Upcoming Movie Nights @ Gallery Art Bar
Film Fanatics Movie Nights transforms Gallery Art Bar into a big-screen cinematic lounge — a stylish, social space where film lovers gather to experience artistic, unusual, and visually striking cinema together. Expect a stimulating evening of conversation, and community — 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 on the big screen at Gallery Art Bar — 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.
The Unknown
USA 1927 • directed by Tod Browning • 68 min (1.33:1)
Stars Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford
Date: TBD
Director Tod Browning and Lon Chaney’s most satisfying collaborator is a bizarre tale of one loved too well but not wisely. That would be Alonzo, an armless circus performer with no arms who throws knives with deadly accuracy. Crafted by Tod Browning (“Freaks”) at the height of his fascination with outsiders and obsession, the film exemplifies a pre-sanitized Hollywood willing to venture into genuinely disturbing psychological terrain. Long revered by cinephiles and midnight audiences alike, this film has become a cornerstone of silent-era cult cinema — praised for its intensity, its taboo-challenging imagery, and its fearless emotional extremity. Seen with an audience, its shocks and silences land with renewed force, making this bold statement one of the most unsettling and uncompromising films of the 1920s.
#SilentCinema #ClassicFilm #FilmHistory #TodBrowning #LonChaney #EarlyHollywood #PreCode #DarkCinema #BigScreenExperience
The Man Who Wasn't There
USA 2001 • directed by Joel & Ethan Coen • 116 min (1.85:1)
With Billy Bob Thornton, Ed Crane, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson
This screening is co-sponsored by the Chambana Film Society
Date: TBA
One of the Coen brothers’ most underappreciated films, this coolly elegant neo-noir distills their sensibility to its most fatalistic and restrained form. Shot in luminous black and white, the film draws on classic Hollywood crime cinema while filtering it through the Coens’ dry wit and existential unease. Anchored by a quietly devastating performance from Billy Bob Thornton and supported by an exceptional ensemble including Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson, and Tony Shalhoub, it transforms small-town America into a landscape of moral drift and cosmic indifference. Immaculate in tone and striking in execution, it stands as one of the Coens’ most refined and haunting achievements.
#CoenBrothers #NeoNoir #BlackAndWhiteCinema #DarkComedy #CrimeThriller #BillyBobThornton #ArthouseFilm #BigScreenExperience
Santa Sangre
Mexico/Italy 1989 • directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky • 123 min (1.85:1)
Stars Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell
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
A Scanner Darkly
USA 2006 • directed by Richard Linklater • 100 min (1.85:1)
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder
Date: TBD
Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel utilizes digital rotoscope animation to create an alternate reality, perfectly suited to the author’s radical aesthetic. Keanu Reeves is Bob Arctor, an undercover cop trying to determine where a new drug, Substance D, is coming from and how it’s made. Along the way he gets involved with a group of ne’er-do-wells who’ve fallen under the drug’s sway and finds himself following in their footsteps. Hypnotic and as seductive as the drug at its center, the film is engaging from start to finish, Linklater adhering to Dick’s paranoid and nihilistic view of the world, creating a sobering vision of a world beset by corruption and paranoia.
#PhilipKDick #RichardLinklater #CultCinema #AnimatedFilm #Rotoscope #SciFiNoir #2000sCinema #MindBending #BigScreenExperience
Film-Fanatic.Club • Gallery Art Bar
119 W Main St, Urbana, IL 61801