Posted on September 15, 2017 at 6:00 am
We are delighted to share this exclusive clip from “Cupid’s Proxy,” starring Jackée Harry as an advice columnist who turns to her young neighbor (Disney star Jet Jurgensmeyer) as her ghost writer. This cute family film is available now on iTunes.
Posted on September 14, 2017 at 8:27 pm
D| Lowest Recommended Age: | Adult |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language |
| Profanity: | Some very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drunkenness, cigarettes |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Extremely intense, brutal, and graphic violence including murders of adults and a newborn, cannibalism, fire, many grisly and disturbing images |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | September 15, 2017 |
| Date Released to DVD: | December 18, 2017 |
Over the next few weeks, maybe over the next few years, you will see some thoughtful analyses and interpretations of “mother!” (lowercase m at the beginning, exclamation point at the end), examining the Biblical references and exploring the metaphors. I look forward to these discussions and hope I will be persuaded. But I was unable to find anything more in the film than pretentious, self-indulgent images with, for a movie about in some sense creativity, very little to say.
It’s a warning sign of precarious pretension when a film’s characters are not named and listed in the credits only as archetypes: mother, man, woman, him, younger brother, oldest son, good Samaritan, fool, wanderer, idler. It’s not that it can’t be done; it’s just that it’s a high bar to clear. What might work as a horror story about a young, pure-hearted bride in a gigantic, isolated house who is confronted with various dread-inspiring elements both natural and supernatural in this case fails because it keeps telling us it wants to be more. There’s some flashy cinematic flourish but very low octane.
Jennifer Lawrence is game and endlessly watchable as always, which is a good thing because most of the time the camera is close on her increasingly panicked face. She plays the title character, who is created out of dust as the house comes together from a wreck of ashes. “Baby?” she asks tentatively and searchingly as she gets out of bed to look for her husband/partner, played by Javier Bardem. He is a poet, acclaimed but currently blocked. She is his endlessly devoted helpmeet, always working to restore the house or present him with wholesome meals or just encourage him.
Their peaceful life is disrupted when a doctor with a bad cough (Ed Harris) arrives, later joined by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer, mesmerizing and terrifying), a couple who have some very serious boundary issues, to the point of being predatory. Basically, they are the world’s worst and most annoying houseguests. mother wants them to leave and cannot understand why poet would not check with her first. He seems unable to recognize how destructive they are. He seems flattered by having them there.
Then the bad stuff begins to happen. And then the really bad stuff begins to happen and keeps happening. Writer/director Darren Aronofksy, who has explored themes of creativity and the line between passion and obsession in films like “Requiem for a Dream,” “The Fighter,” and “Black Swan” may be trying to reach for overarching Biblical concepts here (he also made “Noah”). But with the arrestingly staged but horribly violent last act and it’s not-to-be-revealed ending, it communicates something more like a defensive argument in favor of the right of creators to abuse those around them. Not true, whether it’s family members or people in the audience.
Parents should know that this film includes peril and violence, with murders of adults and a newborn infant, guns, fire, explosions, abuse, cannibalism, grisly and disturbing images, nudity, childbirth, brief very crude language, sexual references and explicit situations.
Family discussion: What does the ending signify? Who do the couple represent? What does the house represent?
If you like this, try: “Noah” from the same writer/director, “North Fork”
Posted on September 14, 2017 at 5:50 pm
B +| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for some language including sexual references, brief violence, and smoking |
| Profanity: | A few strong and crude words |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Wartime violence with disturbing images including holocaust images |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | September 15, 2017 |
J.D. Salinger had three great losses and three great teachers, and “Rebel in the Rye” is the story of how those all came together to influence the author of one of the most popular and influential novels of the 20th century, The Catcher in the Rye, along with his shorter pieces, a few novellas and stories. Salinger is almost as well known for his decades of seclusion in New Hampshire as he is for his work. Reportedly, after publishing his last story in 1965, he continued to write full-time, but never showed it to anyone or allowed it to be published. It may be that the mystery is a better story than the writing.
Writer/director Danny Strong (co-creator of “Empire,” screenwriter of the “Mockingjay” films and actor in “Gilmore Girls” and “Buffy”) introduces us to Salinger before all of that happened, young, ambitious, and like Catcher in the Rye‘s Holden Caulfield, a smart aleck who has left or been asked to leave a number of top schools. Nicholas Hoult (“About a Boy,” “Mad Max: Fury Road”) shows us the teenage Salinger, arrogant but insecure, especially arrogant when it came to writing and especially insecure when it came to girls. He meets Oona O’Neill (Zoey Deutch), the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, and they begin to date, though what makes her most attractive to him is her lineage and her admiration for his writing. And, after leaving NYU, he enrolls in Columbia, where he takes a class from the editor of Story Magazine, Whit Burnett (Kevin Spacey). “There is nothing more sacred than stories,” Burnett tells the class. And he advises Salinger not to let his voice overwhelm the story, not to let his ego obstruct the emotional experience of the reader.
Burnett will be Salinger’s most important influence on the content of his stories, suggesting that Holden Caulfield deserves a novel. And O’Neill will be an influence, too, the first of the three great losses, when she leaves him to marry Charlie Chaplin. Just as he is beginning to make progress as a writer, with his first published work in Burnett’s literary journal, Salinger joins the military in WWII, where he endures great peril and hardship and witnesses some of the worst events in world history, including the landing on Normandy beach and the liberation of a concentration camp. These traumatic experiences caused great distress for Salinger, what would today be called PTSD (as Salinger movingly described in my favorite of his stories, “For Esme, with Love and Squalor.” But it was these experiences that gave him the depth and scope to write his sole novel.
Burnett teaches Salinger that publication is incidental; what matters is doing the work of writing. Salinger’s agent (Sarah Paulson, wry but sympathetic) tells him that “publication is everything” and urges him to “soften” his stories according to the “notes (comments) she gets back from editors. Salinger, initially refusing to make any changes, finally does and even admits that they made the story better.
But the stress of success becomes too much for him. “I’m shackled by my own creation,” he says as Catcher is seen as an invitation for readers to come see him. The last loss and the last teacher are combined in a zen master who advises him to let go of his need for approval. He moves to New Hampshire and never has anything to do with the literary world again. “If I can dedicate my life to writing and get nothing in return,” he says, “I think I might find happiness.”
Hoult is fine in showing us how Salinger changes, especially the effect of the war. His scenes with his parents (Hope Davis and Victor Garber) and with the women he is trying to impress are especially effective. Strong, as a writer himself, well understands the struggle to understand which voices to listen to, whether internal or external, in evaluating the work, and the complexity of needing approval even as we try to transcend that need. The film evokes the mid-century era without being showy or distracting, and, an even more difficult challenge, explores the life of someone who wanted to be left alone without being exploitive. Salinger insisted that there will never be a film about Holden Caulfield, and he was right as the value of that book is in the voice of its narrator more than in the incidents it portrays. This is a better version of a story about someone who wants to catch children to keep them safe, at least in his own mind, or in the stories he will never show.
Parents should know that this film includes wartime violence with disturbing images including holocaust footage, drinking and drunkenness, constant smoking, and sexual references.
Family discussion: Who was right about writing vs. publishing? What makes Catcher in the Rye so compelling? How was Salinger’s wartime experience reflected in his writing?
If you like this, try: the books of JD Salinger
Posted on September 12, 2017 at 9:34 pm
This year’s Center for the Study of Women and Television in Film Report has a pointed title: Boxed In 2016-17: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television. Top findings:
•Overall, 68% of the programs considered featured casts with more male than female characters. 11% had ensembles with equal numbers of female and male characters. 21% of the programs featured casts with more female than male characters.
•Across platforms, females comprised 42% of all speaking characters. This
represents an increase of 3 percentage points from 2015-16 when females accounted for 39% of all speaking characters, and an increase of 2 percentage points from 40% in 2014-15.
•Females accounted for 42% of major characters on broadcast network, cable
and streaming programs. This represents an increase of 4 percentage points from 38% in 2015-16, and an increase of 2 percentage points from 40% in 2014-15.
•The percentage of female characters featured on broadcast network programs was the same in 2016-17 as it was nearly a decade earlier in 2007-08. Last year, women comprised 43% of all speaking characters on broadcast network programs. While this figure represents an increase of 2 percentage points from 41% in 2015-16, it is the same percentage achieved in 2007-08.
•Across platforms, programs are becoming more racially and ethnically
diverse. Black characters in speaking roles comprised 19% of all females in 2016-17, up from 16% in 2015-16. Asian characters accounted for 6% of all
females in 2016-17, up from 4% in 2015-16. The percentage of Latinas increased from 4% in 2015-16 to 5% in 2016-17.
•Broadcast network programs became more racially and ethnically diverse in 2016-17, with Black and Asian female characters achieving recent historical highs. The percentage of Black females increased from 17% in 2015-16 to 21% in 2016-17. The percentage of Asian females increased from 5% in 2015-16 to 7% in 2016-17.
•Latinas continue to be dramatically underrepresented on broadcast network programs. Latinas accounted for only 5% of all female characters with speaking roles in 2016-17. This figure is even with the number achieved in 2015-16 and 2010-11.
•Regardless of platform, gender stereotypes on television programs abound. Female characters were younger than their male counterparts, more likely than men to be identified by their marital status, and less likely than men to be seen at work and actually working.
•Across platforms, female characters were more likely than males to play personal life-oriented roles, such as wife and mother. In contrast, male characters were more likely than females to play work-oriented roles, such as business executive.
•In 2016-17, women comprised 28% of all creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography working on broadcast network, cable, and streaming programs. This represents an increase of 2 percentage points from 26% in 2015-16.
•The employment of women working in key behind-the-scenes positions on
broadcast network programs has stalled, with no meaningful progress over the last decade. Women comprised 27% of all creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography working on broadcast network programs. This represents no change from 2015-16, and an increase of only 1 percentage point since 2006-07.
•Overall, programs employed behind-the-scenes women in relatively small numbers. 50% of programs employed 4 or fewer women in the behind-the-scenes roles considered. In contrast, only 6% of programs employed 4 or fewer men. 3% of programs employed 14 or more women in the behind-the-scenes roles considered. In contrast, 47% of programs employed 14 or more
men.
•Across platforms, women fared best as producers (39%), followed by writers (33%), executive producers (28%), creators (23%), editors (22%), directors (17%), and directors of photography (3%).
•Across platforms, startlingly high percentages of programs employed no women in the behind-the-scenes roles considered. 97% of the programs
considered had no women directors of photography, 85% had no women directors, 75% had no women editors, 74% had no women creators, 67% had no women writers, 23% had no women producers, and 20% had no women
executive producers.
•On programs with at least 1 woman creator, females accounted for 51% of major characters, achieving parity with the percentage of girls and women in the U.S. population. On programs with exclusively male creators, females accounted for 38% of major characters.
•Regardless of platform, programs with at least 1 woman creator featured
substantially higher percentages women in other key behind-the-scenes roles. For example, on programs with at least 1 woman creator, women comprised 57% of writers. On programs with exclusively male creators, women accounted for 21% of writers.
•Across platforms, programs with at least 1 woman executive producer featured more female characters and had higher percentages of women directors and writers than programs with exclusively male executive producers. For example, on programs with at least 1 woman executive producer, women accounted for 18% of directors. On programs with exclusively male executive producers, women comprised 8% of directors.
Posted on September 12, 2017 at 8:00 am
“Dolores” is a new documentary that tells the story of activist icon Dolores C. Huerta, president and founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America. If Ginger Rogers is known for matching Fred Astaire’s steps backwards and in high heels, Huerta was as responsible as the better-recognized Cesar Chavez for bringing the attention of the world to the rights of immigrants, women, and farm workers while raising eleven children as a single mother and constantly being marginalized and underrated because of her race and gender. I spoke to Huerta, who was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor by President Barack Obama, along with the director of the documentary, Peter Bratt.
In the film, we see you begin by sitting down in living rooms or talking to farm workers in the fields to encourage them to insist on fair treatment. What did you say to them?
Dolores Huerta: When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish; people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people, and we give them the list. These are people like yourself, this is what they were able to do in their community. And then we talked about the issues that they’re facing in their own community and then we would say to them, “Well, just like these other people did, they were able to accomplish all these great things. You can do the same thing. But the thing is that you got to do it because if you don’t nobody else is going to do it for you; nobody else is going to come into your community and solve your problems. So you have to take on the issues yourself. You’re the ones who have to volunteer to make the work happen.”
So we do a whole series of these little house meetings and you probably get a hundred and fifty people together and out of that group then you have a cadre of them that will come up and they’ll volunteer to do the work that needs to be done and that’s how the leaders are developed. When you go into a community you’ll never know ahead of time who the leaders are going to be. The leaders come up from the volunteers that do the work and it’s amazing because then they do these incredible things in their community that they never thought they had the power to make that happen. Basically, the message is: you have power, the power is in your person and you can make this happen but you can’t do it alone; you’ve got to work with other people to make it happen, you have to make a plan and you have to volunteer. And it works; it’s like magic.
You go out there and you find those people that have this burning passion that they want to change things and you basically are just giving them the tools. This is the way that you do it: you come together with a group of people, you pass petitions, you go to the city council, you go to the board of supervisors and you can make it happen.
Peter Bratt: She actually was telling me a story that she hopped on a Greyhound to northern central California, throughout the bus ride was expecting sixty to seventy people at a house meeting which had only one person, and she said she gave it her all because one person can be the most incredible leader that can change thousands of lives. That was a great lesson.
Why was it important to you to tell this story?
Peter Bratt: Dolores in my view challenges the three pillars of society. She’s challenging patriarchy and yes, that’s part of gender discrimination but it’s also racial. She’s also a Chicana; she’s a woman of color. The third one is as a labor activist she’s challenging the institution of capitalism, and I think those are the three great threats and that made her dangerous. I think those complexities combined to keep her in the margins.
The people who appear in the film are very candid and sometimes very emotional. How do you as a filmmaker develop a sense of trust so that they will share those memories and feelings?
Peter Bratt: I have some history with Dolores. I’ve known her for a little while and I think there was initially a great amount of trust between her and myself and Carlos Santana whose idea this was, and I also knew a few of her daughters from years back. So I think initially there was trust but you still have to prove yourself and earn even more trust. The most important thing as a director is you have to create a safe environment where you make the person feel safe enough to open their heart and reveal the soul; that’s ultimately where you’re trying to get. We interviewed probably about fifty people and the ones that we selected for the film were the ones who we felt truly opened their hearts and spoke their truth.
What has surprised you in terms of how far we’ve come and what has been the most persistently frustrating?
Dolores Huerta: Women are now 50 percent of the law schools and medical schools, so we can look at all the progress that we’ve made, but we can see all the progress that we still need to make and now with the voter suppression going on and with the racism rearing its ugly head we know that we’ve got to really step up our game on the progressive side and get people to vote because a lot of people aren’t voting. They’ve taken civics out of our high schools. People were asleep but I think they’re waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick and people are waking up and realizing they’ve got to get involved. That’s the message that we want to send with the film; for people to get involved at the local level, at the community level, at the state level and international level because we can’t afford to let the right wing take over our country. My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.
Peter Bratt: Sometimes I just want to put the covers over my head and stay in bed and I feel like no matter what I do it’s ineffectual and I get depressed. So for me having spent these last few years with Dolores, to see her not just doing the work but impassioned about doing the work and getting out there at the grassroots level and she still goes out into the fields in 100 degrees to organize this farm operation, she’s still doing it in the school boards, on water boards, she’s been getting people involved and to see her so engaged and relentless. The fortitude is awe inspiring and yet there is this joy and this passion while continuing to do the work, It encourages me to like quit feeling sorry for myself and get back out there. To me as a filmmaker that’s the biggest reward, to see people lift themselves up and recommit themselves.
A briefer version of this interview originally appeared on the Huffington Post.
