Posted on January 13, 2011 at 3:56 pm
This weekend we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King and every family should take time to talk about this great American leader and hero of the Civil Rights Movement. There are outstanding films for all ages.
Every family should watch the magnificent movie Boycott
The Long Walk Home
Citizen King
For children, Our Friend, Martin
Posted on October 14, 2010 at 6:00 pm
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | NR |
| Profanity: | Very strong and explicit language with sexual references, some crude |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | None |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | October 15, 2010 |
In the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity — and the Cold War and the blacklist and conformity — a small group of writers found much to terrify and infuriate them. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” one of them wrote, the beginning of a barbaric yawp of a poem of fury and protest called “Howl.” His name was Allen Ginsberg.
This movie is not the story of Ginsberg (smoothly played by James Franco), who would go on to become one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed and influential poets, though he is affecting, even at times electric. It is the story of the poem itself, taking us back and forth between three key moments. First is Ginsberg’s own performance, reading the poem aloud in a small, smoky club. Second is an interview two years later with a now-bearded Ginsberg in his apartment. And third is a courtroom, where the obscenity charges brought not against Ginsberg but against his publisher, fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“Experts” (Mary-Louise Parker, Alessandro Nivola, Jeff Daniels) debate the literary merit and destructively prurient content of Ginsberg’s work on the witness stand. The prosecution (David Straithairn) argues that the poem is so detrimental to the minds of Americans that it should not even be seen. For the defense, Jake Ehrlich (“Man Men’s” Jon Hamm), with a natty four-cornered pocket square handkerchief, who shows the court that far more important than any expert’s opinion on the value of Howl
And for me at least, that is where the real poetry is.
Posted on August 25, 2010 at 8:00 am
Gertrude Berg is described in this sympathetic and engaging documentary as an earlier version of Oprah. She wrote every word of over twelve thousand scripts. She played the lead role and oversaw every element of the programs on radio, in television, and in a feature film. She branched out to a line of clothing and a cookbook. She was the first “first lady of television” before Lucille Ball took the title. It is probably more due to Desi Arnaz’s three-camera system for making infinitely rerun-able tapes that has kept “I Love Lucy” in the forefront while shows of equal quality faded from the airwaves.
Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg) has assembled archival footage and contemporary interviews to illuminate the life of this pioneering writer/actress/producer. The film may go too far in giving Berg credit for creating the sit-com, but it makes a convincing case for her stature and influence, even more impressive in light of the era’s bigotry and the restrictions on professional advancement for both Jews and women.
For many people, “The Goldbergs” was their first exposure to a non-stereotyped Jewish family. Among the film’s most affecting interviews are the comments from viewers who speak of what the show meant to them, including the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who says that since her mother had no family, they thought of the Goldbergs as their relatives, and from non-Jewish women who talk about how the series’ portrayal of family felt very much like their own experiences and cultures.
The saddest part of the film is the portion about Philip Loeb, who played Berg’s husband on the series until his name came up during the era of the blacklist. Berg showed great courage and integrity in fighting to keep him on the show and he showed great honor in insisting that the show go on without him. The tragic outcome is conveyed with great sympathy and feeling.
Kempner has a real gift for making these almost-forgotten lives fascinating and vital. Perhaps most important, the film made me sorry that the very intriguing clips from Berg’s television series didn’t go on longer. I’d like to spend more time with the Goldbergs.
Posted on July 20, 2010 at 8:00 am
The fierce determination. The big break. The tyrannical and sometimes unreasonable and sometimes even crooked manager. The endless rehearsals. The performances in dingy clubs. The breakthrough. The first album. The first magazine cover. The first fans. The fights among band members and between band members and their families.
And then, inevitably, the nightmare descent into booze and drugs.
That’s just about every single episode of “VH1 Behind the Music,” because it’s just about every rock band’s real-life experience. But the very success of that series has made it extremely difficult to make a movie about a real-life rock band that does not seem strangled by the constricting inevitabilities of the rock star story arc — as numbingly familiar in movies as it is in real life.
All of that is in “The Runaways,” the story of the pioneering all-girl rock group of the 1970’s. Joan Jett (“Twilight’s” Kristen Stewart) is the one with the fierce determination, especially when a guitar teacher suggests that girls don’t rock. She wants to have an all-girl band. Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is the perfect storm to be out front — she is very pretty, just past puberty, and has a home life so awful that she will do anything for attention and affection. When a music promoter named Kim Fowley brings them together, he tells the teenage girls (in a much cruder way) that they should rock like men.
They were one part female empowerment, one part novelty act. They were Lolitas with a backbeat, jail bait in jumpsuits, their very name emphasizing their youth and rebelliousness. And they really did not have much in common other than a lack of experience and maturity and a longing for thrills. Jett, who went on to a long rock career and is still performing, was a serious rocker. Currie, who was barely old enough to drive when The Runaways were singing “Cherry Bomb” in lingerie to packed concert halls, had no great passion for performing. It is telling that in an early scene we see her at a school talent show — lip-synching David Bowie. It is her memoir that is the basis of the movie, and so it reflects her perspective and her story. She was torn apart by family problems and soon became addicted to drugs.
Posted on April 20, 2010 at 8:00 am
“The Young Victoria” is the story of a teenager who became a queen. Before she reigned for a record 63 years and gave her name to an age, she was a girl who was sheltered to the point of claustrophobia. Famously, her first order as queen was that her mother no longer sleep in her bedroom. Like all in power, she was beset with those who tried to pressure and manipulate her, but she proved herself to be wiser and more adept than many far more experienced when it came to staying true to her ideals and her commitment to her subjects. And perhaps even more rare among royals, she married a man with whom she was deeply in love, and was so true to him that after his death she wore mourning for the rest of her life.
Sarah Ferguson, who knows a great deal about being a young royal because she married and divorced the son of the current queen and is the mother of two of her grandchildren, has produced this sumptuous biography, making it respectful without being at all stuffy. Emily Blunt (“The Devil Wore Prada,” “Charlie Wilson’s War”) plays the young queen as naive but with a lively, curious mind, surrounded by corruption but able to recognize honesty and with the courage, even in an era when women were far from equal, to insist on her full authority as monarch. When she plays chess with her handsome distant cousin Albert (Rupert Friend), he tells her she should find a husband who will play the game of political intrigue with her, not for her. And she knows that he is someone she can trust.
It is very satisfying to see the young queen triumph over her enemies, especially the cruel bully who has dominated Victoria’s mother and hopes to rule as regent (Mark Strong). But it is even more satisfying to see her learn from her mistakes and especially to see her allowing herself to be vulnerable with Albert. She is not just a monarch but a young bride very much in love with her husband. Blunt is simply radiant and the film is stirring, touching, and inspiring.
