SEPTEMBER :: Fargo

Monday, September 15, 2008
7:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for trailer.

Coen Brothers | USA | 1996 | 98 min | R

Starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Awards and Accolades:

Academy Award for Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Academy Award for Original Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film, National Board of Review for Best Actress, National Board of Review for Best Director, Screen Actors Guild Awards for Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay, 2006 National Film Registry.

Reviews:

“Fargo is a strikingly mature, unique entertainment that plays on many levels … all satisfying.”

• Leonard Klady, Variety

“Marge Gunderson is one of a handful of characters whose names remain in our memories, like Travis Bickle, Tony Manero, HAL 9000, Fred C. Dobbs. They are completely, defiantly themselves – in movies that depend on precisely who they are. Marge is the chief in Brainerd, Minn., still has bouts of morning sickness, eats all the junk food she can get her hands on, speaks in a ‘you betcha’ Minnesota accent where ‘yeah,’ pronounced ya, is volleyed like a refrain.”

• Roger Ebert

DECEMBER :: It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Monday, December 10, 2007
7:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for synopsis and trailer.

Frank Capra | USA | 1946 | 130 min | G 

Starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore 

Originally entitled The Greatest Gift, Frank Capra’s inverted take on A Christmas Carol stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a good man who’s spent a lifetime giving up on his dreams in order to keep life in his small town humming. When a guardian angel named Clarence finds a despondent George poised to jump off a bridge, he shows George what life would’ve been like had he never been born.
 

Awards and Accolades:

Golden Globe winner for Best Picture. Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Acror, Best Director, and Best Picture.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it #20 on its “100 Greatest Movies” list. The film has been deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

One of the 15 films listed in the category “Values” on the Vatican film list.

 
Reviews:

“What is remarkable about It’s a Wonderful Life is how well it holds up over the years; it’s one of those ageless movies, like Casablanca or The Third Man, that improves with age.”

• Roger Ebert
 

“As the hero, Mr. Stewart does a warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war. And Donna Reed is remarkably poised and gracious as his adoring sweet-heart and wife.”

• New York Times

“Director Capra’s inventiveness, humor and affection for human beings keep it glowing with life and excitement. Stewart’s warm-hearted playing of what might have been a goody-goody role is a constant delight. And if Director Capra’s Christmas-cheer ending is slightly hoked up to make it richer and happier than life, that is the way many a good fable .”

• Time

“The April-air wholesomeness and humanism of this natural bring back vividly the reminder that, essentially, the screen best offers unselfconscious, forthright entertainment.”

• Variety

Often remebered as sentimental, schmaltzy “Capra-corn”… but in fact is leavened by darker themes and more rigorous morals about self-sacrifice, disappointment, and the fragility of happiness and the American dream.”

• National Catholic Review 

 

Related:

GodSpy: The Gospel According to Frank Capra
Essay: On the deeper meaning of It’s a Wonderful Life

NOVEMBER :: Vertigo (1958)

Monday, November 19, 2007
7:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for synopsis and trailer.

Alfred Hitchcock | USA | 1958 | 129 min | PG 

Starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Tom Helmore 

Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller – far and away one of his darkest and most compelling films – tells the story of police detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who has a crippling fear of heights. When an old friend asks him to tail his wife (Kim Novak), Scottie is drawn into a vortex of deceit, murder and obsession.
 
 
Awards and Accolades:

Nominated for Directors Guild and two Academy Awards including Best Art Direction.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it #9 on its “100 Greatest Movies” list. The film has been deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2002, Vertigo was chosen the second greatest film of all time (behind Citizen Kane) by the Sight and Sound critics’ poll. In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas) in British magazine Total Film’s book, 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.

 
Reviews:

“It is about how Hitchcock used, feared and tried to control women.”

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Once this movie is under way, it’s off into very deep waters… Films like “Vertigo” are the reason that lots of people get consumed with the movies.”

• San Francisco Examiner

 

Related:

Bright Lights Film Journal: Last Laugh: Was Hitchcock’s Masterpiece a Private Joke?
New York Times: Master of Suspense: A Self-Analysis
Images: Hitchcock’s Use of Profiles in Vertigo
Roger Ebert: Interview with Alfred Hitchcock
Video: Excerpt on Vertigo composer Bernard Herrmann
Video: Hitchcock interview excerpts

SEPTEMBER :: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Monday, September 17, 2007
8:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for synopsis and trailer.

Stanley Kubrick | USA | 1968 | 141 min | G

Starring William Sylvester, Keir Dullea, and Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL

Based on Arthur C. Clarke’s story “The Sentinel,” Stanley Kubrick’s quiet masterpiece probes the mysteries of space and human destiny. In the years between primitive man’s discovery of lethal weapons and the birth of the star child, astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) confront HAL-9000, the computer operating their ship. Nominated for four Academy Awards, Kubrick’s epic won for its stunning special effects.

“Space is one of the great themes of our age, yet, it is one still almost untouched by serious art and literature… It is time to break away from the clich’s of Monsters and Madmen. There will be dangers in space but there will also be wonder, adventure, beauty, opportunity and sources of knowledge that will transform our civilization….

“How much would we appreciate La Giaconda [the Mona Lisa] today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: ‘This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten teeth’, or ‘because she’s hiding a secret from her lover’? It would shut off the viewer’s appreciation and shackle him to a ‘reality’ other than his own. I don’t want that to happen to 2001.”

• Stanley Kubrick

“Its origin and purpose still a total mystery.”

• the last spoken words in the movie.

 
Reviews:

“Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.”

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

Related:

Video: A Look Kubrick early life and films pre-”2001″
Video: Charlie Rose Show: Discussion of Kubricks life and films w/ his wife, producer and Martin Scorsese

AUGUST :: The Searchers (1956)

RESCHEDULED
Saturday, September 1, 2007
8:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for synopsis and trailer.

John Ford | USA | 1956 | 119 min | NR

Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond, Vera Miles, and Natalie Wood

Working together for the 12th time, John Wayne and director John Ford forged The Searchers into a landmark Western offering an indelible image of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays an ex-Confederate soldier seeking his niece, captured by Comanches who massacred his family.

He won’t surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness. And in his 5-year search, he encounters something unexpected: his own humanity.
 

Reviews:

“… a rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come.”

• New York Times

“Ethan Edwards, fierce, alone, a defeated soldier with no role in peacetime, is one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created…”

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

Related:

YouTube: John Ford on his view of the West
YouTube:  Martin Scorsese on American Westerns: Part 1 and  Part 2 (Partial)
Google Video: “The American West of John Ford”

JULY :: Citizen Kane (1941)

Monday, July 16, 2007
6:00 PM @ Cinema Paradiso
Admission is $5

Discussion to follow
Click here for synopsis and trailer.

 
Orson Welles | USA | 1941 | 119 min | PG

Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and Everett Sloane

 
Reviews:

“Citizen Kane is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as Birth of a Nation assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and 2001 pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others.”

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 
“It is cynical, ironic, sometimes oppressive and as realistic as a slap. But it has more vitality than fifteen other films we could name. And, although it may not give a thoroughly clear answer, at least it brings to mind one deeply moral thought: For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

• New York Times

 
“So sharply does Citizen Kane veer from cinema cliche, it hardly seems like a movie.”

• Time

 
Related: “The Battle Over Citizen Kane”