Film At Central – Cinema Club
Showtimes every Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the Level B2 Conference Center of the Central Library. Each presentation includes a study guide highlighting the films for that month with trivia, credits and additional resources. Free and open to the public. Wednesdays in October, November and December, 2 p.m., in the Central Library Level B2 Conference Center |
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October Films |
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The Blair Witch Project |
1999, Directed by Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez. Starring Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams. “We're instinctively afraid of natural things (snakes, barking dogs, the dark) but have to be taught to fear walking into traffic or touching an electrical wire. Horror films that tap into our hard-wired instinctive fears probe a deeper place than movies with more sophisticated threats. A villain is only an actor, but a shark is more than a shark. The Blair Witch Project, an extraordinarily effective horror film, knows this and uses it. It has no fancy special effects or digital monsters, but its characters get lost in the woods, hear noises in the night and find disturbing stick figures hanging from trees. One of them discovers slime on his backpack. Because their imaginations have been inflamed by talk of witches, hermits and child murderers in the forest, because their food is running out and their smokes are gone, they (and we) are a lot more scared than if they were merely being chased by some guy in a ski mask.” - Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun-Times. 86 minutes. Rated R. Watch a preview |
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The Witches of Eastwick |
1987, Directed by George Miller. Starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer. “Hollywood pulls out all the stops here, including a reordering of John Updike's original book to give you one flashy and chock-full-o'-surprises witches' tale. George "Mad Max" Miller directs crisply and Vilmos Zsigmond's photography shifts moods superbly, from clean New England greens to stark thunderstorm blacks and whites. But The Witches of Eastwick depends mostly on Nicholson. Certainly Sarandon (as music teacher Jane Spofford), Cher (earthy sculptress Alexandra Medford) and Pfeiffer (fertile town reporter Sukie Ridgemont) turn in excellent performances, but Jack is crackerjack -- reeling wildly between his quirky Terms of Endearment gallantry to the "Heeeere's Johnny" lunacy of The Shining with a zest that must be illegal.” - Desson Howe for The Washington Post. 118 minutes. Rated R. Watch a preview |
Thanksgiving Films"Thanksgiving is not a conventional religious or political holiday but consists simply of families gathering to love one another and express gratitude. That's the tricky part. There are no theologies to fall back on. It has inspired a uniquely North American group of films. Most of the families in them are troubled, but there is usually a reconciliation, comforting to everyone except the turkey." – Roger Ebert |
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Planes, Trains and Automobiles |
1987, Directed by John Hughes. Starring Steve Martin, John Candy. “John Hughes inimitable technique combines a brilliant editing sense and a wholly original pastiche of cartoon exaggerations, suburban melancholy, and abstract non-sequiturs, and he is deft with narrative in the tonal sense, effortlessly swapping laughter for tears–and, even more impressively, switching between modes of comedy. Randomly chosen passages from Planes, Trains & Automobiles, a film that is hilarious for the better part of ninety minutes (before turning–welcomely–sweet and pensive), would instantly prove this.” - Bill Chambers for filmfreakcentral.net. 93 minutes. Rated R. Watch a preview |
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Home for the Holidays |
1995, Directed by Jodie Foster. Starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft. "Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is. Neither caustic nor sentimental, it's a film that maybe half the people walking the earth have at one time considered writing. But how do you convey the touching dignity of Aunt Glady while doing justice to her lunacy and flatulence? How do you square Dad's quiet wisdom with his giddy joy at Redi-Whip and M&Ms in Jell-O? In Home for the Holidays screenwriter W.D. Richter and director Jodie Foster manage to do it, with seeming ease and with a precise command of their story's truth. Until I saw this movie, I thought only my family was like this. Home for the Holidays will hit a lot of people where they live.” - Mick LaSalle for The San Francisco Chronicle. 103 minutes. Rated PG-13. Watch a preview |
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Pieces of April |
2003, Directed by Peter Hedges. Starring Katie Holmes, Oliver Platt, Patricia Clarkson, Derek Luke. “Pieces of April plays like the intersection of two road pictures. The first is almost conventional, with the Burns family making the trek through the woods and over the river to April's apartment. Along the way, they take breaks at rest stops so Mom can settle her churning stomach, and they pause for a roadkill funeral after they run over something. April's "road trip" is a little less usual - it takes her from apartment to apartment within her building as she searches for a working stove after hers gives up the ghost. She meets an affable African American couple who offer their services for a couple of hours (until they need the oven for their own bird), a vegan who can't stand the smell of burning flesh, a very weird single man with an unusually strong affection for his dog, and an elderly Chinese couple who don't speak English.” - James Barardinelli for reelviews.net. 80 minutes. Rated PG-13. Watch a preview |
December Films |
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Hanging Up |
2000, Directed by Diane Keaton. Starring Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthau. “So you young 'uns thought the changing of the generational guard (at least in pop-culture terms) was a done deal; that you'd finally escaped the clammy embrace of lugubrious, self-obsessed baby boomers. Well, think again, mes enfants. Thirtysomething may be a distant memory, and Bruce Springsteen may be increasingly viewed as a footnote in Courteney Cox's career, but to paraphrase the Magnolia mantra: You may be done with boomer angst, but it's not done with you. Hanging Up, like many films you can expect to see in the years to come, deals with the knotty, conflicted emotional relationships among today's middle-agers and their aging parents. Based on a novel by Delia Ephron, who co-wrote the screenplay with sister Nora, it's the story of three sisters (Ryan, Keaton, and Kudrow) whose success-striving lives are disrupted when their 79-year-old father (Matthau) becomes an invalid. Most of the care-providing load falls on the shoulders of youngest daughter Eve (Ryan), whose siblings provide no material support but plenty of second-guessing in the constant cell-phone conversations that seem to comprise half of the action. Eve's situation is all the more thankless because of her curmudgeonly father's failing memory and the staunch refusal of her long-absent mother (Leachman) to get involved. But as is often the case in these situations, Eve's martyrdom also carries power. By judiciously guilt-tripping her absent sisters, she's able to gain a moral leg up on them while enjoying previously unknown depths of bonding with a parent who until now has been an emotionally ambivalent presence in her life.” Russell Smith for The Austin Chronicle. 94 minutes. Rated PG-13. Watch a preview |
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Raiders of the Lost Ark |
1981, Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Harrison Ford, Karen Allen. “You have to love a movie that is so devilishly clever as to make the hero's every effort, no matter how Herculean, irrelevant to the conclusion. Had Dr. Jones elected to go on an extended vacation to Mozambique and never have anything to do with the Ark of the Covenant, nothing would have changed. Jones doesn't save the day. In fact, he doesn't come close to rescuing it, unless one considers his having failed as being the key to success. (Although he does get the girl.) Yes, the movie ends with melting faces, but, underneath all of that liquefying flesh and exploding heads, there's an abundance of irony just waiting for the attentive movie-goer to unearth. When was the last time that an action hero has been so utterly, completely inconsequential as Indiana Jones? Action movies were a different breed in the pre-1981 years than they are today, and one of the reasons for their transformation had to do with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Before this movie, James Bond ruled the roost and the Bond formula was the accepted path that any self-respecting action movie would follow. The first Indiana Jones outing changed that. The film was constructed as a series of cliffhangers with narrow, death-defying escapes. Not since the era of serials have audiences so often asked the question, "How's he going to get out of this one?" It's unfair to claim that the 007 outings were unexciting, but, compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark, they come across as sedate. Raiders transformed the action movie landscape. In the years that followed, nearly every action movie would try to generate the same sense of suspense and tension. Even the Bond movies would catch on.” James Berardinelli for reelviews.net. 115 minutes. Rated PG. Watch a preview |
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Updated: December 03, 2007
