NEW YORK: It's that time of year--the humidity-soaked dead space between the last of the real summer movies and the first of the autumn "serious" pictures--where unexpected flurries of stray weirdness count for a lot even in repertory programming. Starting August 21 and running for a week, Anthology Film Archives digs deep into the seamier recesses of the nostalgia glands for a celebration of New York vigilante movies from the 1970s and 1980s. including the official kick-start to the genre: Michael Winner's Death Wish, with Charles Bronson in his most archetypal role, and a movie that Jeff Goldblum (who made his screen debut with a five-second appearance as one of the caterwauling thugs who fuck up Chuck's wife and daughter) has been apologizing for ever since. The schedule also includes Abel Ferrara's moody, arty-looking bloodbath Ms. 45, which is notable for its wordless star performance by the beautiful and doomed Zoe Lund, who would later write Ferrera's Bad Lieutenant under the name Zoe Tamerlis. (She also appeared in that film as one of Harvey Keitel's drug connections. Zoe Tamerlis Lund died in 1999, of a heart attack brought on by cocaine use, at the age of 37.) The schedule also amounts to the closest thing you're ever likely to see to a William Lustig Festival.
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