Cult, Camp, and Canon Film Discussion Group

I know, I said I'm dropping Thursdays, but decided to use Thursday for 1001 Movie picks rather than start a second Meetup group.

This week's pick from the 1001 Movie list is Safe (19959), directed by Todd Haynes.

From Criterion: Julianne Moore gives a breakthrough performance as Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A profoundly unsettling work from the great American director Todd Haynes, Safe functions on multiple levels: as a prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what you cannot see. This revelatory drama was named the best film of the 1990s in a Village Voice poll of more than fifty critics.

Please watch the film before attending. To help locate where the film is streaming, visit justwatch.com.

Please keep your RSVP up to date as there is a two no-show policy in effect. Thanks.

In memory of Roger Corman, this week's pick for is Targets (1968), directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave. (Criterion.com)

Please watch the film before attending. To help locate where the film is streaming, visit justwatch.com.

Additionally, please keep your RSVP up to date. There is a two no-show policy in effect. Thanks.

Our 4th of July pick is Jaws (1975), directed by Steven Spielberg.

• From Rotten Tomatoes: When a young woman is killed by a shark while skinny-dipping near the New England tourist town of Amity Island, police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches, but mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) overrules him, fearing that the loss of tourist revenue will cripple the town. Ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and grizzled ship captain Quint (Robert Shaw) offer to help Brody capture the killer beast, and the trio engage in an epic battle of man vs. nature.

Please watch the film before attending. To help locate where the film is streaming, visit justwatch.com.

Additionally, please keep your RSVP up to date. There is a two no-show policy in effect. Thanks.

This week's pick for Cult/Camp is Blue Velvet (1986), directed by David Lynch.

Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)—and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the late twentieth century. (Criterion)

Watch the film before attending. To help locate where the film is streaming, visit justwatch.com.

Please keep your RSVP up to date. There is a two no-show policy in effect. Thanks.