VividSimon Simply Perfect

Steineded How sad is this?

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The_Film_Auditor Mudbound is a film that doesn't pull the punches in showing the reality of racism in the post-World War II south. The realism that is put into this film makes me feel many emotions including sadness, anger, and even guilt. It is hard for me to believe that people could be so cruel and inconsiderate to someone just because they had different color skin. Racism was not the only thing covered in this film. Other subjects included PTSD, family, and gender roles.The technical aspects of the film were also well done. The Cinematography was beautiful and I thought the acting from Mary J. Blige, Garret Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, and Rob Morgan was great. I would definitely recommend this.Side note: I don't think I have ever hated a character more than the grandfather!

NikkoFranco I am born free, and we are all born free. Why do we form biases and why do we have to think ourselves superior than others because of the color of theirs and our skin, or because of having money and worldly possessions give some people a self-entitlement and think the lives of others don't matter? Sadly, slavery is a part of history and we can not hide the fact that even the present generation still bear some ignorance towards this subject. Set before the second world war in rural America, this is a film about two families, one White, the other black. Both families had sons who served and survived and coincidentally formed a friendship in a small town laden with folks who are members of the KKK. Needless to say, there are complications and later on a tragic event occurred . The opening scène is a flashback, the story unfolded then back to that moment of flashback crucial to the survival of those involved. Depressing and painful, but bear in mind, slavery is never a joking matter. Well acted and realistic shots, the viewer gets transported back in time. Sometimes dragging but worth watching.

TigerHeron This is the kind of movie people who read books love. Although the plot spans less than 10 years, it has an epic feel. Family relationships, racism, poverty and combat trauma are intertwined in the story of two families and the Deep South culture in which they live in the early to mid 1940s. A white land-owning family and a black tenant-farmer family are interdependent on each other, both poor, the black family only more so. Despite trauma and brutality (one scene is especially violent), the movie was not depressing. The reality of the dependence of farmers on the weather, the land and luck is a subtle theme in the background of this film about characters. The ironic experience of black soldiers who fought for a still-segregated home country returning to that culture is the films' dramatic crux. There are probably many historical lessons for younger people in this film.

secondtake Mudbound (2017) A beautifully filmed movie, and with an important if simple message of being good-and about not being racist. Set in the deep South, the movie has an entrenched racism that some would call a normal segregated world around the time of WWII. As the inequality (and brutality) of the times is driven home, suddenly the war comes along, and a white man and a black man are each sent to fight in different units. The rest of life continues (and it's all rather vivid and realistic). But when the two men come home and they realize the have in common the experience of the war, and that this trumps any racial hatred they had been brainwashed with, the story makes some dramatic and moving turns. The cinematography is by Academy Award nominee Rachel Morrison (the first woman ever nominated), and I actually think she should have won. (The winner in 2017 was the man who shot the new "Blade Runner" and for me the visuals were more to do with set design and special effects than actual photography. But that's me.) The style was a modified cinema verité, with some handheld camerawork and generally in the middle of things kind of shooting that really works. The acting is great throughout, including by the women who are main characters without being designated that way (the men are officially running the story). What sometimes holds the movie back is the simple and even predictable manner that the story is told. There is room here for more than the obvious and the dramatic (which you will see a lot of)-the nuances of character, and of motivation and meaning, are not exploited a bit. And that's what would have made it a great movie instead of merely a very good and well-intentioned movie. Director Dee Rees deserves due credit for pulling this off in a way that is important and sincere. I'm not sure how big her role was in the screenplay, but maybe someone needs to figure out how movies can really soar above the big themes that are shouting for attention and find the little nuances that make us really laugh and weep.