Upcoming Movie Nights
Film Fanatics Movie Nights transforms local venues in Champaign-Urbana into a screening room where film lovers gather to experience artistic, unusual, and visually striking cinema together on the big screen. Expect a stimulating evening of conversation, and community in a lounge atmopshere — the kind of shared experience that reminds us why we fell in love with movies in the first place.
Coming Soon
You told us what you want to see and we listened. Based on the results of our first survey, we’re excited to present the following films over the coming months.
As always, club members receive discounted admission to all screenings, along with reserved seating in our premium section. Join today and help shape what we show next.
Homage to Cinema
The Astronomer’s Dream (France 1898 • 3 min • 1.37:1)
Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (France 1904 • 24 min • 1.37:1)
Le Compositeur toqué (France 1905 • 5 min • 1.37:1)
Directed by: Georges Méliès
Presented by: Rachel Storm and Arthouse 217
Screening date: June 26, 2026
Venue: Old Tiernan's Hall • Downtown Urbana
Free admission
Join us for an evening of film, music, and conversation at the historic Old Tiernan’s Hall, a former 19th-century theater in downtown Urbana. Homage to Cinema features a screening of three Georges Méliès silent short films, accompanied by a live, improvised score by the Nu Orbit Ensemble.
The evening begins with a reception from 5:30–7pm, featuring visual art, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and an opportunity to connect with fellow film, art, and music enthusiasts. The screening and live performance begin at 7pm, following brief remarks. This program offers a chance to experience silent cinema in a contemporary context, where live music and moving image come together in a shared, one-of-a-kind performance.
Content note: Contains silent-era fantasy imagery and slapstick violence.
#SilentFilm #LiveMusic #GeorgesMelies #EarlyCinema #FantasyCinema #ProtoSciFi #CinemaMagic #CinematicDreams #FrenchCinema #VisualWonder #FilmHistory
American Psycho
USA 2000 • 102 min (2.39:1)
Directed by: Mary Harron
Starring: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Chloë Sevigny
Based on the novel by: Bret Easton Ellis
Screening date: TBD
A rare adaptation that sharpens rather than softens its source, American Psycho distills Bret Easton Ellis’s infamous novel into a sleek, darkly funny study of surface, status, and self-invention at the tail end of the Reagan era. Ellis’s fixation on brand names, empty ritual, and interchangeable identities finds a perfect cinematic analogue here, where violence feels less like shock than a logical extension of a culture built on appearance and consumption. The film’s cool, controlled aesthetic—echoing the clinical precision of Stanley Kubrick—turns glassy surfaces and pristine spaces into part of the joke. At the center, Christian Bale makes control itself the punchline, embodying and quietly ridiculing the hyper-managed world Ellis created. Once controversial, now firmly canonized, it plays like a time capsule that somehow feels more relevant with each passing decade.
#BretEastonEllis #ChristianBale #CultCinema #MidnightMovies #DarkSatire #80sExcess #LateCapitalism #LiteraryAdaptation
Santa Sangre
Mexico/Italy 1989 • 123 min (1.85:1)
Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell
Presented by: Paul Young
Screening date: TBD
A hallucinatory descent into madness and memory, this masterwork stands as one of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s most ferocious and personal visions—equal parts surrealist nightmare, operatic melodrama, and cult initiation rite. Emerging after years of myth-making around the director’s unrealized projects, the film marked a triumphant return that reaffirmed Jodorowsky’s status as cinema’s high priest of the subconscious. Drenched in ritual, symbolism, and Grand Guignol intensity, it plays less like a conventional narrative than a waking dream engineered to unnerve and mesmerize a roomful of viewers at once. Decades later, its power remains undiminished: shocking, hypnotic, and unmistakably the work of a singular auteur whose influence continues to ripple through cult and midnight cinema.
#AlejandroJodorowsky #CultCinema #MidnightMovie #SurrealCinema #ArtHouseHorror #VisionaryDirector #CultClassic #BigScreenExperience
Once Upon a Time in the West
Italy/USA 1968 • 165 min (2.35:1)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Starring: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Presented by: Sascha Hilgenfeldt
Screening date: TBD
A monumental reinvention of the American Western, this operatic epic captures Sergio Leone at the height of his formal power and mythmaking ambition that must be seen on the big screen. Shot in expansive widescreen, the film transforms silence, gesture, and landscape into pure cinematic ritual, with towering performances by Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards anchoring its mythic scale. Ennio Morricone’s iconic score operates as a driving emotional force, inseparable from Leone’s meticulous compositions and visual authority. Considered by many as an iconic classic, this grand, austere, and endlessly influential film stands as one of the definitive Westerns and a landmark in the evolution of modern cinema.
#SergioLeone #SpaghettiWestern #EnnioMorricone #WesternCinema #EpicCinema #CultCinema #VisuallyStunning #BigScreenExperience #ModernClassic
