Just perfect...

Absolutely the worst movie.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) is a substitute teacher with issues. His grandpa is in assisted living with dementia. Principal Carol Dearden (Marcia Gay Harden) is being pushed out. Artistic student Meredith is fascinated with Barthes. Ms. Madison (Christina Hendricks) is an idealistic teacher under stress. Dr. Doris Parker (Lucy Liu) is the struggling school counselor. Mr. Charles Seaboldt (James Caan) talks to kids bluntly. Barthes encounters hooker Erica (Sami Gayle) and tries to help her.I really like the stuff at school. I like the disjointed take from different characters. It's tough. It's edgy. It's disturbing. It's uncomfortable. On the other hand, Erica is too much of a trope. She's the hooker with a heart. Barthes becomes a white knight in shinning armor. It turns it into something slightly cheesy. That's the only squeaky wheel in an otherwise rolling movie.

There's no doubt that the film comes with good intentions. However, it fails horribly in it's execution. It uses terrible narrative and cinematic tropes that bombard the screen, making an incoherent cringe-worthy mess. The ya-ho of a director is reaching deep for sensationalism. I'm sure he's a good guy, with good intentions, but his choices and taste are blasé, overcooked, so yesterday, redundant, straight up cheesy. Has this guy walked outside his house in the last 5 years. Does he know anything of the modern world? Or am I talking about the script now. The world-weary school teacher who wrote it and probably won't ever write anything worthwhile again after this crap.

first let me set the record straight, my favorite director is Ingmar Bergman and no I don't like the avengers, so I got nothing against art films in general, but this is way too much. The thing that annoys me most about this film is how nobody took the effort to build these characters at all. they just threw in a punch of people thinking "hey see those characters, here's no background about any of them, no development, just relate to them, love them and don't question why they're popping out and disappearing for no reason what so ever." You just don't skip on character building to show cartoons, which by the way offer nothing to the story, just depicts what's being narrated. I have to say though, Lucy Liu's scene is particularly good. also the whole troubled man - young prostitute thing is totally played out, and the movie doesn't add anything new for that matter, just the same predictable unoriginality that stretches out through the entire 98 minutes (which felt a lot longer)

I became curious about this film because I read where this film was Same Gayle's feature debut. I didn't know anything about this person other than her role on Blue Blood and that show limits her acting strength after seeing Detachment. Here was a film that Tony Kaye directed with an understatement that disguises the powerful argument for sterilization. The students have dissolved into disrespectful future parole violators and the parents, some of them, are the source of these problem children. And trying to ride that ship in turbulent waters in the Adrian Brody character. His attempts to settle those waters is a force of nature one man cannot do alone. But I don't know if he calms those waters following a tragedy or if all hell hits the place and that was a dream? I don't know how old Sami Gayle was when this role was filmed but her corrupt innocence is washed over as an abused prostitute. Her first time encounter with the Adrian Brody character isn't Pretty Woman, a film I hated for it's depiction of the happily ever after prostitute. Sami Gayle's prostitute had more realism to it. The only misgivings I had was that the audience never got to know the results from her medical test. Perhaps it was edited out for time. And the teachers were excellent. I saw where Adrian Brody was the producer for this project. He pulled some top notched actors that made this work. James Caan , Lucy Lui, Marsha Gay Harden, Christine Hendricks, the other guy who held on to the chain link fence, all were good. And while watching this, you had the feeling that some student might go off on the deep end and that was predictable and not unexpected but it was done with the right tempo and uniqueness, no gun play.And I saw where it didn't do well at the box office. Well, with video on demand, I hope this avenue will work out for them so that more eyes can watch this exceptionally independent film.