A cop hunts down rogue replicants in the futuristic detective thriller BLADE RUNNER (Final Cut).
Like tears in the rain, the visibility of replicants amongst humans in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner future aren’t so clearly discernible. Blade Runner is set in a dystopic 2019 Los Angeles where the rain constantly pours over a dirty, crowded, neon city full of mystery. A retired “Blade Runner” cop named Deckard is brought back into the force to eliminate four replicants who have stolen a spaceship and left their work colony to illegally return to Earth. His quest leaves him with more questions than answers. Blade Runner is a science fiction classic that questions what it means to be human through a depiction of a technologically-dependent and class culture that doesn’t look so different than our current times.
Part of Nitehawk’s November SCI-FIGHTERS midnite series.
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto
Slow, pulsating, and terrifying, Ridley Scott’s Alien is the pinnacle science fiction film. It features the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo who are woken up from their cyro-sleep to answer a distress call from an alien vessel. When a couple crew members come back from investigating, they bring with them an alien life form with extraordinary adaptability. Within their close quarters, the crew battles against the mother of all aliens but who will survive? Featuring the iconic creature and environmental design by H.R. Gieger and Sigourney Weaver in the role that would define women in action film, Alien is the ultimate fight in space.
Starring: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, Peter Jason, Sly Richardson, George “Buck” Flower
Subliminal messaging, consumerism, and alienness make up John Carpenter’s iconic vision of Los Angeles in They Live. Nada (Roddy Piper, RIP) is an out of work construction worker who accidentally discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see much of humanity’s true identity…and it’s not of this world. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, there is a plot to keep the human race in line but it doesn’t come from Big Brother government but, instead, from alien invaders. Carpenter takes Los Angeles’ reputation for loving beautiful facades and turns it into something poignant. This is your God.
Take a tour of Los Angeles’ seedy side in John Cassavetes’s THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE. A 35mm presentation!
Los Angeles always feels personal when John Cassavetes sets it as the background for his films. In his stylistic noir vision, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the city becomes a landscape where morals and masculine identity are tested after the unhealthy appetite of gentleman’s club owner, Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara), puts him in an impossible situation. Having to answer to his angry loan sharks, he must choose how far he’ll go in order to appease the gangsters. Cassavetes gives L.A. a surreal and gritty atmosphere here; it’s a city you certainly don’t want to mess with.
Part of Nitehawk’s November L.A. STRANGE brunch series.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
Roman Polanski takes the real life California Water Wars as inspiration in his neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown. At the center of it is Los Angeles, a city that originated as a desert therefore being a place where he who controla the water, controls the town. It’s precisely this ring of corruption that private investigator Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholson) uncovers when he’s on a not-so-typical adulterer case for a beautiful young wife named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Polanski excels at making a familiar city like Los Angeles strange; in Chinatown it becomes extraordinarily mysterious and the site of very unexpected happenings.
Nitehawk presents two midnite screenings of the documentary, FINDERS KEEPERS.
When his amputated leg is discovered in a grill sold at a North Carolina auction, John Wood finds himself at the center of a worldwide media frenzy. Believing the new-found attention to be his chance at doing some great things in an otherwise disappointing, wayward life, he’s quickly swept up in the hysteria as the leg’s enterprising buyer, Shannon Whisnant, then sues to regain its custody. But the stranger-than-fiction chain of events, fueling John’s drug addiction and compounded by generations of his familial dysfunction, soon sets John on the streets and heading to his certain demise. Just in time, however, another twist in these fantastical occurrences gives John a final shot at becoming whole for the first time in his life.
The world’s most dangerous times created the world’s most dangerous group.
In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking us back to where it all began, Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels—armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent—stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A. And as they spoke the truth that no one had before and exposed life in the hood, their voice ignited a social revolution that is still reverberating today.
Nitehawk’s BOOZE & BOOKS celebrates a Dickensian holiday with a special screening of SCROOGED. Introduction by Todd Lawton, Co-founder of Out of Print.
Nitehawk and Out of Print are hosting a book drive for the screening to benefit The NY Foundling! You can do this two ways:
- Donate at least one new book (appropriate for ages ten and younger) and receive a $25 gift card to Out of Print’s website.
- Donate $15 onsite and get a $25 gift card to Out of Print’s website — 100% of this donation will go to The NY Foundling.
The screening will also have prizes, Out of Print goodies for purchase, and an inspired Dickens eggnog cocktail!
Charles Dickens’ classic tale A Christmas Carol has seen numerous adaptations but none are as darkly strange as the Bill Murray helmed Scrooged. As Frank Moss, he plays a television station executive known as much for his callousness and cruelty as for his money-making programming. This Christmas he’s in for a real life lesson. On the eve (Christmas Eve) of hosting a live broadcast of A Christmas Carol, Moss is visited by three ghosts who, well, you know the story…
Happy Holidays from Booze & Books!
Nitehawk Cinema’s LOCAL COLOR and Tribeca Film Festival’s series on New York filmmakers presents a special screening of 3RD STREET BLACKOUT. Q&A after the screening with directors Negin Farsad and Jeremy Redleaf!
Mina and Rudy are that couple: adorable but not obnoxious. Intellectual but not condescending. Busy but still have time to post on Instagram. Yet, sometimes it seems this technology-obsessed duo can’t take their eyes off their screens.
3rd Street Blackout is a dark comedy – literally – that follows Mina and Rudy in the days after Hurricane Sandy left large parts of New York City without power. In this analogue world, their flaws are exposed, their commitment challenged and their mettle tested. How much would you pay to deliver a message during a blackout?
From the filmmakers, “We may lovingly satirize TED, web development and our over-dependency on technology, but we’re starting a conversation about intimacy in the world of hyper-connectivity and community-building in a world where we’ve all but forgotten our neighbors.” Rest assured, you’ve never laughed this hard in dim-lighting.
Spend Thanksgiving at Nitehawk with HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. A 35mm presentation!
Punctuated by two Thanksgivings, Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters shows the complex, and often interwoven, romantic relationships of the stable and successful Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her floundering younger sisters Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest). The men in their lives – a cheating husband (Michael Caine), a cranky artist (Max von Sydow), and a hypochondriac (Woody Allen) – only complicate matters. In the first year we see things begin unravel with the family but by the second year we see life on the mend, onwards and upwards. It’s the quintessential Woody Allen view on the dichotomy of life: comedic and tragic.
