The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia
Film Review by Kam Williams
Some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever interviewed have been dyslexic, including film directors like Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects), Joe Wright (Anna Karenina) and Guy Ritchie (Snatch), as well as matinee idol Channing Tatum, who opened up to me about the pain he felt about his grades in school until he found fulfillment in a number of artistic pursuits such as dance, sculpting, painting, photography, and of course, acting.
Each of the aforementioned is a nonconformist with a knack for thinking out of the box, a trait also shared by most of the subjects of The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia. Among the icons who appear in this enlightening documentary directed by James Redford are self-made, billionaire Richard Branson, investment house CEO Charles Schwab, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and A-list attorney David Boies.
After hearing them weigh-in about their supposed affliction, one can’t help but wonder whether dyslexia might actually be considered by some to be a blessing. Boies points out his learning disability’s positive correlation with creativity, which helps explain why so many born with it have blossomed in unique fashion in their respective fields. Branson says dyslexics are trustworthy because “We say what we mean,” while Newsom believes their brains enjoy the advantage of being able to see “The Big Picture.”
Besides the rich and famous, the film focuses on youngsters (in grammar school, junior high, high school and college) and their parents as they share what life is like after a diagnosis of dyslexia. What’s abundantly clear is that each has managed to overcome the combination of low expectations and frustrations with spelling and reading to prove themselves capable of competing with classmates on the highest level, so long as some slight accommodations are made which take their condition into consideration.
An admirably informative and empathetic effort clearing up common misconceptions, essentially explaining that dyslexia is not a character flaw but merely a neurological issue affecting as many as one out of five individuals.
Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 60 minutes
Distributor: Shadow Creek Films / HBO Films
To see a trailer for The Big Picture, visit
R.I.P.D.
Film Review by Kam Williams
Veteran detective Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds) is very content between his 15-year career with the Boston Police Department and being happily-married to the love of his life, Julia (Stefanie Szostak). However, his American Dream is irreversibly ruined the fateful day he is assigned to bring down a drug cartel conducting business out of an abandoned factory along the waterfront.
For, greed gets the best of his partner, Bobby Hayes (Kevin Bacon), after the ensuing shootout, when they discover a stash of gold artifacts. And instead of taking the antique ingots back to headquarters, he decides to shoot Nick dead and blame the murder on the bad guys. To add insult to injury, Bobby consoles Julia and even has the temerity to put the moves on the grieving widow.
Meanwhile, Nick finds himself neither in Heaven nor Hell, but in a police purgatory where a proctor (Mary-Louise Parker) offers him a chance to return to Earth as a member of a squad of zombie cops called the Rest in Peace Department (R.I.P.D.). He leaps at the opportunity, and is immediately paired with a late, Old West lawman, a salty cowboy named Roycephus Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges).
The grizzled gunslinger grudgingly agrees to work with a partner for the first time, and in the blink of an eye the two are teleported back to Beantown to round up renegade dead souls who have somehow evaded the afterlife. There, Nick conveniently also has an opportunity to check in on Julia and plot his revenge on Bobby.
Like a poor man’s version of Men in Black, R.I.P.D. is a disappointing action comedy both in terms of action and comedy. Think “ghost” instead of “alien” adversaries and you have the basic idea of what director Robert Schwentke is going for.
Unfortunately, the obsolete special f/x leave a lot to be desired, and the corny jokes fall flat. Another major structural flaw is the lack of chemistry between the protagonists, a no-no in any unlikely-buddies adventure. Ryan Reynolds looks lost opposite the drawling, generally unintelligible Jeff Bridges who behaves like he’s still on the set of True Grit.
R.I.P.D. is D.O.A.!
Fair (1 star)
Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, sensuality and sexual references
Running Time: 96 minutes
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Israel: A Home Movie
Film Review by Kam Williams
Most people’s general impressions of Israel come as a result of watching news stories prepared by professional journalists. If you’re interested in getting a more intimate feeling of the country untainted by politics, you might want to check out this documentary by Eliav Lilti.
The movie is basically a collage of home movies shot by amateur shutterbugs on Super 8 film between the Thirties and the Seventies. Besides reminding us of mundane fare like birthdays and bar mitzvahs, it covers subject-matter ranging from euphoric Romanian refugees dancing on the deck of a boat as they arrive in Israel, to a nurse comforting a wounded private who has just lost three limbs in battle, to settlers building in the occupied territories.
Together, these assorted images prove fascinating, since they paint the melancholy, collective psyche of a haunted homeland hopelessly caught in cycles of conflict where the next crisis might lurk just around the corner. For, here, we see a Jewish family grieving a young man murdered in a terrorist attack. And there, we hear a shell-shocked soldier declare, “God bless morphine!”
The tableau that perhaps says it all unfolds at a Yom Kippur beach party whose festivities are suddenly disrupted when a jet fighter is shot down over the sea. Israel captured through the eyes of ordinary citizens as a vulnerable refuge where tragedy has become the norm, and where peace invariably leads back to war.
Very Good (3 stars)
Unrated
In Hebrew with subtitles
Running time: 94 minutes
Distributor: Film Forum
Big Words
Film Review by Kam Williams
It’s November 4, 2008, and Brooklyn is bristling with anticipation about the impending election returns to see whether or not Barack Obama will be the nation’s first African-American president. But the magic of the moment is pretty much lost on John aka MC Wordsmith (Dorian Missick), James aka Jay-V (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Terry aka DJ Malik (Darien Sills-Evans), despite the fact that they’re black and hail from the ‘hood.
Back in the early Nineties, the three shared a brief promising career as the Down Low Poets, a fledgling hip-hop group which produced a video, two singles and an unreleased album before disappearing from the record-biz radar. The band disbanded, went their separate ways and lost touch entirely.
Today, with Obama poised to make history, we find each consumed by a personal crisis. John has just been laid off from his job as an IT technician. James is now a book publicist in a stagnant relationship and considering seducing his handsome, young intern (Zachary Booth). Only Terry is still an aspiring rap star, and stubbornly refuses to see the handwriting on the wall after a couple of decades squandered desperately trying to make it in the music business.
By a twist of fate, their paths cross at an election night party where Obama’s achievement only serves as a distracting backdrop. Proving far more compelling are the personal questions being raised. What are John’s chances with the stripper (Yaya Alafia) he just picked up at a go-go bar?
Will out-of-the-closet James’ once-hidden homosexuality remain a block to repairing relationships with his former pals, especially his cousin, John? Will Terry drop the hip-hop moniker, pull up his pants, and get a real job?
Written and directed by Neil Drumming, Big Words is a perfectly plausible, character-driven drama with only one glaring flaw. Why bother to set an African-American tale on Election Night 2008, if you plan to give Obama’s triumph such short shrift?
A poignant portrait of a very eventful day in the lives of a trio too self-absorbed to care about who was about to win the White House.
Very Good (3 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 94 minutes
Distributor: AFFRM / Twice Told Films
Ryan Coogler
The “Fruitvale Station” Interview with Kam Williams
For Ryan Out Loud!
Born in Oakland, California on May 23, 1986, Ryan Coogler attended college on a football scholarship, playing wide receiver as an undergrad before earning his MFA in Film and Television Production at the University of Southern California in 2011. He worked as a security guard and as a counselor to inmates at a juvenile prison in San Francisco before getting his big break with the help of Forest Whitaker.
The Oscar-winning actor agreed to produce Ryan’s first feature film, Fruitvale Station, a bittersweet biopic chronicling the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, a 22 year-old black man shot in the back by a cop on a train platform in Oakland, California on New Year’s Day 2009. The case became a cause célèbre because the killing was caught on camera by numerous passengers.
Here, Ryan talks about his critically-acclaimed writing and directorial debut, which has already won awards at both the Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals.
Kam Williams: Hi Ryan. I really loved the film. It’s very powerful.
Ryan Coogler: Thanks so much, Kam. I appreciate your taking the time to watch it and to talk to me.
KW: Congratulations on winning at both the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals. That’s pretty impressive for a first-time filmmaker. Your picture’s star, Michael B. Jordan, told me Fruitvale received a very long standing ovation at Cannes. What did that feel like?
RC: Just playing at Cannes was overwhelming, man. It was one of those moments I never imagined happening. I think a lot of the response was due to the audience’s connecting to the cast. The performances were incredible! I really felt happy for my actors, especially Michael [B. Jordan], Melonie [Diaz] and Octavia [Spencer]. None of them had ever been to Cannes before. They were really moved to have their work embraced like that. And it was very moving to me how this story that I wanted to relate about a real event that had happened in my hometown managed to touched people thousands of miles away.
KW: What interested you in making the movie?
RC: The incident itself and what happened immediately afterwards in the Bay area, which is where I was born and raised. I heard about the tragedy almost immediately after it happened, because I was home on Christmas break from film school. Then it was on the news, and I still remember the first time I saw the footage on the internet. I was very emotionally affected by it. Everybody in the Bay was. There were protests and rallies and riots. I saw myself in Oscar. We were the same age, he looked like me, and we wore the same type of clothes. Seeing someone getting shot like that, and not getting a chance to say goodbye to his loved ones was painful. I couldn’t imagine myself in that situation. With my being a filmmaker, I wondered whether there was a way I could do something. My mind immediately goes to that, whenever I’m affected by anything, since film is my outlet. Then, I saw how the incident got politicized, and how Oscar became a symbol, this icon, a martyr who had never done anything wrong in his life to some people, and how he was demonized by others as a criminal and a thug who got what he deserved. In truth, he was neither one of those things. He was just a normal person who had both flaws and good qualities. So, I wanted to tell his story from the perspective of the people he meant the most to and who knew him the best.
KW: Have you ever experienced racial profiling yourself?
RC: Yes, absolutely! The most recent situation happened one night while I was just minding my business, sitting in a car with a friend in Albany, California. The police rolled up on us and told me and her to get out of the car and sit on the wet sidewalk because there had been a robbery and I fit the description of the suspect. It was cold, and we had to just sit there shivering for about 30 minutes until I guess whoever it was that got robbed finally arrived and told the police from across the street that I wasn’t the guy.
KW: What sort of research did you do prior to writing the script? Did you interview any witnesses? The police? Oscar’s friends and family?
RC: I started by helping Oscar’s family’s lawyer organize some of the video footage that got turned in to the prosecutor’s office for the trial. That was really comprehensive. Then I pretty much interviewed anyone who had a meaningful relationship with Oscar, all of his friends and family members. That’s where the three-dimensionality of his character in the script came from. I was also able to bring the actors around his neighborhood, and they got to spend time with the characters they were portraying: his girlfriend, his mom, and the friends he was on the platform with the night he was shot. I based my decisions on all of that research.
KW: Did the police cooperate with the project?
RC: No, we left the cops alone. Most of them no longer work as police officers. They were only a very small portion of the film, and we had their court testimony, which we felt was enough.
KW: The officer who shot Oscar was only convicted of manslaughter. Your star, Michael, still characterized it as a murder. Which do you feel it was?
RC: To be honest, I think people can make up their own minds about the legal terminology. You can call it whatever you want, but regardless, a young man’s life was taken unnecessarily. It’s not for me to get caught up in the politics of it. What means the most to me is that he never made it back home to his loved ones.
KW: Why did you decide to paint a warts-and-all picture of Oscar Grant? Were you at all tempted to sanitize his image?
RC: No, I never was. It wouldn’t have made sense to make a film about Oscar and not show the struggles he was dealing with.
KW: What message do you hope people will take away from the picture?
RC: To me, the film is a domestic story about this 22 year-old and his relationships. It is my hope that people will see a little bit of themselves in the characters. And with that, I hope it will trigger a little bit of a thought process about how we connect to and treat each other, whether strangers or those we’re close to. Some people never come in contact with someone like Oscar, a young African-American male, at all. Their only access to his world is through media. So, I hope the film offers some insight for folks like that.
KW: Have you considered making a movie about the assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey by members of a Black Muslim sect, which is another story of national interest? I was writing for the paper at the time, and spoke to him just a couple of days before his murder.
RC: I’m sorry to hear that, man. I followed the case and know a lot about Chauncey, and was moved by what happened. Like I said before, whenever something happens in the community, I think about it in terms of my art form.
KW: You originally went to college on a football scholarship. How did you make the transition from jock to film student?
RC: Initially, I was majoring in chemistry and planning to become a doctor, if football didn’t work out. But in a creative writing class, I had a professor who encouraged me to go to Hollywood and write screenplays. I thought she was a little crazy at first, since it came out of nowhere, but it stuck in my head. I later transferred schools, switched majors, and started taking a bunch of filmmaking classes. Then I went to USC film school for my graduate degree.
KW: Well, we’re all glad you did, Ryan. Thanks again for the time and best of luck with Fruitvale Station during Academy Awards season.
RC: Thank you, Kam.
To see a trailer for Fruitvale Station, visit: