There are many messages that I remember the first time I saw “Dances with Wolves” that was released in 1990. The most thing I remember was that Dances with Wolves could be one of the best anti-war movies ever made. The story is about a soldier during the Civil war who deserts his unit after being wounded and almost losing his leg. After leaving his unit and living alone in the wilderness, he eventually befriends a local tribe of Indians and over a long period of time, he becomes part of their tribe and eventually part of their family. For me, the best message from this movie was that once you strip away the insanity of war, and being a soldier in an army with the singular goal of killing the enemy, what remains is humanity and how human beings relate to each other as people.

Dances with Wolves was a great movie for many reasons and won for best picture and also won 6 other Oscars, including best Director for Kevin Costner. Most of the movie was filmed on location in South Dakota, mainly on private ranches near Pierre and Rapid City, with a few scenes filmed in Wyoming. Specific locations included the Badlands National Park, the Black Hills, the Sage Creek Wilderness Area, and the Belle Fourche River area. The bison hunt scenes were filmed at the Triple U Buffalo Ranch outside Fort Pierre, South Dakota, as were the Fort Sedgewick scenes, the set being constructed on the property. What I remember the most about this movie are the incredible vistas and cinematography of the midwestern parts of the United States. The story was so well told and compelling that I didn’t even realize that it was almost 3 hours long and in fact, the full version of this film is 4 hours long.

Dances with Wolves is another great example in movie history of a one hit wonder. As with the movies Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment, everybody involved with these great productions all hit a high note in their career and never made a movie even close to this good ever again. Kevin Costner won for best director and this film won for best picture and from there, he went on to make Waterworld and some other very average movies, proving once again that the movie industry is as tough as any profession there is. The movie viewing audience is fickle and creating a great screenplay like Dancing with Wolves should be considered nothing less than a miracle.

It has been almost 30 years since Dancing with Wolves has been released and for all who are reading this movie blog and have not seen this great film, it gets my highest recommendation.

There have been understandably thousands of movies made about World War 2, mainly because it is the most compelling and most important story in human history. World War 2 is a 6 year period of human history that was easily the worst in terms of the destruction of so many cities and the death of so many hundreds of millions of people. World War 2 demonstrated the worst that humanity has ever shown and that there is no measurable lower limit to the atrocities people can inflict on other people. One could probably argue that of all the many thousands of World War 2 movies, that “The Zookeepers Wife” is the first film that involves the owners of a Zoo in Warsaw Poland; Jan and Antonina Zabinski, played by Jessica Chastain. Just like the rest of Poland on September 1, 1939, the Warsaw Zoo was bombed during the German invasion. I thought that during this invasion, this film did a very good job at showing the injuries and death of some of the animals while not actually showing the actual killing in any sort of gory or unnecessary detail. Animals just like all life during this time had to pay a price for the worst time in human history.

Where this movie fails is that it was not different enough or unique enough for me to be that memorable. While this is a true story, we have all seen the War movies where people are being hidden from the Germans and rescued from certain death and evil German officers who indiscriminately kill people and as in this movie, even innocent animals in a Zoo. There are also problems with continuity where Antonina is suddenly giving birth and we never even knew that she was pregnant, almost as if a major mistake was made while film editing. This also happens in few other areas of the film, although not as glaring as this obvious error. There is another Zookeeper from Berlin, who eventually becomes the German officer and villain in this story, but he is not nearly as bad as so many evil German officers have been in so many other World War 2 movies. I thought that this was another problem with this film because there was not enough conflict with the Zookeeper’s wife and her husband and this German officer, that might have made the story more memorable.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty average and run of the mill World War 2 movie so I only give it a very mild recommendation.

The subject of the new series “Crashing” on HBO is about what a person really faces when they want to go into show business and into probably the toughest art form there is; stand-up comedy. We all see the few who succeed and make millions of dollars through TV shows, movies and stand-up specials. We all know about the Kevin Hart’s, Amy Schumer’s and Jerry Seinfeld’s who have made it big and have the life far beyond what they probably thought was ever possible. However, we don’t hear about the thousands who struggle for years and are forever poor and suffer and never make it. The show Crashing portrays some of this nightmare life but tries to make it funny which is a difficult thing to do considering what people who decide to choose this kind of life have to live through.

The story behind Crashing is about a man, played by Pete Holmes, who has the desire to do stand-up, is married and being supported by his wife. One day he catches her having an affair with another man and the marriage immediately ends and then he has to find couches to sleep on with the different people he meets while trying to make it in New York City comedy clubs. As Amy Schumer mentioned in her book, the reality of anyone starting in stand-up clubs in New York City is that you have to go out and hand out fliers and if you get a defined amount of people to attend the comedy show, maybe you can get some time on stage. This time on stage may or may not include even an audience and very often the comedy club is a very low paying flop house. This aspect of the stark reality and the paying of dues is very well done in Crashing as well as Pete Holmes almost having to beg for a couch to sleep on just about every night.

The lead actor and creator of Crashing is Pete Holmes who has been a stand up for a number of years and even has his own YOUTUBE channel. He is a good stand-up comedian, mostly unknown and he would know as well as anyone, how hard it is to make it as a comedian, and more importantly the extreme gamble you are making with your entire life, the point being is that if you are 40 and have tried to make it for 15 years, and it doesn’t work out, what do you do? What is your skill? How can you possibly make a living after 15 years of traveling the country and barely surviving?  I have always thought that this life should be the subject of a movie that shows what is really like for so many people who think they are funny and just have to try this risky life gamble.  I recommend the Amy Schumer  book “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”, because she mentions some of the struggles she went through in stand-up comedy that included after finishing 4th on the TV show last comic standing, then going on a bus tour and bombing in 90% of her performances during that tour. Early in her career, even Schumer had to pass out fliers in the hope of maybe getting some time on stage.  On top of everything you are risking and the inevitable bad times, the bottom line is that stand-up comedy is an extremely difficult art form to master.

I highly recommend the HBO series Crashing, which will have its season finale this Sunday.