Starring: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond

While Stephen Hawking searches for black holes in the universe, a young boy discovers a time hole in his very own wardrobe! Through this opening, a band of dwarves enter into his life while escaping their evil master, The Supreme Being, taking him through Napoleonic times to the Middle Ages to the early 20th century in search of treasure to steal. A philosophical endeavor while also an enduring children’s film favorite, and a truly lovely bizarre one at that, Time Bandits tackles forces of good versus evil in the realm of the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness.

Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen, Tom Skerritt

After waking up from a five-year coma following a terrible car accident, Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) discovers that he’s able to see into the future when holding people’s hands…and they can see it too. Most frightening is his unique ability to also change the future which takes an already uneasy gift into a truly horrible nightmare. Penned by Stephen King and directed by corporeal master David Cronenberg, The Dead Zone asks about the responsibility of knowing something bad is going to happen and takes audiences into this liminal space between life and death.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Patrick Swayze, Drew Barrymore

The complexities of Richard Kelly’s seminal film Donnie Darko are as rich as the concept of time travel itself. When young Donnie escapes death (by a fallen plane engine in his bedroom), a sequence of events unfold that weave together people, events, time and space on a finite loop, all leading up to the inevitable conclusion that rectifies the world.

Portals, teenage angst, God, and hallucinations that include a giant bunny rabbit named Frank play out spectacularly in this new midnight movie cult classic. Basically, Donnie Darko takes the typical teen struggle genre to a whole new existential level complete with an incredible period soundtrack and ultra-creepy Patrick Swayze.

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover

Part nerdy and a little bit cool, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a regular teenager living in the mid-1980s. His Dad is wimpy, mother disaffected, siblings lazy and he dreams of being a rock star. But as complicated as his young life is, when his mad scientist friend Dr. Emmett Brown (the zany Christopher Lloyd) accidentally sends Marty back to the 1950s, things get really weird. While lingering in the past he teaches his father to stick up for himself, fights off his mother’s advances, and learns there’s no place like home. The most important task, however, is to ensure his teenage parents fall in love so he can get… Back to the Future!

Starring: Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Peter Brown, Terry Carter

The lovely Pam Grier plays Foxy Brown (aka “a whole lotta woman”), a sexy bad ass who takes on a job as a high-class prostitute to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend. But it’s not even that straight-forward. He dead boyfriend was a governmental agent and those gangsters? Why, they’re a perverted and kinky couple. She also saves a drug addicted woman along the way. Violent and sexual (oh yes, there’s castration), Foxy Brown is a staple in the blaxploitation genre.

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox

The western genre meets the horror genre in this intense portrayal of an outdoor buddy weekend gone severely wrong. When four Atlanta city slickers decide to spend the weekend on Northern Georgia’s Cahulawassee River, they know that the mode of thinking is different in the country but don’t realize the extent of that difference until it’s too late. Encountering generations of inbreeding with a group of hillbilly moonshiners, they face difficult life-and-death decisions that could mean the difference of going home or never getting out alive.

Nitehawk’s September Country Brunchin’ goes western-style comedy with City Slickers and live pre-show serenade by Honeyfingers.

A trio of men experiencing a mid-life crisis escape the urban jungle by signing up for a cattle driving vacation in this 1990s country western comedy flick.

There’s nothing like getting out into the great outdoors to remind yourself of who you are. Watching Jack Palance light up the screen as the surly cowboy named Curly is reason enough to watch City Slickers but, in case you need more, it’s hilarious fun all around watching city men become, ahem, manly. It surely gets messy when Mitch (a big city ad salesman) and his two friends decide to holiday by taking a two week wild west cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado. Do they become cowboys? Maybe. Do they learn about themselves and life? Yes. Does one of them stick their arm up a cow? Indeed.

Honeyfingers is a band paying respect to the country jazz tradition from the 1950?s. Featuring twin melodies on Jonny Lam’s steel guitar and Luca Benedetti’s 6 string guitar while being held firmly in place by the rhythm guitar of Roy E. Williams and Dave Speranza’s stand up bass.

Starring: Richard Pryor, Franklyn Ajaye, Sully Boyar, Richard Brestoff, George Carlin, Irwin Corey, Otis Day, Ivan Dixon, Bill Duke, Michael Fennell, Garrett Morris

Scandalous humor abounds in Car Wash (George Carlin and Richard Pryor star after all) as these eccentric car wash employees have the strangest day ever. This episodic comedy takes place in one day at a Los Angeles full-service car wash detailing one bizarre encounter after the next including fare-dodging prostitutes, transvestites, full body casts, evangelists and the Pointer Sisters. But lest you think it’s all laughs, Car Wash is a cult film way ahead of its time in its forthright depiction of the African American working class and openly gay characters.

A very varied group of people are in a precarious situation aboard a plane flying to Mexico City.

A technical failure has endangered the lives of the passengers on Peninsula Flight 2549. The pilots, hardened, experienced professionals are striving, along with their colleagues in the Control Center, to find a solution. The flight attendants and the chief steward are atypical, baroque characters who, in the face of danger, try to forget their own personal problems and devote themselves body and soul to the task of making the flight as enjoyable as possible for the passengers, while they wait for a solution. Life in the clouds is as complicated as it is at ground level, and for the same reasons, which could be summarized in two: sex and death.

The travelers in Business Class consist of a pair of newlyweds, partygoers, worn out by their wedding celebration; a financier and embezzler; unscrupulous in business but also a father afflicted by his daughter’s estrangement; an inveterate Don Juan with an uneasy conscience who is trying to say goodbye to one of his women (girlfriends); a rural psychic; a queen of the gossip magazines and a Mexican with an important secret. Each of them has a project in Mexico City, either to work or to escape. They all have some kind of secret, not just the Mexican.

Their defenselessness in the face of danger provokes a general catharsis among the passengers and the crew, and this ends up becoming the best way to escape from the idea of death. This catharsis, developed in the tone of a riotous, moral comedy, fills the time with sensational confessions that help them forget the anguish of the moment.

Nitehawk Cinema Presents:
Spirits, Dinner and a Movie with The Dead Rabbit
GANGS OF NEW YORK

In 1863, Amsterdam Vallon returns to the Five Points area of New York City seeking revenge against Bill the Butcher, his father’s killer.

Nitehawk’s launches its new signature series SPIRITS, DINNER AND A MOVIE this August as we’ve teamed up with The Dead Rabbit (2013 Tales of the Cocktail World’s Best New Cocktail Bar) to present Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. This screening will include incredible crafted cocktails by The Dead Rabbit paired with a delicious food menu inspired by the film. The best part? You’ll be served each course during the specific moments inspired by the film so you can experience edible sensations while watching the action unfold on-screen!

Jack McGarry (2013 Tales of the Cocktail International Bartender of the Year) and Sean Muldoon join us from The Dead Rabbit.

Giving us some of the classic representations of gangsters in cinema, Gangs of New York is Martin Scorsese’s epic love letter to the gritty roots of New York City. At heart, it’s a revenge movie about a young man who returns to New York in order to avenge the death of his father by rival gang member, Bill the Butcher (one of the most memorable performances in film by Daniel Day Lewis). But it’s also about immigration, territory disputes, and the changing landscape of America in the mid 19th century. Larger than life, the film has it all: history, love, loyalty, revenge, and true o.g. gang violence.

Food & Cocktail Menu*
Bill The Butcher
Redbreast 12 Year Old Irish Whiskey, poire eau de vie, lemon sherbet, Dead Rabbit Orinoco Bitters, mace tincture, boiling water, freshly grated nutmeg