The Final Cut

February 15, 2022
Who could guess that making a 10-minute film would plunge a group of seventh graders into a whirl of dirty politics, in school and beyond? Playing his latest largely for laughs, Markell stocks Saint Anselm's Academy, a Brooklyn school for gifted students, with an entertaining array of moneyed fashionistas, budding social radicals, and other middle-grade archetypes--including the obsessed gamers from his The Game Masters of Garden Place (2018)--and inserts the customary gags about school lunches and teachers (hip or otherwise) amid plenty of rapid banter. Film studies may be nowhere near Alex Davis' first choice for an elective, but being grouped with dazzling A-lister Priti Sharma and secretive superhacker Theo Schatten (a creepily pale new kid) to create a video contest entry transforms his dismay into enthusiasm...and then back to dismay when someone makes repeated attempts to destroy their work (a satiric mashup of a school tour and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). Why? As it turns out, an antagonistic teacher, an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, and a corrupt politician have their reasons. Overall, though the shenanigans add suspense, they play second fiddle to Alex's experience of filmmaking as a mix of collaboration, compromise, and creativity, not to mention his getting schooled in local politics, cybercrime, and areas related to gender where he could be more self-aware. Alex reads as White; the supporting cast reflects the ethnic diversity of the setting. A heady romp, fun and scary in turn, with just deserts dealt all round. (Fiction. 10-14)

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February 14, 2022
Brooklynite Alexander Davis seeks to engineer a fresh start for seventh grade at affluent Saint Anselm’s, embracing a new look and nickname, and hoping to get into a coveted elective class on video game theory. But when Alex, who reads as white, ends up in film studies, he’s partnered with popular Priti Sharma, of Indian descent, and pale-skinned, tech-security obsessed Theo Schatten to produce a film and compete in the school’s 50th anniversary Golden Reel film festival. Soon, sabotage threatens to derail the filming of their movie as well as construction of a local building development that Alex’s building commissioner father is overseeing. The group scrambles to uncover the source, suspecting a rival teacher’s film students, local citizens who want to preserve the neighborhood, and a local politician. Didactically rendered social justice lessons sometimes take an awkward tone in Markell’s (The Ghost in Apartment 2R) otherwise humorously told mystery, but plenty of snappy dialogue and reluctant camaraderie make for an appealing neighborhood caper. Ages 10–up. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary.