OT: Our Town

OT: our town Theatrical Trailer from scott kennedy on Vimeo.

 

In the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton, a group of intrepid inner-city students and two courageous teachers attempt to do what has not been done in more than 20 years: put on a school theatrical production. They choose the Thornton Wilder classic “Our Town” and attempt to put the show together without any funding or even a stage. The students struggle to find the extra time and discipline required to perform in a play, not to mention remembering lines and learning how to act.

Education of Shelby Knox

What is bright 15-year-old Shelby Knox to do when confronted by the reality that abstinence can’t solve all the problems of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases — especially in Lubbock, Texas, which has some of the country’s highest incidences of both? The answer: She and her fellow students try to get sex education taught in city schools, which leads to clashes between Shelby and her conservative family, as her personal politics gradually diverge from those she grew up with.

Bully

Filmmaker Lee Hirsch examines five cases of youths who endure vicious persecution at the hands of their peers. Ja’meye, 14, winds up in reform school after pulling a gun on the youths who tormented her for years. Cameras record the abuse suffered by 14-year-old Alex as he’s beaten and teased on the bus. Star athlete Kelby, 16, is ostracized and worse after she comes out as lesbian. Most tragic of all, two boys, one 17 and one 12, commit suicide to escape the torture.

SHE’S THE MAN PG-13


When her brother decides to ditch for a couple weeks, Viola heads over to his elite boarding school, disguised as him, and proceeds to fall for one of his soccer teammates, and soon learns she’s not the only one with romantic troubles.
“Doesn’t have an unpredictable moment in it, borrowing heavily from just about every sports movie or teen comedy ever and, oh yeah, “Twelfth Night.” ” VILLAGE VOICE

DONNIE DARKO – R

From 26 year-old first time writer-director Richard Kelly comes the provocative Donnie Darko, a genre busting fable that blasts the American suburban drama into a wildly imaginative realm of time travel, alternative universes and the manipulation of one’s fate. But at the core of Donnie Darko is the simple story of a boy trying to make a stand in a lonely, chaotic world – and discovering that every little thing he does counts on a cosmic scale. Originally screened at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Donnie Darko became one of the festival’s most talked-about and debated films, praised for blending sci-fi fantasy with an original vision of a modern suburbia teetering on the edge of dread and disaster. The question became: what is Donnie Darko? Is it a look back at the underbelly of the Ferris Bueller and Back to the Future era? Or is it a wild journey into multiple realities and multiple outcomes? Is it the story of an increasingly cynical, hypocritical society on a crash-course with apocalypse? Or is it a fairy-tale about a teen hero who changes the world around him? Is this the cosmic death knell of the Regan Era, or a portrait of a troubled community redeemed by the hand of God? The surprising answer is that Donnie Darko is all of these – a deep inquiry into the recent past and the possibilities for the future all wrapped up in the story of a teenager unlike any you’ve met before. Writer/director Richard Kelly purposefully wanted Donnie Darko to be vast enough to mean different things to different people. But he offers this guidance for the mind-blowing ride ahead: “Maybe it’s the story of Holden Caulfield, resurrected in 1988 by the spirit of Philip K. Dick, who was always spinning yarns about schizophrenia and drug abuse breaking the barriers of space and time. Or it’s a black comedy foreshadowing the impact of the 1988 presidential election, which is really the best way to explain it. But first and foremost, I wanted the film to be a piece of social satire that needs to be experienced and digested several times.