Taking the audience through the culturally rich and beguiling worlds of New York, Lahore and Istanbul, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a story about conflicting ideologies where perception and suspicion have the power to determine life or death.
Beginning in 2011 in Lahore at an outdoor café, a Pakistani man named Changez (Riz Ahmed) tells American journalist Bobby (Liev Schreiber) about his experiences in the United States. Roll back ten years to a younger Changez fresh from Princeton, seeking fortune and glory on Wall Street. The American Dream seems well within his grasp, complete with a smart and gorgeous artist girlfriend, Erica (Kate Hudson). But when the Twin Towers are attacked, a cultural divide slowly begins to crack open between Changez and Erica. Changez’s dream soon begins to slip into nightmare: profiled, wrongfully arrested, strip-searched and interrogated, he is transformed from a well-educated, upwardly mobile businessman to a scapegoat and perceived enemy. With time, he begins to hear the call of his own homeland.
June’s midnite LIVE SOUND CINEMA is a must-see giallo by Dario Argento Four Flies on Grey Velvet with a live score by Daniel Collás performed by Yello Magi.
Giallo and live music! Creepy puppet masks, whispers in the dark, and a murder mystery…Four Flies on Grey Velvet is indeed a Dario Argento film! In fact, it’s the third in the director’s “Animal Trilogy” that began with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’Nine Tails. The killings begin when rock drummer Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) accidently offs the man who has been stalking him. Of course it doesn’t end there. Enter a homicidal maniac who starts murdering all of Roberto’s friends in revenge. But as it is with every good Argento giallo, nothing is as it appears to be!
Daniel Collás is the producer, songwriter, and main mind behind the Phenomenal Handclap Band, whose 2009 hit “15-20” caught the ear of Paul McCartney and started them on a path playing worldwide tours alongside the likes of Bryan Ferry, Franz Ferdinand, and Chairlift, to name a few.
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Toni Collette, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof
Todd Hayne’s Velvet Goldmine centers around the over-the-top career and faux-murder-fall of 1970s glam rock star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Myers) as told through the 1984 journalist investigation by Arthur (Christian Bale). Post-Beatles, pre-punk, and loosely based on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Slade is the bisexual icon of London glam rock responsible for the shocking behavior and style of glam masses…and he’s had enough of himself. After faking his own death on stage, Slade slides into obscurity only to be rediscovered when Arthur revisits his influence. The film interweaves the characters past-and-present in a non-linear style, reflecting various aspects of Slade’s career and personal life. It goes without saying that Velvet Goldmine is highly stylised with a killer soundtrack.
Possessed with sex! Bad Girls Go to Hell is the quintessential 1960s naughty by the queen of sexploitation films and John Waters’ favorite, Doris Wishman.
Are you a bad girl? Do you like bad girls? Do you know they go to hell?! Doris Wishman paved the way, along with contemporaries like Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), to show very dirty and very violent things up on the big screen – and always with a woman in charge! In Bad Girls Go to Hell we see the rise and fall of Ellen who, after killing the man who rapes her (her building’s janitor no less), goes out on the road to escape her past…only to find herself in more sexed up situations in which she is taken advance of and manipulated. Her body may be up for grabs but will her new identity be compromised? An empowering feminist flick of the sexiest and campy sort, Bad Girls Go to Hell is amongst the cannon of sexploitation films and it’s our June NITEHAWK NAUGHTY!
Nitehawk’s July Country Brunchin’ presents the The Long Riders with a live pre-show serenade by The Newton Gang!
Frank and Jesse James are wanted men! Like many Westerns, The Long Riders blurs the line between the “good’ and “bad” guys as director Walter Hill (The Warriors) violently depicts the exploits of hero Jesse James and his gang. Set in the years after the Civil War, the infamous outlaw Jesse James and his band of brothers terrorize the American Midwest by robbing banks, murdering, and causing general chaos wherever they go. But with a detective hot on their trail and a heist-gone-wrong, revenge reaches its gory end. It’s a film about brothers, starring brothers (Carradine brothers, Quaid brothers, and Keach brothers). Beautifully imagined and including one of the best shootouts in the western genre, The Long Riders is Country Brunchin’ classic!
The Newton Gang: Outlaw country, tried and true. From their humble beginnings as part of the Honky Tonk Happy Hour to their current role as Brooklyn’s most prolific outlaw country band, The Newton Gang has come into their own.
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie
Part of our recipe book series NITEHAWK CINEMA PRESENTS. Show your ticket at the bar after the movie to buy a copy of the book for only $20!
At the end of Evil Dead 2 we saw our beloved Ash (sans hand but still alive) get sucked into a swirling time-travel vortex that landed him and his Oldsmobile all the way back in 1300 AD. Army of Darkness picks up from this point as Ash becomes a slave-then-hero to the medieval masses as he and his “boomstick” have to, once again, battle the dead. The Necronomicon is back too as the tome that has the power to send Ash back home but it also continues to do what it does best: unearth those pesky dead.
Hilarious, gory, and full of comic book-style special effects and brilliant one-liners, Army of Darkness is one of the true delights in horror. Hail to the King!
The daring new movie from the director of Blue Valentine, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES is a sweeping emotional drama powerfully exploring the unbreakable bond between fathers and sons.
Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a high-wire motorcycle stunt performer who travels with the carnival from town to town. While passing through Schenectady in upstate New York, he tries to reconnect with a former lover, Romina (Eva Mendes), only to learn that she has given birth to their son Jason in his absence. Luke decides to give up life on the road to try and provide for his newfound family by taking a job as a car mechanic. Noticing Luke’s ambition and talents, his employer Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) proposes to partner with Luke in a string of spectacular bank robberies – which will place Luke on the radar of ambitious rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper).
Avery, who has to navigate a local police department ruled by the menacing and corrupt detective Deluca (Ray Liotta), is also struggling to balance his professional life with his family life, which includes his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne) and their infant son AJ. The consequences of Avery’s confrontation with Luke will reverberate into the next generation.
Peter Jackson’s second feature film brings all the disgusting gooey gore effects from his debut Bad Taste into this tale of a New Zealand community dealing with, what else, zombies!
A budding love affair between a nerdy momma’s boy, Lionel Cosgrove, and sweet Paquita gets complicated in this gory Dead Alive tale. As if dealing with Lionel’s meddling mother on their first date at the local zoo wasn’t enough, they really have to deal with her after her bite from a “Sumatran Rat Monkey” turns her into a vile flesh-eating walking dead! Cue many scenes of blood, ooze, projectile spewing, lawnmover-chopping, zombie babies, and fighting priest (who kicks ass for the lord) and Dead Alive delivers on Jackson’s promise to truly gross us out…and entertain us. Don’t miss this midnite grossfest to find out if Lionel saves his lady and his town!
Thirteen years after Sally escaped Leatherface’s chainsaw, the Texas-based murders have started up again in Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Part 2!
The Sawyers definitely like to keep it (inbreeding and cannibalizing) all in the family and they are back with a bloody vengeance in this ultra gory sequel to the notoriously unbloody 1970s original. Tobe Hooper revisits the cast of cannibal backwoods characters that made him famous with big budget success following Poltergeist. Besides the hacking, chainsawing, and cooking, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 revolves mainly around smalltown disc jockey “Stretch” (who winds up recording some of the new killings) and Texas Ranger “Lefty” (played by Dennis Hopper). As always, it’s a dinner party you’d never want to be invited to but definitely don’t want to miss on the big screen!
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Ricki Lake, Sam Waterston, Matthew Lillard
The satirical expression of saccharine domesticity turned violent and the complete obliteration American norms is why nine out of ten Nitehawk staffers agree that Serial Mom is their favorite John Waters film.
Kathleen Turner plays well-meaning suburban mom Beverly R. Sutphin who literally goes above-and-beyond her motherly duty by killing anyone who gets in the way of her family’s success or who makes the slightest offence. She also makes obscene phone-calls, harassing neighbors simply for the joy of it, and kills a jury member (Patty Hearst) because she wore white after Labor Day. Though this is Waters’ campy dark comedy fun, Sutphin’s unraveling grip on reality is more than a little frightening here. Serial Mom is homemaker bliss turned sour at its very finest.
