Eleanor Reviews

*** DVD release/available to stream After a young Native American woman is found murdered in the snow, a veteran tracker and FBI agent team up to find those responsible. If you've seen the intense, atmospheric trailer for Wind River , you'll probably have experienced the same 'ooh, that looks good' feeling I did. However, be warned - the two or so minutes of the trailer are far better than watching the film itself, which actually turned out to be wholly unremarkable. After the discovery of the girl's frozen body (guess what? She's been brutally raped too!) and the introduction of new-in-town FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen, doing her best with an underwritten role), the film settles into the cliches that we're all so used to, from tracker Cory's (Jeremy Renner) traumatic past, to the estranged son battling a drug problem and the wizened police chief who's 'too old for this shit'. In a strange and somewhat ridiculous

**** After months without answers as to who murdered her daughter, Mildred hires three billboards outside her home town of Ebbing, Missouri, in the hope of focusing the minds of the local police department on the case. What follows is a string of events that no one could have foreseen... Martin McDonagh is an exceptional screenwriter and storyteller. In his debut film, In Bruges , he transplanted two mismatched hitmen into the aforementioned city and allowed us to watch as the bizarre events unfolded. His follow up, Seven Psychopaths , was similarly outrageous, this time focusing around the kidnapping of a beloved pooch. In Three Billboards , the decision to apply questioning slogans upon a set of run-down signs sparks a dramatic fall out. Never one to shy away from an odd initial set up, what links McDonagh's films is his ability to fuse reprehensible characters with moments of shocking violence and laugh-out-loud dark humour in one seamless flick of his pen. Add th

**** Tasked with escorting a Cheyenne chief and his relatives across the rugged and brutal terrain to their homeland, legendary Army captain Joe Blocker sets out with a small cohort. On their perilous journey, the uneasy party meets the recently bereft Rosalie Quaid and a rogue sergeant charged with the brutal murder of a Native family. Described by some critics (and stated as such on the above poster!), Hostiles has been mis-categorised as a 'Western'. Yes, there are some elements of what you might expect to find in a classic Western herein, but Scott Cooper's latest is more existential journey than swaggering cowboys and extended shoot-outs. A meditation on the traumas of war and the brutalities of man, this deeply philosophical film ponders death, hatred, forgiveness and redemption, all set against the sweeping landscapes and dramatic skies of 1892 America. My point? If you're expecting lengthy action pieces and drawn out fight sequences, you may