Micitype Pretty Good

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Robert J. Maxwell Agnes Bruckner is a high-school senior from what is now commonly called a dysfunctional family. Her father has left the family. Her mother, Margaret Colin, is holding down a twelve-hour job and going to school at night. And Agnes must care for her little sister, Regan Arnold, who seems to have childhood schizophrenia. Her friends all have unethical quirks and Bruckner herself is given to shoplifting.Her only outlet seems to be poetry and she comes up with an impressive one she calls "Blue Car." This gets the attention of her teacher in the Advanced Placement class, David Strathairn, and he encourages her to enter a poetry contest to be held in Tampa. She's accepted as a contestant.Her home life being as rotten as it is, Bruckner invests a good deal of herself in the relationship with her teacher. He's reserved, friendly but cool at the same time, a perfect gentleman who may go places some day because, as he tells her, he's writing a novel. He keeps the manuscript in a briefcase and won't allow anyone to read it.Bruckner must sneak away to the contest in Tampa because her mother, preoccupied with her own problems and trying to keep the family on a tight budget, has put the kibosh on the trip.In Tampa, Bruckner runs into Strathairn and his family -- a wife and two kids. When the two are alone, Strathairn gives her a kiss and asks if it's alright. Bruckner assents, the two wind up in bed, and Strathairn deflowers her, somewhat to her discomfort.SPOILER.Afterward, Bruckner begins poking through Strathairn's briefcase, flips through the manuscript of the novel, and finds all the pages blank, except for a few which have stick-man drawings in the margins. A poem that Strathairn has claimed as his own turns out to have been written by Rilke.When her turn comes to read her poem before a vast audience, including Strathairn and his family, she lets him have it. She's discarded "Blue Car" and substituted another that is a raw, bleeding attack on the phony Strathairn.I didn't really care for the film that much, though I applaud its quiet intensity. It's familiar territory, the youth disillusioned by a mentor. We've seen it in, oh, "The Flamingo Kid," "Hearts of the West," and others. But at least this is from the point of view of a young girl who finds respite from real life in poetry. If I have to watch another movie about teen-aged boys trying to make money and get laid, I think I'll vomit.Strathairn is fine as the distant teacher trying to keep his hormones in check, and Margaret Colin, as always, is good in the role of the distraught mother. Even the little sister gives a believable performance, though she's only about six. Bruckner, on the other hand, is bulkily pretty but wears a hangdog expression throughout, as if playing an instrument on which there was only one note.I don't know if the writer/director, Karen Moncrieff, intended it or whether it stems from some brutalization of my own emotional apparatus but I felt considerable sympathy for both Margaret Colin's super-tense Mom and David Strathairn's shamed, phony novelist. Imagine the teacher's character. So lacking in self esteem that he must invent an alter identity for himself -- the promising novelist -- but feeling so low about the trick that he doesn't brag about it, just let's it fall casually and infrequently into conversations. What a tightrope the guy is walking, like a gay guy not out of the closet. The merest HINT in Bruckner's final poem, the slightest pin prick letting him know that she's uncovered his secret, would have brought him down. Instead, she hits him over the head with a crowbar.Strathairn has learned something, namely that you can only carry on a pretense for so long and that eventually your fraud, however modest, is uncovered -- especially by some nosy young girl who goes poking around in your personal effects. But what has Bruckner learned? That you can't trust anyone but yourself? I don't know if that moral calculus all works out.

Amelia_Jade_Black I first heard about it from my Aunt Janice Sterling, towards the end of the summer, she said that her son Dustin was in it, though I never heard of it. She found a copy of the DVD and sent it to me to watch. I must say it is tame compared to a lot of other "R" movies, I liked it so I definitely recommend you buy it if you haven't already.The acting in it was really superb, though the Scene where Lilly was cutting holes in herself was a bit disturbing to me. And the Theft scenes were a bit repetitive. I loved the reconciliation scene that she had with her mom towards the end. All in all it is worth the money to buy it.

Michael Atherton Blue Car is a political film disguised as a character study. It reaffirms our prejudices without clarifying the characters' underlying motivations. (Spoilers) Why are we not surprised at Auster's lack of restraint? Do we assume that any man given the opportunity will use it to full advantage? This is actually the theme of a film made in 1962, Term of Trial, staring Laurence Olivier as the teacher. Term of Trial does not explore the indiscretion, rather it examines our expectation of it. There are thousands of teachers in close proximity of young nubile teens, yet indiscretion is not rampant. You might argue that this is a portrait of just one teacher, but why are we not provided any examination of Auster's motives or character flaws? Auster is not a predator. There is no indication that he has "ruined" other students. Other than helping Meghan gain the opportunity to compete he makes no other arrangements to seduce her, their encounter is by chance. Then what is it that motivates Auster to make the wrong choice? I would suggest that it is not Auster's choice, rather it's the Moncrieff's choice (and Ebert's bias). In the commentary, Moncrieff discusses how uncomfortable the actors felt with the scene and the location. Given what we know about Auster, I believe that he would have felt the same. Realist films should strive for psychological consistency, not moralistic formalism. I love allegories like the Piano, in which the characters are abstractions, but I don't appreciate Realist presentations that provide us with false or underdeveloped characters who simply reinforce our existing prejudices. Not to mention the film's cover photo, which promotes the same type of sexual exploitation we are expected to find abhorrent. If you are interested in Feminist films with complex characters that are more than mere moral contrivances try Lizzie Borden's Love Crimes, but be forewarned that it's more likely to offend your social values than Blue Car.

Mister_Anderson I find myself in an unusual situation. I've read through many of the comments about this movie, both the glowing and the dismal, and discover that to some extent I agree with all of them! The ones who praise the film accurately point out the high points, and the ones who trash the film accurately point out the weaknesses. However, I think both unabashed praise and utter demonification go too far. I'm going to assume if you're reading this, you've probably seen this movie, so beware of spoilers if you have not.No need to go through the plot as other users on here have done a good job of dishing it out. Here are the POSITIVE points.(1) Acting. Not a bad performance in this. Especially notable is Meg (we have a tendency to point out stellar youth performances because they often are few and far between due to lack of experience) who is able to speak a hundred words in each subtle expression and her English teacher. Straitharen is an underused force in the industry and he shows his true talents here.(2) Complex characters. Meg's teacher, her parents, her sister, and others all elicit different emotions from us. Sometimes we think they are supposed to be "good" characters; other times we think they're supposed to be "bad" characters. The film purposely leaves these terms out. Instead, we get an honest picture of how confusing the world can be, especially in the mind of a teenage girl.Straitharen's character is the most complex. Here we have a man who at first seems to sympathize with his obviously troubled student, latching on to the one interest which gets her away from all the problems: poetry, and he nurses this interest until it becomes something she is proud of. He comforts her like a father she needs when her already fractured family falls apart. For this, we like him. But the director suddenly turns this on its head, when the teacher begins a romantic/sexual relationship with the Meg which she does not assertively resist. "Is this okay?" he asks over and over as he goes further and further as if they are both twelve-year-olds kissing in a closet. Because she didn't ever say "no", are we supposed to sympathize with the teacher? Meg's answer is obviously in the negative, as she criticizes him publicly at the poetry reading in perhaps a more "honest" piece than her "Blue Car".Some users are asking what the teacher did wrong. Here it is in short: he should have known better. There are two possibilities. One is worse than the other but neither is good. Either the teacher had foul intentions concerning Meg from the beginning of the film and everything that followed was a rouse to get her into bed (this would be despicable without question), or the teacher honestly wanted to help Meg with her poetry and her troubles and during the course of his teaching and consoling, he developed sexual feelings toward her. Even if the latter is the case, the teacher is a acted very wrong. Why? I said it before: he should have known better. He knows all about this girl's troubles. He knows she has no one to turn to. He knows he is her only "ear" and she looks up to him. And what does he do? He shatters her only lifeline by making her life even more complex by adding sex into a relationship. Sex never simplifies things, especially between a teacher and student. He should not be asking her if it is "okay" as he sexually advances on her. The fact that she is in such a fragile state in that she is incapable of answering this is a resounding NO. He was the adult, he was the one with a more stable life, he selfishly let his own feelings (whether they were genuine or not) complicate a girl on the verge of falling apart herself.The above was assuming the second option was true. However, there is some evidence that the first, more deplorable motivation, is correct. First, there is the fact that he lies to her early on about his novel. When she asked, he could simply have told her that it wasn't a novel. Instead, perplexingly, he lies to her and pretends to read from it. At the time, we don't know this is a lie, but thinking back now, what were his reasons for doing so? Was he trying to cultivate Meg's trust and appeal? Was he trying to make himself what she wanted in her mind in order to cultivate a trusting relationship he could take advantage of later? Also, there's the interesting situation with his wife. She gets depressed when she sees Meg and the teacher offers to walk Meg home. Some of her lines make it seem that the teacher had been inappropriate with girls (students) before. Is this a habitual practice for him? To gain the trust of young girls and use it for his own selfish and deplorable motives? Finally, there is the issue of the deleted scene (which I haven't viewed but heard others talk about) in which after the sex scene the hotel manager tells Meg to get out and that her teacher had only purchased the room for an hour. This shows where the director was heading. The guy obviously had foul plans from the beginning and was too cold to even give her a place to stay for the night. I think the director cut this out because it unquestionably answered the question of the teacher's intentions. From the final cut of the film, though, there's not enough information to decide either way.I agree with the NEGATIVES that some other users have brought up (too much melodrama for only 90 minutes and not an uplifting moment in the entire film), but I don't think these detract enough to make this only mediocre.