The mission to destroy the Horcruxes begins in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1, directed by David Yates.

J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was published in 2007.

The whole of the world has fallen on the shoulders of The Boy Who Lived. In control of both the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts, Voldemort takes his place at the head of the Wizarding world, forcing Harry Potter into hiding. With all hope dimming, Harry, Ron and Hermione set out to find and destroy Voldemort’s horcruxes, magical artifacts cursed by the Dark Lord with a segment of his soul, protecting him from death. As the trio zaps around all of Britain, they discover Voldemort’s ultimate goal: obtaining the Deathly Hallows, the three most powerful artifacts in all of magic.

The first part of the series’ grand conclusion, Deathly Hallows Part 1 features the Potter crew in full-on angst-ridden teen mode – complete with Nick Cave sad-dancing – but things are always darkest before the light can break through. Lumos!

Part of Nitehawk’s Booze & Books HARRY POTTER 20 brunch series.

The dark force threatens Hogwarts School in the Chris Columbus sequel directed HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS.  

J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” was published in 1998.

Only a second-year wizard and already a hero, young Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts for another year of quidditch, crazy ghosts and another suspicious Defense Against the Dark Arts professor (Kenneth Branagh at his Kenneth Branaghiest). Aside from a busted flying car and an annoying house elf popping up, year two goes pretty well for Harry – that is, until someone opens the Chamber of Secrets and unleashes a monster on the school that petrifies all who see it. Obliviate!

Part of Nitehawk’s Booze & Books HARRY POTTER 20 brunch series.

Love and tragedy are abound in the David Yate’s directed HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE.

J.K. Rowling’s penultimate “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was published in 2005.

War has come. The Dark Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters wreak havoc on the worlds of both wizards and muggles alike, and as death rains down from above, Harry Potter and his friends return to the relative safety of Hogwarts. Guided by Dumbledore and a mysterious book of spells once owned by “The Half-Blood Prince,” Harry begins investigating Voldemort’s past, hoping to find the secret behind the Dark Lord’s immortality. Sectum Sempra!

Part of Nitehawk’s Booze & Books HARRY POTTER 20 brunch series.

Dreams enter reality and new worlds become a battleground between good and evil in NIGHTBREED.

Recurring dreams of Midan a world of monsters and strange creatures push Aaron Boone to seek the care of a psychotherapist. Enter Dr. Phillip Decker who moonlights as a masked serial killer. He manipulates Boone with LSD disguised as Lithium and convinces Boone that he is the one responsible for murders that Decker himself has committed. Ordered by Decker to turn himself in to the police Boone is hit by a truck and in the hospital learns that Midan is real and is given a way to enter. Finding the massive city under a graveyard Boone meets the monsters who inhabit Midan and begins his journey into battle between Decker, himself and the two worlds.

Part of Nitehawk’s January BECAUSE I’M EVIL midnite series.

They were all drawn to THE KEEP…tonight, they will face the evil.

Presented in 35mm.

Before his mainstream success with Miami Vice, Heat, The Insider, and Ali, director Michael Mann explored the horror genre in the early 80s with his film adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s vampire fantasy novel set in the latter days of WWII called The Keep. The story depicts the German army’s unfortunate intersection with an epic battle between supernatural beings in a remote mountain castle in Romania. A group of Nazis led by Jürgen Prochnow is forced to join forces with an ailing Jewish historian (Ian McKellen) to prevent an ancient demon from returning to the mortal realm all taking place in a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. Mann in adapting the book created one of the best horror films of the decade, a piece almost entirely reliant on mood vs. conventional storytelling. With a cast featuring Scott Glenn, Gabriel Byrne, and a mesmerizing score from Tangerine Dream, The Keep stands as a significant achievement for its era and, with its hallucinatory imagery, it maintains a timeless quality.

Part of Nitehawk’s January BECAUSE I’M EVIL midnite series.

Enter a world beyond your wildest imagination, where anything can happen.

There’s a secret government agency for just about any nightmare scenario, and in Dreamscape, that’s just what the shady branch of big gov is researching: dreams and how to invade them. Using a group of psychics and some fancy equipment, the secret project hopes to gain a greater understanding of our subconscious (unconscious?) minds. But when an experiment goes wrong and a subject dies in his sleep, Alex, one of the psychics, begins to suspect the program isn’t all what it seems. When the President of the United States needs some help with his nuclear holocaust nightmares, it’s up to Alex to make sure the President makes it out alive.

Part of Nitehawk’s January BECAUSE I’M EVIL midnite series.

Starring: Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero, Álex Angulo, Doug Jones, Ariadna Gil

Not only does Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth begin with the ending of the young heroine dying (the rest of the story is told in flashback) but film critic Jim Emerson says that this scene actually contains the entire film in one shot. Walking the thin line between horror and fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth blurs both worlds as the young Ofelia lives in the brutal reality of post-Civil War Spain in 1944 and a fairy tale world where she must complete a series of tasks and be led through a labyrinth to rule with her father, the King. Leaving the audience to wonder what is real and what’s imagined.

A story about a perverted midlife crisis in suburbia begins with a bang in Sam Mendes’ AMERICAN BEAUTY.

Mendes’ biting and often humorous take on the mundanity of suburban life captures the disintegration of the American dream at the turn of the century. American Beauty opens with a video recording featuring a teenager wishing her perverted father dead and an off-camera voice obliging this request. As the scene shifts to aerial city views, a dead man starts narrating the story of his life and the demise the audience is now well aware of (like Sunset Boulevard). This man is Lester Burnham whose midlife crisis and sexual frustration has lead to an obsession with his daughter’s best friend and complete life overhaul which, despite his best efforts, don’t have a happy ending.

Part of Nitehawk’s January THE END IS THE BEGINNING brunch series.

Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Jack Webb

Are you ready for your close up? Sunset Boulevard is Billy Wilder’s essential Hollywood noir about the bizarre relationship between a down-and-out screenwriter and a silent movie star has-been. Starring real-life silent era actress Gloria Swanson, the film weaves together a changing moment in the movie business with the extreme things people will do to hold on or gain industry success. It’s pretty unique in the fact that the audience knows the fate of the leading man from the very first scene and, from that point on, his ghost leads us through his unfortunate journey.

Starring: Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands, Giancarlo Esposito, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Rosie Perez, Isaach de Bankolé, Béatrice Dalle, Roberto Benigni, Paolo Bonacelli

Five cities. Five taxicabs. A multitude of strangers in the night.

Night on Earth is one of Jim Jarmusch’s most charming and beloved films. So spend the night with us and this extraordinary international cast of actors for this hilarious quintet of tales of urban displacement and existential angst, spanning time zones, continents, and languages. Stories include a no-nonsense taxi driver Corky (Winona Ryder) and a Hollywood casting agent (Gena Rowlands), a Parisian cabbie (Isaach De Bankolé) and some rowdy African diplomats, and an Italian taxi ride that finds quirky driver Gino (Roberto Benigni) making a lively confession to an ailing priest. It’s a lovingly askew view of humanity from the passenger seat which, frankly, we need to see right now.