Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Alan Ruck
Hot shot daredevil loose cannon Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and bomb-happy terrorist Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) have a bit of a Batman/Joker thing going on. Payne keeps planting bombs around Los Angeles and demanding ransoms, and Traven keeps swooping in at the last minute to save the day. Bitter about his latest scheme’s failure, Payne rigs a city bus with explosives set to go off if its speed drops below 50 mph.
“I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to speed around the city, keeping its speed over fifty, and if its speed dropped, the bus would explode! I think it was called The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.” – Homer J. Simpson
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Talia Shire
The Godfather: Part II traces two generations of crime starting with the beginning of a gangster family in Sicily and early 1920s New York life of a young “godfather” Vito Corleone (played by Robert de Niro). It also focuses on his son Michael’s (Al Pacino) budding life of crime as he takes control over their crime syndicate stretching from Nevada to Cuba in the late 1950s. The Godfather films set the tone for a new wave of gangster films and this one is rightly considered an American classic; oh, and quite possibly cinema’s greatest sequel.
Two mismatched personal trainers’ lives are upended by the actions of a new, wealthy client.
Recently divorced, newly rich, and utterly miserable, Danny (Kevin Corrigan) would seem to be the perfect test subject for a definitive look at the relationship between money and happiness. Danny’s well-funded ennui is interrupted by a momentous trip to the local gym, where he meets self-styled guru/owner Trevor (Guy Pearce) and irresistibly acerbic trainer Kat (Cobie Smulders). Soon, their three lives are inextricably knotted, both professionally and personally.
Based on a true story, INFINITELY POLAR BEAR is a funny and heartbreaking portrait of the many unexpected ways in which parents and children save each other.
The year is 1978. Cam Stuart, black sheep of an old New England family, is fresh off a manic-depressive breakdown. His wife, Maggie, has left him, taking their two young girls. Cam misses his family terribly; and when Maggie goes to New York City to get her MBA, she asks Cam to move in and take care of their daughters. Cam insists that Maggie return to help him every weekend, and eventually the four of them figure out a new and unconventional way to be a family.
A lonely college freshman’s life is turned upside down by her impetuous, adventurous soon-to-be stepsister in MISTRESS AMERICA.
Tracy, a lonely college freshman in New York, is rescued from her solitude by her soon-to-be stepsister Brooke, an adventurous gal about town who entangles her in alluringly mad schemes. Mistress America is a comedy about dream-chasing, score-settling, makeshift families, and cat-stealing.
Jeff Goldblum is a hapless insomniac caught up in a jewel-heist involving a beautiful woman, the Shah of Iran and David Bowie. A 35mm presentation.
In John Landis’ tinsel-town caper INTO THE NIGHT, Jeff Goldblum plays a baggy-eyed depressive who just found out that his wife is cheating on him. With little else to do, he ventures off aimlessly into the Los Angeles twilight and has a run in with a beautiful jewel smuggler who snags him in her plot make off with the Shah of Iran’s emeralds.
Mostly known for its B.B. King soundtrack (RIP!), Into the Night also boasts a murderer’s row of Hollywood cameos, keep an eye out for the likes of: David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Amy Heckerling, Lawrence Kasdan, Don Siegel, Jim Henson and more.
Who will survive the attack of SNAKES ON A PLANE?
An early example of crass corporate meme-building, it’s a film reverse-engineered from one deliciously silly title: Snakes on a Plane. Like something built in a B-Movie laboratory, Snakes on a Plane has the good taste to not bother with plot — something about a Hawaiian gangster trying to kill a witness — and wastes no time getting to what the audience really wants: Samuel L. Jackson fighting snakes on an airplane. Almost a decade on, with the heaping froth of internet hype finally gone, Snakes on a Plane still holds up as a fun delivery-method for every possible snake gag you can imagine: snakes in the toilet, snakes biting breasts, snakes on the end of your nose. Snakes. Snakes everywhere. And Sam Jackson is tired of them.
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
Starring: Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, LL Cool J
What’s the old adage? Never genetically modify something that might want to eat you? Obviously, the researchers on board the sea bound laboratory Aquatica never heard that bit of advice. On the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers mine the brain fluid of three genetically modified sharks whose brains grow larger and craftier by the day. When the largest of sharks manages to break free, it heads off on a crusade to free the other imprisoned sharks while eating just about everything that gets in its way. Run, LL Cool J!
Who will survive the attack of the ancient aztec god Q: THE WINGED SERPENT? A 35mm presentation.
It’s a bad summer to be a cop in New York City. First there’s a killer on the loose who’s leaving behind a trail of brutally mutilated bodies, then there’s a massive diamond heist across town, and on top of all of that, an ancient snake-bird starts snacking on the city’s finest rooftop sunbathers and underpaid window washers. The monster is Quetzalcoatl, an ancient Aztec god who’s taken roost inside the grungy, broken peak of the Chrysler Building. With the creature plucking up New Yorkers left and right, it’s up to the cops to storm the art-deco landmark and take the monster out before it can strike again.
Directed by sleaze-horror master Larry Cohen, Q: The Winged Serpent is chock full of unforgettable images: David Carradine waving a machine gun from the top of the Chrysler Building, cops spraying a dinosaur egg full of bullets, and a great deal of majestic cityscapes made complete by a silly looking claymation dragon flying into frame.
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
“Let’s go out to dinner tonight. Then we’ll take in a double bill at The Lyric. Torture Dungeon and Bloodthirsty Butchers. Okay?”
“Who watches those movies in the first place?”
– Dusty and Candy in FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET
This June 11, YOU DO!! When THE DEUCE JOCKEYS venture off 42nd Street to THE PENTHOUSE THEATRE for TORTURE DUNGEON… WRITTEN, DIRECTED, PHOTOGRAPHED, COSTUMED, SET DECORATED – AND MORE – BY ANDY MILLIGAN!
Screenwriter John Borske will be in attendance for a Q&A following the film.
Plus: Prizes and surprises, Bronx Brewery Pale Ale at the after-party, and music by DJ BONES! Hosted and presented by THE DEUCE JOCKEYS: Jeff, Andy, and Joe!
Milligan’s trade-mark “swirl camera” shines its jaundiced eye on scheming royalty and nefarious nobility in this Medieval bit of Machiavellian mayhem shot for a pittance in the boondocks of Staten Island and populated by petulant princesses, horny hunchbacks, idiot inheritors to the throne, and double crossing dukes!! Who will wear the throne of Tarragon?!? Murder! Torture! Forced insemination!! With a witty and smart script and actors ranging from Milligan regulars giving it their all, to those more stupefied wrangled from the Staten Island streets – TORTURE DUNGEON delivers a deliriously daffy look into the fringes of exploitation film-making and the fun that can be had frolicking there…
Andy Milligan made movies on the (real) cheap for real cheapskates. If they’d been made for the “downtown” crowd – they’d probably be considered experimental art-films today. But – financed by self-styled “moguls” out to make a quick buck exploiting a particularly Times Square movie-going public – they were destined to the trash heap of just more Deuce fodder. Milligan’s idiosyncratic take on the “sex, violence, and horror” genre flick is so particular and strange – today it’s hard to imagine his films playing in any theater. But, in Times Square, they did. Almost exclusively. This month THE DEUCE takes you “off-Deuce” for an excursion into the outer-environs of 42nd Street and the Penthouse Theater, the former balcony of The Strand – around the corner, but still very much “Times Square.”
