Won’t Back Down (2012/Fox Blu-ray)/Yelling To The Sky (2010/MPI Blu-ray)
Picture: C+/B- Sound: C+ Extras: D/C Films: D/C+
Now for
two drams that have a few things in common including an urban setting, trouble
at school, poor women in jeopardy and a sense of hopelessness that is exploited
in one film and not explored enough in another.
First is
Daniel Barnz’s idiotic, inept and pathetic anti-Teacher Union propaganda film
not-so-cleverly disguised as a drama, Won’t
Back Down (2012) that manages to waste a good cast (you’ll watch and wonder
why any of them signed up for this mess) and confuse an important topic by
trashing it and shamelessly manipulate the audience as if they were extremely
dumb.
Maggie
Gyllenhaal, in the worst performance of her career, is an ultra neurotic mother
whose daughter is stuck in a school in a poor section of Pittsburgh (the
once-thriving Hill District, an African American community still trying to
recover from racism-guided annihilation in the 1950s) that is badly underperforming
and wants to get her into a special school, but it does not work out. Viola Davis
(still recovering from The Help) is
a teacher in that school with a sick child of her own wanting the same and not
getting it.
Like a
bad 1980s piece of mall movie Reagan cinema, making this seem dated off the
bat, if they just get together, get angry and fight the breakdown happening,
they will magically “win” and everything will be just fine. The script spoof-feeds its over-simplistic
arguments and as soon as it baits the audience into thinking it is union
bashing, a line of dialogue suddenly, “magically” and “miraculously” turns up
to inoculate the audience against thinking so it can make its further argument
and seem like a simple, innocent film.
It is not.
Instead,
it is devious non-stop and laughably so, which means when the leads try to take
over the school by legal means to save it, which means dumping the union
(including a teacher played by Rosie Perez cast to further legitimize its false
arguments as she is a union teacher who feels “betrayed” by Davis, plus fellow
Spike Lee alumni Bill Nunn shows up as a part of the school hierarchy, but I am
not fooled) so the film is essential; playing the race card all the way as if
it is the friend of all minorities, but cannot be if there are no teachers to
hire.
But that
is how short-sighted this all is, though we get Holly Hunter as a tough school
official with her own phony backstory which adds to the mix of illicit appeals
to pity that the makers are addicted to instead of dealing with the issue in an
intelligent, adult way. If it was this
simple, it would have been “fixed” and this stupid film would have never been
made, but it is a phony mess every second of the way and one of the most
insulting releases in years. Oh, and
they use the annoying Tom Petty song that shares the film’s title in the end
credits, even if it has nothing to do with this! Avoid this one like a plague!!!
Extras
include Ultraviolet Copy, an embarrassing feature length audio commentary track
by the director, Deleted Scenes where you can hear his thoughts if you want to
and two making of featurettes. Geez!
Victoria
Mahoney’s Yelling To The Sky (2010) is
much better by default by simply not being phony or obnoxious in any way, but
is still a familiar story of three sisters dealing with living in a tough
neighborhood and the younger two being picked on, but this is not simply about
bullying. They have a sick mother and
abusive father (played by Jason Clarke, who is white, when the mother and
sisters are African American, but we never know if racism is a reason they are
targeted) but his abuse, one-time absence or neglect are truly addressed
either.
Zoe
Kravitz is the sister named Sweetness who is having the most trouble with this
and her older sister can get tough, but she wants more than what looks like
endless fighting all around. Then there
is the lead female bully (Gabourey Sidibe before Precious put her on the map) and a caring teacher (Tim Blake
Nelson) who is not 100& always responsible, but is a good guy, though we do
not see enough of him.
Despite a
convincing cast, no false notes in the film itself and some good moments, the
violence is treated in mixed ways, but also shows up in dumb ones. One odd sce4ne includes white kids in a white
neighborhood throwing rocks as non-whites that comes more out of nowhere than
most of what comes out of nowhere here.
The film presents situations that we believe happen, but does not say or
do anything with them, just brings on more of them. that is not realism, it is repetition and as
compared to something like Spike Lee’s recent, underrated Red Hook Summer (reviewed elsewhere on this site) seems tame and
incomplete.
To bad,
because if this had been thought through better, this could have been really
amazing and a commercial breakthrough with even more critical support. I think Miss Mahoney should get to make
another film, maybe on a different subject, because she has a talent worth
supporting. See it for yourself to
decide.
Extras include
the Original Theatrical Trailer, an on-camera interview with the director and
“Yelling Graffiti” featurette.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 36.5 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Down and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High
Definition image transfer on Sky are
both 35mm film shoots and among the last that will ever be shot on Fuji motion
picture stocks. Sky may be styled down a little bit, but it still looks good,
versus Down which is so darkened on
purpose for propaganda reasons that it makes Pittsburgh look like a depressing
living hell as if one bad school has put a permanent cloud on the entire
city. Steel had been in decline in the Steel City
for decades and by the 1980s, only a few factories remained, so why so
dark? To depress viewers to visually
manipulate them while ideologically manipulating them. What an embarrassment!
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on both films put the sound much
more towards the front speakers than I expected with their low budgets showing
up sonic limits in both cases, though Sky
has the slightly better recording overall.
More than a chunk of each is really simple stereo and even monophonic,
so they both need all the help they can get and I cannot imagine each sounding
better than they do here, unfortunately.
- Nicholas Sheffo