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'12 Angry Men': Classic Movie is Teaching Tool on How to Deal with Prejudice

An "alternative education" program for school drop-outs in Pennsylvania is using the movie classic "12 Angry Men" to teach students how to think critically and to deliberate like a jury, according to the Times Leader.

Each student reads one juror’s part, while the teacher adds the stage direction. Anyone who has participated in a frustrating political discussion, and seeks insight into the psychological dynamics, or an online debate and wants to imagine what it would be like in real life ought to see the 1957 classic about jury deliberations in a murder trial and how "reasonable doubts" are developed. It's a psychological thriller. As The New York Times noted in its original review:

"One of the Jurors, #3 (Lee J. Cobb), a bullying self-made man, has estranged himself from his own son. Juror #7 (Jack Warden) has an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a lesser extent, does Juror #6 (Edward Binns). Jurors #10 (Ed Begley) and #11 (George Voskovec), so certain of the infallibility of the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested, he must be guilty. Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall) is an advocate of dispassionate deductive reasoning. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman), like the defendant a product of 'the streets,' hopes that his guilty vote will distance himself from his past. Juror #12 (Robert Webber), an advertising man, doesn't understand anything that he can't package and market. And Jurors #1 (Martin Balsam), #2 (John Fiedler) and #9 (Joseph Sweeney), anxious not to make waves, 'go with the flow.' "

It's up to Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda, to persuade "the weary jurors to re-examine the evidence."

Movies About 9-11 and Terrorism War Aim to Inform, Disturb

There are now at least three movies about the war on terrorism, one specifically about September 11. The release of United 93, about the flight that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on that fateful morning, follows The War Within, about the psychological war within both Islam and the West, and the British docudrama The Hamburg Cell, about the hijackers, led by Mohammed Atta, as they plotted to easily bypass American security.

  'United 93' was made, filmmakers say, to "pay tribute to the ordinary people who boarded United 93 at Newark Airport that bright morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and sacrificed their lives to spare others," according to the New York Daily News. While the movie was filmed with the cooperation of family members, the reaction of family members of the victims who died on September 11 has been decidedly mixed, according to The New York Times.

'The War Within' is about a Pakistani student in Paris who is apprehended by Americans as a suspected terrorist, sent home and tortured, and three years later makes his way into the United States. The psychological tension of the movie is whether he will follow his good moderate Islamic friend and seek the American Dream, or become a jihadist and suicide bomber. There's a fascinating interview with the filmmakers on the official website.

'The Hamburg Cell' uses facts from the trial of an alleged collaborator in the cell of hijackers in Hamburg to spin psychological profiles of the terrorists. It is "a devastatingly powerful work that puts faces and personalities to the men who carried out the attacks," according to a synopsis in a British Films Catalogue.

For some viewers, it's still too early to watch the films with dispassion. Some accuse 'United 93' of making heroes out of ordinary people caught in tragic circumstances. Others have accused the makers of 'The War Within' and 'The Hamburg Cell' of humanizing and therefore making heroes out of the terrorists.

Release of Movie About New Orleans Jazz Heritage: Good Timing?

The film "Make It Funky!" recently opened with a benefit screening at the Mann Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. It's a documentary about New Orleans' jazz heritage. Director-producer Michael Murphy expects the film to get more attention because of Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous aftermath. Murphy, whose family goes back four generations in New Orleans, told The Los Angeles Times: "Normally when a film is coming out, you do everything you can to get publicity. Here, I want to make sure I get the message right."

• Rent "Make It Funky" from Netflix (Free when you join Netflix and enter code: Friend63.)

Documentary on 'Bush's Brain' Hits Bonanza in New Controversy

The political troubles of Bush advisor Karl Rove are great news for the producers of "Bush's Brain," a documentary about Rove produced for last year's election season. If Rove, to use a phrase from the Watergate era, "twists slowly, slowly in the wind" with an extended controversy, it will be great for sales of the DVD. Rove is accused of "outing" a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's criticism of the Bush Administration's Iraq war plans.