Wasn’t it fabulous getting to see Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI on the big screen? Well, there’s more where that came from. Get fired up for Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS, Wim Wenders’s PARIS, TEXAS, and Julian Schnabel’s BASQUIAT in the coming weeks, plus our one-night screening of LEGENDS OF THE FALL (with director Ed Zwick in person for a Q&A). We’re planning even more for the fall. Add to these all the award-season films coming to Laemmle screens, that is a lot of rewarding moviegoing!
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THE CONVERSATION follows lonely wiretapping expert and devout Catholic Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who is hired to record a seemingly innocuous conversation in San Francisco’s Union Square between two lovers (Frederick Forsythe and Cindy Williams). Upon re-hearing the tapes, however, Caul believes he may put the couple in danger if he turns the material over to his client (Robert Duvall). But what one hears can ultimately turn out to be quite different from what was actually recorded. Opens this Friday at the Laemmle Royal, Town Center, and Glendale.
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ARMY OF SHADOWS opens August 16 at the Royal and Town Center: A gorgeous restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 epic of the French Resistance during World War II, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (perhaps best known for Belle de Jour), the film draws on the wartime experiences of Kessel and Melville himself, both active members of the Resistance and Free French Forces. This is the first time the film has been released in the U.S.
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PARIS, TEXAS opens August 30 at the Royal. New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. PARIS, TEXAS follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski).
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BASQUIAT, opening September 13 at the Laemmle NoHo, depicts the meteoric rise of the brilliant artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright in one of his first roles. Starting out as a street artist, living in Thompkins Square Park in a cardboard box, Jean-Michel is “discovered” by Andy Warhol’s art world and becomes a star. But success has a high price, and Basquiat pays with friendship, love, and, eventually, his life.