The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, July 29-August 4
1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari
Outlaw order collides with capitalist patriarchy in this white-hot blaze of anarchy. In a dystopia informed by Kubrick, Carpenter, and Walter Hill, a young woman’s flight from Manhattan to the dreaded upper borough (its wounds of real-life degradation still raw) spurs unprecedented street warfare. All the while, the Manhattan skyline looms with overbearing menace. In one corner: the Riders, a biker gang comprised of actual Hells Angels, with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson in tow. Opposite: a mix of turncoats, rival gangs on skates, and Vic Morrow as a postal worker gone… well, you know. Stemming from the operatic brutality of Spaghetti Westerns and the social commentary of zombie/cannibal holocausts, Castellari’s mini-epic is a hellborn demonstration of Italian genre cinema’s magnitude. Max Kyburz (July 31, 7:30pm at the Spectacle’s “Bronxploitation”)