Jacob Sahms

Ellie Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) longs to be a fashion sensation, leaving the rural (Redruth, Cornwall) for London, enrolling in the London College of Fashion. Failing to fit in, Turner flounders, but she finds a real-world friendship with John (Michael Ajao), and a weird time-traveling/psychological flashback to a Swinging Sixties singer, Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). But in Edgar Wright’s send-up to the Swinging Sixties, there’s a dirty, gritty, violent underbelly to the glistening sparkles that Ellie thinks she knows.

In her dreams/flashbacks, Turner falls for Jack (Matt Smith), a dark, mischievous spirit, who enthralls her, but also traps her. She meets a strange silver-haired man (Terrance Stamp) in the ’60s and rooms in Ms. Collins’ (Diana Rigg) boarding house in the present day. And her existence in both the past and the present blends… weirdly.

The story is bizarre, but Wright’s desire to make the ’60s colorful and alluring and dangerous shows up in distinct difference from the present. It’s about the visuals here as much as the plot, showing the dangers of romanticizing the past, and ignoring the dangers (as evidenced by Turner’s mother, and warned about by her grandmother early on). This is both a historical fiction, and a horror show, a disturbing exploration of the Soho night life, and a strange parable reminding us that not all that glitters is gold.

On the home media version, special features include “Meet Eloise,” about the character of Ellie and McKenzie’s bringing her to life; “Dreaming of Sandie,” a look at Sandie and Jack, and the actors who played them; “Smoke and Mirrors,” about lighting, special effects and other visuals; “On the Streets of Soho,” about the importance of shooting on location; and “Time Travelling,” at how the crew worked hard to make the film look like 1960s Soho.

Clifford the Big Red Dog has never been my favorite children’s book, and I vaguely remember watching some animated episodes with my son as he progressed from the intolerable Barney to the more likable children’s programs like The Smurfs. The in-between spot found him watching this giant puppy rampaging through the streets of his small town, and it made him happy to watch animals, so I vaguely remember accepting the giant dog. I had similarly blaise expectations for the live-action film – and was blown away by the degree to which the CGI dog and his human co-actors won me over.

To say that I was sarcastic about the film’s chances, or that my son now a teenager was exponentially more skeptical of the movie, would be gross understatements. Instead, as Darby Camp (Christmas Chronicles) navigates the bullying of her overwhelming private school as Emily Elizabeth and interacts with the exploration of adulthood that passes for Jack Whitehall’s Uncle Casey, I found the humanity of her experience endearing. Add in the gift of Clifford via John Cleese’s eccentric old man, and the dastardly (and clearly damaged) entrepreneur played by Tony Hale, and there’s just enough mischief and mayhem to go with the big-hearted story.

But this isn’t just about E.E. and her big red dog. It’s also about the way that the community, the neighborhood, the burrough comes together. This is so New York, so American, so how we should handle adversity that it left me a little teary-eyed. And suddenly it wasn’t just a children’s book come to life, it was a testimony to the way that we say we’re “together” and neighbors and community … and 2021 and earlier have shown us we have so far to go.

In the end, this is a fantastic film to watch as a family, or by yourself quite frankly, and it reminds us of what we could be if we’d follow our better angels and tune out the noise outside.

Or maybe, quite simply, it tells us to follow our hearts – the hearts we had when we were little kids and we thought the world was one big adventure, and every new person we met would probably be our friend.

Clifford The Big Red Dog is available now on Digital and on Blu-ray and DVD February 1st, 2022.

In Netflix’s The Unforgivable, Sandra Bullock plays Ruth Slater, who went to prison for twenty years for murder and now slowly works to rebuild her life. Using Sally Wainwright’s British series Unforgiven as a road map, director Nora Fingscheidt sets the audience up for a series of shocking, emotional twists and turns, all while asking the question: can a person really be forgiven if they’ve done something evil?

When the audience is introduced to Slater, she’s gathering her few belongings, checking out of prison for good behavior and checking into a halfway house. She’s not played by the Bullock we remember, all whip-smart and verbally rambunctious, but rather a quiet, beaten, morose woman who has learned in prison that she has to fight for every scrap of respect, every moment of existence. Released from prison, she gets a job as a fishmonger because she has to, and gains a job working for a Native American building a shelter for the homeless because it’s what she’s gifted doing.

That element of choice – that a woman fresh out of prison and a recovering addict – runs deep through the film. Just because the law considers Slater rehabilitated, doesn’t mean anyone else has to. Certainly not the dead man’s sons, or the people who turn Slater down for jobs when they find out what she’s done. And definitely not those who now care for Slater’s younger sister and refuse to let her back into her sister’s life.

Powerfully told, weaving the three elements of released prisoner, vengeful sons, and troubled younger sister, The Unforgivable smells like the Oscars. Like Charlize Theron in Monster, Bullock shows us varying sides of Slater, some more sympathetic than others. Like Netflix’s 2018 Monster (same name but different), what the audience thinks it knows is wrong, almost entirely until the end.

Critics are panning the film (33% on Rotten Tomatoes) but I’m honestly not sure what they spent two hours watching. Bullock is a quiet, slow burn, captivating in each scene, pent-up until the moment when she finally bursts into flame. Vincent D’Onofrio and Viola Davis are fantastic as John and Liz Ingram, who’ve bought the house where the killing took place; Jon Bernthal shows up as Blake, a co-worker at the fish slaughtering factory that serves as a microcosm of Slater’s post-prison life as an ex-con.

The points couldn’t be much stronger about redemption and grace, crime and punishment, justice and the court of public opinion. This film is so on-the-nose for present-day America, and it feels like a necessary exercise in what it means to be human, or to even consider the purpose of humanity. As people of faith, we promote forgiveness – rather, we talk about it all of the time. But do we really believe in it? Do we believe people can change? Do we believe that we can change?

If we claim to follow Jesus – and we’re told that to be forgiven we have to forgive others – then we have to do better than nearly all of “good society” does in this film. Sadly, we fail to forgive people for much less than what Slater is imprisoned for, and in the process, dishonor the love that calls us to a life of sacrificial love and eternal life in heaven.

For a deeper look – with spoilers – Keep reading!

Slater appears to be wound a bit tight in the flashbacks we see, through her perspective and her sister’s, even before the murder. But the actions that happen are indicative of the hurt she’s experienced: her father committed suicide and there’s a gang of unruly furniture movers who seem entirely too eager to bust in on a single woman and the little girl she’s promised to protect. While the death that leads to all of this is tragic, the more details that float through provide a sense of responsibility – and moral ambiguity in terms of the law considering that most states have a “stand your ground” motif on the books. Is Slater really guilty of murder in her own home? Hard to say once the narrative gets muddy.

The fact that the man killed is a police officer leads to all kinds of other pushback against Slater. Some of the actions that result afterward push the bounds of reasonable society – but our expectations of justice and order, when unfettered, often cause extreme action like the beatdown Slater receives in the fish warehouse. Would people stand back and watch a cop killer get torn apart? It seems possible, but one would hope unlikely.

But the other jump is that the dead officer’s two sons would contemplate retribution against Slater. What is initially proposed by the older brother gets twisted within the younger brother, half because in an encounter where he approaches Slater, she says, “Life goes on,” and half because his older brother is sleeping with his wife. While the first one borders on “Martha!” as a plot point in Batman vs. Superman, the interaction between the three people, two brothers and a wife/girlfriend seems like a weird redirect.

What seems perfectly normal is the way that Slater doesn’t believe that she’s worthy of grace. Slater initially expects that once she’s out, that she’ll find some modicum of normal, but soon, she realizes that she will never be fully accepted back into society, acknowledging that people aren’t that different from outside prison to inside the walls. Those who offer her grace are few and far between: Blake who is also an ex-con, John who is soft on crime with his sons and with Slater, and Liz, who she connects with as a mother after the truth comes out.

The allegories in the film, visually, kept me looped in even if the plot seemed to amble around for the first half. Slater plants seeds in pots to grow plants on the roof (the one place she seems care-free) of the homeless shelter-to-be. Inside the shelter, she’s building up the structure to support the good work that will one day happen there. When she reaches her breaking point, she’s tearing down her own good work, having seen the futility of her efforts to truly be accepted. Too often, the things we invest in aren’t actually changing our situation – something she discovers in meeting her sister’s adoptive parents – because she’s hung up on transactional redemption rather than relational redemption.

Relational redemption is what wins out in the end. She hangs onto believing in the best of people; she’s willing to intercede on behalf of someone who literally has no voice to speak for themselves. She’s pursuing the soul – the divine spark in each of us – as she aims to make things better for an uncertain future. Ironically, she could’ve walked away, or used the truth that the kidnapped girl is not her daughter, but she doesn’t. She follows through, protectively, because she is the mother figure, the protector – unlike her sister’s adoptive mother who is rendered mute by her own decisions (and the script).

S.E. Hinton’s seminal work, made into a motion picture by Francis Ford Coppola, wasn’t considered complete by purists. Now, the story of two 1960s Oklahoma gangs, the East side’s poor Greasers and the West-side rich kid Socs, gets a more elaborate release with thirty-three extra minutes of material.

Launching a series of “Brat Pack” films in 1983, The Outsiders made stars out of then-unknown actors like Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Macchio, and Diane Lane – actors who have starred for decades in other hits. For this film, they were put through their paces by Coppola, who said of the 2005 update: “‘The Outsiders The Complete Novel’ came about after meeting students over the years who repeatedly asked me why certain scenes from S.E. Hinton’s wonderful book were missing from the theatrical version. These questions reminded about my inspiration for the film—in 1980, a contingent of 12- to 14-year-old students wrote and asked me to make it. I listened to those young fans back then, and I continue to listen to young people now and believe in their opinions, so this complete film version of the novel is for them.”

This is possible – adding thirty minutes of footage – because Coppola kept all of the materials he shot, not just the pieces that made it into the original. The four-disc 4K Collector’s Edition includes both the original and the extended version, with digital codes for both. Extras on the discs include the interview that discusses the restoration, with Cinematographer Stephen Burum, Zoetrope Head of Archives and Restorations James Mockoski and Colourist Gregg Garvin, an introduction by Coppola as well as his “anatomy of a scene,” audio commentary by Coppola, Dillon, Howell, Lane, Swayze, Lowe, and Macchio. Other tidbits include a look back at the film itself, a featurette on S. E. Hinton, the way that the film was cast, a NBC News Today program about Coppola’s inspiration, and several deleted scenes.

As a story that explores “coming of age” experiences for teens, and the consequences of living violent lives, it’s remarkably insightful, timeless even. It allows audiences to watch and consider the story from afar, from a different time and place, while recognizing that the actions that happen can be seen as everyday occurrences, drawing people in and forcing them into situations that they never thought possible. Somehow, The Outsiders shows us that violence, fighting, aggression – these lead to dangerous places, and that when we fail to see the ramifications, we can end up tragically in places we never meant to be.

The Outsiders is beautiful – and tragic – a must-watch film for teens and their parents, and for anyone looking for a parable about the importance of real community and peace.

Screenfish is giving away 5 pairs of 2 FREE tickets to the November 3rd showing of NEEDTOBREATHE‘s new documentary, Into the Mystery at your local cinema. The film is only in theaters for one night and you can find a complete listing of theaters here. Winners will be notified on Monday November 1. Check to make sure there is a theater near you and sign up now! 

https://www.fathomevents.com/events/NEEDTOBREATHE