Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Oct 16th at 6:50p for The Guard 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.

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town Irish cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humor, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought straight-laced FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Oct 9th at 7:45p for The Ides of March at the Somerville 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.

As Ohios Democratic primary nears, charming Gov. Mike Morris (George Clooney) seems a shoo-in to win the nomination over his opponent, Sen. Pullman (Michael Mantell) . Morris idealistic press secretary, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) believes in his candidates integrity and the democratic process. But, Meyers meeting with Pullmans campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) and a dalliance with a young intern (Evan Rachel Wood) set in motion a chain of events that threaten Morris election chances.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Oct 2nd at 6:40p for 50/50 at the AMC Boston Common 19 . Look for Howard 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.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this heartfelt comedy drama about a young man’s struggle with discovering that he has cancer in this Mandate Pictures production. Will Reiser provides the script, based on his own experience, with The Daily Show’s Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin handling producing duties. Seth Rogen co-stars, along with Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, and Philip Baker Hall.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Sep 25th at 7:20p for Moneyball at the AMC Harvard Square 5 . 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.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland A’s, one day has an epiphany: Baseball’s conventional wisdom is all wrong. Faced with a tight budget, Beane must reinvent his team by outsmarting the richer ball clubs. Joining forces with Ivy League graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane prepares to challenge old-school traditions. He recruits bargain-bin players whom the scouts have labeled as flawed, but have game-winning potential. Based on the book by Michael Lewis.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Sep 18th at 6:35p for The Interrupters at the Kendall Square Cinema . Look for Dan wearing a multicolored shirt 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.

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence in our cities. Shot over the course of a year out of Kartemquin Films, The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in our cities. During that period, the city was besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student, whose death was caught on videotape. The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, which believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. The singular mission of the “Violence Interrupters” - who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories – is to intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence. In The Interrupters, Ameena Matthews, whose father is Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, was herself a drug ring enforcer. But having children and finding solace in her Muslim faith pulled her off the streets and grounded her. In the wake of Derrion Albert’s death, Ameena becomes a close confidante to his mother, and helps her through her grieving. Ameena, who is known among her colleagues for her fearlessness, befriends a feisty teenaged girl who reminds her of herself at that age. The film follows that friendship over the course of many months, as Ameena tries to nudge the troubled girl in the right direction. Cobe Williams, scarred by his father’s murder, was in and out of prison, until he had had enough. His family - particularly a young son - helped him find his footing. Cobe disarms others with his humor and his general good nature. His most challenging moment comes when he has to confront a man so bent on revenge that Cobe has to pat him down to make sure he’s put away his gun. Like Ameena, he gets deeply involved in the lives of those he encounters, including a teenaged boy just out of prison and a young man from his old neighborhood who’s squatting in a foreclosed home. Eddie Bocanegra is haunted by a murder he committed when he was seventeen. His CeaseFire work is a part of his repentance for what he did. Eddie is most deeply disturbed by the aftereffects of the violence on children, and so he spends much of his time working with younger kids in an effort to both keep them off the streets and to get support to those who need it - including a 16-year-old girl whose brother died in her arms. Soulful and empathic, Eddie, who learned to paint in prison, teaches art to children, trying to warn them of the debilitating trauma experienced by those touched by the violence. The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. The film attempts to make sense of what CeaseFire’s Tio Hardiman calls, simply, “the madness”.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Sep 11th at 7:40p for Contagion at the Somerville 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.

When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia. With Kate Winslet.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Sep 4th at 7:15p for Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place at the Kendall Square Cinema . Look for Dan wearing a multicolored shirt 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.

Magic Trip is a freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ legendary LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip in the psychedelic Magic Bus (named “Further”). In 1964, 29-year-old Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, decided to drive across the country to the New York World’s Fair and film the trip. He was joined by a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s On the Road, who drove the bus, fueled by Speed, talking a mile a minute. Much footage was shot on the eventful (and sometimes hilarious) journey, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. Directors Alex Gibney (Gonzo: the Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson and the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side) and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage. Restoring over 100 hours of film and audiotape, they have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history. Narrated by Stanley Tucci.

The Sunday Night Film Club (SNFC) will NOT be meeting this Sunday, August 28th.  The National Weather Service is predicting that Hurricane Irene will be hitting the Boston area some time Sunday evening, and I’d rather be overly cautious.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Aug 21st at 7pm for 5 Fingers at the Harvard Film Archive . 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.

Featuring one of James Mason’s standout roles as a dashing and immoral spy, 5 Fingers is a deliciously arch espionage thriller whose sharp satiric edge slices through the wonderful screenplay co-written by blacklisted writer Michael Wilson and Mankiewicz, who surrendered his screenwriting credit in order to direct the film. Mankiewicz is once again enamored by the lush yet fragile opulence of the upper class, peopling his films with fallen aristocrats such as Danielle Darrieux’s vanquished countess with questionable allegiances. Mankiewicz himself directed the stunning Ankara and Istanbul location shoots that strengthen the exotic mood expressed by Bernard Herrmann’s marvelous Orientalist-tinged score. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Aug 14th at 7:15p for The Help at the AMC Harvard Square 5 . Look for Howard 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.

Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives – and a Mississippi town – upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen (Davis), Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, is the first to open up – to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter’s life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories – and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly – and unwillingly – caught up in the changing times.