Winter 2015/16 Mondays: 18:00-20:00 (Bi-Weekly) Room: LN003

Film Club

Winter 2015/16 Mondays: 18:00-20:00 (bi-weekly) Room: LN003 Small Town America

November 2, 2015 Pleasantville (Gary Ross 1998, 124 minutes) Helmer/writer Gary Ross does an exceptional job of capturing the contrast between the 50's and the 90's without everything drawn in terms of, pardon the pun, black and white. David becomes the character Bud in the TV show [Pleasantville] and initially believes the morals and wholesome certainties of the time are what he really wants. […] His sister Jennifer, come Mary Sue, is a 90's brat who sees her dilemma as an opportunity to shake things up in the community and have some fun. […] Coupled with the perplexity of David and Jennifer's plight is the story of a town coping with drastic change and the rift this causes in the isolated community. (Robin Clifford)

November 16, 2015 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallstrom 1993, 113 minutes) It's hard to describe the many eccentricities of What's Eating Gilbert Grape without making the film sound as if it had a case of terminal whimsy. Better to say that this is the work of Lasse Hallstrom, the Swedish director of My Life as a Dog, whose gentle, rueful style can accommodate vast amounts of quirkiness in enchanting ways. Mr. Hallstrom is also adept at viewing the world from the perspective of troubled young characters. And Gilbert Grape, the hero and narrator of this story, has troubles to spare. Gilbert lives in Endora, Iowa, a town so flat and featureless that all of its energy seems to have turned inward, particularly where the Grape family is concerned. (Janet Maslin) November 30, 2015 Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen 1996, 98 minutes) […] a scathingly funny, dark little crime comedy. Fargo, supposedly taken from real-life events, whisks us into a world askew. In it, we see America’s heartland through a glass -- and a blizzard – darkly. […] Fargo returns crime to where it mostly dwells: with the hotheads and scatterbrains, the bullies and incompetents. It shows what happens when men of limited intelligence and fewer morals get guns and wild ideas -- sometimes from watching TV. (Michael Wilmington) December 14, 2015 It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra 1946, 125 minutes) It’s a Wonderful Life, with its chubby angel, Clarence, played by Henry Travers, and its colorful collection of characters, was, strangely enough, a box-office failure in 1946 […]. But over the years, as a staple on television at Christmas, the film has acquired the status of a cult classic. I love it, corny as it may be, because it reminds every one of us that we all make contributions to the people around us, contributions we ourselves don't even realize. (David Stratton) January 11, 2016 Lone Star (John Sayles 1996, 135 minutes) Lone Star is an absorbing neo-Western mystery told in a haunting magical realist tone. […] Sayles adopts elegant time flipping segues toward an epic cross-generational and cross-cultural narrative about hard-won legacies for the people of a border town called Rio. (Cole Smithey)

January 25, 2016 Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple 1976, 103 minutes) Ms. Kopple turned her cameras in 1972 on Harlan County, KY, and caught the bitter conflict over the 13-month coal miners' strike that took place there between Brookside mine workers (the Brookside Mine's parent company is the Duke Power Company-they are owned by big oil) and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) during 1973 and 1974, as the miners fought for the right to join the United Mine Workers and were assisted by their loyal long-suffering wives in organizing rallies and offering solidarity for the cause. (Dennis Schwartz) Film Club Project Schein

This project Schein is not graded, it just says you passed the class (after you passed it). It will appear on your LSF transcript.

To get the Schein, you need to participate in a short discussion about the six films we watched (about 20-30 minutes) and, of course, have watched the films. You cannot take any notes for the test or bring any notes.

Here are some questions that might come up:

Which film did you like best and why and which film didn’t you like and for what reasons?

Which film works well for teaching ESL or cultural issues? Why?

Plus, I’ll hand out a few more specific questions per film at the end of January 2016.