Contest

Posted on December 16, 2013 at 9:42 pm

“Contest” more than makes up for some first-time-filmmaker shortcomings with its sincerity and unexpected strengths in the storyline and cinematography.

Tommy (Danny Flaherty) is a high school loner, often bullied by the swim team jocks led by Matt (Kenton Duty). Both boys do not have parents. Tommy lives with his grandmother (“The Good Wife’s” Mary Beth Peil), who owns a pizzeria. Matt lives with his older brother Kyle (Kyle Dean Massey).

When security camera footage of the swim team throwing Tommy into the pool lets Matt in trouble, the assistant principal tells him that if he can make friends with Tommy and lead the anti-bullying campaign for 30 days, he can be reinstated in his extra-curricular activities. Tommy is not interested at first, but when he is selected for a television teen cooking show competition and needs teammates to try for the $50,000 prize, he grudgingly accepts Matt’s help.

Meanwhile, the young, arrogant landlord who owns the pizzeria’s lease wants to get her out. Tommy’s brother Kyle is given the assignment of making sure she cannot exercise her option to buy the property.

The young actors sometimes struggle with the material and the face-slaps from the all-female opposing team are unfortunate. But the script is absorbing, with some unexpected twists, appealing characters (I especially liked the grandmother and the pretty blogger), and real insights into the origins of bullying and its impact on the bully as well as the victim.

Parents should know that this film concern bullying and includes some rough talk.

Family discussion: Why do people become bullies? How are the teens in this story like the adults around them? What does Tommy mean about “flipping the switch?” What changes Matt’s mind?

If you like this, try: “Mean Girls”

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Admission

Posted on March 21, 2013 at 6:01 pm

Tina Fey and Paul Rudd seem perfect for each other. The characters they play in this movie are not as persuasive. Fey is so much better than the adorkable rom-com role assigned to her here and Rudd is capable of so much more than the earnest do-gooder relegated to him. But what really hurts this film is the senseless complications the characters have to try to navigate and the uncertain hold on developments that are are disorientingly off-key. You can see the studio’s lack of confidence in the movie in the bait-and-switch ad campaign. The commercials make it look like a standard romantic comedy (and it may have been re-edited to try to fit those rhythms), but the plot line about reuniting with a child put up for adoption feels awkward, cluttered, and intrusive.

Fey is Portia, a tightly-wrapped admissions officer at Princeton, always buried in orange file folders brimming with the hopes and dreams of 17-year-olds and their parents. They all have excellent grades, community service credentials, positions in student government, athletic achievements, and some sort of artistic streak. Portia knows how to maintain her composure even when confronted with prospects who are certain that asking just the right penetrating question of the student tour guide will somehow cause the (for the purposes of this film) toughest school in the country to get into to see them as the shining star of perfection their parents always told them they were. She is less composed when it comes to her own ambitions. The head of the office (Wallace Shawn) is retiring and Portia is competing with a colleague (“Lincoln’s” Gloria Reuben) who is much smoother at ingratiating herself at Portia’s expense.

Portia is constantly under assault from applicants, parents, and high school college counselors. Despite the avalanche of applications Princeton receives every year, she has to go out to high schools to encourage seniors to apply. Princeton is competitive, too. It wants to make sure that it gets to choose from the the most promising applicants. And it wants to keep its rejection ratio high so it will top the annual US News rankings. She gets a call from John Pressman (Rudd) the head of an alternative school. Like all the other high school administrators, he has a student he wants her to accept. Like many of them, he wants to make the case that the kid’s file does not reflect his true potential. But there is one more thing. John is sure, on the flimsiest of evidence, that an autodidactic polymath named Jeremiah (a likable Nat Wolff of “The Naked Brothers”) is the son Portia gave up for adoption. The one she never told anyone about. Jeremiah wants to go to Princeton and Portia’s vestigial maternal instinct jumps to life. All of a sudden, she finds herself on the other side of the admissions process.

And there’s a lot of other stuff happening with Portia’s professor boyfriend (Michael Sheen), her free-spirited mother (a mis-used Lily Tomlin), and John’s adopted son (Travaris Spears), and John’s parents. And most of these people at some point in the last third of the film do something so inexplicably inconsistent with what we know about them and what we want for them that it almost seems that we’ve wandered into a different movie.

It would be impossible for Fey and Rudd to be anything other than entertaining and highly watchable. But I hope their next time on screen does not test that proposition so insistently.

Parents should know that this movie includes references to infidelity and putting an out-of-wedlock infant up for adoption, drinking, and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: How did Portia’s mother influence her ideas about parenting? How would you decide who to admit?

If you like this, try: “Clueless” and “Date Night”

Brooklyn Castle

Posted on October 18, 2012 at 2:43 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	PG for some language
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 18, 2012

I.S. 318 is a below-the-poverty-line inner city junior high school. And its students have won more national chess championships than any other in the country. So this is a touching and inspiring story of triumph and what can be accomplished in spite of the most daunting of obstacles if there is someone who believes in you. And it is a story of the joys of intellectual passion and a game that goes back centuries, even in an era of saturation in digital media. There is much of what you expect — gifted kids, dedicated teacher, tense anticipation, thrilling victories. The characters are endearing and their stories are stirring.

This movie is also frank about the vulnerability of these programs. We see so much that is made possible by so little, and how fragile even that little can be. These children have endless spirit, skill, and devotion. They can solve complex mathematical puzzles that involve intricate, multi-step strategies. But the adults around them may not be able to show the same level of commitment or ability to think ahead to enable these kids to continue to benefit from the chess program.

Parents should know that this film includes the portrayal of children in difficult circumstances and some schoolyard language.

Family discussion: What do you have to be good at to succeed in chess? What makes this chess program so important to the kids?

If you like this try: “Mad Hot Ballroom” and “Searching for Bobby Fischer” — and try a game of chess!

Pitch Perfect

Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The sensationally talented Anna Kendrick finally gets to play the lead in a story about the cutthroat world of a capella competitions. It’s “Stomp the Yard” with singing, or “Glee Goes to College.” The songs are fabulously entertaining, the romance is sweet, Rebel Wilson’s understated zingers are hilarious, Kendrick is pure joy. John Michael Higgins (“Best in Show”) and co-producer Elizabeth Banks (“The Hunger Games”) are the acid-tongued commentators at the big competitions.

And the projectile vomiting is torrential.

I blame “Bridesmaids.” I am certain that as this movie was being prepared, some dimwit studio executive saw how well “Bridesmaids” was doing at the box office and ordered up three scenes of disgusting bodily function humor be (awkwardly) inserted. Minutes after the film begins a musical performance is interrupted by massive barfing. We are later treated to two additional and increasingly ludicrous throwing-up tsunamis, plus some cringeworthy jokes, many very crude, uncomfortably racial, or based on increasingly lame plays on the words “a capella.” Few are even remotely funny.

Kendrick plays Beca, who arrives at college by herself as everyone else is being dropped off by their parents. She is a loner and she does not want to be there. She just wants to get a job creating music. But her professor father makes her promise to give it a year. If she can complete the year successfully, and that includes an activity, he will let her drop out and pursue her dream. So she joins the girls’ a capella (no musical instruments, just voices) group, led by micro-managing control freak Aubrey (Anna Camp), who is determined to come back from the unpleasant nausea incident at the finals of the previous year that has made them the objects of derision, especially from the champion male group. She insists on keeping everything safe and bland, with uniforms that make them look like 1970’s flight attendants and a set-list of safe but bland middle-of-the-road pop.

And there’s a guy. Jesse (Skylar Astin) likes Beca, but Aubrey has made consorting with the members of the male singing group a firing offense. And Beca, very hurt by her parents’ divorce, really does not want to like anyone. But her natural gifts and passion for music inspire her to remix some fresh and edgy songs. The relationships play out through and amid various musical encounters, with the best an informal riff-off competition in an empty swimming pool (good acoustics).

Kendrick proves she is a real movie star but the mash-up with low comedy keeps tripping up the movie’s momentum. The musical harmonies are sublime but Beca’s pointlessly hostile Asian roommate, who only speaks to other Asians and a member of the singing group who is unable to make an audible sound are way off-key.

Parents should know that this movie has some racial and sexual humor with crude references (though the lead couple do nothing more than kiss), some strong language, drug references, and torrential projectile vomiting

Family discussion: Should Beca’s father have pushed her to go to school and try activities? What was the most important thing she learned from being part of the group?

If you like this try: “Glee 3D: The Concert Movie” and the television show “The Sing-Off” and the non-fiction book that inspired this film, Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin

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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Based on a true story Drama School