Jena Malone

Lying
$19.95
What a great bunch of talented people making such a talentless piece of art. Overbearing amateur style, cluttered with distracting subtle technique, combined with weak pretension; made this a hard film to get through. I really wanted to like it badly, but it didn't deliver anything for me to get excited about.

Confessions of an American Girl
$14.98
"An American Girl" tries to be amusing in an off-hand way about tragedy: teen-age pregnancy, suicide, sexual molestation, low self-esteem and family abuse. It's a complete package in its misfiring: poorly written, badly acted and amateurishly directed. It wasn't as good as a thrown-together t.v. movie.

Cheaters
$9.98
This movie is actually pretty good if you don't take into account actual facts as a basis for informing your opinion about the film.

I attended the "evil" school depicted in this film. My senior year in high school was during the time depicted in the film when Steinmetz High School "beat" out perennial (they had won 22 of the past 23 years of Acadec competitions as depicted in the film) champs Whitney Young in the Illinois Academic Decathlon. A bit of real background, Whitney Young is a Magnet high school within the Chicago Public School system. It is a public school but has selective enrollment. Whitney Young does not have "unlimited income" as portrayed in the film it receives funding just like other public schools in the city. Certainly any "extras" the school receives are a result of fund raising. Twice a year students are asked to sell items (e.g. candy bars) at about $200 a case to assist with tuition and fee costs. We had as many problems with malfunctioning toilets, leaky ceilings (there was a perpetual leak in one of the hallways) as any other CPS. The difference with WY is that the kids attending are considered academically gifted and must "test into" Whitney Young via a selective process. So, it is not a neighborhood school that just anyone can attend. Also, despite the film's portrayal the school is highly racially diverse 32% African-American, 28% White, 22% Hispanic and 17% Asian. About 1/3 of the kids attending Whitney Young are low income and as I one of those formerly low-income students I can tell you my Mom did not "know" anyone to pull any strings to get me into WY. Now, in the film Whitney Young is shown as being highly elitist and the students are shown as snobby brats. The statistics of who these kids are hardly bear this out. In addition, Mr. Minkoff (the Whitney Young Acadec coach) is portrayed as a sleezy slimeball that not only taunts the other Acadec coaches but bets on the winning odds! This portrayal is the exact opposite of who Mr. Minkoff was. Although I was not on Acadec I was in one of Mr. Minkoff's classes and knew him as a wonderful teacher who would never stoop to such levels. I also knew many of the students on Acadec and they were crushed to have lost and then when they were vilified in the local press as being sore losers when questions arose about Steinmetz's improbable scores it was a tough time for many of them. Many do not realize that winning Acadec was a way to ensure scholarships for these students and these scholarships would have been wrongfully stripped from them despite their incredibly hard work to win the competition. Finally, the film attempts to insinuate that somehow the students of Whitney Young are complicit in a conspiracy with Acadec to win every year. One character even states that Whitney Young students probably cheated just like them but have not been caught because of its elite status. This charge is disgusting and unfounded and really smears Mr. Minkoff (who passed away some years ago). After this fraud Whitney Young went on to become the #2 national winners in the country which further validates that these kids really were the truly talented winners. It must be said that to this day none of the Steinmetz students have expressed remorse about what they did. The Steinmetz Acadec coach also never admitted any guilt or remorse until the film's release which was quite coincidental to say the least.

Another couple of things: The film makers went out of their way to portray as the privileged elite vs. hard-working working class. The filmmakers did not request any insight or feedback from the students of Whitney Young, it Acadec team or its faculty. Their information was gleaned from the Steinmetz students and Dr. Gerald Plecki the faculty advisor the Steinmetz Acadec team.

Now, about the film. It is well-made and its protagonists are persuasive in their portrayal of the students. Jeff Daniels plays Gerald Palecki very well, with just enough common man angst and sleaziness to make him a persuasive but creepy teacher. With Daniels' portrayal you can see how persuasive a teacher can direct students looking for "an out" to collectively cheating. As in real life the kids have been studying hard to qualify for the state Acadec competition. They place but are 12,000 points behind the favored winners of the elite Whitney Young high school. In the film WY is said to be a private school within the public school system with state of the (at the time) computers, a sleek modern facility on an open campus with students that appear to be straight out of a poster for model high school kids. Steinmetz is shown from the beginning as having a "poorer class" of students. The students are shown fighting, smoking, screaming, cursing and bored. There is graffiti around and the neighborhood does not look particularly nice. This in direct comparison to WY where the school is located on the near west side just near downtown Chicago and the students are dressed as preppy kids with what seems perpetual smiles on their faces. Following their initial 5th place in the prelims which qualifies them to compete against WY and other schools at the state Acadec competition, the Steinmetz students are faced with a moral quandary. One of the students procures an advance copy of the actual Acadec test. Should they or shouldn't they use it to cheat and beat the smug WY team? They decide to cheat and the story goes on from there. It chronicles their win, the accusation of cheating, the media frenzy that erupts, the student's stubborn refusal to admit cheating and finally their downfall when a jealous team mate contacts the local newspaper to spill his guts and tell what happened.

The acting is well executed and the direction of the film is well-paced and the story is interesting. The flaw of the film is in its handling of this dilemma. According to this film because the "system" is stacked against the Steinmetz students their actions can be justified. Why shouldn't they teach if the world thinks nothing of them anyway? According to the film cheaters prosper more than the hard working joes of the world. While this may be true to a certain extent I think this lets off the cheaters and the adult advisor. The way the film portrays these kids it's as if there were no other circumstances under which they could have been recognized as successes other than cheating. But this seems to go against the reality as portrayed in the film. Case in point, when the Steinmetz kids finish in 5th place at the prelims to qualify for the state competition all of the students (but one) see this as an unqualified disaster. I am not sure but, if this was their first time ever even qualifying at such a level why would this be a bad thing? They finished 5th place in a competition with many other entrants including from schools considered more "elite" than Steinmetz. This win directly defies the logic of the film that these kids were somehow huge underdogs that could never possibly compete in a system supposedly stacked against them. Great acting and story telling but the logical leaps made in the film are too hard to swallow along with the shallow handling of the moral dilemma of cheating. None of the students, the teacher (or it seems the film's writer/director) find fault with what they did (this is also true in real life). The story ends with the main character portrayed by Jena Malone stating that she would do it all over again because she has learned how the world "really' works. Then on the radio a person calls in admitting to cheating all of his life but does not find this a moral issue. He cheated in high school, college, and law school and is an unqualified success (he equates success with making $700K per year). The film made a few parting concessions to the lack of morality such as when Dr. Palecki's mother states the obvious that nothing could make what he and the students did right no matter what they felt. But this was undercut by so many other instances in the film where this is loudly disputed.

Saved!
$14.98
This is a good little movie about what it really means to be Christian. I enjoy it because it sends out the message that we are not all perfect, but God loves us just the way we are. It also shows how people can easily misunderstand God's word.