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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Urban > Propaganda > Education > Crime > Children > Teens > Minorities > Poverty > Won’t Back Down (2012/Fox Blu-ray)/Yelling To The Sky (2010/MPI Blu-ray)

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


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