“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
For several generations of young people “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” Judy Blume’s iconic coming-of-age novel, has been required reading. First released in 1970, when it wasn’t being banned by reactionaries upset by its frank talk about menstruation and religion, it was heralded as a realistic and relatable story of adolescent anxieties.
A new movie of the same name, now playing in theatres, hopes to uphold the book’s wholesome tone, while preserving the plain-spoken nature of “the poet laureate of puberty,” Blume’s prose.
The story begins when New York City preteen Margaret Simon’s (Abby Ryder Fortson) parents,
Barbara and Benny (Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie), announce they are leaving the city. Benny has been given a promotion, and being in New Jersey makes more sense.
“It’s just on the other side of the river,“ he says, but even though It’s just the other side of the Hudson, but it might as well be the other side of the Earth to Margaret. She’s afraid she’ll never see friends again and doesn’t want to start at a new school. Grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) doesn’t make things better when she moans, “I’m never going to see you again!“
Alone in her room, Margaret prays, “I’ve heard a lot of great things about you,” she says. “I don’t want to move. I’ve never lived anywhere but the city. If you can’t stop the move, please don’t let New Jersey be too miserable.“
As it turns out, the family’s new, leafy suburb isn’t that bad. There isn’t a pizzeria for miles around, but the neighbors are friendly, including the extroverted mean-girl-in-training Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham), who pops by on moving day. “I live in the bigger house down the street,” she announces, before inviting Margaret to join her secret club.
Inside this new, small circle of friends, Margaret begins to figure out her place in the world. It’s a time of adjustments, of firsts—first bra, first crush, first kiss, first period, first betrayal—and of a spiritual quest. As the daughter of a Jewish father and Christian mother, who elected not to make her choose a religion until she got older, Margaret forms her own special relationship with God.
“It’s finally time to figure out who I am to be,” she says.
All the highlights from the book “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” including the famous “We must, we must, we must increase our bust” mantra and her famous prayers are present. Director Kelly Fremon Craig, who also wrote the screenplay, maintains the lack of pretence and sense of authenticity that set Blume’s book apart from the pack in this gentle realization of Margaret’s story.
The film perfectly captures Margaret’s tentative steps into adolescence and the life-changing power that comes along with each of her discoveries. It’s a trip into self-acceptance at a very complicated time in her life as she grapples with relationships—with her anti-religion parents, her new friends and Moose, the cute boy from down the street—and situations she struggles to understand. Like the book, which runs an economical 149 pages, the movie is a small story that tackles big issues.
Fortson delivers a natural performance, tinged with curiosity and innocence, that authentically delivers the good-natured humour and deeply felt emotions that color Margaret’s journey.
Set in the 1970s, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” captures the nostalgia of the era, complete with McAdam’s feathered Farrah Fawcett hair, unironic TV dinners, fluorescent folding lawn chairs and shag carpets, but they all serve the movie’s themes, which are timeless.
“The Edge of Seventeen” is a contemporary coming of age story that feels like a throw back to the John Hughes films of the 1980s. Think “Sixteen Candles” and “Pretty in Pink” with an updated soundtrack and you get the idea.
Hailee Steinfeld is Nadine, a dramatic seventeen-year-old who thinks the world is divided into two camps, those who are winners and exude confidence in those who want to blow those people up. Her handsome brother Darian (Blake Jenner) falls into the former camp, she into the latter. Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), Nadine’s oldest (and only) friend is her emotional support and sounding board until one drunken night when something unspeakable happens—Krista and Darian hook up. The relationship drives a wedge between the two BFFs—“ You can’t have both. Its me or him. Pick,” Nadine demands.—and Nadine finds herself on the outside at school and at home. With more time on her hands the teenager finds new ways to vex her self-absorbed mother (Kyra Sedgwick), pine over her Facebook crush (Alexander Calvert) and bond with her sardonic teacher (Woody Harrelson). In the background, trying to be seen and heard, is Erwin (Hayden Szeto), an awkward and sweet classmate with eyes for Nadine.
The story sounds like something we’ve seen before but Steinfeld’s performance makes it seem fresh and new. In Nadine we have a composite of what it is to be a teenager, all the confusion, the fun, the rage, the melancholy, everything. It’s tremendous work that grounds the movie and gives equal weight to the comedy and the drama of her teenage life. The look on her face as the realization sinks in that her former best has left her behind for a boy and a game of Beer Pong is almost Shakespearean in its portrayal of teen angst.
Surrounding Steinfeld are Harrelson whose laid-back performance is a delicate mix of sarcasm and compassion, Szeto, who oozes awkward charm and Sedgwick who brings new meaning to the word frazzled. Strong work from all, but all orbit in Steinfeld’s universe.
Thanks to a great central performance “The Edge of Seventeen” is funny, heartbreaking and melancholic, sometimes all at once.
