Pay It Forward (Movie; drama)

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Myhindupage.org Review
A touching and effective movie to cause one to reflect on doing more good deeds.

Amazon.com Editorial Review
Pay It Forward is a multi-level marketing scheme of the heart. Beginning as a seventh-grade class assignment to put into action an idea that could change the world, young Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a plan to do good deeds for three people who then by way of payment each must do good turns for three other people. These nine people also must pay it forward and so on, ad infinitum. If successful, the resulting network of do-gooders ought to comprise the entire world. Trevor's attempts to get the ball rolling include befriending a junkie (James Caviezel) and trying to set up his recovering-alcoholic mother (Helen Hunt) with his burn-victim teacher (Kevin Spacey), who posed the assignment.
While this could have turned into unmitigated schmaltz, the acting elevates this film to mitigated schmaltz. By turns powerful and measured, the performances of Spacey, Hunt, and Osment can't make up for the many missteps in a screenplay that sanitizes the look of the lower-middle class and expects us to believe that homeless alcoholics and junkies speak in the elevated manner of grad students. (Can that really be Angie Dickinson as Hunt's dispossessed mother? Yes, it is!) The germ of the story is a good one, though, and one may wonder how it would have been handled by the likes of Frank Capra, who could balance sentiment with humor. But clearly Capra would never have let the ending of his version to take the nosedive into cliché and pathos that director Mimi Leder has allowed in this film. More than a few viewers will also recognize that Leder has blatantly borrowed her final image from Field of Dreams, where its intended effect was more keenly and honestly felt. --Jim Gay

Review by K. Corn on Amazon.com
What a pleasant surprise this movie was! I avoided seeing it for awhile because of so many negative or so-so reviews I'd read and also because a friend told me the book was "sentimental and corny". But the movie was very believable and I can't help thinking that the only people who could fail to be moved by it would have to be hard-core cynics. Haley Joel Osmont proves his acting chops yet again (after his acclaimed his role in Sixth Sense), playing a middle-school student named Trevor who has a troubled home life, an alcoholic mother and an erratic, wayward father. When his new teacher, played by the superb Kevin Spacey, gives an imaginative class assignment, daring the students to "change the world" Trevor takes his homework to a new extreme, changing not only his life but that of his teacher. While parts of this movie do challenge the viewer's ability to suspend belief and seem somewhat unreal, it is a rare treat to see such a trio of talented actors come together for such a worthy idea. Don't be surprised to find yourself reaching for the tissues while watching this movie. I came to it with negative preconceptions and reluctance and was surprisingly moved and heartened by watching it. This is one I plan to buy and add to my permanent collection, worth seeing again and again.

Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy

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MyHinduPage.org Review
In my research for a series of articles on economy–Time is Money–for my Pondering blog I came upon this series of three documentaries that presented the world economics with such potency that any lay person with absolutely no understanding of world economics can begin to understand how and why it effects us so profoundly. With well orchestrated divisions that starts with biographies of the most influential figures in modern economics (Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman) to how globalization has changed the character of market economics, that so much of how the markets work is still unpredictable and a matter of study even for experts one can come out with a basic overview of world economics and its complexities. The most important thing that I got out of watching this documentary is that at best even experts are guessing at solutions to economic downturns. When any economy goes awry the best even experts can do is to apply a solution and hope for the best, if it works great, if it doesn't try something else.

Review by Adam Faanes on Amazon.com
For those who want an introduction to international economics and globalization, this is the thing to see. I agree with what the Washington Post said - "No more important program for making sense of our life and times has been seen in at least a decade." It made me want to be an economist.
In the first segment, it covers the development of economic theory through Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman, and the historic solutions and events between the war of 1914 and the 1970s, ending with the change of tack that accompanied Reagan and Thatcher's elections. In the second, it follows the "agony of reform" - that is, the paths taken by many states to transition from planned economies to market economies, following the cases of Russia, Poland, Chile, and Bolivia. The last segment follows the contemporary problems and methods of the global economy, with particular focus on crisis: mainly, the 1998 Asian Economic Crisis.
It is important to remember that this documentary is about economics, and that its concern is about the quality and quantity of wealth generated rather than externalities (the environment, &c.) Taken in this context, I think that it does extremely well: anyone who knows at least a little will leave the show literate in global economics. It does have a certain pro-globalization stint to it, though I hardly find that it is outright dismissive of globalization's criticisms: the second half of the third segment is entirely about arguments against globalization, and the first half of that segment is entirely about the crises that have rocked the global economy. And, after all, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Clinton are two of their biggest commentators, who are at least pragmatic globalists (If the writers favor any viewpoint, it's Clinton and Sachs'). That said, I think that this is probably the least biased (or, most centrist, depending on your point of view) documentary on globalization in existence - the others you'll find will almost without exception skew more than this one will. Not to mention that its cast of commentators and the ability of its filmmakers are excellent, and something that's normally very dry is made really entertaining.
There are some things that it probably does leave out more: it doesn't give the criticisms of the IMF and World Bank really, particularly those that come from the right and business, which is somewhat peculiar. This might be because of center-left bias (think Bill Clinton) that rather likes these multilateral institutions, or because they just ran out of time, which seems pretty likely - they had to cram into the two hours that those issues would make sense in information about three global crises, the methods of modern international finance, two meetings of the WTO, and Hernando de Soto.
The other thing they somewhat miss is what happened to Bolivia, Argentina and some of the other Latin American countries "after" globalization who ended up trashed by economic currents. Part of this is because many of these events happened or came to be examined after the series aired, but I think that in their search for an emblematic case they found a pretty good one: the case of Thailand, which was one fo those countries that got "trashed" in 1998 - they provide a particularly stirring personal anecdote of one businessman who lost everything in the crisis on real estate, and is now working his way back up to his dreams as a street vendor. The thing is that they don't link this to Thailand's development as a globalizing economy (that is, Thailand isn't covered in section 2.) so we don't make the intuitive connection between globalization and increased economic risk.
The third thing that concerns me is that they did not cover the "moderate" paths to globalization experienced in France, Ukraine and Germany, or the successful totalitarian export economies of South Korea or Thailand. Again, I think this is because they ran out of time: the emblems of Chile and India almost get at these ideas, and the importantly but not strikingly different paths taken by the countries I listed were close enough that the viewer could infer the important insights. I suppose I'll have to read the book to see if that covers those alternate paths any better.
That's my take on the program's shortcomings - I think that they faced the problem that they could either cover all subjects, remain aloof from any accusations of bias, but say really nothing about anything, or they could (as they did) stab deeply at a number of emblematic cases and avoid some things that they saw as low-priority. This of course came at cost, but by far I think that this is something that everyone should see - I think they should show it to students, as they'd certainly leave knowing a thing or two about the founders of modern economics and how foreign exchange works. Hell, they might even know what short selling is...
No one having watched this film will leave without having learned something new and important about global economics.