Guided Viewing of Film with Gifted Students
Guided Viewing of Film with Gifted Students
Thomas P. Hébert, Ph.D.
University of Georgia
Annie O (1995)
Annie becomes the first female player on her high school’s male basketball team as her traditional Hispanic parents struggle to understand her athletic aspirations. This talented young woman’s achievements are also not appreciated by her teammates, her boyfriend, or her competitive brother.
Audience: Middle SchoolMPAA Rating: PGHallmark
Broadcast News (1987)
This movie satirically examines the inner workings of a Washington DC television news bureau and also explores a romantic triangle between a feisty young female producer, a handsome news anchor, and a sensitive male reporter. The audience will enjoy the interaction of values and style differences among the three main characters.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-1320th Century Fox
The Competition (1980)
Two gifted pianists competing for a prestigious international music award fall in love. The competition between the two talented musicians becomes more complex as their relationship unfolds. Both musicians must reexamine their values and decide just how important is it to become an internationally renowned concert pianist.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-13Columbia
Dead Poet’s Society (1989)
A dynamic prep school English teacher inspires his male students with unconventional teaching and his passion for poetry. Through his literature classes, he encourages them to view life through a different philosophical lens. Though he is asked to resign from his faculty position, he leaves a long-lasting impression on his young protégés.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-13Touchstone Pictures
Ellen Foster (2002)
This movie features the story of a gifted, resilient young girl who is left alone following the death of her mother. She draws inner strength from loving memories of her mother as she is forced to move from relative to relative in search of a family to replace her deceased mother and abusive father. Her wealthy and bitter grandmother eventually takes her in; however, Ellen’s life in her grandmother’s house becomes more emotionally desolate than ever before. This intelligent young girl takes her situation into her own hands and designs her plan that will provide her happiness. In the end, Ellen’s strong inner strength and determination enables her to free herself of her dysfunctional relatives and the emotionally traumatic events of her childhood.
Audience: ElementaryMPAA Rating: GHallmark
The Emperor’s Club ( 2002)
This compelling and inspiring story about a revered teacher and the students whose lives he changes focuses on shaping moral development in gifted young men. It is an uplifting story of one educator’s efforts to teach young men the importance of maintaining one’s honor and integrity.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating:PG-13Universal
The Ernest Green Story (1993)
This film focuses on the personal story of Ernest Green, the only senior male among the nine gifted Black students who integrated Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School in 1957. Faced with pressure from segregationists as well as his peers, Ernest manages to survive a school year of tremendous adversity through his strong intellect and courage.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: Not rated Disney
Finding Forrester (2001)
A powerful bond develops between an elderly reclusive novelist named Forrester who has disappeared from the publishing scene since winning a Pulitzer Prize decades earlier, and Jamal, an urban Black teenager with a desire to become a writer. When Jamal attends an elite prep school on scholarship, he faces the challenge of adapting to an environment much different from his South Bronx background. With mentoring from Forrester, Jamal’s passion for writing becomes strengthened. Forrester’s dedication to his young protégé increases when he must defend allegations of plagiarism, which could adversely affect Jamal’s future.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-13Columbia
Frankie & Hazel (2000)
Frankie and Hazel are two talented middle school girls growing up in a small New Jersey town. Her grandmother who has aspirations for Frankie to pursue ballet to honor her deceased mother, a famous ballerina, is raising Frankie. Rather than continue her ballet studies, Frankie becomes involved in a Little League baseball team, without her grandmother’s knowledge. Meanwhile, Hazel, a talented leader, decides to clean up her community and challenges the incumbent mayor for his office.
Audience: Middle SchoolMPAA Rating: GDEG Productions
Gross Anatomy
Joe Slovak is a brilliant first-year medical school student who’s casual, nonconforming approach to life becomes tested when he enrolls in anatomy, his most challenging course. Joe’s free-spirited, independent style puts him at odds with his demanding professor who questions whether or not this gifted underachiever has what it takes to be a doctor. Though Joe approaches the challenges of medical school in his own way, he proves he does have what it takes to succeed without having to compromise his values.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating; PG-13Buena Vista
I’ll Remember April (1999)
This movie follows the lives of four ten-year-old boys growing up on the coast of California during the second world war. One of the boys is a Japanese-American whose family is being sent to an internment camp. After hearing of Japanese submarines off the pacific coast, the boys fantasize about being Marines in search of the enemy. While patrolling the beach, they discover a Japanese sailor who is stranded and wounded. Determined to become heroes, they take him prisoner and keep him a secret from their parents. When the sailor rescues one of the boys from drowning, the boys befriend their prisoner and struggle with a pact that could betray their country.
Audience: ElementaryMPAA Rating: G Regent Entertainment
Joy Luck Club
After her mother’s death, “June” - Ming-Na Wen is asked to take her place in a mahjongg club. The other members, like her mother, were all born in China before the 1949 revolution. June discovers that she has two half sisters in China and plans a trip to meet them. With this as a catalyst, the members of the club share stories of their mothers and their own lives in China. While sharing their stories, we also learn of their strained relationships with their Americanized daughters. The film highlights the desire for a generation of Asian women to pass on their hopes for a better life for their daughters.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: RBuena Vista
The Journey of Natty Gann
America is in the depths of the Great Depression when families are often forced to live apart when jobs are available across the country. In this adventure, an intelligent and courageous young girl confronts overwhelming odds when she embarks on a cross-country journey in search of her father. During her quest, she forms a close bond with two traveling companions: a protective wolf, and a hardened drifter. This film offers a moving story of courage, perseverance and applying one’s intelligence to solving life’s problems.
Audience: ElementaryMPAA Rating: PGDisney
Little Man Tate (1991)
Fred, a young music and math prodigy, struggles to gain acceptance from his classmates who view him as an intellectual oddball. Fred’s only friend is his working-class mom who does not have the financial resources to nurture her son’s gifts and talents. When invited to attend a summer college program, Fred leaves home to live with a child psychologist who is fascinated with her new research subject’s genius. Though she is supportive of Fred, he realizes why he appreciates the loving, emotionally supportive environment he has at home.
Audience: ElementaryMPAA Rating: PGMGM
Lucas (1986)
Lucas is a highly gifted young man who has been accelerated into high school. More interested in the wonders of entomology than high school athletics and parties, he struggles to find a place where he fits in. His problems begin when he develops a friendship with Maggie, an attractive new girl in town, during the summer. As school begins, their friendship changes, and Lucas does all he can to capture her heart.
Audience: Middle SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-1320th Century Fox
Matilda (1996)
Matilda is a highly gifted young girl whose neglectful parents do not recognize her love of reading. When her parents enroll Matilda in school, they send her to a bleak school ruled by a dictatorial principal. Matilda finds support from her first-grade teacher who recognizes the young girl’s remarkable abilities.
Audience: ElementaryMPAA Rating: PGSony Pictures
The Mighty (1998)
The Mighty is a story of two young men who come together as outcasts. A highly gifted, physically challenged youngster develops a close friendship with his next-door neighbor when he becomes his reading tutor. In return, his friend protects him from teenage adversaries in their middle school. Together the two boys take on adventurous challenges. In the spirit of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, they set out on an inspirational quest for greatness and preserving the common good. In doing so, they discover the greatest treasure - their lifelong friendship.
Audience: Middle SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-13Miramax Films
Mona Lisa Smile (2004)
A first year art history professor arrives at a prestigious woman’s college in the 1950’s. She has much to teach her students about becoming critical consumers of art. As she overcomes multiple challenges, she teaches them much more about talent development in intelligent young women.
Audience: High School MPAA Rating: PG-13Columbia
Mr. Holland’s Opus
An aspiring composer reluctantly becomes a tremendous high school music teacher. The film chronicles thirty years in the inspirational life of a man, who through his passionate love of music leaves an inedible mark on the lives of students.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PGBuena Vista
My Girl (1991)
This film is a coming-of-age story about a gifted young girl growing up in a single parent home during the summer of 1972. Vada must cope with her feelings of jealousy when her father begins to date again. She also overcomes the tragic death of her closest friend and soulmate, a loss that forces her to question existential issues early in her life.
Audience: Elementary MPAA Rating: PGImagine
October Sky (1999)
In this biographical film, Homer Hickam has no reason to think that he will be any different from other boys growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia, where all young men are expected to become coal miners like their fathers. Too small to earn a football scholarship to college, Homer has no way out of his predetermined life, until 1957 when Sputnik flies over his community and changes Homer’s life. Homer begins a mission to build and launch his own homemade rockets with a group of his loyal friends. Although their frequent mishaps get the “Rocket Boys” in trouble, their successes inspire their small mining community to believe that intelligent youngsters can raise their aspirations and strive for a better life beyond Coalwood.
Audience: Middle & High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG Universal
Real Genius (1985)
When a high school science genius is recruited by a professor to become part of a special research team, he doesn’t realize that he’ll be working on a top-secret military weapon. Enrolling in the university, he meets his fellow gifted classmates, including his roommate, a senior infamous for his intelligence and irreverent behavior. Despite their different approaches to life, the two gifted young men become supportive teammates.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PGTriStar Pictures
The Red Sneakers (2002)
Reggie Reynolds is the dedicated manager of his urban high school basketball team. His problem is that he wants to be a basketball superstar but his dreams of becoming a college player seem impossible because Reggie is intellectually gifted, but not athletically talented. When the neighborhood junkman sells him a magical pair of red sneakers, he becomes an overnight sensation who leads his team to the New York City high school finals. As Reggie enjoys his instant success, he struggles with the jealousy of his teammates, his mother’s changing views of his intellectual abilities, the high scholarly expectations of his math teacher, and a new set of adoring female admirers. In addition, sport scouts descend upon Reggie to offer him a golden future. In the end, Reggie acknowledges his true gifts and remains true to himself and those he loves.
Audience: Elementary MPAA Rating: GDEG Productions
Rudy (1994)
Rudy Ruettiger will allow nothing to stop him from realizing his dreams of attending Notre Dame University and playing on the football team. Rudy is an inspirational story of a young man who overcomes many hurdles in his quest for reaching his ultimate goal - becoming an official member of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish team.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PGTristar Pictures
The Sandy Bottom Orchestra (2000)
A sophisticated woman abandons her promising career as a classical pianist and moves to Sandy Bottom, Wisconsin with her husband. As the head of the local church choir, she spends her days trying to introduce new selections of music to the congregation and challenges the community’s rural mentality. Eventually, the community allows she and her husband to organize a classical concert at the town’s annual family festival.
Audience: Middle - High School MPAA Rating: Not Rated Showtime
The Sandlot (1993)
An intellectually oriented new boy in town joins a neighborhood baseball team and tries desperately throughout a summer to fit in with the others. With the support of the neighborhood’s charismatic gang leader, he gains acceptance from his peer group.
Audience: Elementary - MiddleMPAA Rating: PG20th Century Fox
Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
A gifted young chess prodigy enters the highly competitive world of championship chess and his ambitious father learns that loving his son is the best way to influence his son’s talent development. This powerful movie offers important lessons regarding moral development in young gifted children.
Audience: Elementary - MiddleMPAA Rating: PG20th Century Fox
Selma, Lord Selma (1999)
During the turbulent civil rights movement in 1965, a young girl in Alabama is inspired by Martin Luther King to fight the degradation faced by African Americans. An uplifting true story that highlights leadership talents in a gifted Black child facing tremendous adversity.
Audience: Elementary-MiddleMPAA Rating: GDisney
Stand and Deliver (1988)
This film features the biographical story of Jaime Escalante, a serious math teacher in a tough East Los Angeles high school. Assigned classes of unmotivated students, Escalante is determined to turn his students’ lives around. He draws upon his own cultural heritage and forms a bond with his largely Hispanic student body. Escalente’s students gradually realize that the only way they will escape their economically depressed barrio is to improve themselves intellectually. With Escalante as their teacher, the students’ academic achievements greatly improve.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PGWarner Brothers
Smoke Signals (1998)
This film is the story of two Native American teenagers who leave their reservation to resolve their problems surrounding their relationships with their fathers. Along with an examination of the plight of the modern Native American male, the movie focuses on the anger that one young man bears toward his missing father, and how these feelings negatively impact his life.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG - 13Miramax Films
Wide Awake (1998)
Ten-year-old Joshua pursues a spiritual quest after his grandfather dies. Resolved to find out what happens to the spirit of his grandfather, the highly sensitive Joshua searches for answers to a number of existential questions and discovers them with the support of several loving adults in his life.
Audience: Elementary MPAA Rating: PGMiramax Films
Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (1991)
Heroine Sonora Webster is a bright, determined, and talented young woman who leaves her backwoods home in Georgia to respond to a newspaper advertisement for diving horse girls. Her adventures in the carnival industry provide her opportunities to celebrate her spunky personal qualities.
Audience: Middle SchoolMPAA Rating: GDisney
With Honors (1994)
When a Harvard senior’s thesis falls into the hands of a homeless man, the Ivy League student and his unenlightened friends become students of the real world beyond Harvard.
Audience: High SchoolMPAA Rating: PG-13Warner Brothers
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