Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Movie Review: Waiting for Superman: Or just another Clark Kent playing dress-up?
Let me make this clear right away. I think this is a bad documentary. As a piece of journalism, it’s lazy and manipulative. As a “methodical dissection” of our public education system (which the film’s official movie site purports it to be), it falls far, far short. Continue reading
Filed under Movie Reviews
Should high school students read ‘Push’?
Every year I’ve got a handful of students (girls mostly) who fight over the two or three copies of Sapphire’s ‘Push’ in my classroom library. If you don’t know about ‘Push’—and, honestly, at this point, given the huge success of ‘Precious,’ the Oscar nominated film version, this means either you’ve given up on American cinema entirely, or you just don’t care ‘cause it’s not in 3D—it’s basically the antithesis of that other fought-over bestseller and fountain of teenage readership, ‘Twilight.’ Only in ‘Push,’ the werewolves are real ones.
With regards to my students reading this book, my position until very recently has been, “Yeah—I know it has some explicit subject matter, but, hey, at least they’re reading, right?” Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Heart of Stone’: One principal’s fight to take back his school
by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY The most striking image from Heart of Stone, the recent documentary about Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, a school devastated by gang violence, is of principal, Ron Stone, in his office, strapping on a bullet proof … Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘The Class’: Finally, a teacher movie that gets it
A teacher’s review of the French film, The Class. Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Movie Reviews


