July Film Club

Hey everybody!

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our first 2 films of our Summer Space series, we had a good turnout, great food and a bit of discussion (as much as time would allow us).

For the month of July we will be watching Space Cowboys and Europa Report.

July 18th at 6:15pm
Space Cowboys (2000) Directed by Clint Eastwood

Space Cowboys is a 2000 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood.  It stars Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner as four older "ex-test pilots" whose dreams of reaching space were ended after space flight tests were handed off to the newly created NASA.  In the present day, circumstances lead to them being sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite.  Space Cowboys was well received by critics.  It has a 78% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert awarded the film 3/4 stars saying this in his review, "Space Cowboys tells a genre story where the heroes have come out of retirement for one last hurrah...The stuff in outer space is unexpected, the surprise waiting out there is genuine, and meanwhile, there's an abundance of charm and screen presence from the four veteran actors.  There's a reason Eastwood, Garner, Sutherland and Jones have remained stars for so long, and the movie gives them all characteristic scenes.  The actors know where the laughs and thrills are and respect them.  Eastwood as a director is as sure handed as his mentors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone."

July 25th at 6:15pm
Europa Report (2013) Directed by Sebastian Cordero

Europa Report is a 2013 science fiction film directed by Sebastian Cordero, starring Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra and Sharlto Copely.  A found footage film, it recounts the fictional story of the first crewed mission to Europa, one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter.  Despite a disastrous technical failure that causes the loss of all communications with Earth mission control and a series of crises, the crew continues its mission to Europa and finds mounting evidence of life on the moon.  The film received generally positive reviews from critics and holds an 80% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Christy Lemire, writing for Rogerebert.com, gave the film 3/4 stars saying this in her review, "The beauty of Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero's film is the simplicity of its approach.  The found footage conceit has emerged as a favorite over the past several years but the application often seems erratic and selective.  Working from Philip Gelatt's script, Cordero keeps things consistent, elegant and streamlined.  Europa Report knows who its cultural forebears are, and know that you know them too.  A snippet of Strauss' The Blue Danube, used so famously in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, plays at a key moment, but it's just a taste, enough to bring a knowing smile to your face, mercifully not so much as to constitute full on parody.  Europa Report  actually may be understated to a fault, but that's preferable to gratuitous melodrama."

I hope to you can make it out to these excellent films!

See you there!