The Boston Sunday Night Film Club will be taking a respite this Sunday, July 3rd as we celebrate Independence Day. We will return next Sunday (July 10th).

Hope you have a good holiday, and see you next week!

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, June 26th at 7:20pm for “Land of the Dead” at the Boston Common Loews. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his cane in the little seating area near the concession at the top of the escalators about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.

“In a modern-day world where the walking dead roam an uninhabited wasteland, the living try to lead “normal” lives behind the walls of a fortified city. A new society has been built by a handful of enterprising, ruthless opportunists, who live in the towers of a skyscraper, high above the hard-scrabble existence on the streets below. But outside the city walls, an army of the dead is evolving. Inside, anarchy is on the rise. With the very survival of the city at stake, a group of hardened mercenaries is called into action to protect the living from an army of the dead.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, June 19th at 6:50pm for “Batman Begins” at the Fenway 13 Cinema. Look for Audra 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.

“A new restart of the “Batman” franchise under the helm of “Memento” Director Chris Nolan and more in tone with the early “Batman: Year One” style comics. As a boy a young Bruce Wayne watched in horror as his millionaire parents were slain in front of his eyes, a trauma which led him to become obsessed with revenge but his chance is cruelly taken away from him by fate. After disappearing to the East where he seeks counsel with the dangerous but honorable ninja cult leader known as Ra’s Al-Ghul, he returns to his now decaying Gotham City overrun by organised crime and dangerous individuals manipulating the system whilst the company he inherited is slowly being pulled out from under him. The discovery of a cave under his mansion, and a prototype armoured suit leads him to take on a new persona, one which will strike fear into the hearts of men who do wrong - he becomes, Batman. In the new guise, and with the help of rising cop Jim Gordon, Batman sets out to take down the various nefarious schemes in motion by individuals such as mafia don Falcone, the twisted doctor/drug dealer Jonathan ‘The Scarecrow’ Crane, and a mysterious third party that is quite familiar with Wayne and waiting to strike when the time is right.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, June 12th at 7:05pm for “Howl’s Moving Castle” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his cane 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.

“Visionary director Hayao Miyazaki’s (Spirited Away) animated adventure brims with imagination, humor, action and romance. Sophie, a teenage girl working in a hat shop, finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is swept off her feet by a wizard named Howl, and is subsequently turned into a 90-year-old woman by the Wicked Witch of the Waste. Embarking on an odyssey to lift the curse, she finds refuge in Howl’s magical moving castle. With Sophie’s love and support, Howl risks his life to help bring peace to the kingdom. Based on the novel by Diana Wynne Jones. Original Japanese version with English subtitles.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, June 5th at 7:05pm for “Brothers” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his crutches 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.

“Newly released from prison, Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Reconstruction) is met by his brother Michael (Ulrich Thomsen, The Inheritance), a soldier about to be deployed to Afghanistan. Soon they revert to familiar family rolesb nnik as the alcoholic Black Sheep, and Michael as the responsible Golden Boy. Shortly after commencing his tour of duty, Michael’s helicopter crashes and he is presumed dead, so Jannik becomes close to Michael’s wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen, Gladiator) and her daughters. But Michael survives the crash, and is on his way home…. Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema (Drama) at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Susanne Bier (Open Hearts). (Fully subtitled)”

The Boston Sunday Night Film Club will be taking this holiday weekend off, but we will return the following week with “Brothers” on Sunday, June 5th.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 22nd at 3:30pm (another early show) for Double Dare at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his crutches either outside if it’s nice or 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. This film is showing in the Coolidge’s small screening room, so you might want to purchase tickets ahead of time from their website.

Just as a heads-up, the Boston SNFC will be taking Memorial Day weekend off.

This double-barreled, action-packed documentary follows two un-sung Hollywood heros: Jeannie Epper and Zoë Bell, who have been set on fire, thrown off buildings, dragged by wild horses and hit by cars. As stuntwomen, Epper doubled for Wonder Woman in the 70’s, and New Zealand native Bell landed the coveted job doubling Xena at the age of 18. Academy Award winning director (and Boston native) Amanda Micheli fills DOUBLE DARE with star-studded interviews and rollicking live-action stunt sequences, to create a candid look at these two strong, dedicated women.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 15th at 3:30pm for “Shane” at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his crutches outside the box office about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. This showtime is earlier than we usually meet, and it hardly qualifies as “Night”, but it was the last showing of this classic film.

George Stevens’ classic Western, adaptated from the Jack Schaefer novel, stars Alan Ladd in the title role. Riding the ranges of Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, Shane stops at the farm of homesteader Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) just before Ryker (Emile Meyer), a powerful and predatory cattleman, arrives with his hired muscle to make the farmer a threatening offer for land that he intends to get by any means necessary. When Shane lets the cattle baron know that his gun will back Starrett if there’s any trouble, the grateful homesteader offers the stranger a job as a hired hand, which he accepts. Joe’s young son Joey (Brandon de Wilde) is drawn to the quiet stranger, whose difference from the men he knows is confirmed by the accidental revelation of a gunfighter’s lightning reflexes. Shane becomes a valuable asset to the farm, but is slowly drawn into the continuing hostilities between the two opposing groups. To complicate matters, Shane feels an unspoken, and unwanted, attraction to Starrett’s wife Marian (Jean Arthur). This creates a sense of ambivalence in Joe, whose son already idolizes the gunslinger. Stevens’ meticulous artistry imbues the simple Western with the mythic aura of an Arthurian legend, as Loyal Griggs’ beautifully composed images provide the canvas for career performances by Ladd, Heflin, Arthur, and de Wilde, in what many regard as the finest western ever made.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 8th at 7:00pm for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his crutches 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.

“Based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, director Alex Gibney (writer and co-producer of The Trials of Henry Kissinger) presents the inside story of one of the greatest business scandals in history, when top executives of Enron, America’s seventh largest company, walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. Inside accounts and controversial tapes show the unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy - and how their actions may shape our economy for years to come.”

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, May 1st at 7:15pm for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” at the Fenway 13. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting with his crutches in the little seating area in the lobby (between the ticket booths and the video games) about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion (and I promise that this week that establishment WILL NOT be Longhorn. :P).

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers.

The introduction begins like this:

“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen …” and so on.

(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt.)