ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[southendmd]

Plot:  A seemingly innocent, yet stressed high school girl is caught in a room with a man she doesn't recognize during a high school shooting.

[memento]

aka: Bad Education

IMDB Plot: In the early 60s, two boys - Ignacio and Enrique - discover love, movies and fear in a Christian school. Father Manolo, the school principal and Literature teacher, both witnesses and takes part in these discoveries. The three characters come against one another twice again, in the late 70s and in 1980. These meetings are set to change the life and death of some of them.

[Fran]

Also known as:  Like Grains of Sand

   

From IMDb:  Fortunately this film isn't just another repetition of the Japanese high-school drama genre -- even though all characters are students and a reference to bullying is not missing. Instead, we witness the very complex relationships between Yoshida, leaving Shimizu for Aihara (or at least he tries to), and his friend Ito, whose love for Yoshida seems to have little chance for success. In the end we have a coalition of Ito and Aihara -- who may or may not be in love with Ito (or with Yoshida, who knows) -- teaching Yoshida a lesson. This is not a film about homosexuality either; indeed, one message of the film may be that it doesn't matter if a boy loves a boy or a girl. Anyway, the complexity (even incomprehensibility) of the motivations of the characters is a most realistic and just reflection of the motivations of modern Japanese teenagers. Or in other words: the film captures exactly the same thing which Banana Yoshimoto describes in her novels; what it is however, is very difficult to say.

=comment=
You can watch this movie online here:  http://video.aol.com/video-detail/like-grains-of-sand-movie/1785026699
There are English subtitles.  (Time:  129:09)

[southendmd]

IMDb comment:  I, too, was a fan of the radio and TV series (via recordings--I'm was born after the movie was made). The problem with this movie, the TV series, and the later episodes of the radio series was that the cast was getting too old. The story is not so disappointing. And if they used another group of actors to be the same characters, that would be disappointing.

Many years later, when the cast of the Saturday morning TV series, Saved By the Bell, became too old looking to be high school students, they graduated them and put in different students.

Maybe it's like the proverbial soap opera storyline: An egg takes two days to fry. A pregnancy lasts two weeks. A baby remains a baby for five years. And Helen Trent still hasn't found a husband.

[Lynne]

From TLA Video:

SYNOPSIS
Gay teen Marc Hall made headlines in Spring 2002 when he defied his Catholic school board and brought his boyfriend to the prom. In this Canadian television film, the events are re-enacted with lots of style and sense of fun we think you'll love, we did.

REVIEW
With his blue hair and life-size poster of Celine Dion on his bedroom wall, Marc Hall's devout Catholic parents had to deal with having a gay son, but now the school board of his Catholic Parish had to face Marc as well. All Marc wanted to do was bring his date to the prom like all of his accepting friends, and that's just what the school wouldn't allow -- so sets the drama for this excellent, surprisingly fun, made-for-Canadian TV movie.

Set in the fictional working-class town of Inniston, Ontario, Prom Queen introduces viewers to Marc Hall (Ashmore), a popular student who manages to avoid the typical harassment a gay kid in a small town would expect to face. But when Marc decides to take his boyfriend to the prom, he finds he has stepped over the line, straight into a firestorm. His boyfriend Jason wasn't prepared for the battle and closet issues arise. His mother and father love their son unconditionally and they join the battle. Marc submits his application to take his date to the prom like all other students, expecting nothing more than to join the party. What he gets is a firm rejection first from the principal and then the school board. When Marc appeals the decision he loses that too. It's then that sharp gay attorney Lonnie Winn (Scott Thompson) takes up the battle toward the end we all know is coming -- after all this is a happy movie!

With lively set design, lots of catchy pop tunes and clever screenwriting, Prom Queen has none of that dryness a US TV movie has. While you won't be getting any sexual jollies off the film, you will probably laugh, you'll learn something and you'll probably find yourself cheering for Marc before the film's end.
-- Scott Cranin

[memento]

From IMDB: Set in the 1950s, School Ties sheds light on the "true" nature of the old boys club. David Green (Fraser), a supreme athlete, is granted admission to an exclusive boarding school reserved for the country's blue bloods. Green hopes to use the school to get into Harvard, while the school uses him to win football championships. Everything is going as planned until a spoiled classmate Charlie Dillon (Damon), finds out that Green is Jewish. Given the time and circumstances, this does not sit well with his classmates. The movie comes to a climax when the classmates are forced to choose between Green and Dillon in a cheating scandal. The movie really highlights the religious inequality that took place at that time in America. One also comes to realize how the elite maintain their status and privilege by attending schools such as the one in this movie.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  "Return to Florence" takes a humorous look at Anglo-American art students in romantic Florence, Italy. In an intimate school setting, they learn the painting techniques of the Renaissance period while being isolated from modern influences. The documentary compares the students' expectations with what they actually experience, exploring as well their love affairs and conflicts.

[Lynne]

From Wiki:

Suicide Club, known in Japan as Suicide Circle (自殺サークル, Jisatsu Sākuru?) is a 2002 Japanese independent film and part of a trilogy that gained a considerable amount of notoriety in film festivals around the world for its controversial subject matter and gory presentation, and has since developed a significant cult following. It won the Jury Prize for "Most Ground-Breaking Film" at the Fantasia Film Festival. The movie was written and directed by Sion Sono. It deals with a wave of seemingly unconnected suicides that strikes Japan and the efforts of the police to determine the reasons behind the strange behavior.

From TLA Releasing:

SYNOPSIS
A brilliant and wicked tour-de-force from Japanese writer/director Sion Sono about 54 girls who leap to their death.

REVIEW

Beginning with one of the most unforgettably outrageous scenes in recent cinema, as 54 smiling high-school girls join hands and then cheerfully jump off a subway platform to be crushed by an oncoming train, The Suicide Club is a remarkably bold and bizarre film which becomes stranger and more surreal as it progresses. A wicked social critique in the form of a creepy and enigmatic detective mystery, the film examines the despair of disaffected Japanese youth and the influence of pop culture with fantastic style and perceptive wit....

[memento]

From IMDB: A faithful rendition of the Thomas Hardy book of life at the famed Rugby School for Boys in 1834, when Dr. Thomas Arnold, headmaster, was trying to alleviate the brutality of the 'hazing system' which was supposed to make men of the young boys, but which actually was a mask for passionate, unregenerate cruelty. The primary story has Tom Brown ragged continually by one particularly brutal upper-class-man, Flashman. Tom's bravery and school-spirited silence gains him Arnold's admiration.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  A story of life. A story of love. A story of hate. A story of guilt. "University Heights" tells the story of four lives on a college campus which have been torn apart -- lives which could not be more different than the other. Throughout the course of a few days, each past is revealed -- and each future will be uncovered. A tale of drugs, relationships, sexuality, racism, and deceit, "University Heights" grasps the everyday struggles of humanity -- finding yourself.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4pHYpF934I[/youtube]

Trailer 1:56