Celebrate the 20th anniversary of REALITY BITES at Nitehawk with our 35mm screenings!
You and me and five bucks. The film that lamented the struggles of being in your early twenties is now twenty itself! Looking for love and searching for a sense of self after graduating from college, Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites takes a slice of Generation X’s mid-1990s disenfranchisement and serves it to you in a Big Gulp. Set in Houston, the story centers around four friends who all have their own identity issues – career anxiety, lack of ambition, promiscuity, and the fall out from coming out. And while it may seem like a sarcastic snapshot of the time, it’s doused with all those awful funny things that can only happen to you when you’re trying to grow up.
FINAL WEEKS: playing at Nitehawk until March 20! Nitehawk screens the 2014 Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary by Morgan Neville, TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM!
Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names. In his compelling new film, award-winning director Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and heartbreaking in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices who brought shape and style to popular music and a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spent harmonizing with others.
These gifted artists span a range of styles, genres and eras of popular music, but each has a uniquely fascinating and personal story to share of life spent in the shadows of superstardom. Along with rare archival footage and a peerless soundtrack, Twenty Feet from Stardom boasts intimate interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Sting to name just a few. However, these world-famous figures take a backseat to the diverse array of backup singers whose lives and stories take center stage in the film.
FINAL WEEKS: playing at Nitehawk until March 20! PHILOMENA is the true story of one mother’s search for her lost son.
Falling pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena was sent to the convent of Roscrea to be looked after as a “fallen woman”. When her baby was only a toddler, he was taken away by the nuns for adoption in America. Philomena spent the next fifty years searching for him in vain. Then she met Martin Sixsmith, a world-weary political journalist who happened to be intrigued by her story. Together they set off for America on a journey that would not only reveal the extraordinary story of Philomena’s son, but also create an unexpectedly close bond between them.
For years, lines have been drawn…and then colored in yellow.
To celebrate the one year anniversary of Nitehawk’s weekly Simpsons Club, we will be counting down the 17 best episodes of the series all March long and conclude in the theater with a screening of our pick of the #1 episode followed by The Simpsons Movie. Plus a Simpsons-inspired cocktail menu like the classic ‘skittlebrau’ and a raffle of Simpsons swag!
The brainchild of the show’s best writers, The Simpsons Movie was seventeen years in the making. The story of a man, his family and his town. The Simpsons Movie follows Homer to Alaska after he inadvertently tips Springfield’s pollution problem past the breaking point, forcing a power-mad EPA agent to seal the town under an indestructible dome.
Watch film’s favorite underachiever get the girl in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything.
Say Anything changes everything. Since its release, girls have wanted a guy (preferably John Cusack) to stand outside her window blaring a love song on the his boombox. Although the now iconic Lloyd Dobbler is labeled an underachiever in this film, he’s actually an amazingly cool guy: he listens to great music, wears The Clash t-shirts, practices kickboxing and, above all, he’s incredibly considerate and loving. Any lady, including illusive valedictorian Diane Court, would be so lucky to have him. But like the complications of real life, Say Anything reflects the turmoil that comes from love and family. Still, Lloyd Dobbler fights. A must see now and always.
Part of Nitehawk’s February I CHOO-CHOO-CHOOSE YOU brunch series.
Don’t miss our one-weekend only brunch screenings of the classic high school film for the aughts Mean Girls in November.
Raised in the African bush country by her zoologist parents, Cady (Lindsay Lohan) thinks she knows all about the “survival of the fittest.” But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when the home-schooled 15-year-old enters public high school for the first time. Trying to find her place among jocks, mathletes and other subcultures, Cady crosses paths with the meanest species of all – the Queen Bee, aka the cool and calculating Regina (Rachel McAdams), leader of the school’s most fashionable clique, The Plastics. When Cady falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, though, the Queen Bee is stung – and she schemes to ruin Cady’s social future. Cady’s own claws soon come out as she leaps into a hilarious “Girl World” war that has the whole school running for cover.
Nitehawk’s November Country Brunchin’ presents Navajo Joe featuring a live pre-show serenade by Lil’ Mo and the Monicats.
It’s becoming obvious that we love a little Burt Reynolds with our Country Brunchin. Mr. Reynolds has danced with prostitutes and had a nightmare of a vacation, but it’s his turn as a vengeful Navajo Indian in Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western, Navajo Joe, that really gets our ponies racing. After an outlaw heads up a bloody massacre of an Indian village, the sole survivor (Navajo Joe) steals a train full of money, makes bargains for killing, and has a shootout in an Indian cemetery to get revenge on his wife’s death. It’s beautiful, it’s violent, it’s the perfect Country Brunchin. Also, the soundtrack may sound familiar to those familiar with Tarantino’s Kill Bill, another find-them-and-kill-them revenge adventure.
Lil’ Mo and the Monicats: There may be bands like Monica Passin’s long-thriving rockabilly outfit in a lot of cities, but hers, popular in NYC in various configurations for about two decades, has the benefit of her fetching, time-warp creating vocals—good for lilting jive, Buddy Holly-like original ‘billy ballads, and blues, too—This latest [album, Whole Lotta Lovin’] features that typical Li’l Mo mix, and reminds us that when there was still a lot of straight country boogie in rock ‘n’ roll, the vocal demands and results were often considerable. And they still are, here. – Barry Mazor, Engine 145.
An unprecedented look inside the private world of J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye.
SALINGER features interviews with 150 subjects including Salinger’s friends and colleagues who have never spoken on the record before as well as film footage, photographs and other material that has never been seen. Additionally, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Pulitzer Prize winners A. Scott Berg and Elizabeth Frank talk about Salinger’s influence on their lives, their work and the broader culture. The film is the first work to get beyond the Catcher in the Rye author’s meticulously built up wall: his childhood, painstaking work methods, marriages, private world and the secrets he left behind after his death in 2010.
For more than fifty years, the ever elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye has been the subject of a relentless stream of newspaper and magazine articles as well as several biographies. Yet all of these attempts have been hampered by a fundamental lack of access and by the persistent recycling of inaccurate information. Salinger remains, astonishingly, an enigma. The complex and contradictory human being behind the myth has never been revealed.
The Grandmaster is a Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts drama film based on the life story of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man (the man who trained Bruce Lee).
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, The Grandmaster is an epic action feature inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu master, Ip Man. The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China’s last dynasty, a time of chaos, division and war that was also the golden age of Chinese martial arts. Filmed in a range of stunning locations that include the snow-swept landscapes of Northeast China and the subtropical South, The Grandmaster features virtuoso performances by some of the greatest stars of contemporary Asian cinema, including Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang.
Nitehawk’s September Country Brunchin’ goes western-style comedy with City Slickers and live pre-show serenade by Honeyfingers.
A trio of men experiencing a mid-life crisis escape the urban jungle by signing up for a cattle driving vacation in this 1990s country western comedy flick.
There’s nothing like getting out into the great outdoors to remind yourself of who you are. Watching Jack Palance light up the screen as the surly cowboy named Curly is reason enough to watch City Slickers but, in case you need more, it’s hilarious fun all around watching city men become, ahem, manly. It surely gets messy when Mitch (a big city ad salesman) and his two friends decide to holiday by taking a two week wild west cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado. Do they become cowboys? Maybe. Do they learn about themselves and life? Yes. Does one of them stick their arm up a cow? Indeed.
Honeyfingers is a band paying respect to the country jazz tradition from the 1950?s. Featuring twin melodies on Jonny Lam’s steel guitar and Luca Benedetti’s 6 string guitar while being held firmly in place by the rhythm guitar of Roy E. Williams and Dave Speranza’s stand up bass.
