Laemmle Theatres

David Wain’s ‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’ Is a Multi-Directional Spoof

July 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

As a director, David Wain has made mainstream comedies like Role Models and Wanderlust, but is perhaps better known for his spoofs of same, like Wet Hot American Summer (’80s camp comedies) and They Came Together (big city rom-coms). His latest, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, is more in the latter category…while also functioning as a very loose, unofficial remake of The Wizard of Oz.

Catch David Wain on a new episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass opens July 10^th at Laemmle’s Glendale, NoHo, Town Center, Monica, and Newhall.

Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her very name an inversion of “Dorothy Gale,” doesn’t get spirited away to a magical land by accident – she goes there very deliberately, after fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) has sex with Jennifer Aniston, who’s in town to promote her generic cookbook. Tom pleads innocent – they had been discussing the concept of celebrity sex passes, which is to say the one celebrity a partner in a relationship can sleep with with no harm, no foul, if they get the chance. Gail, however, didn’t think he’d actually do it, so off she heads to her version of Oz, Los Angeles. She’s on a quest not so much to see a wizard, but rather her celebrity sex pass Jon Hamm, whom she intends to have revenge intercourse with.

Gail gets to L.A by tagging along with her hairdresser friend Otto (an anagram of Toto), played by Smile 2‘s Miles Gutierrez-Riley. As they look for ways to locate Jon Hamm, they accumulate more companions: none-too-bright agent wanna-be Caleb (Karate Kid: Legends star Ben Wang), not-especially smart paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and Hamm’s now-cowardly former Mad Men costar John Slattery. Each has specific goals, but naturally, their real achievements will be attaining brains, heart, and courage.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn’t just content to be an L. Frank Baum riff, nor a satire of Los Angeles and the more mundane, tedious aspects of show business. On top of all that, it’s also a parody of ’80s-style MacGuffin comedies like Innerspace, as Gail’s suitcase gets accidentally switched at the airport with a look-alike containing evil plans for destroying the world’s financial systems. This puts Gail in the crosshairs of Ludovica (The White Lotus‘ Sabrina Impacciatore), who fills the role of the story’s Wicked Witch.

Los Angeles residents are particularly likely to laugh at references to local landmarks and specific celebrity hangouts; star maps and CAA also serve as significant plot points. There’s enough here, however, to get laughs from most audiences, as the premise sticks to its absurdity, and its characters are mostly, but not always, oblivious. A former member of comedy troupe The State, Wain has many of his former teammates appear (Michael Showalter is notably absent) along with every celebrity favor he could seemingly call in, from Hamm and Aniston to Weird Al Yankovic and Henry Winkler. Fred Melamed, as Gail’s local mailman, narrates the movie…deliberately badly.

Deutch, who previously impressed as a sex-hungry comedic lead in Zombieland: Double Tap, continues to effortlessly balance sweetness and charm with determination. She’s the most ridiculously perfect, nice woman in her hometown, but absolutely, single-mindedly set on a revenge plan not because she really wants any enjoyment from it, but because it’ll even the score. It takes a lot to make sex with Jon Hamm feel like a relatable, realistic goal, but as the plot proceeds, audiences should feel like he might actually be the bigger beneficiary – any man should be so lucky as to have someone who can be simultaneously as naughty and as nice as Gail Daughtry.

This kind of comedic tonal balance, between sincere rom-com and utter mockery of same, without too much cynicism, is also a sweet spot for Wain. One could say that for him, there’s no place like home.

“25 years after Wet Hot American Summer premiered at Sundance, it’s a relief to know that Wain and Marino are still at the absolute top of their game.“ – Christian Zilko, IndieWire.

“…it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.” – Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter.

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.

Daniel Roher’s ‘Tuner’: When the Piano Man Goes Bad

June 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 2 Comments

While movie industry observers have noted the surprise success of smaller movies this summer like Obsession and Backrooms, there’s another one slowly and steadily holding on arthouse screens everywhere: Daniel Roher’s Tuner. Now about to enter its third smash month in theaters, the first narrative film from the acclaimed documentarian behind Navalny and The A.I. Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist blends crime, romance, jazz piano, and even a touch of real-life super power in the tale of a piano tuner whose nimble fingers and ears also serve him well at safe-cracking.

You can still catch Tuner at Laemmle’s Town Center and Laemmle’s Monica Film Center.

One key reason not to miss Tuner in theaters is the distinctive sound design by Maximilian Behrens, whose audio work on The Zone of Interest contributed greatly to that film’s overall impact. Behrens’ work puts us directly inside the head of Niki (The White Lotus‘ Leo Woodall), who has hyperacusis, a condition that makes loud noises painful and debilitating, but allows him to hear other things inaudible to most humans. As he listens for distinctions between piano notes, or for tumblers in a lock to slide into place, we feel it. Mercifully, when the sounds of the world go in the other direction, the movie only gives us a small taste of the pain that forces Niki to wear earplugs and headphones almost 24-7.

Roher takes a break from real-world existential threats like Vladimir Putin and Artificial Intelligence to focus on much more personal stakes. Niki’s irascible mentor Harry (a scene-stealing Dustin Hoffman) has angrily and temperamentally canceled his own Medicare, and refuses to eat healthy; before long, he’s stuck with a hospital bill he can’t afford. Piano tuning, even for New York’s rich and careless, doesn’t earn Niki enough to help, so he takes the slightly less legal route, working for an unethical “security” company that skims from clients’ safes.

Meanwhile, a romance is blossoming with hard-working piano prodigy Ruthie (model-turned actress Havana Rose Liu) who reminds him of himself before the hearing condition made playing literally painful. He wants to help her, but the erratic, spontaneous needs of his illegal work threaten to tear him away.

Unmoored from the demands of documentary reality, Roher treats the story like a parable; it involves some extreme coincidence, but treats it as karmic justice. The ending is designed to get audiences talking, and perhaps arguing, the moment they leave the theater. And the director couldn’t have asked for a better cast to anchor his first drama. Jean Reno shows up as a musical maestro, Tovah Feldshuh gives as good as she gets playing Hoffman’s wife, Herbie Hancock appears as himself, and Lior Raz brings lived-in menace to Niki’s criminal boss Uri. Prior to being an actor, Raz was an IDF commando and a bodyguard for Arnold Schwarzenegger; he doesn’t have to do much to persuade a viewer of his inherent threat level.

Be sure to catch Tuner in theaters while you still can. With its canny, subjective soundscapes, original numbers by Marius de Vries (La La Land), and carefully-selected jazz classics, you’ll want the premium speaker experience. But the story might just stick in your head as well.

“Roher knows that in crime flicks, as in jazz, pacing is everything: he reveals just enough but allows the audience to fill in the gaps.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer.

“It’s a thrill to watch this kind of original, adult moviemaking that’s all too rare these days.” – Katie Walsh, Tribune.

‘Romería’: Carla Simón’s Moving Portrait of Loss, Identity, and Belonging

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Over the course of three features, Carla Simón has quietly established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European cinema. Following her acclaimed debut Summer 1993 and the Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs, the Spanish filmmaker returns with Romería, a deeply personal coming-of-age drama that continues her exploration of family, memory, and the lingering impact of loss.

Catch Romeria in theaters beginning July 1st at the Laemmle Glendale.

The title translates roughly to “pilgrimage,” an apt description for the journey undertaken by Marina (newcomer Llúcia Garcia), an eighteen-year-old preparing to leave home to study filmmaking. Before she can begin that next chapter, however, she must travel to the Galician city of Vigo in search of documents connected to her late father, whose death years earlier left crucial gaps in her understanding of both her family history and herself.

Raised apart from her father’s relatives, Marina arrives as both an outsider and a blood relation. Her extended family welcomes her warmly enough on the surface, inviting her on boat trips, beach outings, and sprawling family gatherings, yet beneath the hospitality lies a more complicated reality. Old wounds remain unhealed, uncomfortable truths have been buried, and differing accounts of the past begin to challenge everything Marina thought she knew about her parents.

Like Simón’s previous work, Romería unfolds through intimate observations rather than dramatic confrontations. The filmmaker has a remarkable gift for capturing the rhythms of family life: overlapping conversations around crowded tables, casual moments of affection, and the subtle tensions that emerge when multiple generations inhabit the same space. Yet as Marina pieces together fragments of her family’s history, Romería expands beyond a straightforward search for answers. Her mother’s diaries, camcorder recordings, and the stories told by her relatives create a layered portrait of two people she barely knew, as what begins as a realistic family drama gradually opens into something more lyrical and impressionistic. Simón incorporates dreamlike passages and flashes of imagined memory, allowing the boundaries between history, recollection, and personal mythology to blur. These touches of magical realism give emotional shape to experiences that can never be fully recovered, only reimagined.

Both tender and quietly heartbreaking, Romería confirms Simón’s status as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Drawing from deeply personal material while touching on universal questions of identity and belonging, she has created a film that is at once a family portrait, a coming-of-age story, and a meditation on the subtle ways that each of us carries the residue of our forebearers.

“Carla Simón’s story of a young woman untangling a web of family secrets cements the filmmaker’s aptitude for naturalism while also marking a bold new step towards magical realism.” – Sophia Satchell-Baeza, British Film Institute

“A kind of road movie by sea, journeying in pursuit of some sense of self-completion.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

John Early’s ‘Maddie’s Secret’ Finds Heart Beneath the Camp

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

John Early has spent years building a reputation as one of contemporary comedy’s most distinctive voices, whether through scene-stealing performances in projects like Search Party and Stress Positions, or his singular stand-up and musical work. That history makes Maddie’s Secret an especially surprising directorial feature debut. While the film contains plenty of the heightened absurdity and comic precision that fans of Early will recognize, it ultimately reveals itself as something far more sincere: a melodrama about eating disorders, self-worth, and modern womanhood disguised as a campy made-for-television movie.

Catch Maddie’s Secret in theaters beginning June 26th at the Laemmle Monica.

Early stars as Maddie Ralph, a shy but gifted home cook working behind the scenes at a trendy food-media company. Her life changes overnight when a homemade cooking video goes viral, transforming her from anonymous dishwasher to the face of the brand. This sudden attention, however, reawakens her long-suppressed struggle with bulimia. Desperate to conceal her relapse from her loving husband Jake (Eric Rahill) and best friend Deena (Kate Berlant), Maddie tells an impulsive lie that quickly spirals beyond her control.

The premise sounds like the setup for broad satire, and Maddie’s Secret certainly pokes fun at influencer culture, wellness trends, online therapy apps, foodie celebrity, and other fixtures of contemporary life. Yet Early’s screenplay consistently resists easy cynicism, treating its characters with affection and finding humor in their quirks without reducing them to punchlines. Even the broadest personalities feel grounded by an underlying emotional honesty.

That tonal confidence is especially evident in Early’s performance. Playing Maddie could easily have become an exercise in caricature, but he approaches the character with remarkable empathy. Maddie is funny, anxious, talented, vulnerable, and deeply human. The film never treats her eating disorder as a joke, even as it finds comedy in the myriad social pressures, cultural expectations, and personal contradictions that surround it.

What ultimately distinguishes Maddie’s Secret is its refusal to choose between irony and sincerity. In an era when many comedies keep their subjects at arm’s length, Early allows himself to care deeply about his protagonist and the struggles she faces. The film is frequently funny, occasionally outrageous, and unexpectedly moving. By the time it reaches its emotional climax, what initially seemed like a clever genre exercise has transformed into something infinitely richer: a compassionate portrait of a woman trying to reconcile the person she is with the person she believes she should be.

For a filmmaker making his feature directing debut, it is an impressively assured achievement. Campy and heartfelt, and unlike much else in contemporary cinema, Maddie’s Secret announces John Early as a filmmaker worth watching.

“A lesser film would find more cynicism and mockery in the text, but Maddie’s Secret is a testament to the art of trying, finding optimism, and approaching life empathetically.” – Peyton Robinson, RogerEbert.com

“Brimming with style and spirit up to the final scene.” – Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times

“A film of real kindness.” – Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire

‘O Horizon’ Explores Loss in the Age of AI

June 17, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Artificial intelligence has long been a staple of science fiction, but as AI becomes an increasingly familiar part of everyday life, filmmakers face a new challenge: how to tell stories about technology that no longer feels wholly speculative. Writer-director Madeleine Rotzler’s O Horizon approaches that question from an intimate angle, using a near-future premise to explore the ravages of grief.

Catch O Horizon in theaters beginning June 19th at the Laemmle Royal.

Maria Bakalova, the Oscar-nominated breakout actress from Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, stars as Abby, a neuroscientist struggling with the death of her beloved father (David Strathairn). Months after his passing, she remains emotionally adrift, unable to fully connect with her family, her work, or her own future. Then she discovers an unusual service called “Seeking a Friend,” which uses personal data—messages, videos, recordings, and emails—to create an AI facsimile of a deceased loved one. Soon Abby finds herself speaking regularly with a digital recreation of her father.

The premise recalls classics such as Her and episodes of Black Mirror, but O Horizon is less interested in providing dystopian warnings than in exploring the emotional complexities of loss. What begins as a source of comfort gradually becomes something more complicated as Abby confronts unresolved feelings, old frustrations, and the question of whether technology can truly help us heal or merely postpone the process of actually moving forward.

Running parallel to Abby’s personal journey is her groundbreaking neuroscience research, which explores the possibility of artificially recreating human sensations and experiences. Together, these storylines examine a common theme: If pain, loneliness, and grief can be technologically softened, what might be lost along the way? The film raises provocative questions without insisting on easy answers.

Much of the film’s appeal rests on Bakalova’s nuanced performance, which brings emotional authenticity to Abby’s complex journey through loss. David Strathairn, for his part, makes a strong impression despite limited screen time, lending warmth and humanity to both the memories of Abby’s father and his AI-generated counterpart. Together, the two actors ground the film’s speculative premise in recognizable human emotions, helping transform a contemporary technological thought experiment into something more personal and universal.

Beautifully photographed and deliberately understated, O Horizon favors reflection over spectacle. Rather than presenting artificial intelligence as either salvation or catastrophe, it uses emerging technology as a lens through which to examine love, memory, and the lingering bonds between parents and children.

At a moment when AI is rapidly moving from science fiction into daily reality, O Horizon offers a timely and deeply personal meditation on what it means to hold on—and when it may finally be time to let go.

“A moving lead performance from Maria Bakalova.” – Alex Harrison, ScreenRant

“Sort of a Black Mirror premise… [but] more of a fable.” – Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times

‘Peter Asher’: The Man Behind the Music

June 17, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many music fans, Peter Asher is one of those names that seems to appear everywhere once you start paying attention. A member of the British Invasion duo Peter & Gordon, head of A&R for the Beatles’ Apple Records, producer of landmark albums from James Taylor to Linda Ronstadt, and a trusted collaborator to generations of artists, Asher has spent more than six decades helping shape popular music from both center stage and behind the scenes.

The new documentary Peter Asher: Everywhere Man traces that remarkable career, revealing how one seemingly modest figure repeatedly found himself at pivotal moments in music history. Helmed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, the film combines archival footage, contemporary interviews, and performances from Asher’s acclaimed live storytelling show to create a portrait of a life that often feels stupefyingly interconnected.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear co-directors Goldfine and Geller discuss their fascinating new release with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning with a special Q&A on June 22nd at the Laemmle Royal.

Asher’s story begins in an unusually artistic household in London. His sister Jane Asher’s relationship with Paul McCartney brought the Beatles directly into the family orbit, with McCartney at one point living in the Ashers’ home. Numerous songs that would become part of popular music history were written there, and the documentary delights in recounting how Peter found himself witnessing events that would later seem legendary.

Yet Everywhere Man makes clear that Asher was never merely a bystander. As one half of Peter & Gordon, he scored international hits, including “A World Without Love,” a Lennon-McCartney composition that topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Later, as an executive at Apple Records, he signed a young James Taylor, beginning a partnership that would help define the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s.

The documentary is particularly compelling when examining Asher’s influence as a producer and manager. Working with Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, he helped shape the polished California sound that dominated popular music throughout the decade. Along the way, he pushed for greater recognition of studio musicians, insisting that the talented players behind classic recordings receive proper credit on album sleeves—a practice that seems obvious today but was far from standard at the time.

What emerges is not simply a history of one career, but a tour through several eras of popular music, featuring everyone from the Beatles and Marianne Faithfull to Elton John, Diana Ross, and Randy Newman. The result is an entertaining and affectionate documentary about a man whose influence extends far beyond the spotlight. Even viewers who don’t immediately recognize Peter Asher’s name may discover that they already know much of the music—not to mention the stories—that he helped usher into the world.

“The pleasure of Everywhere Man is that every time you think you’ve seen the wildest piece of Peter Asher adjacency, the next chapter proves you wrong.” – Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

“[The] film does an amazing job tracking the arc of a career of an artist who was really just about everywhere.” – Brad Auerbach, Entertainment Today