CANCELED: Brawl in Cell Block 99
UW Cinematheque 821 University Ave., UW Vilas Hall, Room 4070, Madison, Wisconsin
press release: In compliance with UW Madison’s policies enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19, all previously announced UW Cinematheque screenings through April 12 have been canceled. The Cinematheque programming staff is currently investigating the possibility of re-scheduling some of these screenings on future Cinematheque calendars. The Cinematheque’s free screening series is currently scheduled to resume on April 17 with Where’s Poppa?. Please visit the Cinematheque’s website (http://cinema.wisc.edu) for further updates and a schedule of screenings between April 17 and May 3.
USA | 2017 | DCP | 132 min.
Director: S. Craig Zahler
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson
Writer-director Zahler earned wide-spread critical acclaim for his second movie, which follows the descent into crime of the former boxer Bradley Thomas (Vaughn). When Bradley’s drug-dealing career lands him in prison, he is forced to act cleverly and quickly to outwit both a sadistic warden (Johnson) and the thugs on the outside who pose a threat to his wife (Carpenter). This screening will be followed by a discussion with UW Whitewater Professor Jeff Herriott, who, with Zahler, has co-written the music scores and songs for all three of Zahler’s features. Brawl features several Zahler-Herriott compositions performed by Butch Tavares and The O’Jays.
S. Craig Zahler: 21st Century American Auteur: A successful writer of novels and unproduced screenplays for more than a decade, S. Craig Zahler made his debut as a feature film director with the gripping Western/horror hybrid Bone Tomahawk in 2015, followed shortly after by the urban crime dramas Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete. Often provocative for their genuinely shocking moments of violence and narratives driven by well-defined, yet unpredictable characters, Zahler’s enticingly titled movies follow in the tradition of classical cinematic storytellers like John Carpenter, Walter Hill, and Jean-Pierre Melville. A gifted writer of tightly constructed plots and spare, but flavorful dialogue, Zahler is also the co-composer (along with UW-Whitewater Professor Jeff Herriott) of the songs and music score on each of his three features. While they have debuted at prestigious international film festivals, Zahler’s films have mostly received limited theatrical distribution in the U.S. Now, with this series of all three Zahler-directed movies presented in a proper cinema setting, you have the opportunity to join this complete auteur’s fast-growing group of cinephile admirers.