Tom Fudge : We'll talk about the following movies on this edition of Film Club of the Air:
Burn After Reading
We start with a new movie by Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coen brothers had a big year last year, winning Academy Awards for Best Picture AND Best Director for their film, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel,
No Country for Old Men
. Their new movie is called
Burn After Reading
. This movie takes place in Washington D.C.. In the beginning, we meet a CIA man who loses his job and decides to write a memoir. He loses a CD copy of his memoir, which is found by two people who work at a gym, and think they've stumbled across some top secret material. Meanwhile, the CIA man's wife is having an affair with a U.S. Marshall. The people who work at the gym try to extort money from the CIA guy, then they try to sell his memoir to the Russians. This story soon becomes a great thicket of love affairs, mistaken identities, and foiled plots.
Burn After Reading
stars John Malcovich as the CIA man, George Clooney as the U.S. Marshall, and Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt as the people who work at the gym.
Burn After Reading is currently playing in area theaters.
Righteous Kill The next movie on our list is Righteous Kill , directed by Jon Avnet. This movie stars two of the most prominent film actors alive today, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Righteous Kill is a cop movie in which our two stars play two homicide detectives. At one point, they start investigating the work of a serial killer who murders people that have been accused or convicted of heinous crimes. Police begin to suspect that the serial killer is a police officer. In fact, we see bits of a video tape in which Turk, De Niro's character, appears to be confessing to the crimes. The mystery and the investigation plays out. In the end, we see the confrontation between the main characters as it becomes clear what's been going on. Righteous Kill also stars Carla Gugino and John Leguizamo.
Righteous Kill is currently playing in area theaters.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
is a movie by writer-director Alex Holdridge. Its main character is a slacker named Wilson who's trying, though not trying very hard, to make a go of it as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. Wilson doesn't have much going on in his life, and his roommate encourages him to get out of the apartment and make some friends. So he goes onto Craig's List to tell the world he's in search of a companion. His internet ad says "misanthrope seeks misanthrope." As a result, Wilson meets Vivian, who is as surly as Wilson is lonely and depressed. Together, they set out to explore Los Angeles by foot (something I wasn't sure you could actualy do). The film stars Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss is playing at Landmark's Ken Cinema through September 18th.
Choke
Our next movie is called
Choke
, directed and co-written by Clark Gregg. In this movie the main character is Victor, a sex addict who works at a historical theme park. He dresses up in period costume and gives tours to tourists. The title
Choke
refers to Victor's habit of going to restaurants and pretending to choke on food, hoping some rich person will save his life, bond with him, and give him money. The money is meant to help Victor pay for his mother's residence in a high-priced mental health hospital. Victor joins a sex addict support group while he's also falling for his mother's nurse. Meanwhile, he's obsessed with finding out who his real father was, before his mother dies.
Choke
is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who's best known for the book
Fight Club
, which was also made into a movie.
Choke opens in area theaters on September 26th.
Sukiyaki Western Django . This spoof of spaghetti westerns was made by veteran Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike and stars Quentin Tarantino.
Sukiyaki Western Django opens in area theaters on October 10th.
Guests:
- Beth Accomando is the KPBS film critic.
- Scott Marks is the author of the film blog emulsion compulsion.com
