Staff and students at a rural school react to a warning of an imminent nuclear attack, not knowing whether it is real or a mistake.Staff and students at a rural school react to a warning of an imminent nuclear attack, not knowing whether it is real or a mistake.Staff and students at a rural school react to a warning of an imminent nuclear attack, not knowing whether it is real or a mistake.
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Did you know
- TriviaWilliam Daniels' film debut.
- GoofsWhen Mrs. Forbes takes the toy cannon off the play fort & buries it in the sand box, the fort has a flag on it. However, when she goes to put the man & woman with a child on top of the fort just seconds later, the flag is gone.
Featured review
A quiet nightmare loomed in an enervating, champion film.
Surely this packed a hell of a punch in its theatrical release. It remains quite penetrating today, if chiefly as a Cold War time capsule, and a fast-fading memory of a gentler, though increasingly tumultuous America in the early stages of multi-directional change.
LADYBUG, LADYBUG is a deftly machinated picture, and clearly a vest-pocket project born of much heart and personal investment(rarely are films of this type made as big boxoffice prospectives). The largely no-name cast does a spectacular job, the children especially so...they are all in top form, with a few in particular providing some of the finest juvenile dramatic performances of that decade. With a methodically weak pulse, LADYBUG imagines the anxiety and dread of a single day when the students and faculty of a public grade school are erroneously led to believe that a nuclear missile attack may be expeditiously imminent. A group of students are chaperoned home on-foot by a teacher...it's a tense walk, and all the while they do their best to keep each other calm, each straining to maintain an abstemious bravado and composure. Particular focus is placed on a girl and boy just entering puberty, and the awkward apprehension of their nascent mutual attraction...those first pangs of romantic/sexual interest in (generally) the opposite sex which are so confusing, so exciting, and so soon forgotten. The denouement is bitterly heartbreaking, and alleged to have foothold in a true-life tragedy.
Uniquely horrifying in a plaintive, almost fragile way, it enjoins in sotto-voce the eternal, immutable call for peace on Earth...a call, as yet, unheeded.
8.5/10...a film to preserve for posterity, as much for its stinging hindsight as its urgent cautionary gravity.
LADYBUG, LADYBUG is a deftly machinated picture, and clearly a vest-pocket project born of much heart and personal investment(rarely are films of this type made as big boxoffice prospectives). The largely no-name cast does a spectacular job, the children especially so...they are all in top form, with a few in particular providing some of the finest juvenile dramatic performances of that decade. With a methodically weak pulse, LADYBUG imagines the anxiety and dread of a single day when the students and faculty of a public grade school are erroneously led to believe that a nuclear missile attack may be expeditiously imminent. A group of students are chaperoned home on-foot by a teacher...it's a tense walk, and all the while they do their best to keep each other calm, each straining to maintain an abstemious bravado and composure. Particular focus is placed on a girl and boy just entering puberty, and the awkward apprehension of their nascent mutual attraction...those first pangs of romantic/sexual interest in (generally) the opposite sex which are so confusing, so exciting, and so soon forgotten. The denouement is bitterly heartbreaking, and alleged to have foothold in a true-life tragedy.
Uniquely horrifying in a plaintive, almost fragile way, it enjoins in sotto-voce the eternal, immutable call for peace on Earth...a call, as yet, unheeded.
8.5/10...a film to preserve for posterity, as much for its stinging hindsight as its urgent cautionary gravity.
- EyeAskance
- Sep 17, 2003
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 22 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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