Teaching Movie Reviews Samples For Students

Waiting for “Superman”

Waiting for “Superman” is a documentary film produced by Lesley Chilcott and directed by Davis Guggenheim. This documentary produced in 2010 analyzes the shortcomings of the American public school system by following the struggles of several students and their families to gain access into a charter school (Guggenheim, 2012). It features students from across America that has been negatively affected by the public school system. These students together with their families have numerous hardships to overcome yet show a strong determination to succeed and an attitude of never giving up (Spina, 2011). The producer says that the problem lies with the public schools ...

Lions for Lambs is an American fictional film written by Matthew Michael and released in 2007. Robert Redford directs the film. Arian and Ernest, two determined students at the West Coast University, are being advised by their idealistic professor to do something imperative with their lives. They commit themselves to fighting in the army, in Afghanistan after school valediction as a way of showing their patriotism. Another student, Todd, listens to the professor to learn why Arian and Ernest are in Afghanistan. In Washington, a captivating Republican presidential candidate, Legislator Jasper Irving calls journalist Janine Roth to his office where he ...

“Waiting for ‘Superman’” is a powerful documentary movie that highlights and explores the issues and problems with American education system. It brings to fore the failure by schools, teachers, and government to stamp out myriad of problems that students encounter in their pursuit of good education. All the children captured in the documentary have great dreams. For instance, Daisy aspires to be a medic. She has written to one of the colleges to preserve her place. However, Guggenheim is very skeptical about the realization of this dream given the failure rates of most public schools. Guggenheim aptly demonstrates reduced standard of ...

Watching the film offers inspiration and enlightenment on doing something within set personal goals. The setting is at Welton Academy located in Vermont. The school presents a traditional set-up of a boy’s preparatory school. The film represents events that took place in 1959. During the period, the school has not received external pressure to admit young black students. Further, it represents the perceptions of young white scholars who have access to a vast wealth. The film revolves around an alumnus of the institution and seeks to return as an English teacher. His style shakes up the institution due to the enthusiasm ...

- What is the title of the film, what (brief summary) is it about (subject, topic)?
The film is called Unmistaken Child and focuses on a Tibetan Buddhist monk’s search for the bringing back to life of his teacher and mentor. The main character who is Temzin is a very humble and quiet person is involved in the search for the child who is the reincarnation of his teacher and mentor. Unmistaken Child is a very powerful film as it shows a lot about Tibetan culture and direction.2. Why did you choose this documentary to view? What did you expect ...

Interview One Report

The first interview I conducted was with Joseph Morgan, a young man from my neighborhood who recently cleared high school. He is currently in the process of looking for a suitable college which he will attend during the fall. My interview with Joseph was centered on his general outlook on life and his future dreams and goals.
The first thing I wanted to know from Joseph was the role or impact that both his parents had on his life that now that he had cleared high school and he would soon be an independent man in college. Joseph was very ...

In the recent film Won't Back Down (2012), Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a single mother and bartender who gradually embarks on a social justice campaign to take over her local public school, which is failing miserably. Along with teacher Nona (Viola Davis), she must navigate the bureaucracy of the school system, represented by the teacher's union president (Holly Hunter) and the principal of the school (Bill Nunn), to find a better way to teach their children. The film grossed approximately $2.6 million in its opening weekend, and has an overall gross so far of approximately $4.5 million - hardly an impressive ...

This movie employs an intensely defective character that makes him remain seriously popular among action movie lovers. Despite all the faults, he remains largely rational and combines faultless logic with enthusiastic scrutiny, accompanied with impressive attention to details. This is the core of the movie; finding resolutions to situations by relying on instincts and scrutiny.This article looks at the movie plot with regarding to adoption of the source materials and science in the 19th century.The movie regards Holmes’ face to face with monsters that would otherwise invade London.
The plot in the movie revolves around the advent of ...

The video features an attempt at highlighting the various emotional scenarios faced by teachers in American Educational institutes. He mentions various situations in which he has to play multiple roles while being a teacher. Roles of a father, a mother, a caretaker, a fan etc. He assumes roles of various characters that have an influence on the lives of the students. He justifies the same by stating that it is the way teachers act to bring out the best in the students.

Taylor Mali uses dark humor to subtly bring to the surface the poor pay grades the teachers in America get. He also ...

Spellbound (2002 film)

Spellbound is a 2002 film that focuses on the efforts of eight teenagers to win a spelling competition. The movie centres on how culture plays an important role in shaping language skills of the children as well as their parents and teachers. All the children that participated in the competition came from different backgrounds and school and received varying training. The determination they had as well the support they received from their parents, siblings, other relatives and teachers. Apart from the simple fact that the movie is entertaining, it has more of an academic touch whose audience are the stakeholders in ...

Disney’s “The Lion King” exemplifies the many struggles and triumphs of leadership in several ways. It can be surprising to the untrained eye than an animated children’s movie could hold the valuable lessons by such a complex concept but it is true. Even Kouzes Posner’s framework for Leadership is exemplified throughout the movie. There are multiple characters that take on leadership roles at different times throughout the movie, but the primary leaders are Mufasa, the initial King we meet, his son, Simba, and Mufasa’s evil brother, Scar. Each exemplifies leadership in their own ways, showing both ...

1995's Dangerous Minds, the urban school drama directed by John N. Smith and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, tells the tale of real-life teacher LouAnne Johnson, who dramatically transformed the lives of kids at an inner-city school through dedication and innovative teaching practices - all the while dealing with sensitive issues of race and violence in schools and the inner city. While its intentions are noble, Dangerous Minds tends to warp Johnson's story into a treacly, overly sentimental mess that cannot be saved by a strong cast and assured direction. In the end, the overt melodrama and incredibly simplified morality of the film undercuts ...

Movie Review: “The Emperor's Club” (2002)

Introduction

The Emperor's Club (2002) is an American film produced and directed by Michael Hoffman. The film presents a story of a renowned teacher who fixes candidates’ results in an academic competition. The intension of fixing the results in the competition was to ensure that, a well-connected student wins the competition in expense of other students. The film presents William Hundert as a prominent educator with a strong reputation due to his past character and experience in the film industry. Although Hundert was successfully in developing an educative film, his work presents some weaknesses (The Emperor's Club 2002).

Important factors in moral development

Personal characteristic ...

Introduction

Lean on Me is a movie which was produced in 1989 and written by Michael Schiffer. It is about a high school principal whose school was at a risk of being taken over by the government since the students were not performing well in their tests.

Task role

In the movie, Joe Louis Clark was a high school principal. His school faced numerous problems especially those ones which were dealing with drugs and gang violence. His student’s were also receiving low test scores. He therefore had the obligation of devising mechanisms in order to improve the performance of his school or else it be ...

Essay 1: Auteur

X-Men series of film is an institution in its amazing way. Bryan Singer pioneered this popular comic characters and brought them to the silver screen. It is a very gigantic task to convert the fictional fantasy of an existence of a superhuman into a realistic visual treat. However, highly creative mind of Bryan Singer is capable of this task. The history is the evidence (The Usual Suspects) of the mastery of Bryan Singer in direction and storytelling. The thesis statement of this paper is the powerful auteur of the directorial team of the movie to bring his vision into reality.

Very few ...

Communication is the art of sharing, receiving and passing information between two or more people. During the conversations, the medical team of Professor Vivian Bearing employ some techniques reminisce in the nursing profession. To start with, there is an elaborate use of silence as a communication technique, especially in the instances where there is interior monolog. It is demonstrated by the use of dots to connote silence. For instance, when she says, “I can’t believe that my life has become so Corny,” shows that it was silence as a technique. Reflecting is also a technique that Dr Bearing uses as a communication ...

The Personals

The movie was shot in 1998 by Chen Kou-Fu. The next year the movie was presented at the Cannes Festival. The story described in the movie, in my opinion, is rather banal. There is a woman who is rather busy and does not have time for her personal life. However, she is at that very age when everybody around her has a family. She decided to solve the problem with a partner by simply posting an ad in a newspaper. Soon she gets more than a hundred calls. The “potential” partners are rather strange: beginning with a restaurant manager who adores shoes and ending with a ...

(Student’s Name)

All submitted papers must be typed no hand written papers will be accepted.

1. Unfortunately, many individuals in our society are considered at "great risk" for psychological problems. Identify the psychosocial issues in the movie that should cause individuals to seek professional counseling help (even if some individuals could not afford to pay).
The film is a romance-comedy-drama written and directed by David O. Russell and based from the novel of the same title by Matthew Quick. It tells the story of a former History teacher, Patrizio "Pat" Solitano, Jr. (Bradley Cooper), who wants to reunite with his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), after spending eight months of therapy for bipolar ...

Movie Review: Examine the videos of Huang and Pattanaik through the eyes of globalization. Each of the presenters is making the argument that Western industrial development does not overwhelm culture, and that their 'lesser developed' countries have much to teach the West. Do you agree, disagree and why?
- Medical Doctor Devdutt Pattanaik, in his presentation entitled: “East vs. West -- the myths that mystify,” shared his views about the difference between “the world” (logos) and “my world” (mythos). He gave mythological and real-world examples about objective and subjective truths. My personal stance is that I do not ...

Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant's 2000 follow-up to his critically acclaimed film Good Will Hunting, follows a young black youth named Jamal (Rob Brown) whose entrance into a well-respected private high school coincides with his befriending of an eccentric, reclusive Salinger-like fiction writer (Sean Connery), who teaches him to cultivate his writing skills. The film centers around this mentor-mentee relationship, as Forrester befriends someone for the first time in decades, while Jamal finds someone who believes in the things he is actually passionate about. Finding Forrester is a sentimental, treacly yet fairly effective movie that touches on ideas of anti-intellectualism, racism, inner-city ...

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The overall goals of the strike were to reach a consensus with the campus administration so that the educational modes must be culturally diverse and meet the needs and requirements of all the diverse students. The students mainly belonging to the minority and different ethnic groups formed a coalition on campus known as the Third World Liberation Front. The main demand was that education should be provided equally and the quality of education should reflect the needs of the culturally diverse student base within the campus. The strikes that were held ...

The impact of Rick Smith’s ideas and suggestions on classroom management are clever and efficient. By spending a little time every day teaching procedures, especially through visuals and sound signals ensure a safe and well managed classroom. Students of all ages and grade levels want to learn in an organized classroom.
Smith’s suggestions on dealing with individual students are smart. Spending time for a minute or so each class having a conversation with a “problem” child about something not related to class creates a relationship. This is a foundation for teaching behavior once a connection is established. ...

Temple Grandin is a movie that was released in 2010.the movie is based on an autistic woman who brought a revolution in the cattle ranches and slaughterhouses. The movie was directed by Mick Jackson and the role of Grandin temple was played by Claire Danes. Temple Grandin, a young lady conceived in 1947, scarcely articulated an expression until she was four. She is conceived Autistic. She utilized her mental imbalance, the capacity to think in pictures, further bolstering her good fortune and elucidated issues that are imperceptible to a neurotypical individual. She is currently a widely acclaimed specialist of a creature science, a lobbyist for mentally ...

Introduction

The ability to assist someone to understand himself or herself and his or her capacities besides developing his or her potentialities to solve the problems at hand and achieve social and psychological compatibility depends on a number of factors. The counselor needs to have better communication skills, knowledge and experience, passion, adequate resources, among others. Everyone needs guidance and counseling, which is vital in helping one solve the everyday problems.

Lack of guidance and counseling when one is going through difficulties eventually makes one become sick and even is some circumstances makes one commit suicide as a better way to deal ...

Complete Name of Professor

When we talk about religion and its impact to the world and society, these two always come to mind: Confucianism and Christianity. Confucianism was started by Confucius. He lived in China from about 550 to 479 B.C. He never claimed to be god but after his death, those who become his followers started to worship him. Although not many people today would call themselves as Confucianists, the teachings still have a strong hold particularly in Asia (Comparing Confucianism and Christianity, 2008).
On the other hand, Christianity came after the death and resurrection of Jesus. His followers were first called as ...

“Psycho” is one of the most horrifying movies by Alfred Hitchcock. Although there were no grandiose shots, Hitchcock was able to invoke horror and thrill among the audience because of how he presented the crime scene and how he provided close ups of the victims. The black and white screen adds more horrifying effect and delivers an eerie atmosphere. Hitchcock introduces the viewers to the film’s characters and invites them to enter their world through consistent close up shots. By doing so, the audience establishes a much closer contact with the character and they seem to observe his/her experience ...

Introduction

Careful examination of a person’s behavior can sometimes be the most challenging part. People may not open up about what they are going through or what they are experiencing. It is upon an individual who has proper counseling skills to look at a person and come up with the correct diagnosis of the problem in question. Not all the time would one come up with the correct diagnosis, but the essence is to develop a plan of action with respect to the disability of the individual. The movie ‘Towelhead’ provides a challenge of conceptualization (Ball, 2008). The movie provides a broad converse over ...

One of the most widespread epidemics in the United States is childhood obesity. More and more kids are turning to fast food chains for their lunches and dinners because of ease and taste. One documentary went out to prove that going this route is not only unhealthy for you, but it is also detrimental to the society as a whole. Morgan Spurlock states “40 percent of Americans eat out” (Spurlock 2004) which adds to the ever growing epidemic. People are choosing to eat out rather than cook a meal at home. Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me set out to prove ...

Introduction

Dr. West who was born on June 1953 in Tulsa Oklahoma spent his life in Sacramento in California. He went to John F. Kennedy High school. He attended Harvard University where he graduated with his undergraduate degree in bachelor of education in 1973.He later received his PhD at Princeton University in 1980.He became the first African American to receive PhD from the same university. He initially thought at Princeton University as a professor before he moved to Union Theological Seminary in New York .He thought African American Studies while he was still in Princeton University. After going to Union Seminary, ...

We are planning our next trip to Chicago and hoping to spend some time with family. I decided to find out what kinds of educational activities there are for children in Chicago. In the search engine Google, I typed: “Children’s museum, Chicago area.”

- Chicago Children’s Museum from www.booking.com
- Art Institute of Chicago from www.artic.edu/visit-chicago‎
- The 7 best children's museums in Chicago from www.chicagoparent.com
- Family museums in Chicago and the suburbs from www.chicagoparent.com
- Kohl Children's Museum from www.kohlchildrensmuseum.org‎
- Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier www.chicagochildrensmuseum.org/
- ...

The movie American History should only be viewed by the mature unbiased individuals reason being I heard immature giggling both during and after class which made me mad. This is important to such people especially in embracing the change as for example Derek was bad but finally he changed. The importance of fighting against racism is also depicted. In the movie we are told of the instance when Murray a history teacher for Danny Vineyard (Edward Furlong) gives them assignment to write a paper on any book which relates to the struggle for human rights.
Danny writes a paper about Adolf ...

Death defying stunts, combat aerobatics and epic matchups are just some of the notable features comprising a martial arts movie. People who are unaware or disinterested in this genre would often argue that these movies just advocate violence and killing. However, this conceptualization of martial arts films had been refurbished and reinvented by one man as his work ethic, ideology, acting, directing, and way of the fist exemplified that there is more to martial arts films than just pure violence and conflict. Many people – from artists, martial arts practitioners to fans – would hail this man as an indispensable foundation to ...

Movie making began long time ago. However, radical cinema came up in the early 1960s. Within the time given, there have been distinct ways to determine the creation of a movie. Most people who came to radical film making had little knowledge. Due to their poor level of knowledge, the film makers developed the already existing cinematic techniques. The cinematic techniques include; first, the shots, improvisation, close-ups, camera location and type of lighting. Among other cinematic techniques include the use of jump cuts. They are the edits made in a continuous scene of footage, without having to transit hence gives the ...

The lecture series delivered by Tom Kelly, the General Manager of IDEO and also the writer of The Art of Innovation had relayed crucial inputs pertinent to diverse topics in business and entrepreneurship. There are nine mini-lectures, all below six minutes of running time each, the shortest spanning just below two minutes.
For the first topic, Innovation Made Personal, the main message relayed was for innovation to be taken in a more personal perspective. As disclosed, young people should learn how to harness, nurture, develop, and reinforce creative potentials; as well as innate capacities for innovation so these can ...

Epic is an animated film by Blue Sky Studios that is loosely based on William Joyce’s book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs (2013; 2001). The movie was created after a discussion between Joyce and the director, Chris Wedge, about how they should place a story in a detailed forest inhabited by something like fairies (Sarto, 2013). The movie took about eleven years to be made from the time of that discussion and involved a huge number of decisions. Because the movie was animated, the creators could control literally every detail about how movie finally looked, which is not the ...

Omar Amirallay’s 2003 film, Flood in Baath Land, takes a look at how the damming of the Euphrates river reflects the changes in Syria since the rule of Al Assad. The film opens with the scene of a boat on Lake Assad, and a man speaks about how the houses of the people he knew since childhood are now drowned under the water, but that they still recall where their old homes are located.
In contrast to this man’s reflections, much of the film focuses on the filmmaker’s visit to the areas affected by the Tabqa dam. There ...

1. Unfortunately many individuals in our society are considered at "great risk" for psychological problems. Identify the psychosocial issues in the movie that should cause individuals to seek professional counseling help ? (even if some individuals could not afford to pay).
The psychological problems suffered by the main protagonist of this movie “The Beautiful mind” are psychotic problems such as; stress, depression, schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations, delusions, among other mental disorders. 2. If an individual was hospitalized or attended a mental health clinic for the problems you identified in the above question, as a psychiatric nurse, what type of nursing approaches ...

1. Describe the main character and determine what psychological disorder he is suffering from? Substantiate your answers with information from your textbook.
John Nash, the main character in the 2002 movie A Beautiful Mind is a gifted scholar at Princeton University (Howard & Grazer, 2002). Nash is a genius in the field of mathematics seeking to stand out from other gifted mathematicians at the institution through individual contribution to the field. Unfortunately, he is fazed by a serious challenge of dealing with a mental illness that Nevid (2012) referred to as schizophrenia . Dr Rosen, the psychiatrist in the film, diagnoses him with the ...

Director Peter Levin's movie, Homeless to Harvard, which starred Thora Birch in the role of female protagonist Elizabeth Murray, is a true to life story of "Liz" as she struggled to become a better person than what she saw in her parents. Growing up in the Bronx, she realized early on that she belongs to a dysfunctional family consisted of a sister and drug addicts as parents. Despite the grim realities of life, Liz managed to get excellent grades even though she seldom attended school and would only attend the last couple of weeks before the exams. Her mother decides to separate from ...

Introduction

The film, The Secrets of my Success, is a viewed as a comedy that presents a young and determined business man who continues his business ambitions by strategizing on business oriented plans that consequently brings his company into a better position and outweighing the competitors. By just reading an email that passed through his hands, Fox devises a defined and brilliant project of streaming his uncle’s multinational corporation. The film presents the ladders that brilliant business individuals should undertake in moving a company to better heights. However, one can clearly see the integration of personal issues in business where Britney interacts sexually with a fellow ...

Produced by Caitlin McNally and directed by Dretzin and John Maggio, the film, Growing up Online shows a clear difference between the virtual world and the real life of emotions with regard to teenagers and young people. From the film, young people have made the internet part of their social and academic life. The film agrees that the internet is today a way of life and the young IT generation of today are influenced by the internet in many ways. The web shapes how the youth behave, learn, interact and share information. Therefore it becomes a crucial tool for learning. However, virtual ...

The protagonist in the movie Precious manifested many of the major issues that

adolescents go through. For one, she had low self-esteem. In her words, Precious described herself as an “ugly black grease, need to be wiped away” (Daniels, 2009). On her first day in Ms. Rain’s class, she didn’t think that she was good at anything when her teacher at her previous school knew very well that she was very good in math.

It could be assumed that her low self-esteem was caused by the way her mother

treated her. Her mother constantly beat her, treated her like a slave, and forced her to eat. Her mother said demeaning words to her and belittled her. As Precious surmised, “Momma said I can't dance. Plus, she ...

I think that the film provides a well-detailed and comprehensive analysis of the causes of the global financial crisis. Ferguson says that at a figure of $20 trillion, the financial crisis almost lead to another great depression akin to the 1929 depression. There is a global connection to the crisis that spans geography. The crisis extends from the United States, China, France, Singapore, Iceland and England. Ferguson uses research from politicians, journalists, scholars and financial insiders to present a mind-blowing assessment of the financial crisis. Ferguson’s documentary the Inside Job is an accurate depiction of the causes of the financial meltdown that ...

I believe that Tom has laid down a great talk from a prospective of education on motivation especially to the students in this Motivational and Emotional video. This is applied in a sense of what is a challenging task engaging. One of the techniques that could be applied is collective questions that randomly rewards person with a huge piece of puzzle. In this presentation, I think the main idea is how the video games are applied as an extension of the practices and principles of applied analysis of behavior.
In my opinion, what makes the schools to be a mindless and boring for most ...

In the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel The Road, John Hillcoat remains extremely faithful to the spirit and essential plot of the book. Its tale of a post-apocalyptic epic journey with a father (Viggo Mortenson) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) struggling to survive is a poetic and heartbreaking tale in either format. One of the essential components of the story is the father attempting to teach his son how to remain one of "the good guys" in a world of thieves, murderers and killers. The man states that they are "carrying the fire" of the goodness of humanity, remembering a time in which ...

Communication in Film

Good Will Hunting

Understanding communication strategies between people can be learned by carefully observing feature films. Dramas are the best because the characters are involved in different types of relationships. Good Will Hunting directed by Gus Van Sant is a movie centered on a young man named Will Hunting who lives in South Boston. Will does not really ‘communicate’ per se with anyone even though he hangs out with a group of friends who are his surrogate brothers. Will is an orphan and has had a difficult life. Because he has had a difficult past he built a lot of defensive walls. He must learn ...

Movie Review: The Reader

The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg, David Kross as young Michael Berg, and Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz, is an unusual film because unlike most pieces that tackle the touchy subject of the Holocaust, it deals mostly with the lives of ordinary Germans at the time. Additionally, it brings the film into the modern day, showing the effects on German lives almost half a century after the time of the atrocities.
The movie’s form is that of a retrospect. It opens in Berlin in 1995 with Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a lawyer, admitting ...