Richard LaGravenese
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This drama recalls 1995's "Dangerous Minds," and many other films going all the way back to 1955's "Blackboard Jungle," the granddaddy of white-teacher-instructing-troubled-inner-city-kids movies.
If you've seen "Blackboard Jungle," "Up the Down Staircase," "To Sir, With Love," "Dangerous Minds" or "Stand and Deliver," you'll be way ahead of the story.
Both films, it should be said, are laden with clichés of the inspirational-teacher genre that go back to 1955's "Blackboard Jungle" and 1967's "To Sir, With Love."
This drama recalls 1995's "Dangerous Minds," and many other films going all the way back to 1955's "Blackboard Jungle," the granddaddy of white-teacher-instructing-troubled-inner-city-kids movies.
Sadly, it's way too easy to be cynical about a movie that follows the "teachers can make a difference" formula we've seen so many times, especially when the first twenty minutes comes across like a remake of the Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle "Dangerous Minds."
In "Dangerous Minds" Michelle Pfeiffer woke up her inner-city English class by getting relevant and quoting Bob Dylan.
The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw ads for "Freedom Writers" in January was that it looked remarkably similar to another true-life film about an inspirational female teacher at an inner-city school, "Dangerous Minds" (1995).
The movie seems to be channeling Notting Hill (which was written by Richard Curtis), right down to the poster and its opening montage showing Efron’s movie star character Chris Cole attending premieres and being hounded by the paparazzi.
And way back in the distant sands of time I recall Danny DeVito preaching Shakespeare to recalcitrant recruit Marky Mark -- um, Mark Wahlberg -- in "Renaissance Man."
The list in this category is long, and the quality broad, ranging from To Sir, with Love (Sidney Poitier straightens up hooligans) to Sunset Park (Rhea Perlman coaches hoops!).
That territory has been covered in a myriad of films, including "Stand and Deliver," "Dangerous Minds," and the now 40-year-old "To Sir, With Love" (which is the racially opposite twin of FW).
But if you've seen "To Sir, With Love," "Dead Poet's Society," "The Corn is Green," or "Stand and Deliver" – to take a random sample – you've already seen much of this movie.
Dangerous Minds , Stand and Deliver --is based on a true story about a teacher who gets urban kids motivated lends some credibility.
If you've seen "Blackboard Jungle," "Up the Down Staircase," "To Sir, With Love," "Dangerous Minds" or "Stand and Deliver," you'll be way ahead of the story.
If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
Coming after so many similar films—Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, and, especially, Dangerous Minds come to mind—Freedom Writers has its work cut out.
Were reminded of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich but with a touch of Hilary Swanks Freedom Writers inspiration.
…musical remake), UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE…
If you've seen "Blackboard Jungle," "Up the Down Staircase," "To Sir, With Love," "Dangerous Minds" or "Stand and Deliver," you'll be way ahead of the story.
The list in this category is long, and the quality broad, ranging from To Sir, with Love (Sidney Poitier straightens up hooligans) to Sunset Park (Rhea Perlman coaches hoops!).
If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
Coming after so many similar films—Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, and, especially, Dangerous Minds come to mind—Freedom Writers has its work cut out.
How do we explain our perennial support for school-based films such as "Lean on Me," "Finding Forrester," "Mr.
But if you've seen "To Sir, With Love," "Dead Poet's Society," "The Corn is Green," or "Stand and Deliver" – to take a random sample – you've already seen much of this movie.
Writer-director Richard LaGravenese is more accustomed to scripting glossy prestige romances ( Water For Elephants , The Horse Whisperer , The Bridges Of Madison County ) than directing this sort of heady Twilight descendant, but his touch here probably means less than the presence of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (Tim Burton’s lensmeister on Big Fish , Planet Of The Apes , and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory ) and production designer Richard Sherman ( The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 1 and 2).
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
influenced by Living Out Loud (1998), Freedom Writers (2007)
Dialogue Themes
The screenplay is credited exclusively to Susannah Grant, who also worked on Ever After and Pocahontas, but the dialogue reminds me of Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud, The Fisher King), the writer/director whose name was on early credit listings for the film but has since been excised.
But all of that energy and goodness is counterbalanced by the tentative style and script and by a lingering air of failed strategizing: the producers of Erin Brockovich trying to make a folk-hero of another Erin, but without a high-octane star, a full-scale immersion in a place and a community, or a comparable command of the intricacies of power and its effective resistance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Directed by Tim Burton
influenced Beautiful Creatures (2013)
Writer-director Richard LaGravenese is more accustomed to scripting glossy prestige romances ( Water For Elephants , The Horse Whisperer , The Bridges Of Madison County ) than directing this sort of heady Twilight descendant, but his touch here probably means less than the presence of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (Tim Burton’s lensmeister on Big Fish , Planet Of The Apes , and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory ) and production designer Richard Sherman ( The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 1 and 2).
Set in the mid-'90s, the film takes place in the sort of crime-ravaged Southern California war zones immortalized in NWA's music and movies like Menace II Society.
If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
There have been many films about at-risk teens receiving guidance from a surrogate parental figure, from Stand and Deliver to Freedom Writers to The Blind Side, which tend to feel false due to waterboarding the audience with sentimental inspiration and self-congratulatory smugness instead of honesty.
Compared to a film like "Boyz N The Hood," this is cinema activism lite.
Writer/director Richard LaGravenese (whose previous screenplays include The Fisher King and The Bridges of Madison County) does what competent filmmakers do with these Dangerous Minds tales - he takes the basic facts and massages them until they are suitably cinematic.
Richard LaGravenese, the screenplay writer of The Fisher King , A Little Princess , The Bridges of Madison County , and The Horse Whisperer , is the director of Freedom Writers.
He was once the creative force behind the modern classic, " The Fisher King ," so it's startling that he would willingly wade in the crowded waters of such murky formula all these years later.
However, it's one of the movie's major shortcomings that writer-director Richard LaGravenese (screenwriter of "The Fisher King" and "The Bridges of Madison County") is evidently more at home with the top-down -- trips to the Holocaust Museum; a visit from Anne Frank's protector, Miep Gies -- than the bottom-up: dramatizing the domestic "war" Gruwell's pupils describe vividly in their diaries.
That's the basis for the film, written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, who is best known as a scriptwriter - he wrote The Fisher King and the adaptations for The Bridges of Madison County, The Horse Whisperer and Beloved.
Writer/director Richard Lagravenese --known more for his screenplays ( The Fisher King , The Horse Whisperer ) than his directorial feature efforts (just one, Living Out Loud )—wields the camera again and manages to hit some of the right points.
If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
How do we explain our perennial support for school-based films such as "Lean on Me," "Finding Forrester," "Mr.