Sheridan wanted to make sure Wind River’s message stayed intact
The Weinstein Company
Speaking to Interview Magazine about the film in 2017, Sheridan recalled that he always had his eye on “Wind River” being his true feature debut as a director (even though he’d called the shots on a horror movie years earlier), if only because he wanted to ensure the film’s sensitive subject matter was addressed in an appropriate way. “I always knew that this one I would direct. I would rather it not get made than be made with another director,” he explained.
The message that resonates throughout the film is just how much Native American women are overlooked when it comes to missing person cases. As the film rightfully states in its final moments, “While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.” It was this detail, along with the modern Native American reservation culture as a whole, that Sheridan was determined to highlight. As he noted:
“There are countless directors better than me — this is the first time I’ve done this at this scale — but I knew that if I did it, it would be done exactly the way I promised friends of mine on the res it would be done and that the vision wouldn’t be diluted and the message wouldn’t change. That was more important to me.”
That dedication shines through in a film that earned critical acclaim and enough at the box office to even warrant a sequel. It’s also that level of authenticity that has continued into the “Yellowstone” saga, a world of Sheridan’s own making where he’s rightly permitted to call the shots himself.
by admin | Jul 1, 2025 | Articles, Hollywood Reporter Articles
In a career spanning 37 years and over 50 features, there have been few instances when Aamir Khan has been outshined in a film. His acting prowess, enduring stardom and usually impeccable creative instincts have held him in good stead. But in Sitaare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth), the actor-producer becomes a second lead to a group of spunky, neurodivergent, mostly debutant actors who steal every scene they are in.
Casting directors Tess Joseph and Anmol Ahuja have done a superb job, and Ashish Pendse as Sunil, Aroush Datta as Satbir, Aayush Bhansali as Lotus, Rishi Shahani as Sharma Ji, Gopi Krishnan K Verma as Guddu, Rishabh Jain as Raju, Vedant Sharma as Bantu, Samvit Desai as Kareem, Naman Misra as Hargovind and Simran Mangeshkar as Golu — a player whose preferred strategy in competitive situations is kicking her opponent between the legs — are all pitch perfect, yet individually distinctive. This is a group of smart, resilient and cheerfully irreverent people who definitely don’t want your pity. One of my favorite moments in the film is an exchange between two of them about a girlfriend who happens to be a sex worker. As the film’s tagline says, “Sabka apna apna normal hai” (“everyone has their own normal”).
Sitaare Zameen Par
The Bottom Line
Heavy-handed but winsome.
Release date: Friday, June 20
Cast: Aamir Khan, Genelia Deshmukh, Ashish Pendse, Aroush Datta, Aayush Bhansali, Rishi Shahani, Gopi Krishnan K Verma, Rishabh Jain, Vedant Sharma, Simran Mangeshkar, Samvit Desai, Naman Misra, Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari, Gurpal Singh, Bijendra Kala
Director: R.S. Prasanna
Screenwriter: Divy Nidhi Sharma
2 hours 35 minutes
Remaking the 2018 Spanish movie Champions, director R. S. Prasanna and writer Divy Nidhi Sharma replay the beats and lines almost exactly. But there is a new scene in the second half in which Gulshan (Khan) tries to process a situation with his mother, Preeto (Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari), and what Prasanna and Divy Nidhi Sharma have added is so sparkling that I wish they had recreated the earlier movie with more abandon.
Sitaare Zameen Par tells the story of a prickly, unlikable basketball coach who after a DUI is ordered by a judge to train neurodivergent adults as community service, rather than go to jail. Gulshan’s life is already a mess. He has lost his job and separated from his wife and is living with Preeto, played by Tewari with the right touch of affection and exasperation. He’s an insensitive, rude man who in the beginning refers to his players as pagals (mad), arguing, “What is the meaning of this — that you can’t call mad people mad?”
Gulshan is the exact opposite of Ram Shankar Nikumbh, the compassionate, caring teacher that Khan played in 2007’s Taare Zameen Par in 2007; if Gulshan and Nimbukh met, they would barely be able to make conversation. But slowly, Gulshan changes — as one of the players says, “We are coaching him.” By the end of the film, he comes to understand that he was never the teacher, and that the people he had considered inferior were in fact always ahead of him. Like Rocky Randhawa in Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (Rocky and Rani’s Love Story), Gulshan comes to understand that the things we learned in childhood or imbibed from our environment aren’t necessarily right.
Prasanna, whose last film, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (Let the Marriage Be Fruitful), was about erectile dysfunction, has a talent for adding lightness and wit to complicated situations. There is an inherent generosity in his worldview, which is inclusive and positive and humane. Soaked in sweetness and life lessons, Sitaare Zameen Par is insistent on making us into better people by asking us to reconsider our definitions of normality and success. Winning in life, it reminds us, is about so much more than a competition.
But the moral high ground can get exhausting. One character, played by Kartar Paaji, has a role that is mostly explaining, expounding and underlining the central message. Ram Sampath’s background score does even more of this emphasizing. It’s almost as if Prasanna didn’t trust that we would get the messaging, so he keeps hammering it in again and again for over two and a half hours.
Keeping with that tonality, Khan pitches his performances a few notches higher than his counterpart Javier Gutiérrez’s in the Spanish original. Though his arched eyebrows, perpetual frown and exasperated hand gestures are a little more obvious, he makes it work. Genelia Deshmukh’s Sunita, Gulshan’s wife, isn’t well fleshed out, but she gets one scene in which she shines. And Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s effervescent title track adds buoyancy to the narrative.
Be warned that Sitaare Zameen Par isn’t a patch on Taare Zameen Par. That film shattered your soul with finesse and delicacy and then, magically, enabled you to heal again. This one, though a spiritual sequel, doesn’t possess the same artistry; it’s too on-the-nose and front-loaded with sentimentality. But it will put a smile on your face — and perhaps even nudge you to suspend judgment the next time you encounter someone who doesn’t fit your definition of normal.
by admin | Jul 1, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles
“Elio” is a flop, which sucks because the movie is actually rather fun. It’s got great alien designs, an entertaining story, and a Carl Sagan quote designed that will make you quite emotional about the possibilities and power of science while also just reminding you of one of the most fascinating minds to walk this planet in the last century.
Sure, it’s easy (and not unfair) to blame the marketing for the failure of “Elio” at the box office, combined with the competition from other, higher-profile films. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that this simply wasn’t Pixar’s best. What’s more, reports have surface that the movie suffered heavily behind-the-scenes, undergoing creative changes that resulted in a vastly different film hitting theaters than the one imagined by the project’s creator and original director.
An article by The Hollywood Reporter highlights the series of changes made to the film and its story, ranging from the erasure of its queer elements to the movie’s Latino representation being all but removed. This is also what led to voice actor America Ferrera and director Adrian Molina leaving the project, and reading the report, it’s hard not to be furious at how Pixar ruined what could have been a very special film (by turning it into one that’s just fine) because it was afraid of how the public would respond … yet no one bothered to see the movie anyway.
