Uncover Cinematic Family Secrets
Many a movie concerns a family in crisis. Some families are seemingly happy but are undermined by long-kept secrets and grudges. Others are thrown into turmoil by unexpected revelations. This month, we will be highlighting family dramas that run the gamut of dysfunction, from the extraordinary to the painfully real.
Both of the movies we will be showing at our midweek movie nights concern families in their secrets. Our first showing, scheduled for March 4, will be Sentimental Value, the Oscar-nominated Norwegian film. Join us at 6:30 PM to watch the drama of a filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgård) who tries to repair his estranged relationship with his children by offering his daughter (Renate Reinsve) a role in his new movie. Later in the month, on March 18, we will be screening The Housemaid, in which a paroled woman (Sydney Sweeney) stumbles upon the family secrets of her wealthy employers (Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar) while serving as their live-in maid.
Tom (Jim Broadbent) is a geologist, and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) is a psychotherapist; they enjoy a happy marriage as they enter their sixties. They have an adult son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), an activist lawyer who hasn’t settled down yet, much to his mother’s chagrin. One of Gerri’s close friends, Mary (Lesley Manville), has been very lonely since her husband left her. Gerri has tried to set Mary up with Tom’s sloppy but good-natured pal Ken (Peter Wight), but Mary is interested in Joe, despite him being young enough to be her son. (2010, dir. Mike Leigh, 129 minutes)
Fraternal twins Conner and Murphy MacManus (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus) are lionized after they kill a pair of Russian mobsters in self-defense. Believing they have received a divine mission to cleanse Boston of evil, the Catholic brothers begin to massacre mafioso and their places of business. As the vigilante spree continues, troubled FBI agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) debates whether he ought to arrest the twins or aid them as they target their mutual enemies. (1999, dir. Troy Duffy, 108 minutes)
Every Sunday, semi-retired chef Zhu (Sihung Lung) prepares a feast for his three adult daughters. Eldest Jia-Jen (Kuei-mei Yang) is a devout Christian and chemistry teacher recovering from a breakup with her college sweetheart. Youngest Jia-Ning (Yu-wen Wang) is a college student working part-time at Wendy’s who falls for her friend’s sometimes boyfriend. Middle child Jia-Chien (Chien-lien Wu) is an airline executive with an independent streak. When she announces her plan to move out of the family home into an apartment, she disrupts the status quo. (1994, dir. Ang Lee, 123 minutes)
Black photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) drives to upstate New York with his White girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), to visit her family. Chris is uncomfortable with the comments the Armitages and their wealthy party guests make towards him, but it appears to be merely an awkward response to an interracial relationship. That is, until Chris becomes aware of a series of disappearances of young Black people in the area. Dean Armitage’s (Bradley Whitford) medical practice and Missy Armitage’s (Catherine Keener) hypnotherapy thus begin to appear far more sinister. (2017, dir. Jordan Peele, 104 minutes)
In late 1940s New York, Mafia boss Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) gathers his three sons around him for daughter Connie’s (Talia Shire) wedding: the hot-headed Sonny (James Caan), ineffectual Fredo (John Cazale) and war hero Michael (Al Pacino), who has chosen to distance himself from the “family business”. When Vito is shot and wounded for refusing to sanction a rival family’s heroin sales on his territory, Sonny takes charge and embarks on bloody gang warfare. When Sonny himself is targeted for retaliation, Michael takes it upon himself to find a permanent resolution to the conflict. Based on the novel by Mario Puzo. (1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 175 minutes)
Poland, 1962. 18-year-old orphan Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) plans to become a nun at the convent where she has lived since she was a little girl. Her prioress reveals she has a living relative, her mother’s sister, and she must visit her before taking her vows. This long-lost aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), turns out to be a worldly and infamous communist prosecutor. What’s more, Anna learns from Wanda that her real name is Ida, and her family is Jewish. The two women thus begin a journey to find where their relatives killed in the Holocaust are buried. (2013, dir. Paweł Pawlikowski, 82 minutes)
At the reading of their mother’s will, twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) Marwan are given instructions to locate their father (whom they believed dead) and their brother (whom they have never heard of). They travel to the Levant to unravel the past of their mother, Nawal (Lubna Azabal), and deliver a pair of posthumous letters. Based on the play by Wajdi Mouawad. (2010, dir. Denis Villeneuve, 130 minutes)
15 years ago Junpei, eldest son of the Yokoyama family, drowned while saving a boy’s life. Parents Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), now retired from his struggling clinic, and Toshiko (Kirin Kiki) host their surviving children for an annual gathering. Youngest son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), painfully aware that Junpei was his parents’ favorite, arrives with his wife Yukari (Yui Natsukawa) and stepson Atsushi (Shohei Tanaka), despite his parents disapproving of the marriage. Sister Chinami (You) brings her own family and does her best to entertain everyone despite the cloud of melancholy hanging over the home. (2008, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, 114 minutes)
Rachel Buchman (Rosemarie DeWitt) is about to be married to the love of her life. The weather outside may be perfect, the vibes are off. Kym (Anne Hathaway) is the family black sheep, and she’s been given leave from rehab to attend the wedding. Alienated from her family due to her past behavior, Kym find herself the subject of unwanted attention and the agent of many awkward conversation, much to Rachel’s displeasure. (2008, dir. Jonathan Demme, 114 minutes)
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), had three children, each a prodigy. Chas (Ben Stiller) started buying real estate in his early teens. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) received a $50,000 grant for a play she wrote in ninth grade. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Years later, a homeless Royal pretends he is sick with stomach cancer in a bid to win back Etheline, now estranged, and his kids, who have become neurotic in adulthood. (2001, dir. Wes Anderson, 109 minutes)
An elderly couple, Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama), leaves their small coastal village to visit their married children in Tokyo. Their eldest son (So Yamamura), a doctor, is too busy to show them around town, and their eldest daughter (Haruko Sugimura) is occupied with her beauty salon. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), is willing to take time off work to show the couple the sights of Tokyo. (1953, dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 136 minutes)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
George (Richard Burton) is an associate history professor; his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) is the college president’s daughter. Their marriage has long been characterized by acrimonious arguing. Tiring of attacking each other in private, George and Martha invite the new biology professor (George Segal) and his wife (Sandy Dennis) to their home for late night drinks to they can have an audience for their recriminations. (1966, dir. Mike Nichols, 132 minutes)
