As part of the Freedom Public Library Winter Film Series we will be showing "Midnight In Paris".  Admission and popcorn are free.  A simple bread and soup supper will follow the movie for anyone who would like to stay.

 

Many agree that this is Woody Allen's masterpiece. An ultra-romantic comedy, it tells of Gil, a Hollywood screen writer (Owen Wilson) on vacation in Paris with his fiancée and her family. It's clear that, unlike him, they're not particularly interested in the glories of the city, and after dinner with friends, Gil departs to explore it on his own. A mysterious car appears, picks him up, and transports him back in time to the Paris of the 1920s. Here he meets and befriends many icons of the past such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter. He returns night after night, and eventually falls in love with the beautiful Adriane, (Marion Cotillard). Allen's point is that while we may romanticize another era, we may as well make the best of the time we live in. It's a point made by taking us through the glorious Paris of not one but three eras replete with enchanting characters of other times.

As part of the Freedom Public Library Winter Film Series we will be showing "Submarine".  Admission and popcorn are free.  A simple bread and soup supper will follow the movie for anyone who would like to stay.

 

Submarine is an amusing British coming-of-age story exploring the troubles of Oliver who, attempting to discover the ways of teen-age love, at the same time has to deal with the marital problems of his parents. The two protagonists, Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige, are outstanding; he a pale and awkward fellow supplying voice-over narrative, and she, a rather more sophisticated young lady who succeeds in humiliating Oliver before getting together with him. Oliver's disillusioned mother, his passive father, and an odd-ball mystic boyfriend are other wonderful characters in this funny but occasionally poignant film. One reviewer remarked that “growing up in the U.K. is just as hard as it is in the U.S. only the dialog is better!”

The Freedom Library Book Club welcomes everyone to join our monthly discussion.

The selection for February "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. Although Lewis is perhaps best known for his sports-related nonfiction (including The Blind Side), his first book was the autobiographical Liar's Poker, in which he chronicled his disillusionment as a young gun on Wall Street in the greed is good 1980's.  He returns to his financial roots to excavate the crisis of 2007-2008, employing his trademark technique of casting a microcosmic lens on the personal histories of several Wall St. outsiders who were betting against the grain - to shed light on the macrocosmic tale of greed and fear.

As part of the Freedom Public Library Winter Film Series we will be showing "Poetry".  Admission and popcorn are free.  A simple bread and soup supper will follow the movie for anyone who would like to stay.

 

A beautiful sixty-ish grandmother spends her days caring for an elderly gentleman paralyzed by a stroke and also is responsible for an ungrateful grandson. She moves through this somewhat uninteresting routine with humor and grace, and on a whim enrolls in a poetry class to help enrich her life and to help her put her feelings into the right words. Mija, the heroine of this South Korean film, finds her world turned upside down as she realizes she is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease. There is further disruption when her grandson, Wook, is involved in a terrible crime. Her lovely and unusual poetry enables her, finally, to confront and face these awful facts.

As part of the Freedom Public Library Winter Film Series we will be showing "The Way".  Admission and popcorn are free.  A simple bread and soup supper will follow the movie for anyone who would like to stay.

 

The Way of St. James also known as El Camino de Santiago is a path in the Pyrenees Mountains travelled by pilgrims looking for greater meaning or spiritual fulfillment in their lives. In this film, Martin Sheen, an American doctor, comes to France to retrieve the body of his son (Emilio Estevez) who has died in a storm while walking this path. However, in his grief, and wanting to honor his son, Sheen decides to travel on the same 500 mile journey his son never completed. The movie, directed by Estevez, and filmed in the rugged Pyrenees of France and Spain, features a few other travelers each with his or her own reasons for making the trip. Never sentimental, the movie nevertheless conveys the message that we're all on a journey, each of us finding our own way.