Word: preciousness
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Because the early screening of Precious came with a warning from the publicist to bring tissues, I fully expected to be a goner. Yet there I sat dry-eyed through all of Lee Daniels' screen adaptation of Sapphire's celebrated 1997 novel Push. The movie has the kind of authenticity and ugly immediacy that make the tears of a viewer sitting in the dark safety of a movie theater seem a little silly - indulgent even...
That's not to say there is a lack of compelling emotional material in the story of Claireece Precious Jones, an obese and pregnant teenager whose life so far has been filled with nothing but unrelenting private abuse and systemic public neglect. But to be the moviegoer sniveling over Precious' miseries seemed akin to being the bystander engaging in histrionics at the scene of a train wreck instead of trying to do something, anything. (See the top 10 movies...
...Precious' case, having been invisible to the world for most of her life, she would like to be heard, and it is of enormous credit to Gabourey Sidibe - an unknown actress making her screen debut - that we feel an obligation to catch every confusing piece of dialect or distorted sentence out of Precious' mouth. Sidibe speaks in a soft mutter - not always intelligible but warm and highly addictive. The story is set in 1987, in Harlem, and in the movie's first minutes, Precious - having been held back many times before - is in a junior high math class, projecting...
...contradiction awakens the first of many mysteries. If Precious likes math, why not open the book? Daniels, his screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and Sidibe have made Precious more enigmatic than her literary creator did. Sapphire drops two major bombshells in the book's first sentence, but we're kept mostly in the dark during the film's early scenes. We learn only that Precious is pregnant - for a second time - much to the disgust of her principal, Mrs. Lichenstein (Nealla Gordon), who tosses her out of school. (See pictures of the youngest best actress nominees...
...million, first weekend 2. A Christmas Carol, $22.3 million; $63.3 million second week 3. The Men Who Stare at Goats, $6.2 million; $22.4 million, second week 4. Precious, $6.1 million; $8.9 million, second week 5. Michael Jackson's This Is It, $5.1 million; $68.2 million, third week 6. The Fourth Kind, $4.7 million; $20.6 million, second week 7. Couples Retreat, $4.3 million; $102.1 million, sixth week 8. Paranormal Activity, $4.2 million; $103.8 million, eighth week 9. Law Abiding Citizen, $3.9 million; $67.3 million, fifth week 10. The Box, $3.2 million; $13.2 million, second week...