The Providence Effect

Posted on September 24, 2009 at 9:29 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic elements
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Reference to poverty and other challenges faced by children and their families
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	September 25, 2009

You often hear the expression “feel-good movie” and it usually refers to a heart-warming romantic comedy or maybe something with penguins. This is a real feel-good movie because it is a real story. A man with a passionate commitment to children, to education, and to his community took a school on the brink of being closed down and made it into a place where teachers and students set, meet, and exceed the highest of standards for achievement in all categories, including character.

The students at Providence St. Mel do not have fancy computers or calculators. They live in a community that struggles with gangs, drugs, and poverty. But they have families who work several jobs to pay a portion of the school’s tuition (every student in the school has a scholarship) and they have teachers who feel lucky to be there and make the students feel lucky, too.

An unabashed valentine to the school, Providence St. Mel, and its driving force, civil rights activist Paul J. Adams III, and at times it feels more like an infomercial than a movie. But it is a genuine privilege to spend time with these passionate, committed students and teachers. We follow the principal through the halls. We sit in circle time with seven-year-olds whose teacher has them not just participating but conducting the session. We see a graduating class that is sending 100 percent of the seniors to top colleges. And we see graduates returning to talk about how Providence St. Mel gave them what they needed to succeed in college, grad school, and the working world. We see their genuine excitement in learning, their pride in their sense of mastery, and the way that the confidence their teachers and parents have in them inspires them to learn. And that may just be the most important lesson that Providence St. Mel has to teach, turning all of us who watch this film into students who want to learn more.

Related Tags:

Documentary Movies -- format

Nursery University

Posted on September 8, 2009 at 7:29 am

Ingredients:

1. Too many toddlers
2. Not enough preschools
3. Parents who will do anything for their children
4. Parents whose top priority is their children’s education
5. Parents who recognize the substantial social and educational advantages of the few very top Manhattan preschools
6. New York City and its tendency to increase overall stress (meaning both emphasis and pressure)

Result: a sort of combustible insanity as on the day after Labor Day every year some of the most ambitious, aggressive, status-oriented, and very highly motivated people in the world rev up for one of the most cut-throat competitions in America, admission to preschool in Manhattan. You think I’m exaggerating? Then remember that just a few years ago a scandal that brought down some of the biggest names in Wall Street had a top securities analyst changing his recommendation on a company in exchange for a contribution that eased his twins’ entry into a posh preschool. As he noted in his email on the subject, admission was statistically harder than getting into to Harvard. And yes, we are talking about 2 and 3-year olds. As the film-makers put it, “Cue the tears, hysterics and breakdowns–and that’s just the parents.”

“Nursery University” is a frank but not-unsympathetic look at what pretty much everyone agrees is the insanity of the process of applying to preschool in Manhattan, from the pricey consultants to the interviews of both parents and toddlers. The intricacies of pushing without being pushy, of conveying a family’s ability to provide support without sounding like you are name-dropping or trying to buy your way in, the challenges for families who are not wealthy are all here. The focus is on five applicants and their parents, from the speed-dial madness that begins today just to get the privilege of being permitted to apply to those are-they-thick-or-thin envelopes that arrive in the spring.

Bonus features on the DVD include deleted scenes and interviews with the parents and admission experts and even some advice for parents who may be entering this process themselves.

Related Tags:

Documentary Parenting

It Might Get Loud

Posted on September 3, 2009 at 3:50 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic elements, brief language and smoking
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 4, 2009

It goes to 11.

Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) has made a documentary featuring three generations of guitar gods: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (The White Stripes). But it is not about the musicians. It is about guitars, and passion, and hearing, and sticking it to the man, and art, and music, and the sublime that brings all of those things together. It is a joyous yowl from the depths of existence that soars to the ears of the celestial choirs, where it makes them pause and smile and, if such a thing is possible for angels, envy the humans who get to make such sounds and even those of us who get to listen to them.

We spend time with each of these musicians. The archival clips are surprising and delightful and it is pure pleasure to see these men return to places and instruments that are especially meaningful to them and to listen in as they talk to each other and demonstrate their comments with riffs and techniques. They say that successful musical performers fall into three categories: rock star, performance artist, and musician. These three men are above all musicians. At times they seem to embody music itself, with aural imperatives mortals can only gasp at. Their utter commitment is moving and inspiring. Rock on.

Related Tags:

Documentary Movies -- format Music

Woodstock

Posted on August 24, 2009 at 8:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for drug content, nudity and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drug use, drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	1970
Date Released to DVD:	August 25, 2009
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001NXDSLQ

Forty years ago, it seemed for one brief moment as though a disastrous, mud-soaked music festival that attracted so many people it had a larger population than all but one city in the state could be the beginning of a new world of peace and cooperation. That dream was quickly battered but still lives on in the magic that its name and its songs still evoke: Woodstock. This week, a new movie from Ang Lee covers the impact of the festival on the community that was its not-entirely-welcoming host. But the truly indispensible memento of the three days of peace and music is the award-winning original documentary from director Michael Wadleigh. A new 40th-anniversary edition is being released this week with additional footage from from Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter & Mountain and interviews from participants including Wadleigh and concert producer Michael Lang. Whether you remember the warning about the brown acid and the interview with the porta-john guy and the nun flashing the peace sign or whether you have yet to experience the “Fixin’ to Die” rag or Hendrix’s stunning “Star Spangled Banner,” this is a brilliant film about an extraordinary moment.

X Games 3D: The Movie

Posted on August 20, 2009 at 5:58 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for extreme sports action and accidents
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense sports action and accidents, reference to serious injuries
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 21, 2009

Kids, don’t try this at home.

3D is X-treme film-making and thus well suited to the X Games, hyper-intense, hyper-dangerous, hyper-what are they thinking? sports that are closer to stunts. Young men compete on skateboard, snowboard, and on dirt bikes and motocross to defy the laws of physics. One of them says he feels about gravity the way some people feel about evolution: “It’s just a theory.”

Adolescent testosterone-friendly sponsors like Play Station, Taco Bell, Red Bull, and the Navy have helped make the X Games into an enormous and high-stakes event. Some of its most stunning images are of the homes these young men have purchased with the money they make breaking their bones to do these tricks.

And X can also stand for something else. At one point, a selection of one competitor’s past x-rays of injuries flash on the screen.

The stunts are astonishing and the 3D effects are so intense that you will feel like wiping the dirt kicked up by the motocross bike off your face. But there is more to the film. It has some important lessons about passion, commitment, being willing to ask “what if it is possible?” and being willing to fail in order to achieve ultimate success. The climax of the film comes in a three-way competition that includes one man coming back from a wipe-out the year before and one who is badly injured early on and insists on continuing to compete. The respect and affection between the competitors is genuinely touching and the way they ride their boards back and forth to the medical facility to check on the injured athlete is affecting. They are barely aware of how organic their attachment to the boards has become.