P.S. I Love You

Posted on May 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Hillary Swank does not have the chin for romance or the rhythm for comedy. Her two Oscars were for earnest, androgynous roles (“Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby”) that made the most of her strong jaw and lanky figure. Romantic comedies, even bittersweet ones about perky young widows learning to go on with their lives, need twinkle. Her character wears twinkly dresses and does twinkly things, but Swank delivers her lines as though she is still slamming into that heavy bag.

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The Red Balloon

Posted on April 29, 2008 at 2:09 pm

B+

red%20balloon.jpg Two recent films showed the influence of this classic French film about a little boy befriended by a red balloon and now the original is available on DVD for the first time. “CJ7” from China and “The Flight of the Red Balloon” from France (with a Taiwanese director) both make direct visual references to the 1956 short film, the only Oscar-winner for best screenplay without a single line of dialogue.

The Red Balloon is the story of a lonely boy (Pascal Lamorisse, son of writer/director Albert Lamorisse) who finds a large red balloon on the way to school. It has a mind of its own, following him to school like Mary’s little lamb, waiting patiently for him outside his bedroom window when his mother will not allow it in the house. The balloon is an imaginative and playful friend. When it is attacked by bullies, it seems that Pascal’s friend is lost. But an unforgettably joyous ending reminds Pascal of the power of friendship.

Charlie Wilson’s War

Posted on April 22, 2008 at 6:00 pm

charlie%20wilson.jpg It is not easy to take a wealthy socialite, a powerful Congressman, and a CIA agent, have them played by three Oscar-winners, two who are genuine box office gold, and make them look like the underdogs, but in this “extraordinary story of how the wildest man in Congress and a rogue CIA agent changed the history of our times” (as put in the unusually accurate book subtitle), that is what they are.

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Juno

Posted on April 15, 2008 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content and language.
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad and tense confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 5, 2007
Date Released to DVD:	April 15, 2008
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000YABYLA

Juno%20poster.jpg
It’s time for the q-word again. Every year, it seems, there is some audience-favorite-quirky-little-indy — that category is now a genre of its own, like thriller and romantic comedy. 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine was called “this year’s Napoleon Dynamite. And in 2007, ever since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, “Juno” has been called this year’s Little Miss Sunshine. All three films are modest little independent films, though the two most recent have, if not A-list superstars, certainly established A-list actors. All three are small stories about people who are not glossy, air-brushed, homogenized, safe, and stories that are not formulaic or easily classified. The movies are filled with telling details and some intriguing messiness in character and plot. Hollywood’s word for this is “quirky.” When it’s done right, it is endearing, engaging, and unforgettable, filled with people we want in our lives.

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The Miracle Worker

Posted on April 14, 2008 at 8:00 am

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violence, characters injured
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	May 23, 1962

Today is the 142nd anniversary of the birth of one of the most extraordinary teachers in American history, Annie Sullivan, who gave a little blind and deaf girl the power of language. William Gibson, who wrote two plays about the teacher and her student, says that when people refer to “The Miracle Worker” as “the play about Helen Keller,” he replies, “If it was about her, it would be called ‘The Miracle Workee.'” Sullivan, herself visually impaired, was first in her class at the Perkins School for the Blind. When she went to work for the Keller family she was just 21 years old. And Keller, who was blind and deaf due to an illness when she was 19 months old. When Sullivan arrived, Keller was almost completely wild, without any ability to communicate or any understanding that communication beyond grabbing and hitting was possible.

Every family should watch the extraordinary film about what happened next, and read more about Keller, who, with Sullivan’s help, graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude and became an author and a world figure.

Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for their performances as Sullivan and Keller, repeating their Broadway roles and Duke later played Sullivan in a made-for-television adaptation. In this scene, after months of teaching Keller to fingerspell words, Sullivan is finally able to show her that language will give her the ability to communicate, with a new world of relationships, feelings, and learning. No teacher ever bestowed a greater gift.

Monday After the Miracle is Gibson’s sequel to the play, and Keller’s own book is called The Story of My Life. There is a photobiography of Sullivan called Helen’s Eyes.