Gimme shelter Film REview

1209 Words3 Pages

The film opens with Agnes “Apple” Bailey is cutting her long hair with scissors as she prepares for what is coming. She is a teenager living with her abusive mom in a poor motel- and she is going to escape to find her father. Her one clue to a parentage is the one letter he once sent her. The actress Rosario Dawson plays Apple’s mother. Rosario Dawson gives the role a dramatic edge and slowly turns her performance up to eleven as the story progresses. Vanessa Hudgens plays Apple Bailey and she is nearly unrecognizable. This is a surprising dramatic overture for Vanessa Hudgens who is better known for such saccharine Disney fare such as “High School Musical,” family movies like “Journey 2: Mysterious Island,” and the upcoming “Great Migration” and upscale grindhouse films such as “Sucker Punch,” “Machete Kills,” and presumably the upcoming “Kitchen Sink.” Vanessa Hudgens taking this powerfully empathic and dramatic role in this film will empower her career. This straightforward and occasionally documentary style film combines both the themes of the hope of creating your own family and the threats of exploitation and poverty. These are themes in the works of Ron Krauss. The style of the film occasionally is over-reliant on intercutting close-ups such as with the initial scenes between James Earl Jones and Vanessa Hudgens but fortunately Ron lets the characters interact in the same space for most scenes. From the heartwarming “Puppies for Sale” (1998) to the heartbreaking “Amerixica” (2010) Ron gives an empathic perspective about human life even under terrible conditions. This film with its emphasis on themes such as family and poverty has some similarities “The Blind Side” however for originality and empathy there are few if... ... middle of paper ... ...r files. They read out loud the labels other people have put on them and in doing so they take away the power of these labels to define and hurt them. The shelter has many other people with their own lives and issues. One character has oversize glasses and the other has colorful dyed hair in a partially successful attempt to differentiate the background characters. As Apple’s pregnancy progresses they celebrate Christmas together and are planning a trip to the beach. Tom awkwardly returns and attempts convince Apple to return to his house with both wealth and a creepy side hug. June returns in a vicious fury and she tries to make her mark on Apple. Cassandra escapes the confining life at the shelter and tries to convince Apple to go with her. However Apple now has the strength to find to make her own life in the midst of chaos like a pinwheel turning in the wind.

Open Document