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Village Movie Group

 

Sausalito Village unveiled a new monthly program in August 2020
called Village Movie Group hosted by Paul Mowry and Joe Silverman.
 Like a Book Group, attendees will have all watched the same film and
come prepared to the event to discuss it.

 

August Selection:  2018 Oscar nominated documentary called "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail"
that can be found on both PBS online and Kanopy through the Sausalito Library.

The film is an excellent documentary that centers on the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a family-owned community bank in Manhattan's Chinatown which became the only bank to actually face criminal charges following the 2007 mortgage crisis - and only because it was deemed not 'too big to fail', an incredible injustice by the U.S. Justice Department merely looking for a scapegoat.

The member connection to this film is Stella Shao, SV founding Board Member, whose step-brother and family own Abacus Federal Savings Bank. Here is the trailer:  Click Here  
PBS link to the film: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/

 

September Selection: “Infinitely Polar Bear" The connection is with SV Member and volunteer Rosalie Wallace. This film was written and directed by her daughter in law, produced by her son and features her granddaughter!!  Critics gave it an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Rent on Amazon for $3.99: 

More about the film: Maya Forbes autobiographically inflected Infinitely Polar Bear stars Mark Ruffalo as Cameron, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder. After a breakdown forces him to leave his family and move into a halfway house, he attempts to rebuild a relationship with his two daughters, and win back the trust of his wife Maggie (Zoe Saldana). When Maggie decides to go to business school in New York, they decide that he will move back in and take care of the day-to-day care for the kids. Due to his mercurial nature, this leads to a series of quirky, funny, and sometimes frightening episodes. Infinitely Polar Bear screened at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi  Link to Trailer

 

 

October Selection: "Olompali" A Hippie Odyssey narrated by Peter Coyote.  A film that, as Marinites, we all have a connection to. This one is free and easy on Kanopy through the Sausalito Library. Just need your library card to sign up for Kanopy and click on this link to get started: https://sausalito.kanopy.com/

Embracing the spirit of the counterculture revolution during the Summer of Love, wealthy Marin County businessman Don McCoy transforms his life from conservative entrepreneur to beneficent hippie dropout, using his family inheritance to lease Rancho Olompali, a 700-acre estate north of San Francisco, to start a commune. He invites a couple dozen like-minded friends and families to join him in his dream of creating a community where they can live without monetary concerns in an atmosphere of love, peace and freedom. The group becomes known throughout the Bay Area as the Chosen Family - Marin's archetypal entry into the legend and lore of the Sixties hippie commune movement.

November Selection:     

"Coco" is the sprightly story of a young boy who wants to be a musician and somehow finds himself communing with talking skeletons in the land of the dead. Directed by Lee Unkrich ("Toy Story 3") and veteran Pixar animator Adrian Molina, and drawing heavily on Mexican folklore and traditional designs, it has catchy music, a complex but comprehensible plot, and bits of domestic comedy and media satire. Most of the time the movie is a knockabout slapstick comedy with a "Back to the Future" feeling, staging grand action sequences and feeding audiences new plot information every few minutes, but of course, being a Pixar film, "Coco" is also building toward emotionally overwhelming moments, so stealthily that you may be surprised to find yourself wiping away a tear even though the studio has been using the sneak-attack playbook for decades.  Livestream on Disney+ or $2.99 on Amazon Prime.

December Selection: "THE THIN BLUE LINE", a wonderful documentary that marked Erroll Morris's rise from cult favorite to mainstream, and probably the most successful documentarian for the masses, or at least tied with Michael Moore.  THE THIN BLUE LINE is a real life crime drama about a drifter who murdered a Dallas police officer.  Or did he?    ;-)  Here's the Wiki page:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Blue_Line_(1988_film)

Paul and Joey became very involved in this guy's story and formed a grass-roots organization, The Free Randall Adams Campaign.  They have a lot of background and relationships with Erroll and Randall...