12 Years a Slave (***1/2)

In human history, there are, unfortunately, many worthy contenders for superlative evilness, but the Holocaust and American slavery were at least unusual in perpetuating elaborately organized systems of cruelty that provide endless storytelling possibilities. There are more films about the Holocaust, I think, and the unwillingness of Americans to look at the ugly sides of American history may be part of that, but there have been, also, many more Holocaust survivors who were in a position to tell their stories. Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was an educated man, a free black man with a loving wife and children in Saratoga, New York, who became a slave in 1841, and was sent to Louisiana. Later, he wrote one of the few surviving slave narratives. In effect, he had a perspective analogous to a Holocaust survivor, living a normal life one day, though discriminated against, and thrust into the control of others the next. His reaction is ours, were we thrust into a similar situation.

Northrup, then, does not represent the typical slave story. When he is, essentially, kidnapped while being mistaken for a runaway, his first reactions are to argue, to fight, and to run. Another man, taken along with him, expresses contempt for the “niggers” who have always been slaves and only wish to survive. Northrup says, “I don’t want to survive; I want to live.” Although his skills on the violin are an occasional help to him, his learning and independence are generally of no advantage. He cannot pick cotton as fast as others, and so he is punished. He cannot resist telling a cruel master (Paul Dano) that he’s made a mistake, and so he is punished. In one of the more remarkable scenes in the film, Northrup finds himself nearly hanged, with his toes just able to touch the ground. Instead of cutting to the next scene, director Steve McQueen lets the camera linger, with Northrup at the center of the frame, as white people and slaves alike go about their business.

McQueen’s last movie, Shame, told the story of a sex addict as if it were the Jesus story, but this scene is the closest this movie gets to pretentious. There’s no need to lay it on thick when depicting slavery. In its most ordinary aspects, it is still dramatic. There are several scenes of violence, enough to make the point that a slave was subject to violence at the whim of a slaveowner, and for reasons that could not always be anticipated or avoided. However, for me other scenes had an equal impact. In one, Northrup’s owner (Michael Fassbender, star of Shame and McQueen’s earlier Hunger) wakes up the slaves to have them dance and entertain him, a reminder that no part of a slave’s life, save perhaps private thoughts, was entirely his own.

In some respects, I find the slavemaster a more curious character than the slave. It’s easy to understand Northrup, especially since he has been raised as a free man. But how to explain the man who can live with people he owns, and see their humanity, and yet can still regard them as of a kind so different that he does not identify at all with their suffering or feel guilt at causing it. Of course, this was not always true. Northrup spends most of his time in captivity under the master played by Fassbender, but is first purchased by a somewhat kinder man played by Benedict Cumberbatch. This man treats Northrup with humanity, yet, as one of the women points out to him, is no more inclined to set him free, if only because it will cause him financial ruin. In this way and others, McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are able to present different aspects of a curious, unfortunate, and fascinating chapter of American history.

IMDb link

viewed 11/3/13 3:05 pm at AMC Cherry Hill and posted 11/4/13

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (***)

The Butler is “inspired by” the true story of Gene Allen, whose story was briefly told in a Washington Post article written just after the 2008 election won by Barack Obama. Forest Whitaker plays a character called Cecil Gaines, who, like Allen, labors for decades in the White House, where the serving staff, in contrast to everyone else, have traditionally been black. Rather than chronicling the behind-the-scenes challenges of preparing for state dinners and such, Daniels uses this melodrama as a vehicle for exploring the history of the civil rights movement.

Screenwriter Danny Strong penned the contemporary political dramas Recount and Game Change, which managed to create an air of uncertainty about outcomes that, presumably, were known by the audience. In contrast, this movie has the feel of a “great moments in history” docudrama, something to show young folks who might not know much about the Gandhi-inspired nonviolent protests of the early Civil Rights era, or the formation of the Black Panther Party years later. Starting with President Eisenhower (Robin Williams) and proceeding through the next several administrations, Gaines is shown overhearing one meaningful civil-rights related conversation and having one meaningful interaction with several of the Oval Office occupants, all played by name actors who look more like themselves than the leaders they’re playing, except maybe Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan. It is history as inevitable march of progress, though the re-creation of a Woolworth lunch counter sit-in is powerful and upsetting.

In the movie’s telling, the occupation of the title character is not so much a window into an unseen world as a representation of one side of the black experience. For Gaines, it represents the highest position a black man could reasonably hope to obtain and a source of dignity and unalloyed pride; although he recognizes the injustice of the glass ceiling that holds back men of his color, he sees nothing to be gained by the dangerous tactics employed by the Freedom Riders and other activists. The fictional character of his oldest son (David Oyelowo), who becomes one of those activists, is meant to embody the other side of the coin. For the son, a well-paid butler who talks to presidents is still just a modern version of the house slave. Daniels shows this conflict without imposing a strong viewpoint.

Daniels and Strong mix the history with family drama. Oprah Winfrey, in her first major acting role in 15 years, manages to make you forget she’s Oprah in playing Gaines’s wife. It’s a subplot, but the marital scenes are less programmatic than the historical ones. There’s something sad about a life story, because the subject always winds up dead or very old in the end. But, despite that and the discrimination portrayed, the movie is more uplifting than depressing, and, rather than a instructional video, it comes off like a pretty good yarn.

IMDb link

viewed 10/6/13 1:05 pm at Riverview and posted 10/7/13

Dark Girls (***)

My indirect introduction to the topic of this film was as an adult, reading about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned various types of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. To me, the reference to “color” seemed mostly a reiteration of “race,” a semantic difference. But most black people, not just in the United States but Africa and elsewhere, wouldn’t need to learn about “colorism” in from a book. This largely in-group prejudice, typically to the disadvantage of darker-skinned people, especially women, is the subject of this documentary.


Directors Bill Duke and  D. Channsin Berry offer no overarching thesis on the topic. Some psychologists and other academics, plus actress Viola Davis, provide some context, but predominantly the film features everyday folks in Atlanta and New York offering a variety of perspectives. From a dating perspective, we hear the views of women and men who both adhere and react against the idea that lighter-skinner people are more desirable. Most poignant are the tales of internalized prejudice. A woman recalls a childhood memory of her mother talking about how beautiful she was, but finish by adding, if only she were light-skinned. Another segment depicts the global phenomenon of skin-lightening treatments. In much of Africa, Asia, and South America, a history of colonialism as well as imported media images have accomplish what slavery plus segregation did in the United States.

Despite the inclusion of “color” in the Civil Rights Act, it’s unclear whether politics or the legal system will help to decrease colorism. (The Equal Employment Opportunity commission has reported an increasing number of complaints based on color in recent years, but it’s still the least common type of complaint.) The film doesn’t talk about politics or law and concludes with platitudes about the need for understanding. It’s not the be-all an end-all on the subject, but it’s a good primer for those who need one and, for those who don’t, no doubt reaffirming.

IMDb link


viewed 3/10/12 7:00 at Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA and reviewed 3/16/12

The Guard (***1/4)

“What a beautiful fucking day,” exclaims Brendan Gleeson at the start of this Irish comedy-drama, and few actors can muster such depth of feeling in uttering such a sentiment. The paunchy actor plays Sergeant Gerry Boyle, who finds himself temporarily partnered with an FBI agent (Don Cheadle) when some international drug smugglers, and a murder victim, wind up in his ordinarily quiet hamlet.

There are elements of a mismatched buddy comedy. When Boyle, speaking of drug smugglers who use submarines to avoid detection, says you have to admire their ingenuity, the agent says drily, “No, you don’t.” Quite a lot of the humor is dry here, as when the one of the smugglers, who’s English, corrects the others, who are Irish, on the matter of the nationality of philosopher Bertrand Russell.

The story also has the fish-out-of-water element, as one character actually points out. The FBI man’s introduction to Boyle involves racial insults, and his attempt to do some sleuthing on his own—it’s the sergeant’s day off, which even a murder investigation won’t impede—finds the locals pretending to only speak Gaelic. It’s unclear whether his race or his being an outsider has more to do with this.

The action element is also not neglected, although it’s saved for the ending. But, more than anything else, the film is a character drama and a vehicle for Gleeson. Boyle can seem like a bumpkin one moment, then show another side in the next scene. The agent tells Boyle, “I can’t tell if you’re mutherfuckin’ stupid or mutherfuckin’ smart.” In quoting this, I may falsely suggest that this is a rather broad film, but in general it’s understated and realistic. Boyle, a single man, is prone to insulting coworkers and committing certain victimless crimes from time to time, but has a soft spot for his dying mother, Croatian widows, and Disney World. It takes the length of this brief movie to reveal his true nature, and writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin McDonagh) lets the character percolate until the satisfying conclusion.

IMDB link

viewed 9/8/11, 7:15 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/8/11

The Help (***1/2)

It’s nearly impossible to review this movie without commenting on what its appearance in theaters, and atop box-office charts, says about American culture. On the one hand, the subject lines of some of the busier Internet Movie Database discussion threads—“Black people need to get over it”; “Not racist”; “Honestly Not Much Has Changed In 50 Years”; “Any minority that likes this movie”; “The Help Was Made For White Audiences”—show how divisive a subject race still is. On the other, had this adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel been made 50 years ago, when it takes place, I doubt that it would have functioned, as I think it does, as a feel-good movie for much of its audience.

Aside from those assuming movies about racism are made only to hector whites, many of the objections boil down to criticizing the Mississippi-set drama for not encapsulating the entire African American experience, which is like criticizing The Godfather for not encapsulating the entire Italian American experience. Some criticize the movie for making a white aspiring journalist (Emma Stone) into the heroine, but Aibileen (Viola Davis), one of the black maids she writes about, is also the heroine. Or they don’t like that the black characters are maids.* But focusing on maids is a reminder of how limited the opportunities were for black women. And it’s nearly impossible to simultaneously show that a people were denied agency and rights and then have them triumph without any assistance from someone with more power. Ultimately, though, any one movie ought to be evaluated in terms of the story it’s trying to tell, and how well it does it.

Fairly seen, although obviously Stone’s Eugenia, a headstrong college girl returning to her hometown, appears to be admirable in depicting the lives of these women, she is not perfect, or without ambition, and the women themselves, and black people generally, are certainly shown to be the primary victims of the embedded system. This story, in its most general outlines, is probably well known to most people, but in fact by showing how the rigid social structure constrained even whites who saw things a different way, the story shows the more subtle ways a social system can repel change. (The social ostracism faced by another white character [played by Jessica Chastain] seems clearly meant to be analogous to the prejudice faced by blacks.)

It’s true that director Tate Taylor uses the character of Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), petty as well as intolerant, as a kind of living embodiment of Southern intolerance, letting the other characters off the hook, as it were. But there is also the more subtle racism of Eugenia’s mother, and the not-subtle-at-all racism as enforced by the police. In other words, this is not simply a movie about a white savior and one villain, although it is partly that, and, reductive or not, it’s impossible not to be satisfied by (or laugh at) Hilly’s inevitable, grotesque comeuppance.

So, along with its earnest condemnation of a system that hardly anyone defends anymore anyway, the movie offers a juicy, Peyton Place-style melodrama, complete with romantic subplot, of the sort that will never be dated. It’s gossipy while allowing white people to feel — rather than guilt-tripped — superior to their unenlightened forbears and to identify with the forward-thinking, modern-seeming heroine. In that way it peddles racism in an easy package, but that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t show it in a true light. Perhaps many younger people will be shocked to learn that many towns would routinely require, necessitating considerable time and expense, separate facilities for blacks, even to the point of requiring separate bathrooms in private homes. (Such baroque manifestations of segregation are further detailed in Isabel Wilkerson’s recent non-fiction bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns.) And if Hilly is in part a caricature, Eugenia and Aibileen are given enough dimension (and well acted, as are all the parts) that those of any race should be able to identify with them, even if its not via personal experience.

Last, speaking as one who has not read Stockett’s novel,  I’d say Taylor’s done an admirable job of making the story feel complete. Only once, watching Leslie Jordan’s colorful turn as the newspaper editor who hires Eugenia to write a household-hints column, did I think to myself that the book must have had more to say about this character. But even then, it wasn’t out of any sense of something missing, but simply because the hiring scene was so entertaining that I figured there had to be more where that came from.

* Or the way they speak. Aibileen tells her young charge, “You is smart. You is kind. You is important.” To me, though, this was more unrealistic for its appropriation of 1980s self-help-speak than nonstandard dialect.

IMDB link

viewed 9/9/11 at AMC Loew’s Cherry Hill; reviewed September and November 28–29, 2011

Jury Duty (***1/4)

This French adaptation of a 1962 novel begins with a murder, but is more psychological drama than thriller. The killer is a quiet small-town pharmacist who runs a apothecary with his wife. Despite his leaving evidence at the scene of the crime, the police arrest a young Algerian who was sleeping with the deceased. (Algeria gained independence from France in 1962, concluding a violent struggle.) Worries about being caught give way to worries that the druggist himself may wind up on the jury.

Beyond the well-shot courtroom drama, the plot reveals how prejudice can overcome judgment, and convenience can overcome conscience. Surprisingly, the killer is not the one who lacks a conscience.

IMDB link

viewed at Prince (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 4/1/09

New Boy (***1/2) [2009 Oscar-nominated shorts program]

An African boy confronts a slur-slinging bully on his first day at his new Irish elementary school. This charming adaptation of a Roddy Doyle story covers comedy, drama, politics, and racism in a mere 11 minutes.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/11/09

Gran Torino (***1/4)

IMDB link

viewed 12/31/08 at Ritz 5

Doubt (***3/4)

Since I saw this movie, I’ve seen a preview for it that makes Meryl Streep’s nun character look like a shrew trying to railroad a forward-thinking priest, and a television commercial that makes her seem like a crusader for justice working against a male hierarchy that would like to whitewash the truth. These attempts to shoehorn the plot into mutually exclusive thrillers inadvertently point to the brilliance of director John Patrick Shanley’s tightly constructed script. Streep, who plays a primary-school headmistress, seems to embody the sort of nasty old Catholic school nun that makes up clichés about nasty old Catholic school nuns.

Invoking fear in both students and her fellow sisters, she is almost a caricature of sternness, so conservative that in 1964 she still cannot abide ballpoint pens. When she suspects something untoward about the kindness of the priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) toward the school’s only black student, is she not simply biased against his more liberal theology? Turn the question around and it becomes, does being biased, or not likeable, make her wrong? In the end, this movie is a drama, not a thriller, and the title is exactly on point. So the question is not whether the priest is guilty but how sure of herself does her accuser need to be before going forward, when being wrong in either direction may have significant consequences.

In the most emotional scene of the movie, the student’s mother spells out some of the less-expected consequences. Viola Davis, in this small role, nearly steals the scene from Streep, who is nonetheless quite good. (Additionally, her character turns out to be more complex than she seems, though the very last line of the movie still seems out of character, and unsubtle.) Amy Adams, well cast as a younger nun, serves as an audience surrogate whose sympathies and suspicions battle each other.

Shanley won an Oscar for writing 1987’s Moonstruck, but his only directorial effort was 1990’s offbeat Joe Versus the Volcano. Neither of those movies would prepare you for this adaptation of Shanley’s play, which has already copped both a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shanley hasn’t taken great efforts to “open up” the play, though it makes lovely use of period locations and detail in evoking the Brooklyn of 1964. It’s a cinch for a screenplay Oscar nomination as well.

IMDB link

viewed 12/2/08 (screening at Bridge); reviewed 12/18/08

Australia (**1/4)

They just don’t come any bigger than this continent-size epic from director Baz Luhrmann, best known for Moulin Rouge. Set in the early part of World War II, the film offers two leads who exude old Hollywood star quality, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The clear antecedent for Kidman would seem to be Kate Hepburn in The African Queen; she is, in this case, a posh Englishwoman, Lady Ashley, alarmed by the rough-and-tumble Aussie town of Darwin, which offers up every cliché of old westerns (fightin’, cussin’, drinkin’, etc.) in the first ten minutes. Luhrmann, a master of style, makes it all look smashing (sometimes literally). Later on, he fills the screen with expensive-looking aerial shots as the lady predictably learns to embrace the Outback. She is plucky, it seems. Jackman’s character is a cattle drover; helpfully, he is called Mr. Drover. He helps Lady Ashley round up the cattle she’s trying to sell. They bicker like Hepburn and Humprey Bogart in African Queen; much more quickly, they follow the cinematic law requiring that the two most attractive-seeming characters must eventually stop bickering and hook up.

However, this does not purport to be what the movie is about. Nor is it about Australia’s role in World War II, though as it happens Darwin was bombed by the Japanese, the attack faithfully re-created in the second half of the feature. But the story the movie claims to tell is that of Australia’s “stolen generations” of mixed-race children subjected to a kind of forced assimilation that only ended in 1973. The narrator is a small boy (Brandon Walters) who, as the son of a white man and an aborigine, is subject to being captured and sent to be re-educated by missionaries. The boy’s grandfather, steeped in the old ways, is a recurring “magical black man.”

Luhrman, though an Aussie, tells this story in the way Hollywood always tells this kind of story, by framing it in the glow of a grand love affair between forward-thinking white folks. It’s not apparent that either Drover or Lady Ashley has ever entertained a racist thought. More interesting might be seeing a character overcome racism, but this is not that sort of a movie, obvious racism being, in this context, a proxy to identify the villain, who wants to acquire Lady Ashley’s land for a fraction of cost.

Superficially, one can level a similar criticism at most any movie with rich/noble white main characters and poor/discriminated-against natives. The similarly epic (and continentally titled) Out of Africa comes to mind. But that romantic drama is, simply put, much better. It’s a movie for grown-ups, with characters exceeding the minimum requirements for complexity and shades of subtlety in the plotting. The music score is better, too. Here, on the other hand, is mere spectacle. The dialogue is typically spouted out as if the script is written in ALL CAPS, though memorable lines are in short supply. Jackman is a perfect combination of Bogart and Robert Redford—a ruffian who cleans up extremely well. (Kidman makes less of an impression, and the chemistry between the two is lacking.) The cattle stampede in the first half can’t help but sweep you up in the excitement. There is action, there is romance, there is drama, there is—crikey!—a dash of comedy. But any real depth of feeling is missing. Australia borrows its sentiment overtly, from The Wizard of Oz. The brief Judy Garland clip is more touching than any of the new footage. (The characters watch the movie in 1939, though as it happens the film did not open Down Under until the next year.) The climactic, presumably cathartic, moment, after two and a half hours, begat titters of laughter from the audience I saw this with, such is the magnitude of the cliché.

I might yet recommend Australia but for this: It is a nearly three-hour movie in which not one truly surprising thing happens. The closest might be when a crocodile bite becomes a major plot point, which is hardly a recommendation. In the end, whether you like this one depends on what you look for in a movie. To me, whereas a film such as Moulin Rouge could succeed on little more than panache, set design, and catchy tunes, the epic requires more substance. Australia recalls great adventure movies of the past, like the ones mentioned above (even the credits font is like that of Casablanca), but the comparison does not flatter. The film to which it truly invites comparison is the formulaic Pearl Harbor, although, blessedly, that film’s corpulent third act is without analogue here. At the very least, this movie doesn’t seem any longer than it is.

There is, as it happens, a movie that more directly tackles the subject of “stolen generations,” and that is Rabbit-Proof Fence. It’s far superior to this exercise in schmaltz.

IMDB link

viewed 11/24/08 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 11/25/08

Happy-Go-Lucky (***1/2)

Screenwriters and directors like to talk about story and character arcs, the processes by which a movie takes its characters and its audience from point A to point B. But Brit Mike Leigh, who is both writer and director, has made a comedy drama that arguably has neither of these. Leigh is best known for downers such as Life Is Sweet (bittersweet, really), Secrets & Lies, and Vera Drake. (To be fair, there was also the rousing Gilbert & Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy.) But here the title—and her name—fairly describes Poppy (Sally Hawkins), its main character. She’s chipper at the start and chipper in the end. If there’s a story arc, it’s the one anchored by a series of driving lessons with a humorously bitter instructor, whose no-nonsense demeanor barely discourages her from chatting him up.

Dressed like a box of crayons, in boots, Poppy seemed ditzy at first, but she’s not. What she is is another unique creation by Leigh and actress Hawkins, who is completely believable as the sort of quirky character that can seem artificial in lesser hands, or with a lesser script. (Leigh uses improvised rehearsals to flesh out his characters.) Unlike with most of Leigh’s other films, one character is the center of attention, and Hawkins, though not beautiful, commands it with wide eyes and mouth askew. And big boots. There are a lot of other characters: Poppy’s flatmate; her sisters; her doctor; a homeless guy who shows up for ten minutes, then isn’t seen again. To the homeless guy, she offers food. To the doctor, she offers to text him where it hurts. For a while, you may wonder where it’s all going, before concluding that it doesn’t matter. It’s to the film’s credit that one of the funniest scenes also turns out to be the most touching. No, there’s not much forward movement in the story. The forward momentum comes from the way Leigh and Hawkins bit by bit reveal the layers of her character. Like the driving instructor, our reaction to her changes as the film progresses. I had the thought that Poppy’s further adventures would make a great TV series. But I’ll settle for this.

IMDB link

viewed 10/15/08 [screening at Ritz Bourse]; reviewed 10/21/08

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (**1/4)

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle didn’t quite reinvent the stoner comedy, but it had a unique dynamic between the two leads and seemed organically conceived. This feels strained, like the work of people forced to come up with a second act when the first one said all that needed to be said. Despite all the emphasis on pot humor, the duo (John Cho, Kal Penn) here don’t seem like stoners, just smart kids who make foolish choices, like lighting up on a plane, which is how Guantanamo comes into the picture. Yes, it’s strained. The ensuing escape turns this into a road movie, with the boys fleeing the law and trying to hook up with once and future girlfriends. An amiable goofiness pervades. The reappearance of Neil Patrick Harris as pot-smoking, prostitute-loving “Neil Patrick Harris” (to quote the credits) has an amusing randomness about it. Some of the humor relates to stereotyping, not only of the Asian stars but a redneck couple who help out the two fugitives. The characters are still solid, but neither the plot nor the jokes are enough to make this stand out among other comic offerings.

IMDB link

viewed 5/3/08; revised 3/30/14

previous version of review:

An admission: I never saw Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, so I have no idea if this is worse or better. As for this sequel, I wasn’t impressed one way or the other. Despite all the emphasis on pot humor, the duo (John Cho, Kal Penn) don’t seem like stoners, just smart kids who make foolish choices, like lighting up on a plane, which is how Guantanamo comes into the picture. The ensuing escape turns this into a road movie, with the boys fleeing the law and trying to hook up with once and future girlfriends. An amiable goofiness pervades. The reappearance of Neil Patrick Harris as pot-smoking, prostitute-loving “Neil Patrick Harris” (to quote the credits) has an amusing randomness about it. Some of the humor relates to stereotyping, not only of the Asian stars but a redneck couple who help out the two fugitives. I liked the characters, but neither the plot nor the jokes are enough to make this stand out among other comic offerings.

The Kite Runner (***1/2)

Having seen Atonement the day before this, I thought the title could well apply to this adaptation of another best-seller, Khaled Hosseini’s semiautobiographical story based on his childhood in Afghanistan. The first hour mostly tells the story of young Amir’s friendship with a shy boy who was, nonetheless, his fierce protector. Also vividly portrayed is Amir’s father, a sophisticated, literate, man who nonetheless cannot repress his contempt for the boy’s cowardice. Although the father is only a supporting character, he is surprisingly multidimensional, and I wound up feeling that I understood him.

The relationship of the boys and their fathers (one works for the other) is not particular to the time and place. On the other hand, it may come as a shock to see the re-creation of 1970s Kabul, a place that, if not a sophisticated place, was nonetheless a place where a sophisticated man could find a niche. Also particular to the setting are the kite battles alluded to in the title. Director Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction, Stay) wonderfully captures this colorful custom of Hosseini’s youth. (He again collaborates with Stay screenwriter David Benioff.) It is before the Soviet invasion, before war, before the Taliban. Knowing about these things, the viewer awaits devastation that turns out to be as much emotional as physical.

The adult Amir (Khalid Abdalla), who has wound up in California, is a less vivid character, and plot and the prospect of returning to Afghanistan must sustain the film’s second half. Like Atonement’s Briony, Amir feels guilt but cannot undo the past, and so crafts an ending to his own story that will allow him to live with himself.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/24/08

Pride (**1/4)

-->? The place is Philadelphia in the age of plaid, when the O’Jays (1974) and Philly soul ruled the charts. Unable to land a job as a math teacher, former college swimmer Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) takes a job at the run-down Marcus Foster Recreation Center, which is about to be shut down by the city. There, he starts a team that proves that black kids really can swim.

+ The best things here are Howard and the character he plays. While the storyline is heavily fictionalized, it’s true to Ellis’s modest, unassuming way. As a profile of Ellis in February 14’s Philadelphia City Paper put it, “When there was racism, he taught his swimmers to recognize it, then rise above it.” Bernie Mac lends some gentle humor as the rec center’s other employee. The pacing is good.

- Pride strains so hard to be inspirational, as the title suggests, that it feels false. The plotting seems convenient rather than believable. Take, for example, how Ellis supposedly gets his team. One day, a city worker takes down the basketball net outside Foster where five friends like to play. Lo and behold, all five agree to transform themselves into a swim team. Gee, not one of them says, no thanks, I’m not that into swimming? Tom Arnold is the cartoon racist who won’t hire Ellis to work at the preppy “Main Line Academy.” Lo and behold, not only is he the head of the school, but he also coaches the swim team, which just so happens to be the best in the Northeast corridor, thus the eventual rival to Ellis’s team. There’s a cartoon criminal too, singlehandedly representing the element Coach Ellis is trying to help the kids resist. He’s so generic you can barely tell if he’s a drug dealer (as I assumed) or a moonshiner, and the scene where the coach faces him down is way corny. The students themselves are underwritten characters, and there’s hardly anything about swimming or Ellis’s actual coaching techniques.

= **1/4 I’ll admit that the preview audience seemed to like this from the comments I overheard, and it certainly left me in a pleasant mood, but since about a dozen of these “inspirational” BOATS (based on a true story) movies come out every year, there are better ones to watch. Recently preceding this were Invincible, another Philly sports story that was actually partly filmed there, and Freedom Writers, which isn’t a sports movie but covers the raising-up-urban-youth angle. You want both? Watch The Gridiron Gang.

IMDb link

Glory Road (**3/4)

A drama about Texas Western men's basketball coach Dona Haskins (Josh Lucas), the first to play five black starters in an NCAA title game. Entertaining, though rarely rising above the formula it employs.

These films about underdog sports teams seem to come out at regular intervals. Sometimes they’re comedies; 2005 alone brought us Kicking & Screaming and the remakes The Longest Yard and The Bad News Bears. Sometimes they’re dramas, like Miracle (2004) and Remember the Titans (2000). In the comedies, the coaches and players are usually both inept to start with but somehow figure out how to win (usually aided by a ringer or two). The dramas tend to focus on a godlike coach. The sport here is basketball. Josh Lucas plays Don Haskins, the real-life coach of the Texas Western Miners. Recruiting black players when other southern schools had none gave him an edge that helped send the team to the NCAA championship game in 1966. Like Titans, set just a few years later (and likewise produced by slick-meister Jerry Bruckheimer), Glory Road means to give you a warm-and-fuzzy feeling about the triumph of the underdog and how far racial relations have advanced.

Except for one brief scene that name-checks Malcolm X, there’s little attempt to tie the events of the movie into the larger social changes happening in the 1960s. I’d have also liked to see the flashback scene, cut from the film, that might have helped explain Haskins’s willingness to challenge white racists. Lucas is very good in a role not unlike Kurt Russell’s Herb Brooks in Miracle, but, as written, a shade less three dimensional. On the plus side, there were only a couple things that had me thinking, no way did it happen like that. (One is that it appears as though Haskins is a first-year coach whose black players are all freshmen; in fact, he’d taken the job in 1961 and inherited an already-integrated team.) These underdog films go down like slices of pizza, filled with tasty cheese like, “They can’t take your desire away from you.” Even when they’re nothing special, they’re still perfectly enjoyable, as the cheers from the crowd I saw this with suggest.

IMDb link

viewed 1/13/06 at Moorestown