Rusty Magee Movies
A Woody Allen Manhattan mosaic, Hannah and Her Sisters concerns the lives, loves, and infidelities among a tightly-knit artistic clan. Hannah (Mia Farrow) regularly meets with her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) to discuss the week's events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's various subplots. Hannah is married to accountant and financial planner Elliot (Michael Caine), who carries a torch for Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow). Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey (Allen), who used to be married to Hannah and spends most of the film convinced that he's about to die. Appearing in supporting parts are Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's real mom), as the eternally bickering husband-and-wife acting team who are the parents of Hannah and her sisters. The film begins and ends during the family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, filmed in Farrow's actual New York apartment. Unbilled cameos are contributed by Sam Waterston as one of Wiest's brief amours and Tony Roberts as one of Allen's friends. Hannah and Her Sisters collected Oscars for Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, and Woody Allen's screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, (more)
- 1997
A certain conversation-starter, this documentary takes a disturbing look at a growing tendency for some conservative school boards to use their positions to promote their religious beliefs and agendas at the expense of the students' education and well-being. Landsdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, is a community divided over whether or not to build a new high school to remedy the overcrowding in North Penn High School. The multi-cultural community is comprised of young families with children and a large senior citizen population. School taxes in the area are already high and with the construction of a new school, they promise to increase. This angers the area senior citizens who fear the raises will cut into their retirement. The young families, worried about the quality of their children's education, are also angry. Into this heated mixture comes the school board, headed by the controversial Donna Mengel, a conservative Christian woman who has been called to task for publicly making blatantly anti-Semitic comments. A staunch supporter of her older voters, Mengel was largely responsible for defeating the bid for a new school and for curtailing school programs that clashed with her ideology. Such classes included those dealing with sex and drugs, multicultural sensitivity classes, art, music and athletic programs. Mengel's agenda is supported by three (out of nine) other board members who go to the same church. The film not only delves into their tactics, it also makes a strong point about the effectiveness of grassroots political activism. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
