John Humma Cinema Arts Series - Fall 2009
| All films are shown Monday evenings at 7:15 in the Russell Union Auditorium. Films are large screen format, unless noted otherwise. Cinema Arts films are not subsidized by student activity fees. Cinema Arts is an alternative or "repertory" cinema. The films are part of the regular academic program of Georgia Southern. Classroom decorum is required. |
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 September 14: Gran Torino (US, 2008)In his fourth directorial feature in the span of two years and arguably the best film of his remarkable career, Clint Eastwood plays a grizzled Korean War vet transformed and redeemed through a reluctant friendship with a Hmong teenage boy and his immigrant family. Set in contemporary Detroit, Gran Torino tackles the shifting cultural and economic landscape of not only the Motor City, but America as well. Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, an unabashed bigot who never heard a racial insult he didn't love. Bitter, haunted, and full of pride, Walt refuses to abandon the neighborhood he's lived in for decades despite its changing demographics as he clings desperately to a mindset long since out of step with the times. When his Hmong neighbor Thao tries to steal his prized muscle car as part of a gang initiation, Walt is forced to grapple with the world around him. There is nothing subtle about Walt's bigotry, yet his misanthropy knows no bounds, and Eastwood does a remarkable job of finding the humor in Walt's equal opportunity racism. More than simply a racial morality tale, however, Gran Torino is about the unlikely bonds that people form to navigate the subtle complexities of everyday life. It shows the challenging yet rich new world that can open up when individuals let down their guard, even if for just a moment. Estranged from his family and his church, and without any sense of personal peace, Walt offers all that he has to Thao and his family, namely wisdom and protection. When tragedy strikes the family, Eastwood allows a little classic Harry Callahan to poke through, but the surprising finale posits a hero that Dirty Harry would never have the guts to be. It's a potent symbolic gesture to Eastwood's own growth as a storyteller. 116 minutes. |
 September 21: Just Another Love Story/Love on Film (Denmark, 2007)Ole Bornedal’s ironically titled Just Another Love Story is anything but. Cleverly narrated, impressively shot, and dynamically edited, this gripping psychological thriller both reinvents and pays tribute to the film noir convention by combining its influences into an entirely original package. Jonas is a crime photographer, a family man, and a generally beleaguered resident of suburban malaise until he’s involved in a car accident that leaves a stranger, Julia, unconscious in the hospital. Curiosity compels Jonas to visit her, but when Julia’s family mistakes him for her boyfriend, Sebastian (whom they’ve never met), Jonas readily steps into the role. His pretense would be short-lived, but Julia awakens with amnesia and, enlivened by the new identity he’s inherited, Jonas maintains the deception. Of course, memories return. And so do boyfriends. Playing with flashbacks within an already non-linear fractured storyline, Bornedal shows remarkable artistic dexterity. Constantly aware of what’s predictable, he heads in the opposite direction, knowing all along that fatalism rules in noir, and the cruel irony is that living a life that isn’t yours is a dangerous game, an illusory freedom. A riveting experience from start to finish. The American remake is unfortunately already in the making. In Danish with English subtitles. 100 minutes. |
 October 5: Milk (US, 2008)Nominated for eight Oscars, Gus Van Sant’s triumphant biopic about the life and assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to major public office in America, is the best treatment against all the ignorance and intolerance that still plagues this country and led to the passing of the referendum (Proposition 8) that banned same-sex marriage in California. In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. His victory was not just a victory for gay rights; he forged coalitions across the political spectrum. From senior citizens to union workers, Harvey Milk changed the very nature of what it means to be a fighter for human rights and became, before his untimely death in 1978, a hero for all Americans. In his extraordinarily empathetic performance that earned him an Oscar, "Sean Penn never tries to show Harvey Milk as a hero, and never needs to. He shows him as an ordinary man: kind, funny, flawed, shrewd, idealistic, yearning for a better world," (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). Winner of over forty (40) international awards. 128 minutes. |
 October 19: Sicko (US, 2007)In Sicko, his most recent documentary, Academy Award and Cannes Film Festival winner Michael Moore takes on the crumbling US healthcare system, the most urgent of the many reforms undertaken by the Obama Administration. This timely exposé of the massive failure and absolute incurability of the capitalist healthcare model practiced in US is devastating, utterly convincing, and, in Moore’s typical fashion, hugely entertaining to watch. While citizens of other developed nations enjoy universal health care, 50 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and the rest struggle with the ever-rising premiums, fewer choices, higher deductibles and co-pays, reduced coverage, and overall decline in quality. And it will keep getting sicker and sicker, so long as politicians take donations from the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and the entire industry remains driven by profit. The filmmaker's trips abroad to easily-accessible hospitals are juxtaposed with maddening stories of American patients buried in debt and doctors who can't operate on dying patients. Another milestone documentary from the most famous social and political activist of our time and a true American patriot. 113 minutes. |
 November 2: Tomorrow (US, 1972)Cinema Arts is really thrilled to bring you this forgotten, brilliantly understated gem, only now released on DVD. Starring Robert Duvall in his breakthrough screen role and shot in black and white to convey the feel of the Depression era, Tomorrow is a gripping and poignant tale based on a short story by William Faulkner and scripted by Academy Award winner Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies). Duvall plays a Mississippi cotton farmer who finds a pregnant and unconscious woman on his land and nurses her back to health. As their relationship develops, deep trouble brews for both of them. 102 minutes. |
 November 9: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (France, 2007)Julian Schnabel won Best Director at Cannes for bringing Jean-Dominique Bauby's monumental memoir to the screen. The late Elle magazine editor suffered a stroke that left his entire body paralyzed, save his left eyelid, which he used to blink a witty life story into existence in defiance of his "locked-in syndrome." This feat is not diminished in Schnabel’s wondrous film. Mathieu Amalric plays Bauby, whose motionless body is free in his memories and fantasies, rendered cinematically with ocean-deep narration and expert POV photography by the Oscar winner Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List). "The result is not what you could call inspirational . . . It is more than that. It is heroic" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). With Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Jose Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incredible Max von Sydow. Winner of over forty (40) prestigious international awards including four Oscar nominations. In French with English subtitles. 112 mins. The screening of Diving Bell and the Butterfly is part of the Annual National French Week. Partial funding provided by Dr. Clara Krug from the Department of Foreign Languages. |
 November 16: Let the Right One In (Sweden, 2008)An art-house vampire movie about a lonely, bullied little boy and an even lonelier, bloodsucking little girl who form a tender bond in their snowy Swedish town. Tomas Alfredson’s cool direction, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s unusual script, Hoyte van Hoytema’s hushed photography, and the captivating performances of Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson make for a flawless horror film that puts its high-grossing American counterpart, Twilight, to utter shame. Winner of fifty-one (51) European and American film awards including Toronto, Tribeca, and Edinburgh festivals, not to mention the Grand Prize at the prestigious Sitges (Catalonia) Horror and Fantasy International Festival. Not to be missed. In Swedish with English subtitles. 115 minutes. |
| Program Director: Tomasz Warchol, 478-5823 tomwar@georgiasouthern.edu |