SECRET MOVIE CLUB presents
Part of our NICOLAS WINDING REFN TRILOGY OF MISFIT MASCULINITY series! Saturday, June 4, 2022
LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021
*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate.
5pm BRONSON (2008, co-wri & directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Magnolia, United Kingdom, 93mns, 35mm)
7:30pm DRIVE (2011, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Swank, 100mns, 35mm)
9:30pm ONLY GOD FORGIVES (2013, written & directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Swank, 90mns, 35mm)
IMPORTANT NOTES:
***As of April 1, 2022, masks are now optional for indoor theater events if you're fully vaccinated. Anyone without proof of vaccination will be required to wear a mask for their own safety. We will continue to update our protocols with the dynamic situation. We are working to make sure we make the theater going experience the most enjoyable and safest possible.
HOW TO:
1)PLEASE BRING YOUR VACCINATION CARD (digital cards accepted).
2)PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANYONE EXHIBITING COVID OR FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS AT THE DOOR, WILL BE OFFERED COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS TO A FUTURE SHOW AND ASKED TO RETURN WHEN HEALTHY. So please, if you’re feeling sick, just write us at community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening when you’re healthy. (Disclaimer under “REFUNDS” applies)
Bad boy enfant terrible Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is only 51 years old and yet has all ready amassed a body of work as exciting as it is divisive, as visually assured as it is thematically strange.
Tonight, we screen his unofficial trilogy of misfit masculinity-Bronson, Drive, and Only God Forgives. All on 35mm.
Bronson pushed Refn from the cinematic side tent into the spotlight. A stunningly assured and cinematic telling of the story of real life British criminal Michael Peterson, Bronson is powered by the twin engines of Tom Hardy’s absolutely committed performance and Refn’s thrillingly operatic cinematic style.
Bronson plays like the kind of indie movie Stanley Kubrick would make. It’s filled with wildly assured cinematic sequences, violence, bravura camerawork and editing. But what really makes it so successful is its understanding that Peterson is at heart a misfit struggling to find his place and calling in the world.
As terrifying as Peterson is in his violence and lack of control, he is also incredibly sincere and possessed of an artistic temperament. Hardy and Refn grasp and express this with startling sensitivity so that by the end of the movie you find yourself, despite all efforts, empathizing with Peterson’s predicament.
Refn followed this up with the even greater grand slam success of his first American movie Drive starring Ryan Gosling. Drive also finds misfit masculinity at its center, this time in the character of “Driver”, a Hollywood stunt man car driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for thieves.
Driver falls in love with Irene (a supremely wonderful Carey Mulligan), a single mother, in his apartment building and becomes a kind of surrogate father to her young son. That is until her husband Standard (a terrifying Oscar Isaac) returns from prison and ropes Driver into a heist that screams “bad idea” from the very start.
Throw into this mix: Albert Brooks playing a local Los Angeles crime lord, one of the greatest nocturnal soundtracks of the last twenty years, and Ryan Gosling’s magnetic, dangerous and sensitive performance at its center and you get one of the most singular and gripping works of cinema of the 21st century.
This Programmer also loves how Refn and company somehow perfectly understand the real mood and atmosphere of Los Angeles.
Refn and Gosling followed this with their most divisive work, Only God Forgives, which took the Drive noir style and misfit masculinity and exploded it into a nocturnal Thailand hellscape of ultra-violence, dysfunctional family, and near abstract meditations on the divine.
Yes, Only God Forgives is definitely the chapter in this trilogy that most people are befuddled by. But this Programmer, while acknowledging its huge flaws (a sometimes pretentious and silly film school like approach to heavy themes and images) feels it is actually a pretty great movie. And hopes you will give it a second chance.
Gosling plays a manager of kick boxers in Thailand who discovers that his older brother has brutally murdered a prostitute and then been murdered himself by a local Police Chief who dispenses a kind of supreme justice.
When Gosling’s even more viperous drug running mother, Crystal (played in a show stopping performance by Kristen Scott Thomas), arrives to demand Gosling seek vengeance and kill the Police Chief, Gosling finds himself stuck between family loyalty and his own conscience.
Refn said the genesis of the idea here was a character who wants to “fight with God”. Literally.
The nocturnal Bangkok Refn creates cinematically is one of the most visually stunning bits of world building this programmer has ever seen. And the clever positioning of the Police Chief as a kind of inscrutable divine being, the near Oedipal child-swallowing Mother as a kind of Satan, and terse Gosling as an everyman caught in between, is pretty powerful.
Take a chance on all three of these very singular recent cinematic works. All on 35mm!
Craig Hammill
Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR OUR IN-DOOR THEATER SCREENINGS
REFUNDS:
We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.
However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write to us before showtime: community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening. (Disclaimer: Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)
HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:
We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.
There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.
HOW CAN WE STAY ON TOP OF NEWLY ANNOUNCED 35MM SCREENINGS, EVENTS, ETC?
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HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:
You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.