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Category Archives: Netflix Watch Instantly

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24 Jan

2011
Drama
Director: Tony Kaye
Writer: Carl Lund

A strong cast and good acting punctuate this drama about well-worn themes in contemporary cinema and educational discourse—failed public schools and the teachers allegedly indifferent to the pervasive, seemingly intractable social problems in them. Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher who, in his one-month stint in a long-suffering public school, encounters teachers barely hanging on to their jobs and vocational motivation, and teenage students struggling with identity problems, abuse, and serious adult dilemmas such as prostitution. Hard-hitting indictment of not just the problems afflicting US public education but also some of the remedies advanced to solve them.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2015 in Available Online, Children, Cities-Urban, Class, Drama, Education, Labor History, Netflix Watch Instantly, Occupation/Type of Work, Themes, White Collar, Working Class

 

Cesar Chavez

19 Nov

2014
102 min
Biography

Director: Diego Luna
Writers: Keir Pearson (screenplay), Timothy J. Sexton
Stars: Michael Peña, America Ferrera, Rosario Dawson

The film follows Chávez’s efforts to organize 50,000 farm workers in California, some of whom were braceros—temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live and work in the United States in agriculture, and required to return to Mexico if they stopped working. Working conditions are very poor for the braceros, who also suffer from racism and brutality at the hands of the employers and local Californians. To help the workers, César Chávez (Michael Peña) forms a labor union known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). Chávez’s efforts are opposed, sometimes violently, by the owners of the large industrial farms where the braceros work. The film touches on several major nonviolent campaigns by the UFW: the Delano grape strike, the Salad Bowl strike, and the 1975 Modesto march. 

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Biography, Drama, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Labor History, Migrant workers, Netflix Watch Instantly, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

The Grand Seduction (2013)

02 Jul

The small harbor of Tickle Cove is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French (Gleeson) leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis (Kitsch) he employs – along with the whole town – tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.

Director: Don McKellar
Writers: Michael Dowse, Ken Scott
Stars: Taylor Kitsch, Brendan Gleeson, Liane Balaban

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Comedy, Netflix Watch Instantly, Romance

 

Price Check (2012)

12 Feb

For Pete, settling down with a wife and son meant giving up his unstable musical career to work for a third-rate supermarket chain.

Cast: Parker Posey, Eric Mabius, Annie Parisse

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2014 in Comedy, Drama, Netflix Watch Instantly, Retail

 

The Women on the 6th Floor (Les femmes du 6ème étage) (2010)

26 Nov

Director: Philippe Le Guay
Writers: Philippe Le Guay, Jérôme Tonnerre
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Kiberlain and Natalia Verbeke
104 min – Comedy

In 1960s Paris, a conservative couple’s lives are turned upside down by two Spanish maids.

 
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Posted by on November 26, 2012 in Class, Comedy, Netflix Watch Instantly, Service Workers, Women, Working Class

 

Morning Glory (2010)

13 Nov

DIR Roger Michell; SCR Aline Brosh McKenna  PROD J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk. US, color, 107 min. RATED PG-13

After hard-working producer Rachel McAdams gets fired from her lackluster suburban New Jersey morning show, she lands a new job producing the lowest-rated network morning talk show in New York City. This decidedly mixed blessing includes wrangling randy host Ty Burrell, in bad need of training about sexual harassment in the workplace, and former beauty queen Diane Keaton, frosty behind her fake smile. Meanwhile, disgruntled serious newsman Harrison Ford, McAdams’ idol, is idling away, playing out his contract before retirement. Would he go for a morning show makeover? Time to get to work! Director Roger Michell gets the best from his game cast; screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA). “It grows from human nature and is about how people do their jobs and live their lives. It is wisely not about a May-October romance between McAdams and Ford. It’s more about their love for their work.”—Roger Ebert.

 

 
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Posted by on November 13, 2012 in Entertainment Industry, Netflix Watch Instantly, Romance

 

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Compliance (2012)

30 Aug

90m; U.S.

Director: Craig Zobel

Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker and Pat Healy

Synopsis: “In the middle of a bad day Sandra (Ann Dowd), the harried manager of a fast-food franchise, receives a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer. He accuses an employee named Becky (Dreama Walker) of theft and instructs Sandra to subject the pretty teenager to a series of humiliations: detain her in the stock room, confiscate her belongings, conduct a strip search and on and on. As the title suggests, at each step of this increasingly elaborate and unnerving hoax, Sandra and Becky do what they are told.”

–‘Compliance’ Raises Questions About Human Behavior; NYT 8/10/2012

Trailer

 
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Posted by on August 30, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Class, Consumerism, Drama, Legal System, Netflix Watch Instantly, Service Workers, Women

 

The Harvest (La Cosecha) [2010]

13 Jun

Synopsis: THE HARVEST will be told from adolescents’ perspectives as we meet 5 of the more than 400,000 to 500,000 children between the ages of 5 and 16 who labor in fields and factories to feed us, lacking the protections offered by the Fair Labor Standards Act that all other American children enjoy. We follow them as they follow the 2009 harvest, working throughout the spring, summer and early fall until they return to school in early November, struggle to catch up, only to be forced to leave school again the following April.

Contact: Shine Global 973 746-7257 646 442-1712 http://www.shineglobal.org/?page_id=19 Susan MacLaury, Executive Director: susan@shineglobal.org Rebecca Katz, Executive Assistant: rebecca@shineglobal.org Ruth Sarlin, Fundraising: ruth@shineglobal.org

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Children, Documentary, Farm & Food, Netflix Watch Instantly

 

Even the Rain (También la Lluvia) [2010]

13 Jun

103m; Spain/Mexico/France

Director: Icíar Bollaín

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar and Karra Elejalde

Synopsis: A Spanish film crew comes to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1999 to make a film about Christopher Columbus.  The intent is to do a revisionist account portraying Columbus not as a hero, but as a conqueror.  The film crew is not well financed and looking to cut costs, which includes to indigenous Bolivians being hired to star in the movie.  At the same time, a mounting wave of protests is occurring, with one of the film extras serving as a major leader, over the privatization of Cochabamba’s water supply.  The film crew becomes entangled in the protests in an ever more complex and deep ways.  A superb film about the intersections and limits of art and politics.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Arts/Culture, Entertainment Industry, Global Economy, Labor History, Netflix Watch Instantly, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

The Trotsky (2009)

04 Jun

120m; Canada

Director: Jacob Tierney

Cast: Liane Balaban, Jay Baruchel and Taylor Baruchel

Synopsis: Leon Bronstein is a high school student in Montreal West who is absolutely convinced he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.  After leading a hunger strike with some of his fellow private school peers against his father, the owner of a textile factory who will not allow the workers to unionize, Leon is sent to public school.  There he finds apathy, but also potential and begins to organize a student union, while also pursuing an older woman he is convinced he must marry.  A very funny and smart film that includes a lot of genuine moments about the power of organizing, and a lot of jokes about labor and left-wing history.

Trailer

 
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Posted by on June 4, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Education, Labor History, Netflix Watch Instantly, Organizing, Romance, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 
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