July Film Club #2

 Our fourth film in our Summer Series comes to us from Monty Python alum, Terry Gilliam. (Film Club veterans may remember that we watched Gilliam's brilliant Brazil 11 years ago! Time flies when you're watching good movies!) We will be watching The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 adventure fantasy film, cowritten and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams, and Uma Thurman. The film is based on the tall tales of the 18th-century German nobleman, Baron Munchausen, and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire. It underperformed at the box office, but received favorable reviews from critics and was nominated for 4 Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Visual Effects, and Makeup. It currently holds a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "There really was a Baron Munchausen, and he lived from 1720-1797. He was, it is said, in the habit of embellishing his war stories, and in 1785 a jewel thief from Hanover named Rudolf Erich Raspe published a book in England which claimed to be based on the baron's life and times. The real von Munchausen apparently did not complain about this book that made free with his reputation, even though it included such tall stories as the time the baron tethered his horse to a "small twig" in a snowstorm, and discovered when the snow melted that the twig was actually a church steeple. Terry Gilliam's film is, in itself, a tribute to the spirit of the good baron. The special effects are astonishing, but so is the humor with which they are employed. The wit and the spectacle of Baron Munchausen are considerable achievements. Gilliam says it's the third part of a trilogy, his first film, "Time Bandits" was about childhood, his second, "Brazil" was about adulthood. "Baron Munchausen" is about old age. He may be telling us the truth. He may also be telling us he tethered his film to a twig in a snowstorm."

We will be meeting Thursday, July 25th at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1M-vhN8lsg&ab_channel=TrailerChan

Hope to see you there!

July Film Club #1

 Hey! It's already July! Hope you're enjoying the warm weather. Our third film in our Summer Series is Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowksy's El Topo.

El Topo (Spanish "The Mole") is a 1970 Mexican acid western film written, scored, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, used of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Judeo-Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about El Topo-a violent, black-clad gunfighter played by Jodorowsky-and his quest for enlightenment. The film is widely considered the igniting film of the midnight movie movement, and for decades, El Topo could only be seen at midnight screenings in art houses and via partially censored Japanese laserdiscs and bootleg videos. 

The film currently holds an 80% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 4/4 stars, later adding it to his list of Great Movies, saying this in his review, "Jodorowsky lifts his symbols and mythologies from everywhere: Christianity, Zen, discount-store black magic, you name it. He makes not the slightest attempt to use them so they sort out into a single logical significance. Instead, they're employed in a shifting, prismatic way, casting their light on each other instead of on the films conclusion. El Topo's quest supply most of the films generous supply of killings, tortures, disembowelments, hangings, boilings, genocides, and so on. El Topo's violence is extreme and yet somehow it doesn't come over as an exploitation film. Maybe that's because Jodorowsky dazzles us with such delicate mythological footwork that the violence becomes distanced, and we accept it like the slaughters in the Old Testament. I'm not sure. El Topo is a movie it's very hard to be sure about after a single viewing. It weaves a web around you, and you're left with two impulses. One is to accept it on its own terms, as a complex fantasy that uses violence as the most convenient shorthand for human power relationships. The other is to reject it as the work of a cynic, who is simply supplying more jolts and shocks per minute than most filmmakers. The first impulse seems sounder to me, because if Jodorowsky were simply in the blood-and-guts sweepstakes he could have made a much simpler, less ambitious movie that would have had the violence of  El Topo but not its uncanny resonance."

We will be meeting Thursday, July 18th at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjTlNTbv-xs&ab_channel=ABKCORecords%26Films

Hope to see you there!

June Film Club #2

Our second film in our Summer Series comes to us from Winnipeg, MB, Canada, director Guy Maddin's weird and wonderful The Saddest Music in the World.

The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. Maddin and co-screenwriter George Toles based the film on an original screenplay written by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, from which they kept "the title, the premise and the contest-to determine which country's music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote. Like most of Maddin's films, The Saddest Music in the World is filmed in a style that imitates late 1920's and early 1930's cinema, with grainy black and white photography, slightly out of sync sound and expressionist art design. A few scenes are filmed in color, in a manner that imitates early two-strip Technicolor. The film was well received by critics. It currently holds a fresh rating of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "So many movies travel the same weary roads. So few imagine entirely original worlds. Guy Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World" exists in a time and place we have never seen before, although it claims to be set in Winnipeg in 1933. You have never seen a film like this before, unless you have seen other films by Guy Maddin. The more films you have seen, the more you may love "The Saddest Music in the World". It plays like satirical nostalgia for a past that never existed. The actors bring that kind of earnestness to it that seems peculiar to supercharged melodrama. You can never catch them grinning, although great is the joy of Lady Port-Huntly when she poses with her sexy new beer-filled glass legs. Nor can you catch Maddin condescending to his characters; he takes them as seriously as he possibly can, considering that they occupy a mad, strange, gloomy, absurd comedy. To see this film, to enter the world of Guy Maddin, is to understand how a film can be created entirely by its style, and how its style can create a world that never existed before, and lure us, at first bemused and then astonished, into it."

We will be meeting Thursday, June 27 at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyAlgfHgrk0&t=17s&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesClassicTrailers

Hope to see you there!

 

June Film Club #1

 Our first film of our Summer Series: Weird and Wonderful, is David Lynch's weird and wonderful directorial debut, Eraserhead.

Eraserhead is a 1977 American surrealist body horror film written and directed by filmmaker David Lynch.  Shot in black-and-white, Eraserhead is Lynch's first feature length film, coming after several short works.  The film was produced with the assistance of the American Film Institute (AFI) during the director's time studying there.  Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk, it tells the story of Henry Spencer (Nance), who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape.  Throughout the film, Spencer experiences dreams or hallucinations, featuring his child and the Lady in the Radiator (Near).   Initially opening to small audiences and little interest, Eraserhead gained popularity over sever long runs as a midnight movie.

Since its release, the film has earned positive reviews.  The surrealist imagery and sexual undercurrents have been seen as key thematic elements, and the intricate sound design as its technical highlight.  In 2004, the film was preserved in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  The film currently holds a 91% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes out of 55 critical reviews and Mike D'Angelo, writing for the A.V. Club, gave it an "A" saying this of the film, "While it's certainly possible to find metaphors in Eraserhead's bizarre imagery, the film works on such an intensely visceral level that attempts to analyze it seem counterproductive.  Can any words evoke the flesh-crawling queasiness of Henry's visit to Mary's parents' house, in which he sits uncomfortably on the couch exchanging forced pleasantries with Mom while some ungodly squeaking/squelching noise threatens to drown out the dialogue?  Is it worse when the source of that sound is unknown, or is it inexplicably worse when the source is revealed and it's not the horror show conjured up by your imagination?  Then there's that infant...thing, which hits the precise amalgam of repulsion and vulnerability that's capable of ripping one's soul apart.  See Eraserhead once and it'll lodge itself firmly in some dank recess of your brain and refuse to vacate." 

We will be meeting Thursday, June 20th at 5:30pm

Here is a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Eq5GtCYdA&ab_channel=criterioncollection

Hope to see you there!

Summer Series: Weird and Wonderful

 Hello everyone! Summer is finally upon us! As some of you may know for the summer months of Film Club we usually expand our movie watching. Instead of one movie a month, we do two, and those are usually part of some kind of theme: genre, director, etc. Last year our theme was Directed by Wes Anderson, a spotlight on the films of director Wes Anderson. So, I decided this year to do something a little different, or rather, very different, one could almost call it, something WEIRD. This year, our theme is "Weird and Wonderful" and will feature 6 films from 6 very strange directors.

(click the titles for a trailer)

June 20-Eraserhead

June 27-The Saddest Music in the World

July 18- El Topo

July 25- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

August 22- Even Dwarfs Started Small

August 29- Stalker

That is the lineup for the summer. I will have individual posts and booklets available for each film, each month. Stay tuned!

Hope to see you there!

May Film Club

 For the month of May, we will be watching George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is a 2022 fantasy romantic drama film directed and produced by George Miller. Written by Miller and Augusta Gore, it is based on the 1994 short story "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" by A.S. Byatt and follows a djinn (Idris Elba) who is unleashed from a bottle by a professor (Tilda Swinton) and tells her stories from his thousands of years of existence.

The film holds a 71% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Glenn Kenny, writing for Rogerebert.com, gave it a 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "The tales told by the Djinn are packed with hair-raising violence and extremely variegated landscapes of lust. It's a chronicle of how love and hate can make one do funny things. And about the paradox of being human, our intrepid selves and our shadow selves. So much human achievement is depicted here, and so much human atrocity. As is observed near the end of the picture, "Despite all the whiz-bang, we remain befuddled." 

I hope that you will be able to make it out for this interesting film. We will be meeting Thursday, May 23rd at 5:30pm.

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWGvntl9itE&ab_channel=MGM

Hope to see you there!

April Film Club

 Hey everyone! Since April is my birthday month, I generally pick one of my favorite movies for us to watch. This time around we will be watching the utterly bizarre Borgman by Dutch director, Alex van Warmerdam. I think it will get us ready for our Summer Series: Directors of the Weird and Wonderful.

Borgman is a 2013 Dutch psychological thriller drama film directed by Alex van Warmerdam. The film follows a vagrant as he and his team turn the lives of arrogant upper-class people into a psychological nightmare. It currently holds an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and Brian Tallerico, writing for Rogerebert.com, gave it 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "Van Warmerdam is clearly commenting on class issues, however, the social commentary feels like background more than thematic centerpiece. He is way more interested in mood, malevolence, and the general sense of unease that permeates every frame of "Borgman". Like a religious parable designed to present more questions than answers, "Borgman" can sometimes frustrate but it is an accomplished piece of work, driven by a uniquely malevolent tonal balance and two fantastic central performances. It sometimes simmers when I wish it would boil over but damn if it isn't fascinating to watch the water bubble."

We will be meeting Thursday, April 25th at 5:30pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Tgt-qAdJM&ab_channel=FilmIsNowMovies

Hope to see you there!