Sunday Night Film Club – DC

Director Ridley’s Scotts ultimate release of his landmark 1982 “future noir” film. On the off chance you’ve never seen the movie:

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically manufactured beings called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are used for dangerous and degrading work in Earth’s “off-world colonies”. Following a small replicant uprising, replicants become illegal on Earth; and specialist police units called “blade runners” are trained to hunt down and “retire” (kill) escaped replicants on Earth. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of replicants hiding in Los Angeles and a semi-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment.

Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) stars in a heartfelt comedy about a loveable introvert named Lars whose emotional baggage has kept him from fully embracing life. After years of solitude, he invites a girl he met on the internet to visit him. When he introduces Bianca to his brother (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer), they are stunned: Bianca is a life-size doll, not a real person. The family doctor (Patricia Clarkson) explains that this is a delusion he’s created—for what reason she doesn’t yet know but they should all go along with it. What follows is an emotional journey for Lars and the people around him.

In 1988, New York’s police wage an all-out war on drugs, and guilty and innocent alike become casualties. Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix), manager of a nightclub that is often frequented by gangsters, tries to remain neutral but hides a potentially fatal secret: His brother (Mark Wahlberg) and father (Robert Duvall) are both cops. Caught in the middle, Bobby and his girlfriend, Amanda (Eva Mendes), are forced to choose sides – between the familial ties he has rejected and a future he cannot avoid.

n the new comedy from director/co-writer Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums), three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other—to become brothers again like they used to be. Their “spiritual quest,” however, veers rapidly off-course, and they eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer and a laminating machine. At this moment, a new, unplanned journey suddenly begins.

Outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) terrorizes 1800s Arizona, especially the Southern Railroad, until he is finally captured. Wade must be brought to trial, so Dan Evans (Christian Bale), the owner of a drought-stricken ranch, volunteers to escort him to the train. Along the trail, a grudging respect forms between the men, but danger looms at every turn, and the criminal’s men are in pursuit.

The mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is a driver for one of London’s most notorious organized crime families of Eastern European origin. The family itself is part of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Headed by Semyon, the family’s fortunes are tested by Semyon’s volatile son and enforcer, Kirill, who is more tightly bound to Nikolai than to his own father. But Nikolai’s carefully maintained existence is jarred once he crosses paths at Christmastime with Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital. Anna is deeply affected by the desperate situation of a young teenager who dies while giving birth to a baby. The girl’s personal diary also survives her; it is written in Russian, and Anna seeks answers in it. By delving into the diary, Anna has accidentally unleashed the full fury of the Vory. With Semyon and Kirill closing ranks and Anna pressing her inquiries, Nikolai unexpectedly finds his loyalties divided.

A love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock ‘n’ roll, moving from the dockyards of Liverpool to the creative psychedelia of Greenwich Village, from the riot-torn streets of Detroit to the killing fields of Vietnam. The star-crossed lovers, Jude and Lucy, along with a small group of friends and musicians, are swept up into the emerging anti-war and counterculture movements, with Dr. Robert and Mr. Kite as their guides. Tumultuous forces outside their control ultimately tear the young lovers apart, forcing Jude and Lucy–against all odds–to find their own way back to each other.

A man named Mr. Smith (Owen) delivers a woman’s baby during a shootout, and is then called upon to protect the newborn from the army of gunmen.

If it’s half as awesome as the trailer makes it look, it’ll be pretty great.

Writer/director Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) tackles the mysteries of life, love and public speaking in a wry comedy of adolescent angst. Teenager Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) inhabits a cosmically ridiculous, often incomprehensible world. His erratic stutter can leave him hopelessly tongue-tied at the worst possible moments, sending him fleeing for his secret refuge—the high school janitor’s closet. So it comes as a complete, though not unwelcome, surprise when the debate team’s star member, the hyper-articulate beauty Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), approaches Hal to join her team. Mixing humor with compassion, Blitz creates a film about the little insights that can emerge from, and ultimately eclipse, the agonies and disappointments of youth.