzie and Denis Villeneuve -- he has nonetheless done a very respectable job, and often more than that. He captures with great strength and tact the the pain and grief surrounding a death in the family (two families, actually), as well as handling the mystery and thriller elements very well, too. In fact, his movie's single action scene is one of the best we've witnessed in a film in quite some time.

This extended scene (above) is by turns surprising, suspenseful, shocking and as full of violent action as a connoisseur could want. But it is in the quiet, thoughtful moments that Sheridan's poise and accomplishments are also evident, never more so than in the film's final scene, as our hero (one of them, anyway, given a deep, quiet and full embodiment by the excellent Jeremy Renner) and his Indian friend (another wonderful performance from Hell or High Water's Gil Birmingham) sit in the snow, below, as they quietly talk and ponder.

Sheridan's stars here are Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, below, making further good on the predictions of a long and starry career made at the time of this actress' earliest appearances on film. These two work so well together, even as their characters keep their appropriate and professional distance, that I hope we'll see them together in other films again soon.

Mr. Sheridan's deepest concerns appear to be with the longing for and journey toward justice. In Hell or High Water, this is fraught with ironies and sadness. Here it is more direct but no less difficult. Wind River is a depressing movie -- what film about American Indians worth its salt would not be? -- but it is so well conceived and executed that I doubt you will be bored for even one moment of its 107-minute running time. The film is alternately sad and darkly funny, surprising and lively, thrilling and doleful.

All the subsidiary characters come to vital life, too, and this is not easy, I suspect, for a relatively new filmmaker to achieve. Sheridan's writing is unusually on the mark, however, giving us lots of info with little verbiage.

From The Weinstein Company, the movie opened in New York and L.A. a week or two back and hits South Florida this Friday, August 18 -- in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale areas at AMC's Aventura Mall 24, Coral Ridge 10, Sunset Place 24, and Weston 8; at the Cinebistro at Cityplace, Dolphin Mall 19 Theatre, Miami Lakes 17,  Cinemark Paradise 24, Cinepolis Grove 13, Cinepolis Deerfield 8, Deerfield Beach,  Gateway 4, IPIC Intracoastal, The Landmark at Merrick, and Regal's Oakwood 18, Kendall Village Stadium 16 and South Beach 18. In West Palm Beach and Boca Raton, you find it at AMC's CityPlace 20, The Movies of Delray, Downtown 16 Cinemas Palm Beach Gardens, Cinemark's Palace 20 and Boynton Beach 14, Cinepolis Jupiter 14, IPic Entertainment Mizner Park 8, Regal Shadowood 16 and Royal Palm Beach 18. Wherever else you reside in our large, and increasingly Trump-dumbed-down country, click here to find the theaters nearest you.

Back on the rez again, in Jack Pettibone Riccobono's documentary, THE SEVENTH FIRE

Is there a cinema subject as consistently, singularly depressing as that our American Indians and the
"reservations" on which they are living -- and hopefully, leaving? (Except that, since it is usually the most promising of those young Indians who leave, this just makes it more depressing and difficult for those who remain.) Add to the list of worthwhile movies on this subject, both narrative and documentary, the new one by filmmaker Jack Pettibone Riccobono (shown below), THE SEVENTH FIRE.

The reason for the depression is twofold: first, what our country's "settlers" gave the Indians (smallpox, death and destruction) and how we have treated them ever since (hoarding them into ever smaller and less comfortable living quarters; even now we continue to take away their tribal land). "Make America Great Again"? Yeah, right, Mr. Trump. Maybe you could think about starting here. For all the horror of slavery, many Blacks survived, while the Indians were mostly decimated. What remains are condoned off and hidden away from most Americans.

The Seventh Fire -- that title has to do with some kind of spiritual incantation/episode/journey about which we learn very little -- takes us into the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, where we meet, among others, two males important to the reservation. The older of these is 37-year-old Rob Brown (above and below), a big, beefy, good-looking guy who, during his life, grew up in some 39 foster homes, has already served five prison terms, and is now, as we first meet him, about to go away to prison once again.

Rob is the "criminal kingpin" of the rez, even though his supplying drugs and what-not to the locals seems to extend no further than the borders of the reservation. He also has a young daughter whom he loves and tries to care for -- clearly at somewhat of a distance.

The other male is a young man named Kevin, above and two photos below, who appears to be a kind of acolyte of Rob, striving to carve out his own large patch of the kingdom. Early on, Rob (or maybe it was another of the characters) tells Kevin, "If you're gonna risk your freedom, make sure the reward is worth it." Quite. Notes another rez resident, "One out of ten young people, every ten years, will make it out of here." This is not exactly a happy prognosis.

Mr. Riccobono takes a discursive, disjointed, seemingly haphazard and sometimes near-surreal (above) look at all this, bouncing from time and place so that we are not always sure what's going on or why. Some of his images are strange and compelling, and the film never loses our interest for long, but had I not had access to the press kit that accompanied the film and that did some explaining that The Seventh Fire itself fails to do, I am not sure I would have understood the documentary nearly so well.

On the plus side, Riccobono proves something of a smart investigator, following young Kevin around discreetly and perhaps on the sly. Initially we see and are charmed by the fact that Indians and whites in the local town get along so well. Well, sure and why not, since Kevin proves to be their drug dealer? We're privy here to everything from doing drugs and fighting to sexual connections. We even get an afternoon filled with Bingo.

All of this is, as expected, depressing as hell. You leave the film as you probably have so many others down the decades, narrative or documentary -- from Smoke Signals (one of the most positive of these movies) through Drunktown's Finest to the recent Songs My Brothers Taught Me --  with that gnawing sense of justice trampled in perpetuity, with nothing at all being done about this.

From Film Movement and running only 76 minutes (we probably could not take much more), The Seventh Fire has its U.S. theatrical premiere on Friday, July 22, in New York City at the new Metrograph theater, and on Friday, July 29 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. Another ten cities are scheduled for screenings in the weeks to come. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Indians vs Indians in the newly rediscovered/ restored silent epic, THE DAUGHTER OF DAWN

Milestone Film & Video -- the company that has given us so many recent restorations of seemingly lost and/or classic movies, from the hugely over-rated Losing Ground to a documentary TrustMovies would not have missed to save his life, NotFilm -- has a new one releasing to home video this coming Tuesday, July 19, in its DVD and Blu-ray world premiere. THE DAUGHTER OF DAWN, a 1920 silent movie directed by Norbert Myles and using an all-Indian cast of over 300 Kiowa and Comanche people, proves a curiosity that anyone who enjoys silent film, American Indian sagas or good old-fashioned melodrama will most likely want to see.

If not the first film to tell a story of Native Americans using actual Native Americans, The Daughter of Dawn was certainly among the first. (Hell, protestors are still trying to get Hollywood to cast real Indians in movies in which Indian characters appear.) And according to two of the cast members who were interviewed some time back (in the very good Bonus Features that appear on the disc), the filmmakers went out of their way to get all the details as honestly and correctly as they could manage.

The movie itself -- six reels lasting 80 minutes -- is no great shakes as a piece of art or even entertainment, yet it's appearance is definitely worth a shout-out. Thought to have been lost, along with so many other silent films, especially independents, the movie suddenly re-surfaced after nearly a century. (The story of how it was found and then restored is one of the highlights of the disc's Bonus Features.)

The tale told by The Daughter of Dawn is awash in, well, cliche, each one as obvious as the next. "From time immemorial: the eternal triangle," notes one of the early inter-titles. This is actually an "eternal triangle" plus-one, as our heroine -- that titular daughter (above, left), named because she was born as the sun rose -- is desired by two men, White Eagle and Black Wolf (guess the good guy via his color), the latter of whom is loved by a very sad Indian woman named Red Wing.

As the plot unfolds, we are privy to everything from a Buffalo hunt (filmed in Oklahoma, where actual Buffalo were relatively plentiful back then) to a Comanche raid on the Kiowa in which the women are abducted Sabine-style, a death-defying leap from atop a bluff (above), a dance of Thanksgiving, followed by a dance of War. There's kidnapping, betrayal, and a Romeo/Juliet-like conclusion, which is more than wasted on a real rat-fink of a Romeo.

The acting is stolid, rather than solid, and yellow/sepia filters are used for day-time shots and blue ones for night. Despite all of the above (probably because of it), the film manages a considerable amount of charm and sweetness. And since we have almost no filmed record of our Indian heritage, the movie takes its place as pretty much one-of-a-kind. You won't see another film like this one anytime soon.

The musical score on the sound track was created especially for the film's current release, and we learn much of how this was handled in those Bonus Features. With an old-fashioned aspect ratio of  1.33: 1, the restoration is a joint venture of the Oklahoma Historical Society and Milestone Film & Video and will hit the street this coming Tuesday, July 19, on Blu-ray and DVD -- for purchase and, I hope, rental. You can learn how to order it by clicking here, and to read the very interesting press information about the movie and its re-discovery, simply click here.

Native-American teens today fill Chloé Zhao's do-we-stay-or-leave-the-reservation movie, SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME

When you are "breaking" a horse, explains our Native-American hero, Johnny, at the beginning of the new independent film, SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME, you should "leave some 'bad' in it. They'll need it to survive out here." Initially intimate but spacious, with breath-taking vistas of the badlands of South Dakota, and extremely low-key, this new movie from Chloé Zhao (born in China, now living in the U.S.) is her first full-length piece, one that took four years to complete, as she lived & worked on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Those four years evidently helped give the movie the kind of authenticity that is not easily faked, as Ms Zhao (shown at right) shows us in leisurely, slow-moving fashion, the world of the kids who are "stuck on the res." The movie shows us their lives -- with their family and friends, at school, in church, at work and play, in love and sex -- without any expository or narrative comment, and we see how they must fit into a hugely downsized and circumscribed culture.

The filmmaker never stoops to proselytizing or special pleading. She doesn't have to. The lives we see on display make their point lucidly enough. She uses non-actors who pretty much appear to be playing themselves (or a reasonable facsimile). While this makes them seem authentic, it also diminishes the drama and much of the specificity that a good actor might bring to the role. (That's John Reddy, above on horseback, who plays our hero, Johnny.) Johnny's younger sister, Jashaun (Jashaun St. John, below) is the other character we learn most about, along with his girlfriend, who's soon to leave the res for college.

Perhaps the most unusual character is the tattoo artist/clothing designer who befriends Jashaun and is partial to the number 7. The movie generally avoids melodrama (except for one revenge-of-a-rival-gang scene), sticking to its low-key, slow pace. Once the film, around the halfway point, begin to lose any edge at all, it seems to turn generic in both its dialog and situations. At this point, the slow pace simply sinks things. (I can't remem-ber another film during which I consulted my watch as often as here.)

Songs My Brothers Taught Me is a well-intentioned movie that achieves its goals well enough to be successful on the "intentions" front. Visually, too, the movie succeeds (the framing is quite good: cinematography by Joshua James Richards). Sound-wise, perhaps not. It may have been the quality of the screener disc I watched, the lack of enunciation by the actors, or the sound design itself, but I missed a certain amount of the dialog along the way and felt periodically frustrated.

Another odd thing: our lead character's narration at both the beginning and end of the film sounds far too intelligent, poetic and writerly to be coming of this young man's mind or mouth. The rest of the dialog we hear from him is on a completely different level. But that, too, I suspect, is part of the "well-intentioned-ness" of this not uninteresting but likely to be overpraised film. Songs My Brothers Taught Me, from Kino Lorber and running 94 minutes, has its U.S. theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, March 2, at Film Forum in New York City. Click here then scroll down to see all upcoming playdates, with cities and theaters listed.

Worthwhile streaming: Arnaud Desplechin's JIMMY P. tackles psychology and healing

Something different (as well as his second film in the English language) from French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is his (along with co-writers Kent Jones and Julie Peyr) adaptation of ethnologist/ psychoanalyst Georges Devereux's book, Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian. The subtitle of the book is also the subtitle of this movie -- JIMMY P. -- and I'm wondering if it perhaps turned audiences off a bit, making them imagine they'd be getting something too dry and academic. (Even TrustMovies, as much as he'd wanted to see the film, managed to wait a month or three after it became available on Netflix streaming before he dived in.) He should not have worried, and neither should you. This is one remarkable, and remarkably vital and enjoyable movie.

Two hours long and without a boring moment, Desplechin, shown at left, gets just about everything right -- from the wonderful 1950s feel (including sets, costumes, cars and attitudes) to the unshowy but spectacularly good performances from the entire cast, especially his two lead actors, Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric. And while the story is indeed all about the psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, though it is intelligent and real as it shows us the act of therapy from doctor to patient, with emphasis on the importance of dreams, it is not in the least dry or academic. "You are there," as the saying goes, right in the dense and emotional middle of this act of healing.

Yet the movie is nothing like one prolonged therapy-fest. Instead, Desplechin weaves Jimmy P.'s history of love and wartime and reservation life into the whole, and Del Toro uses all his skills to bring to life (and not a little sorrow) this grand character descended from an Indian chief. (That's Misty Upham with Del Toro in the photo above.)

The filmmaker also gives the therapist his due, as we learn of Devereux's own past -- and more. When the major love of his life (very well played by Gina McKee, above, right) -- married to a friend of his, it would seem -- comes to the Midwest for a visit, we spend a good deal of time with the pair.

In the supporting cast are a number of fine actors -- from Larry Pine (above, right, as Karl Menninger) to A Martinez (as another therapy patient) -- mostly playing doctors or Indians. Because there are no false steps (that I could see, at least), this is a movie you can easily relax into, enjoy and learn from.

In fact, it's among the most edifying films of the past several years. It makes us grateful for the visionaries of psychology and therapy, as well providing us with a bracing reminder of our own native Americans. Without ever once bringing up overtly the plight of our Indians, the movie allows us to see in sustained fashion their strength and endurance and what we have still to learn and gain from them -- as well as what we must give them back to make them whole again.

Jimmy P. can be streamed now via Netflix (and elsewhere, I suspect). It's a film that intelligent audiences, as well as movie buffs, will want to see.