Maybe it's because there's a devoted grade-school teacher in my family, but I'm a pushover for good movies about great educators. I'm not embarrassed to admit that The Ron Clark Story (Sunday, Aug. 13, at 8 pm on TNT) choked me up several times on its shamelessly manipulative way toward an inspiring ending.
This fact-based drama stars Matthew Perry, naturally charming and thoroughly convincing, as young Mr. Clark, who leaves North Carolina for the challenge of teaching in Harlem. His improbable goal: to raise the all-important test scores for the lowest-ranking class in an inner-city grade school.
"Nobody wants them and I do, so what's the problem?" he argues to the skeptical principal. (Turns out he isn't considered too white, but too nice.) Thus begins the earnest but entertainin
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Question: Are you familiar with a movie about Shangri-La? The hero crashes in the mountains and is rescued by the natives, then falls in love with a young lady who can't leave the valley without death by old age overtaking her. It was definitely from the black-and-white era. Thank you. Answer: That would be Lost Horizon, based on James Hilton's perennially popular novel about a hidden paradise somewhere in the Himalayas. The hitch, because there always is one, is that the natives of the magnificent, peaceful Valley of the Blue Moon can't leave. Since you clearly remember the film being in black and white, you saw the glorious 1937 version directed by Frank Capra and starring Ronald Colman,
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