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Arts & Entertainment

Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Precious</em> or <em>The Men Who Stare at Goats</em>

By

Robert Horan

Published Nov 6, 2009

Modified Nov 6, 2009

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The novel Push by Sapphire, probably one of the more interesting additions to High School reading lists, will be unveiled to the masses via Oprah and Tyler Perry as the movie Precious. The film follows illiterate, 16 year-old Claireece "Precious" Jones, pregnant for the second time by her absent father, as she attempts to somehow escape her abusive mother and transcend her generally nightmarish situation. A.O. Scott at the Times calls it "less the examination of a social problem than the illumination of an individual’s painful and partial self-realization. Inarticulate and emotionally shut down, her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place, Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look. "At its plainest and most persuasive, her story is that of a writer discovering a voice. Precious is a hybrid, a mash-up that might have been ungainly, but that manages to be graceful instead. And Ms. Sidibe, perhaps the least-known member of this movie’s unusual cast, is also the glue that holds it together. Nimble and self-assured as Mr. Daniels’s direction may be, he could not make you believe in Precious unless you were able to believe in Precious herself. You will."

 

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By

Robert Horan

Published Nov 6, 2009

Modified Nov 6, 2009

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Click on the film stills for more details and reviews for this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include Precious, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fourth Kind, A Christmas Carol, The Box, Collapse, Turning Green, That Evening Sun, And Now For Something Completely Different, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

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