June Film Club

Look out everyone, summer is here!

Our first two features for our series will be Insomnia and The Prestige.

 Insomnia will be showing Thursday, June 9th at 6:15pm

Insomnia is a 2002 American psychological thriller film directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.  It tells the story of two Los Angeles homicide detectives investigating a murder in an Alaskan town.  A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, Insomnia was released on May 24, 2002, to critical acclaim and commercial success, grossing $113 million worldwide.  To date, this is the only film that Nolan has directed without receiving at least a share of one of the writing credits, even though he wrote the final draft of the script.

The film currently holds a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 190 critical reviews.  Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 ½/4 stars and said this of the film in his review, “Unlike most remakes, the Nolan “Insomnia” is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play.  “Insomnia” is a film with a lot of room for the director, who establishes a distinctive far-north location, a world where the complexities of the big city are smoothed out into clear choices.  The fact that it is always daylight is important:  The dilemma of this cop is that he feels people are always looking at him, and he has nowhere to hide, not even in his nightmares.”

Here's the trailer:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brHA3CF4_Mw

The Prestige will be showing Thursday, June 16th at 6:15pm

The Prestige is a 2006 mystery thriller drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, from a screenplay adapted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest’s 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name.  The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19^th century.  Obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, they engage in competitive one-upmanship with tragic results.  The American-British co-production features Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier, Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.  It also stars Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Piper Perabo, Andy Serkis, and Rebecca Hall.  The film reunites Nolan with actors Bale and Caine from Batman Begins, and returning cinematographer Wally Pfister.

The film has a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 179 critical reviews.  Richard Roeper and guest reviewer A.O. Scott gave the film two thumbs up.  Scott, a reviewer for The New York Times said this in his review, “Set in a stylized late-Victorian world of dueling music-hall magicians and diabolically clever inventors, it has a satisfyingly puzzle-like structure, zipping around in time and scattering clues throughout its busy scenes and frames.  Like, Memento, The Prestige is a triumph of gimmickry, a movie generous enough with its showmanship and sleight of hand to quiet the temptation to grumble about its lack of substance.  The point of a magic trick, after all, is not the content, whatever that might be, but the ingenuity of its conceit and the skill of its execution.  And The Prestige-the title is a magician’s term of art referring to the climactic surprise that seals a successful magic trick-manifests an enthusiasm for the nuts and bolts of illusionism that is pretty much irresistible.”

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gHCmTQDVI