May Film Club

Hey everyone!  Happy May to you all!
Thanks to everyone who was able to come out for our screening of First Man, we had a good turnout and a nice (albeit short) discussion afterwards.  And those of you who bring food all the time, there aren't enough thanks that do you justice.
For the month of May, I've decided to show a film you may not have heard of, since it was a small release, but it is an expertly executed thriller and a gripping film.  We will be watching Steven Knight's Locke.

Locke is a 2013 British-American drama film written and directed by Steven Knight.  The film stars Tom Hardy in the title role, the only character seen on screen, as he holds a total of 36 speakerphone conversations with characters voiced by Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, Tom Holland and Bill Milner.  The film received critical acclaim, particularly for Hardy's performance.  The film currently holds a 90% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Glenn Kenny, writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "With the exception of its opening shot, which shows its title character getting into his tricked-out BMW, the movie is a one-man show that takes place as the title character is taking a long, fateful drive.  The camera doesn't always stay in the car, but it's with Locke for the whole drive  We hear voices of others, but we don't see anyone else.  The self-imposed minimalism of the conceit challenges Knight to make a compelling cinematic work.  And it challenges the actor playing the title character more.  Fortunately, the actor is Tom Hardy, and boy does he do a job with his unusual, and unusually complex character.  In the end, Locke is a cinematic stunt that engrosses as it unspools, and pays dividends after it's been accomplished."

I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I hope you will as well.  We will be meeting Thursday, May 16th at 6:15pm.  Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyoO35P41YM

April Film Club

Hey everybody!

A great big thank you to everyone who was able to come out for Michael Collins last month.  We had a great crowd and some good (albeit short) discussion following the film. Oh, and as always, a great amount of food!  Thank you again, you make my job too easy.

For the month of April I will be following the tradition of playing whatever I feel like playing, without necessarily having a theme.  It's my birthday month, so it's usually just a wild card option, but, since this year is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 1969, to commemorate that historic, and monumental achievement, I've decided to play Damien Chazelle's First Man.

First Man is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Damien Chazelle and written by Josh Singer.  Based on the book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, the film stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, alongside Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Ciaran Hinds, Christopher Abbot, Patrick Fugit, and Lucas Haas, and follows the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969.  The film received critical praise, particularly regarding the direction, Gosling and Foy's performances, musical score, and the Moon landing sequence.

While the film was considered a commercial disappointment, grossing only $105 million against its $59 million production budget, it did nevertheless receive numerous award nominations and wins.  At the 91st Academy Awards it won for Best Visual Effects, along with nominations for Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Production Design.   It holds an 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Matt Zoeller Seitz, writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "If you want to get an almost first-person sense of what it felt like to fly in one of the earliest supersonic planes or ride a rocket into orbit and beyond, "First Man" is the movie to see.  It makes the experience seem more wild and scary than grand, like being in the cab of a runaway truck as it smashes through a guardrail and tumbles down the side of a mountain.  Even when "First Man" stumbles as historical psychodrama, it still represents a giant leap forward for movies about the physical experience of flight.  I wouldn't call the test piloting and bastoff-and-orbit scenes artful, exactly-there's little poetry in the images-but I don't think they're aiming for that.  They're about single-mindedly putting you inside Neil Armstrong's body and brain pan, and giving you a sense of how hard it must have been to focus, work out equations and flip switches with all that noise battering the senses.  There might be a brief moment of beauty or peace, along with a sidelong glimpses through a window of the blue earth, the grey white moon, or the blackness of space, but that's generally all the aesthetic pleasure they get-and maybe all they can handle.  They expend most of their mental energy studying the instrument panels in front of them and trying to process the information that's being fed through their headsets by mission control, knowing that one missed fact for wrong choice could mean their deaths."

We will be meeting Thursday, April 18th at 6:15pm.

I hope you can make it out to this wonderful, intense, and deeply moving film about an American hero and mankind's unstoppable curiosity and ingenuity.

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSoRx87OO6k

March Film Club

Hey everybody!

Thank you to everyone who made it out for La La Land, we had a good group, good discussion and of course, great food!
For the month of March, I've decided to continue the trend of the past few years of showing something Irish in honor of St. Patrick's Day, so for this month, we will be watching Neil Jordan's Michael Collins.

Michael Collins is a 1996 historical biopic written and directed by Neil Jordan and starring Liam Neeson as Michael Collins, the Irish patriot and revolutionary who died in the Irish Civil War.  It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.  The film opens in the closing years of Britain’s rule over Ireland from its base in Dublin Castle, when Irish Republicans fight for Irish independence against Britain and its military and police forces.  With a budget of $25 million, with 10-12% from the Irish Film Board, it was one of the most expensive films ever produced in Ireland.  While filming, the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire caused the film’s release to be delayed from June to December.

The film currently has a score of 77% on Rotten Tomatoes from 47 reviews.  It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.  Robert Ebert gave the film 3/4 stars saying this in his review, “Michael Collins paints a heroic picture of the Irish Republican Army’s inspired strategist and military leader, who fought the British Empire to a standstill and invented the techniques of urban guerrilla warfare that shaped revolutionary struggles all over the world.  Played by Liam Neeson in a performance charged with zest and conviction, Collins comes across as a clear-sighted innovator who took the IRA as far as it could reasonably hope to go.  Collins was arguably the key figure in the struggles that led to the separation of Ireland and Britain.  He was also, on the basis of this film, a man able to use violence without becoming intoxicated by it.  The film argues that if he had prevailed Ireland might eventually have been united, and many lives might have been saved.  We will never know.  But De Valera was right.  History has judged Collins at his expense.”

We will be meeting Thursday, Mar. 21st at 6:15pm.  Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb0BCqgMPmo

February Film Club

Hey everybody!  Happy February to you all.  Hopefully the cold weather isn't here for much longer because I've about had enough.

Thank you to everyone who came out for The Matrix, we had a good turnout, great discussion and of course, great food!

For the month of February I've decided to show a romance movie, and not only a romance, but a musical romance.  We will be watching Damien Chazelle's wonderful La La Land.

La La Land is a 2016 American romantic musical film written and directed by Damien Chazelle.  It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles while pursuing their dreams.  Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together.  Moving  to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle wrote the screenplay but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design.  Following the success of his 2014 film Whiplash, the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment.

La La Land was critically praised, especially for Chazelle’s screenplay and direction, Gosling and Stone’s performances, Hurwitz’s musical score, musical numbers, cinematography, and production values.  It won every category for which it was nominated at the 74th Golden Globes Awards.  It also received 14 nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, tying the record for the most Oscar nominations with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997).  It went on to win for Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Production Design.  It currently holds a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Brian Tallerico writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, “It’s easy to let the world get you down sometimes...It’s easy to think that dreams don’t come true, and that love only exists in movies. La La Land serves to remind us that movies can still be magical, and they can still provide the channel for us to see magic in the world around us.  It’s not so much another day in the sun, as the characters sing in that opening number, but the dreams of the night before, the ones we wake up and try to fulfill, that keep us dancing.”

I hope you can join us for this excellent film!  Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdqf4P9MB8

January Film Club

Happy New Year everybody!

Sorry for the late update again, I actually had this all done a week ago but forgot to do the blog.  I'll get this back on track next time, haha.  Anyway, thank you to everyone who was able to come out and celebrate Christmas with us, we had fun watching Die Hard.  Thank you to everyone who brought snacks to share, it was a regular smorgasbord as usual.

For the month of January I've decided to show one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time.  This year is actually the 20th anniversary of this film but since it was released in March of 1999, and I usually save March for something Irish themed, I figured we could start off the year with it instead.  This month's selection is none other than The Matrix.

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by The Wachowskis and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.  It depicts a future in which reality as perceived by humans is not quite what it seems.  Cyber-criminal and computer programmer Neo learns the truth and is drawn into a rebellion against the forces that work against the humans.  The Matrix is known for popularizing a visual effect known as “bullet time”, in which the heightened perception of certain characters is represented by allowing the action within a shot to progress in slow-motion while the camera moves at normal speed.  The film is an example of the cyberpunk sub-genre and contains numerous reference to philosophical and religious ideas.

The film holds an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert awarded it 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "It's great looking, both in its design and in the kinetic energy that powers it.  It uses flawlessly integrated special effects and animation to visualize regions of cyberspace.  It uses f/x to allow its characters to run horizontally on walls, and hang in the air long enough to deliver karate kicks.  It has leaps through space, thrilling sequences involving fights on rooftops, helicopter rescues and battles over mind control.  And it has performances that find the right notes.  Keanu Reeves goes for the impassive Harrison Ford approach, "acting" as little as possible, and Laurence Fishburne finds a balance between action hero and Zen master.  The Matrix did not bore me.  It interested me so much, indeed, that I wanted to challenged even more."

As I said, this is one of my favorite Sci-Fi films with lots of great ideas and wonderful special effects.  It's just an enjoyable film overall, and I hope you can make it out.

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8e-FF8MsqU

December Film Club

Hey everyone!

A big thank you to everyone who came out last month for All Quiet on the Western Front, we had a great conversation afterwards (and as always, great food!)

For December I've decided to continue my trend of non-traditional Christmas movies and show one of my absolute favorite Christmas films, John McTiernan's Die Hard

Die Hard is a 1988 American action thriller film.  It was directed by John McTiernan, and written by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart.  The film follows off-duty New York City Police officer John McClane (Bruce Willis) who is caught in a Los Angeles skyscraper during a heist led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman).   It is based on Roderick Throp’s 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever.  Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to shoot the film as a sequel to his 1985 action film Commando, and Fox reluctantly gave the role to Willis, then known as a comedic television actor.  Made for $28 million, Die Hard grossed over $140 million worldwide, with the film turning Willis into an action star, and became a metonym for an action film in which a lone hero fights overwhelming odds.  The Film’s success created the Die Hard franchise, which includes four sequels, a number of video games, and a comic book, and in 2017 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.  Die Hard has been named on of the best action and Christmas-themed films ever made.  It currently holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and David Kehr, writing for the Chicago Tribune the year the film was released, said this in his review, “Though Willis is still a bit pale and TV-tentative, the slack is more than taken up by Alan Rickman, a British stage actor who, in his movie debut as the chief terrorist, creates a classic villain.  Small, slinky and well-spoken, Rickman’s Hans Gruber has the silkiness of Claude Rains and the smiling dementia of “Gilda’s” George Macready.  As directed by John McTiernan, it turns out to be something more-the archetypical action movie of the ‘80s, the perfection of the form.  Sleekly engineered, impeccably staged and shrewdly dosed with humor and sentiment."

We will be meeting next Thursday, the 20th at 6:15pm.  Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TQ-pOvI6Xo

November Film Club

Hello everyone!

So sorry for the SUPER late update for Film Club, but here goes.  First, thank you to everyone who came out for Horror Fest, once again you've all outdone yourselves, we had a great time and watched some fun scary, alien themed movies.  Thank you for making my job so easy.

On to November.
For the month of November I've decided to show a war film in honor of Veteran's Day (something we've been doing the past couple years now).  But, this year is also the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that led to stopping the hostilities of WWI.  So, for this very special Veteran's Day I've decided to show Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American epic pre-code war film based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name.  Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.  It opened to wide acclaim in the United States.  Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, it made the American Film Institute’s first 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998.  A decade later, after the same organization polled over 1,500 workers in the creative community, All Quiet on the Western Front was ranked the seventh best American epic film.  In 1990, the film was selected and preserved by the United States Library of Congress’ National Film Registry as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”  All Quiet on the Western Front received tremendous praise in the United States.  The film was the first to win the Academy Award for both Outstanding Production and Best Director.  The film currently holds a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Irene Thirer, writing for New York Daily News in the year the film was released, said this in her review, “All Quiet on the Western Front depicts a war which is wild, mad, raging with fight.  Universal’s audible screen production of Erich Maria Remarque’s sensational best seller, is so magnificent, so powerful, that it hardly behooves mere words to tell of its heart-rending appeal, of its dramatic fire, its breath-taking battle shots in which men stab and kill each other, for the glory of war.  It is not only a great motion picture because it has been built firmly and consistently upon the plot of a great book: It smacks of directional genius-nothing short of this; sensitive performances by a marvelous cast and the most remarkable camera work which has been performed on either silent or sound screen, round about the Hollywood studios.”

I hope you will be able to come out and join us for this wonderful, harrowing film!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grapXipP3fM