Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's easy to make a film like this go wrong, with all of the potential possibilities to be lazy and write these characters and stereotypes. Of course, the film doesn't do that and it's because Chloe Zhao has a real knack for creating profound humanity through the images that represent this type of life, humanity that she infuses her characters with. This is a very special film and this is a director to watch out for.

I enjoyed the film, a contemporary portrait of growing up and coming of age in America in a very different setting and culture than most. Early on, the movie gave me the distinct feeling of watching a documentary rather than a fiction with rehearsed actors. Images tell the stories as much as the dialog, which is very spare. The characters seem very real, as real as their scruffy surroundings. A worthwhile portrait of a part of society most of us won't see, "really" see. The Badlands scenery is very stark and so are (most) of the lives depicted. It's interesting that I saw this film in a contemporary arts center, where it played for two nights. It seems films like this struggle to get on enough screens in enough places to get noticed much. Maybe some people will get to see in on video, I hope.

First-time writer-director Choe Zhao is now making the rounds on the indie circuit (garnering a couple of Spirit Award Nominations along the way), with the intriguing Songs My Brothers Taught Me. Somehow she was able to befriend denizens of the insular Pine Ridge Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota and fashioned a coming of age story with members of the local population taking on most of the acting roles.One is struck immediately by the urban influence on the reservation, particularly rap music, which most of the kids and teenagers appear to enjoy profusely. There is of course the sad influence of alcohol which contributes to the overall depressing atmosphere on the reservation--but at the same time, the people there have not given up the Native American customs, which constantly remind them of their ancestors and what was once an intimate connection to the land.John Reddy plays Johnny Winters, a high school senior, who plans on leaving the reservation and seeking his fortune in Los Angeles after he graduates. He lives in a small house with his mother and sister Jashaun. Johnny's father, a man who fathered 25 children from nine women, is not close with Johnny and Jashaun—and early on he's killed in a fire at his home. Community members pay tribute to their fallen neighbor but Johnny doesn't appear to get overly emotional about his father's death.Johnny works for Bill, illegally selling alcohol on the reservation so that he can save enough money to follow his girlfriend, Aurelia, who plans to attend college in California. Bill has a non-native Caucasian girlfriend who expresses a sexual interest in Johnny at one point, but nothing comes of it. Meanwhile, Jashaun is perhaps looking for a father figure and finds one in distant relative Travis, a tattoo and clothing designer who she bonds with. I also shouldn't forget that Johnny's older brother is incarcerated in state prison and both the mother and kids periodically visit him.Zhao's narrative is extremely slow-moving and the characters are virtually all low-key. One has to wonder whether this film could have been better as a documentary. The exciting moments here are really few and far between. Things do perk up a bit when we see Johnny's dream of becoming a boxer shattered when he's pummeled mercilessly during a sparring session with a far superior pugilist. And then there's a moment of violence when tribal gang members beat Johnny up and set his truck on fire in retaliation for an earlier confrontation in which they felt he had "dissed" them.The film closes, suggesting (I think) that Johnny wasn't ready quite yet to leave the reservation. There's a great contrast with Johnny furiously riding a horse with his friends to the next scene where he's talking on his cellphone. In his final narration we see scenes of rodeo and boxing juxtaposed with a traditional Native American ceremony. Johnny notes that his sister has more of an affinity for the traditional culture than he does. Ms. Zhao has done well allowing us a glimpse of this insular world—I just wish there was more of a well developed plot to go along with it.

The director, Chloe Zaho said she's hoping "for the audiences to leave the theater feeling that they have gotten to know a group of very complex characters and to have a glimpse into just how diverse and vivacious the Lakota people of Pine Ridge really are, instead of the two dimensional stereotypes we often see represented in today's dominant culture". Well, it's a success.This movie spoke to me of love and care. Of family - in the most broader sense that this big concept can be stretched to - and belonging. Of home and community. There's something real sweet about it... A real tenderness in the way it is filmed, in the way these characters' stories are told. Some sort of hope in the face of the disappointments and obstacles they may and do encounter. A hope that lies in the love and care of the siblings, Jashaun & Johnny for one another and, more broadly, in the bound the people of Pine Ridge have to each other - and for some to the land itself.