Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry
Based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, this silent horror classic features an aspiring young opera singer Christine Daaé (Mary Philbin) who discovers that she has a mysterious admirer intent on helping her become a lead performer. The enigmatic masked presence is Erik, also known as the Phantom (Lon Chaney), a horribly disfigured recluse who lives underneath the Paris Opera House. When the Phantom takes Christine prisoner and demands her devotion and affection, her suitor, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry), sets out to rescue her.
Starring: Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris, Richard Beymer
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!
Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ Academy Award winning musical film, West Side Story, is a modern take on Shakespeare’s classic doomed love story, Romeo and Juliet. But instead of the Montagues and Capulets, there are The Jets and The Sharks! The Jets, a white gang on New York’s explosive West Side, is getting ready to fight the rival Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. Riff, the leader of the Jets, tries to enlist the help of the co-founder of the gang, Tony – but Tony has quit to work an honest job, and he goes along only to keep the peace. At the neighbourhood dance where the gangs meet to arrange the rumble, Tony meets and falls in love†with Maria, later learning that she is the sister of Bernardo, leader of the Sharks. At the rumble, Tony tries to limit the weapons to fists, but the fighting gets out of control and the warring clans’ feud takes a tragic turn.
Nitehawk’s MUSIC DRIVEN series presents a special screening of GOODNIGHT BROOKLYN – THE STORY OF DEATH BY AUDIO.
Q&A with director Matthew Conboy & producer Amanda Schultz.
Goodnight Brooklyn - The Story of Death By Audio brings viewers inside the last underground venue for music and art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a neighborhood once defined by its cultural contributions to the city of New York. The film chronicles the origins, community-building, influence and ultimate closure of one of Brooklyn’s best DIY venues, ironically at the hands of a former champion of their efforts.
Nitehawk and Vimeo present the New York premiere of “555,” with creators Kate Berlant, John Early and Andrew DeYoung in person!
From the minds of Kate Berlant, John Early and Andrew DeYoung, “555” is an anthology miniseries of five short films that unfold in a stark, humid, surreality of Hollywood. These short, cinematic fairy tales are set in tinsel town, where status is everything and the stakes are high.
The backdrop is big dreams, and in the foreground, the humiliations of clawing one’s way toward them. Each episode focuses on a fraught relationship between two characters, where ambition prevails over empathy. Among the wildly varied characters: a young Mama Rose type and her mute child, two sensual but ignorant acting students, an agent turned artist by tragedy and his partner who must watch his grotesque fall. Each episode zooms in on characters toiling in different corners of a Hollywood hellscape. Will greed, egotism, ignorance and desire consume them? Or can they escape dark fates by clinging to rare moments of tenderness?
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr., Muse Watson, Anne Heche
Inspired by a 1973 novel of the same name, the urban legend “The Hook,” and the slasher genre as a whole, I Know What You Did Last Summer may not have had the film critics raving but it sure was popular with audiences. It starred the famous young actors of the 1990s – Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze, Jr. – who leave a body on the side of the road after a hit-and-run one night after some high school partying. Fast forward to one year later and the person, dressed in a slicker and wielding a hook for a hand, is out for revenge!
Starring: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Michael Rosenbaum, Loretta Devine, Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid, Robert Englund
Pop rocks and soda, a man in the backseat, a cat in the microwave. These are just a few of the many urban legends mentioned and used by the killer as inventive ways to off college-aged victims in, ahem, Urban Legend. As a lot of the slasher films from this era did, Urban Legend featured hot young stars like Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, and Tara Reid. It notably also includes a cameo by horror legend Robert Englund! The film is a super fun horror escapade that truly deserves more credit than it typically gets.
Starring: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Daniel Roebuck, Chad Donella
The first of SIX films in the franchise, Final Destination ushered contemporary slasher films into the aughts. Continuing the tradition of featuring young stars like Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, and Seann William Scott, Final Destination is basically a film about escaping or not escaping death. Death gets pissed when a few high school students avoid their fate after one has a premonition that gets them off a plane that’s bound to crash. But when these “survivors” start dying in bizarre accidents, the rest band together to stay alive. But Death always gets her man.
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union, Clare Kramer, Nicole Bilderback
Life’s looking sunny for bleached blonde San Diego cheerleader Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst). Now the captain of the championship Rancho Carne High School Toros cheer squad, she’s confident that they’re on the road to capturing their sixth National trophy in a row. Problem tho. Seems the Toros’ former captain Belichicked the routines of the rival East Compton Clovers and passed the moves off as her own – and the Clovers captain, Isis (Gabrielle Union), ain’t having it anymore.
With Toros privilege thoroughly checked, and Nationals still on the horizon, it’s up to the two captains to rally their squads for a cheer-off for the ages. Can Torrance come up with a championship routine? Can Isis scratch up the funds to make the competition? The stage is set. Bring it on!
Hoop Dreams director Steve James tackles traumatic brain injuries as public health crisis in HEAD GAMES.
Christopher Nowinski was the first WWE professional wrestler to be a Harvard graduate — they made a big deal out of it, even calling him Harvard Chris when in the ring. After a brief career in the squared circle, Nowinski retired from the WWE when he began suffering with post-concussion syndrome. In the years since leaving WWE, Nowinski self-published Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis, chronicling his own struggles with concussions as well as those by other prominent professional athletes.
The book caught the attention of Hoop Dreams director Steve James, who expanded Nowinski’s research in his own feature length documentary. Cutting across a wide range of contact sports – both professional and amateur, male and female – James highlights the pressure that athletes feel to power through injury, the devastating effect of repeated trauma on developing brains, and the long term physical cost of chronic traumatic brain injury.
Part of Nitehawk’s February A FOOTBALL PROGRAM brunch series.
You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now under FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.
Odessa, Texas, like countless American towns, is a tense, economically downtrodden, racially divided community — difficult to escape from and paralyzing to live within. The town copes by washing out their woes under the bright lights of the High School football stadium, where the Permian High School Panthers run roughshod over more well heeled competition. Leading the Panthers’ charge to state is coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), whose job and family’s well-being relies on his talented, but troubled team making the playoffs. He’s got an inconsistent quarterback, a star player on the disabled list, and a full-back whose alcoholic father lives through his son’s successes and failures.
Part of Nitehawk’s February A FOOTBALL PROGRAM brunch series.
