April Film Club

 Hello all! It's the month of April, the greatest month of the whole year! Why you ask? Well, it's the month of my birthday and in following my own egotistical tradition, we'll be watching one of my favorite movies! This year, it happens to be Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire black comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom.  Dr. Strangelove parodies Cold War fears of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union and stars Peter Sellers (portraying three different characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The story concerns an insane brigadier general of the United States Air Force who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States (Sellers), his scientific advisor Dr. Strangelove (Sellers), a Royal Air Force exchange officer (Sellers), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Scott) as they attempt to stop the crew of a B-52 from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.

The film is widely considered one of the best comedy films and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. It currently holds a 98% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 4/4 stars later adding it to his list of The Great Movies, saying this in his review, " Kubrick made what is arguably the best political satire of the century, a film that pulled the rug out from under the Cold War by arguing that if a “nuclear deterrent” destroys all life on Earth, it is hard to say exactly what it has deterred. “Dr. Strangelove’s” humor is generated by a basic comic principle: People trying to be funny are never as funny as people trying to be serious and failing. The laughs have to seem forced on unwilling characters by the logic of events. A man wearing a funny hat is not funny. But a man who doesn’t know he’s wearing a funny hat … ah, now you’ve got something. The characters in “Dr. Strangelove” do not know their hats are funny."

We will be meeting Thursday, April 23 at 5:30 pm 

Here's a trailer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftZUbEu6WeA

Hope to see you there!

March Film Club

 It's March and that means an Irish film for Film Club. This month we will be watching Jim Sheridan's The Boxer.

The Boxer is a 1997 Irish sports drama film written and directed by Jim Sheridan and co-written by Terry George. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Emily Watson, and Brian Cox, the film centers on the life of a boxer and former Provisional IRA volunteer Danny Flynn, played by Day-Lewis, who is trying to "go straight" after his release from prison. The film is the third collaboration between Sheridan and Day-Lewis and portrays different factions within the IRA. In preparation for the role, Daniel Day-Lewis trained as a boxer in Ireland for a year. The film currently holds an 80% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer isn’t the usual pugilistic grind — the ring becomes a backdrop for something deeper: a man seeking peace in a city torn apart by old wounds. Daniel Day-Lewis gives Danny Flynn a quiet strength, not just as a fighter but as someone trying to rebuild his community and his heart. Sheridan balances politics, romance and the struggle to forgive with a craftsman’s care, making this more than a boxing movie — it’s a portrait of endurance in a place desperate for healing."

We will be meeting Thursday, March 26 at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc0AxFQMm9o

Hope to see you there!

February Film Club

 Hello everyone! 

For the month of February I sometimes choose a romantic comedy, this is one of those Februarys. 

We will be watching Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her. Regarded among the greatest films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI's list of the 100 greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of the greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". It currently holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert initially gave it 3.5/4 stars and later gave it 4/4 adding it to his list of The Great Movies, saying this in his review, "“Woody Allen’s Annie Hall… dares to go into this material a little more seriously and cohesively than is usually the case in an Allen film. Annie Hall is a comedy, yes, and there are moments in it as funny as anything Woody has done, but the movie represents a growth on Allen’s part… From a filmmaker who would do anything for a laugh… this film is much more thoughtful and (is it possible?) more mature… At the end of the affair, we’ve learned only two things for certain: that enduring relationships are very likely impossible in this time and place… and that life without the search for relationships is unthinkable. In Annie Hall he makes it very funny, and sad, and tricky indeed.”

We will be meeting Thursday, February 26 at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj4ZoeRMHwU

Hope to see you there!

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!