We were soooo excited to drop this one on you! Before we started the movie, one of our guests asked for his martini “with a twist this time”. I replied, “Believe me, mate… we’ve got plenty of twists coming up!” More than one reviewer felt that The Disappearance of Alice Creed was a very good movie that could have been great if it hadn’t turned down the suspense at the two-thirds point.  Hmmm… I can sort of see what they meant – the “big” surprises were very big, and it would be hard to keep them coming without necessitating total suspension of disbelief. That being said, the somewhat less surprising sprint to the finish line kept us guessing almost until the last minute. All in all, a very promising first feature from Mr. J. Blakeson (who also wrote it), with great performances from the cast of three, tight editing, and great sound design. We likey. More, please, J.

This was the third MovieNight Thursday (out of six) this season to be blasted with stormy weather. What’s up with that? Bad weather should happen on Wednesday nights, in my humble opinion. In any case, maybe the rain did us a favor and kept the masses away: we had to break out the folding chairs as it was!

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Director Luca Guadagnino certainly delivered a work of sprawling magnificence with I Am Love. Somewhat inexplicably, I felt physically moved at several points during the movie. This could perhaps be attributed to my secondary activity of the evening: perfecting the ginger cosmopolitan! (I think I got it right in the end)

I must confess that I unintentionally misled several guests, telling them that Guadagnino was a young director, and that this was his first feature. I really did think this was the case (where did this notion come from?) but in fact the man is 39, and has made a few features, one of which – Melissa P – I had the misfortune of seeing. It was a quite dreadful Cumming-of-Age (pun intended) story of a 15 year old girl, replete with graphic sexual abuse. Guadagnino met Tilda Swinton in the nineties, and as the story goes, the seed for I Am Love was planted soon after. The pair nurtured their “baby” until it came of age last year.

Swinton’s voice was dubbed fairly well, but clever camerawork obscured and confused, making it difficult to notice any audiovisual discrepancies. Her body was also rather well “doub’ed”, to coin a phrase, in a few of her nude scenes… to her credit, not all. In my opinion, Swinton was an inspired choice (although apparently, there was never another option) to play a Russian beauty who had married into a wealthy Italian industrial family. I totally bought it.

Or was that just the Ginger Cosmo doing the buying?

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We really are moving along nicely with our season! This beautiful aboriginal Australian love story packed the house. One of the early guests asked me to describe the feel of Samson and Delilah before the screening. I replied, “Bleak, funny, uplifting.” He thought that was strange, and after thinking about it for a moment, I said, more accurately, “No, it’s funny, bleak, and then uplifting.” Somehow this made more sense.

He forgot to pay for his second Hot Pretty Lady though, and I forgot to remind him. Oh well.

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It’s still early days, but I think it’s fair to say that the record for this season of MovieNight is 2 for 2! The Maid is a near perfect movie in my opinion. It’s a dramatic comedy (or funny drama? dramcom?) that starts off as a somewhat slowly-paced glimpse into the daily life of a well-to-do Chilean family. The fly-on-the-wall point of view is just interesting enough to hold our attention while we get to know the family. While little clues lead us to suspect that all is not well in Raquel’s world, her character encourages us to laugh, albeit a bit nervously. When things start falling apart quickly, Raquel’s survival seems impossible. But then…

Of course I’m not going to give anything away, because perhaps some of the 50 or so people who visited this blog to read about The Maid and didn’t show up to MovieNight will want to watch it. They should.

And Jennifer Aniston? Well, kinda… we treated our faithful crew to an hilarious aprez-MovieNight screening of Star Stories: “Jennifer Aniston – The One Where Jen’s Husband Dumps Her For A Total Bitch”. More to come.

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Well, we made it through another summer without succumbing to the temptation to hold an extraordinary, off season MovieNight. It was just so damned hot… a person would be hard pressed to enjoy a movie with all those whirring and blowing air conditioners in the room. The roof? That was an idea we entertain every year, but the logistics are complicated, to say the least. It seems that the cozy, cocktail-sipping vibe is just not a summer thing. Hey! No matter, summer’s over!

We got off to a great start with our opener. Terribly Happy was nice and creepy, good and strange, and even quite funny at times. “Mojn.” said the kitty.  Our crowd was warm, happy to be back, and didn’t even seem to mind my being so out of practice behind the bar (just call me Rusty?).  Hopefully the service will improve as we continue… stay tuned.

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