Killing Them Softly is a juicy, bloody, grimy and profane crime drama that amply satisfies as a deep-dish genre piece but with political and historical depth.
Money, men, and murder. The worlds of Wall Street and Goodfellas collide beautifully in Killing Them Softly, a violent, witty and hugely entertaining flick about a crumbling mafia empire based on George V. Higgins’ novel “Cogan’s Trade”. After three dimwitted guys unwisely rob a Mob protected card game for 100k, they send the local criminal economy into a collapse. Steely Cogan (Brad Pitt) is the side-burns cool savvy enforcer hired to track the three thieves down and restore some much needed order. However, Coogan’s preferred style to kill “softly” is known and the ruthless specialist Mickey (James Gandolfini) enters to further complicate matters.
Starring: Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise
The Chicken Ranch is as clean, moral, and wholesome as a whorehouse can get but that’s still not good enough for a meddling TV preacher man in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, a musical-comedy starring two of our favorites: Dolly Parton as Miss Mona Stangley and Burt Reynolds as Lanville County Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd. These friends-with-benefits must fight to let the good times roll at the popular Chicken Ranch when television personality Melvin P. Thorpe goes on a consumer watchdog rampage to expose the illegal activities. Come watch the Chicken Ranchers since, dance, and sleep their way to continued success and into your hearts on the big screen!
Starring: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull, Andy Fenwick
A toy factory worker, mentally scarred as a child upon learning Santa Claus is not real, suffers a nervous breakdown after being belittled at work, and embarks on a Yuletide killing spree.
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!
Nitehawk’s THE WORKS presents a special Brian De Palma Director Series on select Midnights (January – March 2013).
The persistent memory of his involvement in the deaths of his wife and daughter come back to haunt Michael Courtland in a very real way.
Unhinged and unable to forgive himself for the part he played in the deaths of his kidnapped wife and daughter, New Orleans real estate developer Michael Courtland (Cliff Robertson) winds up on a treacherous journey through the haunting and constructed fiction of memories. The traumatic occurrences of losing his family repeat themselves after he re-marries a much younger woman who is, rather eerily, a spitting image of his former wife. Admittedly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Obsession’s structure folds in on itself as the narrative twists and turns to reveal a terrifying truth.
Man has created a machine. Now the machine wants to create a man.
Based on a novel by Dean Koontz, Donald Cammell’s Demon Seed is a science-fiction thriller that places the future of horror back into the everyday space of the home.
After her estranged husband Fritz leaves for work, Susan (Julie Christie) becomes imprisoned and eventually impregnated by Proteus IV, an artificial intelligence system designed by her husband that contains organic materials and, get this, the power of thought. Proteus wants to be free so he escapes the lab finding the one available portal to him – Fritz’s house. The future of power over women is here. What’s probably most intriguing about Demon Seed is that addresses what it means to be human and become human.
Nitehawk’s THE WORKS presents a special Brian De Palma Director Series on select Midnights (January – March 2013).
The glossy and stylish Femme Fatale is De Palma’s neo-noir cinema antidote to the “woman-as-victim” genre.
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.
