Part of our CINEMA IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS series. Saturday, May 23, 2020 @ 10:15p, Netflix Streaming Service: HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016 , Netflix, dir by David Mackenzie/wri by Taylor Sheridan, streaming, 102mns)
HOW TO: While we all work to be socially responsible during the age of coronavirus, Secret Movie Club is experimenting with news ways we can all come together as a community and watch great movies.
We want to keep this very reasonable since folks have to have Netflix to start with. So we're asking for $1, $2, $3, $4, and $5 dollar tickets to get the link. Whatever you want to contribute.
Just make sure you download NETFLIX PARTY on a Chrome Browser. You'll see the initials NP in the upper right hand corner of browser after a succesful download.
Secret Movie Club will email the link for the Netflix Party at 30 minutes before showtime using the email you provide here. Click that link then click the NP in upper right hand corner. This will synch you to our screening. We will start the movie at exactly 5 minutes after the hour.
There will be a chat function that allows everyone to comment as we go.
The Secret Movie Club team will be offering trivia, history, insights, articles, deep dives throughout the movie(s). We're going to work to make this as rich a feast as possible utilizing the technology at hand.
Then we'll want your feedback immediately on how we can improve/make it better! This also will allow Secret Movie Clubbers from all over the world to join in on a virtual screening!
This week, we’ll be looking at two amazing yet very idiosyncratic westerns. The second half of our Saturday night double feature is 2016’s David Mackenzie directed, Taylor Sheridan written HELL OR HIGH WATER.
We understand many folks might be rightly taking us to task for calling this movie a Western. After all it takes place in the 21st century and is as much about class, economic strain, and family dynamics as. . .but wait, isn’t that what westerns are often about as well?
And we don’t mean to be overly cute here. This movie IS a western. Following two outlaw brothers who rob banks to try to make money to keep their homestead, HELL also follows the soon to retire Texas Ranger who would just as soon like to go out in a hail of bullets as sit and watch golf in his living room in his old age.
What’s fascinating about Hell or High Water is how adeptly it embraces the tropes of the western while molding the story to our current moment. In a strange way, the movie essentially proves that the western is a state of mind that still rages in the American psyche. We may have the internet and a continental 48 states and law and order but the misfit outlaw rebel mentality as well as the resentful working class versus city elites dynamic that has roiled our country from the beginning is still (unfortunately) alive and well.
Powered by three career-high performances by Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, and Chris Pine, and written by one of the best current working screenwriters Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Wind River), Hell or High Water like the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men is one of the greatest westerns of the last 20 years. And it takes place right now in 2010’s America.
Join us for our watch party at 10:15p this Sat 5/23/20 and chat about a fascinating addition to classic American genre.
Best always,
Craig Hammill
35mm Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer