I wasn’t privileged to get a preview of this horror pic, opening tonight.
So there’s nothing for it but to Get to the Regal Winter Park Village Stadium 20 on time to see “The Prodigy” on opening night. Looks scary. Horror movies titled “Prodigy” often are.
Might Orion Pictures preview their future releases a bit more widely? Let’s hope so. Hey, Orion! Big fan, longtime fan, etc.
Even named my sailboat after you.
Maybe next time, help a brother out?
Everybody’s review of “What Men Want” posted in the wee hours of Thursday AM, thanks to a silly and absurdly restrictive embargo Paramount (Paramount Players/BET) slapped on this latest mid-winter Taraji P. Henson outing.
She can say, “At LEAST they weren’t Screen Gems,” which dumped “Proud Mary” into theaters in a previous January, leaving a promising misfire of a star vehicle to its fate.
But nothing says the studio isn’t keen on a picture’s chances like not letting reviews show up before opening night.
And as lowdown as this farce is, it’s not bad. It’s full of laughs.
Sure, reviews are going to be mixed.
But it’s tracking even higher on the more selective-about-their-critics-site Metacritic.
The earliest ones I saw were from IMDb “users” who are among the class of gimme-free-tickets folk the studios call “passholes,” for obvious reasons. They’re older and most often white and the earliest “buzz” from them was they’re still mad Mel Gibson isn’t in it.
“What Men Want” was always going to do OK, with or without “Girls’ Trip” reviews. But I can’t help but wonder if BET didn’t let Paramount leave money on the table, not letting critics sing its praises for a few days before it opened.
Holding reviews back implies “damaged goods,” even though those of us who previewed it early this week knew better, Paramount didn’t want us to say so.
I had to double check, to make sure this wasn’t a fake trailer.
But I won’t lie. I laughed.
Samuel L. Jackson has to teach the trade to “junior.” Jessie T. Usher (under my radar, here are his mostly-TV credits) plays the kid as punchline in this sequel/reboot.
But Richard Roundtree’s here to remind us that he was “one bad mutha…” long before Samuel L. owned the description.
Regina Hall gets the biggest laugh in this trailer for “Shaft,” which opens June 14.
Whatever Taraji P. Henson is “on” in “What Men Want,” sign me up for a bottle of that.
Her amped up, go-for-broke, lowdown, dirty and broad performance in this distaff spin on the Mel Gibson “I can hear the thoughts of the opposite sex” hit, “What Women Want,” has two things you want in a screen comedy — desperation and laughs.
It’s so long that it’s no surprise they can’t make an end of it and let the film exit gracefully. “Men Want” reaches for every low-hanging-fruit joke it can grasp. But this Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”) farce tries to make Henson a one-woman “Girls’ Trip,” and doesn’t miss that lowdown and raunchy mark by far.
Henson plays Ali Davis, almost the only female agent in Atlanta’s high-powered Summit World Management agency, a sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed workaholic who handles many of the world’s greatest female athletes.
She’s “crushing it” to such a degree that she and her supportive but long-suffering assistant (Josh Brener, fun) are SURE she’s about to make partner. When the boss (Brian Bosworth, perfect) doesn’t pitch that promotion her way, she blows a fuse. He dismisses her with A) “You don’t connect with men” and B) “Stay in your lane.”
Our Ali’s a “ball-buster” who has an “all about you” rep with her colleagues. She’s a tigress when she beds a handsome bartender (Aldis Hodge), and savagely selfish. There’s something she’s not “getting.”
Stereotypical gay assistant Brandon has to send her to a cousin’s bachelorette party to cool off. And the psychic the ladies hire as entertainment has a hand in changing Ali’s life.
Singer/actress Erykah Badu threatens to steal the movie as “Sister,” a flake of the first order, server of “Haitian tea” that makes Ali wild. Was it spiked?
“I’m 19 years sober,” Sister harrumphs. “If you don’t count the weed, the peyote and the crack.”
As potent as the tea is, it still takes a blow to the head to make Ali start hearing men’s inner thoughts.
From “I gotta get my prostate checked” and “This whole wearing ladies’ underwear thing” on the street, to “Pretend I’m working, pretend I’m working, pretend I’m working” from colleagues, girlfriend has ALL access. Now how might that be helpful is she’s trying to sign the hottest NBA prospect out there, winning over his crazy, changed-his-last-name-to-“Dolla” dad (Tracy Morgan)?
It’s a cluttered, messy movie, stooping to pander, here and there — in between the fart jokes, Pete Davidson (gay office drone) appearances and F-bombs.
But there’s a breezy, improvised best-joke-on-the-set wins feel to a lot of the zingers. Maybe Wendi McClendon-Covey didn’t come up with the not-quite-Born Again party girl Olivia character on her own, but her one-liners sound like the work of an improv vet, and co-star of “The Goldbergs.”
“Before I started following The Lord, I followed 2 Live Crew on tour!”
A men–only poker game Ali crashes features Shaq, Grant Hill and NBA owner Mark Cuban, who gives us the rich guy’s take on the 99 percent.
“Gotta stop playing poker with poor people!”
No, it’s not on a par with “Bridesmaids” or “Girls’ Trip.” The sentimental stuff, the piercing “insights” Ali picks up about men, are instantly forgettable.
But Henson plays the hell out of this part, no subtlety allowed. And the over-supply of one-liners and an abundance of silly supporting players (Jason Jones of TV’s “The Detour,” Richard “Shaft” Roundtree as Ali’s aged jock dad) ensure that the laughs keep coming, even if “What Men Want” outstays its welcome.
(Did Paramount Hamstring “What Men Want” before the Box Office Race Started?)
MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content throughout, and some drug material
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Tracy Morgan, Josh Brener, Erykah Badu, Richard Roundtree, Wendi McClendon-Covey, Brian Bosworth
Credits: Directed by Adam Shankman, script by Tina Gordon, Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory. A Paramount Players/BET release.
Running time: 1:57
Oh hummus, you Dionysian dip delight, you magical combo of chickpeas, garlic, tahini, lemon juice, olive and salt.
Is there any meal that wouldn’t be improved by the Original App, a little delicious dab daubed on pita bread?
Is it no wonder the Greeks want to take credit for inventing you? Ah, but they have to take a NUMBER, don’t they? Pakistan and Lebanon, israel and Egypt and the entire Levant claim you as their own.
“Hummus! The Movie” doesn’t get to the bottom of that. It notes the Israelis “are now claiming that hummus is part of THEIR tradition. ‘An Israeli dish; blah blah blah,” as one skeptical Lebanese chef gripes. “NOT true. In Lebanon we “have been eating hummus for a few hundred years.
“OUR cuisine, our tradition, part of our society.”
Yeah, but what about the Greeks, Beirut Boy?
“Greek? PLEASE. We were baking bread for thousands of years while in Europe, they didn’t have any culture. They were eating each other.”
That’s just part of the lip service paid to that great debate in “Hummu!,” a whimsical to the point of playful film from Israeli filmmaker Oren Rosenfeld. Yes, he’s prejudiced, and most of the hummus houses he visits are in Israel and in the towns the Muslim majority there still call Palestine.
But when his assorted cooks, chefs, restaurateurs and others (a monk and a rabbi, for starters) weigh in, it’s all in good foodie fun. The name comes from the Arabic spelling of “chickpeas” which seems to settle that. Egypt seems to have the strongest claim for country of origin.
But “Hummus!” is more about how its emerged, from that region, as a universal appetizer, the dip found from Dieppe to Daytona, Chareloi to China.
Rosenfeld has fun with folks on the street — New York, Tel Aviv, etc. — describing hummus –“It’s s a mousse. Chickpeas and tahini…It comes from Greece, Israel, Spain, Pakistan, what have you.
Jalil Dabit in Ramle, a Christian Arab Palestinian is the third generation to run his family’s restaurant in Ramle, and dreams of taking his secret sauce to Berlin.
Yehoshua Soferthe Jamaican-born rabbi, martial artist and “Raggamuffin” (rap reggae) rapper), has the hippest take on the snack and the “conflict” over it.
It’s the “national food of the Middle East. The common denominator that makes all people here stupid is hummus!”
As he croons in the film’s title tune, “”It’s not about Huuuuuumus. It’s about life in the wild, wild Middle Eeeeeeasst.”
A French monk in Acre complains about the taking of turns cooking in his monastery (“Very DANGEROUS.”) and marvels at the Muslim village of Abu-Gosh he walks through which has 20 restaurants, each with its own distinct take on the food for which they’re famous.
But the most serious this conflict gets is the ongoing fight to see who can serve up the biggest plate of hummus. We meets a London-based Guiness Worlds Records adjudicator largest serving of hummus in human history.
“As long as the finished product includes chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, salt garlic, olive oil we’re happy with that,” he says. Lebanon and Israel keep raising the kilogram throw-weight.
Whatever the history, the food is pitched here as the food of the future.
“Chickpeas,” one expert opines, “are SUPER food!”
A German gent marvels that “In Virginia, many farmers, they change their harvest from tobacco to chickpeas.”
From his mouth to the USDA’s ears.
Be sure to catch this with the subtitles. Unless you speak Arabic, Hebrew and “raggamuffin” jive.
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Cast: Suhela Alhindi ,Jalil Dabit, Ido Zarmi, Eliyahu Shmueli
Credits: Directed by Oren Rosenfeld, script by Oren Rosenfeld, Rebecca Shore and Baruch Goldberg. A Multicom Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:09
John Weld was a journalist, screenwriter, novelist and Ford dealership owner whose life is lightly skimmed over in “The Remarkable Life of John Weld,” a documentary based almost entirely on recreations of all the famous people he met, befriended, loved and cuckolded.
It’s a picaresque “Pilgrim’s Progress” of a biography that passes Weld off as a sort of writing equivalent of Forrest Gump or Woody Allen’s “Zelig.”
Weld was an Alabama boy who hied it to Hollywood at the peak of the silent film era, relying on his general fearlessness to tackle a job as a stunt man for the likes of Chaplin, Barrymore and cowboy star Tom Mix.
He was pals with Clark Gable, chased Walter Huston’s fiance and then became Huston’s lifelong friend and eventually came back as a screenwriter and novelist whose works Hollywood optioned. No films ever came from his writings there — not that made it to the Internet Movie Database, in any event.
A meeting at a party with gossip reporter Louella Parsons landed him a start in newspapering, learning the trade and writing in New York, chasing Lindbergh to Paris where he interviewed then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt and befriended the writer James Joyce. He eventually founded a small (rich) town newspaper in Laguna Beach.
The famed aviatrix Pancho Barnes was a drinking buddy. You might remember her as a “character” in “The Right Stuff.”
He wasn’t so much a colorful character and somebody who knew colorful characters. None of his books are touchstone titles — a Donner Party novel, “Don’t You Cry for Me” that was a 1940 best seller, and his “Memoirs of a Hollywood Stunt Man” captures the danger and DIY nature of early film stunt work.
He and his last wife filmed travelogues, but again, no record of them shows that they turned up in theaters or on TV.
And while the esteemed actor and go-to PBS narrator Peter Coyote narrates the recreations as Weld, reading from his memoirs, the experts interviewed here include a godson, a stunt coordinator, a couple of nieces, a film historian and Laguna Beach historian and an “Entertainment Life Coach.” Not exactly an assemblage that would past “American Masters” or “The American Experience” muster on PBS.
The relatives and fans interviewed here refer to Weld as “a man of honor,” even though he took up with other men’s wives and his Wikipedia entry leaves out half his marriages.
Director Gabe Torres samples a couple of Weld’s more difficult early Hollywood stunts — cliff diving, plunging in a raging river doubling for starlet Zasu Pitts — but neither of them deign to identify the movies.
And by the time we get to the resolution of the mystery that frames this life story — a ship sinking, with Weld and wife number four aboard it — in Yokohama Harbor in 1961 — the viewer can be excused for noting “Well, yes, this was a colorful enough life. But remarkable?”
The larger point here might be that this is an example of the sort of life lived when The Lost Generation was in Paris, when Hollywood was still new, when the world was smaller and people who made connections and got a foothold in publishing or New York newspapers or cinema could move relatively easily between those worlds.
As Coyote narrates Weld’s near-drowning “I wanted to take with me as many memories and images as I could conjure,” you can bet Weld wasn’t mentioning, in that memory, the bulk of his life — writing press releases for Boeing and Ford, owning a couple of small California Ford dealerships.
The viewer? It’s not just envy of a comfortable life well-lived that could make you blurt out, “Yes, and?”
MPAA Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Nic Tag, Claire Adams, Emily Kincaid, narrated by Peter Coyote
Credits: Directed by Gabe Torres, script by Rob Lihani. A Multicom Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:16
Director Zhangke Jia gave us “Still Life” and “A Touch of Sin,” but earlier he expressed a fondness for gangster tales.
Nothing in this trailer — she meets him on the dance floor, he drops his gun, revealing his hidden life — surprises save for the setting. Quite striking.
Look for “Ash is Purest White” in limited release March 15.
There’s a “don’t overthink this” watchability to “Miss Bala,” the Hollywood remake of a lean-mean Mexican gangster movie about a beauty queen coerced into doing a drug lord’s murderous bidding.
Don’t give too much thought to the rapid transition the heroine makes from shocked and scared to death to confident enough to tamp down the fear and play both sides of the drug dealers/DEA front lines.
No head shaking at the obvious “heat” the good looking but cold-blooded kingpin is supposed to generate with the kidnapped and traumatized American woman.
And let’s not wallow in the moral ambiguity of a picture that paints the callous corruption of drug dealers, Mexican police and the Drug Enforcement Administration agents as equal on almost all counts.
Because we have to believe that to buy into any of this heroine’s journey from naif to nasty enough to hold her own among monsters.
Catherine “Twilight” Hardwicke’s film, hewing closely to the somewhat sharper 2011 Spanish language B-movie “La Bala,” shows us “the other Tijuana,” a border city with cool buildings, money, swank clubs and people who’d sponsor a beauty pageant. That’s before she delivers the Tijuana generations of drug-trade thrillers have planted in the mind — corrupt, lawless, violent with poor people trapped in the crossfire.
That’s the Tijuana Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) lived in as a girl, which she’s reluctant to return to as an adult. She’s a makeup artist who works in the fashion industry, and she’s come to town to help childhood pal Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) win the Miss Baja California Pageant.
Gloria herself isn’t to be confused with a pageant contestant, as other characters give her the “Ugly Betty” treatment. That’s “foreshadowing” for you.
When they don their disco togs and hit a club, all is swinging and fun until Gloria visits the bathroom. That’s where she sees the Estrellas (star) gang break in and gear up. They’re here to assassinate the police chief.
Their handsome leader (Ismael Cruz Cordova) gives her the chance to escape, but tracking down Suzu slows her down and they’re both trapped when the shooting starts.
Gloria gets out. Where’s Suzu? She tracks down a cop afterwards seeking answers. Mentioning “I saw the men who did this” to the cop turns out to be a mistake. She’s turned over to the gang, asked “Do you want to stay alive?” and given a choice — “Do this one thing for us” and Lino the leader will help her find Suzu.
That “one thing” turns out to be parking a car bomb in front of a DEA “safe house.” Which creates problems when Gloria escapes and runs to safety to the first American accent she hears (Matt Lauria). That leads to her second “unless you help us” threat.
Gloria is trapped, forced to be Lino’s “mule” and forced to be Agent Reich’s (!?) “mole.”
As Gloria, plucky Rodriguez of TV’s “Jane the Virgin” brings a nuanced and underplayed sense of a young woman barely keeping it all together faced with horrific life-and-death choices, one right after another. We get moments of quivering, moist-eyed terror and rage, but Rodriguez made the choice to go with “poker faced,” and sticks with it. She never lets Gloria make the leap to “compelling.”
That gets in the way of Lino’s real-or-feigned attraction for her. It’s not an appearance thing. She’s just not that interesting. Why add her to the gang’s harem of enslaved women? Only the threat against Suzu’s little brother, that they’ll “gut that boy like a chicken,” keeps Gloria on task with them.
The DEA’s threats, lawless, lawyerless and outside of their jurisdiction, are just ridiculous enough to work — in B-movie logic.
Hardwicke gives us a trio of competent if not stylish shootouts, teases us with hints of what COULD happen to Gloria at every turn and brings in a US supplier (Anthony Mackie) to add another tipping point to Gloria’s tightrope walk.
“Tell Lino there’s a ‘mole’ in his operation!”
Lino’s too busy explaining his “I’m just playing THEIR game” villainy, feeding Gloria Mexican barbecue and always getting interrupted just as it seems as if he’s about to make a movie on Miss Poker Face.
“Miss Bala” — the title translates to “bullet,” as in “La Bala settles EVERYthing” — may be slicker than the Mexican film it’s based on, and for all its alleged complexity, it’s the B-movie conventions (tempting villain, a suspicious top lieutenant to the mobster who doesn’t trust Gloria, etc.) that hold it together.
Hardwicke loses track of those building blocks of the Bs at her own, and her movie’s peril. And she does. Characters disappear for long stretches, plotlines are abandoned and the finale we all see coming feels like a pulled punch.
A movie this illogical shouldn’t get hung up on whether Gloria is turned on by the bad guy giving her the eye. And a genre pic this conventional shouldn’t shy away from those conventions, when they’re the time-proven elements that work.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of gun violence, sexual and drug content, thematic material, and language
Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Cristina Rodlo
Credits: Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. A Sony/Columbia Pictures release.
Running time: 1:44
The lifelong horrors of childhood abuse hide in plain sight in “Beneath the Leaves,” a more tricky-than-interesting thriller that might outsmart itself if it was any smarter to begin with.
It’s got kids who survive trauma and try to make something of their future, and kids who go on to repeat their trauma to a new generation. And what they’re all living with is memories of the worst things that can happen to children — torture, kidnapping, sexual abuse. So there’s something at stake here, at least.
A prologue shows us the worst of it, foster siblings growing up with a horrific stepfather who forces the nail-biting boy to endure brutal, bloody nail-trimming sessions, and a sad little girl who endures stepdad’s drunken attention after the boy has taken his punishment.
They escape their lot, but can they escape their fate?
Twenty years later, Whitley, a notorious child killer played by the cadaverous Doug Jones (he wore the amphibian suit in “The Shape of Water”) escapes from prison with several other convicts. And he’s on his way back to the old gold mining town of Julian, California, to settle old scores.
The police captain (Paul Sorvino) puts his cops in the hunt. But despite the fact that several murderers were among those who got away, Detectives Shotwell (Mira Sorvino) and Larson (Kristoffer Polaha) are put on “domestic disturbance” duty.
Is it because they not-so-secretly sleep together? Is it because they both drink, Larson to excess? Nope. Larson was one of a handful of kids to escape Whitley’s clutches years before. He’s “too close to this case.”
As the escapees kill here and there, and are killed themselves, Shotwell and Larson get caught up in the action.
Whitley is still at large, but not being allowed to pursue him, they have time to hit the bars where Larson drinks til he drops and Shotwell picks her spot to share her past trauma — she’s ex-military — with her lover. Since nothing cools him down, she’s given a new partner — the squirrely bird lover Abrams (Aaron Farb), an obsessive with convenient knowledge of the area flora and fauna.
And then Whitley’s escaped prey from 20 years before start turning up dead, trapped, tortured and murdered.
There’s not much for the actors to play here, with the Oscar winning Sorvino having her weepy moment of remembrance and Poloha (“Atlas Shrugged”) tossing furniture around in drunken and sober tirades.
Farb makes his character comically quirky enough to underestimate. Abrams and Shotwell check out the register of a sleazy motel where one victim disappeared.
“Peter Piper? That’s a pseudonym!”
“Ya think?”
The odd burst of violence doesn’t hide the sense that one and all are kind of sleepwalking through “Beneath the Leaves.” There’s a mystery to unravel, but no urgency in the actions of one and all. Only one of the fights has suspense and gets the viewer’s heart racing.
The novelty of pairing up the Oscar winner Mira Sorvino with her father, veteran character actor Paul Sorvino, wore off three collaborations ago.
Three screenwriters adapted a story by director Adam Marino (the Lou Ferrigno thriller “Ring Ring”), and they and he pay more attention to plot than dialogue or characters.
Some random scenes pay off. The opening, with children in jeopardy, works better than anything that follows.
Some later scenes, with Polaha, Christopher Masterson of “Malcolm in the Middle” and Christopher Backus (married to Sorvino) giving us a hint of the living nightmare adult survivors of childhood abuse endure, pull the viewer in. Just a smidge.
Mostly though, “Beneath the Leaves” keeps us at arm’s length and the cast at half-speed, a disappointing combination when your aim was an intricate, raw-nerves thriller with visceral violence, surprises and characters we connect with enough to root for.
MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence and sexual situations — some involving children — and profanity
Cast: Doug Jones, Mira Sorvino, Kristoffer Polaha, Paul Sorvino, Aaron Farb, Christopher Backus, Christopher Masterson
Credits: Directed by Adam Marino, script by Naman Barsoom, Daniel Wallner and Mark Andrew Wilson. A Reel Fire/Eagle Films release.
Running time: 1:30
In the larger scheme of things, the fact that a musical interrupted by tragedy came together for opening night isn’t the most important or telling story about the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
But if you watch one documentary about Parkland, Amy Schatz’s “Song of Parkland” might be the easiest to take.
The tragedy of Feb. 14, 2018, underscores every scene, every action.
The cell-phone videos recorded mid-evacuation, the TV news helicopter footage and montages of the news coverage of the massacre of 14 kids in a suburban high school isn’t pushed aside.
But the pluck and poise of the drama kids, more than a few of whom have become public spokespersons for a school that morphed into a national movement, is damned inspiring. The fierce, focused woman who is their teacher, coach and director, Melody Herzfeld — expects no less.
They were mid-rehearsal when Nikolas Cruz brought his AR-15 into school and opened fire. Herzeld, whom ALL her students call “Herzfeld,” didn’t let them dash into the hall on hearing the fire alarm go off. One insists “that saved our lives.” She made them finish the number they were working on for their annual musical for little kids.
When the were in the middle of a school “CODE RED” became clear, she rounded up her charges — 65 students — and herded them into the secure “techie room” backstage.
“Text your parents…that you’re safe” she told them.
And when they heard the police break down the nearby doors to finally enter the school, she gave them another piece of “direction.” Cell-phones off, hands up.
“No dramatics. You’re not going to cry.”
And as cell phone video of their “rescue” plays out on the screen, she remembers what she told them as they were led to safety out on the school lawn.
“On the grass, I said ‘NOW we can cry.'”
As the news of the tragedy spread and the school became Ground Zero for #NeverAgain, the political movement that would take on the Russian-financed NRA and its Congressional backers, with a school surrounded by makeshift memorials made of posters, notes of support, flowers and stuffed animals from all over the country, shaking the shock was difficult, handling the turmoil and emotions more than most kids could handle.
“Our city is broken, and we don’t know when it’s gonna be fixed,” student Alex Wind says. But for kids like him, Herzfeld’s “Make your voice heard, tell your truth” edict was something they could cling to.
They poured their heartbreak and trauma into composing songs. And they went back to rehearsal.
“You always hear, ‘The show must go on,'” Wind remembers. “When we all came back to school, we knew what we needed to do.”
They’d get “Yo, Pirates!,” a musical adaptation of a children’s book, ready for opening night.
“We HAD to finish this to show ourselves and the community that we CAN do and keep moving on from something tragic that happened,” cast member Ashley Paseltiner says.
“We want to bring happiness to the school…to ‘shine a light,’ if you will,” Alex Atjanasiou declares, to gales of giggles from the rest of the cast at his cheeky drama nerd corniness.
If you wondered where those darned “Parkland Kids” got their confidence to speak up, debate foes and withstand the assaults of Fox News hosts and others, where their polish in organizing their thoughts, their courage to stand up and start a movement came from, “Song of Parkland” has your answers.
Schatz’s film doesn’t capture kids in weeping despair, but in the focus that comes with a renewed sense of purpose.
Drama kids, as anybody who ever was one can tell you, can be narcissistic and overly dramatic. But there’s little of that here. Schatz doesn’t let us confuse their efforts for any pursuit of the spotlight. They’re determined to put a different face on their school, and with that little musical, demonstrate resilience to their community.
Which they did, all the way to last year’s Tony Awards, when they stood on stage on national TV and sang “Seasons of Love” from “Rent.”
As I said, this isn’t the deepest or darkest or most complete look at Parkland you’ll ever see. But “Song of Parkland” is the most upbeat. Whatever hangs over them, whatever awful thing happened to them and their classmates, their plucky Keep Calm and Carry a Song is a sweet exclamation point to put on a year of tragedy, outrage, activism and action.
MPAA Rating: unrated
Credits: Directed by Amy Schatz. An HBO Film.
Running time: 29 minutes
Movie Nation 