Film review on social problems (Movie Review Sample)

Film Review on Social Problems
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Film Review on Social Problems
Grapes of Wrath
The grapes of wrath is an exclusively unique film showing “the peoples invincible spirit to overcome poverty. The movies’ filming is based on a novel by John Steinbeck. “Grapes of Wrath” does a commendable and outstanding job of depicting the life of dust bowl family who are struggling to survive. The Joads family takes a trip out to the west in their old dilapidated old track. They go through different and enormous struggles to get to California, the Promised Land where they believed wages were high and work was in plenty but it was not so. The Joads arrive at the first migrant workers campground where they find it crowded and stuffed with other jobless, starving and desperate travellers. They decamp from there after seeing the camps deplorable state of poverty and travel to the next where they find the situation same as the first. After going through several camps they finally find one that is clean and presentable. The Joads family comes face to face with poverty, struggle and discrimination because of being okies but they also encounter people who are compassionate and understanding of the plights of the people with no choice. During the times of great depression, many if not all sharecropper families encountered first- hand experience with both climatic and economic hardships. From the housing, clothing to the old track, the film accurately depicts the poor, struggling conditions and status of the migrant workers.
The Pursuit of Happyness
This film is set on a true story experience. The story starts in the year 1981 where a small young family of one Chris Gardner, his wife Linda and their five year old son lived in a small apartment. Chris worked as a salesman of a bone scanning machine while his wife worked at a laundry service. Chris could not make enough money to cater for his family. This brought about frequent misunderstandings between Chris and his wife and because she could not bear the fangs of poverty, she left leaving her five year old son behind. Hopeless and plunged deep into poverty Chris and his son were left homeless with no money for rent, so they sought refuge in a shelter for the homeless. At one point Chris had to sell his blood to get money for survival. After struggling with poverty, homelessness and living from hand to mouth, Chris eventually secured a decent job where he rose through the ladders and eventually set up his own company for stock broking.
The American Winter
The American Winter clearly depicts the precariousness of the American economy for the many of its citizens who refuse to distinguish between a non-deserving and deserving poor. The documentary was filmed in Portland Oregon over the winter of between 2011 and 2012. The film clearly and emotionally documents the stories and versions of eight families displaying the proliferation of an average low wage work and the human costs of safety nets that have been frayed. Most of these families never in their lives imagined that they would in situations where they would need support to pull through rough times and finding that the much needed support is just not there. One of the stories is of a man who loses his job and his wife has to support him plus their three children on her minimum wage salary. They in one time lost electricity and heat in the winter so as to pay the mortgage. A story is also told of an aging accountant who is sadly laid off from work and struggles to care for his son who suffers from Downs Syndrome, he is now faced with a situation of losing his sole asset; a ranch which would provide a future for his son. Another story is of a college educated woman who was laid off and has to sell scrap metals and donate plasma in order to support her family. Featured also is a story of a woman whose husband suddenly dies. She and her son cannot keep their home so they are forced to sleep in their car and garage before they ended up in a shelter. These and many stories are told of Americans struggling with modern age poverty.
The three movies described, portrays poverty in its actual snare. From the older times as depicted in Grapes of Wrath where many migrant families struggled with economic hardships as well as poverty to the early 1980’s where a story of a young man is told of his struggles with homelessness, unemployment and poverty to the modern age and time where we encounter eight families grappling with economic hardships. In the movie Pursuit of Happyness, Chris represents a new class and breed of Americans called the working poor. These are people or families working with no sufficient wages to maintain their households consistently. They actually live from paycheck to paycheck. The film Grapes of Wrath clearly captures the tribulations encountered by the okies, it captures reality on a more spiritual point of view and focuses on socialists sentiment of “one big soul” but also captures the economic hardships as something larger and maybe more palatable to the audience of America.
Now to the bigger question, how can America solve its social problems? Progress has been made in solving certain social problems like providing food stamps for people who are poor (Crone, pg64). However, can more be done? Poverty experienced by many families is primarily caused by the larger social patterns of unemployment. Looking at a broader perspective, employment alone cannot solve the poverty problem. Probably there are different groups of poor people. There are some who are plain lazy and don’t want to work. Another group is of those who are poor but have jobs that pay below the average poverty line. Such people live from paycheck to paycheck and are still poor. There is another group of the poor consisting of people who cannot work like the disabled, children and elderly.
To solve the problem of poverty in America, a number of steps that are hum...