Theater Buzz Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Culture Vulture Evolves: From Limited Runs to Unlimited Options

July 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

A mere dozen years ago, your Laemmle Theatres forefathers set out with a new mission, one that would really put the “art” in “arthouse theater.” With our Culture Vulture program, we brought live stage to the cinema auditorium, took attendees inside the world’s greatest art museums to see the classics, and gave PBS documentaries the big-screen treatment they deserved, among other deep delves.

That was then, in a more conventional film environment.

These days, with companies like Fathom Events running one-night-only and limited programs, it’s not uncommon to see plays, concerts, TV finales, restored older films, and all sorts of niche documentaries on every topic.

At Laemmle Theatres, you can still expect to see more from the likes of Exhibition on Screen, telling the stories behind famous works of art, and National Theatre Live bringing the best of British stage productions to the movie screen. They no longer need other umbrellas to stand under, as their productions are now recognized by the likes of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. If we ran just one a week, in some cases, we’d be limiting your options rather than expanding your horizons.

Culture Vulture began in 2014, with an all-male production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. It used to run at every Laemmle theater – the Claremont ran it for all 12 years, which is more than any other. Over those eleven-plus calendar cycles, the programs have broken down to: fine art 31%, stage capture 28% (Shakespeare 12% of that), opera 10%, ballet 10%, and music docs 7%.

In all, 24 of Shakespeare’s 38 plays have been a part of the program, some more than once. Hamlet, easily the highest-grossing title in Culture Vulture’s history, came through in three different productions, as did Romeo and Juliet, including in Matthew Bourne’s all-dance version.

Here are some more Culture Vulture numbers: a total series run-time of 11 years and 10 months, from September 22, 2014 to July 27, 2026.

In that time, our screens have run 434 titles, 2,078 engagements, 4,449 theatre-days, 10 theatres, and 90 distributors.

Culture Vulture titles needed strength in numbers, but the future has more than we can count. Just keep an eye on Laemmle.com for keywords like ballet, opera, and stage. If you sign up for Laemmle’s e-newsletter, you’ll be even more ahead of the curve.

Culture Vulture as a label may be phasing out, but like a phoenix from the ashes, it’s just rebirthing to spread its wings wider. Long live culture, on even more screens and locations!

Three Classics Revived: ‘White Nights,’ ‘The Piano,’ and ‘Mysterious Skin.’

July 28, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

What do Luchino Visconti’s White Nights, Jane Campion’s The Piano, and Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin all have in common? Aside from critical acclaim, not much. Except this: they’re all returning to the big screen in new restorations over the next few weeks.

Catch The Piano starting July 31^st at Laemmle’s Royal, White Nights August 7^th also at the Royal, and Mysterious Skin August 21^st at the NoHo.

Not to be confused with the 1985 American film of the same name, White Nights (1957) marked a transition in Visconti’s style. Previously known as a master of neorealism, he shot the entirety of White Nights on a large set in a Roman soundstage, giving the production a dreamlike quality in line with the Dostoevsky short story it’s based on. Based on the Tuscan city of Livorno, the set used netting to give the street lights a nighttime haze, and included a functional mini-canal, for a key moment in a rowboat.

Italian acting icon Marcello Mastroianni turns on the charm as Mario, a man on a late-night walk who encounters a crying woman, Natalia (German cinema star Maria Schell). Over the next couple of evenings, he attempts to woo her despite her fealty to a man who left a year ago, with a vague promise to return. Visconti originally planned to dub Schell, but she impressed him with her Italian and got to keep her voice.

At the center of The Piano, on the other hand, is a relationship not serendipitous but pre-ordained. From an early age, Ada (Holly Hunter), from Scotland, is promised into an arranged marriage with New Zealand settler Alisdair Stewart (the late, great Sam Neill). By the time she’s old enough to actually wed, she already has a daughter (Anna Paquin), and is either unable or unwilling to speak…except through the emotional music she plays on her piano. When her new spouse fails to put a priority on her signature instrument, she’s drawn to a man who does – George Baines (Harvey Keitel), a Scottish sailor who has gone native with the Maoris.

Hunter and Paquin both won Academy Awards for acting – unable to use words, Hunter’s Ada conveys everything through her eyes, stomps, and slaps. Paquin’s Flora comes off as a realistically mercurial kid, mostly loyal to her mother but capable of ruining everything in a fit of pique. Writer-director Jane Campion scored the film its third Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the film’s frank depiction of sexuality from a female gaze pushes the boundaries of what the MPAA typically allows in an R-rated film.

Filmmaker Gregg Araki has always pushed boundaries of sex – and violence — from his breakthrough film The Doom Generation onward. Mysterious Skin is less overtly outrageous, but almost more shocking for it, as it follows two childhood friends, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet, who process childhood sexual abuse in very different ways. Gordon-Levitt’s Neil becomes a hooker in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis, while Corbet’s Brian, who believes his abuse may have been an alien abduction, increasingly has his repressed memories manifest as physical symptoms.

With a supporting cast that includes Michelle Trachtenberg, Richard Riehle, Elisabeth Shue, Chris Mulkey, and Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mysterious Skin is acclaimed as one of Araki’s finest and most sensitive films, but with its unflinching look at the damage done by child abuse, it isn’t for the faint of heart.

All three of these movies will have regular runs – not just one-off screenings – of at least a week, starting July 31^st with The Piano. If you’ve never seen them before on the big screen, or it’s been a while, come and see them look better than ever. Three very different films, by three great directors…and there’ll be more where that came from.

David Alvarado’s ‘American Pachuco’ Pays Tribute to a Pioneering Director

July 21, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

It’s notable and maddening that the director of the most successful Chicano movie ever never got to make another theatrical feature. Fortunately, it’s not like Luis Valdez, who made La Bamba, has been idle. David Alvarado’s American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, catches up with the now-octogenarian to chronicle his life as an artist and activist.

Watch American Pachuco: the Legend of Luis Valdez at Laemmle’s Royal and NoHo starting July 24^th. Director David Alvarado and subjects Luis Valdez and Lou Diamond Phillips will participate in Q&As after the 7:20 PM show on July 24 at the Royal and after the 7:00 PM show on July 25 at the NoHo.

According to Merriam-Webster, “pachuco” means a young Mexican-American having a taste for flashy clothes and a special jargon and usually belonging to a neighborhood gang. The gang part is likely a stereotype; socially defiant attitudes were definitely involved, as with many youth cultures. Yet the film underscores that the Zoot Suit riots, and the Sleepy Lagoon murder that preceded them, were more about white racism than Chicano crime, though law enforcement at the time knew who was easier to blame.

Valdez immortalized the events in the play Zoot Suit, and its subsequent filmed version; it became a huge hit in Los Angeles, but fared less well on Broadway, where the documentary highlights how racially charged reviews speculated whether Valdez, who was an English major in college, could speak the language well enough to convey a point.

Considering Valdez was born in 1940 to poor migrant farm workers, it’s remarkable just how much filmed footage exists of his entire life, including the early years. Director David Alvarado, who was inspired by La Bamba to make movies, clearly reveres Valdez, and sets out to make the case that you should too. A theater kid in a family where lack of privilege made that kind of think a nigh-untouchable luxury, Luis Valdez had his first role in a school play stymied by his parents being evicted. As he grew up and understood the protests led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, he staged activist plays by and for the workers, sometimes performed on truck beds. Alvarado frames the story as a quintessentially American success story, albeit one that must still speak out to justify itself.

Still alive and vital, Valdez is able to reflect back on camera, as is Huerta, Linda Ronstadt, Zoot Suit star Edward James Olmos, La Bamba breakthrough star Lou Diamond Phillips, producer Taylor Hackford, and more. Alvarado, whose previous documentary feature Blood Sugar Rising dealt with diabetes, has a much more pleasant task at hand here. Paying tribute to an artistic hero of his, he has the treasure trove of a lifetime of footage, from which to assemble a mere hour and a half. Edward James Olmos narrates in character as Zoot Suit‘s El Pachuco, which became his breakthrough, Tony-nominated role, though he also appears as himself.

As Valdez prepares to executive-produce a remake of La Bamba, perhaps this vital look back at his entire career as a playwright, TV producer, and activist can offer him more opportunities while he’s still with us. Like Ritchie Valens might sing, “Come on, let’s go!”

“Alvarado’s documentary turns into a defiant reminder of our past struggles, a celebration of our successes and progress, and a call to remain proud of one’s roots. “ – Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com.

“As much as the doc is explicitly celebratory, its existence is inherently a political statement, just like Valdez’s oeuvre. To spotlight a Mexican American pioneer who still stands proud in all the nuances of his identity feels necessarily defiant. “ – Carlos Aguilar, Variety.

Fifty Years Haven’t Dulled Sidney Lumet’s ‘Network’

July 20, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

To celebrate Arthouse Theatre Day on July 30, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of the classic expose of television, Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet.

Don’t miss out and be mad as hell! Network screens Thursday, July 30th at 7 p.m. at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

The film received 10 Academy Award nominations and won 4 Oscars in 1976, including one for Chayefsky and three for actors Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, and Beatrice Straight. That tied the all-time record for acting Oscars for a single film. The 5 acting nominations that it received also tied a record. In close to 100 years of Academy Awards, no film has ever earned more than 5 acting nods, and only a handful have received that many. The cast also includes William Holden, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty, and William Prince.

Chayefsky and Lumet set out to satirize the growing commercialization of television news, which began in the ’70s and has only mushroomed in recent decades. When news anchor Howard Beale, played by Finch, seems to be having a breakdown on the air, sober-minded executives want to fire him, but the head of the entertainment division, played by Dunaway, sees his crazed rantings as a potential boon to network ratings. Indeed Beale’s anthem, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more,” captures the imagination of gullible members of the viewing public.

Consider how many real-life personalities since 1976 have been allowed to rant and rave over the airways under the guise of being fearless truth tellers.

Reviews for the film were actually mixed, but most were positive. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby called Network “brilliantly, cruelly funny.” Leonard Maltin claimed that the “entire cast explodes,” and he added, “Paddy Chayefsky’s outrageous satire on television looks less and less like fantasy as the years pass.” Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin agreed with Maltin and wrote in 2011, “No predictor of the future—not even Orwell—has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote Network.”

Will it still make audiences laugh, or is the the satire too close to the truth these days? There’s only one way to find out — come and watch Network on the big screen again.

Ross McElwee Revisits Personal Loss and Cinema in ‘Remake’

July 14, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Long before blogging and social media, Ross McElwee was turning a movie camera on his own life, processing his own reality through the films he made, like 1985’s groundbreaking documentary Sherman’s March. His latest, Remake, offers the biggest personal challenge to date – emotionally coming to terms with the death of his son.

Catch both Remake and a new restoration of Sherman’s March this Friday, July 17^th at Laemmle’s Royal.

Whatever the ostensible, assigned topic of McElwee’s documentaries – be it General Sherman or Big Tobacco – the real pleasures of his movies come when he tends to get sidetracked and return to the subject of his own life. For his last couple of films, In Paraguay and Photographic Memory, he cut directly to the chase and started with his family. Photographic Memory spotlighted his complicated relationship with his son, Adrian; fourteen years later, he’s dealing with Adrian’s death from drug addiction.

There is an originally assigned topic to Remake – Sherman’s March was being considered for a Hollywood remake as a fiction film, and McElwee signed a deal that allowed him to make a film about the making of the new film. As the movie stalled in development, however, Adrian spiraled downward and ultimately died. Adrian was himself an aspiring filmmaker, and Remake is made up of footage shot by him as well as his father.

McElwee’s narration remains as steadily deadpan as always, like he can reason his way through anything, but in this case he only comes up with more questions that require answers from the heart rather than the head. He’s always been masterful at self-analysis, yet it’s clear that he now realizes its inadequacy in the face of such a blow. The best he can do is keep Adrian alive on film, and try to understand him by seeing the world through his camera. At a certain age, Adrian stopped wanting to be the subject of his father’s films – in death, his shared credit as cinematographer and editor offers a glimpse at the artist he might have become. It’s clear that he followed somewhat in his father’s footsteps, trying to understand his own life through the camera lens, but having his own addiction as a topic didn’t allow him enough distance. The elder McElwee, naturally, wonders how much of this is his fault as a father.

The reuse of footage from his older films is a common McElwee technique, done both because he doesn’t assume audiences have seen all his films, and because the footage takes on new context when viewed as flashback rather than contemporary commentary. In Remake, he takes short side quests to catch up with some of the characters from Sherman’s March, now four decades older, using the old scenes for contrast. Audiences don’t have to make do with those snippets, as Sherman’s March in its entirety, now remastered in high definition, will be playing alongside Remake in theaters. Indeed, it is even more effective as a time capsule than it was as contemporaneous Boomer self-reflection. Particularly in light of all McElwee’s subsequent movies about himself as a family man, filmed evidence of his awkward single life during the Reagan administration stands as a slice of verite Americana, unpolished by the image-consciousness of the era.

“Even in a film as sombre as “Remake,” one of the joys of [Ross] McElwee’s method is the freedom with which he constructs his movies. “ – Richard Brody, The New Yorker.

“Both an elegy for a son and a meditation on artistic purpose, this autobiographical documentary transforms unbearable personal loss into a powerfully intimate probe of memory, creativity, and family legacies. “ – Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue.

Dan Curtis’ ‘House of Dark Shadows’ Brings Barnabas to the Big Screen

July 14, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Long before the sparkling Cullen vampires wowed YA fans, a bloodsucker named Collins caught the imagination of America’s youth. Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 60th anniversary tribute to the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which premiered June 27, 1966.

We will screen the first theatrical movie based on the series, House of Dark Shadows (1970) for one night only, July 27 at the Laemmle NoHo at 7:00 p.m.

The television series focused on the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine and the wealthy Collins family, incorporating unprecedented supernatural elements for a daytime serial. Produced by Dan Curtis, the series had become an enormous success and pop cultural phenomenon after the introduction of 170-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins (stage actor Jonathan Frid) almost a year into the run, with Frid emerging as an unconventional “matinee idol.”

Curtis capitalized on the popularity of the TV series by fashioning a fast-paced feature-film adaptation, basically a condensed version of the storyline about Barnabas, cursed as a vampire in 1795. Inadvertently awakened in the 20th century, he wreaks terror on his contemporary ancestors at Collinwood while seeking to recreate his lost 18th century love as his vampire bride. The film featured most of the original TV cast: Joan Bennett, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Roger Davis, Grayson Hall, John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, Louis Edmunds, Thayer David, et al. Welcomed by fans seeing their favorite characters on the big screen, the film was a solid box office hit. When the series was abruptly canceled in 1971, its cult status propelled it through several decades of syndication, short-lived primetime remakes, and an ill-conceived “camp” movie version by Tim Burton in 2012, which was rejected by the ardent followers of the original series, who keep the show’s legacy alive.

To attract viewers outside of the fan base, House of Dark Shadows was sold as a straightforward vampire movie, emphasizing a more sinister side of Barnabas with increased shock and blood and giving a sanguine conclusion to the character. Horror filmmaker Rob Zombie offered a 21st-century assessment: “A prime example of everything done right when turning a TV show into a movie…essentially 200 episodes of storyline distilled down to a spectacular 97 minutes of gothic horror. It’s like an epic American version of a Hammer film.”

“The poetic finale is a tour-de-force of superb gothic imagery and galvanising horror.” – Alan Jones, Radio Times.

“Genuine chills and surprises. Blows away the TV show.” – Gerry Shamray, Cleveland.com.

Mystery and the Immigrant Experience in Guido Chiesa’s ‘For the Love of a Woman’

July 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In 1970s Rhode Island, all cold grays and blues, a mother dies in hospital, and her estranged adult daughter barely feels anything. In a 1930s moshav in British Mandate Palestine, all vibrant colors as memories tend to be, a widower hires an attractive newcomer to be his housekeeper. These are different women, yet their stories entwine a family mystery in Guido Chiesa’s For the Love of a Woman.

Catch For the Love of a Woman at Laemmle’s Royal and Town Center 5 starting Friday, July 10^th. Star Mili Avital will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:00 p.m. Royal show on July 11, as well as the 1:00 p.m. TC5 show and the 4:00 p.m. Royal show on July 12.

For the Love of a Woman is loosely based on Meir Shalev’s novel The Loves of Judith, also known as As a Few Days or The Four Meals, but it adds a lot in the adaptation. Only the scenes set in the ’30s are from the novel, though the format of nesting stories remains the same, turning the book’s wraparound narrative into the story being uncovered by the new framing device, set 40 years later and invented for the film. Director Chiesa, an Italian immigrant who worked with Michael Cimino and Jim Jarmusch, has turned the story from a riff on Jewish folktales to a meditation on the immigrant experience. What does a person lose when they leave the homeland…and how might they find it again?

Mili Avital, the acclaimed Israeli actress whose Hollywood breakthrough was as the female lead in Stargate, plays Esther, a middle-aged woman who is handed a mystery upon her mother’s death. Prior to succumbing to dementia she left Esther a letter and a piece of jewelry, telling her to take it to Israel and look for the name “Judith.” With the assistance of a family friend who lives there, she discovers an old farmhouse, and under pretense of wanting to buy it, meets the heir, a university professor (Ori Pfeffer) whose actual given name is Zayde, or “Grandpa.”

As Esther asks more questions about the house, Zayde reveals his own family history, mostly focusing on the quirky circumstances that led to his having three fathers. All of them pined for one woman, Yehudit, or Judith (played by Romanian actress Ana Ularu), who had a secret backstory of her own. Moshav communities, like kibbutzes, involve shared resources and collectivism; this story humorously suggests that might extend to women too. Yet Yehudit is nobody’s property; she owns her sexuality, and the men eventually fall in line. Especially when she gives birth to Zayde (standing up, no less!), without knowing which of her triptych of lovers is the dad. “Who does he look like?” they ask. “Me,” she responds.

Chiesa’s filmography consists primary of Italian films, sometimes depicting political/historical moments, as in Working Slowly (Radio Alice) or Johnny the Partisan, and sometimes comedies both romantic and family-related, like 30 Nights With My Ex or Belli di Papa. Taking on an English-language movie about the Israeli immigrant experience is a bold leap, but he draws on his experience with both family complications and political history, along with his own experience as an import, to reveal that sometimes there is universality in the specifics.

Ties to two cultures can make a person’s life feel divided; different people bridge the divide in different ways, but it all stems from the same root feeling. One need not be either Italian or Israeli to connect to the journeys Esther and Zayde take, and their realizations that key elements of their pasts have been missing. For the Love of a Woman reveals that there may be sorrow in the lost connections, but there’s joy in making new ones, and the former can directly fuel the latter.

“With a moving story, beautiful direction and a cast and crew that execute with precision this is a film not to be missed.” – Ricky Archuleta, Film Threat

“Some films sweep you away with breathtaking action. Others quietly capture your heart. For the Love of a Woman belongs firmly in the second category, blending romance, mystery and family history into a thoughtful, emotionally rewarding film.” – Mira Temkin, Splash

It’s Identity vs. Politics in Chase Joynt’s ‘State of Firsts’

June 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

“Transgender for everyone” is a dog-whistle phrase the current administration frequently uses to scare conservative parents. Yet with additional punctuation, “transgender, for everyone,” it could sum up the campaign of Sarah McBride, the first transwoman elected to Congress. Chase Joynt’s new documentary State of Firsts follows her campaign, its immediate aftermath, and how it changes her along the way.

Catch State of Firsts at the Laemmle Glendale beginning July 2^nd. Director Chase Joynt will participate in Q&As following the 7:30 PM shows on Thursday, July 2 and Friday, July 3, as well as the 3:10 PM show on Sunday, July 5.

Joynt, a professor of gender studies at the University of Victoria, is also an acclaimed documentarian usually focusing on transgender history, in films like No Ordinary Man and Framing Agnes. Here, he gets to chronicle history in real-time: a personal “first” like the others implied in the title. Sarah McBride looked to be the first trans woman elected to Congress in the same year – 2024 – in which she also anticipated the first Black female president, who would have been the first president of South Asian descent as well. That McBride won while Kamala Harris lost reveals an electorate more complex than some pundits might have it.

On his official university faculty page, Joynt states that he is often asked, “Are you a film person invested in gender theory or a gender studies person who also makes films?” He evidently saw a similar dichotomy in McBride, who wanted to run to represent her constituents primarily, but constantly found herself being pushed into representing every transgender American. For her, politics and the personal are intertwined more in her advocacy for affordable health care than her gender – her husband, a trans man, died of cancer at the age of 28, mere days after they got married.

Through much of the film Joynt’s cameras focus closely on McBride’s face as she’s driving her car. The road trips between campaign stops offer a convenient place to talk, but they also capture emotional nuance and convey the sense that she is very much in control of her path and message. Once she is elected, she notably starts taking the train like her mentor Joe Biden, and the visual metaphor is immediate – now she’s being swept along by the currents of government, forced to be one of many passengers rather than a lone driver.

McBride’s home state of Delaware in 2024 already seems like a time and place far removed from our own, a mere two years later. At least from what we see, McBride receives a mostly positive reception as she goes door to door and talks to ordinary people in public. The menace represented by her opponents, pre-election, mostly comes through in threatening signs, and Joynt periodically narrows the aspect ratio, pointedly boxing McBride’s image in, when he intersperses national news footage.

Once she is elected – hardy a spoiler, since she’s in Congress now – a far more deranged response ensues. In the face of such opposition, can McBride maintain her stance of being the patient listener who’ll talk nicely to her political opponents, or become more confrontational as the situation dictates? The movie offers hints, but you can follow along in real life too.

This July 4^th, State of Firsts reminds us that independence is for everyone.

“In following McBride’s campaign, Joynt confidently transitions from the highly stylised modes of his previous works. “ – Pat Mullen, POV.

“McBride’s grace, steadfastness, and perseverance are the stuff of true heroism. Joynt captures this essential moment of LGBTQ+ history with dignity and respect.” – Frank J. Avella, Edge Media Network.