January Film Club

 Happy New Year!

Thank you to everyone who made it out last month for The Green Knight, even though I completely forgot to make a blog post or booklet! Hey, there's a baby in my house now, I've been distracted.

Anyway, a new year always brings with it a whole slew of new movies. We will be starting 2026 with Martin Scorsese's After Hours.

After Hours is a 1985 American neo-noir black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Joseph Minion, and produced by Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne, and Robert F. Colesberry. Dunne stars as Paul Hackett, an office worker who experiences a series of misadventures while attempting to make his way home from Manhattan's SoHo district during the night.

After Hours grossed only $10.1 million in the United States, but was given positive reviews and has since been considered an "underrated" entry in the director's filmography. The film won Scorsese the Best Director award at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and allowed him to take a hiatus from the tumultuous development of The Last Temptation of Christ. It currently holds a 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert initially gave it 4/4 stars and later added it to his list of The Great Movies, saying this in his review, "Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” is a comedy, according to the strict definition of that word. It is, however, the tensest comedy I can remember, building its nightmare situation step by insidious step until our laughter is hollow, or defensive. This is the work of a master filmmaker who controls his effects so skillfully that I was drained by this film – so emotionally depleted that there was a moment, two-thirds of the way through, when I wondered if maybe I should leave the theater and gather my thoughts and come back later for the rest of the “comedy.” The result is a film that is so original, so particular, that we are uncertain from moment to moment exactly how to respond to it. The style of the film creates, in us, the same feeling that the events in the film create in the hero.

We will be meeting Thursday, January 22 at 5:30 pm.

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkruzyfYR4A

Hope to see you there!

November Film Club

 Hey everyone, Fall.

For the month of November I've always tried to show some kind of war film in honor of Veteran's Day. This year we will be watching the harrowing remake of All Quiet on the Western Front.

All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit. 'Nothing New in the West') is a 2022 German epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque. It is the third film adaptation of the book, after the 1930 and 1979 versions. Co-written, directed and co-produced by Edward Berger, it stars Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic, and Devid Striesow.

Set during World War I, it follows the life of an idealistic young German soldier named Paul Bäumer. After enlisting in the German Army with his friends, Bäumer finds himself exposed to the realities of war, shattering his early hopes of becoming a hero as he does his best to survive. The film adds a parallel storyline not found in the book, which follows the armistice negotiations to end the war.

It currently holds a 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Matthew Jackson of the AV Club gave it an A- saying this in his review, "Berger’s All Quiet On The Western Front is a powerful, human odyssey about the cost of endless war and the whims of the powerful, but what lingers afterward is the way its director frames that narrative across the (literal) European landscape. Berger’s battle sequences are memorable, but just as memorable are his moments of quiet punctuation by framing up the silent trees of the Western European forests, the babbling brooks that will flow on no matter how much blood seeps into the waters, the wildlife that will keep fighting its own battles, heedless of the human ones. A shot of a tank emerging from smoke like a monster in a horror film might be followed by a still tableau of a forest canopy, as though God himself is watching from just above those trees, maybe judging the combatants, maybe ignoring them. If the outcome is the same, does it matter?

These are the questions invited, and not always answered, by All Quiet’s elegiac and haunting look at a war almost no one is still alive to remember. Yet what it has left to teach us, and what we carry of it into our own wars, is very much up to us—and it’s the film’s keen awareness of that sense of projection that makes it resonate."

Because the 27th is Thanksgiving, we will be meeting Thursday the 20th at 5:00 pm (the movie is 2.5 hours, so we're starting a little early). 

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFqgmaO15x4

Hope to see you there!

October Film Club: 14th Annual Horror Fest

 Hello everyone!

It's October! And while you wouldn't know it from the weather, spooky season has arrived. Halloween is later this month and for those of you seasoned Film Club attendees that can mean only one thing: Horror Fest!

Our theme for this year's Horror Fest is "Horror Outside of the Box". I have selected 4 horror movies that each have some kind of "hook" that makes them different from your standard movie. One is shot almost incidentally, and is unlike anything I've ever seen, one is a live show from hell, one has no dialogue, and one is from the perspective of the killer. I was impressed by all of them in some way or another so I thought it would be fun.

As in previous years we will be meeting for two nights and watching two movies each night. This is what the lineup looks like:

(Click the title for a trailer)

Oct. 22 @ 4 pm: Skinamarink

Oct. 22 @ 6 pm: Late Night With the Devil

Oct. 23 @ 4 pm: Azrael

Oct. 23 @ 6 pm: In a Violent Nature

Hope to see you there!

September Film Club

Thank you to everyone who made it out for our Summer Series celebrating the work of the Coen Brothers, we have a had great time!

For the month of September we're going to get a little weird (we can't go a whole year without a little something strange). We will be watching Denis Villeneuve's bizarre and mysterious, Enemy.

Enemy is a 2013 surrealist psychological thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve and produced by M. A. Faura and Niv Fichman. Written by Javier Gullón, it was loosely adapted from José Saramago's 2002 novel The Double. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a dual role as two men who are physically identical, but different in personality. Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, and Isabella Rossellini co-star.

The film has a fresh rating of 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and Godfrey Cheshire writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 2.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "As noted, Villeneuve and Gullon leave the meaning of all this an open question—or perhaps several questions at once. Is the French Canadian director’s tale of Anglo Canada an allegory of his culturally divided homeland? Is the cryptic story a symbolic meditation on something central to cinema, the fraught relationship between an actor and the “double” he fashions in creating a character who bears his likeness? Does it contain a whiff of Villeneuve’s feelings about Canada’s greatest art-film auteur prior to his arrival, David Cronenberg, whose “Dead Ringers” is one of cinema’s finest tales of doubles.

Take your pick, or better yet, supply your own reading. What seems certain is that Villeneuve is a very self-conscious artist whose estimable work descends from the European high-modernist tradition of decades past."

We will be meeting Thursday, Sept. 25 at 5:30 pm.

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVvgt3jIUsc

Hope to see you there!

August Film Club #2

 Our final film of our Coen Brothers Summer Series is True Grit.

True Grit is a 2010 American Western film produced, written, and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. It is an adaptation of Charles Portis's 1968 novel. Starring Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld (in her theatrical-film debut), True Grit also stars Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Barry Pepper. In the film, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross (Steinfeld) hires boozy, trigger-happy lawman Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to go after outlaw Tom Chaney (Brolin), who murdered her father, accompanied by Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Damon), who is also hunting Chaney, and who has his own gripes with Cogburn. The Coens intended their film to be a more faithful adaptation of Portis's novel than the 1969 version starring John Wayne; in particular, they wanted to tell the story from Mattie's point of view.

The film currently holds a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "What strikes me is that I’m describing the story and the film as if it were simply, if admirably, a good Western. That’s a surprise to me, because this is a film by the Coen Brothers, and this is the first straight genre exercise in their career. It’s a loving one. Their craftsmanship is a wonder. Their casting is always inspired and exact. The cinematography by Roger Deakins reminds us of the glory that was, and can still be, the Western.

But this isn’t a Coen Brothers film in the sense that we usually use those words. It’s not eccentric, quirky, wry or flaky. It’s as if these two men, who have devised some of the most original films of our time, reached a point where they decided to coast on the sheer pleasure of good old straightforward artistry. So let me praise it for what it is, a splendid Western. The Coens having demonstrated their mastery of many notes, including many not heard before, now show they can play in tune."

We will be meeting Thursday, Aug 28th at 5:30 pm.

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOHGKCle-aY

Hope to see you there!

August Film Club #1

 Our first Coen Brothers film for the month of August is Burn After Reading.

Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also stars George Clooney as a womanizing U.S. Marshal; Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osborne Cox; Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; and J. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor.

The film has a 78% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "The Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading” is a screwball comedy that occasionally becomes something more. The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the roles seem like a perfect fit for the actors — yes, even Brad Pitt, as Chad, a gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor. I’ve always thought of him as a fine actor, but here he reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven’t seen before. This is not a great Coen brothers’ film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It’s funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad."

We will be meeting Thursday, Aug. 21 at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

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

Hope to see you there!

July Film #2

 Our second Coen Brothers film for July is The Big Lebowski.

The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime comedy film written, directed, produced and co-edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows the life of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity then learns that a millionaire, also named Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is supposedly kidnapped and millionaire Lebowski commissions the Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release. The plan goes awry when the Dude's friend Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) schemes to keep the ransom money for the Dude and himself. Sam Elliott, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, David Thewlis, Peter Stormare, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Jon Polito and Ben Gazzara also appear in supporting roles.

The film is loosely inspired by the work of Raymond Chandler. Joel Coen stated, "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant." The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a longtime collaborator of the Coen brothers. The Big Lebowski received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Reviews have since become largely positive and the film has become a cult favorite, noted for its eccentric characters, comedic dream sequences, idiosyncratic dialogue and eclectic soundtrack. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

It currently holds an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars originally, in 1998, and later gave it 4/4 and added it to his list of Great Movies, saying this in his review, "“The Big Lebowski” is about an attitude, not a story. It’s easy to miss that, because the story is so urgently pursued. It involves kidnapping, ransom money, a porno king, a reclusive millionaire, a runaway girl, the Malibu police, a woman who paints while nude and strapped to an overhead harness, and the last act of the disagreement between Vietnam veterans and Flower Power. It has more scenes about bowling than anything else. This is a plot and dialogue that perhaps only the Coen Brothers could have devised. I’m thinking less of their clarity in “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men” than of the almost hallucinatory logic of “Raising Arizona” and “The Hudsucker Proxy.” Only a steady hand in the midst of madness allows them to hold it all together–that, and the delirious richness of their visual approach."

We will be meeting Thursday, July 24 at 5:30pm 

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd-go0oBF4Y

Hope to see you there!