Category Archives: Trailers

Rich Hill

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“An examination of challenges, hopes and dreams of the young residents of a rural American town.” That description from the film’s website doesn’t begin to capture the bleak hopelessness and despair I came away with. Be very surprised if the Missouri Department of Tourism includes this documentary in its promotional material.

Let me pause a moment to encourage you to see this film. It’s such a powerful story. Three stories, actually. As I watched I kept thinking, you can’t write dialogue like this. And if you could, no actor could could express this depth of (fill in emotion).

I was born in a small town in Missouri and have spent most of my life here. I’ve been to the places shown in this film. But I don’t think I have ever really seen the people. This film grabs your head and forces you to take a good, long look. Unflinching might be the word I’m looking for.

MITT

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“Whatever side your on, see another side.” That’s the tag line for the Netflix documentary MITT, written and directed by Greg Whitely, and it’s a good one. I don’t do reviews but I’ll share a few impressions, in no particular order:

  • Some unresolved daddy stuff going on for Mitt
  • He didn’t really want to be president. He wanted to be elected president
  • There must have been times when the family and/or the campaign said, ‘Stop filming. Please leave the room.”
  • The decision to have no narration was a good one
  • Some of the shots looked like they were from a GoPro strapped to the family pooch. I liked that quality throughout the film
  • Mitt and Anne don’t know any poor people. Sure, they’ve met some in their public life, but they seem incapable of grasping what it would be like to be poor.
  • Karl Rove and Roger Ailes threw up 5 minutes into this film
  • No politician will ever again agree to this kind of access

Teach children “how to believe”

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One of the best ideas (for me) in this documentary came from Prof. Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He points out that a five year old will 25 in 2031, and asks how can any teacher say she/he is preparing that child for 2031.

Professor Mitra suggest a curriculum that teaches just three skills:

  • Reading comprehension
  • Information search and retrieval
  • Teach the child “how to believe.”

That last one was the money shot for me. He described it as “giving the child armor against doctrine.” Not just religious doctrine, but rigid belief sets of all kinds. Ooh.

Winter’s Bone

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I heard about this movie Saturday morning at the Coffee Zone and –as luck would have it– it was showing at the Rag Tag Cinema in Columbia. Be surprised if this makes it to the Cineplex.

Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.

This synopsis doesn’t begin to capture the subtle layers of this movie. And I don’t have the skill to describe them. The bad guys in this movie make the red necks in Deliverance look charming. They’d deep-fry Tony Soprano’s crew and eat ’em.

Winter’s Bone is based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell and took Best Picture and Best Screenplay at the Sundance Film Festival. Filmed in Missouri but I’m not sure where.