Upcoming Movie Nights
Film Fanatics Movie Nights transforms local venues in Champaign-Urbana into screening rooms where film lovers gather to experience artistic, unusual, and visually striking cinema together on the big screen. Expect stimulating evenings of conversation, and community in intimate non-traditional spaces — 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 recent surveys, 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.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
(Ukraine 1965 • 97 min • 1.37:1)
Directed by: Sergei Parajanov
Presented by: Sam Veremchuk
Screening date: November 8, 2026
Venue: Pizzeria Antica
A cinematic excursion steeped in folklore, ritual, and ecstatic color, this Romeo-and-Juliet-esque tale set in the Carpathian Mountains is considered one of the most internationally heralded Ukrainian films in history. More than a film, it’s a sensory incantation—an explosion of camera movement, mythic symbolism, and visual experimentation that helped redefine what Soviet-era filmmaking could dare to be (though few were able to see the film in the Soviet Union).
Decades later, its hypnotic imagery and rebellious creative spirit still feel startlingly modern, earning it a permanent place as a classic example of Ukrainian magical realist cinema. Unfortunately for Parajanov, the KGB surveilled him for his love of Ukrainian culture and for his sexuality, leading to his arrest for “sodomy” by the Soviet authorities when in reality many at the time believed it was for his love of Ukrainian culture.
Content Advisory: Graphic violence, death, murder, suicide, grief, ritual violence, animal death, religious imagery, and scenes of emotional distress.
#1960sFilm #Arthouse #BigScreenExperience #ClassicFilm #ComingSoon #WorldCinema #UkrainianCinema #SovietCinema
Adaptation.
USA 2002 • 114 min • 1.85:1 • Rated R
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Wrtten by: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Screening date: November 21, 2026
Venue: The Literary
What happens when a screenwriter tries to adapt a book about orchids and discovers that the real subject is himself? Charlie Kaufman’s wildly inventive adaptation of Susan Orlean's 1998 nonfiction book is transformed into one of the great films about screenwriting — a dizzying hall-of-mirrors comedy that turns writer’s block, artistic anxiety, Hollywood formula, and the very idea of originality into its own raw material. Nicolas Cage gives one of his most remarkable performances as both the painfully neurotic Charlie and his fictional twin Donald, while Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper bring extraordinary depth to characters who gradually become entangled in Kaufman’s increasingly unstable fiction. Spike Jonze directs with a light touch that allows the screenplay’s elaborate games to remain genuinely funny, surprisingly moving, and completely unpredictable. The film constantly threatens to collapse under the weight of its own cleverness, then somehow finds another level. Funny, melancholy, intellectually mischievous, and formally audacious, this s a rare Hollywood movie that turns its own construction into the subject without losing sight of the human beings trapped inside it.
Content Advisory: Strong language, sexual content, nudity, drug use, smoking, alcohol use, violence, death, suicide, and disturbing imagery.
#SpikeJonze #CharlieKaufman #NicolasCage #MerylStreep #ChrisCooper #CultCinema #ArtCinema #MetaCinema #FilmAboutFilm #RepertoryCinema #LiteraryAdaptaton
Dune (1984)
USA 1984 • 137 min • 2.35:1 • Rated PG-13
Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Patrick Stewart, Sting, José Ferrer, Linda Hunt, Max von Sydow, Jürgen Prochnow, Kenneth McMillan, Brad Dourif
Presented by: Hannah Brown
Screening date: December 3, 2026
Venue: Analog Wine Library
Before Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks made David Lynch one of America’s most singular filmmakers, he took on what was widely considered an impossible assignment: Frank Herbert’s sprawling science-fiction epic. The result is one of the strangest major studio films ever made, a $40 million space opera filtered through Lynch’s fascination with dreams, decay, grotesque bodies, industrial textures, mysticism, and the uncanny. The story may be notoriously compressed, but the images are unforgettable: baroque interiors, giant sandworms, floating villains, mutant navigators, blue-eyed desert warriors, and a galaxy that looks simultaneously futuristic and ancient. Freddie Francis’s cinematography and the lavish production design give the film a tactile grandeur, while Toto’s haunting score adds another layer of dreamlike atmosphere. A notorious critical and commercial failure on release, the Lynch version has gradually developed a devoted cult following precisely because it feels so unlike any other epic science-fiction movie. It is not the definitive Dune. It is something much stranger: Lynch’s imperfect, fascinating, occasionally magnificent nightmare of one. With another chapter of Herbert’s saga arriving in theaters this December, there’s no better time to revisit the most unconventional Dune of them all.
Content Warnings: Graphic violence, body horror, grotesque imagery, torture, sexual violence, disturbing imagery, death
#DavidLynch #KyleMacLachlan #FrankHerbert #CultCinema #CultFilm #ScienceFiction #SciFiCinema #Lynchian #FilmHistory #RepertoryCinema #EpicCinema #VisuallyStunning #BigScreenExperience
