Ford Library Blog

Latest titles are:

Pride and Glory
Rudo y Cursi
State of Play
Sugar
Sunshine Cleaning
Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases
Trouble the Water
Velveteen Rabbit
Yes Man

Ballet Shoes
Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5
Dark Matter
Edge of Love
Express : the Ernie Davis Story
Final Destination
Foot Fist Way
Frozen River
The Great Buck Howard
In the Shadow of the Moon
Priceless [Hors de Prix]
Push
Race to Witch Mountain
Soloist
Son of Rambow
Towelhead

Our latest movies are listed below:

Labou
Oliver Twist
Passengers
[Rec]
Role Models
Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail
The Unborn
Watchmen
Wendy and Lucy
Yonkers Joe

How many movie love stories are written by former Marines?  Bob Comfort wrote the screenplay for Dogfight which features River Phoenix playing Marine Eddie Birdlace.  Birdlace and his buddies are out on the town in San Francisco the night before they’re due to ship out to Vietnam.  They organize a callous “dogfight” at a local bar where each man puts in fifty dollars and brings the ugliest woman he can find.  Birdlace picks unassuming, self-contained Rose (Lili Taylor).  The scene where she finds out about the dogfight sets the film off in an unexpected direction.

Nancy Savoca’s direction, Bob Comfort’s script, and the lead performances make what initially appears a run-of-the-mill narrative into something more moving and honest.  The great soundtrack features a host of 1960s artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Pete Seegar.  This film had a very small release in 1991 but deserves a wider audience.

Anyone who attended a U.S. high school in the late 1970s or early 1980s should see Dazed and Confused.  Even those who weren’t in school in 1976 should still see the movie.  Director Richard Linklater’s day-in-the-life of a group of friends on the last day of school ranks among the best high school movies ever made.  You’ll see early performances from Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck, and it’s great to see Affleck play a jerk rather than a square-jawed hero type.

The movie has no plot to speak of, but the characters keep things interesting and the soundtrack rocks (Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, War, Steve Miller Band, etc.)  Not just a 1970s nostalgia-fest, the film manages humor and introspection in equal doses.  Jason London’s character Randall “Pink” Floyd offers up a perfect example with “All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.”  Don’t miss it.

Our second movie title in the series is the 1991 British release Enchanted April.  Movies are rarely charming anymore, but this one is both sweet and amusing.  Rose and Lottie, two depressed English women (played by Miranda Richardson and Josie Lawrence) decide to rent an Italian villa. A crochety Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright) and bored aristocrat Lady Caroline (Polly Walker) make up the foursome who share the summer rental.

Plowright, her character by turns funny and touching, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  At one point Lottie asks, after Mrs. Fisher name drops several literary figures, if she knew Keats.  Plowright’s indignant, “No, I didn’t, and I didn’t know Shakespeare and Chaucer either!” is one of the best scenes in the movie.

The opening shots the morning after the women arrive at the villa make one want to buy a ticket for Italy immediately.  It’s filmed on location, and the cinematography is stunning.  The  atmosphere has a restorative effect on the villa’s inhabitants, and when Lottie and Rose decide to invite their husbands (played by Alfred Molina and Jim Broadbent) even these less sympathetic characters fall under the its idyllic spell.  The film showcases some fine acting and lovely cinematography.

The latest movies have arrived and are out on the shelves.

Paul Blart : Mall Cop
The Sixth Sense
Taken
True Blood, season 1
The Uninvited
Valkyrie
Wild China
Defiance
Revolutionary Road

I’m going to highlight a few movies from our DVD collection over the next couple of months that you may have missed when they first came out.  Some are older and some are just more obscure.  File this first title under horror with a smidge of science fiction.

Silk is a Taiwanese film originally released under the title Gui Si.  A group of researchers, led by paranormal scientist Hashimoto, have managed to capture the ghost of a little boy.  The scientists see the ghost talking to itself, but its speech is inaudible.  In a sublimely creepy scene, one of the researchers does manage to capture the spirit’s attention, and the ghost shifts from mysterious to menacing.

The group enlists the help of a special agent who has superior eyesight and lip reading skills to help uncover the circumstances behind the child’s death. Not a strictly plot driven narrative, the film provides the viewer with far more character motivation than the average horror flick.  Any fan of horror films or mysteries should check this one out.  It was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.

Just in time for the holiday weekend–

The Wrestler
X-Men, v. 1 and 2
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Bride Wars
Death Race
Freaks and Geeks, the Complete Series
In the Electric Mist
I’ve Loved You So Long
Must Love Dogs
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Our newest movies include:

Blindness
Bolt
Doubt
Edge of Heaven
Encounters at the End of the World
Jodhaa Akbar
Marley & Me
Milk
Pinocchio
Planet B-Boy
Rachel Getting Married
Seven Pounds
Slumdog Millionaire
Smart People
Stephen King’s The Langoliers ; The Stand ; Golden Years
Twilight
Up the Yangtze