city thing welcome to another edition of a fistful of popcorn i'm janet stern i am tonight's moderator and i'm thrilled to be joined by two of our regular panelists marilyn campbell and bob brown tonight we'll be discussing two films that are currently playing at least in our area two very very different films one is called wind river this is taylor's sheridan follow up to hell or highwater which we discussed last year this time he's the writer and director not just the writer and the other film is another follow up it is the trip to spain with steve coogan and rob brighton and that follows on trip to italy and the trip so we're going to discuss them separately and i think we'll do wind river first marilyn would you like to give a summary of your wind river takes place american woman who's a friend of his daughter so he goes back and reports that and a f b i agent comes from los vegas to take care of the case and has something to do and i'm sure i missed some of the details about the fact that the that the body was discovered on an indian reservation so that the minister paudie does not have jurisdiction and  vocal tribal police police don't have jurisdiction over murders so the f b i does so she comes to take care of the case and jeremy renner decides grammar remender writer decides to help her out or she asked him to help her out because he's very familiar with the area and she is not at all familiar with the area she's that regular you know young person from the outside coming in and who needs instruction in all of the ins and outs of this very very demanding environment it's this is by the way deep winter which was interesting that it was released in the summer because it was really a cooling off for him she said in the movie this is spring hasn't anyone told us it was actually spring but it's like winter right so they investigate the death of this young woman  and eventually discover why thanks marilyn i think when we were discussing hell or highwater we talked about the fact that the film seemed almost like a western but w approach i think would be an approach that seemed to me very much the same and i applied it a little bit in my summary was the importance of the environment and this movie the environment knowing how to live within its environment is a life or was part of the story and the i mean it's definitely part of the story yes this is a an issue film and you get see by the last credits and i think i heard a little bit of an interview  about the issue of women who go missing on reservations and there's no accounting there's no record keeping of these things which is kind of shocking to think about that human beings would be just sort of discarded fan because there's no system the other thing about this it's a modern western in terms of the fact that there are two three actually different policing systems you've got the reservation you've got the feds and you've got the local sheriff and they all have territorial issues there's a series which i think fourth actually because when there is there's that drilling operation yes and the drilling anybody met with these guys could anyway i'm just there's a series of this is very much like long my who don't know if you've ever seen that i actually think that treats that issue a little more in depth than this film did at its short jeremy renner and so in a way it's sort of stereotyping casting for her to be i went back to the battles or to hide the ears i looked at a clip today for the show a little and i watched jeremy renner telling her about something that happens with the lungs in theory the whole weather which we're going to hear when she's looking at him you get really profoundly get the feeling that she's learning i think she did that very well so initially i was jolted by her fullness and but of course it may have been a little overdone that she was so she was sort of innocent not naive but innocent but she really learned she wanted to learn and she did learn and what i was going to ask you both is and it relates to all of the the major characters marilyn you kind of alluded to it when you said that this is this environment is do or die know you don't know how to survive it you're not going to survive it but each person in the film had a strength which they kind of impressed on the others and they want the same strengths jeremy renner as character excuse me continually mentions that he's a hunter he's downplaying what his skills are but we can see throughout the film that his skills are incredible the young girl whose body  especially at the end is exalted into what her particular strengths were and there are martin luther father of the young girl it's really in durance but there is a moment when in a very tense moment when the f b i agent takes control and she does it very well and each she she saves she saves the situation so she has had she has some kind of training i disagree but in terms of the plot but in terms of the the acting i wouldn't agree with you and i actually bob me bob alluded to something earlier before the show started about having certain problems with this film i had a big problem with this film which is that another film about american indians where the two major characters are white people indians are supporting players and i i saw in the critics that this film was partially funded by an indian tribe which i think is great if they're going to make any profits and i did this story i think that's super and i think probably taylor sheridan has his heart in the right place but the movie is constructed the way certain critics have to have coughed about the magic negro in films where  like like ghost where the black person comes in and and is as is this sort of magic character in this film the indians are interests sort of a way of magical and they're not developed or examined i characterize it would have been way on girl what about her i thought she was very developed in about ten minutes well yeah but i mean really we don't have except as a dead body you know and i just know it's just it's just another film that supposedly about native americans where the native americans are marginalized if you ask me you see i didn't think that at all well because i did not it great i didn't think it was a film about me to my own well or right i thought it was a film about the fact that white people had absolutely no idea about the about native american life  that's what i thought it was about and that made me very sad to see this because i did not see these cultures ever come being forced to come together to understand each other to to have respect for each other that the injustices done to the native americans are going to continue forever that's what i saw i didn't see this as a film about native americans well i think that it's been it i think that that may be a problem that that's the reason you don't see it as it as a problem in the film and i see it as an problem in the film i and part where they say that the disappearance and presumed death of of native american women is a huge problem comes out of nowhere it's not really discussed in the film in any meaningful way the film the film concentrates on the relationship this his ex wife but he was married to a woman who is belongs to this tribe that lives in this area and has a daughter and a son who are half white half native american and one who is the post in be in the movie in terms of that misty of the person who can track where no one can track before who's a dead shot who you know can read the they're focusing in other words the i i'm sure that the the indians in that part of new just as much about tracking in the snow as he did it just happens that he was this the star which just happen the issue is supposedly violence against women in on on reservations and the indian characters are marginalized i didn't feel that way i thought that era for example was extremely prepossessing can you play he's a great range of characteristics he just happens to be a native american he's a very good actor well so what were your problems well they were largely marilyn's as well but besides the fact that i thought  ms olson was not the right i like the idea of a tenderfoot but she was just too sexy and too unbelievable as a tenderfoot to throw in there i think that well he does the share of it was his share of family i don't know if he shared that he was as the tribal tribal he does say head of the tribal but we have several of them saying look what they gave us and i thought that you know they had to be someone who was somewhat diminished in their mind a view i mean maybe she didn't have to be that diminished but didn't have that sort of issue involved i wonder if taylor sheridan it's tends to want us to believe that there are times when binge vigilanteism is ok because it's came in both i haven't seen  other two movies the law enforcement industry gets a really really bad rap because it's about drug smuggling along the southern border and the corruption on both sides of the border is the main focus of that movie is that if you put that in that vigilante is what's his face that the the p young woman who is zero in overhead and and he you know does what he wants to do so is that is that what chairman is saying go ahead and do it and he probably would have voted for  a different sort of thing entirely i don't i wouldn't put him out in the middle of the desert and expect him to survive but i think that that that what this movie and then the trip to italy before this this is just an extension of that and the fun in this film is watching two guys who are really clever and have a great rapport and report today and are great at ad libbing and also mimics i mean they're super mimics it some of those are just devastatingly funny it can wear a little bit thin toward the end and it sort of drifts off at the end into a story that how did that exactly fit  but just watching them together i just i'm always amazed they take this trip a stance of belief or rob bryden to review restaurants in spain and they go to these fabulous restaurants in these wonderful location that's the whole point is the two interacting well i've read some really horrible horrific you say that this is one of them was so completely dimwitted that it's not even worth going into it it's like i didn't get to see spain and all that kind of spain yeah anyway but you know i kind of took issue with that because with these bad reviews because i thought none of the in no case is did they make the film you wanted them to make certain certain things that come up as problems you know when an actor or anyone really hits fifty that is maybe the sex life is not what it used to be maybe your career is stalling maybe you know you're if you have to deal with with with problems with your growing children and that those aren't developed and then i kind of agree with you because those were interesting moment those were when they when especially steve coogan has these moments where he reveals it and of course this is fictional and maybe  fictionalized but it's still fictional that this short of nastiness at the base of his character and i found that nastiness rather interesting and i read like they're seeing more of it but it just collides path that we've seen so many is you see that as this sort of glib person he sees that everyone who becomes as pregnancy in their realm is becoming responsible and they can't make the trip yeah because their response and then leaving him to have to fight off this fear of getting older by himself right among humans and i thought ted did those injections were just enough just because i didn't want it to be melodramatic i didn't want that these are good people who don't necessarily go deeply could the movie been made without their actually going to food what would they be doing never happened because it seemed like that was the direction it was going to raise you know he was just not at the end by the end of the trip people as not having fun and there is a running joke about the drinking which is that the waiters right well i just got the impression that the reason there was a little focus on the food is because once again they really don't they're not that interested in anything but themselves you know that you know the first trip i think was that it was us just it was just revealing to all of us because we didn't know food was that good in england that was really the thing the shock was that there is that fantastic restaurant in the northern part of being they actually did talk more about the food they did they did they definitely do that's going to do more but now you're seeing them the while driven winter a very sorry and for reasons i've said not that it's a bad film but it just i was expecting more because the first film which i was just blown away by so that was my reaction to that  have to say i wish i went because i read the reviews i went to a trip to spain expecting it to be really bad and i was personally seen yeah it was it was more enjoyable and it got a little long to the end  i can't not say it was well done it was it was intriguing it was interesting that the characters the white characters were were were well acted i thought and  gripping film really i was just disappointed that yet again a film that supposedly about indians was not about indians and and and that the indian role was overtaken by  heterosexual white male and he is that yes i'd like to wind river also as much as i like tell hell or highwater because i like these regions i'll never go there and not at that time of year a but you know i would i do find it that's one of the great things about sentiment so trite but you do have these worlds open to you and trip to spain they agree with you exactly i was expecting the worst in that left me head off and i'll follow those guys anywhere and i hope you follow