Starring: Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, James Woods, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, Matthew Modine, Jim Brown
Four years ago, D’Amato’s (Al Pacino) Miami Sharks were at the top. Now, his team is struggling with three consecutive losses, sliding attendance, and aging heroes, particularly 39-year-old quarterback Jack “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid). Off the field, D’Amato is struggling with a failed marriage and estranged children, and is on a collision course with Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), the young president/co-owner of the Sharks organization.
Starring: Sammy Snyders, Jeannie Elias, Sonja Smits
Left with a baby sitter (Jeannie Elias), a bad boy (Sammy Snyders) with a teddy bear finds a pit with four hungry monsters.
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Paré, Meredith Salenger, Mark Hamill
Ten months after the small California town of Midwich was struck by a mysterious event during which everyone in the village fell unconscious at once, 10 local women give birth on the same day. As the unsettlingly calm and unemotional children grow at an abnormally fast rate, it becomes clear that they can read adults’ minds and force people to harm themselves. Local doctor Alan Chaffee (Christopher Reeve) and federal agent Susan Verner (Kirstie Alley) must team up to battle the alien children.
Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale
A young woman inherits an old hotel only to find it sits atop a gateway to Hell and all manner of creatures lurk in the darkness.
Starring: Raimund Harmstorf, Amadeus August, Gianni Macchia
Rolf Olsen’s Bloody Friday (1972) is one of the more underrated examples of West German crime cinema. The film opens with an explosive courtroom escape by convicted criminal Heinz (Raimund Harmstorf) and doesn’t let up from there: Heinz and his friends plan a bank robbery to break free of their repressive daily lives. The heist becomes predictably violent, with the police viewing them as leftist terrorists, and things go from bad to worse when the group begins to turn on one another. With uncredited script work from poliziotteschi master Fernando Di Leo, Bloody Friday straddles the line between gritty exploitation film and political arthouse movie. Though director Rolf Olsen was primarily known for a series of low budget exploitation films and mondo movies, Bloody Friday has themes similar to a lot of the more consciously political New German Cinema crime films from directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Reinhard Hauff.
Bloody Friday screens in connection with the release of Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990 from writers and editors Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan, with an introduction from Samm Deighan, who will have copies of the book for sale.
In this documentary, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris captures the life of Los Angeles “gutter punks”: homeless teenagers who prefer anarchy and chaos to organized society. Many of the film’s subjects come from abusive households and have developed alcohol and drug problems. While living on the streets, they must panhandle, squat in abandoned apartment buildings and fight off skinheads to survive. The film also includes performances by several notable Los Angeles punk bands.
Filmmaker Terry Zwigoff creates a complex but affectionate portrait of his longtime friend, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. A notorious curmudgeon who would prefer to be alone with his fellow cartoonist wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and his beloved vintage jazz records, Crumb reveals himself to be a complicated personality who suffered a troubled upbringing and harbors a philosophical opposition to the 1960s hippie underground that first celebrated his work.
Barry Blaustein’s honest, intimate, revealing, highly entertaining, and critically acclaimed behind-the-scenes look at wrestling, takes viewers beyond the ring and into the lives of the men and women who inhabit this colorful, competitive, and surprisingly complex world.
In this cult-favorite documentary, Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker from a working-class Wisconsin background, is set on finishing his low-budget horror movie, despite a barrage of difficulties. Plagued by lack of cash, unreliable help and numerous personal problems, Mark wants to complete the film to raise funds for a more ambitious drama. With the assistance of his bumbling but loyal friend Mike Schank, Mark struggles to move forward, making for plenty of bittersweet moments.
Filmmaker Nick Broomfield follows the saga of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who has been accused of committing a brutal series of murders. Broomfield conducts interviews with Wuornos herself, and his crew films her trial as well as her interactions with religious fanatic Arlene Pralle, who gives Wuornos dubious advice and legally adopts her. The cameras also roll as the accused’s attorney ignores the case at hand to negotiate a deal to sell his client’s story.
