Past seven days

Getting ready for the Chicago International Film Festival which begins next month!  I'm perusing the schedule now and planning my very long days.

The Dwarf Magician
Forever Enthralled
The Master of Ballantrae
Shaun the Sheep:  A Woolly Good Time
Waking Sleeping Beauty
Young Victoria

Won't Back Down

This is a based-on-real-events movie about a Pittsburgh bartender/office worker and a local teacher working together to force their school board to allow them to change their shoddy school.

The bartender Jamie is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a working class type who is very passionate about getting the necessary education for her dyslexic daughter. Although her daughter was in a private school once, Jamie could no longer get scholarships so had to revert to going to the bad public school.  Jamie is frustrated she cannot afford to move to a better school district, nor afford a better school on her working class wages, as well as the fact that her daughter’s teacher is an uncaring monster.

Viola Davis is Nonah, a teacher at that school. She too is slipping into apathy with her class, although she has a son who is developmentally challenged, so she can see the parental side of this issue.  She pushes him perhaps too hard in his schoolwork, believing he is smart, but frustrated he just cannot do better. This divides her and her husband and they separate.

Jamie challenges Nonah to do what is best for her son, as well as convince the cute music teacher Michael (Oscar Isaacs) to join and help her rally parents and teachers alike to break from this school to form their own non-unionized school.  It seems there is a law that any parent can create a new school with the proper amount of backers and the right plan. But the school board and teachers' union both do not want this, nor do teachers who fear losing union jobs or jobs altogether if the new school fails. The two women have a lot of people fighting them both passively and aggressively, and work very hard to get people to have the faith in their plan, which is ultimately "for the children."

The Little Fugitive

I think there has been a remake or two, but this original black and white feature was made back in the day where kids played ball in the street while their parents were at work, and a long distance call was important.  This apparently simple film has been noted by filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut as an influence on his work, neo-realism before it was categorized as such.

12-ish-year old Lennie is tired of looking after his 7-year old brother Joey, who loves to play cowboy. When Lennie gets some money for his birthday, he plans on going to Coney Island with his friends. But their mother needs to leave town to visit a sick relative, leaving Lennie to look after Joey and cancelling his plans of birthday.

One of the friends has a rifle which they play around with in an empty lot, and they trick Joey into thinking he shot Lennie, with the evidence of ketchup blood, but don't think beyond the joke they are playing. One friend tells Joey he should go on the lam and gives him Lennie's harmonica, further convincing him that Lennie is indeed dead. 

Plague Dogs

Plague Dogs is, like Watership Down, an animated film based on a book by Richard Adams. Also like Watership Down it takes a pro-animal stance, in this case, against animal testing and confinement.

This story focuses on two dogs at a testing lab--Snitter (voiced by John Hurt), a fox terrier who has had some sort of brain surgery, and Rowf (Christopher Benjamin), a labrador who has been drowned several times to test his fear reactions, to the point that he fears the water now. One night one of their cages is accidentally left open and the two dogs escape from the facility, which is located in a remote hilly area of England. They traverse the countryside as Snitter tries to convince Rowf that they need to find a “master” who will care for them. They cross paths with “the tod,” a crafty fox (James Bolam) who alternately tries to trick them or help them. They run across several possibilities of a master but time and again it is a failure, whether due to cruel humans, marauding animals, or the hardships of travelling cross country. The story sometimes shows us news stories or discussions by human characters who voice concern about the escaped animals and the fear that they might carry the bubonic plague, which was being tested at the facility Snitter and Rowf escaped from.

Past seven days

More tv this week, another short-lived tv series called Andy Barker P.I., starring comedian and talk show sidekick Andy Richter as an accountant turned private investigator.  Also checked out some TedTalks on Netflix.

Double Indemnity
The Golden Goose
Here Comes the Boom
The Little Fugitive
Scarecrow
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Trouble With the Curve
Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers