Michael Greyeyes

40 Acres

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A silhouetted figure with an assult rifle

Prepping for the apocalypse seems to be mostly a white thing. 40 Acres rebalances things a touch. A paranoid survivalist drama set in a world where the “animal biosphere” has been killed off by a pandemic, and a civil war has further screwed things up, most of it plays out in a compound where a non-white family headed by Danielle Deadwyler’s Hailey and Michael Greyeyes’s Galen try to put some some semblance of life back together while fending off attacks from beyond the stockade perimeter. That “40 Acres” alerts us that something racial going on here. It’s a reference to the 40 acres and a mule promised to freed slaves during the American … Read more

Wild Indian

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Makwa as the grown-up Michael

Wild Indian starts out looking like it’s going to be a film about a troubled kid, abused at home, struggling at school, who suddenly takes matters into his own hands and does something heinous. It turns out to be a film about the two grown-ups involved in that heinous event – the guy who did it, and the friend who was there when it happened. We first meet Makwa (Phoenix Wilson) and Ted-o (Julian Gopal), a pair of Native American kids cusping on puberty. Makwa isn’t having too good a time of it – beaten at home, bullied at school, unable to get the girl he fancies – and in a moment of … Read more