An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success

Posted on June 21, 2015 at 10:40 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	2015
Date Released to DVD:	June 22, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00TPL8DWW

“Grace Stirs Up Success” is the latest in the excellent “American Girl” series, all featuring spirited young heroines confronting real-life problems, and learning some important lessons. They always include a lot of fun and a loving family, too.

In this especially delicious entry, Grace (the darling Olivia Rodrigo) is a talented and hard-working young chef who loves to help out in her grandparents’ bakery. When her mother’s pregnant sister needs help, Grace and her mother go to Paris to stay with them and Grace gets to work in a real French pastry shop. She makes some big mistakes in the kitchen and outside, but she learns a lot about cooking and about being careful and following directions.

There is a wild and very funny food fight in the kitchen as well, and learns how to make friends with her cousin, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_TAxtc714M

Back at home, there is trouble at the bakery, which may have to close. Grace enters the Master Chef Junior competition, hoping to win enough money to keep the bakery going. It is a lot of fun to see the fictional Grace on the real-life reality show.

This terrific series is one of the few that really delivers top quality for elementary schoolers, with thoughtful, interesting stories and outstanding production values. Virginia Madsen is warm and winning as Grace’s mother and the Parisian settings and costume design are colorful and appealing. The films are always frank about the problems the girls face, both external and growing-up challenges, and show how friends and family can work together to make things better.

Parents should know that there are some difficult family issues, including financial problems.

Family discussion: What would you like to learn how to cook? What was the most important thing Grace had to learn?

If you like this, try: the other American Girls films

AFI Docs 2015: What I Saw

Posted on June 21, 2015 at 9:51 pm

I loved every film I saw at AFI Docs this year, with a wide variety in subject matter and tone. There were intimate, personal stories, and movies about major global figures and forces. And I also saw an eye-popping demonstration of new technology, VIZIO’s Ultra HD supporting Dolby Vision. With samples from computer animation to live action, the Reference Series TV, which will be available later this year, showed stunningly dynamic, clear, and accurate images. They will also be using their systems in movie theaters, including five AMC theaters this year.

The films I saw were:

“The Best of Enemies” The legendary William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal debates following the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968 are, according to this film, the origin of today’s partisan, combative television news programming.

“The Wolfpack” Like a Wes Anderson movie come to life, this is the story of seven children, six of them boys, growing up in New York, home schooled and not allowed to leave the apartment, completely isolated from the world except for movies, which they watch and re-create.

“From This Day Forward” As a filmmaker prepares for her own wedding, she explores the very unusual but deeply committed relationship of her parents, who remain married despite her father’s transition to being a woman.

“Hot Type: 150 Years of the Nation” The country’s oldest continuously operating publication faces unprecedented challenges in an era of new media and impatient readers.

“How to Dance in Ohio” A group of teenagers and adults with autism prepare for a prom to work on their social skills.

“Very Semi-Serious” New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and the quirky and engaging people who create cartoons tell us how they find what is strange about the familiar and familiar about the strange.

“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” Alex Gibney, whose award-winning documentaries have covered Enron, Scientology, torture, Eliot Spitzer, and more, turns his camera on one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

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Documentary Festivals

Real Genius — Three Decades Later, It Still Holds Up

Posted on June 21, 2015 at 3:58 pm

Thirty years ago, a college comedy called “Real Genius” was released, and it is good to see that it holds up well. It is even more apt in some ways now than it was when it came out. Tor’s Emily Asher-Perrin has an excellent assessment of “Real Genius.” Long before “The Big Bang Theory,” this story of super-science-smarties at a CalTech-style college who discover that the experiments they are doing are for a new weapons system.

Asher-Perrin writes:

he movie is better at portraying geeks in ways that don’t just melt down to old tropes of pocket protectors and bow ties and awkwardness. It communicates that having an outrageous IQ can be isolating, but doesn’t make all smart people out to be socially undeveloped shut-ins. It also shows us how being driven toward answers can blind even the most optimistic, well-meaning folks into making terrible mistakes. And it communicates what it’s like to study for finals more realistically than any film I’ve ever seen, which is an accomplishment and a half.

No really, there’s a scene where everyone is gathered around a communal table to cram for the exam, and one guy just gets up and starts screaming at everyone before running from the building. Everyone else is unresponsive and some other dude sitting on the room’s perimeter moves into his vacated seat without comment. That’s basically the experience distilled into its purest form.

Also, did I mention that it ends on a Tears For Fears song? Because that should be enough to recommend it right there.

Another great thing about this film is how it doesn’t couch itself in the “nerd versus jock” dynamic. It’s a boring cliche that rarely bothers to examine the realities of persecution due to differences. Instead, it herds people into group stereotypes and activity negates character complexity. Real Genius knows this, and most of the rivalry here is geek-on-geek.

As she points out, the women in the film are more varied, intelligent, and substantial than in most teen comedies, especially the character named Jordan. “It’s not the fact that she might be on the spectrum itself that’s remarkable, but the fact that the film never suggests that Jordan should be viewed differently because of it. It doesn’t make her “special” in a manic pixie dream way, but it doesn’t make her pitiable either. She’s simply who she is, and that person is still portrayed as desirable and engaging and brilliant.”

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Film History For Your Netflix Queue