Director Roman Polanski's classic detective story is set during a heat wave in 1930s Los Angeles, where residents suffer from a water shortage due to an ongoing drought. Chinatown is a complex and superbly crafted period drama that has become Polanski's most critically acclaimed film. Private investigator Jake Gittes ( Jack Nicholson) runs a sleazy detective agency specia. When a client ( Diane Ladd) hires him to spy on her "husband," who is rumored to be having an affair with a younger woman, Jake uncovers a plot against the man--but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Yet to emerge are a sex scandal implicating the real wife ( Faye Dunaway), with whom Jake is destined to become more closely acquainted, and a real estate swindle of tremendous proportions devised by her tycoon father ( John Huston), backed up by a vast network of corrupt city officials and landowners who make life hell for the private eye. 1974. 131 minutes. Rated R.
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"All
right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
Billy Wilder's masterpiece is a corrosive black comedy that
remains the most memorable assault on the emptiness and vanity
of the movie business. The story, set in '50s Hollywood, focuses
on Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a silent-screen goddess
whose pathetic belief in her own indestructibility has turned
her into a demented recluse. When down-and-out screenwriter
Joe Gillis (William Holden) comes across her decrepit mansion
while trying to elude some persistent repo men, he finds the
grandiose former silent movie goddess and her zombie-like
manservant Max (Erich von Stroheim). Upon hearing that he's
a writer, the lonely but still wealthy woman offers to pay
him generously to stay at the house and work on her "comeback"
script. In desperate straits, Joe takes the job, little suspecting
the madness of the netherworld he’s entered. 1950. 110 minutes.
Not Rated. 
PLUS! Zingerman's Deli will be here to hand out
chocolate samples before the film screening!
Lawrence Kasdan's first directorial effort is a throwback to the early days of film noir. The scene is a beastly hot Florida coastal town, where naive attorney Ned (William Hurt) is entranced by the alluring Matty (Kathleen Turner in her film debut). Ned is manipulated into killing Matty's much older husband (Richard Crenna), the plan being that Ned's knowledge of legal matters will enable both conspirators to escape scott-free. This might have been the case, had not Matty been infinitely craftier than the cloddish Ned. Just when it seems as though the film has run out of plot twists, we're handed yet another surprise. 1981. 113 minutes. Rated R.
