Well we have all had a wonderful sabbatical this summer but it is time to bring back the movie club. What better what to do that then to view a feature film and a short film. The theme will be Isolation and Human relationships and we will be comparing Lars and the Real Girl to Weathered. Because Weathered is a short film we will be watching both films together, no homework.
Date: September 20th, 7:00 PM
Location: Casa de Love
Lars and the Real Girl (d. Gillespie, 2007) - The search for true love begins outside the box
In this comedy, Lars Lindstrom is an awkwardly shy young man in a small northern town who finally brings home the girl of his dreams to his brother and sister-in-law’s home. The only problem is that she’s not real - she’s a sex doll Lars ordered off the Internet. But sex is not what Lars has in mind, but rather a deep, meaningful relationship. His sister-in-law is worried for him, his brother thinks he’s nuts, but eventually the entire town goes along with his delusion in support of this sweet natured boy that they’ve always loved.
Weathered (d. Barber & Webb, 2008)
Weathered is the intimate portrait of Weather Wellington, who is caged in time by the loss of her fiancé. Retreating inside herself, Weather longs for human connection and reaches out the only way she knows how… by making doctors appointments.
Well things have been a little busy outside of movie club land but with the new Batman movie coming out now is the perfect time to get back together.
The original ‘89 version featuring the dramatic skills of Michael Keaton will be our homework and then we will catch the new version in the theaters together. The tentative plan for the movie time will be Friday night opening at Paseo Colorado in Pasadena. Feel free to make another suggestion if there is a theater which is closer/better for you.
Batman (d. Burton, 1989)
The Dark Knight of Gotham City begins his war on crime with his first major enemy being the clownishly homicidal Joker.
The Dark Knight (d. Nolan, 2008)
Batman and James Gordon join forces with Gotham’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to take on a psychotic bank robber known as The Joker, whilst other forces plot against them, and Joker’s crimes grow more and more deadly.
April 12th. 6:30pm.
Location 250 N. Madison Building, 2nd Floor Conference Room. You will need a key to get in so if the door is locked you can call me at (626) 379-7415.
No Country For Old Men is our homework movie.
No Country For Old Men (d. Coens, 2007).
In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart.
Miller’s Crossing (d. Coens, 1990).
A highly styled ‘genre’ film which can perhaps be seen as a pastiche of all gangster movies. Tom Reagan is the laconic anti-hero of this amoral tale which is also, paradoxically, a look at morals within the criminal underworld of the 1930s. Two rival gangs vie for control of a city where the police are pawns, and the periodic busts of illicit drinking establishments are no more than a way for one gang to get back at the other. Black humour and shocking violence compete for screen time as we question whether or not Tom, right-hand man of the Irish mob leader, really has a heart
