Welcome to Movie Nights @ The Literary
Film Fanatic Movie Nights is a series of communal film experiences designed to stimulate the senses, feed the mind, and dazzle the eyes. Each film is presented by a film fanatic curator who introduces the film, sets the stage with background and insight, and leads an informal discussion afterward. Whether you come as a viewer, a movie buff, or a full-on fanatic — you're among friends here.
Next public screening
American Psycho
USA 2000 • 102 min (2.39:1) • Rated R
Directed by: Mary Harron
Starring: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Chloë Sevigny
Based on the novel by: Bret Easton Ellis
RSVP on Facebook • Download poster
Saturday, July 25, 2026 at 10:30 pm
Venue: The Literary Book Bar
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Advance tickets: $10 (available online until 5pm on July 24)
Member discount: $8 (includes premium seating in reserved section)
Special offer: Join Film-Fanatic.Club today and get one FREE admission plus one drink ticket (more info)
Note: Upon purchase, your name will be added to our door list (no tickets will be issued). Simply check in at the door at least 10 minutes before the screening starts on the night of the event. Your email receipt is your proof of purchase.
The Literary is an ADA accessible venue with designated spaces that can accommodate anyone, including guests who use wheelchairs. Please email ada@film-fanatic.club for more information.
About the film
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.
Content Warning: Graphic violence, drug use, adult themes, disturbing content. Viewer discretion advised.
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Presented by Sanford Hess
This screening and the discussion that follows will be hosted by Sanford Hess, curator of the Arthouse Experience and former operator of the Art Theater.
Sanford believes in film as a means to transport us, to immerse ourselves in another time, place, and people. American Psycho definitely does that, taking us to a specific place and time: New York in the late 1980s, with Wall Street financiers eating power-lunches in expensive suits.
What sets this film apart is the way it fires up Roger Ebert's "empathy machine," but takes us to a place of incredible darkness. Faithfully adapting the 1991 book, this 2000 film challenges us to imagine a character who has all the privileged benefits of wealth, looks, and privilege — yet is bored by that life and uses his status to secretly perform acts of diabolical evil. The book and the film satirize this world and challenge us to consider the difference between someone's outward appearance and inner thoughts and grasp how American society can produce this kind of Psycho.
In our current age, the film has a new level of meaning from its adoption by the "manosphere." Some young men now emulate the character's skin care routine, narcissistic body development, and (especially) his toxic masculinity — warping the message completely and celebrating the film for the wrong reasons.
We chose to show this film to reclaim it, by watching it in full (not as individual scenes) and with a post-film discussion to unpack the film and the incredible work it did adapting the source material.
Film-Fanatic.Club • The Literary Book Bar
122 N Neil St, Champaign , IL 61820
