Film           Dead Letter Office        (3rd week February)

Director:    John Ruane

Runtime     1.35min

Review

Alice’s father left when she was a child. She continued to share her life with him in letters that she sent not realising that he never received them. Eventually, they all come back with “Dead Letter Office” stamped on the front. As an adult, she becomes consumed with a desire to find him and takes a job with the Dead Letter Office, convinced that she can use them to fulfill her romantic notions of a reunion with her father. What awaits her at the DLO is far more than that …

Movie  Miller’s Crossing  (1990)      (1st week March)

Directors: The Coen Brothers

Rated M Frequent Violence

Plot

Tom Regan is an advisor to Leo, a crime boss in an unnamed Prohibition-era town. When Leo and rival boss Johnny Caspar feud over a bookie who’s been cheating Caspar, Tom tries to keep the peace. Instead he finds himself caught in the middle of a war of ambushes and shifting allegiances where nothing is ever quite what it seems.

This is one of the Coen Brothers early works and one of their best 

The Movie Marnie (1964), Director Alfred Hitchcock. (3rd week March)

Starring Tippi Hedren, whom Hitchcock introduced in The Birds, returns in a particularly demanding role and Sean Connery, makes his American film bow, as the two principal protagonists in this adaptation of Winston Graham’s best-seller.  The complicated story line offers Hedren as a sexy femme who takes office jobs, then absconds with as much cash as she can find in the safe, changing the colour of her tresses and obtaining new employment for similar purposes. The Plot becomes objective when she is recognized by her new employer, book publisher Connery, as the girl who stole $10,000 from a business associate, and rather than turn her in, marries her! That’s merely the beginning, and balance of unnfoldment dwells on husband’s efforts to ferret out the mystery on why she recoils from the touch of any man. “himself included” and why terrors seem to overcome her.

Enjoy the movie.

Peter

Film  Touch of Evil  1958 (remastered version )  (week 1 April)

Director:  Orson Wells

Plot

An automobile is blown up as it crosses the Mexican border into the United States. Mike Vargas, a high ranking Mexican narcotics official on honeymoon with his bride, Susie, is drawn into the investigation because a Mexican national has been accused of the crime. The figurative and physical presence of Hank Quinlan as the 330 pound sheriff looms all over. Quinlan is a fanatic where “justice” is concerned, even if obtaining it involves planting evidence. Quinlan’s reputation for law and order enables him to bend the law without question until Vargas confronts him. From that point on, it’s a battle of wits between the two that, with an accelerating pace, rushes to a climax.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock       (3rd week April)

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1934 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Leslie Banks and Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock’s British period.
The film is Hitchcock’s first film using this title and was followed later with his own 1956 film using the same name featuring a significantly same plot and script with some modification.

The Plot

While holidaying in Switzerland, Lawrence and his wife Jill are asked by a dying friend, Louis Bernard, to get information hidden in his room to the British Consulate. They get the information, but when they deny having it, their daughter Betty is kidnapped. It turns out that Louis was a Foreign Office spy and the information has to do with the assassination of a foreign dignitary. Having managed to trace his daughter’s kidnappers back to London, Lawrence learns that the assassination will take place during a concert at the Albert Hall. It is left to Jill, however, to stop the assassination.

6 academy award nominations, 5 Golden Globe nominations  (1st week May)

Director: Alexander Payne

Plot

Nebraska is a 2013 American black-and-white comedy-drama road film directed by Alexander Payne, written by Bob Nelson, and starring Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb and Bob Odenkirk. It follows an elderly Montana resident and his son as they try to claim a million-dollar sweepstakes prize on a long trip to Nebraska.

Director:  Roman Polanski   (third week May)

Review

When a successful ghostwriter, the Ghost (Ewan McGregor), agrees to finish the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), England’s former prime minister, his publisher assures him it’s the chance of a lifetime. Instead, he begins to uncover evidence that suggests his late predecessor knew a dark secret about Lang and may have been murdered to prevent it from coming to light.

Directors the Coen Brothers   (1st week June)

Plot

The Big Lebowski is a 1998 black comedy crime film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, then learns that a millionaire also named Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski’s trophy wife is kidnapped, and he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release; the plan goes awry when the Dude’s friend Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) schemes to keep the ransom money. 

Written by George Orwell  (3rd week June)

Actors  John Hurt, Richard Burton

Plot

Now for something a little different

Michael Radford’s brilliant film of Orwell’s vision does a good job of finding that line between the “future” world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote. The movie’s 1984 is like a year arrived at through a time warp, an alternative reality that looks constructed out of old radio tubes and smashed office furniture.

See you on Thursday

Movie 99 Homes – run time 1hr 53 min  (Third week in July)

Director: Ramin Bahrani’ 

Plot

99 Homes is a 2014 American drama film directed by Ramin Bahrani, written by Bahrani and Amir Naderi, and starring Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Tim Guinee, and Laura Dern. Set in Florida, during the Great Recession, the film follows single father Dennis Nash (Garfield) and his family as they are evicted from their home by businessman Rick Carver (Shannon), leading to Nash choosing to help Carver in evicting people out of their homes in exchange for his family’s home. Bahrani dedicated the film to the late film critic Roger Ebert.