Everyone knows the first thing a police officer is supposed to tell you during arrest, “You have the right to remain silent,” etc. The story of those “Miranda Rights” traces to the 1960s, and this film tells the forgotten story of the victim in Ernesto Miranda’s crime. In 1963, 18-year-old Patricia Weir is coming home from work late one night when she is grabbed by a man in a car, driven to a remote location, and raped. Shy and innocent from a sheltered upbringing, Trish can’t even accurately describe what happened to her. Her mother wants to hush it up and pretend it didn’t happen, afraid that no future husband will want Trish if she isn’t “pure,” but Trish’s older sister urges her to go the police. The police don’t do much to help rape victims in the 60s, but luckily Trish gets a resilient detective, who uses her description of the car to track down Ernesto. At the station under an hours-long interrogation, Ernesto confesses and is sentenced to prison, but later says that he was coerced. His appeal, where he states he never was told he could have a lawyer present, goes all the way to the Supreme Court, which rules that his confession must be thrown out due to not being told of his rights. Heartbroken that her rapist is set to go free, Trish has to put herself through a second trial, with little hope that Ernesto will be found guilty without a confession. The movie really makes you think who Miranda’s legacy is protecting: the truly innocent, or the guilty looking for get-out-of-jail-free cards. Strong acting from Abigail Breslin as Trish and a moving story all around. ★★★★★
You Resemble Me is a French film following a girl named Hasna. In the beginning, Hasna and her sister Mariam are inseparable, a bond forged through their terrible home life. Their father isn’t in the picture, and their mother only looks up from her stupor when she’s interested in something, leaving the kids to fend for themselves for food and comfort. 9-year-old Hasna and 7-year-old Mariam eventually end up running away together, but when picked up by the police, they are put in separate foster homes. Hasna cannot stay in hers, as the white family makes her straighten her dark, curly Arabic hair and forces her to eat pork (non-halal) food, so Hasna takes to the streets, where she is raped right away. After that horrific scene, we pick it up years later, but adult Hasna has not led an easy life. Craving something to believe in (and someone to believe in her), Hasna reaches out to her cousin Abdelhamid, who has become an ISIS terrorist. He lures her with promises of freedom, to fight for a cause, with paradise waiting at the end, but when she joins him, she finds it is not what was promised. The film is a fairly accurate portrayal of the 2015 Saint-Denis raid, where it was initially widely reported that Hasna was a suicide bomber. Directer Dina Amer was at the time a reporter for Vice News, and when it was later reported that Hasna was not the bomber but a victim herself, Amer felt horrible that she aided in spreading the initial narrative. She dove into the real story and made this film to tell Hasna’s life, about how society can fail someone to the point that being radicalized felt like her only escape. Tremendously touching and powerful film. ★★★★½
The Road Dance, based on a book, takes place in Scotland during World War I. In a tiny village of a dozen families out near the sea, Kirsty is the young lady every man covets, but she only has eyes for Murdo. Kirsty and Murdo share a love of literature and a dream for kicking the dust off their shoes and seeing the world. Murdo is currently on leave from fighting for England, though thankfully with his booksmarts, he has spent more time behind a typewriter than on the front. Home for now, he and Kirsty renew their promises to each other, but they will have to wait. The other 4 young men in town are conscripted, and they, along with Murdo, will be going to the front this time. To send off the young men, the town throws a Road Dance party, but what should be a joyous event turns to tragedy for Kirsty. When she wanders off alone, she is attacked and raped, but after taking a blow to the head during the attack, she cannot remember the man who did it. The next day, the doctor stitches up the gash on her head, and of course notices signs of her attack, but keeps her secret, knowing that (in that era) news of her rape would “ruin” her in public. The secret won’t be kept forever though: Kirsty is pregnant. As the months go by and she and Murdo continue to exchange letters, she keeps her secret from her mother and sister, wrapping her stomach tightly in towels and wearing long heavy coats as concealment. Everything will come to a head before long though, with ramifications for all. Absolutely incredible movie for the first hour-plus, solid 5 star territory for its picturesque landscape and engrossing acting from Hermione Corfield as Kirsty, but a big twist (which is heralded far too soon) comes off as too gimmicky, and the very last scene steals some of the anguish from the film. It’s too bad too, before all that fell apart, this was shaping up to be one of the best films I’d seen in awhile. ★★★½
Butcher’s Crossing’s main character is ostensibly Will Andrews, a young man who leaves Harvard in 1874 because he “wants to see the country,” but it really is the hunter named Miller, portrayed by Nicholas Cage, whose face is plastered all over the marketing materials. And honestly, that’s the only reason I watched it. Will leaves school and comes to a tiny bordertown in Kansas called Butcher’s Crossing and falls in with Miller on a buffalo hunt. For years, Miller has been trying to find a financier to fund his expedition into Colorado, where he says he has seen a herd of bison so thick that you can walk across the valley on their backs. No one believes him, so Miller has been scraping by in Butcher’s. The young, gullible Will is his meal ticket. Will breaks out the checkbook and he and Miller, along with a cook and a “skinner,” head out for Colorado. It is an arduous journey in the wild west, but the quartet does make it, and sure enough, there’s buffalo as far as the eye can see. They hunker down and get to work, but even when they’ve killed more than they can carry, and with winter coming fast, Miller refuses to leave until every animal is dead. Winter comes before they can leave, so they are forced to shelter until spring, with madness coming for more than one of them. Sounds exciting, but it mostly isn’t. Nicolas Cage is doing his Nicolas Cage-y thing, which sometimes works, but here it doesn’t, and the plot meanders along with no payoff in the end. For a supposedly wild western, it’s awfully tame. ★½
Dumb Money is one of those movies that is highly entertaining, but which will also get you riled up (unless you are a billionaire investor). It tells the famous story of the Gamestop short squeeze in 2021. Keith Gill is a middle class financial analyst who is tired of seeing stocks manipulated by hedge funds. He fondly remembers playing video games as a kid, and believes that Gamestop’s stock is purposefully being held down during the COVID pandemic, with hedge funds shorting it, expecting it to go lower. Keith has a small following on reddit and YouTube, and starts talking about his faith in Gamestop, sharing his beliefs about its true valuation and openly showing how much he is buying in (over $50,000, half of his net worth). His followers start buying in too, soaring the price in just days. All of these single investors start making money, from thousands to hundreds of thousands to, in the case of Keith, tens of millions. Meanwhile, the hedge funds obviously go the other direction, but they aren’t losing millions, they are losing BILLIONS. But they’ve got big government on their side, so if you aren’t angry by the end of this movie, then you probably fall in a higher tax bracket than me. A great movie about how the system is stacked against average-joe investors, with a great cast too (Paul Dano, Seth Rogan, Nick Offerman, Pete Davidson, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and others). ★★★½
- TV series recently watched: Fargo (season 5), The Artful Dodger (series), Mayor of Kingstown (season 2), Beef (season 1)
- Book currently reading: Dragons of a Fallen Sun by Weis & Hickman
Jons Movie Takes 