THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (John Cassavetes, 1976)
- Monday, September 3
A near-masterpiece from director/actor Cassavettes - the king of loose, improvisational cinema - in which Ben Gazzara’s run-down strip-club owner and inveterate gambler runs afoul of the mob. There’s not a cliché in sight in this waywardly plotted, bold reworking of the gangster genre.
HOUSE OF GAMES (David Mamet, 1987)
- Monday, September 10
The debut feature from playwright, screenwriter, director and heretical film theorist Mamet is a highly stylized glimpse into the ever-fascinating, hard-boiled world of the con artist. Lindsay Crouse plays a repressed psychologist drawn into the parallel world of Joe Mantegna’s slippery confidence trickster.
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (Martin Ritt, 1965)
- Monday, September 17
Ritt’s adaptation of John Le Carre’s classic cold war espionage novel is notable for a standout performance from Richard Burton, as well as an unrelentingly bleak, unsentimental, seedy atmosphere of disillusionment and betrayal that hangs like a monochrome cloud over the film. James Bond it ain’t.
THE STATION AGENT (Thomas McCarthy, 1973)
- Monday, September 24
A warm, funny, touching and perfectly-judged story about friendship, starring vertically-challenged Peter Dinklage as a loner dwarf, who inherits a run-down train station in a small New Jersey town that proves to be anything but the quiet retreat he hoped for.
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