After reading and reviewing the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry in July 2026, I learned that there was a TV miniseries made after the movie in 1989.

Above are Gus on the left (Robert Duvall) and Call on the right (Tommy Lee Jones). The series is comprised of four movies of 90 minutes each. Other notable actors, who were not as notable yet back in 1989, are Danny Glover as Deets – a perfect casting, and Steve Buscemi as Luke, and Chris Cooper as July Johnson.

The script follows the book very closely, sometimes to minute details. Of course, it leaves out much depth. After all, the first edition of Lonesome Dove was 840 pages. All that detail can’t be crammed into a 360 minute miniseries.

I very much enjoyed the visuals the movies  provided to round out my imagination concerning the characters. When I eventually read Lonesome Dove again, I won’t be able to think of Gus and Call without thinking of Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

If you read the book, you will enjoy the miniseries.

Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) was a single father of a very young girl in 1933, four years into the Great Depression. He had no job, he lost his apartment, and in the desperate struggle to find a roof over their heads he was attacked by thugs and eventually arrested and hauled off to a hard labor camp in the back county of Oregon. Knowing that his daughter, in the custody of the state, would soon be adopted away from him, he was desperate.

When widespread bank failures during the depression made people lose trust in paper money and hoard gold, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933. It required U.S. citizens to surrender their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve for $20.67 per ounce, in an effort to control the economy by removing gold out of private hands. After the seizure, the price of hold was raised to $35.00 per ounce.

There were many gold mines in Oregon, and people tried to steal or smuggle gold away before the government could take it from them.

Murphy and several of his companion inmates were coerced into smuggling a fortune in gold from one mine across impenetrable wilderness in rural Oregon. With fortunes of gold in their backpacks, and lawlessness all around them, things quickly got out of hand.

The Weight has a powerful soundtrack. Sometimes it was not music, but just loud noise to create tension and pressure. The music and noise were so loud, I wished I had brought my earplugs (which I use at every concert). Loud it was, but it was also immersive and intensive and it helped the movie. I walked out in a daze, glad I didn’t have to live through the Great Depression, aware of the fragility of our economic system, empathetic to the love of a father for his daughter and the length to which he will go to save her. The movie left me stunned for a while, not sure what to think of it.

My wife gave it two stars, I am upping it a bit.

 

I read the book Remarkably Bright Creatures a couple of years ago and here was my review. As it often is with movies based on successful books, the story becomes more shallow and big sections of plot are bypassed. However, the visuals sometimes enhance the experience. So it is with this movie.

The story is told from the viewpoint of an octopus named Marcellus, who was rescued after an injury some 4 years earlier and has lived most of his life in a tank in an aquarium in the Pacific Northwest. Marcellus observes the humans who visit him, and he befriends the cleaning lady Tuva (Sally Field).  While he philosophizes about his own life, he also observes the humans in his orbit, recognizes their misery, and plots to help them. That’s a pretty challenging task for an octopus that is about as close to humans as a space alien would be.

In the end, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a feel-good movie that draws out a few tears at the end and makes us feel good about the simple things in life, like a picnic in the yard, surrounded by good friends, neighbors and family.

And as I am wont to do, I will put in my English language lesson: The English plural of octopus is octopodes, often also octopuses, not “octopi” which we often read. The word comes from Greek, and the original plural form is actually “octopodes.” The Latin word for “octopus” is actually “polypus.” There is no “i” in any form of octopus.

I have written a lot about octopodes in this blog. Put the word “octopus” into the Seach box and see for yourself.

2.5

A drug enforcement unit of the Miami police conducts a raid on what they expect to be a routine drug stash house. The two leaders are Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and Detective Sergeant J.D. Bryne (Ben Affleck). The two are good friends and have relied on each other for many years in the force. During the raid, they discover not just a stash of drugs and some cash, they uncover a hidden cache of millions of dollars of cartel money.

With so much money in play, greed, paranoia and conflicting loyalties quickly permeate the team, and spill over to other units. Everyone start mistrusting everyone else and the group quickly fractures. Even the two friends start losing trust in each other.

The Rip is a movie about cops, all kinds of cops. Local Miami police, drug enforcement cops, FBI, the federal DEA, you name it, they are in this movie. The cops are the good guys, and the bad guys, all at the same time. This is a gritty crime thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The story has holes in it, the script is somewhat confusing at times, but the action is riveting and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck definitely carry the movie – from the first minute to the last.

Sarah Rector is an 11-year-old black girl born in the Oklahoma Indian Territory in the early 1900, when the oil barons ruled. Due to her heritage, she gets a land grant. While most such land grants are useless to the recipients, Sarah has a hunch that there is oil on her land.

She is smart, educated and courageous. First she has to convince her parents that she wants to find oil. Then she has to find partners who help her drill for it. It’s not an easy undertaking for a young girl, and many wolves and sharks try to swindle her out of her property. Eventually, when they are not successful, they start to threaten crimes. But she prevails, and at age 11 she becomes a millionaire and gets fame as “the richest colored girl in the world.”

Supposedly this movie is based on a true story. Much of the way her life is portrayed in the movie is dramatization, but the core elements are true. The real Sarah did move to Kansas City and lived a wealthy life. But this is not told in the movie: she lost much of her wealth again in the Great Depression.

This is a feel-good movie where we see the underdog prevail, and deservedly so.

 

Sometimes my wife takes me on a “blind movie date.” I went to see East of Wall last weekend without knowing anything about the movie or even its title. She walked me into the theater with my eyes closed.

Wall is a town in South Dakota off of I-90. In 1978, I drove west on I-90 across the country and I remember seeing billboards for “Wall Drug” for hundreds of miles, like “Have You Dug Wall Drug” and the like. After such a billboard every 20 or 30 miles, literally for hundreds of miles, once you get to Wall, you HAVE TO stop and see what it’s all about.

I just googled it, and here is a street view picture today:

Even 50 years ago, it looked like this, and after all the hype of the anticipation, built over two days of driving, at the end it was just a drug store with a cafe, gift shop and other touristy stuff.  But hey, it worked. I went to Wall, South Dakota, I stopped at Wall Drug, I don’t know what I bought, if anything, but I am writing about it almost 50 years later in a movie review. The campaign obviously worked.

East of Wall plays on a ranch in the South Dakota Badlands, well, east of Wall. Tabatha Zimiga is a young, tattooed woman with a bunch of teenagers, some of her own, and some wayward ones whom she has taken in to live with her, mostly girls. Her fiancé, John, tragically died by suicide a few years before, just after their youngest son was born. Tabatha had her first son when she was 16, followed by a daughter, Porshia, when she was 18. She herself was a child of a teenage mom. Her mom still lives with her on her broken down ranch. She struggles to make ends meet.

Tabatha is somewhat of a horse whisperer. She knows horses, and the runs a horse rescue ranch, training the horses, having her teenage girls exhibition-ride them at auctions, and selling them via TikTok. Her oldest daughter, Porshia, is her star rider. She has won many riding competitions, and all her siblings and step siblings look up to her as their star.

In comes a rich cowboy from Texas who wants to buy her ranch and spruce it up to make it successful. Will his ways work and will Tabatha fall for him?

As I watched East of Wall for the first 30 minutes, I didn’t know what to make of it. There were a lot of clips from smartphones ready for TikTok, of teenagers riding horses. There were teenagers hanging out doing not much of anything on the junk-strewn ranch. There were shots of rodeos and horse auctions. There were a bunch of women smoking and cussing and hanging around.

It turns out, East of Wall is played mostly by non-actors playing themselves. Tabatha Zimiga is playing herself in her own life on her own ranch. Porshia Zimiga is Tabatha’s real-life daughter. The teenagers hanging out at the ranch are the real teenagers the real Tabatha has taken in to raise along with her own.

East of Wall is a living testament to healing through grit. It shows how Tabatha and her ranch became a sanctuary amid grief, hopelessness and despair, both for young people and for horses. It portrays an unconventional family, a home built on mentorship and trust, freedom and life itself. The horses become symbols of strength and loyalty. East of Wall is a Western, but focused on women, on community and on emotion.