The Found Footage Festival and TV Carnage present the action-packed new edition of their wildly popular and wildly unpredictable VHS-based variety show, VCR Party, at Nitehawk this February!
This month’s stellar lineup includes comedian Michael Lawrence (Conan), Eliot Glazer (Shit New Yorkers Say), Jess Dweck (Jimmy Fallon writer), and a host of other funny people to be announced. Plus, never-before-seen VHS goodies from the Found Footage Festival and TV Carnage vaults and the debut of a new training video made for Nitehawk moviegoers.
LIVE+SOUND+CINEMA goes back for more Jean Rollin with Requiem for a Vampire with a live original score by GUIZOT.
What would a Jean Rollin film be without girls, graveyards, and vampires? In Requiem for a Vampire (aka Caged Virgins) two young women – all mini-skirts and knee-high socks, killing men in clown masks – find their way into an atmospheric castle of vampiric delights. Conflict arrives when one of the girls one of the girls decides to lose her virginity while the other preserves hers and joins the ranks of the undead. With its moody visuals and softcore sex, Requiem for a Vampire is a coming of age story of friendship told Rollin-style. Amusez-vous.
Guizot: Clifton Hyde (Guitars, Mandolin, & Composer), Chris Komer (French Horn), Grant Zubritsky (Bass), and Rich Stein (Percussion).
Quintessential Chicagoan John Cusack counts down his top five break-ups in this music driven comedic drama based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel.
When independent record store owner Rob Gordon gets dumped by his girlfriend, he launches into the one thing that makes him feel secure: lists. As he lists his top five break-ups of all time, including the current one, he comes to realize that memory isn’t always a reliable resource and perhaps the answer to his problems lies in growing up. Set in the Wicker Park section of Chicago at the height of the late 1990s indie music scene, High Fidelity captures the slacker-ness of the time through the beautiful pain of losing someone you love. It’s like John Cusack becomes Lloyd Dobbler for the2000s. Also, Jack Black is stunningly brilliant in his role of the abrasive, loud-mouth, offensive record store employee.
Starring: Tony Todd, Virgina Madsen, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons
Set in Chicago’s infamous public-housing project Caprini-Green, Clive Barker’s Candyman is a corporeal horror film that embodies racial and gender politics.
Skeptical graduate student Helen Lyle’s investigation of the “Candyman” urban legend – where a hooked-hand killer can be summoned by saying his name five times in a mirror – not only initiates a series of new unexplained murders but also ignites a realization that personal traumas can violently exist beyond the grave. With its inclusion of architectural connections and spiritual conversions (rooms within the projects are linked to each other and are from where Candyman emerges), Candyman destablizes and eviscerates the results produced when urban development and cultural politics collide.
Malaysian director Dain Said’s second feature film centers around a complicated and violent family living in the small village of Bunohan (translation: murder).
Bunohan: Return to Murder deals with family histories, rural isolation, and the inevitability of development through the complicated evolution of three estranged brothers – a kickboxer, a businessman, and an assassin. Murky, violent, and a little fantastical (mixed in are talking birds and a strange ghost-women), the brothers in Bunhan fight for their lives in a “dark web of deceit, regret and murder.” It’s definitely not your conventional Asian crime film.
Film fact: though it was not short-listed, Bunohan was only the second Malaysian film to ever be nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film by the The National Film Development Corporation Malaysia.
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson
What is the power of memory? Is it something that can be wiped out in order to move forward in life with less pain or are we simply doomed to repeat ourselves? This philosophical quandary of love and loss is at the very heart of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a surreal science-fiction film written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Michel Gondry, and starring a multi-color-haired Kate Winslet and sentimental Jim Carrey.
First she mates, then she terminates! A young woman becomes possessed by an ancient maneater in this Indonesian low-budget version of The Terminator.
So let’s get something straight: Lady Terminator doesn’t actually involve robots however it IS the Indonesian rip-off of The Terminator and it does deal with a young woman possessed by a black-widow spirit of “The South Sea Queen.” It also vaguely has something to do with an eel and a vagina. This young anthropologist (not a lady!) gets possessed by the man-killer Queen in order to kill the great-granddaughter of the man who did her in. We can’t spoil all the fun in this description so just trust us when we say that you definitely don’t want to miss this lovely low-budget exploitation flick!
Starring: John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich, Steven Bauer, Frances Sternhagen, Gregg Henry, Tom Bower
Some consider Carter Nix (John Lithgow) “the perfect man” for his passionate investment in raising his daughter Amy. Presumed to be on hiatus from his child psychology practice, his devotion unsettles wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich), who suspects Amy to be a professional project for Carter. Jenny, caught up in a reignited tryst with Jack (Steven Bauer), is having trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality just as mothers and children start to disappear from a neighborhood playground. Meanwhile Carter’s evil twin has emerged, putting on display the damage done by their father who specialized in child development.
A return to thriller form for Brian De Palma, who dips into his bag of tricks to confound and delight, Raising Cain revels in upending expectations, toying with the audience. Lithgow chows down on the multiple roles, effortlessly swinging from whiny man-child to slick maniac.
Starring: Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash, Sy Richardson
The uncertainty of the 1980s permeates Los Angeles as punk rocker, Otto (Emilio Estevez), finds out that nothing is quite what it seems. He quits his no-where job, gets dumped by his girlfriend, and finds out his parents spent his colleague funds on a televangelist. With nothing to lose he becomes a repo man…and this is when things start to get really strange. Director Alex Cox makes Los Angeles the place of cosmic possibility, a city where UFOs and lunatic scientists meet car and punk culture. Plus, the soundtrack captures a real moment in L.A.’s music history.
The glossy and stylish Femme Fatale is De Palma’s neo-noir cinema antidote to the “woman-as-victim” genre.
“A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations.”
Jewelry heists, identity theft, suicide, faux-kidnapping, and murder make up this Parisian tale that follows con-woman Laure (Rebecca Romjin) from her double-cross after stealing the diamond jewel “Eye of the Serpent” from a sexually adventurous model at the Cannes film festival to her attempts to straighten her life out. Though her power of seduction has helped her attain riches and has gotten her into the arms of a powerful politician, the beautiful and deadly Laure cannot escape her past. Often viewed as prioritizing form over content, Femme Fatale is a self-referential sexy thriller about cinema, desire and the complications involving the secrets we manifest.
Part of Nitehawk’s THE WORKS – BRIAN DE PALMA series.
