Word: hillers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
THERE'S A DEATHWISH in this movie. From the opening scene, in which the protagonist Morgan Hiller (James Spader) narrowly averts decapitation by a slashing car aerial, to the final fight, involving everything from dart guns to fireaxes, the smell of blood hangs heavy in the air. And the strangest aspect of this adolescent brinksmanship is its complete premeditation--every character consciously seeks out dangerous situations and harrowing relationships...
Tuff Turf tries to reconcile two essentially irreconcilable methods of artistically treating youth in America--either powerfully, viscerally, and almost animalistically, like West Side Story, or neurotically and confusedly like any one of a number of Robby Benson movies. If Morgan Hiller is really a perceptive, intelligent New England prep school teenager, why does he fall so quickly in love with a rather stupid Los Angeles gang girl, thereby subjecting himself to violent beatings and possible death? And if he is a hopeless romantic, why does he have such neurotic, pseudo-intellectual conversations and relationships with the people around...
Like its subject, the public high school, Teachers is undone by its aspiration to be all things to all members of its constituency. Sometimes it is a sardonic assault on institutional idiocy, something Director Arthur Hiller once managed pretty well in The Hospital. Sometimes it is a sentimental plea for humanistic faculty-student relationships, sometimes a romantic comedy and sometimes The Blackboard Jungle revisited. Mostly, however, it is a mess. Screenwriter W.R. McKinney wrenches his plot endlessly, attempting to make plausible the weird shifts in tone. The leads (Nick Nolte and JoBeth Williams) and a raft of good supporting players...
...Hiller thinks he can tell us what is wrong with our schools, but all he manages are the great American cliches, "One man can make a difference", "If people just cared more about our schools", etc. This movie follows the Ronald Reagan approach to problem-solving: say something vague and positive, then hope the problem goes away. Placing the administrators as heavies also echoes Reaganite attitudes. You can almost hear him saying "Get the administrators off the teacher's backs, and America's schools will be great again." After seeing this film you know that it was made by Beverly...
...Hiller does not manage to synthesize the opposing personalities of this film until the very end, in possibly the worst climax to scar a movie in many years. A teen-exploitation film rarely has trouble finding a good reason for its female leads to take off their clothes, and you might have thought you had seen them all. As Teachers rolls to its much anticipated end, we find that Nolte has finally decided to bag teaching for something more suitable to his talents, like All-Star wrestling. In order to convince him to stay, Williams strips to the buff...