When the Game Stands Tall — The Real Story

Posted on August 23, 2014 at 3:47 pm

“When the Game Stands Tall” is based on the real-life story of the De La Salle High School Spartans football team, which had the longest winning streak of any team in any sport at any level 151 games in a row over twelve years. The movie is based on what happened at the end of the streak, when one of their star players was killed and their coach, Bob Ladouceur (played by Jim Caviezel in the film) has to bring them back together. Ladouceur said that their first bus ride of the season was to their teammate’s funeral. They lost the next game.

The film is based on the book by Neil Hayes, with a foreword by John Madden about Coach Ladouceur and his team. When people asked the coach how he was able to produce these results, game after game, year after year, he would say, “Spend a year with us.” Hayes took him up on it, and that is what produced the book and then the film. Another book, One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game, by Don Wallace, tells the story of the championship game between the Catholic private school De La Salle and public school Long Beach Poly, .

Here is the real Bob Ladouceur.

And here are the Spartans.

Spartans who later became professional athletes:

T.J. Ward, safety for the Denver Broncos
Maurice Jones-Drew, halfback for Oakland Raiders.
Amani Toomer, wide receiver for New York Giants
Kevin Simon, linebacker for Washington D.C. football team
Matt Gutierrez, former quarterback in the National Football League
D. J. Williams, outside linebacker for the Chicago Bears
Doug Brien, kicker with San Francisco 49ers
David Loverne, guard with New York Jets
Derek Landri, defensive tackle with Philadelphia Eagles
Stephen Wondolowski, pro soccer player
Chris Wondolowski, pro soccer player
Stefan Frei, pro soccer player
John David Baker, pro baseball player
Chris Carter, pro baseball player
Jon Barry, pro basketball player
Brent Barry, pro basketball player
Kristian Ipsen, Olympic diver, bronze medalist
Aaron Taylor, former offensive lineman for Green Bay Packers

If I Stay

Posted on August 21, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some sexual material
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, including teen drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	The film's themes include a tragic accident, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 22, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	November 17, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00NT964VS

Hamlet asked it best. “To be, or not to be: That is the question.” We struggle through, worrying about whether someone likes us or whether we will be accepted at the school of our choice. Those seem like serious problems. And then something really huge shows us how small those problems are, and forces us to confront the only question that matters: will we continue to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or will we obliterate ourselves, and everything we can perceive?

That is the question faced by a young cellist named Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz, in one of her first roles as a normal girl). She has a wonderful family, loving, supportive, understanding and remarkably hip and gorgeous parents (Mireille Enos as Kat and Joshua Leonard as Denny) and a not-too-pesky kid brother named Teddy (Jakob Davies). She has the kind of kindred spirit best friend who is always vitally interested in every detail and always on her side (“Trust’s” terrific Liana Liberato). And they are a part of a warm, loving community in Portland, Oregon that seems like an endless pot luck dinner party, seamlessly blending from one time and place to another, always filled with laughter and music.

And there is Adam (Jamie Blackley). He is the perfect combination of untamed/angsty and utterly devoted swain. He is supposedly a punk musician, though his performances are disconcertingly pop-ish with even a bit of emo. And he says swoon-worthy things like, “You can’t hide in that rehearsal room forever. It’s too late. I see you.” Mia feels like an outsider as a classical cellist in a family of rock musicians. And, of course, she attends high school with teenagers who have no interest in orchestral music. “Right on, I love classic rock,” one of them responds when Mia tries to explain the kind of music she plays.

Adam watches Mia rehearse and instantly sees that in the most important way she is just like him. She is someone who is not just moved by music, but saved by it. She says, “I loved the order, the structure, that feeling in my chest. Like my heart is beating with the cello.” The “whole messy live for the moment punk rocker thing” does not feel right to her.

Soon Adam and Mia are a couple. But then his group becomes successful and he starts to tour. And she may have a chance to go to Juilliard, on the other side of the country.

And then there is the accident. Mia’s family takes advantage of a snow day to go off on an excursion together, but a car slips on the ice and there is a very bad crash. The entire story is told as Mia’s spirit, alone in the limbo between life and death, able to see and hear everyone around her but not able to be seen or heard, is remembering her life, beginning to understand what has happened, and recognizing that it is up to her to decide whether to re-enter her body and fight to stay alive.

Gayle Forman‘s book is thoughtfully adapted by Shauna Cross (“Whip It”), who has a good sense of the inner lives of teenage girls. While Adam and Mia have their struggles, they are thankfully a step above the typical teenage drama (on and off-screen), and almost always respectfully handled and based in character and context and not the usual sitcom-ish miscommunication. Moritz takes on a tough challenge in playing a character who has to express so much anxiety with so little interaction with other actors, except in flashbacks. She does well, as does director R.J. Cutler in keeping an internal story visually engaging. If it doesn’t have the emotional impact of recent YA weepies like “The Spectacular Now” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” it is a touching story about an appealing young couple.

Parents should know that this film has literal life-and-death situations, with a serious accident, and characters injured and killed. It also includes strong language, teen drinking, and non-explicit sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: How did their families influence the different ways Adam and Mia saw their options? Why did Mia’s grandfather tell her she could go? What would you decide and why?

If you like this, try: “The Spectacular Now,” “Save the Last Dance,” and “Bandslam” as well as the book by Gayle Forman and its sequel, told from Adam’s perspective, Where She Went

The Giver

Posted on August 12, 2014 at 7:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence
Profanity:	Some strong languge
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Citizens are required to take drugs to make them submissive
Violence/ Scariness:	Sci-fi-style apocalyptic violence, murder, peril, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 15, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	November 24, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00MU2P0HO

the giver poster — Copyright 2014 The Weinstein Company

“Thank you for your childhood.” Are there any more fearsome words in literature than these?

Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a Newbery Award-winning novel, a staple of middle school reading lists and book reports. It tells a dystopian story of a post-apocalypse society that is pleasantly courteous on its surface, but rigidly regimented and ruthlessly enforced. As children come of age and are assigned to their future careers by the all-powerful elders (who will later assign their mates and children as well), they are thanked for their childhood, words that sound grateful and polite, but which imply that all lives belong to the community, which demands that childhood be somehow contributed. And, it clearly communicates that whatever freedoms or pleasures of childhood exist in this society, they are now in the past.

“From the ashes of the ruin,” we are told, “the communities were built” and “true equality” was achieved. Whoever designed these new communities made the decision that human life could only continue if all memories of the past were erased, so that the sources of catastrophic conflicts — individual and cultural differences, were wiped out, along with the freedom to chose that inevitably leads to jealousy, anger, and struggles for power. Fear, pain, envy, hatred, are all gone. So are colors. We see their world through their eyes, muted greys, no color, no music, no art. There is constant discussion of “precision of language,” but it is just a way to eliminate words that describe strong emotions or complicated concepts, while genuinely imprecise words like “elsewhere” and “release” are euphemisms for dire and tragic consequences. People “apologize” all the time but there are no real regrets and the “I accept your apology” responses are just as perfunctory.

Three friends, the serious Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), fun-loving Asher (Cameron Monaghan), and kind-hearted Fiona (Odeya Rush) are about to receive the thanks for their childhoods and be assigned their jobs. Jonas is worried but his “parents” (a couple assigned to each other and handed babies from a collective nursery) reassure him that the Elders will make a good assignment, whether it is as a laborer, a nurturer (caretaker of infants and elderly), a lawyer (like his mother), or one of the other jobs that keep the community going.

But at the assignment ceremony announcements, Jonas is skipped over. Only when everyone else has been assigned does the Elder (Meryl Streep in Very Serious Hair) tells the group that Jonas has been selected for a very important job. The founders of this post-Ruin society erased all memories of the past but recognized that there might be some circumstances when mistakes could be prevented by reminders of past failures. And so, it turns out, one isolated member of society is designated to be the repository of memories. Jonas has been selected to be his successor. He tells Jonas that because he is transferring the memories, he is The Giver (Jeff Bridges). There is a lot of pressure on The Giver and Jonas because a previous effort to find a new keeper of memories (a small role for Taylor Swift, unglammed and made under) failed.

The story retains its power, despite an uneven translation to screen, in part because the book has been so influential that its ideas are no longer as innovative. There is now an entire literary genre about repressive dystopian societies where it is up to an exceptionally attractive and very brave and talented teenager to save the day: Divergent, The Hunger Games, and the upcoming “The Maze Runner.” Those stories have some similarities — the imposition of sometimes-fatal assignments by all-powerful adults, the rigidity and corruption of the society. But the other stories are more inherently cinematic than The Giver, with a lot of the interaction here limited to conversations. The muted emotions and colors are better imagined by a reader than watched as a viewer. Streep and Bridges give uncharacteristically one-note performances in one-note roles. Only Alexander Skarsgård as Jonas’ “father,” a nurturer in the facility where all the newborns are kept for the first year, gives his character some nuance and complexity, particularly in one very difficult scene that shows Jonas just how ruthless the seemingly placid and egalitarian community really is.

Indeed, that is one of the few scenes that seems to come alive. On film, the book falters, more weighted by ideas than by story or character. Despite the gifted work of production designer Ed Verreaux, whose setting convey placid exterior and deeper menace and director Philip Noyce, who uses music and color to deepen the emotional resonance, the film still feels thinly conceived. The Giver can transmit tumultuous events and powerful emotions with a touch. But the audience never achieves that visceral connection.

Parents should know that there is disturbing dystopic material in this story including peril and attacks, murder of people deemed unwanted or superfluous and mandatory drugging of the entire population, some graphic images, reference to adolescent “stirrings,” and a kiss.

Family discussion: If you were The Giver, what memories would you share and why? What are the reasons someone might think this was a better way for societies to function?

If you like this, try: “Pleasantville,” “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” and the three sequels to this book by Lois Lowry.

Boyhood

Posted on July 17, 2014 at 6:00 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language including sexual references, and for teen drug and alcohol use
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen and adult drinking, teen drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Domestic abuse, guns
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 18, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	January 5, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00MEQUNZ0

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will/And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” (Longfellow)

We first see Mason (Ellar Coltrane) lying on the ground, looking up at the sky, and it is clear that his thoughts are very long indeed. We will stay with Mason and — in an unprecedented longitudinal form of filmmaking from writer/director Richard Linklater — portrayed by Coltrane for twelve years, until he leaves for college at age 18. This film deservedly appears on most of the year’s top ten lists and has been selected by several critics groups as the best film of the year.

Linklater has followed characters over the years before. We have seen the romantic relationship of Celine and Jesse in three 24-hour episodes (all involving walking through European cities) in the “Before” films, plus an intriguing segment of the animated “Waking Life.” That series is an extraordinary, and I hope, continuing undertaking, with stars Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke working with Linklater to create the storyline and script.

Hawke is in this film, too, as Mason’s father, Mason senior. Patricia Arquette plays his mother and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei plays his older sister, Samantha. All are superb. Linklater says that he knew what the last shot would be from the beginning. For the rest, he trusted his stars and the developments of the dozen years ahead of them. As the children got older, they joined Linklater, Hawke, and Arquette in helping to fill in the details.

And it is the details that are the story here, giving it a unhurried yet mesmerizingly enthralling feel and an unexpected power. At first, it seems like time-lapse footage of a flower blooming. Then it feels like watching someone’s home movies. By the end, we are so invested in Mason’s life we feel we are watching our own.

Linklater and his cast met for just a few weeks each year to film a little more. Unlike a conventional narrative, where, as Chekov put it, economy of storytelling means that a gun over the fireplace in act one has to go off by act three, this story is not linear. But non-linear does not mean random. The incidents chosen are not necessarily the high points of Mason’s years, but they are indicators that create a mosaic of the fuller picture. Mason sees his mother, who has gone back to graduate school, talking to one of her professors. But it is unlikely that he understands the meaning of the look they exchange. We are not surprised to find them married in a subsequent scene. And we do not need a slow build-up or full character arc to understand the import of the succeeding conflicts between the stepfather and stepson.

Meanwhile, Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater do something no one has ever done quite this way before on screen. They grow up. And Richard Linklater trusts the audience enough to let that in and of itself be the dramatic arc of the story. There were laughs and hoots in the audience over the antiquated look of the computers at Mason’s school. There are references to the first Obama Presidential campaign and the release of a new Harry Potter book. But these are all organic, as much as his first heart-break, his second stepfather, and new stepmother, and tough words from his teacher. There is no micro-managed re-creation of the past; this is the past, our past as well as Mason’s. It feels real, it feels lived in, and, as he leaves for college, it feels bittersweet but filled with promise.

Parents should know that this film includes domestic abuse, tense family confrontations, guns, very strong language, sexual references (some crude), and teen drug and alcohol use.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Mason’s photography teacher about what he should do? Mason had many different role models for masculinity — which do you think he will follow?

If you like this, try: Richard Linklater’s other films, including “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” and “Before Midnight” and “Waking Life”

The Fault in Our Stars

Posted on June 5, 2014 at 6:00 pm

John Green’s best-selling novel, The Fault in Our Stars is the story of kids with cancer, but it is not about dying. It is about living. This exquisite adaptation is that rare film based on a beloved novel that does full justice to the source material without being static or talky. The screenplay is by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who showed exceptional sensitivity in the bittersweet love stories “(500) Days of Summer” and “The Spectacular Now” (also adapted from a beloved YA book and also starring Shailene Woodley), and it was directed by Josh Boone, of the underrated “Stuck in Love” (also starring Nat Wolff, who appears here as a friend of the central couple).

Remember the hospital scene in “Terms of Endearment?” This one will make you cry more. But it is sad, not depressing.

Woodley plays Hazel Grace Lancaster, whose lungs have been badly compromised and who cannot breathe without a nasal cannula attached to an oxygen tank. Pushed by her mother to attend a support group that meets “literally in the heart of Jesus,” with a guitar-strumming leader who is well-intentioned but unwilling to acknowledge the direness of the circumstances, Hazel catches the eye of lanky Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort, and yes, he played her brother in “Divergent”).

She’s the nerdy girl, he’s the basketball-player and cool guy, which is the classic high school movie romantic setup for opposite attraction except in this case what they have in common is more important than what table they would sit at in the school cafeteria. He is not playing basketball anymore because his leg was amputated due to cancer. What brings them together is not the cancer but the shared worldview they developed as a result of the cancer, with few illusions but an openness to hope, if not hope for a longer life, at least hope for a better life. Hazel worries that she is “a grenade,” that the most significant impact her life will have is the devastating grief she leaves behind.

Hazel and Augustus exchange favorite books. His is a novelization of a video game. Hers is an ambitious, literary novel by a reclusive author named Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe, superb in a tricky role). The book ends abruptly, in the middle of a sentence, when its main character dies, and Hazel is overcome with curiosity about what happens to the characters she left behind. For all they have lost, they still have “cancer perqs,” privileges that come with the combination of pity and guilt felt by people around them. Augustus takes advantage of his to help Hazel meet Van Houten. But it is in the other parts of the journey that they find more important answers and better questions as well.

The characters in the movie like to say, “it’s a metaphor,” but their own story is a metaphor about the issues we all grapple with. Watching people whose biggest problem should be what to wear to the prom confront the problem of making sense of life, finding meaning, risking intimacy is a heightened version for dramatic purposes. But these are the core challenges for all of us, whether our lives will last for 16 years or 116. These teenagers just do not have the luxury the rest of us do of being in denial about how little time there is.

Elgort is marvelous, but then he gets to say swoon-worthy lines like “You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.” On the other hand, he has the challenge of grandiloquent lines like. “It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you,” and he says them beautifully. Woodley is in every way (except literally) the heart of the film, and once again delivers a performance of endless sensitivity, even with a cannula in her nose. Fans of the book will find key scenes like the egging of a car and the ultimate romantic restaurant date exactly as they envisioned it. Even the trip to the Anne Frank house, which could have been heavy-handed, is handled well. Anne Frank is, in a way, the spiritual sister of Hazel and Augustus. Like them, she had to find meaning in the midst of devastation. As they walk through the hidden annex where she lived, her words of hope come out of tinny display speakers. And Hazel’s climb up the steep steps to see it is itself a “shout into the void.”

I like the way they call each other by their full names. Even though their time is limited, addressing each other with a touch of formality and grandeur is too important for short cuts. I like the intensity and honesty of their talks; anything less they know they do not have time for. The title comes from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” The nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” He is saying that it is we who determine how we live. But the line that I think of when I see this film is from poet Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

Parents should know that the theme of the film is teenagers with cancer. Many characters are very ill and there is a very sad death, as well as brief strong language, sexual references and situation, teen drinking and adult alcohol abuse.

Family discussion: What questions would you like to ask an author about a book you like? How should you choose who will hurt you? What makes some infinities larger than others?

If you like this, try: the book by John Green and the films “Harold and Maude” and “Restless”