Movie Club—Stand By Me

In August the Movie Club will be screening Stand By Me, directed by Rob Reiner and starring River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and Kiefer Sutherland.

In Castle Rock, Oregon, 1959, four boys, Gordie (Wheaton), Chris (Phoenix), Teddy (Feldman), and Vern (O'Connell), come to believe that they know the location of the dead body of a boy who went missing from a nearby town. They decide to take a journey out of town and across the country to find the body and be celebrated as local heroes. While taking the journey the boys face many perils, some real, some only rumour. But what they really find along the journey is who they are and where they are going.

The film is based on a Stephen King novella, originally entitled "They Body", from the Different Seasons collection, which also contained "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption", which was also made into a film in 1996. Like The Shawshank Redemption, the film has become an audience favourite, and won the approval of King, who believes it to be one of the first accurate adaptations of his work. It has become the quintessential coming-of-age film, dealing with the loss of childhood innocence, death, nostalgia, and the uncertainty of growing up.

The film will be screened on Wednesday 10 August at 6pm at Narellan Library, Corner of Queen and Elyard Street, Narellan. Tea, coffee, and biscuits provided, but BYO snacks are more than welcome. Stay after the screening to share your thoughts about the film and join in a discussion about the many intriguing insights the film explores.

Book Review—Room by Emma Donoghue

All his life Jack has lived in Room. He lives with Ma, along with Bathtub, Wardrobe, Bed, and Egg Snake. Jack has no conception of an outside world, with the only links being TV, which he believes is all made up, and Old Nick, the man who kidnapped Ma and has been keeping the two of them. Old Nick comes into Room most nights while Jack sleeps hidden in Wardrobe and rapes Ma as he has for the last seven years. Ma learns that Old Nick has been unemployed for several months and fears that if he loses the house he will kill her and Jack. She makes plans to escape, but getting Jack and herself out is only the beginning of the challenge, as she learns to live again and Jack must completely redefine his sense of reality.

Told entirely from Jack's perspective the voice sets the novel as a work of exploration and discovery rather than a dark study. Although dealing with difficult subjects it uses these as catalysts for celebration, a celebration of life and the world despite the dark elements that often take hold and don't let go. We are transfixed by Jack's wonderment of life even while still in Room, and like Sofie Laguna's The Eye of The Sheep, which also gave a child's fantastical expression to troubling situations, Room utilizes this child's fascination to give these scenarios a rich, human quality that makes the difficulties more poignant without diminishing their impact or slipping into sentimentality.

Despite its dark origins Room is a surprisingly uplifting story of a life most unique and touching.
Andreas

Book Review—Peru by Gordon Lish

At the tender age of six, Gordon murdered Steven Adinoff in Andy Leiblich’s sandbox. After witnessing scenes on the television of violent acts from a prison in Peru, Gordon begins to remember this event. But as he remembers, as he interrogates whatever details his memory is willing to conjure, his thoughts take on a new form, until the very murder at the centre of Gordon’s reminiscences becomes uncertain.

Unlike other memory narratives where the process involves the clichéd “peeling an onion” technique, where removing layers of details reveals the truth, Peru works the opposite way. “There is nothing I will not tell you if I can think of it”, Gordon promises us, and so he circles around the facts of the matter as well as seemingly inconsequential details that will not yield. The flurry of repetition both immediate (“Steven Adinoff is not even the half of it, Steven Adinoff is not even a smidgen of it. For instance, for instance—speaking of the cellar for instance”) and in recurring passages (the coloured man and the Buick, the matriarchal nanny, Andy’s sister in the cellar, the hoe striking into Steven Adinoff’s head) all add to this swirling around that both confirms as it casts doubt. To add to this blurring of the real and the false Lish, the author, uses his real given name (Gordon) for the protagonist and dedicates the novel not only to his real family but also and the fictional(?) deceased boy. Even the basic assumptions of what is ‘real’ and what is fictional are not guaranteed.

Frightening with its allure of the obsessiveness of memory, Peru is a haunting look at a gruesomely twisted childhood nostalgia.

Andreas

Film Review - Last Vegas By Director Jon Turtletaub

Last Vegas stars Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline. Billy, Paddy, Archie and Sam are all childhood friends. When Billy decides to get married to his 30 something girlfriend the gang gets back together.

 They head to Las Vegas to throw a bachelor party for their last remaining single pal. This film is filled with laughs. Anne

Film Review - Saving Mr Banks By Director John Lee Hancock

Saving Mr Banks stars Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. This story is about the making of Mary Poppins. Walt Disney tries unsuccessfully to obtain the rights to the story from a tough author.

Only when they go back into past childhood memories do they feel free and are able to release Mary Poppins into the world. An enjoyable and uplifting movie, touching at times. Anne