From My Collection: American Pie Movie Review

Sometimes I really wish I could experience things for the first time again. There’s nothing quite like seeing a hilarious comedy in a crowded theater early in its run, especially when you are smack within the age range of the target audience. I was 21 when American Pie came out and I saw it three times that summer. Although I’m sure I was much more likely then to enjoy a gross-out comedy than now, I was by no means a sheep that followed the masses when it came to movies. I’ve always had more discerning taste.

A Better Life Movie Review

There’s something about a white director and a white screenwriter making a film about an immigrant Latino family in Los Angeles that doesn’t sit right, like Steven Spielberg or Norman Jewison directing movies about the African-American experience. That director Chris Weitz was able to make such a simple and moving family drama that portrays real characters without resorting to stereotypes shows willingness and empathy on his part to get it right. He could not have been successful without the touching screenplay by Eric Eason from a story by Roger L. Simon and surely it helped that it was financed by smaller independent studios, freeing the filmmakers to work outside the constraints of the studio system that otherwise might have insisted on a story in which a white character achieves self-actualization by helping non-white characters. Not that we’ve seen that before in a popular film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.