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Reviews
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)
Bombs at the ending
While this is a very good debut for the writer/director, the end falls apart. The story revolves around a seventeen year old girl living with her parents and brothers in the Brooklyn projects. She is a good student, and spends the majority of her time working and hanging out with her friends. She meets a guy at her school, and soon becomes pregnant. Her decision to hide her pregnancy and the lengths she goes to while doing so take up the second half of the film. As good of a film as this was, I feel it really fell apart at the end. It wrapped everything up nicely, and denied the viewer the emotional payoff that the film promised. In the end, she did become 'Just another girl on the I.R.T.
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
The worst of times, and the worst of times...
our your heroine is stuck in the place we all look back on with bittersweet memories- the seventh grade. Unpopular, awkard, and dealing with being the middle child in a borderline dysfunctional family. She has a painful crush on an older high school boy who plays in her nerdy, big brother's band. She has a spoiled, manipulative little sister who is the princess of the family. This is a great movie, bound to bring back memories of Junior High school days, and all that time period entails. Highly reccomended.
Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen (2001)
SAD
One will want to change the channel, yet feels compelled to continue watching. The beginning shows a lower class woman who browbeats and psychologically tears down her (yes adorable) five years old child, Swan, as she prepares her for the child beauty pagent ring. Her constant demands and critical commentary on Swan's preformance continually appear to wear the child down, as ninety % of the film, her bewilderment, weariness, and constant strain of preforming like a circus animal show on her face. The other part of the film features the daughter of a gay man, who along with his partner, have made a fortune preparing these children for the pagent circut. The daughter, Leslie, is a little older, and the contrast between the two children is sad. While Leslie is supported by her father, Swan behaves like a beaten dog trying to win the approval of a cruel master. The gay men seem to enjoy the children, and the process, yet the mother of Swan is forced. She guilts the child by saying things a five yr. old can't fully understand, i.e., 'I am taking a 3rd mortgage on my house for all of this, I am getting a third job, etc. Her other three children are in stark contrast to Swan- a troubled teenage boy who is in jail, a sixteen yr. old girl who is slightly overweight, and a virtually ignored three yr. old son. The entire film is troubling, and leads one to wonder how the subjects themselves felt after watching it, and if it changed their attitudes any.
Immediate Family (1989)
excellent
This movie was an excellent follow up for actress Glenn Close, after Fatal Attraction. It is a completely different direction, and showed her range as an actress. Lucy and Michael Spector, a upper middle class Seattle couple, have been married for ten years, and long to start a family. After several failed attempts, they opt for an open adoption. Mary Stuart Masterson plays the expecting teenage mother who contacts them through the ad they placed in a out of state newspaper. What follows is an acurate and touching portrayal of four people, (including the baby's father,) who's rollercoaster emotions manage to be both funny and heartbreaking at times. I thought this movie was fantastic, engrosing from start to finish, and a must see for any fan of the actors in it! Eight stars!