News of the World

Movie: News of the World
Nominated for: Production Design, Cinematography, Achievement in Sound, Original Score
How I watched: VOD
When I fell asleep: No sleeping
When it had me: News Reader? I want to do that!
When it lost me: It's hard watching white supremacy play out
What I have to say:  

First, I'm not a fan of westerns. It feels like every western has some leering, skeevy white creeper who says things like, "well, well, well, what have we here?" and then there is literally no one to stop that bad guy and you basically have to run across the desert to escape him. Ugh. I'm sick of that. This movie had that, too, but I made it through anyway. 

Tom Hanks plays a man who travels from town to town reading newspapers to townsfolk. A pre-television news anchor, of sorts. I thought that was a cool job! This film takes place after the Civil War and brings to life all the resentments of the people of the South, racist and otherwise. It's weird to see that a lot of those resentments are still being played out in our political reality today. 

The acting was solid, of course. I became way more invested in the presentation of ever-increasingly dire and miserable circumstance than I thought I would. I know some people love the whole "wild west" vibe and sort of wish we could return to that. I suspect those people grossly over-estimate their ability to survive. The whole thing looks unbearable to me.

The story felt fairly predictable and Tom Hanks was very Tom Hanks-ish. For me, this was a solid work horse of a film. I had no complaints but it didn't light up my brain in any notable ways, either.