Imagine a Thanksgiving table. We’re all gathered. Arguing. Laughing. Fighting over the stuffing.
Avoiding politics maybe. Just wanting to keep the peace. Eating too much. Anxiously wondering what 2022 has in store for all of us. A new beginning or another global two by four to the head.
Only this Thanksgiving table is set with movies. Movies for which we’re thankful.
It’s personal of course. Just like…
Read MoreI remember years ago, when I lived in New York, there were posters all over the theatre district for this show, I would see them daily, but I never knew a single thing about the show, to me it was a title only. Not anymore.
tick, tick…BOOM is the story of Jonathan Larson, author of Rent. It’s an autobiographical musical about a young musical theatre writer and composer, about to turn 30, terrified that he hasn’t made it yet and never will.
From my perspective, on the other side of 50, this is ridiculous…
Read MoreI have never used these posts to review films that I actually see at Secret Movie Club, but today that tradition changes, because this was a very particular movie experience.
Edwin, a staff member at SMC, got to program a movie…
Read MoreLast week we screened John Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970, Columbia). Three people walked out. The rest stayed.
Walk outs are fairly rare for us but it got this programmer thinking. What does it mean when people walk out? How much should that be looked at as a good sign? That is-that the movie really touched a nerve and is still vital, confrontational, provocative? How much should it be looked at as a bad sign? That is-it was so offensive and/or boring and/or poorly made and/or out of step with the current times that people just would rather leave than see it through to the end?
This programmer…
Read MoreI must say that I’ve always been a big fan of Wes Anderson. I haven’t seen every single one of his movies, but of course I adore Rushmore, like everybody else, and Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs I thought were just absolutely wonderful. The Royal Tenenbaums never quite grabbed me like it did many others, but I greatly enjoyed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is one of his more polarizing films.
All this is to say that I am not new. I am familiar with his somewhat arch style and boxy, square, fussy production design. But…
Read MoreI saw the trailer for Last Night in Soho some months back, and I’ve been gagging to see it ever since. Could it possibly live up to the trailer? Would it be one of those situations where the trailer is a perfect short film unto itself and adding a whole film around it actually lessened the experience then added to it?
Pfft, don’t be silly, Edgar Wright wouldn’t…
Read MoreWe’re in the homestretch. Two more, and Jamie Lee Curtis is back from the dead. Again. Please, please be good.
Miramax still existed in 2018? The worm had yet to turn, huh.
It starts out in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, with Michael Myers having been there for forty years, and…they are about to transfer him, having not learned the main big lesson of the ten previous Halloween films, never ever transfer Michael Myers.
But if he has been there for forty years…does that mean that they again retconned everything after the first Halloween II? The great H20 never happened? This is crazy. But, open mind, open mind, let’s try…
Read MoreSo, after Halloween 8, a.k.a. Halloween: Resurrection, where are they going to go from there? It’s a mystery!
Nobody knows what could possibly happen after the events of…OH MY GOD! IT’S A REMAKE!
This is going to be an utter disaster, and that is me putting the best spin possible on it.
Why do they ever remake perfect films? I mean, I know, it’s because…
Read MoreDavid Cronenberg’s body of work is one of the most fascinating in its tension of a creative spirit constantly pushing itself in new directions while always somehow being true to its initial spirt and obsessions.
In Cronenberg’s now 50+ year career (his first movie STEREO was made in 1969), he’s moved through very noticeable phases. His initial…
Read MoreAfter six Halloween films, we arrive at the seventh where they retcon the previous four! I mean, they sort of wrote themselves into a corner on the last one. They killed off…
Read MoreHey Secret Movie Clubbers!
I’m back for another Voidoween recap! This week we’ve got two foreign language films, two broken families, werewolves, vampires… Cat People…
Read MoreTonight we screen famed French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot’s horror suspense thriller LES DIABOLIQUES (1955). The legend goes (and it very well may be fact) that Clouzot had beaten none other than Alfred Hitchcock by mere hours to option the source novel and the resulting masterpiece so infuriated Hitchcock (because it was as brilliant as Hitchcock knew it would be) that Sir Alfred immediately optioned the novelists Boileau-Narcejac’s D’Entre Les Morts which became Vertigo.
So in that weird cosmic way that never quite makes sense to us mere mortals…
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