In the wake of the passing last week of famed actor Rutger Hauer, there’s been a consciousness for one to revisit his work again, or at best discuss his long and expansive career. While most people would be wont to mention the arguable apex of his career with the apocalyptic classic Blade Runner, the film that he did right before it, Nighthawks, is another standout, albeit extremely underrated and one that introduced him to American audiences.

Nighthawks, originally released in mid 1981, is a crime thriller starring Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams as two NYC cops on a hunt for a global terrorist (chillingly played by Hauer), who has already made his explosive mark in his native town of London and is now firmly entrenched in the teeming metropolis that is New York City. The movie took its cues from the classic gritty inner city cop films of the previous decade, like The French Connection, Dirty Harry, Serpico and others, still holds up today, and in a way, is even more harrowing, mirror image of today’s society than ever.

Rutger Hauer, the Dutch wunderkind of an actor whose steely intensity made his presence unforgettable in films like Blade Runner, Nighthawks, and other challenging projects, died on July 19 2019 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illness, per Variety. He was 75.

The blond-haired actor with piercing blue eyes was a force majure on screens big and small. There was always an expected nervousness he gave the viewer when playing characters, there was always a wonderful unsettling feeling he gave to the energy of whatever might have been going on in a picture, and his magnetism went toe to toe with screen stalwarts like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner and Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams in the underrated crime yarn Nighthawks.

Annapurna Pictures has released an official trailer for The Sisters Brothers, an upcoming western directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) and starring Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Carol Kane, and Rutger Hauer.

The movie is based on the novel of the same name by author Patrick Dewitt, and follows two brothers who have been hired to kill a prospector. You can read an official synopsis for The Sisters Brothers and watch the trailer below.

It’s been two months since New York Comic-Con”¦ are you feeling the itch? Was NYCC too overwhelming? If so, then New York WinterCon may be more your speed. For the second straight year, NY WinterCon rolls into Resorts World Casino NYC this coming weekend bringing with it the very best for sci-fi and genre fans. The convention will feature celebrity guests, epic movie reunions, cosplay contests, artist alley, panel discussions and Q&As, and vendors galore. Everything starts this Friday night, December 1st, in Queens, New York.

Observer
Xbox One l PS4 l PC
DEVELOPER: Bloober Team
PUBLISHER: Aspyr Media
RELEASE DATE: Aug 15, 2017

From Bloober Team, the developer behind the 2015 horror Layers of Fear, comes a cyberpunk horror titled Observer (stylized as >observer_).

The game is set in the year 2084, in a dark and depressing world that’s the result of two devastating events: the Nanophage—a sort of computer virus which caused thousands of deaths when it affected the cybernetic augmentations most people now have in their bodies—and a massive nuclear war known as the Great Decimation, which killed millions and left many areas of the planet uninhabitable. You play as Daniel Lazarski (Rutger Hauer), a neural detective called an Observer who’s able to dive deep into the minds of others to acquire necessary information.