Having recently visited the Emerald Isle, it almost seems that "the troubles" are far behind; The peace accord is firmly in place, and the picturesque country no longer lives in daily threat of terroristic incidents.  Ah, but talk to a native and the bucolic landscape doesn't look so peaceful.  Memories of civil strife are still fresh in the minds of any adult resident because they all remember what it was like when they were children.  And it wasn't pretty. Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) is a young British soldier whose unit is snatched out of basic training in order to help quell a riot in Belfast on 1971.  That in itself, of course, is bad policy: Neither Hook nor his unit is trained in any kind of riot control tactics.  And they're completely green even wearing the uniform, much less learning to trust each other and to look out for each other. That's why, in the midst of the chaos and confusion of confronting an angry mob, Hook gets separated from his unit, beaten to a bloody … [Read more...]

This is a highly emotional film that is difficult to watch because the subject matter seems so realistically raw. Writer/director Amy S. Weber has made her mostly hand-held camera work look like a documentary, and the effect is immediate. It’s about school bullying, which, of course, everyone is against, but nonetheless persists in our schools. Most of us can remember some incident from our childhood where we were not treated kindly by another child. But what if that escalates into habitual, continual harassment? What does that do to a child? What does it say about the one doing the bullying? And how about the others – students, teachers, administration – who stand by and watch and do nothing to stop it? Whose “fault” is it? Jessica Burns (Lexie Ainsworth) is an easy girl to like – cute, in a girl-next-door kind of way, a little shy, a lot quiet, but with a bright smile and an easy-to-be-with demeanor. She was once friends with Avery Keller (Hunter King), but something happened that … [Read more...]

Phone interview with Amy S. Weber Director/writer of “A Girl Like Her” Dallas, Texas; March 24, 2015 Ronald P. Salfen for “The Presbyterian Outlook” Presbyterian Outlook: First, I want to say that I enjoyed this movie. No, “enjoyed” wouldn’t be the right term – it was highly impactful, and one that has stayed with me ever since I saw it. Amy S. Weber: Thanks, I appreciate hearing that. Presbyterian Outlook: That format you chose, with the documentary-style within the scenes – I have to admit, you had me going for a while there. What was your intent in filming it that way? Amy S. Weber:  I thought that format would put the viewer up-close and personal with the bullying, and also I wanted to make sure people knew that the girl doing the bullying herself had lots of issues. She wasn’t a bad person, really, she just engaged in bad behavior, which could be corrected. I don’t believe any of us were born evil. We learn to do bad things because of responses to our environment. … [Read more...]

Veronica Roth’s wildly popular youth novels about a dystopian future in the ruins of Chicago were converted into a highly successful movie (“Divergent,” 2014), and now this sequel. You can see why Hollywood loves these: they celebrate diversity and the idea of following one’s own path. Yes, the main themes play right into Hollywood’s persistent agenda. So of course the filmmakers make the productions as slick and believable as they can, despite the science fiction trappings, and feature some of the industry’s best young “A” list stars. It almost works. But the result is just too hopeless, violent, humorless, and arrogant to appeal to many mainstream moviegoers. There’s neither charm nor elegance here. And certainly no cute or endearing, either. The good news is that this sequel can be successfully viewed without having seen the original, although there is plenty of reference to what has happened before. The world consists of a ruined Chicago, with a big electric, impassable wall … [Read more...]

The good news is that this is a solid, winsome live-action rendering of the classic Disney animated version. Those of us who have read this familiar story to our children, and then our grandchildren, will delight in how “faithful” it is to the original (OK, technically, the real “original” is more than 400 years old, and even the Grimm Fairy tale version is more than 200 years old, and there are, by last count, 345 variants to this classic myth, but for most of us, the 1950 Disney animated version is the real “original.”) But the bad news is that it’s so predictable that there are no surprises, which will disappoint viewers expecting some creative fresh approach. Lily James (of “Downton Abbey” fame) plays Cinderella like a good veteran actress: from buoyantly happy to sadly resigned, she conveys to us that her basically kind spirit cannot be broken, even by an evil stepmother and her two selfish shallow, mean-spirited daughters. But what we like about Cinderella, her placid demeanor … [Read more...]

Some of us are old enough to remember the “Red Scare,” when as schoolchildren in the 1950s, at the height of The Cold War, we practiced hiding under our desks in case of nuclear attack. Yes, you read that right. Some of us are old enough to remember that the Russians actually launched the Sputnik first in the “space race.” The U.S.S.R seemed like a juggernaut, a Red Tide unstoppable on the other side of the globe – as if China and Russia were a big monolithic political system that was threatening to spread as far as Cuba (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?) and yes, Vietnam. According to film writer and director Gabe Polsky, it was Stalin who personally ordered the Soviet hockey team to be part of the Army, because he wanted to take pride in the way it would outshine its Western opponents and so demonstrate the superiority of the Communist system. It’s fitting that Polsky uses a clip from a Ronald Reagan to introduce his documentary, warning us solemnly about the dangers of … [Read more...]