Ok, positives up front. Frances McDormand: great. As someone who grew up in Missouri, Ugh. Hard to swallow. Full of grotesque sterotypes and gratuitous violence. I couldn't figure out why it didn't feel at all like Missouri to me. Then saw that they filmed it in North Carolina neare Asheville! Didn't even bother to travel two states over to give it the real feel. Just gave everyone southern accents and affects, not necessarily Missouri accents, made every man but the advertiser a violent jerk. Everyone says fuck every third word. Not quite like the Missouri I know full of walmarts and fallen buildings and churches (NOT catholic). The mother of Woody had some authenticity. The "people of color" were sophisticates, completely and utterly urban and out of place. The wife of the sherrif had...a British accents?! Really? FYI...authenticity alert...there are no restaurants with white tablecloths and wine in my town or anywhere near if you don't go to college towns or cities.

What I guess bothers me about it is that there are so, so many projections on the American midwest now that no one really cares to go and see...you know what is really there. Even if they make a movie about the place they don't go! Missouri is a fiction here. One of male violence, racism and western vigilanteism. And that just doesn't feel right. Where is the picture of that very active grief that is the American midwest, black and white? Ok, so I guess it fell a bit short as a cultural piece for me in sum.