It’s the 90th anniversary of this Grand Illusion favorite, and April marks the 20th anniversary of our cinema becoming a volunteer-operated nonprofit. Come join us in celebration of these two milestones!

THE THIN MAN tells the story of retired detective Nick Charles (William Powell) who, while spending much of his time managing his wife Nora’s considerable fortune and consuming quantities of alcohol, is asked to follow the trail of a missing inventor. Although reluctant to interrupt his holiday in Manhattan, he is persuaded to investigate by Nora’s (Myrna Loy) craving for adventure, and together they embark upon a case that leads to the disclosure of deception and murder.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“One of the most popular comedies ever made.” Don Druker, Chicago Reader

“Nick and Nora Charles are one of the screen’s great couples.” Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

“Tense and slick, this early thriller remains a true masterpiece.” David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

A restoration of George A. Romero’s masterpiece for the 45th anniversary of its North American premiere!

As hordes of zombies swarm over the U.S., the terrified populace tries everything in their power to escape the attack of the undead. In Pennsylvania, radio station employee Stephen (David Emge) and his girlfriend Francine (Gaylen Ross) escape in the station helicopter, accompanied by two renegade SWAT members (Ken Foree and Scott H. Reiniger). The group retreats to the haven of an enclosed shopping mall to make what could be humanity’s last stand. Featuring groundbreaking special effects by Tom Savini and music by Goblin.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

Please note: Per the booking agreement with the distributor, free admission and guest passes aren’t accepted for these screenings.

“Undoubtedly the zombie movie to end ’em all.” David Pirie, Time Out

“One of the best horror films ever made.” Roger Ebert

“As a blend of horror, action, tension, and humour, it stands in a class of its own.” Almar Haflidason, BBC

“A darkly satirical assault on bourgeois culture… Romero’s films tend to be left of center in outlook: ethnically and sexually integrated, pro-feminist, gay-friendly, anti-macho, and skeptical about capitalism, they represent a progressive aspect of the genre.” TV Guide (!)

25th anniversary!

Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic mosaic of interrelated characters in search of love, forgiveness and meaning in the San Fernando Valley. Featuring a star-studded ensemble that includes Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Phillip Baker Hall, William H. Macy and John C. Reilly, MAGNOLIA offers a bold and empathetic look at the strange connections that bind us together.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“One of the most enthralling and exhilarating American movies in ages.” Geoff Andrew, Time Out

“Magnolia is operatic in its ambition… one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions.” Roger Ebert

55th anniversary!

A key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa’s RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet — where she’s ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya). One of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, Matsumoto bends and distorts time here like Resnais in LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, freely mixing documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons, into a dizzying whirl of image and sound.

In Japanese with English subtitles. Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Definitely not for everyone. But for those who do sit through, unlike the queen who ‘harrumphed out’ when I saw it, Funeral Parade of Roses is a very strong trip.” Bebe Scarpie, Drag

“You will walk away from Matsumoto’s film with a newfound appreciation of what movies can be.” Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com

25th anniversary!

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day, he is an average computer programmer, and by night, a hacker known as Neo. Neo (Keanu Reeves) has always questioned his reality, but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity has been captured by a race of machines that live off human body heat and electrochemical energy, and who imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the Agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion.

35mm print! Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

Co-presented by Kung Fu Clubhouse, who will provide special intros before the June 13th and June 15th showings.

“The Matrix still stands up as a fiercely exciting and discombobulating futurist drama, which pioneered breathtaking ‘bullet-time’ action sequences inspired by Asian martial arts.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“[It] isn’t just a movie, it’s an entire philosophy that also examines metamorphosis and personal transformation to mirror The Wachowskis’ own personal journeys as trans women.” Sezín Koehler, Black Girl Nerds

35th anniversary!

Set on one block of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy Do or Die neighborhood, at the height of summer, this 1989 masterpiece by Spike Lee confirmed him as a writer and filmmaker of peerless vision and passionate social engagement. Over the course of a single day, the easygoing interactions of a cast of unforgettable characters give way to heated confrontations as tensions rise along racial fault lines, ultimately exploding into violence. Punctuated by the anthemic refrain of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” DO THE RIGHT THING is a landmark in American cinema, as politically and emotionally charged and as relevant now as when it first hit the big screen.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Like Rear Window to Alfred Hitchcock, like Nashville to Robert Altman, like Playtime to Jacques Tati, Lee’s Do the Right Thing is an undiluted representation of its creator’s artistic command.” Eric Henderson, Slant

20th anniversary!

When the hapless Sing (Stephen Chow) and his dim-witted pal, Bone, try to scam the residents of Pig Sty Alley into thinking they’re members of the dreaded Axe Gang, the real gangsters descend on this Shanghai slum to restore their fearsome reputation. What gang leader Brother Sum doesn’t know is that three legendary retired kung fu masters live anonymously in this decrepit neighborhood and don’t take kindly to interlopers.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

“Chow, perhaps the first action star and filmmaker to be as influenced by classic cartoons as by the karate-chop balletics of human movement, directs like a gonzo fusion of Tarantino and Tex Avery.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“It’s a short, sharp shock to the cinematic system that’s virtually impossible to dislike, and if you don’t leave the theatre grinning your face off, then, buddy, movies just aren’t for you.” Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle

45th anniversary! Come out to play-ay!

A turf battle between New York City street gangs rages from Coney Island to the Bronx. The Warriors are mistakenly fingered for the killing of a gang leader. Soon they have every gang in the city out to get revenge and they must make their way across the city to their own turf.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“The movie is like visual rock, and it’s bursting with energy.” Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

“If Bruce Springsteen were a filmmaker he might have directed The Warriors, for its rhythmic, vivid camerawork is a visual rock ‘n’ roll.” Michael Ventura, L.A. Weekly

70th anniversary! We’re ending the season with one of our absolute favorite summer movies presented in a beautiful restoration.

Laid up with a broken leg in his West Village apartment, professional photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James “Jimmy” Stewart) wiles away the sweaty summertime hours between visits from uptown gal Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) by using a telephoto lens to zero in on the human comedy across his courtyard – but, hey, what’s Raymond Burr up to? One of the Master of Suspense’s greatest successes: a witty, nerve-shredding entertainment and technical tour de force.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“One of Hitchcock’s finest artistic achievements” Gene Siskel

“It’s one of Alfred Hitchcock’s inspired audience-participation films: watching it, you feel titillated, horrified, and, ultimately, purged.” Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“One of the master’s greatest stunts. Not only is this a thriller without on-screen violence or a visible (human) corpse, but virtually the entire movie unfolds in a single room, albeit facing out on one of the largest, most elaborate sets ever built on Paramount’s back lot.” J. Hoberman, Village Voice

40th anniversary! New 4K restoration by The Academy Film Archive of the original theatrical cut!

Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Director, Milos Forman’s lush, rollickingly entertaining drama explores the mysteries of creativity and divinely-bestowed genius, as well as jealousy, addiction, and disapproving dads. In a remote asylum, elderly composer Antonio Salieri (a riveting, Oscar-winning F. Murray Abraham) regales a priest with the story of his long-ago frenemyship with the legendary Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Oscar nominee Tom Hulce). Flashing back to 18th-century Vienna, the pious and pompous Salieri eagerly anticipates meeting Europe’s greatest musical genius—only to discover that Mozart is also crass, immature, and deeply annoying. Knowing that the talent of a “dirty-minded little creature” far surpasses his own drives Salieri to teeth-grinding aggravation and, ultimately, an obsession to destroy his rival.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Amadeus is a magnificent film, full and tender and funny and charming.” Roger Ebert

“A grand, sprawling entertainment… Mozart sings the music of God, Salieri schemes and screams in tragic register, and the film keeps humming merrily along with them both.” Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

“With Mozart’s magical music swirling around them, Hulce and Abraham share a dual triumph in a film that stands as a provocative and prodigious achievement.” Peter Travers, People Magazine

100th anniversary!

One of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH (Der letzte Mann) stars Emil Jannings as an aging doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of the duties and uniform which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride. Through Jannings’s colossal performance, THE LAST LAUGH becomes more than the plight of a single doorman, but a mournful dramatization of the frustration and anguish of the universal working class.

Presented in celebration of National Silent Movie Day and part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“[A] highly artistic film masterpiece.” Mordaunt Hall, The New York Times

“One of the most famous of silent films, and one of the most truly silent, because it does not even use printed intertitles. Silent directors were proud of their ability to tell a story through pantomime and the language of the camera, but no one before Murnau had ever entirely done away with all written words on the screen (except for one sardonic comment [towards the end]). He tells his story through shots, angles, moves, facial expressions and easily read visual cues.” Roger Ebert

30th anniversary! New 35mm print of Quentin Tarantino’s groundbreaking crime classic!

Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are hitmen with a penchant for philosophical discussions, whose story is interwoven with those of their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), his wife Mia (Uma Thurman), struggling boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), and a nervous pair of armed robbers, “Pumpkin” (Tim Roth) and “Honey Bunny” (Amanda Plummer).

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“A spectacularly entertaining piece of pop culture.” Todd McCarthy, Variety

“It’s a film that still satisfies like a ‘quarter-pounder with cheese’ – then hits like a bullet to the gut.” Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent

50th anniversary!

Glamour has never been more grotesque than in FEMALE TROUBLE, which injects the Hollywood melodrama with anarchic decadence. Divine, director John Waters’ larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, the living embodiment of the film’s lurid mantra, “Crime is beauty,” who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair. Shot in Waters’ native Baltimore on 16 mm, with a cast drawn from his beloved troupe of regulars, the Dreamlanders (including Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey, and Cookie Mueller), this film­—the director’s favorite of his work with Divine—comes to life through the tinsel-toned vision of production designer Vincent Peranio and costume designer/makeup artist Van Smith. An endlessly quotable fan favorite, FEMALE TROUBLE offers up perverse pleasures that never fail to satisfy.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Waters smashes the bowdlerizing codes of Hollywood morality with self-consciously delirious parodies of classic Hollywood genres and tropes; the resulting feast of sex, violence, cruelty, and frivolity mocks sentimental notions of family, work, and love, and turns the egomaniacal furies of pop culture inside out.” Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“John Waters’ trashterpiece is just as hilarious today as it was 50 years ago. Just bring your pearls with you in case you need to clutch them.” Trace Thurman, Horror Queens Podcast

Santa Claus is coming to town… and this time he’s got an axe! Community leaders tried to stop it. The P.T.A. fought to ban it. Now, one of the most controversial slasher films of all time is back for its 40th anniversary, restored from the original camera negative. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is the demented story of little Billy Chapman, traumatized by his parents’ Christmas Eve murder and then brutalized by sadistic nuns in an orphanage. When Billy grows up and dresses as Santa, he goes on a yuletide rampage to punish the naughty with extreme prejudice. Robert Brian Wilson and Linnea Quigley (NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) star in this harrowing horror classic that continues to ruffle the feathers of angry parents and stuffy critics forty years later.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Buried beneath the blood-soaked Santa suit, Silent Night, Deadly Night has something a lot of slasher films lack – a unique identity, and thus cult film status.” Matthew Rozsa, Salon.com

“I would like to hear the filmmakers explain to their children and their grandchildren that it’s only a movie.” Roger Ebert

75th anniversary! Join us for this special fundraiser screening of Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN. We need your help to build an even grander Grand Illusion and the proceeds from your $25 ticket purchase will go towards our relocation. Plus you get to see one of the greatest films of all time restored in 4K!

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) only to find him dead. Martins develops the ultimate conspiracy theory after learning of a “third man” present at the time of Harry’s death, butting up against interference from British police officer Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover Anna (Alida Valli).

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“The best revelation in all of cinema.” Martin Scorsese

“Exquisite! Encapsulates all the reasons we go to the movies!” Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice

“I’ve seen it 50 times and it’s still magic.” Roger Ebert

50th anniversary!

Years before he crafted the ultimate comedic yuletime experience, A CHRISTMAS STORY, genre pioneer Bob Clark gave us one of the most influential Hitchcockian slashers of all time. When sorority sisters Olivia Hussey (ROMEO & JULIET), Margot Kidder (SUPERMAN) and Andrea Martin (SCTV) are under attack from a vicious, obscene killer, it’s up to police chief John Saxon (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) to even the odds. But what about Keir Dullea (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), the brooding art-school pianist? Could he have something to do with the Christmas rampage? One part frosty Christmas atmosphere, one part stalk ‘n’ slash magnificence, and all parts awesome, BLACK CHRISTMAS is a timeless, terrifying, and demented holiday tradition that gets everything right.

A very limited number of arthouse-cinema-exclusive green variant, silkscreen printed 18″ x 24″ posters featuring new artwork by Phantom City Creative (pictured) will be for sale, courtesy of AGFA in partnership with Mutant. Please note that the posters will be for sale only while supplies last, so if they sell out at the first screening, they won’t be available at the second.

Both screenings will be introduced by AGFA’s Executive Director, Jackson Cooper, who will also be manning an AGFA pop-up shop in the lobby before each show.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“Bob Clark’s Black Christmas is a masterful exercise in tension. That it happens to be one of the most progressive horror films of the ’70s is just an added bonus.” Trace Thurman, Horror Queers Podcast

“There’s no doubting that Black Christmas had all the advantages of being first of its kind. The film stands as the mother of the modern slasher. It was able to make its own rules, and subsequently created a template for the films that came after.” Jourdain Searles, Thrillist

50th anniversary! Join us for this special screening of Brian De Palma’s cult classic rock musical. For $25 you get to see an amazing movie and help us relocate. 

A disfigured composer (William Finley, SISTERS) sells his soul for the woman (Jessica Harper) he loves so that she will perform his music. However, an evil record tycoon (Paul Williams) betrays him and steals his music to open his rock palace, The Paradise. 

This screening is generously sponsored by Stephanie Kurtz Mascis, an employee of the Grand Illusion during its 80s incarnation.

Part of our 20th Anniversary Celebration Series!

“A crazy, savage film — iconoclastic and truly liberating.” Richard Schickel, Time Magazine

“The film is a one-of-a-kind entertainment, with a kinetic, breakneck wit.” Pauline Kael, The New Yorker