THIEF (45th Anniversary/4K Restoration) – January 17
THE KEEP (4K Restoration) – January 24
MIAMI VICE (20th Anniversary) – January 31
Michael Mann-uary is a celebration of one of cinema’s great stylists. A four-time Academy Award® nominee, Mann has crafted a meticulous filmography filled with celebrated antiheroes and paradoxical procedurals. From the neon-soaked streets of Miami Vice to the neo-noir heist thriller Thief, and the dream-like ambiance of The Keep, Mann’s films pulse with atmosphere.
An auteur whose influence continues to shape the look and feel of contemporary cinema, this retrospective honors Mann’s unmatched command of the silver screen with a trio of anniversaries and restorations.
The Keep:
New 4K Restoration!
Michael Mann’s The Keep is a moody, dreamlike fusion of supernatural horror and WWII thriller, anchored by an phenomenal cast that includes Scott Glenn (The Right Stuff), Ian McKellen (Lord of the Rings), Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot), and Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects). Adapted from F. Paul Wilson’s best-selling novel set in Nazi-occupied Romania.
In a small and gloomy village hidden deep in the mountains, German troops have arrived to lay siege. Although warned by the townspeople to stay out of a mysterious and ornately carved structure known only as “The Keep,” two arrogant soldiers ignore their orders and break into the obelisk, hoping to find stowed treasure, but instead unleash an ancient evil force which, with each new victim, grows stronger and more powerful,
The Keep marries Mann’s signature visual style with an atmospheric, almost hypnotic aesthetic, amplified by Tangerine Dream’s ethereal score (they also scored Thief). Production challenges (including the death of key visual effects coordinator, Wally Veevers) and a famously truncated final cut (down from Mann’s original 210-minute version) quelled the film’s initial reception, but those same qualities helped transform it into a cult object. Today, The Keep stands as one of Mann’s most unusual and stylistically daring works—an enigmatic, broken masterpiece.
1983, 96 minutes, USA, Directed by Michael Mann, Rated R
“The Keep is a worthy successor to a mode of horror, as morally unsettling as it is spiritually devastating, that threads through films like Murnau's Nosferatu and Lewton and Robson's Isle of the Dead.”
– Kim Newman, ELECTRIC SHEEP
“There is a weight to the film, the only one in Mann's filmography that deals explicitly with myth and religion, that is as grounded in the eponymous cavernous fortress as it is in the characters it centers around.”
– Ryan Swen, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE
“The Keep has a power that’s hard to shake, like a vivid dream that clings to you long after waking.”
– Padraig Cotter, DEN OF GEEK
“The Keep reminds me a lot of David Fincher’s Alien3; popularly-derided early films by now-revered directors; tampered with, disowned, and now gradually reconsidered as perhaps fragments, but fragments of brilliant and transformational work.”
– Walter Chaw, DECIDER
