Sunday Night Film Club – Boston

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 21st at 6:30pm for The Da Vinci Code at the Fenway 13 . Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (‘Tom Hanks’) receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci – clues visible for all to see, and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion – an actual secret society. In a breathless race through Paris, London and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei – a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic organization believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory’s secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory’s secret – and a stunning historical truth – will be lost forever.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 14th at 4:25pm for Art School Confidential at the Kendall Square Cinema . Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

Filmmaker Terry Zwigoff and comic artist and screenwriter Daniel Clowes, who collaborated for the acclaimed 2001 comedy-drama Ghost World, team up once again for this offbeat satire. Jerome (Max Minghella) is an aspiring artist who arrives at a prestigious East Coast art institute to study. While Jerome enjoys daydreams of becoming the best-respected painter on Earth and winning the hearts of his female classmates, he soon learns the sad truth — his “cool artist” act is old hat in the big city, and as he’s surrounded by every art school cliché on Earth, practically nothing about him stands out. Determined to be recognized whatever the consequences, Jerome maps out a bizarre plan to become famous that has some unexpected consequences. Loosely adapted from a story in Clowes’ comic book Eightball, Art School Confidential also stars John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston, and Sophia Myles.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 7th at 7:00pm for Mission: Impossible III at the Fenway 13. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“Recently retired, Agent Ethan Hunt lives a slower-paced life training new IMF agents. With this change, new opportunities enter his life, including a possible marriage to his girlfriend Julia. However, when a new conflict arises, Ethan is called back to duty to confront the toughest villain he’s ever faced – Owen Davian, an international weapons and information provider with no remorse and no conscience.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 30th at 5:30pm for Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. This is an exclusive engagement at the Brattle, so you may wish to pre-order tickets or show up early.

“The best mock documentaries – This is SPINAL TAP, BOB ROBERTS, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN – work because they fall just short of mockery. They have real affection for their subjects, and can recreate those subjects’ hilariously skewed version of the world insofar as they fully inhabit that world. Mock-docs that don’t do this are either mean, obvious, or both.

Thankfully, BLACKBALLED writer-director Brant Sersen loves paintballers, and his movie has the winking empathy that marks all great mock-docs. A hilarious cast, complete with (Boston’s own) Rob Corddry of “The Daily Show” and much of the cast from the famed “Upright Citizens Brigade,” put together a group of memorable characters and one-liners that are sure to become tomorrow’s dorm-room jokes.

Corddry is Bobby Dukes, the uncontested Michael Jordan of paintball for many years…until the day he committed the unthinkable during a paintball match: he “wiped.”We get this back-story in a clever opening sequence, then meet Bobby ten years after his betrayal of the sport. Now, he’s decided that it is time to return to the paintball field, face the demons of his past, and assemble a motley crew of paintballers to compete in the Hudson Valley Paintball Classic. Game on! – notes from the Independent Film Festival of Boston 2005.

Alongside Corddry, the cast is rounded out by many familiar comedic faces including: Ed Helms (The Daily Show), Paul Scheer (VH1’s Best Week Ever), Rob Riggle (Saturday Night Live), Rob Huebel (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and local comic legend DJ Hazzard.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 23rd at 7:00pm for “The Beauty Academy of Kabul” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting in the little seating area in the lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“Who would ever dream that what war-torn Afghanistan needed was a school for hairdressers? Yet this surprising and humorous film reveals that there is healing power—as well as economic opportunity—in the pursuit of beauty. Six American volunteers, three of them Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in 20 years, come to Kabul to open the country’s first post-Taliban beauty school. The response is so overwhelming that a lottery must be held to select the lucky students. Features the music of Ahmad Zahir. Directed by Liz Mermin. (Partially subtitled)”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 16th at 5:00pm for “Following Sean” at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. Note: This film is showing in the Coolidge’s “Screening Room”, which is quite small, so you might want to show up early or preorder tickets.

“This riveting family saga looks back to San Francisco in the late ‘60s when budding filmmaker Ralph Arlyck made a candid short film about Sean, a precocious 4-year-old hippie child who lived in his apartment building. A natural on camera, Sean is frank about how he smokes pot and hangs out with speedfreaks. The film gained great acclaim (and naturally sounded alarms), but the story doesn’t end there. Three decades later, Arlyck finds Sean again, now a struggling husband and father. New interviews with Sean as well as his freewheeling father, sarcastic communist grandma, and boisterous family are combined with original ’60s footage to paint vivid time-traveling portraits. FOLLOWING SEAN is an epic chronicle of growing up and moving on filled with moments of surprising tenderness and humor.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 9th at 5:30pm for Baby Face at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion

“Baby Face was one of the most notorious of all the films of the Pre-Code era – the time during the early Depression when the Hollywood studios virtually ignored the censors and offered up one sex-filled film after another. Public morals were so offended that the industry was forced to adopt an even stricter Production Code in 1934. Advertised with the titillating warning, “Parents: do not bring your children,” Baby Face stars Barbara Stanwyck as an abused daughter who turns tricks out of a speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania, then heads to Manhattan, where she sleeps her way up the corporate ladder (with a young John Wayne, among many others). A longer (by five minutes), even racier version was recently discovered by the Library of Congress and is making its debut at the Brattle. After the film, we’ll be showing scenes from the censored version for comparison. – adapted from notes from the Film Forum, NYC“

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 2nd at 4:45pm for “Awesome: I F@&!%*’ Shot That” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting in the little seating area in the lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“Before the lights went down at Madison Square Garden, 50 fans were given hand-held Hi-8 cameras and told to record their experience of being at a Beastie Boys concert in the band’s hometown. The man behind many of their innovative music videos, director Nathaniel Hornblower (aka MCA, aka Adam Yauch), then edited the best footage from the night with his signature creative imprint into a musical experience that takes you right into the world of Mike D, Ad Rock and MCA. Also features Money Mark, Doug E. Fresh and Mix Master Mike.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, March 26th at 7:00pm for “Thank You For Smoking” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting in the little seating area in the lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for Big Tobacco, makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers in today’s neo-puritanical culture. Confronted by health zealots and an opportunistic senator, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes, but he begins to think about how his work makes him look in the eyes of his young son Joey.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, March 19th at 6:30pm for “V For Vendetta” at the Boston Common Loews. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the main lobby on the ground floor about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“World War III has come and gone. In its wake, is left chaos. This chaos was quickly reigned-in by small insurgent groups who used fear, force and “faith” to subdue an entire nation, forging a new, “Greater” Britain. It is in this brave new world that V (Weaving), a mysterious, masked, swashbuckling figure, saves the young Evey Hammond (Portman) from unspeakable tortures, and takes her under his wing, into the Shadow Gallery; a world that may prove to be full of tortures of its own. All the while, bodies have been piling up within the ranks of the England’s fairly new but powerful government. All the murders are connected, far deeper than any mere affiliation with any governmental branch. These killings are vastly encompassing, but acutely personal. It is a vendetta: In a totalitarian state, the government has the people convinced that a single “terrorist”, V, would have them under siege. But V would stand to say that he is showing the people that they have been under siege by their government. V is out to avenge individuality, and reclaim freedom for the people, even at the expense of their happiness. We are all in prison, and he is “showing us the bars”. The lines between hero and villain do not blur, but become frighteningly clear and you will become uneasy, at times, when you find yourself cheering for V. That is, anyway, if the film is anything like the graphic novel. Find out for yourself, and read the novel, by Alan Moore, first. “England Prevails”, under one law or under chaos.”