Shallow Pretentious Mediocrity
Added 10/26/2009
If you're looking for a film that explores and analyzes the reasons why senseless school shootings (like Colombine) occur, then look elsewhere (or watch Gus Van Sant's superb "Elephant"). "April Showers" (which has to be the dumbest title imagineable for a movie about violence) purports to be about the aftermath of a Colombine school style shooting and how it affects the "victims." However, the true victims in this case are the viewers who happen to see this film.
The main problem with this film is the lackluster cliche-ridden script. The badly conceived script - which has NO point of view and says nothing - absolutely NOTHING about why these shootings occur and what can be done to prevent them - is only matched by the bad acting and the God-awful music. The director supposedly lived through the real Colombine massacare - my guess is that he really slept through it judging from the lack of specific detail and depth to this movie.
However, if you want a medicore tear jerker to cry over while viewing, this is your movie. And if the movie isn't pretentious enough, one has to read a list of every school shooting that has occurred over the end credits;this raises even more questions that the filmmakers never even bothered to think about while making this film. You have been warned.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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This is a very disturbing movie. It moves very slow and I struggled to sit through it. I am just going to say it was OK but I never really got into it. I could have stopped watching it anytime but I was bored and finished the movie. I gave it 3 stars because I think the story needed to be told especially after all the college shootings we have had. It just did not seem real to me nor was I impressed with the acting. I would have liked to rated this as a 2.5 stars.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Movie review
Added 9/25/2009
This is a well made movie based on the mental trauma suffered by a survivor of the Columbine High School tragedy. Kelly Blatz was simply wonderful, great acting. Although an event like this is unlikely to happen in my country as we have very strict `gun laws' nevertheless this true story make us become more aware of our responsibilities as parents and teachers. Parents must always look for signs of depression and aggression in their children and teachers must be just as aware to prevent such a tragedy from occuring. In the aftermath of such a tragedy the adults again play an important role to help survivors overcome the trauma. See it, experience it and learn from it.
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Intense, powerful "April Showers" is an eye-opener for any community
Added 8/2/2009
For any school that thinks "it can't happen here," this film will show that the potential consequences of school violence are just too high to ignore, particularly in a small town where the high school is a center of the community as well as the main social venue in kids' lives.
"April Showers" shows cascading consequences. From initial shock trauma to media stress and family disintegration, and then on to a chain reaction of emotional and spiritual crises. It's a challenging experience, and ultimately a rewarding one -- if you can turn to the person next to you and talk late into the night about a shared future.
I've been at screenings where police officers, fire fighters, emergency medical workers -- even SWAT team members -- watch, slowly shake their heads, and shed a tear as the personal details of the teenagers unfold in "April Showers." I told one of them something I heard a Colorado congresswoman say: "Teachers today have to learn to better respond to this kind of incident, and stay calm when inside they're falling apart." He answered, "Don't think for a second we don't feel the same way inside. This rips our guts out."
"We went to schools like this one," he explains, "and now we have our own kids there, too." I told him, "Teachers need to hear that. So do students."
It's especially tough for responders to arrive at a scene like this. They feel the vulnerability of the school. It's a "soft target," in the parlance of Homeland Security. When a school gets hit with a violent critical incident it's a direct hit on the cornerstone of the community.
This is why "April Showers" is starting to be used by school administrators in school safety training, and just last week I was copied on a request from the Sheriff's Office of a major county in Colorado to use a dozen video clips from the movie in SWAT team training. Not that they were interested in just the law enforcement procedures, but felt that the film could also help officers understand more about recovery and prevention, and hopefully, better preparedness.
I was a state senate aide working on school safety issues when "April Showers" came along. At the beginning of 2009, Colorado started getting ready for the 10th anniversary of the Columbine tragedy. The local sheriff's office was apprehensive about the event. Would the media come in and again pick at the scabs?
But then Andrew Robinson, writer-director of "April Showers," showed up with his film about survival, and what I saw this year was how he helped a growing movement afoot in Colorado to focus on the future of safer education rather than the unresolved grief of the past. And rather than promote his indie project as an auteur, he was more interested in being part of a larger conversation. As a result, he soon became a highly sought-after central voice in the national conversation about the Columbine anniversary.
His interviews with the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NBC, CNN, Los Angeles Times, FOX News, Associated Press, and others, had a group problem-solving quality to them. And then his engagement with younger moviegoers on Facebook, YouTube, and even his own blogs on CNN and his movie site showed how kids are connecting with this film in unexpected ways. For instance, students at the high school where he shot "April Showers" watched the finished film, created a mindmap of the issues they saw, wrote journals -- and this led many of them to make new promises to themselves. They wanted to make a difference.
So, although you may enjoy "April Showers" purely as a drama (with a tempo much like Oliver Stone's in "World Trade Center"), I invite you to know that teachers, administrators, responders, lawmakers, parents -- and teens -- are taking to heart the movie's themes and turning them into personal challenges. And they're ready to use "April Showers" as a tool for change.
In the words of a Boulder safety official, "If we ever show this movie to a community group, we sure as hell better have our act together, because when the lights go up people are going to have some pretty tough questions. And I hate to think of the egg we'd have on our face if we don't have any answers."
Because of the high public purpose of the film, I give it a 5. Compared to other hot movies out there on a Friday night, sure, it feels more like a 4. Good original love story, great dating film if you want to talk way into the night, intense action at the school, absorbing psychological drama. Film tech buffs will marvel at the quality of the digital video. But the sheer significance of the film deserves an extra half-star, and so I'm going to round UP to a 5.
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Easy Answers and Stylish Moviemaking?
Added 7/15/2009
April Showers.
The title alone carries with it the melodramatic weight of an emo-boy writing to his lost love.
This is a movie that points to our flawed human psychology; we need easy answers. We need easy closure. We need fixes. We don't want to believe the world can be dark, scary, random, and unexplainable. Movies, in one way, are a perfect resource for this idea. However, in the objective look at things, personal tragedies such as Columbine, when given this 'easy' spin, can result in Disney-esque results. Why approach horror in such a way? What if the Holocaust was portrayed in such melodrama? Or Pearl Harbor (see: Michael Bay film)? It removes dialogue and thought from the topic in favor of a storybook portrayal; easy open, easy close.
Columbine, school shootings, teen violence; these are topics to be discussed, to be debated, and to be a foundation for teaching critical thought in regards to the violence-in-art(media) issue. A vision of the events like April Showers, in which we have sweeping scores, action-style editing and cinematography, and an 'everything is going to be okay' outlook seems like spitting in the face of the spectator; let's give the audience some credit.
I also call into question the intentions of the director, one of the survivors of the event. During all trailers for this movie, and all clips found on youtube, there is a scroll bar instructing people to purchase the DVD of the film. There is certainly a confusing blend of consumable spectacle at work here. While I do not deny or invalidate his feelings and thoughts, his execution seems a little strange. (I also have to wonder why, based on his testimonies of the shooting, he would craft such a subjective and fictional piece?)
This is why I only give this movie one star. From a technical standpoint, this is a well made film; it LOOKS like a high budget film. But was this the point? Form and content are inextricably tied, let's not forget this. If a film's form is reminiscient of a sweeping action epic, the content will reflect as such.
This should have been high class catharsis. Instead, it's fast food.
1 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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Shallow Pretentious Mediocrity
Added 10/26/2009
If you're looking for a film that explores and analyzes the reasons why senseless school shootings (like Colombine) occur, then look elsewhere (or watch Gus Van Sant's superb "Elephant"). "April Showers" (which has to be the dumbest title imagineable for a movie about violence) purports to be about the aftermath of a Colombine school style shooting and how it affects the "victims." However, the true victims in this case are the viewers who happen to see this film.
The main problem with this film is the lackluster cliche-ridden script. The badly conceived script - which has NO point of view and says nothing - absolutely NOTHING about why these shootings occur and what can be done to prevent them - is only matched by the bad acting and the God-awful music. The director supposedly lived through the real Colombine massacare - my guess is that he really slept through it judging from the lack of specific detail and depth to this movie.
However, if you want a medicore tear jerker to cry over while viewing, this is your movie. And if the movie isn't pretentious enough, one has to read a list of every school shooting that has occurred over the end credits;this raises even more questions that the filmmakers never even bothered to think about while making this film. You have been warned.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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This is a very disturbing movie. It moves very slow and I struggled to sit through it. I am just going to say it was OK but I never really got into it. I could have stopped watching it anytime but I was bored and finished the movie. I gave it 3 stars because I think the story needed to be told especially after all the college shootings we have had. It just did not seem real to me nor was I impressed with the acting. I would have liked to rated this as a 2.5 stars.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Movie review
Added 9/25/2009
This is a well made movie based on the mental trauma suffered by a survivor of the Columbine High School tragedy. Kelly Blatz was simply wonderful, great acting. Although an event like this is unlikely to happen in my country as we have very strict `gun laws' nevertheless this true story make us become more aware of our responsibilities as parents and teachers. Parents must always look for signs of depression and aggression in their children and teachers must be just as aware to prevent such a tragedy from occuring. In the aftermath of such a tragedy the adults again play an important role to help survivors overcome the trauma. See it, experience it and learn from it.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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