(Nicholas Ray, US 1950, 91 min.)

In perhaps his most intense performance, Humphrey Bogart plays Dix, a troubled, neurotic screenwriter who is implicated in the murder of a hat-check girl. Laurel (the fabulous Gloria Grahame), Dix’s aspiring actress neighbor, provides him with an alibi and the two embark on a tempestuous romance that is constantly threatened by Dix’s violent temper. Director Ray’s (Rebel Without a Cause) powerful drama is both an indictment of Hollywood and a deeply personal look at human relationships.

(Andre de Toth, US 1948, 84 min.)

then at 8:30 p.m.

(Jacques Tourneur, US 1956, 78 min.)

These two noir tales of paranoia put the spotlight on their underrated directors, European émigré de Toth (House of Wax) and genre specialist Tourneur (Out of the Past, Cat People). In Pitfall, Dick Powell stars as a married family man who enjoys a dalliance with a blonde femme fatale (noir fan favorite Lizabeth Scott) and incurs the wrath of a psychotically jealous private detective (Raymond Burr). Nightfall finds innocent man Aldo Ray implicated in the death of a friend and on the run from the two gangsters (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond) who did the crime. Our hero finds solace in the arms of Anne Bancroft. Two films for one admission price.

(PONT DE VARSÒVIA, Pere Portabella, Spain 1990, 85 min., Spanish/subtitles).

A wonderfully mad lost masterpiece, Warsaw Bridge is unlike any other movie ever made. Director Portabella, one-time producer for Luis Buñuel, has assembled a series of bizarre images and surreal sequences that play out like a beautiful dream: an unusual concert in a shopping arcade; a verbal chess match; an opera performed at a fish market; credits that appear 30 minutes into the film; and much more. Ostensibly the story of a romantic triangle between a novelist, a conductor, and a marine-biology professor, Portabella’s film is actually a love letter to the possibilities of cinema, filled with non sequiturs and nonsense.

(John Carpenter, US 1982, 108 min.)

then at 9:00 p.m.

(John Carpenter, US 1986, 99 min.)

Kurt Russell stars in a pair of classic ’80s cult movies directed by his frequent collaborator John Carpenter. First, in Carpenter’s slick, scary, and ultra-gory updating of Howard Hawks’s ’50s sci-fi classic, the arctic setting remains the same, but this time the alien visitor knows where to hide: inside the human body. Then, in Big Trouble in Little China, Russell stars as truck driving Jack Burton in a special-effects romp and variation on the classic Fu Manchu stories. Two films for one admission price.

(Emily Hubley, US 2008, 84 min., Digital Projection)

“A kind of free-associative, good-humored surrealism informs The Toe Tactic, a feature by Emily Hubley that combines her squiggly, playful animation (most widely seen in Hedwig and the Angry Inch) with an oblique story about the serendipities of urban life”—A.O. Scott, The New York Times. Mona (Lily Rabe) an unfocused woman in her 20s, learns her mother has sold the family home, setting her off on an emotional and quirkily funny journey where she intersects with a variety of NYC residents. All the while, Mona speaks to a Greek chorus of animated animals (voiced by Eli Wallach, David Cross, Andrea Martin, and others) who offer her lots of opinions and advice. Animator and director Hubley will introduce her feature film debut and answer questions in a post-screening discussion. Co-presented by George Eastman House and the Rochester High Falls International Film Festival.