SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

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

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

museumofdave "Excellent!" is a word I've heard applied to this film by so many different viewers from so many different backgrounds; one prominent New York critic refers to it as "slight and charming;" I rather think of it as "monumental and utterly mesmerizing." We observe a batch of disparate kids from various ethnicities come together as they are exposed to art, in this case the art of dancing; this is not a sugarcoated look at childhood, but a fascinating examination of what happens when dedicated teachers are able to interact with love and discipline and give kids honest self-esteem which they earn by active participation. This film is the best argument I've seen for increasing the Federal Arts Education Budget and perhaps spending a little less on bombs and already obsolete armaments; your contacts with many of the kids will leave you with a pleasant feeling, instead of feeling assaulted with car explosions, torrents of expletives and noisy special effects--this is excellent entertainment at a high level--and without condescension or sugar coating!

kirk-246 I first saw this movie in my Foreign Language class in the 7th grade and I hoped that I would never see this piece of trash as long as I lived.Unfortantly,I was forced to view it again in the 8th grade in the same class.I actually wanted to try to enjoy it for what it was but instead I hated it.This movie is so boring,that I can't stand the fact why students were actually forced to see this god-awful mess.The movie could've been a drama with the same plot and not a documentary.I hope the director is forced to see this movie with his eyelids open wide so he can't blink so even he knows that he never should've been involved in this piece of trash.If I could give this movie -10 stars,then I totally would.

annevejb I prefer to read this feature as background about the fall of the two towers, an event that affected most involved with this. This is not Spellbound (2002), though I can interpret that in this way too, even though it was filmed three-ish years before the fall and this three-ish years after. I understand that pressures that made some want the fall have increased as a consequence of the fall, that the whole thing is a minefield. Whatever solution, things can easily get worse. * A documentary with a lot of threads. Individuals, more than a hundred. Places too. It took a few viewings for me to properly feel at home in trying to follow this. Some threads felt rather familiar, recognisable. As a white European, PS150 Tribeca is where I looked to for that, but some of that aspect is role play. Tara having appeared in another feature straight after this, Swimmer – 2005, comments here tend to be favourable, underlining this. Recognisable; there is even a 10ish lookalike to Haley Hudson of Freaky Friday in Tara's class. Emma is special to me too. A range of individuals who are recognisable as individuals. PS115, Washington Heights, I found it difficult to notice individuals as individuals, its threads were as one thread to me. For PS115 I tried to look closer, by way of screen dumps and websites but did not get far. The spirit of their dance made it seem worth an attempt. Tending to view this in terms of the destruction of the two towers gives some scary aspects, but for that one's interpretation would need to find it fitting for those threads to be implied. This can read as a story about special training in certain skills and attitudes, a cooperative, winner-winner, scenario, followed by an impressive exam. Brief understandings of training for life are included, dance professionals being vastly different to the PS principals. * The story provides a framework for musing. For that musing to work I need first to enjoy the story of these grade 4 and 5, aged 9 to 11?, discovering bits of the world of dance over the ten week course. I need first to enjoy the story of some of them enjoying the contest exercise that shows their new skills. This story as having been built from a much wider set of detail. What has been selected for inclusion in the tapestry starts to be a problem for me, what it shows of PS115 and PS144 near the end, the threads about Tara and Emma, if I do not remind myself of that. I head for a Winter Garden interpretation because of that. The selecting and moulding of the threads. Tara and Jonathon and PS144. These having special roles. Do they look back on the film with a smile? I assume yes, maybe. Freeze frame can say unlikely, but looking with motion suggests yes, maybe. * Looking for comment re Two Towers I needed to look for echoes of what I have come across myself, in reality and in stories. I also needed to add that the director appears to favour such themes rather than simple nice education type stories. Yet this can also be a simple and nice education story. My own past says that round here, England, Tara and Jonathon and PS144 and Emma, etc, would likely be in big trouble from such as a documentary crew unless they 'passed the test' with them over and over again. To me this is close to the spirit of the energiser of two towers warfare. I likely get that aspect wrong as that likely mostly happens to three time loser types, not so much to winners. To me, error correction is central. Mad Hot dealing with ways that some of the fit are understood by some to avoid the worst of error correction, cute looks as a carrier for the concept that people need to feel to be dealt with in an okay way. Right place, right time, no problem, very useful, not error correction at all. But kids from Washington Heights are under pressure for that to be not so simple. Even more than the others are under pressure. Error correction. Tara and Jonathon and PS144, nice if these were just gross role play. Jonathon portraying symptoms akin to death by 99 ice cream, a popular form of error correction, one that I understand can give a lifetime in hell and trouble for those around the ice cream factory during its lifetime. So many ways to crash. His teacher notices that many of her school's little ones are prone to get sunk early. The PS150 teacher, symptoms of belief in some types of therapy solution? Cooperative with integrity is obvious sense to me, yet ways to make it work when those not considered to pass the test are concerned tend to get different understandings of integrity. Intolerance, and pressures to prefer war. I find it scary that by late 2008 these young ones are now of high school age. In a sensible world, no problem, they would have got there with a strong past behind them. Feet on the ground. I now read PS144 as trying to alienate the audience from having much interest in their school, they did really well but one could not see any reason why. Were 144 teachers glad at second? Sense or nonsense? * I find this to be a magnificent and fun story about individual development. But look at little bits, try to interpret those well, then there space for is all sorts of scary.

jsbmd1 This is amateurish, camcorder-level shooting. The content is essentially an argument by teachers for why the program should be funded, and would have been better off used for this purpose with the NYC Board of Education.I was sorely disappointed by this film, as I am originally from NYC, went to a "P.S." grade school, and was charmed by the idea of reminiscing a little watching the opening credits.It is a boring documentary with a few cute moments when the kids are dancing, and a few interesting comments by two children -- one a 10 y.o. girl, who is a sort of philosopher, and one a 10-y.o. boy, who is quite talkative. The reasons for my rating of 2 and not 1.The cutting is terrible. I enjoy dance, and some of the kids were good dancers, but the photography tries to capture faces (poorly), and jumps, as in an action movie, every 3 seconds. The included announcements of winners is trying to sit through, slow and trite.A minor complaint: It was also annoying to see that although this is about 5th grade, the winners of the "contest" seem to be kids who are at least 13 years old. They therefore are able to manage "Cuban" motion better, as they are apparently already postpubertal. Although the teachers seem to struggle with making the competition fair, and with not hurting any child's feelings (although sensitive, this also got repetitive), the entire contest actually seemed unfair to many, who were only about 10 years old.