Matching Jack

“Peggy Cleary may be a tougher film critic than Roger Ebert.

The Fairview Park councilwoman recently completed her second year on the feature screening committee of the Cleveland International Film Festival. Between August and December, she watched about 35 films submitted to the festival, which begins tomorrow and runs through April 3 at Tower City Cinemas in Cleveland.

Of the roughly three dozen films she screened, she recommended three. Two of those three will be shown at the festival.

Cleary and the other screeners, who received DVDs of the films at their homes, gave the movies a letter grade and wrote reviews that were forwarded to the directors.

The films that receive recommendations from two of three reviewers were forwarded to festival directors for final approval.

Peggy Cleary recommended…

“Matching Jack”

Directed by Nadia Tass

103 minutes

Screening times: 7:35 p.m. March 31; 9:15 a.m. April 1; 4:25 p.m., April 2

In this Australian film, two successful parents learn their only child, Jack, has leukemia. When Jack is hospitalized, the father turns his even sicker roommate’s bed into a sea-faring vessel and tells Irish tales to cheer them up. When the mother discovers her husband had cheated years earlier, she sees it as an opportunity to find a bone marrow donor for her son. “It reminded me of “Life Is Beautiful,” Cleary said, referring to the 1997 film in which Roberto Benigni won the Oscar for best actor as the father who tells cheerful, imaginative stories to make a Nazi concentration camp bearable for his son. “It was just a very compelling story.

– WestLife Paper

link: www.westlife.northcoastnow.com