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!