Won’t Back Down

Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

What should have been a rousing, feel-good, “inspired by a true story” film about a mother and a teacher who take on the teacher’s union and the school board to turn around a failing elementary school benefits from strong performances but suffers from a palpably skewed point of view. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, the devoted single mother of a daughter with dyslexia who attends the John Adams elementary school in a poor Pennsylvania community. Viola Davis plays Nona, a frustrated teacher whose own son has developmental disabilities that add to the strain in her marriage.

When Jamie tries to see the school superintendent to complain about the principal’s unwillingness to help her, she can’t get in. But a sympathetic receptionist explains that there is a parental trigger law that at least in theory can help. If a school has consistently failed, parents and teachers can petition to take it over. In reality, Jamie is told, those petitions never succeed. The school board uses delays and technicalities to wear down the petitioners. But, as Jamie explains, those mothers who lift trucks to save their babies have nothing on her.

The other teachers are angry and scared when Nona joins Jamie. If the petition is successful, the teachers will no longer be part of the union. They will lose their tenure and possibly their jobs. The petition cannot be successful without the signatures of at least half of the teachers. Lifting the truck begins to seem easy by comparison.

Gyllenhaal conveys passion well but her character is too good to be true, never wavering or even slowing down despite having to hold down two jobs to support her daughter and always having to exemplify all that is committed and pure of heart while also being all kinds of spontaneous and free-spirited, knowing everything about Penguins hockey, being infinitely patient with her daughter, and rocking the skinny jeans. Davis brings great depth and warmth to Nona, but she is stuck with the “black Stepford wife” role and even Davis, one of the finest actors in film history, cannot make Nona’s big powerhouse revelation scene work.

Every parent and anyone who has ever been to school cannot help but be drawn into this underdog story about people who want to make things better for their children and are willing to take on the bad guys. But oh, this movie really overdoes it with the bad guys. There are some mentions of the important contributions made by unions, especially by Michael (the always-outstanding Oscar Isaac) as a Teach for America veteran who is one of the school’s best teachers. But those references are all to the distant past and the praise sounds as insincere Antony’s praise for Brutus. Meanwhile, the union officials are portrayed as venal and corrupt, more concerned with their own power than with the welfare of the children and willing to restort to bribes, threats, manipulation, and character assassination. The bias is evident when of them all but twirls a villain-esque mustache as he quotes a statement the late Albert Shanker, former president of the teacher’s union, never actually made about how children do not pay union dues, so his allegiance is to the teachers who do. They make “It’s a Wonderful Life’s” Mr. Potter seem like Santa Claus. There are bad teachers in schools but it is way over the top when the opening scene shows Jamie’s daughter struggling to sound out the word “story” as her teacher checks her email and shops online and some of the other kids play computer games and make fun of her.

The film has been widely criticized because it is funded by those who have an economic interest in taking over schools, for-profit companies that want to get the school contracts, and those points are valid. Those points are valid. But so is the point that seven out of ten kids at this school cannot read by the time they leave. It is fun to see Gyllenhaal and Davis dance together in the bar where Jamie works as a bartender but it would have been a lot more meaningful to have a forthright conversation about how to protect and retain good teachers and help students who do not have enough support at home. All we ever hear about from the phone book-sized petition Jamie and Nona present to the board is a number with digits mistakenly reversed that may be grounds for rejection. We never hear about the ideas for change that would be the reasons for its approval. We can all agree that schools can do better and that abuses occur when there is too little protection for teachers and administrators and when there is too much. The tough part is coming up with a way to do something about it. Nona and Jamie talk about the importance of high expectations. I had higher expectations for this film than it was willing to meet.

Parents should know that this film includes drinking, scenes in bar, mild language (“screw”), references to drunk driving and irresponsible behavior, tense confrontations, and some kissing.

Family discussion: Read about the controversy over the “parent trigger” laws advocated in the film – what are the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing school administration? What are parents in your community doing to help teachers and students?

If you like this, try: the documentaries “Waiting for Superman” and “Small Wonders”

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Lawless

Posted on August 30, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Musician Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat are Australians who are drawn to bleak internal and external landscapes. They worked together on “The Proposition,” a western-style and very violent crime story about brothers. “Lawless” is another crime story about brothers, again very violent and, like “The Proposition,” with a bleak setting and compromised characters. This one is a true story, based on Matt Bondurant‘s book about his Prohibition-era grandfather and great uncles, who were ran illegal hooch in Franklin County, Virginia, described by writer Sherwood Anderson as “the wettest county in the world.”

“There’s a feeling around these parts that these Bondurants is indestructible,” one character says. Forrest Bondurant (a quietly powerful Tom Hardy) came back from WWI without injury and the community almost believes the legend that he cannot be stopped. That’s good for business; you might even say it is their brand. But just as in legitimate enterprise, the success of a local operation selling moonshine in mason jars attracts the interest of the competition. The big bootlegging organization out of Chicago is thinking about what one might call a very hostile takeover. The Bondurants have a good relationship with the local sheriff, who is happy looking the other way for a small piece of the action. But a federal agent named Charlie Rakes (an oily and twisted Guy Pearce) arrives and for him it is not about law, morality, or directions from his superiors. It is about power. The Bondurants are not afraid of him and that is why he wants to destroy them. Pearce, in gloves and slicked-down hair parted in the middle, is one of the best villains of the year.

Forrest is the leader and he has an unspoken understanding with his brother Howard (Jason Clarke). Indeed, a lot that goes on here is unspoken. The youngest brother, Jack (Shia LeBoeuf) wants to prove himself to his older brothers. And he wants to prove something to a pretty churchgoing girl named Bertha (Mia Wasikowska). Brash and flashier than his brothers, he has the nerve to try to make a deal with machine gun-toting Chicago hood Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman) and the entrepreneurial instinct to improve and expand production and delivery. When he sees a brutal gangland slaying, his only thought is to grab a souvenir shell case. He will have a Michael Corleone moment when the violence gets closer to home. “It is not the violence that sets men apart,” Forrest says. “It is the distance he is prepared to go.” The Bondurants do not give up. It is not about the money. It is about defending their home and their right to make their own choices.

Maggie (Jessica Chastain) shows up out of the blue one day, offering her manicured hand to Forrest’s rough one and offering to work for the brothers. “The city can grind a girl down,” she tells Forrest. “Gets to a point where you start looking for somewhere quiet.”

Franklin County is far from quiet. But the noise Maggie wanted to escape was the cacophony of heartlessness she was surrounded by in the city. Everyone in this story is breaking the de jure law, but Maggie knows that the Bondurants have a core of integrity and loyalty that she can count on. And she will show that she can be counted on as well.

Strong performances and an evocative sense of time and place anchor the film and the unexpected tenderness of the romantic interludes balances the brutality. A coda provides perspective that just because someone is willing to go the distance does not mean he cannot come back home.

Parents should know that this is the true story of moonshiners during Prohibition, so the good guys are law-breakers and the police are corrupt. The movie includes extremely graphic violence with characters tortured, injured, sexually abused, and killed, strong language including a racial slur and segregation, sexual situations including prostitution, female nudity, and alcohol and smoking.

Family discussion: How were the brothers alike and how were they different? The script was written by musician Nick Cave – how does the music help tell the story?

If you like this, try: Lawless: A Novel Based on a True Story by the real-life grandson of the youngest Bondurant brother

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Posted on July 4, 2012 at 3:38 pm

James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R1jiVcIGcg

For Greater Glory

Posted on May 31, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended battle violence with many characters and animals killed, children tortured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, strong female characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 1, 2012

In 1926, the atheist President of Mexico Plutarco Elias Calles (Rubén Blades) decided to secularize the country by edict. He deported non-Mexican priests and prohibited the remaining priests from appearing outside of the churches in their cassocks. Rebels fought back, at first with peaceful protests and then with increasing force until it became an armed conflict known as the Cristero War or Christiada. This film, financed in part by the Catholic fraternal society The Knights of Columbus, is a faith-based and often heavy-handed retelling of the story, focusing on characters who have since been recognized by the church as martyrs and canonized.

Andy Garcia and Oscar Isaac bring some depth and dignity to a script that is sincere but clunky. Garcia plays Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, a non-believer married to a devout woman (Eva Longoria) and a former general now painfully under-employed as a manager at a soap factory. When the Cristeros offer him the job of commanding their troops, he accepts because he wants to do the work he was born for, because it will please his wife, and because, he discovers, he would like to believe in something. One of his biggest challenges is winning the respect of the Cristero’s legendary fighter, Victoriano Ramirez (Isaac), known as “El Catorce” because he defeated fourteen of the President’s army by himself. Rodriguez plays one of the women who played key roles in transporting guns and ammunition.

The battle scenes are impressively staged and there are some affecting moments, but it assumes a level of belief and commitment on the part of its audience that may not apply to those who are not familiar with Catholic teachings. Ultimately, it is closer to worship than story-telling, more likely to validate believers than to engage new hearts.

Parents should know that this film has extended battle violence with many characters and animals injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images, and a harrowing scene of a child who is tortured and killed.

Family discussion: How does the quote at the beginning of the movie relate to the story? How did participating in the fight change the general’s mind about God?

If you like this, try: “The Mission” and “Braveheart”

Interview: Writer/Director Richard Linklater of “Bernie”

Posted on April 27, 2012 at 8:00 am

Richard Linklater has directed some of my favorite movies like “Waking Life,” “Before Sunset,” “School of Rock,” and “Dazed and Confused.” He talked to me about his new film, “Bernie,” starring Jack Black as the real-life Bernie Tiede, the most popular man in the small Eastern Texas town of Carthage even after he confessed to killing a wealthy widow and stuffing her in a freezer for nine months. Tiede, now in prison for the murder, was a funeral director who became friendly with octogenarian Marjorie Nugent, known as “the meanest woman in east Texas.” She lavished him with gifts and trips and made him her heir, but then became possessive and demanding and abusive. He shot her, hid the body in her freezer, told everyone she was in assisted living, and spent a lot of her money helping people in the community. Shirley Maclaine plays the widow and the prosecutor is played by Matthew McConaughey. As Ms. Nugent’s nephew wrote in the New York Times:

There are little things in “Bernie” that aren’t exactly true, bits of dialogue, a changed name here and there. But the big things, the weirdest things, the things you’d assume would have to be made up, happened exactly as the movie says they did. The trial lawyers really did wear Stetsons and cowboy boots and really were named Danny Buck Davidson and Scrappy Holmes. Daddy Sam’s barbecue and bail bonds, just a few blocks from the courthouse in Carthage (population: 6,700), really does have a sign that says, “You Kill It, I’ll Cook It!” And they really did find my Aunt Marge on top of the flounder and under the Marie Callender’s chicken potpies, wrapped in a Lands’ End sheet. They had to wait two days to do the autopsy. It took her that long to thaw.

One of the highlights of this film is the commentary from the people in Carthage. Are those real townspeople really talking about their own experiences?

Oh, they’re definitely, mostly real people, I mean, “non-actors,” but some are actors. Most are people from the area of the state near Carthage and surrounding towns. Some of them were actually intimate with Bernie and Mrs. Nugent, so it’s kind of a mix.

It feels so natural. Was it unscripted?

No, it’s scripted, but they kind of put it in their own words, quite often. I looked at a lot of people and found people that could be themselves, doing material and throwing in. You know, some of my favorite ones were things that people just threw in there. When Sonny Carl Davis, who’s an actor, goes off on the town, “He’s my daddy, he’s my cousin,” you know, he’s got a way with words. And Juli Erickson saying, “Honey, there are people in this town who woulda shot her for five dollars,’ stuff like that.

What made you decide on this quasi-documentary format?

I really never thought of it much as documentary, because the stories were dramatic. I saw a story told from town gossips—and Southern gossip is such a huge thing. I attended the trial, and read and got my hands on everything. I was going through Skip Hollandsworth’s journalistic notes where he had interviewed everybody, and what they were saying was really kind of funny, I felt, and very telling of the town and of the situation. If you think about it, Bernie was in jail, Ms. Nugent was gone, and they’re not there to speak for themselves. As in small towns, with any event like this, all that’s left is the community itself reverberating around with opinions. If you were to go to Carthage, anybody over a certain age would be able to tell you what happened; how they knew Bernie, about the nine months she was in the freezer, how he preached at church, “we hung out, went to a party at his house,” maybe how he should’ve killed her to get away with it—everyone has their own idea, how they would’ve done it? You know, it’s just one of those crazy things. It’s a very rare event, such a notorious crime in that area. The guy says on closing credits, “we don’t have stranger killings, usually it’s family.”

You certainly deglamorized Matthew McConaughey. I love the choice of the glasses, they were wonderful.

Oh, you liked those? Let me think about it, he also had little plumpers in his mouth, and a little gut, an extra 25 pounds. He still had a ways to go to get to the real Danny, but he tried.

And you were at the trial? I never heard of a change of venue to a different city because the defendant was too popular!

Yeah, no one’s ever heard of that. I’ve talked to every judge, DA, defense attorney, since this trial. “Have you ever heard of a trial being moved because it was too because he was too well liked and they didn’t think they could get a conviction, so they had to move to get a jury of his peers?” People just kind of go, “No, I’ve never heard of that.” Skip’s article probably didn’t help Bernie—it just was not on terms that were any good. I think Danny Buck started feeling pretty confident at some point and there wasn’t a plea bargain, or it didn’t work out or something. At the end of the day he definitely got a really hard sentence. Well, the deck was stacked against him. First off, the change of venue, and then the judge disallowed the psychiatrist to examine him, who was going to speak on behalf of his disassociated moment, temporary insanity, and that got disallowed. That was his only hope. As Scrappy tells it, I had a guy who had confessed and told em’ everything and he didn’t have a lot to work with by the time he was with Bernie and yet he was really going for this thing…. The evidence that Danny was allowed to show him at trial, pulling Ms. Nugent out of the freezer, with some really horrific images and out of context. And he successfully prosecutes him as the other— not like us— flying first class, going to the opera.

Tell me about working with Oscar winner and old-style Hollywood movie star Shirley MacLaine.

There’s no one like her. I had always had her in mind for this part, I guess because she had played a Texas grand dame a couple times already, as Aurora in “Terms of Endearment” and the sequel, and I was just lucky she did it. I think she wanted to work with Jack. It’s not a huge part for her, but I think she had fun. It kept her laughing, but she was sort of perfect. What was funny, I think, Shirley liked Ms. Nugent. The first thing she told me was, “even after she’s dead, she’s still around. That’s how I’m going to be! That’s how I’m going to be, you can tell me, that’ll be me.” I think she’s right! There was so much historical record, there was so much testimony. It is a little bit of a dance of how much of a bitch, to what level the bitchiness should reach, but at the end of the day, Ms. Nugent was actually a lot worse than Shirley was in the movie, according to all accounts. Shirley kind of humanized her, but that was my goal. I think the fun part—and this is why I love Shirley for the part—is that she still has that little girl infatuation, she’s still very sensual. When they were first together we called it the honeymoon, the time where she was happy, when out of the blue this terminally miserable lady who could never be happy with anyone or anything, had some fun, a guy paid some attention to her, before she had to possess him and ruin it. There were some happy times there.

I know you’ve worked with him before, but Jack Black would not have been the first person to come to my mind for this part, because Bernie’s a very restrained character, a kind of repressed character—and I think of Jack Black as irrepressible.

Well, that’s what you know from parts you’ve seen him in—but I know him, and having worked with him before, I knew he could do it. I was just lucky he wanted to do the part and found it interesting. And you know, a good actor like Jack, you find there’s a part of Jack that could relate. Bernie is a guy who’s non-confrontational and Jack really is the sweetest guy in the world, a total nice guy. He saw Bernie very clearly, and could in some ways relate to him. And who else could sing like that? There’s really no one else at the end of the day who could play this part, who could sing to Bernie’s actual level.

I love the parts when he sang, when he steps in at that funeral and sings “Amazing Grace,” it was fantastic. What was it like to stage a big musical number from “The Music Man?”

Fun! A dream come true! Anytime, you’re making a musical, it’s just fantastic. I felt like, “I’m Vincente Minnelli, and it’s the fifties and I’m making a musical!”