Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present this month’s screening in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Michelangelo Antonioni’s vibrant masterpiece RED DESERT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and collected rave reviews around the world on its release over the next several months. We will show the film at five of our theaters at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 31.Antonioni had earned critical acclaim for the three movies in his “alienation trilogy”—'L’Avventura,' 'La Notte,' and 'Eclipse' — made during the early 1960s. RED DESERT explored some of the same themes but introduced a new element to

Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle and his wife Tish Laemmle are being honored by the good folks at Glendale Arts "in recognition of their unparalleled legacy of dedication to independent filmmakers and the art of storytelling on the screen." Glendale Arts is an award-winning 501(c)3 non-profit organization that generates opportunities throughout greater Los Angeles to showcase, promote, encourage, and engage with the arts. From their announcement:Glendale Arts proudly announces the organization’s highly-anticipated Summer Soiree “Under A Thousand Stars” to be held on Saturday, July 27, 2024 from 7:00-10:00 P.M. at ace/121 Gallery. Tickets

Next week at the Royal we open Crossing, the acclaimed new film by the Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin (And Then We Danced). It follows Lia, a retired teacher living in Georgia, as she tries to fulfill a promise to find her long-lost niece, Tekla. The search takes her to Istanbul, a beautiful city that seems full of connections and possibilities. There she meets Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever.*Akin will attend the July 20 evening screening for a Q&A.*"A piercing portrait of forgiveness across generations...Dumanli, making her screen feature debut here, is a pure joy to watch, enveloping

From Alissa Wilkinson's New York Times review of the superb new documentary we are opening next week, HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer:Given the hagiographic bias of most celebrity documentaries, HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer sails into choppy waters. The director Jeff Zimbalist had to figure out a way to sum up one of the 20th century’s most admired, and most notorious, cultural figures. Mailer’s legacy as a novelist, speaker, filmmaker and pop culture icon — the movie reminded me how often he’s mentioned in “Gilmore Girls” — is full of bad behavior and also brilliant work, and making a film about such a person seems nearly impossible

A SUMMER PLACE 65th Anniversary Screening July 11 with special introduction by film music historian Steven C. Smith celebrating the career of composer Max Steiner.Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 65th anniversary of the teen angst romance classic A SUMMER PLACE (1959) starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue on Thursday, July 11 at 7 PM at the historic Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Written and directed by Delmer Daves, the lavish melodrama is now best remembered for introducing the phenomenally successful “Theme from A Summer Place,” the best-selling instrumental in pop music history.Adapted from a popular novel by

We are proud to open filmmaker Agnieszka Holland's powerful new film Green Border this Friday at the Royal Theater in West L.A. Thirty years after her Oscar-nominated film Europa Europa, Green Border is set in the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so-called “green border” between Belarus and Poland. Here refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Finding themselves pawns in this hidden

From film critic Tim Grierson's recent L.A. Times profile of Janet Planet star Julianne Nicholson:*"When she was 18, Julianne Nicholson came to New York City to model but quickly grew tired of that — she knew she wanted to act. “I was waitressing and just living my best life,” she says over Zoom, smiling, from A24’s Manhattan offices. “I was basically being a young person in New York without a care in the world. It was wildly different from Janet Planet." She’s referring to the wonderful new film set during summer 1991 in which she stars — a film that, like Nicholson, doesn’t put on airs but is capable of small miracles. Since its premiere at

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964). Starring the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, we'll screen this rock 'n' roll movie classic on Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM at the historic Royal theatre in West Los Angeles. Directed by Richard Lester from an Oscar-nominated original screenplay by Alun Owen, the milestone film was also aptly nominated for musical scoring. (George Martin lost to Andre Previn for My Fair Lady.)After the Beatles exploded onto the global stage by early 1964, the British pop group (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr) conquered the

A rare debut feature that premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and Senegal's official submission to the 96th Academy Awards, Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical West African dreamscape, a tragic romance that soars to the heights of longing and descends deep into the realm of myth as it sets its protagonists' perfect everlasting love on a collision course with their community’s traditions. We're proud to open it this Friday at the Royal. Click here to see the trailer."Unequivocally beautiful. Sy paints breathtaking scenes with her camera, demonstrating a gorgeous way of seeing the world." - Lovia Gyarke, Hollywood Reporter“A

Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will be in town later this month for her latest film, the powerful Green Border. She'll participate in Q&As after the evening screenings at the Royal on Friday and Saturday, June 28 and 29 and for good measure join us for a Q&A after the June 29 screening of her 1993 family film The Secret Garden, which we're screening as part of our Anniversary Classics series. One moviegoer might want to ask her how she manages such range, because the movies are quite different.Thirty years after her Oscar-nominated film Europa Europa, Holland’s poignant and essential Green Border is set in the treacherous and swampy forests that make

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present 65th anniversary screenings of Louis Malle’s 'The Lovers' ('Les Amants') starring Jeanne Moreau, on June 19 for one night only at 7:00 PM in West Los Angeles, Encino, Glendale, Claremont, and Santa Clarita. When first released in the United States in 1959, the film became an art house sensation with frank sexuality and nudity that inflamed the prudish American censors. Those censors, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and the repressive Hollywood Production Code wielded considerable influence at that time, preventing American films from exploring adult themes in a provocative manner

Over the weekend, writer-director Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket) was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top prize, at this year's Cannes Film Festival for Anora, his comedy about a sex worker. New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis called the film "a giddily ribald picaresque." In his acceptance speech, Baker spoke eloquently about seeing movies in theaters. You can watch the whole thing online, but here's the key excerpt:*"This literally has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years. So I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do with the rest of my life, but I do know that I will continue to fight for cinema

This Friday we open the intense Italian drama Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara at the Royal and Town Center, which is based on the true story of a Jewish family in 19th century Bologna whose young son was secretly baptized as a baby by his nurse. Years later, the cardinal orders the boy abducted so he can receive a Catholic education. The scandal received wide attention at the time and now gets a terrific film adaptation by Marco Bellocchio (The Wedding Director, The Traitor, Marx Can Wait) which, among other accolades, earned a Palme d'Or nomination at Cannes and a Best Foreign Film nomination at the César Awards.*"It is a full-tilt

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the third in our popular series of James Bond revival screenings. Following the successful showings of the very first Bond picture, 'Dr. No,' and the popular third film, 'Goldfinger,' we present the second movie in the long-running series, 'From Russia with Love.' This screening takes place almost 60 years to the day when the movie enjoyed its wide U.S. release in May 1964.'Dr. No' had been a big hit when it opened a year earlier, and producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided to bring Bond back. They chose Ian Fleming’s novel 'From Russia with Love' in part because

The new documentary Taking Venice, which we open next week at the Royal in West L.A. and the Town Center in Encino, uncovers the true story behind rumors that the U.S. government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale – the Olympics of art – so their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the Grand Prize. Director Amei Wallach wrote this about her film:"I grew up during the Cold War when the world seemed as dangerous as it does today. But it also seemed to be filled with possibility, with the actions of people who dreamed big and took big chances. This was especially true of artists, always looking to build

Hope/Good News Alert! Next week we have three screenings of the new documentary Finding the Money. It follows former chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT,” to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope and empowering democracies around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.We're hosting Q&As 5/14 in Claremont with director Maren Poitras; 5/15 in NoHo with Ms. Kelton, Cory Doctorow, and Ms. Poitras; and 5/16 at the Royal with Ms. Kelton, Harry Shearer, and Ms. Poitras.Check out Ms. Kelton's recent

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the next entry in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, the biopic drama of the early years of Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). The Academy Award-winning film by director Walter Salles (Central Station) will play for one show only on Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 pm at five Laemmle locations: Claremont, Encino, Glendale, Newhall, and West L.A. In addition to the Oscar for Best Song, “Al Otro Lado Del Rio,” the film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by playwright Jose Rivera, based on Guevara's memoir. The film recounts the 1952 road trip by 23-year-old medical

We’re proud to soon screen two films by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema: her just-restored 1995 romance When Night is Falling (May 7 at the Royal and May 8 at the NoHo) and her most recent film, Mouthpiece (May 13 & 14 at the Town Center, Monica Film Center, Glendale, and Claremont). Rozema will participate in Q&As after the Tuesday, May 7 and 8 screenings of When Night is Falling at the Royal and NoHo. Tracy E. Gilchrist, VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for equalpride, will moderate the Royal Q&A.Long considered to be a pivotal entry in the LGTBQ+ canon, When Night is Falling is a sexy, daring and visually resplendent story about the

We know that over the past four years, you may have become accustomed to hearing bad news from us. So we are pleased to share some good news. Qualified good news. But still, a sign of improvement.It appears that older audiences are returning in larger numbers. That's welcome news for all of us at Laemmle Theatres, and at art houses across the U.S. Before the pandemic, the hand wringing was about the “graying” of the arthouse audience. But since reopening, as arthouses have had success with younger-skewing films, the concern instead has been about how to reconnect with the older audiences that were once weekly guests at our theaters. Now, we love

Family man and gangster Abel Davos (Lino Ventura), holed up in Italy for over a decade, needs some startup money in order to return to France, where he's been sentenced to death. With Milan's Duomo looming in the background (shot on location), he and a crony execute a split-second payroll heist — in broad daylight — then begin a lightning-fast getaway via underground passages, cars, motorcycle, bus, speedboat, and ambulance. Only the beginning of the mounting mayhem.Bridging argot-rich '50s masterworks like Dassin's Rififi and Becker's Touchez Pas Au Grisbi with Melville's pared-down thrillers of the '60s, Classe Tous Risque (referring to a kind