In “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy,” director Nancy Buirski takes viewers into the journey to get the historic 1969 film produced, as well as the tumultuous era in which the movie was released and embraced. The film opens July 21 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.
Continuing is “The Miracle Club.”
A half century after its release, “Midnight Cowboy” remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt’s brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger’s fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes.
But this is not a documentary about the making of “Midnight Cowboy”: It is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Featuring extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.
“Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” is playing through Aug. 3.
In “The Miracle Club,” when the chance to win presents itself, the women seize it. However, just before their trip, their old friend Chrissie (Laura Linney) arrives in Ballygar for her mother’s funeral, dampening their good mood and well-laid plans. The women secure tickets and set out on the journey that they hope will change their lives, with Chrissie, a skeptical traveler, joining in place of her mother. The glamor and sophistication of Chrissie, who has just returned from a nearly 40-year exile in the United States, are not her only distancing traits: Old wounds are reopened along the way, forcing the women to confront their pasts even as they travel in search of a miracle. Their shared traumas can only be healed by the curative power of love and friendship.
Directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Thaddeus O’Sullivan, “The Miracle Club” is based on a story by Jimmy Smallhorne, with a screenplay by Smallhorne, Timothy Prager and Joshua D. Maurer.
“The Miracle Club” is showing through July 27.
Learn more about the films, including show times and ticket availability.
