Thursdays 1

Parallax Views: Paranoid Thrillers from Nixon's America and Beyond

Programmed by Nick Quintana

Join Doc Films for this look back into the darker side of the '70s, the era of Watergate and the Weather Underground, when neighbors became strangers, people lost faith in the government, and corporations continued to slowly infiltrate more and more aspects of daily life. Responding to this strange new atmosphere, Hollywood channeled a disturbed and increasingly familiar paranoia onto the big screen, featuring insidious conspiracies and extensive cover-ups that reflect America at its most schizophrenic.

1/5/2017 @ 7:00 PM

All the President's Men

(Alan J. Pakula, 1976) · After a break-in at DNC headquarters, rookie reporters Woodward and Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) follow the money right into a dead-end paranoid haze. A well-connected informant, the enigmatic "Deep Throat", confirms their suspicions: something's rotten in the District of Columbia, a cover-up that goes all the way up to the Oval Office. This true-life political thriller is a paean to the free press and a goosebump-inducing meditation on its vulnerability.

runtime: 138m format: 35mm

 

1/12/2017 @ 7:00 PM

Three Days of the Condor

(Sydney Pollack, 1975) · Returning with lunch for his colleagues at a CIA research cell, stylish bookworm Joe Turner (Robert Redford) discovers the bullet-riddled corpses of all of his co-workers. Unable to trust anyone, he plunges headfirst into a nebulous underworld of spies and assassins with nothing but his codename and a .45 he's never shot. Condor endures as a groovy variation on the Hitchcockian suspense thriller about a regular guy caught in a nearly impossible situation.

runtime: 117m format: 35mm

 

1/19/2017 @ 7:00 PM

The China Syndrome

(James Bridges, 1979) · A professionally unfulfilled anchorwoman (Jane Fonda) butts heads with her boss when she tries to report on serious news, a "routine" accident at a nuclear power plant. Her frustrations with the glass ceiling are soon overshadowed by the aggressive attempts of an energy corporation to suppress the story at all costs. If suited stalkers and nerve-tingling car "accidents" don't suffice, count on this film's deep dread of impending nuclear meltdown to make your skin crawl.

runtime: 122m format: 35mm

 

1/26/2017 @ 7:00 PM

Marathon Man

(John Schlesinger, 1976) · A graduate student (Dustin Hoffman) discovers Nazis in his midst when his secret agent brother unwittingly involves him in a covert intelligence operation. Lawrence Olivier's Szell remains one of the great Nazi villains, a coolly sadistic war criminal who emerges from the Amazon to make one final withdrawal from a New York bank. Replete with stinging double-crosses, tense nocturnal pursuits, and a dental examination from Hell, Marathon Man will leave you gasping.

runtime: 125m format: 35mm

 

2/2/2017 @ 7:00 PM

Day of the Jackal

(Fred Zinnemann, 1973) · Based on actual assassination attempts on Charles de Gaulle, this understated thriller follows the sleek movements of the Jackal, a British assassin tapped by terrorist conspirators to take out the French President. With his cold-blooded professionalism and split-second resourcefulness, he gives Melville's gangsters a run for their money, forcing baffled French security officials into a desperate scramble to thwart his seemingly inexorable approach towards de Gaulle.

runtime: 143m format: 35mm

 

2/9/2017 @ 7:00 PM

Klute

(Alan J. Pakula, 1971) · Jane Fonda's turn as neurotic NYC call girl Bree Daniels is endearing and fierce, with the perfect foil in Donald Sutherland as reserved country detective John Klute. Together they traverse a stream of menacing correspondences and an underworld nightscape, searching for leads in a missing-persons case. Capturing tableaux of stunning detail, the camera's voyeuristic position becomes increasingly sinister as the perp lurks through the shadows.

runtime: 114m format: 35mm

 

2/16/2017 @ 7:00 PM

The Conversation

(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) · When unassuming surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) begins to suspect that the targets from his latest bugging job will be murdered, he has second thoughts about giving the tapes to his corporate client. The Conversation takes an unsettling awareness of the pervasiveness of surveillance technology and couples it with an obsession over every grainy detail in a recorded dialogue, creating one of the most uncanny distillations of paranoia ever committed to film.

runtime: 113m format: DCP

 

2/23/2017 @ 7:00 PM

Chinatown

(Roman Polanski, 1974) · Drought-stricken Depression-era Los Angeles is the backdrop for this neo-noir period piece, in which slick P.I. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) uncovers a massive conspiracy to manipulate the city's water supply. Polanski's direction suffuses LA's sun-scorched waterways and orange groves with an ineffable menace. A radical vision of noir for its time, Chinatown wraps up a chilling account of municipal corruption with an unforgettable ending that you won't want to believe.

runtime: 130m format: 35mm

 

3/2/2017 @ 7:00 PM

The Parallax View

(Alan J. Pakula, 1974) · After witnessing the assassination of a senator, a journalist (Warren Beatty) infiltrates the Parallax Corporation, which has murky ties to a series of disappearances. Rising through the ranks, he abides a sinister slippery slope from self-help literature to nationalist indoctrination. Gordon Willis' innovative widescreen cinematography blurs back- and middleground for a full-bodied immersion into the insane depths of a shady corporation, evoking baptism by conspiracy.

runtime: 102m format: 35mm

 

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