Ordinary People

A must-watch due to its pedigree as the winner of Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor at the 1981 Academy Awards, I hadn't actually any idea what Ordinary People was about until reading the synopsis on the case.  It was with a slight sense of dread I wondered what I was letting myself in for, but I was rewarded with something subtly remarkable.

Robert Redford's directorial debut is a quiet drama, packed with explosive moments.  Pacing slowly through the opening, Ordinary People allows the audience to piece together its subject matter one strained conversation or nightmare flashback at a time, until it's apparent we're exploring a changed family dynamic after a tragic death.

Naturally, it's emotional, but the authentic tone and sensitive handling avoids melodrama or sentimentality.  The characters truly are ordinary, next door types, (albeit in a very nice neighbourhood!) with real worries and problems, ripped apart by their differing ways of dealing with their grief.

Delving into the ways they handle their feelings and examining guilt, avoidance, over-compensation, openness and deflection, Ordinary People takes place in a time when it wasn't "nice" to talk about your problems, and brings to the fore the need for communication, even when it's hard to talk.  A brilliant take on grief and depression.

If Ordinary People looks at grief and communication amongst teens and adults, sweetly nostalgic Stand By Me does the same for children.  Again, it's the loss of an older brother overshadowing the story, but in this case, it's twelve-year-old Gordie's friends who pull him through.

To Sir, With Love

Set at a tough high school in London's East End, at the tail end of the swinging sixties, To Sir, With Love is tagged as heavy-hitting social drama.  It stars Sidney Poitier as a out of work engineer who takes a temporary teaching post to tide himself over, and singer Lulu, as one of the class, performs a soaring theme song of adolescent angst and gratitude.

I was amused to find the film much less dramatic than I had expected.  That's not to say it doesn't address tough issues - it does, and they are still current, the characters negotiating violence, racism, sex, poverty, and death, as well as the difficulty of being taken seriously by adults.  The issues of growing up, then, haven't changed much since 1967 - but the behaviour presented as so shocking is sweetly dated - the dreadful teens seemed to me almost sweet by today's standards!

However, this is a film with great heart, and Poitier's teacher-turned-advisor gaining the respect of his class, giving wayward youths lashing out against their own helplessness a sense of personal responsibilty, and even provoking change in a fairly reactionary community, is a lovely thing to watch.

A good teacher - student relationship can be hugely important in a teenager's life.  That relationship in Half Nelson begins when a troubled student discovers her charismatic young teacher struggles with a drug addiction.  A deft blend of social commentary, sensitive performances and hopeful spirit.

Flat 3

Flat3 follows Lee, Jessica and Perlina as they try to figure out who they are, what they’re doing in this life, and whose turn it is to buy toilet paper.

Meet the girls from Flat 3:  Loud-mouthed, overly dramatic Jessica has a heart of gold, which is well hidden by her self-absorption.  Control freak Perlina is convinced she knows best, and makes it her mission for everything to be just so - the flat, her job, her life, and her flatmate's lives - but can't understand why people don't like her.  Naive, optimistic Lee wants a career in the arts, and thinks moving out of home and facing the real world should get her started...

Part sketch show, part drama, and a hundred percent comedy gold, the three girls are put through the wringer of modern life: being stalked online by your mum, put on the spot by the entertainment industry's all-encompassing sexism, dumped by boyfriends who won't explain why, party-throwing fails, accidentally kissing the wrong people, and figuring out how to deal with the naked man in the lounge.

The six episode web series was created by its leads, JJ Fong, Perlina Lau and Ally Xue - three young actresses who happen to be Asian New Zealanders.  Although race is not the focus of the show, their interactions with others are often coloured by their ethnicity, and the team are certainly not above having fun with that.  Involving writer/director Roseanne Liang (of films Banana in a Nutshell, My Wedding and Other Secrets,) was both logical and inspired, given her body of work plays on similar themes.

Billing themselves as co-creators, the four women shot the first season in early 2013 on a tiny budget, with a skeleton crew working for free.  They've garnered a small but loyal following online, been well-received critically, and have just completed a fundraising campaign allowing them to pay crew for a second season, which should go live in 2014.

Kiwi girls doing it for themselves!

Watch Flat 3 on their website (which includes all manner of tasty extras!) or catch them direct on YouTube.

From the archives: check out Roseanne's award winning 2007 short, Take 3.  It's also a comedy featuring three young Asian actresses, and questions "the way minority actors are asked to perpetuate old-fashioned stereotypes" with hilarious results.