School Days

Good Will Hunting (Miramax Collector's Series)

Will Hunting is a headstrong, working-class genius who's failing the lessons of life. After one too many run-ins with the law, Will's last chance is a pyschology professor, who might be the only man who can reach him.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-MAR-2003
Media Type: DVD

Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Hunting triumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women's melodrama in the '30s and '40s: He's crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.

Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet math genius who ignores his gift in favor of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgård). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor's former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past, and as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film's beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck's clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection and feeling for one another. --Dave McCoy

Mr. Holland's Opus

A musician resorts to teaching for financial security and discovers his own gift is teaching.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 25-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD

An earnest and at times overblown story of a music teacher's impact on those around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is at times a genuinely touching drama in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) plays an aspiring composer and musician who takes a job teaching music at a local high school to save money while he composes his music. But when his wife (Glenne Headley) becomes pregnant, Glenn Holland must put aside his dreams and address the everyday realities of his life, from the melancholy and sometimes tragic fates of his students to the discovery that the son he cherishes is deaf. Building to a highly emotional climax in which the teacher sees the impact he's had on the world around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is a showcase for a fine Oscar-nominated performance by Dreyfuss and an engaging, heartwarming story. --Robert Lane

The Miracle Worker

Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft had been playing their respective roles as Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, on Broadway for some time before director Arthur Penn (The Left-Handed Gun) built a mesmerizingly beautiful film around their layers-deep performances. Duke is astonishing as the deaf, blind, mute Keller, who awakens to an awareness of language under Sullivan's determined guidance. Bancroft is fascinating and focused. Penn wisely kept his adaptation unencumbered by cinematic indulgence. The black-and-white film is sparse and charged with the immediacy of the drama. The script is by William Gibson, who also wrote the original play. --Tom Keogh

Starring in what is quite possibly the most moving double performance ever recorded on film (Time), Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke are remarkable in their OscarÂ(r)-winning* portrayalsof Annie and Helen. Ennobling and uplifting (Variety), this inspirational story of courageand hope is one of the finest works of art in the history of motion pictures (Boxoffice). Locked in a frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness since infancy, 7-year-old Helen Keller has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. ThenAnnie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touchthe only tool they have in commonand leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light. *1962: Actress (Bancroft); Supporting Actress (Duke)

Pay It Forward

Inspired by an assignment from his teacher, a young boy attempts to make the world a better place by doing good deeds for three strangers, paying them \""forward\"" instead of paying someone back.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 3-FEB-2004
Media Type: DVD

Pay It Forward is a multi-level marketing scheme of the heart. Beginning as a seventh-grade class assignment to put into action an idea that could change the world, young Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a plan to do good deeds for three people who then by way of payment each must do good turns for three other people. These nine people also must pay it forward and so on, ad infinitum. If successful, the resulting network of do-gooders ought to comprise the entire world. Trevor's attempts to get the ball rolling include befriending a junkie (James Caviezel) and trying to set up his recovering-alcoholic mother (Helen Hunt) with his burn-victim teacher (Kevin Spacey), who posed the assignment.

While this could have turned into unmitigated schmaltz, the acting elevates this film to mitigated schmaltz. By turns powerful and measured, the performances of Spacey, Hunt, and Osment can't make up for the many missteps in a screenplay that sanitizes the look of the lower-middle class and expects us to believe that homeless alcoholics and junkies speak in the elevated manner of grad students. (Can that really be Angie Dickinson as Hunt's dispossessed mother? Yes, it is!) The germ of the story is a good one, though, and one may wonder how it would have been handled by the likes of Frank Capra, who could balance sentiment with humor. But clearly Capra would never have let the ending of his version to take the nosedive into cliché and pathos that director Mimi Leder has allowed in this film. More than a few viewers will also recognize that Leder has blatantly borrowed her final image from Field of Dreams, where its intended effect was more keenly and honestly felt. --Jim Gay

Love and Basketball (New Line Platinum Series)

From the playground to the pro leagues, Monica and Qunicy taught each other how to play the game. Now, their commitment to the sport will force them to make a choice between each other and the game...between family and team...between "Love & Basketball." DVD Features: Two Original Documentaries, Deleted Scenes, Blooper Reel, Three Feature Length Commentaries, Music Video, DVD-ROM Content Including Screenplay And Original Theatrical Web Site, 127 Minutes

Gina Prince-Bythewood, a former college athlete, puts a spin on this one-on-one tale of Love and Basketball. Sanaa Lathan (The Best Man) is the fiercely driven, hot-tempered Monica, a tomboy who gives her all for basketball. Omar Epps (The Mod Squad) is Quincy, an NBA player's son who has pro dreams of his own. Next-door neighbors since first grade, they start as rivals (she flabbergasts the boy by outplaying him in a game of driveway pickup) and age into best friends and lovers. The romantic complications follow a familiar game plan, but the film throws a fascinating spotlight onto the contrast between men's and women's basketball. While Quincy plays college ball on huge courts to cheering, sold-out crowds, we see Monica's sweat, tears, and sheer physical dedication in front of tiny audiences in small gyms and second-rate auditoriums.

The story is pointedly set in the late 1980s, years before the establishment of the WNBA, so Monica's prospects for pro ball lie exclusively in Europe, while Quincy steps into the pros at home. It's a pleasure to see a character as passionate and fully developed as Monica, and Lathan gives a fiery portrayal (she had never played ball before the film, but you'd never tell from her performance). Prince-Bythewood favors her struggle over Quincy's and opens our eyes to her unique challenges with a sharp, savvy contrast. Alfre Woodard costars as Monica's harping mom (always trying to get her to be more ladylike) and Dennis Haysbert is Quincy's philandering father. Hoops fan Spike Lee produced. --Sean Axmaker

The Paper Chase

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: HOUSEMAN/BOTTOMS/WAGNER
Title: PAPER CHASE
Street Release Date: 09/05/2006
Domestic
Genre: DRAMA

Tuesdays with Morrie

This warmhearted TV offering based on Mitch Albom's nonfiction bestseller of the same name dives right into the action, with Morrie (Jack Lemmon) collapsing within the first three minutes. Then it's cut to Mitch's hectic life as a sports columnist cum television host and long-term, often long-distance boyfriend. But this Mick Jackson-directed film slows considerably after the introductions as former student Mitch (Hank Azaria) learns his beloved professor is dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). He reconnects with his mentor and begins learning from him all over again, this time about life. Oprah Winfrey produced this 88-minute film, and her renowned touchy-feely quality is prominent as Mitch learns to love both Morrie and his own girlfriend. Azaria, better known for somewhat goofy roles (The Birdcage, the dogwalker on TV's Mad About You) conveys an intelligent, if edgy dignity, and double Oscar winner Lemmon turns in his usual exquisite performance, giving even the most obvious moments touches of subtlety. --Kimberly Heinrichs

Based on a true-life story, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is a loving memoir to a man whose lessons on life have much to teach us about ourselves. Academy Award(R)-winner Jack Lemmon (Best Actor, 1974, SAVE THE TIGER) delivers an outstanding performance as Morrie Schwartz, the Brandeis University professor upon whom the best-selling book is based. Hank Azaria (GODZILLA) plays Mitch, an accomplished journalist so driven by his job, he has little time or energy left for anything else. One night, Mitch happens to catch Morrie's appearance on a national news program and learns his old professor is battling Lou Gehrig's disease. After the telecast, Mitch contacts Morrie, and what starts as a visit turns into a pilgrimage as Mitch opens his heart to the lessons Morrie has to teach him. As the bond grows between these two men, Mitch learns that professional commitments don't mean anything without the love of family and friends. Sure to inspire, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE may just change your views on the meaning of life ... forever.

Wit

Based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson WIT features the Academy Award winning actress Emma Thompson in a movie directed by Academy award winning director Mike Nichols. Vivian Bearing is an English professor with a biting wit that educates but also alienates her students. With her teaching and life both rigidly under control Vivian would never let down her defenses until the day comes when they are taken don for her. Diagnosed with a devastating illness Vivian agrees to undergo a series of procedures that are brutal extensive and experimental. For eight months her life must take an uncharted course. No longer a teacher but a subject for others to study. Vivian Bearing is about to discover a fine line between life and death that can only be walked with wit.Running Time: 99 min.System Requirements: Running Time 99 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 026359178122

Deservedly hailed as one of the best films of 2001, Wit makes it clear why top-ranking talents seek refuge in the quality programming of HBO. Unhindered by box-office pressures, director Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson turn the most unglamorous topic--the physical and psychological ravages of cancer--into an exquisite contemplation of life, learning, and tenacious, richly expressed humanity. In adapting Margaret Edson's compassionate, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Nichols and Thompson open up the one-room setting with a superb supporting cast. But their focus remains on the hospital experience of Vivian (Thompson), a fiercely demanding professor of English literature whose academic specialty--the metaphysical poetry of John Donne--is the armor she wears against the cruel indignities of her cancer treatment. While losing all that she held dear, she reassesses her life as an aloof intellectual, and Wit illuminates her bracingly eloquent and deeply moving struggle for dignity, meaning, and peace at life's ultimate crossroads. --Jeff Shannon

Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester could have been a shallow variant of The Karate Kid, congratulating itself for featuring a 16-year-old black kid from the South Bronx who's a brilliant scholar-athlete. Instead, director Gus Van Sant plays it matter-of-fact and totally real, casting a nonactor (Rob Brown) as Jamal, a basketball player and gifted student whose writing talent is nurtured by a famously reclusive author. William Forrester (Sean Connery) became a literary icon four decades earlier with a Pulitzer-winning novel, then disappeared (like J.D. Salinger) into his dark, book-filled apartment, agoraphobic and withdrawn from publishing, but as passionate as ever about writing. On a dare, Jamal sneaks into Forrester's musty sanctuary, and what might have been a condescending cliché--homeboy rescued by wiser white mentor--turns into an inspiring meeting of minds, with mutual respect and intelligence erasing boundaries of culture and generation.

Comparisons to Van Sant's Good Will Hunting are inevitable, but Finding Forrester is more honest and less prone to touchy-feely sentiment, as in the way Jamal and a private-school classmate (Anna Paquin) develop a mutual attraction that remains almost entirely unspoken. The film takes a conventional turn when Jamal must defend his integrity (with Forrester's help) in a writing contest judged by a skeptical teacher (F. Murray Abraham), but this ethical subplot is a credible catalyst for Forrester's most dramatic display of friendship. It's one of many fine moments for Connery and Brown (a screen natural), in a memorable film that transcends issues of race to embrace the joy of learning. --Jeff Shannon

Stand and Deliver

Based on a true story, this inspiring American Playhouse production stars Edward James Olmos as a high school teacher who motivated a class full of East L.A. barrio kids to care enough about mathematics to pass an Advanced Placement Calculus Test. Not exactly a variation of To Sir, With Love, the film concerns itself with assumptions and biases held by mainstream authorities about disadvantaged kids, and Olmos's efforts to keep his students coolheaded enough to prove them wrong. Olmos, virtually unrecognizable as the pudgy, balding instructor, gives a career performance in this fine piece directed by Ramón Menéndez, and written by the director and Tom Musca. --Tom Keogh

Edward James Olmos's Oscar-nominated performance energizes this true-life story of a Los Angeles high school teacher who drives his students on to excellence at calculus.