In one of Paul Verhoeven's most provocative films, Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) becomes ensnared in a web of sex, lies, and violence, all leading back to Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a seductive, mysterious crime novelist. As the bodies pile up and hidden obsessions are revealed, Curran begins to doubt his investigatory instincts and give in to his baser ones. Cinematography by Jan de Bont. This new 4K restoration was supervised by Verhoeven.

Oscar Nominee: Best Original Score, Best Film Editing
Palm d’Or nominee at the Cannes Film Festival

“A slick, trashy, blatantly manipulative thriller that you won’t stop watching once you start.” Boston Globe

“Basic Instinct transfers Mr. Verhoeven’s flair for action-oriented material to the realm of Hitchockian intrigue… viscerally effective.” The New York Times

“With her high octane gyno-power at full throttle, [Sharon Stone] … commands our attention now as much as she did on the film’s initial release, defiantly holding our gaze if we dare even for a moment let our eyes drift towards anything else.” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Senses of Cinema

Bring your own blu-ray, DVD, or even VHS (2.5 hours running time max) and enjoy the theatrical experience privately with up to 25 people. Our professional video projector and 5.1 audio system is vastly superior to watching at home. Bring your own beverages and see movies the way they're meant to be seen! Feel good knowing your rental supports a small, non-profit cinema!

The price of $195 (+ $5 fee) includes a year membership to the Grand Illusion! You'll get a discounted ticket at our regular screenings and a reduced rate on future rentals!

In order to protect our staff: • Proof of vaccination (card or photo) or a recent negative COVID test (home tests are OK) required. • Masks must be worn at all times and no food or eating is allowed.

** Sales for rentals are final. We might be able to reschedule, but cannot guarantee another weeknight will be available for you. **

2/10, 2/20 rentals are sold!

15-year-old Leshka lives in an isolated village on the Bering Strait. Like most men where he lives, he is a whale hunter. When internet arrives in the village, Leshka becomes infatuated with a webcam model from America - so far away and yet almost close enough to see across the waters of the Strait. Coming of age in the male-dominated whaling community, Leshka's encounter with this mysterious woman awakens in him a desire to find love outside of the confines of his tiny world. He becomes determined to meet her in real life, setting forth on a dangerous adventure across the raging waters of the sea. Featuring stunning photography of the dramatic landscape, and punctuated by off-kilter humor, "there’s an almost fable-like simplicity to this atmospheric coming of age story" (Screen Daily) about the division between two worlds.

"[A] brilliant premise for a movie and Yuryev delivers on that promise big time… visual poetry that will be hard to forget." Zhuo-Ning Su, Awards Daily

Presented by The Sprocket Society.

The Saturday Secret Matinees escape from lockdown with a new, extra-thrilling season of weekly serial episodes plus secret classic features, all on 16mm film!

In the 12 chapter serial DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE (1939), a trio of circus acrobats battle to stop the murderous plots of a brilliant, revenge-crazed criminal and his gang of thugs. Ranked by serial fans as one of the very best ever made, it boasts outstanding stunt work and a great cast, including Charles (“Ming the Merciless”) Middleton as the villain.

Each week’s episode is paired with a secret feature film. Bi-weekly themes provide clues, but it could be almost anything: adventure, sci-fi, art house, a forgotten treasure, or a beloved classic. Plus! As an extra treat this year, each show also includes a different rare serial trailer!

Discounted series passes available!
$66 general
$48 student/senior
$36 member
PASSES ARE SOLD OUT. We’ll have a few individual tickets available each week.

"She's back... and deadlier than ever!" It's our Cynthia Rothrock secret feature!!! Get your ass over here or she'll turn it into lunchmeat!!! Only released on VHS! Only $3!

New 4K Restoration! "A great film is much like a great party, and what makes a party great is not the host or even the location but whom the host invites. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, one of my favorite movies, is great because of the guests invited by the director, Alfred Hitchcock. There is the screenplay provided by Ernest Lehman (SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS), the stunning title sequence by the graphic artist Saul Bass (ANATOMY OF A MURDER), the faces of Cary Grant, James Mason, and a young Martin Landau. And, of course, there’s the big, brassy, bold, and lusty score by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock knew how to throw a great party." Charles Mudede, The Stranger

"One of Hitchcock's most entertaining American thrillers." Pauline Kael

Winner of Best First Feature Award at 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. The film follows two women who move into a New York apartment once owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“An audacious take on genre cinema that confronts contemporary issues such as global power structures, sexual abuse, conspiracy theories and the dark corners of the internet in a wildly twisted, witty and subversive manner. Perhaps in recognition that polite decorum may no longer be an effective tactic in sparking discourse around these burning issues.” - Berlinale Jury

New 4K Restoration! John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. A sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, a dominatrix who is unable to connect, a gay couple who are deciding whether to open up their relationship, and the people who weave in and out of their lives, all converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics, and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, SHORTBUS tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh, and imperatives of the heart. ** This film is rated NC-17, no one under 17 will be admitted. **

Co-presented by SECS Fest.

“Few arthouse directors have put real sex to such narratively constructive and credibly, humorously human use.” Ben Walters, Time Out

“A rather sweet, wistful little movie that just happens to have a lot of explicit sex in it.” Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

“Something both deeply funny and transcendently human: a revolving door that leads to the senses and to the heart” Ty Burr, Boston Globe

A Native American boxer embarks on the fight of her life when she goes in search of her missing sister. CATCH THE FAIR ONE is a taut thriller and second feature for Tribeca “Best New Narrative Director” winner, Josef Kubota Wladyka, and a star-making debut for professional boxer, Kali Reis. Kali is the first Native American fighter to win the International Boxing Association middleweight crown and she fought in the first female boxing match ever televised on HBO. She is currently the WBA Super lightweight champion.

“Josef Wladyka delivers a cathartic, bloody knock-out & instantly becomes one to watch.” The Playlist

“Poignant and raw, the film is effective in all the ways it should be.” Screen Rant

“[Wladyka] is clearly a directing talent to watch, grounding the driving tension of his action sequences in a foundation of grit and morality.” ScreenDaily

In 2035, our dreams are no longer our own–they’re infused with product placement and auditors assess unpaid taxes on our most private reveries. Beleaguered taxman James Preble (Kentucker Audley) arrives at a run-down house in the countryside for a routine audit and encounters Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller), a lifelong dreamer who remains resolutely analog, circumventing the surveillance state with VHS tapes and homemade headgear. As Preble works his way through Bella’s archive of the unconscious, he begins to fall in love with visions of her younger self (Grace Glowicki). But all is not well in dreamland as dangerous family secrets and a rogue’s gallery of blue demons and fried chicken pitchmen threaten to set the lovers’ paradise ablaze. Can Preble and Bella escape from the modern, monetized dreamscape and find refuge in Strawberry Mansion?

“A cult weirdo classic in the making.” Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“A film to admire not just for its psychedelic aesthetic delirium, but also for its pure moxie, its gleeful embrace of the very idea of filmmaking itself.” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Film International

“Sensational, strange, and sophisticatedly sweet.” Kristy Puchko, RogerEbert.com

“With Dan Deacon’s cosmic synth carrying the strange twists along, Strawberry Mansion works its way through an absurdist romance with palpable depth.” Eric Kohn, IndieWire

LOVE! LOSS! REVENGE! SATAN! Our (POST) Valentine's Day Special! Never released on DVD! Only on VHS! Only $3!

The reviews are in!

“Fans of rediscovered now-classics like Miami Connection (1987) and Samurai Cop (1991) will likely appreciate the nuttiness of what’s going on here.”

“[It’s] a perfect storm of stupidity… If you’re like me and really enjoy a terrible movie in the vein of Ed Wood’s atrocities, then you will love this film.”

“I was in this movie, I was the big blonde haired thug in the scene 32 minutes in. So even though the movie bombed and I didn’t get paid I say it was AWESOME! Just kidding it was the DRIZZLING SH*T’S”

Talking Heads singer David Byrne plays host to this patchwork of tabloid-inspired tales, set in the fictional town of Virgil, Texas. Cruising the streets in his cherry-red drop-top, Byrne introduces viewers to the local eccentrics gearing up for the town's 150th anniversary. They include a community leader (Spalding Gray) with a thing for veggies, a woman (Swoosie Kurtz) so lazy she won't leave her bed, a lovelorn country singer (John Goodman) and more! New, restored 4K transfer, supervised by director David Byrne and cinematogra­pher Ed Lachman with 5.1 surround mix.

“3-1/2 stars. This movie does what some painters try to do: It recasts ordinary images into strange new shapes.” Roger Ebert

“Joyous, daft and hauntingly original…” Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

“As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.” The Criterion Collection

Directed by Oscar-winner Spike Lee, DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA is a groundbreaking cinematic event that inspires audiences to connect with each other and with the global community. This filmed version of the electrifying Broadway musical sensation brings Oscar, Grammy, and Golden Globe-winning musician David Byrne (Talking Heads) together with 11 musical artists from around the world to perform songs from across Byrne’s career. Hailed by critics as “pure bliss,” the performance is a joyful celebration of music and dance, a call to action to engage in our democracy, and an invitation to reimagine our own utopias.

“Pure bliss.” K. Austin Collins, RollingStone

“CRITIC’S PICK! Some filmed stage shows die on the screen from a sheer lack of visual energy and invention. Lee, a master of the art, uses cinema’s plasticity to complement this production, making it come alive in two dimensions.” Manohla Dargis, New York Times

John is just an average man working as a sound technician for a New York City news station, until one day his pregnant wife is brutally murdered while witnessing the kidnapping of a young woman in broad daylight. Turning to the police for help, John soon learns that the city is overrun with crime and the police are too busy to help. Dressing as a white ninja, John takes to the streets as a sword wielding vigilante hell bent on cleaning up the streets of the city he once loved by ridding it of muggers, pickpockets, rapists, and gang members. However, in John’s quest for justice, he soon finds himself the target of every criminal in the city, including a mysterious villain known only as the Plutonium Killer. Will John survive to become the hero that New York City so desperately needs?

Originally directed by and starring martial arts actor John Liu (The Secret Rivals, Invincible Armor) in his only American production, New York Ninja was filmed entirely on 35mm in 1984, but the project was abandoned during production resulting in all original sound materials being lost over time. 35 years later, Vinegar Syndrome acquired the original unedited camera negative and painstakingly constructed and completed the film. Enlisting the voice talents of genre favorites: Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Bloodfist, Whatever It Takes), Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Nightmare Sisters), Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies), Vince Murdocco (Night Hunter, LA Wars), Matt Mitler (The Mutilator, Battle for the Lost Planet), Leon Isaac Kennedy (Lone Wolf McQuade, Penitentiary), Ginger Lynn Allen (The Devil’s Rejects, Vice Academy), and Cynthia Rothrock (China O’Brien, Martial Law) Vinegar Syndrome Pictures is extremely proud to present this truly one of kind film experience. Restored in 4K from the original camera elements, New York Ninja is finally available in all of its ridiculous over-the-top glory for the first time ever after spending nearly four decades in film obscurity.