December Film Club

Hey everybody, thank you to everyone who made it out to Drive last month.
Sorry, this is so last minute, but I was having a hard time deciding what to show this month because I wanted it to be a Christmas themed movie and I kind of exhausted my knowledge of Christmas movies over the past couple of years.  Truth be told I don't really watch them, or enjoy watching them, so I had to seek some outside help.  I decided to show a film that was recommended by multiple people: Christmas in Connecticut.

We will be meeting at the regular time of 6:15pm this coming Thursday, Dec. 18th.  Hope you can make it!

November Film Club

Well, what do you know?  It's November already.  A huge, giant, thank you to everybody who came out to Horror Fest last week, it was a complete blast and I can't wait for next year!

On to business.  For the month of November, I generally try to find a film that has some connection to Thanksgiving, but I decided to forego that because there really aren't A LOT of good films that take place during Thanksgiving.  Instead, I decided to screen one of my favorite films of recent years. This month, (Thursday, November 20th at 6:15pm) we will be watching Nicholas Winding Refn's, Drive.  A film that is as beautiful as it is haunting.

Drive is a 2011 American neo-noir arthouse crime thriller directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks.  It is adapted from the 2005 James Sallis novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Hossein Amini.

Like the book, the film is about an unnamed Hollywood stunt performer (played by Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver.  Prior to its September 2011 release, it had been shown at a number of film festivals.  At the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Drive was praised and received a standing ovation.  Winding Refn won the festival's Best Director Award for the film.  Reviews from critics have been positive, with many drawing comparisons to work from previous eras.

The film currently holds a 93% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 235 critical reviews.

Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 1/2 out of 4 stars saying this of the film, "As played by Ryan Gosling, he is in the tradition of two iconic heroes of the 1960s: Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name and Alain Delon in Le Samourai.  He has no family, no history and seemingly few emotions.  Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface.  He is an existential hero, I suppose, defined entirely by his behavior.  That would qualify him as the hero of a mindless action picture, all CGI and crashes and mayhem.  Drive is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep.  Sometimes a movie will make a greater impact by not trying too hard.  The enigma of the driver is surrounded by a rich gallery of supporting actors who are clear about their hopes and fears, and who have either reached an accommodation with the driver, or not.  Here is still another illustration of the old Hollywood noir principle that a movie lives its life not through its hero, but within its shadows."

I love Nicolas Winding Refn as a director and I love this film especially.  You will not want to miss this film.  Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWX34ShfcsE

4th Annual Crete Library Horror Fest

Before I get down to business, I would like to thank everyone that came out for Good Morning Vietnam, we had a good turn out for our little tribute to the work of Robin Williams.

I can't believe it's almost October.  This year has FLOWN by.  We've watched a lot of great films and I think this year has been the best yet for post-film discussions.  Now, on to business.  There's something we do here at the Crete Library every October to get into the Halloween mood.  Those of you who are familiar will know that I'm talking about the Annual Crete Library Horror Fest.  This is the 4th year that film club has hosted the Horror Fest and I aim to maintain the level of horror excellence we've brought in the past years.  The way I've structured Horror Fest is as follows:  We will be meeting on two separate nights, Wednesday, Oct. 29th and Thursday, Oct 30th at 5pm.  We will be watching a total of 4 horror movies over those two days.  Not only will we be watching some films, but there will be plenty of candy/snacks, possibly pizza, soda, etc.  I'm also thinking some horror trivia, WITH PRIZES!  If the past years are any indication, I think we're going to have a lot of fun with this.

Anyway, here's the lineup so you can plan accordingly:

Wednesday, Oct. 29th

5:00pm-28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02qibJJ0OvE

















7:00pm-REC directed by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGJ_jPKOj1c


















Thursday, Oct. 30th


5:00pm- The Descent directed by Neil Marshall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhZj0Q9rq9E
















7:00pm- Ju-On directed by Takashi Shimizu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sicuc0XH-K8
















Horror Fest is one of my favorite things to host at the library and I can only do it with your support.  As long as you guys keep coming, we can keep this tradition alive!  So, I hope you can make it out for some horror movie fun, let's make this the best Horror Fest yet!

September Film Club

GOOOOOOOOOD MORNING INTERNET!!!

First, let me start by thanking all of you who came out to our Neo-noir Film Series (I believe some of you may have come to every single film!), that was awesome, you guys are awesome.  I wish every single week was like the film series, a new film every week, it would be spectacular, unfortunately that isn't how it goes.  But, enough gloominess, I have an announcement to make!  I come with news of a new film, (gasp!) that's right folks, you heard me correctly, this isn't a joke, this is the real deal!  On Thursday, Sept. 18th at 6:15pm, as something of a small tribute to Robin Williams, we will be watching Barry Levinson's excellent film: Good Morning Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam is a 1987 American war comedy film written by Mitch Markowitz and directed by Barry Levinson.  Set in Saigon in 1965, during the Vietnam War, the film stars Robin Williams as a radio DJ on Armed Forces Radio Service, who proves hugely popular with the troops, but infuriates his superiors with what they call his "irreverent tendency".  The story is loosely based on the experiences of AFRS radio DJ Adrian Cronauer.  Most of Williams' radio broadcasts were improvised.  Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

The film holds an 89% "Certified Fresh Rating" on Rotten Tomatoes.  Roger Ebert awarded the film 4/4 stars saying,

 "Williams' best movies are the one where he is given a well-written character to play and held to the character by a strong director.  In his other movies, you can see him trying to do his stand-up act on the screen, trying to use comedy to conceal not only himself from the audience-but even his character.  The one-liners and ad-libs distance him from the material and from his fellow actors.  What is inspired about "Good Morning Vietnam" which contains far and away the best work Williams has ever done in a movie, is that his own tactics are turned against him.  The director, Barry Levinson, has created a character who is a stand-up comic, he's a fast talking disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio during the Vietnam War, directing a nonstop monologue at the microphone.  There is absolutely no biographical information about this character.  We don't know where he comes from, what he did before the war, whether he has ever been married, what his dreams are, what he's afraid of.  Everything in his world is reduced to material for his program.  But while he's assaulting the microphone, Levinson is doing something fairly subtle in the movie around him.  He has populated "Good Morning Vietnam" with a lot of character actors who are fairly complicated types, recognizably human, and with the aid of the script they set a trap for Williams.  His character is edged into a corner where he must have human emotions, or die."

Hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mJoHqmtFcQ

Neo-noir Film #6: L.A. Confidential

Good day good people!  Well, here we are at last, the final film of our summer neo-noir film series.  Last week we witnessed Roman Polanski's noir masterpiece, Chinatown, and I don't want to let you guys down so I decided to finish up the series with another entry that just oozes film noir greatness.  Made some 23 years after Chinatown, but in a very similar vein and setting, we come to Curtis Hanson's beautiful homage to the genre: LA Confidential.

L.A. Confidential is a 1997 neo-noir detective film based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series.  Like the book, the film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in the year 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity.  The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.  The film adaptation was produced and directed by Curtis Hanson and co-written by Hanson and Brian Helgeland.

Critically acclaimed, the film holds a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as an aggregated rating of 90 on Metacritic.  It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two:  Kim Basinger for Supporting Actress and Hanson and Helgeland for Best Adapted Screenplay; it lost every other category to Titanic.

Roger Ebert awarded the film 4/4 stars and later added it to his list of Great Movies and said this of the film, "L.A. Confidential is described as film noir, and so it is, but it is more: unusually for a crime film, it deals with the psychology of the characters...It contains all the elements of police action, but in a sharply clipped, more economical style; the action exists not for itself but to provide an arena for the personalities.  The dialogue is lovely; not the semi-parody of a lot of film noir, but the words of serious people trying to reveal or conceal themselves.  And when all of the threads are pulled together at the end, you really have to marvel at the way there was a plot after all, and it all makes sense, and it was all right there waiting for someone to discover it."

As I said, this film is a wonderful example of neo-noir made to replicate the feeling of the noirs of old, and it's a fantastic film.  We will be meeting Thursday, Aug. 28th at 6:15pm, hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4XbnrmbEME

Neo-noir Film #5: Chinatown

A big thank you to everyone who was able to make it out to Fargo last week, we had a wonderful turnout!  This week in our Neo-noir series we will be entering into a little different territory.  Until now, just about all of our films were set in somewhat modern settings while employing the themes and techniques reminiscent of Film noir (hence, neo-noir).  This week's film (as well as next week's) fits into the neo-noir category because it was made after 1960, but is set in the late 1930s, when actual Film noir was being made.  Essentially it is a noir period piece.  This film comes to us from 1974, Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir film, directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.  The film was inspired by the California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley.  The Robert Evans production, a Paramount Pictures release, was the director's last film in the United States, and features many elements of film noir, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama.

In 1991 the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and it is frequently listed among the greatest in world cinema.  The 1975 Academy Awards saw it nominated eleven times, with an Oscar going to Robert Towne for Best Original Screenplay.

The film currently holds a 98% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 60 reviews.  Roger Ebert awarded the film 4/4 stars and later added it to his list of Great Movies saying of the film, "Chinatown is not only a great entertainment, but something more, something I would have thought impossible:  It's a 1940s private-eye movie that doesn't depend on nostalgia or camp for its effect, but works because of the enduring strength of the genre itself.  In some respects, this movie actually could have been made in the 1940s.  It accepts its conventions and categories at face value and doesn't make them the object of satire or filter them through a modern sensibility...Here's a private-eye movie in which all the traditions, romantic as they may seem, are left intact."

This film and next weeks film are wonderful examples of neo-noir replicating the feel of actual 1930s and 40s film noir in a way we have not yet seen in our series, and you will not want to miss it.  We will be meeting Thursday, Aug. 21st at 6:15pm, hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

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

Neo-noir Film #4: Fargo

Greetings!  First, allow me a moment to thank everyone who was able to make it to Memento, hopefully you've had some time to think about what happened in the film because at the start of our next meeting there will be a test....ok, that isn't true, but I'm glad you all stuck with it, it can be a somewhat challenging film, but a challenging film is a film that makes you think!  Secondly, I'm here to announce the next title in our Summer Neo-noir film series!  This next film will be the second in our series directed by the masterful Joel and Ethan Coen (who directed our first film Blood Simple).  Fargo is perhaps the one film in our series that somewhat strays from the traditional dark and shadowy style generally found in noir and neo-noir (some others have but not as much), taking place in the blinding white of snowy Minneapolis, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota.  This being said, the film does maintin many of the themes we have seen in our other films in the series: kidnapping, murder, revenge, double crossing, criminal investigations, etc.

Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy crime film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.  It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant Minnesota police chief who investigates a series of local homicides, and William H. Macy as a struggling car salesman who hires two criminals to kidnap his wife.  The film also features Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Harve Presnell, as well as the work of one of my favorite cinematographers in business, Roger Deakins.  The film earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Original Screenplay for the Coens and Best Actress in a Leading Role for McDormand.  In 2006, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and inducted into the United States National Film Registry for preservation, making it one of only five films to be preserved in its first year of eligibility.

Fargo was met with widespread critical acclaim, currently holding a 94% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 84 critics.  Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both named Fargo the best film of 1996.  It was also Ebert's fourth favorite of the 1990s.  He awarded the film 4/4 stars and later added it to his list of Great Movies.  In his original review he said this of the film: "Fargo begins with an absolutely dead-on familiarity with smalltown life in the frigid winter landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota.  Then it rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen....films like Fargo are why I love the movies."

We will be meeting Thursday, Aug. 14th at 6:15pm, hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdOXSEkvO8