A Treat for Cinephile Insomniacs
Coolidge Corner Theatre’s After Midnite series to screen Fight Club tonight
Love movies? Can’t sleep? Each Friday and Saturday night the Coolidge Corner Theatre becomes a magnet for night owl cinephiles, drawn by the cinema’s Coolidge After Midnite series, a showcase of horror, cult, camp, weird, and avant-garde films, many screened from 35 mm prints.
Tonight the theater will show David Fincher’s controversial 1999 drama Fight Club, now considered something of a cult film.
Adapted from the novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club stars Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. In the film, Norton plays a depressed man with insomnia who befriends soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt). Together, the two establish an underground fight club as a way to reenergize their lives. The film’s biting commentary on American consumerism and its twist ending have made it a favorite of cinephiles, despite the fact that it was only modestly successful during its original commercial release.
The film helped cement the reputations of its stars and director. Pitt had recently earned an Oscar nomination for his work in Twelve Monkeys, and Norton was coming off two Oscar nominations for his work in Primal Fear and American History X. Both would go on to starring roles and additional Oscar nominations. Fincher later directed Zodiac, Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Social Network, earning Oscar nominations for the latter two films, and an Emmy for directing House of Cards.
Coolidge After Midnite caters to dedicated film fans hoping to see classics on the big screen again or for the first time. Some highlights: Tomorrow, the series features Santa Sangre, about a young circus performer and his strange odyssey following a crime of passion. On August 12 and 13, there’s Alligator, a horror film about a baby alligator that becomes a giant monster after eating the corpses of lab animals who have undergone hormone experiments. Eraserhead, the 1977 career-defining film by David Lynch, which has been called a “touchstone in film history,” will screen on September 24. A full list of the series’ films can be found here.
The Coolidge After Midnite films are shown at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline, on Fridays and Saturdays all year long. All screenings are at 11:59 p.m. Tickets are $11.25 and can be purchased online (click on the time) or at the door. Take an MBTA Green Line C trolley to the Coolidge Corner stop.
Connor Lenahan can be reached at lenahan@bu.edu.
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