Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron and the movie ‘The Blind Side’

Remarkable acts of compassion can make all the difference. If that isn’t an overriding message of the movie The Blind Side (2009), then I was watching a different movie with the same name. John Lee Hancock and Michael Lewis take movie writing credit for the film, which in being based on the Lewis’ book The Blind Side. The sport of football is a language of this movie, with compassion being the message.

(From left, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy, Ray McKinnon as Coach Cotton, and Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy in the movie The Blind Side).

The primary compassion of the movie began with Leigh Anne Tuohy, as portrayed by Sandra Bullock, who saw Michael Oher as a teenager walking down the street with nowhere to stay. Touhy convinced her husband, Sean Tuohy as played by Tim McGraw, to bring the young man into their home for a meal and a night of sleep. Oher would become a member of the family, go to school and college, and become a legitimate part of the Tuohy family.

(From left, Kathy Bates as Miss Sue and Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher in the movie The Blind Side).

Roy McKinnon as Coach Cotton needed some convincing to allow Oher, as played by Quinton Aaron, to join the high school football team. Having had a difficult beginning wherein his mother was exposed to crime and his father wasn’t in the picture, Oher could have easily fallen through the cracks of a system that could not provide the safety net that the child and man Oher was and would become could flourish. Kathy Bates as Miss Sue became a tutor. Collins Tuohy as portrayed by Lily Collins and S.J. Tuohy as portrayed by Jae Head became a sister and brother to Michael Oher in real senses of the term over time and through the course of the movie. The friction of acceptance, belief in decency, and an affirmative choice of compassion in the face of stereotypical fear were all forthrightly addressed with an affirmative outlook.

(From left, Lily Collins as Collins Tuohy and Jae Head as S.J. Tuohy in the movie The Blind Side).

Michael Oher grew to become the 23rd pick in the 2009 NFL draft by the Baltimore Ravens. The movie offered a dramatic and comedic look into the journey of Oher, the Tuohy family, and the journey from homeless teen to more fuller, whole person. I rate The Blind Side at 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, July 18, 2020

Jake Gyllenhaal and the film ‘October Sky’

Based on the true story as written in the Homer H. Hickam Jr. book Rocket Boys, the film October Sky (1999) was adapted to film by Lewis Colick and directed by Joe Johnston about a year after the book was released. Given the film’s warm reception among critics and audiences, we queued this worthy film up for your consideration.

(Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickam in October Sky).

October Sky, the primary focus of this blog post, begins during the early days of the Space Race with the launch by the Soviet Union of the satellite called Sputnik. The story of the film October Sky is at first a brief capturing of the American response to the beginning of the Space Race, and much more broadly the implication of this on Homer Hickam, the people and mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia, and the story Hickam, a small group of friends, and the rocketry that informed the larger narrative of the film.

(Chris Cooper as John Hickam in October Sky).

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Homer Hickam, the real life subject and author of the book Rocket Boys, that is October Sky‘s story. Hickam is the younger of two brothers, and from the start we see that he and his father, real life John Hickam as portrayed by Chris Cooper, will have a contentious relationship built in part by being similarly hard headed. The two have a deeply separate world view wherein the John Hickam sees the pragmatic reality of sons who will get a football scholarship to college or work in the Coalwood mines. Homer Hickam takes a warming to rocketry with a determination equal to his father’s pragmatism, yet the aspiration is seen by his father as unrealistic dreaming.

(Laura Dern as Miss Riley in October Sky).

Miss Riley, as portrayed by Laura Dern in October Sky, shares an aspiration that bucks the trend of Homer’s father and the sensibility of the community of Coalwood as embodied by the principal of the high school in Coalwood. Miss Riley offers encouragement to Homer, and a group of three friends in Roy Lee, Quentin, and O’Dell who eventually join Homer in his amateur rocket making experiments. The rather tame drama that follows the relationship Miss Riley has with the Hickam family and the larger Coalwood community offers useful anchoring to the larger narrative of October Sky.

(From left to right, William Lee Scott as Roy Lee, Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickam, Chris Owen as Quentin, and Chad Lindberg as O’Dell in October Sky).

There is tension between Homer Hickam and primarily his father over whether the pursuit of rocketry and the encouragement Homer receives from his mother, Elsie Hickam, and the community of Coalwood is worthy. John Hickam, at least in Homer‘s telling, offers real support to Homer‘s football playing elder son while largely offering no emotional support to the second son. Elsie, as played by Natalie Canerday, serves as a tangible buffer between the two, defending her husband to her son in multiple ways over her father’s apparent love for the coal mines before all else. Through much real life drama that occurs over the course of the film, and the redeeming tale of overcoming that is the larger story of October Sky, father, son, and the people of Coalwood are portrayed with a narrative arc of change and redemption that is the larger story of the film.

(Natalie Canerday as Elsie Hickam, left, and Chris Cooper as John Hickam in October Sky).

October Sky sets out with some direct and straightforward storytelling goals around how to view life, generational differences between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers, and family. The time period encapsulated by the Cold War and in part discussed through the lens of a West Virginia mining town following World War II might be a legacy of the 20th Century, at least in the United States. That this story is shared through one family, one community, and the outcome of a few people in that community through a redemption story ultimately works. These qualities are what I feel worked for critics and audiences alike. My rating for the film is 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.

Matt – Wednesday, May 8, 2019