Kevin Maher will geek out about character actors like Morgan Wallace and many others at Nitehawk and Alamo Drafthouse this month
Thursday, February 23, Nitehawk Cinema, 136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave., 718-384-3980, 9:30
Monday, February 27, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, 718-513-2547, 7:00
kevingeeksout.com
If you’re like us, you can’t watch a movie without identifying many of the actors who have small roles, familiar faces you’ve seen in films and old television series but who rarely get their names in the opening credits. You then scan the closing credits, trying to confirm their appearance. Kevin Maher will explore that phenomenon with two editions of “Kevin Geeks Out About Character Actors.” Among those who come up in the trailers for the February 23 show at Nitehawk and the February 27 show at the Alamo Drafthouse are Elisha Cook Jr., Jack Elam, Robert Morley, Tiny Lister Jr., Taylor Negron, Paul Dooley, Billy Barty, Timothy Carey, and Alice Nunn; if most or all of those names mean something to you, then this is the program for you. Maher, who geeks out about something monthly — past geek-outs have delved into space operas, super villains, Nazi zombies, holiday specials, and the apocalypse — will be joined at Nitehawk by Tanya Smith, Sonya Moore, Ryan Gabos, James Hancock, and Adam Howard and at the Alamo by Ryan Arey, Cristina Cacioppo, Caroline Golum, Bob Satuloff, and Andy Webb. While those names might not ring a bell, here’s some more character actors who might be part of these discussions: Michael Berryman, Zelda Rubinstein, Pete Postlethwaite, Margaret Hamilton, Gerrit Graham, Joan Cusack, Jon Polito, René Auberjonois, and Curtis Armstrong.
Jason Reitman, the son of producer-director Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters, Dave), made his sparkling feature-film debut with the brilliant Thank You for Smoking, a devilishly delightful black comedy based on the novel by acerbic wit Christopher Buckley. Aaron Eckhart gives a riotous performance as Nick Naylor, a fast-talking, handsome, smarmy lobbyist for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a Big Tobacco laboratory that, remarkably, cannot find a link between cigarettes and health risks. A master of spin, Naylor seems to even believe himself when he tells a young boy dying of cancer that he’s better off smoking. As a grandstanding senator (William H. Macy) plans congressional hearings on the evils of tobacco — especially on teenagers — Naylor is being groomed as the industry’s savior by his high-strung boss (J. K. Simmons) and the Captain (Robert Duvall) while trying to establish a meaningful relationship with his son (Cameron Bright). The fine ensemble also features Katie Holmes as a hot young reporter who’ll go to virtually any length to get a story; Sam Elliott as the Marlboro Man, who is dying of lung cancer; Rob Lowe as a Zen-like Hollywood agent who is considering Naylor’s idea of making cigarette smoking cool in the movies again; and Dennis Miller and Joan Lunden as themselves, adding a bit of reality to the hysterical situation, which might not be as far off from the truth as we might think, especially with President Donald Trump recently promising to enact a ban preventing administration members from becoming lobbyists for five years after they leave government service.
Metrograph is getting ready for the Academy Awards by screening some of its favorite Best Picture champs, beginning February 18 with Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, followed February 19 by Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Based on embedded journalist Mark Boal’s experiences in Iraq, The Hurt Locker follows a three-member Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit as they are called in to defuse a series of dangerous situations involving various kinds of bombs, including IEDs and other life-threatening explosive devices. Team leader Will James (Jeremy Renner) is an expert bomb defuser and maverick who doesn’t follow protocol and likes to live on the edge. Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is a greenhorn who just wants to survive the last forty days of their rotation. And Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) likes to go by the book and take no unnecessary chances, which puts him in constant conflict with the unpredictable James. Recalling the second half of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam drama Full Metal Jacket, The Hurt Locker unfolds in a series of harrowing set pieces in which the EOD unit is called in to either safely detonate or defuse explosive devices while under the eyes of local Iraqis, any of whom could potentially be the bomber or a sniper.
With protests continuing around the country, and the world, against Donald Trump and his administration, IFC Center is honoring Presidents Day with the special evening “Surviving and Resisting: A Presidents Day Event.” The centerpiece is a screening of the gripping 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague. For his directorial debut, longtime journalist David France, one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS crisis that began in the early 1980s, scoured through more than seven hundred hours of mostly never-before-seen archival footage and home movies of protests, meetings, public actions, and other elements of the concerted effort to get politicians and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize the growing health epidemic and do something as the death toll quickly rose into the millions. Focusing on radical groups ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), France follows such activist leaders as Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, Larry Kramer, Bob Rafsky, and Dr. Iris Long as they attack the policies of President George H. W. Bush, famously heckle presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and battle to get drug companies to create affordable, effective AIDS medicine, all while continuing to bury loved ones in both public and private ceremonies. France includes new interviews with many key activists who reveal surprising details about the movement, providing a sort of fight-the-power primer about how to get things done. The film also shines a light on lesser-known heroes, several filled with anger and rage, others much calmer, who fought through tremendous adversity to make a difference and ultimately save millions of lives. How to Survive a Plague is screening at 7:30 on February 20, along with three new short documentaries, Jem Cohen’s Birth of a Nation and two works from Laura Poitras’s 