Sunday Night Film Club – Boston

“Director Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith) takes an unprecedented look into the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) film ratings system and its profound effect on American culture. By examining controversial ratings decisions, Dick asks whether Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content, and whether keeping the raters and the rating process secret leaves the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions. Features candid interviews with critics, attorneys, authors, educators and filmmakers, including John Waters (A Dirty Shame), Kevin Smith (Clerks), Matt Stone (South Park), Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), Atom Egoyan (Where the Truth Lies), Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and Mary Harron (American Psycho).”

“Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is an idealistic inner-city junior high school teacher who inspires his students to challenge the status quo. Though he keeps it together in the classroom, Dan has a serious drug habit. He keeps his lives precariously separated, until one of his troubled students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), catches him getting high after school. From this awkward beginning, Dan and Drey stumble into an unexpected friendship that threatens to undo them or provide the vital change they both need to move forward with their lives. Directed and co-written by Ryan Fleck.”

“By intercepting a package and following instructions meant for a deceased gangster, aimless 20-year-old Sébastien (George Babluani, the director’s brother), thinks he’s going to make a quick buck and help his poor immigrant family. Instead, things take a turn for the absolute worse when the trail he is following leads him into the heart of the French countryside and face to face with a clandestine ring of gangsters who bet on human lives. A surreal, neo-noir thriller from debut writer/director Géla Babluani. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. (Fully subtitled)”

“A medieval adventure—part legendary fable, part horror-story—based on the seminal ninth century Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. Director Sturla Gunnarsson tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warriorÂ’s battle against the murderous and vengeful troll Grendel (Ingvar Sigurdsson), who has laid siege to the kingdom of Hrothgar (Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd), King of the Danes. Beowulf (Gerard Butler) leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid the village of the marauding troll, but his willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is responsible for the trollÂ’s rampages. Filmed in Iceland, the drama plays out in a brutish Northern Europe where Beowulf is caught in a battle of vengeance, loyalty and mercy. In English.”

“No one among the Hoovers quite has it together, but it’s not for lack of trying. Father Richard, a hopelessly optimistic motivational speaker, is desperately attempting to sell his 9-step program for success–without much success. Meanwhile, the Hoovers’ pro-honesty mother Sheryl is constantly harried by her family’s eccentric secrets, especially those of her brother, a suicidal Proust scholar fresh out of the hospital after being jilted by his gay lover. Then there are young Hoovers with their unlikely dreams–the four-eyed, slightly pump, seven year-old would-be beauty queen Olive and Dwayne, an anger-fueled, Nietzche-reading teen who has taken a staunch vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy. Topping off the family is the grandfather, a foul-mouthed pleasure-seeker recently kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin. They might not be the picture of the perfect mental health, but when a fluke gets Olive invited to compete in the fiercely competitive Little Miss Sunshine competition in California, the whole Hoover family rallies behind her. They pile into their rusted-out VW bus and head West on a three-day tragicomic journey filled with madcap surprises and leading up to Olive’s big debut–which will change the entire misfit family in ways they could never imagine.”

Ricardo Tubbs is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, as they work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida to identify a group responsible for three murders. Sonny Crockett is charismatic and flirtatious until-while undercover working with the supplier of the South Florida group-he gets romantically entangled with Isabella, the Chinese-Cuban wife of an arms and drugs trafficker. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one-especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves.