Game of Thrones returns, Taxi Driver pulls up and Roddy Piper puts on those sunglasses again

April 23, 2016

Thursday 4.21
Sarah Lancashire is an absolute wonder as a grandmother and police sergeant in the BBC crime series Happy Valley. Season 2 quietly arrived on Netflix two months ago, and buzz continues to build for this stellar show, just renewed for a third season. Set in an economically depressed river valley in Northern England, it follows kidnapping and murder plots, but its true strength is in tracking interlocking webs of familial damage. Victims are treated with empathy, and the main character is allowed to be very imperfect.

Friday 4.22
Martin Scorsese’s uncompromisingly bleak Taxi Driver celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival. Well, the Screenland Armour doesn’t have Marty, Bobby, Cybill and Jodie for a Q&A, but it does have the very same 4K digital restoration that screened last night in New York. Today and tomorrow at 9:30 p.m., experience this nightmarish vision of a bankrupt, crime-infested NYC before it was cleaned up for tourists.

Saturday 4.23
As part of the Kansas City Public Library’s “Plaaaay Ball!” series of underappreciated baseball movies, the Central Library is showing 1994’s Cobb for free at 1:30 p.m. Tommy Lee Jones is a stone monster in this brutal biopic, which shows Ty Cobb — whom many have called the greatest baseball player of all time — crashing cars, screaming at people, shooting guns indoors and participating in a sexual assault. As a film about America’s need for heroes, it’s a one-note foul out, but Jones has rarely been better.

Sunday 4.24
Season 6 of Game of Thrones starts tonight on HBO with an episode that, rather than the typical slow-build that establishes where all the characters are this season, immediately follows some of last season’s cliffhangers. After that, it never slows down — and it comes with several shocks. If you can’t wait to find out whether Jon Snow is really dead, just ask Siri. Silicon Valley and Veep also debut new seasons tonight as well.

Monday 4.25
As part of its Versus series, a “tribute to the ultimate battles in cinema,” the Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet is showing John Carpenter’s subversive popcorn flick They Live. The 1988 movie shows at OBEY 7:30 tonight and Wednesday. Of course, the battle referred to here is the one between “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and CONFORM Keith David — an epic six-minute back-alley brawl over wearing a pair of sunglasses. Do you dare to uncover the alien conspiracy SUBMIT that keeps us all complacent little consumers?

Tuesday 4.26
Hollywood tough guy John Milius’ directorial debut, Dillinger, starring Warren Oates as the nihilistic bank robber, arrives today on Blu-ray. This 1973 B-movie was one of several Depression-era gangster films released in the wake of 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, and it’s probably one of the most violent. Ben Johnson narrates as FBI man Melvin Purvis, while Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss provide supporting color.

Wednesday 4.27
No other movie straddles the line between art-house ambition and easy-to-approach economy quite like David Lean’s 1945 romantic drama, Brief Encounter. A married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a housewife (Celia Johnson) meet in a train station and share an immediate attraction but dare not act on it. New on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection, this Noël Coward adaptation is a gorgeously shot slice of cinematic heartbreak that will no doubt delight Downton Abbey fans who still crave doses of unspoken passion and polite English manners.