Get stuffed one more time with Jodie Foster’s Thanksgiving feast, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. A 35mm presentation.

Nitehawk kicks off the holiday season with this should-be holiday classic, Home for the Holidays. Claudia Larson is heading home to Baltimore for yet another chaotic and exasperating family Thanksgiving but this year she has more on her mind than usual. Poor Claudia has just been laid off from her job as an art restorer and her teenager daughter informed her that she’d be having sex with her boyfriend while she was out of town. Add to that a colorful family and an intriguing new visitor, she’s about to kick off the holiday season with a bang. Everything will be alright if they can all duck the flying turkeys!

Part of Nitehawk’s December NITEHAWK SAVES XMAS brunch and midnite series!

Starring: Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith

Set during Christmas time, Steven Spielberg’s Hook focuses on an adult Peter Pan who has forgotten all about his childhood and his time not growing up in Neverland. In his new life, Peter Pan is Peter Banning, a successful corporate lawyer with a wife (Wendy’s granddaughter) and two children. However, when the enemy of his past (baddie Captain Hook) kidnaps his children, Peter once again returns to Neverland in order to save them. Along the journey, he unknowingly reclaims his youthful spirit, along with the power of imagination, friendship and magic!

Nitehawk presents two special midnite screenings of the once lost DANGEROUS MEN!

Dangerous Men has many characters…like Mina whose life is shattered when two bikers with rape on their minds attack and kill Daniel, her fiancé. Driven by grief, she embarks on a killing rampage, wreaking vengeance upon all the menthat she seductively lures into her trap. In her twisted world, cops and killers are all the same – David, Daniel’s brother, is a cop who relentlessly pursues the killers, while facing a nest of drug dealers, followed by the FBI and the police SWAT team, also in hot pursuit. Mina, a victim of violence, carrying a twisted obsession for justice, is caught between opposing forces in a world of dangerous men.

Two gay men (Sebastián Silva, Tunde Adebimpe) and a nurse (Kristen Wiig) contend with nosy neighbors while trying to conceive a baby.

A Brooklyn couple, Freddy and his boyfriend Mo, who are trying to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly but their plans are disrupted by growing harassment from a menacing neighborhood local known as ‘The Bishop’. As their clashes become increasingly aggressive, it is only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.

Famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in 1961 conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans willingness to obey authority.

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) designs a psychology experiment that remains relevant to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger (Jim Gaffigan) strapped into a chair in another room. Disregarding his pleas for mercy, the majority of subjects do not stop the experiment, administering what they think are near-fatal electric shocks, simply because they’ve been told to. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram’s exploration of authority and conformity strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster. His wife Sasha (Winona Ryder) anchors him through it all. EXPERIMENTER invites us inside Milgram’s whirring mind in this bracing portrait of a brilliant man whose conscience and creative spirit continue to be resonant, poignant, and inspirational.

In this Yuletide spectacular, comedian KEVIN MAHER welcomes guests to obsess over the holidays with a two-hour video variety show full of laughs and weird film clips.

Guest Segments include:

• Department Store Santa GLEN HEROY shares true tales from Santaland and other gigs as St. Nick.
• THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL presents a selection of found videos with a Christmas theme.
• Filmmaker CAROLINE GOLUM tells the story of a Jewish Christmas in New York.
• Word & Film blogger TOM BLUNT makes a case for why VH1’s A DIVA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL deserves to be canonized as a Holiday classic.
• ELLIOTT KALAN (The Flophouse Podcast and The Daily Show) takes a closer look at the Santa myth.
• Space Cat creator WENDY MAYS spotlights an overlooked holiday gem that may disgust you.

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D’Onofrio

Strange Days features a (former) future Los Angeles two days before the turn of the millennium. Former policeman Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) has moved into a more lucrative trade: the illegal sale of virtual reality-like recordings that allow users to experience the emotions and past experiences of others. While the bootlegs typically contain tawdry incidents, Nero is shocked when he receives one showing a murder. He enlists a friend, bodyguard Mace (Angela Bassett), to help find the killer — and the two soon stumble upon a vast conspiracy involving the police force Nero once worked for. 

An assassin accepts a dangerous mission to kill a political leader in 7th century China.

Back with his first film in 8 years, legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien wowed this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where he won Best Director) with his awe-inspiring THE ASSASSIN – a wondrous take on the traditional wuxia film. The story is simple, if elusive – in 9th-century China, Nie Yinniang is a young woman who was abducted in childhood from a decorated general and raised by a nun who trained her in the martial arts. After 13 years of exile, she is returned to the land of her birth as an exceptional assassin, with orders to kill her betrothed husband-to-be. She must confront her parents, her memories, and her long-repressed feelings in a choice to sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins. Rich with shimmering, breathing texture and punctuated by brief but unforgettable bursts of action, THE ASSASSIN is a martial arts film like none made before it.

The third annual Nitehawk Shorts Festival is excited to introduce the debut MUSIC DRIVEN category this year screening music videos at midnite!

This screening includes an introduction by John Woods (Nitehawk Cinema), Sacha Jenkins (Mass Appeal) and filmmakers.

In this Music Driven screening at the Nitehawk Shorts Festival, we take a look at the early days and current state of the music video. Featuring the selected works of festival participants, the screening also focuses on on the time period before the emergence of big budget video directors such as Russell Mulcahy, Steve Barron, and Diane Martel. These early examples the music video genre were made with little or no record company support and, in some cases, before MTV or any other regular outlet existed. Even bands on bigger labels created memorable music videos despite time and budget limitations by devising a loose concept and shooting almost documentary style. We’ve chosen a small selection of early “clips” as they were known to illustrate some of the origins of what can still be a vital art form inside and outside the mainstream.

Accompanying the contemporary music videos selected from submission, Mass Appeal, who remains one of the biggest supporters of new music videos, will present some of the more recent original and groundbreaking clips they’ve featured. While this is a diverse program on many levels, the continuing innovation and creative execution of the music video remains the common thread.

LIMB & NECK (Crown the Invisible)
Theodore Collatos | 2015 | 3 minutes

CANAL (Ratking)
Eric K. Yue | 2015 | 3 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1982 | 2 1/2 minutes

DIM THE LIGHTS (Wild Ones)
Montana Wildhack (Calvin Waterman and Peter Kearney) | 2015 | 4 1/2 minutes

RUBY (Charly Bliss)
Andrew Costa | 2015 | 2 1/2 minutes

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO FUCK (Run the Jewels)
A.G. ROJAS | 2015 | 5 minutes

ORION’S BELT
Megan Clement | 2015 | 4 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1987 | 4 minutes

HIGH ROAD (Mastadon)
Roboshobo | 2014 | 4 minutes

DOUBLE HELIX (KNTRLR)
Matthew K. Esolda & Daniel Bowhers | 2015 | 5 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1982 | 3 1/2 minutes

ARIGHT (Kendrick Lamar)
Colin Tilley | 2015 | 7 minutes

NO WILL (White Hills)
Ego Sensation | 2015 | 4 minutes

LONER (Kali Uchis)
Kali Uchis | 2015 | 4 1/2 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1976 | 4 minutes

FIREWORKS (Josef Henry)
Megan Smith | 2015 | 2 1/2 minutes

LIKE ME (Joey Badass)
Nathan R. Smith & Joey Bada$$ | 2015 | 5 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1979 | 3 minutes

BLAZING STAR LODGE (Jim Lopezzo)
Jim Lopezzo | 2015 | 4 1/2 minutes

I LOVE YOU TOO (Darlings)
Ricardo Villavincencio | 2015 | 2 1/2 minutes

Vintage selection from the formative time of the music video
1983 | 4 minutes

HILLSIDE (Lost Children)
Richard Joneleit | 2015 | 6 minutes

THARSIS SLEEPS (Throne)
Nicos Livesey & Tom Bunker | 2014 | 4 1/2 minutes

Program is subject to change.

Prize sponsorship provided by Heard City, a boutique audio post-production facility, and Nice Shoes, the full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and color grading studio specializing in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. One filmmaker will receive 14 hours (2 days) of Sound Design and/or Mix with one Sound Designer/Mixer courtesy of Heard City as well as 20 hours of color grading with a night colorist (valued at $16k) from Nice Shoes. The winner is selected by festival organizers and invited guests.