OPENING FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. A 20-something supervising staff member of a foster care facility navigates the troubled waters of that world alongside her co-worker and longtime boyfriend.

The story is told through the eyes of Grace, a twenty- something supervisor at a foster-care facility for at-risk teenagers. Passionate and tough, Grace is a formidable caretaker of the kids in her charge – and in love with her long-term boyfriend and co-worker, Mason. But Grace’s own difficultpast – and the surprising future that suddenly presents itself – throw her into unforeseen confusion, made all the sharper with the arrival of a new intake at the facility – Jayden, a gifted but troubled teenage girl with whom Grace has a charged connection. She and Mason also struggle to help Marcus – an intense, quiet kid who is about to turn 18 – manage through the difficulty of having to leave the facility. Grace comes to find – in both her work and the new teenager in her care – surprising sources of redemption. And while the subject matter is complex and often dark, this lovingly realized film finds truth – and humor – in unexpected places.

Nitehawk’s ART SEEN series presents a special one-night screening of the acclaimed documentary Cutie and the Boxer with director Zachary Heinzerling in person for a Q&A.

A reflection on love, sacrifice, and the creative spirit, Cutie and the Boxer is a candid New York tale that explores the chaotic forty year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara. 

Once a rising star in the ‘70s New York art scene, 80-year-old “boxing” painter Ushio Shinohara hopes to reinvigorate his career as he preps for his latest show. His wife, and de facto assistant, Noriko, seeks her own recognition through her “Cutie” illustrations, which depict their chaotic, yet sustained, 40-year marriage. Heinzerling’s camera captures the Brooklyn-based couple at home and at work, combining candid vérité scenes, archival footage and charming animated sequences of Noriko’s drawings. Cutie and the Boxer captures two lives united by a dedication to art-making for a touching meditation on the eternal themes of love and sacrifice.

Cutie and the Boxer is a part of Nitehawk’s ART SEEN and LOCAL COLOR signature series.

NITEHAWK CINEMA presents…A NITE TO DISMEMBER!
A celebration of Halloween with an overnight horror film fest!

A Nite to Dismember is Nitehawk’s first overnight screening event celebrating a genre near-and-dear to our hearts…HORROR! Join us and our hosts SAM ZIMMERMAN from Fangoria and Nitehawk’s own KRIS KING on Halloween night (10pm until 8am) as we show five horror cinema classics that each touch upon well-loved themes: the werewolf, the witch, the vampire, the slasher, and the zombie.

Between each movie will be creepy montages, costume contests and horror movie trivia (with prizes by such awesome people as Shout Factory), the short film Jack Attack by Bryan Norton and Antonio Padoran, along with other grindhouse throwbacks.

Plus, our bar will be open really late and will feature cocktails like THERE WILL BE BLOOD and GORILLA CARNAGE. AND you get free popcorn, coffee, and self-serve breakfast (scrambled eggs and bacon) in the morning!

Forget trick-or-treating, spend the nite with us!

FILMS (in order of screening)…
American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981). DCP.
A backpacking trip through England gets hairy when one friend gets killed by a werewolf while the other turns into one. With amazing special effects and slight comedic undertones, this is John Landis’ at his horror best. Beware the moors!

Burn Witch Burn (Sidney Hayers, 1962). 35mm.
A college professor’s wife dabblings into magic and witchcraft are enacted to protect him from his intellectual colleagues. He doesn’t believe it at first but then the devil becomes all too real in this underrated 1960s horror film.

Fright Night (Tom Holland, 1985). DCP.
A vampire moves into a suburban neighborhood and the only people who notice are the kids next door (and those he’s killing). Fright Night is a late-night movie adventure that has heart…and Chris Sarandon’s dad sweater.

The Burning (Tony Maylam, 1981). 35mm.
Ah, the camp slasher movie is always a delight. Featuring “Cropsy” and a bunch of “before they were star actors” like Helen Hunt, Jason Alexander, and Fisher Stevens (with a script written by Harvey Weinstein), The Burning has all the boobs and blood you could want.

Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978). Digital.
The quintessential horror film on capitalism and patriarchy (our own zombie existence). Four people flee the ongoing zombie outbreak into a shopping mall center where things are fine at first but, as Romero always give us, people are the ones who should be feared the most.

Thanks to our sponsor, Gorilla Coffee…

Life is a journey you never have to take alone especially when undergoing a 12-step treatment for sex addiction.

On the surface Adam (Mark Ruffalo), an over-achieving environmental consultant, Mike (Tim Robbins), a long-married small-business owner, and Neil (Josh Gad), a wisecracking emergency-room doctor, have little in common. But all are in different stages of dealing with addiction. Confident and successful in his career, Adam is afraid to allow love back into his life, even if that means losing a chance to start over with smart, beautiful and accomplished Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow); Mike’s efforts to control his wife, Katie (Joely Richardson), and son, Danny (Patrick Fugit), as tightly as he does his impulses are tearing the family apart; and Neil is still deeply in denial when befriended by Dede (Alecia Moore), who has just begun to take her own small steps back to health. As they navigate the rocky shores of recovery, Adam, Mike and Neil become a family that encourages, infuriates and applauds each other on the journey toward a new life.

PASSION PLAYS FOR TWO MIDNITES AT NITEHAWK! A young businesswoman plots a murderous revenge after her boss and mentor steals her idea. Brian De Palma returns to the sleek, sly, seductive territory of Dressed To Kill with an erotic corporate thriller fueled by sex, ambition, image, envy and the dark, murderous side of PASSION.  The film stars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapaceas two rising female executives in a multinational corporation whose fierce competition to rise up the ranks is about to turn literally cut-throat. As the maze-like story begins, Christine (McAdams) – a gorgeous, powerful executive at an international ad agency in Berlin — is searching for a killer idea to impress her bosses, helped by her clever but naïve protégé Isabelle (Rapace).  Isabelle admires Christine’s polish and devotion to her work and Christine feeds on Isabelle’s admiration. But when Isabelle comes up with a brilliant viral marketing idea that wows the client, it is Christine who gleefully takes the credit. Thus begins what starts out as typical office back-stabbing – or “just business,” as Christine explains it — yet soon turns into something ferocious and primal. 

Starring: Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, Mary Kay Place, Martha Plimpton. Brendan Sexton III

A young Baltimore teen’s hometown photography become the temporary toast of the New York art world!

Pecker is a young man who’s artistically driven to photograph his very strange family (his sister Crissy who compulsively eats sugar, his nutty grandmother with the talking Madonna), his buxom girlfriend, and local colorful Baltimore community. All act as willing muses but when he’s discovered by an art dealer and receives adulation from the upper-echelon of the New York art scene, he’s torn between achieving success as a photographer and exploiting those closest to him. In typical John Waters’ style, Pecker is over-the-top, raunchy, hilarious and full of colorful characters but nothing just shock value, there’s legitimate commentary at play about the fickleness and ridiculousness of the art world. Oh, and Pecker is named after the way he eats…why, what were you thinking?

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron

Yes, Keanu Reeves is a lawyer. And, yes, Al Pacino is Satan (and a lawyer) in this law firm of the devil movie. Basically, Keanu comes to the Big Apple from Florida with his wholesome wife Charlize Theron in order to become the ruthless and rich lawyer he was destined to become. But things start to get pretty strange when he discovers that his new boss is, you know, actually Lucifer. Pacino is splendid in his over-the-top Satan impression while inciting suicide, sex, and scandal all around him…and then there’s the incest.

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max Von Sydow

We know this movie now for its parodies and pea soup jokes but even after forty years, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is one of the scariest movies you’ll ever see. Perhaps it has something to do with the invasion of the devil onto (and into) a young innocent girl and the helplessness that inflicts on everyone involved. Or maybe it’s the enduring battle of two things that still confront the unknowable: science and religion. Whatever  fright the context provides, the fear most certainly stems from the innovatively disturbing graphic scenes produced by Friedkin that leave the most lasting impression. It’s the cannon of horror and an essential cinematic Satanic masterpiece. The power of Christ compels you…

Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon

The year is one! In the film that marked horror as being domesticated, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is the quintessential film about the devil. Set in 1960s New York and inside the infamous Dakota (known here as the Bramford), the dollish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and the devious Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) battle it out as his desire to be a famous actor means the ultimate pact with Satan…offering his wife up to be the mother of the devil’s only living son.

Rosemary’s obsession with a growing concern for the safety of her baby from neighbors Minnie (oh Ruth Gordon how we love you) and Roman Castevet is validated when she discovers the horrific truth. He does, after all, have his father’s eyes.

Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov, Greta Gerwig, AJ Bowen, Dee Wallace

Set in the 1980s and stemming from the fear of the occult and satanic worship during the time, Ti West’s House of the Devil is a slow-burning horror film punctuated with bursts of extreme violence. Low on cash and slightly out of place, Samantha  is a college student who reluctantly takes a strange babysitting gig in order to move into her own place. But this job coincides with a rare lunar eclipse that brings forth the devil which means that, instead of watching some kid, she’s the sacrificial lamb (this plays out in scene that mirrors Rosemary’s Baby). Definitely see this one, House of the Devil is one of the better horror movies made in the past decade.