Rudy

Posted on January 17, 2008 at 4:59 pm

In this true story of determination and courage, a young man from a blue collar family wants to play football for Notre Dame, despite the fact he has neither the athletic nor the academic skills. Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger (Sean Astin) is told by his family and his teachers college of any kind is out of the question for him, and he should be content with the good, steady work with his family at a steel mill. Only his best friend, Pete, believes in him, and when Pete is killed in an accident at the mill four years after their high school graduation, Rudy puts on the Notre Dame jacket Pete gave him and takes the bus to South Bend. A sympathetic priest helps him get into nearby Holy Cross Junior College, where, with the help of a shy tutor named D-Bob (John Favreau), he is able to make the grades necessary to be accepted as a transfer to Notre Dame.
The coaches make it clear he will never be good enough to play, but they accept him on the team to act as an opposing team player in practice sessions. His determination and commitment endear him to the team, and he is finally permitted to play for seven seconds of his last game, assuring him a place in the record books as having made it to the Fighting Irish.
With some reservations about the language, this is a good family movie for a discussion of dreams – the importance of having them and the possibility of achieving them through persistence and commitment. Rudy is contrasted not only with the athletes who have far more ability but none of the “heart,” but also with his friend Fortune (Charles S. Dutton), who reveals near the end that he was once a member of the team but quit, and has regretted it every day since.
Rudy’s father is afraid of dreams; his own father lost everything in the Depression by risking all he had to have a dairy farm. He insists Notre Dame is not for people “like us.” Rudy’s older brother, Frank, does not want Rudy to succeed, because then he will have to confront his own failure to try for something more. Rudy’s teammates want him to “tone it down a notch,” not to “play every practice like it was the Super Bowl.” But ultimately, his spirit and his insistence on giving everything he can every single time inspires them. Rudy becomes an indispensable part of the team, and each of his teammates goes to the coach to insist Rudy play in his place.
Parents should know that this movie has very strong language for a PG movie. A man calls another a “pussy,” and there is a reference to “busting your balls.” D-Bob’s girlfriend tells him not to swear anymore. Characters drink beer. Rudy gets a little drunk, with consequences – he makes the mistake of telling the secret he had been trying to keep: he was not enrolled at Notre Dame. There is a scuffle in a bar and a subtext of class issues.
Family discussion: What are some of the things Rudy has to do to be able to be on the team? Which are the hardest? What are some of the things he had to give up? Which do the people who made the movie think is more important, ability or determination? How can you tell? Why didn’t Fortune admit he left Rudy the key? How did Fortune change Rudy’s mind? Why didn’t the quarterback do what the coach said at the end of Rudy’s last game? Why did Pete’s death make Rudy decide not to wait any longer? Do you think determination is a talent you have to have, or can you learn it? Have you ever been determined to make something happen? What did happen?
If you like this, try: Ideally, this movie should be seen as a double feature with Knute Rockne, All-American, that other great movie about Notre Dame football. Pat O’Brien appears in the title role, and Ronald Reagan plays “the Gipper,” whose deathbed request inspired the most famous motivational speech of all time, memorialized on a plaque in the Fighting Irish’s locker room and read aloud by Rudy.
Rudy is played by Sean Astin, son of Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker) and John Astin (West Side Story). In real life, Rudy (who appears in a photo at the end of the movie and as a fan in the stands) had a second dream: to make a movie about his time at Notre Dame. Like the first dream, it seemed impossible, and like the first dream, he made it come true.

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Persepolis

Posted on December 24, 2007 at 5:55 pm

A-
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material including violent images, sexual references, language and brief drug content.
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drugs, drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: References to wartime violence, torture and execution of prisoners, sad (offscreen) deaths, characters in peril
Diversity Issues: Gender, religious, and ethnic diversity a theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: December 25, 2007

pesepolis_poster.jpgMarjane Satrapi brings her award-winning graphic memoir to the screen in a powerful story of growing up in Iran as the Shah was ousted and hopes for democracy were crushed by the rise of the fundamentalists. Named for the legendary ruin Alexander the Great is believed to have burned, the frank portrayal of Satrapi’s coming of age personally and politically is a stunning achievement. Like the books, it is told almost entirely in black and white, with simple, supple, strong lines that beautifully complement and underscore the starkness of the story.

(more…)

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The Pursuit of Happyness

Posted on December 11, 2006 at 12:20 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some language.
Profanity: Some mild language, f-word visible in graffiti
Alcohol/ Drugs: Smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Sad and disturbing situations, character hit by car
Diversity Issues: An unstated theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: 2006
Date Released to DVD: May 27, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN: B000N6U0E2

This week’s release of “After Earth,” starring Will Smith and his son Jaden, is a good time to take another look at their first co-starring film, based on a real-life father and son:

If a man goes from homeless single dad to multi-millionaire stockbroker, you know there has to be a movie. This one has the good sense to star Will Smith and his real-life son Jaden.
Their natural chemistry and Smith’s natural charisma help this story work.
The story does not have the usual feel-good arc. Even though it omits some of the real-life obstacles and setbacks faced by its main character, it is still more grounded in what happened than in the established beats of narrative and the conventions of story. So even the considerable charms of both Smith and the personable character he plays may not be enough to keep audiences from growing impatient to get to the good stuff.

Chris Gardner (Smith) is a Navy vet, first in his high school class and good with numbers. But his decision to invest everything he had in a portable bone density scanner “that takes a slightly better picture for twice the money” has left his family in a financial position that teeters between precarious and dire. His wife (Thandie Newton) is tired of pulling double shifts and bitter about the way their dream of the future seems to be impossible. She loves their son, but feels overwhelmed. Gardner has to sell two of the heavy machines a month to be able to pay the rent. He is determined to sell them all, but for both of them, the machines he lugs around are like anchors or leg irons.
Chris has one dream that is even more important to him than selling the scanners. He wants to be the father he never had. And he is devoted to his son, endlessly patient and involved. But when his wife leaves, everything begins to slip away. He loses his apartment. And there’s no panic as deep as the fear of not being able to care for your children.
Chris sees a man with a great car and asks what he does. When the man says he is a stockbroker, Chris decides to apply for an internship at Dean Witter.
There are a few obstacles. Chris does not have a college degree. He has no background in the stock market. The internship is six months of intense, demanding, and unpaid work, competing with dozens of others who have more time and better educations. And at the end, only one may be offered a job. Oh, and Chris shows up for the interview covered with paint, in a t-shirt and battered pants. Why? Because he spent the night in jail due to unpaid parking tickets and didn’t have time to change.
His unpretentious charm — and mastery of the then-brand new Rubik’s Cube — gets him the job. And then things get really tough as Chris and his son become homeless and have to spend nights in a shelter or riding public transportation. Chris is handed two near-impossible tasks — to master the fine points of securities analysis and to make cold calls to a list of prospects and turn them into clients. He has a supervisor who keeps sending him for coffee. And while the other interns work late, he has to be at the shelter by 5:00 to make sure he gets in.
Smith has the courage to turn the pilot light down on his powerful movie star charisma and let us see that despite Chris’ intelligence, optimism, and drive, he is vulnerable and scared.

Parents should know that the movie has some tense and unhappy moments that may be disturbing for some audience members, including the break-up of a marriage. A character gets hit by a car.
Families who see this movie should talk about why the word “happiness” is misspelled in the title, when spelling it correctly was so imporant to Chris. What do you learn about him from the way he pursued the stolen scanners? From his decision to sell the scanners in the first place? From the way he handled the job interview? Why did he tell his son not to dream of playing basketball? What was the most important factor in his success? They should talk about how Chris was constantly teaching his son. And they should talk about the insensitivity people showed Chris because they had no idea of his situation; one of the movie’s most important lessons is that we should always remember that we do not know what anyone else is dealing with when we form our expectations.
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Erin Brockovich (some mature material) and Rudy (some strong language).

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American Splendor

Posted on August 22, 2003 at 5:13 am

Harvey Pekar says, “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.” His own life is a good example. He has the most ordinary of professions – he is a file clerk in a veteran’s hospital. He lives in the most ordinary of apartments — dank, drab and cluttered. He has the most ordinary of frustrations – a woman in front of him at the grocery store’s check-out counter takes too long, a look in the mirror provides “a reliable disappointment.” He faces the most minor and the most severe obstacles and problems with the same grumpy pessimism. Yet Pekar, file clerk, freelance jazz critic, comic book author, sometime Letterman guest, and now the subject of a biographical movie, has an extraordinary ability to recognize the complexity of ordinary life. Like many artists, Pekar may be too overwhelmed by life to deal with it, but not too overwhelmed to document it.

His insights and artistic sensibilities do not translate into a capacity for tolerance or intimacy. Pekar is selfish and insensitive. He does not want to be alone but he is too unpleasant and petty to live with anyone else. His first two marriages tanked, so he lives without human companionship in a dingy apartment surrounded by the clutter of his collections of old records and comic books. He spends his free time at garage sales haggling over minor purchases. He manages to alienate almost everyone around him with the exception of his small coterie of equally damaged human beings. One of the highlights of the movie is his relationship with Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), a fan who impulsively decides to marry him after a disastrous first date, and who indeed turns out to be his ideal life companion. Like Pekar, she is relentlessly honest about her own quirks, shortcomings, and pathologies and those of others.

Pekar does not hide a single blemish. On the contrary, he seems to wear his flaws somewhere between chip on his shoulder and a badge of honor. His combination of self-awareness and self-obsession can be extremely difficult to digest in large doses. And yet, Pekar’s unpretentious candor makes him seem real, honest, and even engaging. He may not like being a file clerk, but he is not slumming and he does not feel superior to anyone there, no matter how aware he is of their deficiencies. Being a file clerk fills some need in him, perhaps for order and predictibility and authenticity.

When we first meet Pekar, he is a child out trick-or-treating on Halloween. The other kids are dressed as superheroes, but he is all he will ever be, himself. When that is insufficiently impressive to elicit candy, he gives up. He would rather be the real Harvey Pekar than a pretend comic book hero.

What is ironic, of course, is that Pekar became a comic book hero.

Okay, maybe an anti-hero, but a highly successful one. Pekar’s stories have been illustrated by the top artists working in comics today. Comic expert Don Markstein wrote, “Pekar’s critics accuse him of having founded the ‘dull autobiography’ genre of comics writing. But as is often the case, his many imitators miss the point. It isn’t Pekar’s normal, work-a-day life that draws so many readers to his work. It’s his ability to find piquant things to say about the ordinary things he sees and does.”

The artists illustrating Pekar’s stories are so many and so varied that their differing renditions of Harvey provide one of the movie’s best moments. Fan and future wife Joyce Brabner arrives at a bus station to meet Pekar (Paul Giamatti) for the first time. She looks around and before she sees the real Pekar (rather, the actor portraying him), she sees the ways he was drawn by different artists, trying to put together the Pekar of the comics with the Pekar who wrote them.

This prismatic approach to Pekar is ideal for conveying his complex ordinariness. At one point, Pekar the real person is watching Giamatti, the actor portraying him, who is watching actor Donal Logue playing Pekar in a play. Or maybe Logue is playing Dan Castellaneta, the actor who actually played the part of Pekar in that production.

The characters in this movie are so weird and their lifestyles are so odd that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether they are real people or cartoon characters. The movie brilliantly plays upon this, switching fluidly from comic book drawings to actors, to actual footage of the real people involved, then back again. The real-life characters appear as a sort of Greek chorus to comment on the story and on the movie itself. The real Pekar is, of course, reliably disappointed. Footage of Pekar’s appearances on the David Letterman show is spliced cleverly with surrounding scenes in which actors depict the events leading up to and following the show.

Pekar shows us that when you look closely enough, there is drama even in the uneventful life of a file clerk. Pekar rails against his loneliness, or talks about the sweetness of life in a way that shows he is not all that different from the rest of us. He raises himself from squalor by teaming up with a friend, the famous artist R. Crumb, to produce a whole new type of comic book. He has life-threatening medical problems which require him to confront his own mortality. And in his own way, he loves, deeply.

The overall effect of the movie is not one of slapstick but of earthy, gritty reality. Davis and Giamatti are brave, funny, heartbreaking, and simply magnificent. So are the real Brabner and Pekar.

The movie gives us a Pekar who is an interesting, angry, intelligent, multi-facted, slightly twisted man in his moth-eaten underwear and scratching himself in rude places. He may be reliably disappointed in himself, but the honesty of his take on himself and his life is, ultimately, quite beautiful. Plus, it has the best soundtrack of the year, filled with meticulously chosen classics.

Parents should know that the movie’s rating is based on language. There are some sexual references and inexplicit sexual situations. Some viewers may find the unhappiness and dysfunction in the movie disturbing.

Families who see this movie should talk about why such an intelligent and perceptive man created this kind of life for himself. What was it that appealed to him about the file clerk job? Why did he confront David Letterman? What makes Pekar happy?

Families who enjoy this film should see Crumb, a documentary mentioned in American Splendor about Pekar’s collaborator. Crumb is surrounded by similarly eclectic characters, many profoundly dysfunctional and deeply disturbing. They should also see Ghost World, based on a comic book from the same genre.

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Based on a true story Comedy

Bloody Sunday

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

On January 30, 1972, thousands of civil rights demonstrators in Derry (Londonderry), Ireland, held a rally to protest the British Government’s use of internment without due process in Northern Ireland. British military forces were ordered into the unarmed crowd to capture some of the rowdier youths. What followed has been the subject of great debate and a well-known U2 song, but amidst the confusion, the army opened fire on the protestors, killing thirteen and wounding fourteen others. The day became a turning point for the Northern Irish “Troubles” and is attributed with inspiring thousands of new volunteers to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

As far as subject matter is concerned, many people are more familiar with the U2 song than they are with the actual event or the factors that led to the day. This movie takes a turn at correcting this imbalance by recounting what happened on Bloody Sunday in a powerfully realistic half- drama, half-documentary.

Five characters represent the major forces of the day: a reluctant protest organizer and popular local –Protestant—politician, Ivan Cooper (a mesmerizing performance by James Nesbitt); a seventeen year old Catholic boy, just out of jail and torn between protesting and staying out of trouble, Gerry Donaghy (Declan Duddly); the radioman whose shock and disgust with his fellow soldiers is pitted against his loyalty to the unit, Soldier 027 (Mike Edwards); the dutiful but sympathetically human Brigadier, Patrick MacLellan (Nicholas Farrell); and, the unbending imperialist with the order to end the unrest, Major General Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith). However, it is in the faces of those around these characters where so much of the event is framed: the subtle shift of expression on the face of the Captain of the local police force as the Major General orders soldiers into position; the desperate grimace of an unnamed man as he rushes to resuscitate a corpse; the vacant eyed shock of a man learning of the death of a loved one beneath iridescent hospital lights.

Director Paul Greengrass does an excellent job at crafting a documentary feel for the story, complete with grainy film, jumpy shots, wavering sound and naturally gray light. Reportedly, Greengrass sought out people who were there on January 30th –those who lost loved ones as well as soldiers and bystanders—casting them as extras to add to the verisimilitude. The dialogue might be hard to follow between strong accents and a shifting aural perspective but the result is so realistic that the abrupt ringing of the phone or the crack of gun fire makes you flinch.

Not allowing the viewer to be passive, the movie catches us up in this pivotal day in Ireland’s history. Greengrass chooses not to review events leading to Bloody Sunday beyond passing references, however the moment itself is caught with a moving clarity: whether you agree with Greengrass’ portrayal of controversial events or not, he does a good job of capturing the feel of a society in flux during the early 1970’s and portraying the plight of Derry’s denizens. And, yes, they do play U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as the credits roll.

Parents should know that this movie depicts a tragic, violent event. The graphic shooting of unarmed protestors is very disturbing and the ensuing images including mayhem and grieving are likely to terrify younger children. Young adults accustomed to Hollywood’s comic book portrayal of violence are likely to be disturbed by the events so realistically framed on 35mm film.

Families who see this film could be discussing it for days. First, from a historical perspective, families might wish to talk about how this movie relates to current news stories about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Both the Major General and the protest organizers work as much as possible with the media. How is the debate being presented to the court of public opinion? How has this changed since Bloody Sunday? When Ivan says that the IRA scored its biggest victory on Bloody Sunday, what does he mean?

Second, families may wish to discuss the ramifications of having military forces in populations that are predominately civilian. For some historical perspective, the paratrooper unit responsible for firing on the crowd –the First Battalion Parachute Regiment—was created in 1940 by Sir Winston Churchill, gaining the nickname “Red Devils” during fighting in Northern Africa, Sicily and France during WWII. In the years before being stationed in Northern Ireland, they were stationed in the Middle East, Aden, Cyprus and other hotspots. With a respected history in combat, the First Battalion considered themselves part of Britain’s fighting elite. Why would this group –trained to face armed enemies—be given a peacekeeping role in Ireland? What friction exists between the Regiment and the local police? What are their respective goals and responsibilities? What lessons might there be for us regarding troops in other urban situations, such as the Balkans or the Middle East?

Greengrass has chosen to film this account with a distinctly “documentary” camera style, intended to make an audience feel like they are there as a witness to history. As a brief notice in the credits mentions, the movie is based on events that did occur, however many of the conversations and characters were created for the purpose of the story. Is it important to the story that the audience think of this film as a documentary? If so, what issues might this raise for Greengrass or other filmmakers when they are presenting stories based on controversial events?

Families who are interested in seeing more on non-violent protest and the difficulties of maintaining peaceful demonstrations in the face of force might wish to watch “Gandhi” (1982). For those who are interested in the theme of mismatch between military units and the political objectives asked of them, “Black Hawk Down” (2001) might be of interest. Those who are interested in seeing more on the Irish Troubles might be interested in director Jim Sheridan’s 1990’s trilogy (“In the Name of the Father”; “Some Mother’s Son”; and, “The Boxer”) or Neil Jordan’s “Michael Collins” (1996). For families who wish to see James Nesbitt in a vastly different role, “Waking Ned Devine” is a lighthearted look at an isolated Irish town far away from Bloody Sunday and, indeed, from any troubles at all.

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