Gimme Shelter

Hans Munevar
ESL 025-01
Prof. Vaccaro
1/30/2014

NJ.COM ARTICLE REFLECTION
Summary:
“ Gimme Shelter” was filmed in mean streets of Newark. The actress Vanessa Hudgens is a pregnant teenager homeless in NJ, with a drug-riddled mother. Her father who abandoned her and armed with only a return address she goes in search. Vanessa Hudgens has been trying to move past her teen vogue image with this new film.

Reaction: The article was short but summarizes the fine. such as registry changes Vanessa Hudgens actress in this new film titled "Gimme Shelter" in which I liked as the actress is working on a hard role to play a young pregnant homeless.

Vocabulary Words:
Compelling --- arousing or denoting strong interest, esp admiring
Kids in ragged clothes and torn sneakers, their hands stuffed deep into the pockets of worn hoodies — when they're not holding a cup, begging for spare change. Runaway kids. Throwaway kids.
Maybe you give them a dollar or two. Maybe you grumble that they'd have money if they only got a job, didn't spend it on tattoos, got off drugs. Maybe you don't even see them anymore.
"Gimme Shelter" wants to make you see.
It's both based on real events and places (including Jersey activist Kathy DiFiore's Several Sources Shelters) and told with the occasional, over-earnest attitude of a sermon. But it also features two real performances, and delivers a common but compelling story.
Vanessa Hudgens is Agnes, now self-styled as "Apple," a teenager with no real home, a drug-riddled mom and a pregnancy. Armed with only a return address she goes in search of the father who - himself a teenager at the time — abandoned her even before her
But it already shows signs of the actress Hudgens was interested in becoming, and her skill at walking that razor-sharp line between tender/tough, innocent/guilty.
The rest of the film, though, is more hit/miss.
Rosario Dawson gives a scarily intense performance as Hudgens' ravaged mother, but a rather pale and puffy Brendan Fraser looks too old to be playing her birth father, a character who - according to the math, anyway -- should be in his pampered mid-30s.
And while it's always good to see James Earl Jones, here playing a priest — and a bit of a relief to see a movie clergyman who isn't a hypocrite or a molester — the movie's upbeat message seems one-sided. (Although, for example, it's not surprising that abortion isn't seen as an option for Apple — DiFiore, and her approach, is staunchly Catholic — it is odd that adoption is never mentioned.)
Give credit to Hudgens, though, for trying to reinvent herself (although it would be nice to see a route out of teen stardom that didn't always detour through sleaze and sex). And credit to the film itself for occasionally moving past its blinkered optimism to put some real streets, and streety kids — many of them playing themselves — on screen.
Because most of us don't see them. And we need