What new movies have recently joined the Stream & Dream Lounge?
War pony In generally lively fashion, War pony It works in many ways—as an unlikely modern western, as a fractured and darkly picaresque coming-of-age story, and as an extended social document with dark humor.
Filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation with a young cast of mostly Oglala Lakota, this mini-epic follows the separate but adjacent adventures and misadventures of two men – 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) and 12-year-old Matho (LaDamian). Crazy Thunder). Both are free spirits in trouble – Bill drives around in his beat-up car, juggles relationships with the mothers of his many children, and struggles for opportunities to find well-paying jobs. Mathos and his friends ride their bikes in search of fun and mischief and the occasional chance to make a buck or two. And after his abusive father kicks him out of the house, Matho also tries to find places where he can spend the night.
Co-directors Gina Gammell and Riley Keough tell these stories through vividly animated fragments with details that suggest continuities and connections, most of which remain strikingly tacit. The lead performances have the reckless conviction of classical neorealism.
surrounded After serving as a “buffalo soldier” in the Civil War, Moe Washington—disguised as a man (and played by Letitia Wright)—travels west to the land she claims. Her wagon journey is interrupted by a gunfight that pits her against a mischievous bandit and his gang. Her knowledge and skills with a pistol figure in the ensuing violence, which breaks up the gang and affects the capture of the robber, the imposing Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell). But then he is left to hold the robber captive while the sheriff carries the injured man to safety.
The cat-and-mouse struggle that unfolds during the night is made all the more fraught by the late-night visit of a mysterious stranger (the late Michael K. Williams in his final role). As dawn breaks, the gang returns, with the lawmen not far behind. The violent skirmish that follows sets things up wisely and sends Mo into an overwhelming haze of cruel and very lonely glory.
It's a gunfighter story with some lively twists, but there's nothing simple about the intense mix of moral dilemmas and jagged social issues – race, gender, justice and its opposite, personal integrity and more. The brilliantly realized action scenes are punctuated by tense dialogue scenes that sometimes get a bit heavy-handed, but still play nicely into the overall dramatic momentum.
Wright plays the paradoxes of her role with a grace that is both ferocious and dignified, and Bell brings a mercurial passion to the bandit's sly screams.
The Unknown Country Alone and grieving the death of her grandmother, Tana (Lily Gladstone) leaves snowy Minnesota in her inherited Cadillac and heads for South Dakota—first for a friend's interracial wedding, then for reunions with friends. , family and tribal elders – and then , in tribute to an unforgettable trip her grandmother once took, deep in Texas, partying in Dallas and then hiking to a very special place in Big Bend country.
It's a gently revelatory journey of recovery and renewal, much of which is cumulatively reflected in moments of stage imagery and action rather than clear-cut emotions and dialogue. The journey from cold isolation to a quiet glowing kind of rapture is reflected in Gladstone's subtly engaging performance and, no less effectively, through seemingly random glimpses of people and places Tana encounters, sometimes directly, sometimes not.
Writer-director Morissa Maltz, a documentary filmmaker most of the time, here mixes scripted material with clips from cinema vérité-style footage. The wedding scene is an actual ceremony involving a Sioux couple who had already been chosen as Tana's friends. (The bride, Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, also shares screenwriting credits with Maltz and Gladstone). And several minor characters are portrayed through moments from Maltz's documentary encounters with the real people.
Sam Now Sam and Reed Harkness are brothers, but with different mothers. Beginning in childhood, while raised by their father with no mother present, the two boys begin making home movies together, with Sam sometimes playing a fantasy hero called the Blue Panther. Reid, the older of the two, will become a documentary filmmaker as an adult, but before that the two had the idea of making a film about their search for Sam's mother, a beloved lady who one day left the whole family and there has been no news since.
Sam Now, which the grown-up Reed co-directed with Sam, is the resulting film, with footage from two decades of their lives depicting that search and more. As the title suggests, the film is a portrait of Sam, a young man dealing with the trauma and mystery of maternal abandonment. But the portrait extends much further—to Sam's mother Jois, certainly, but also to Reed's mother. to their two other brothers, including Jois's other son, Jared; to their sad but resilient father, who gradually warms to their duty as well. and, implicitly, to Reed himself. Excellent editing of personal footage from various eras and sources Sam Now an even more exciting cinematic experience.
