Anniversary Classics Archives

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.

Homoerotic Hitchcock: ‘Strangers on a Train’ at 75

June 10, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the movie that launched Hitchcock’s greatest decade of moviemaking, the 1951 suspense classic Strangers on a Train.

On Wednesday, June 24, at 7 p.m., attend the 75th anniversary screening at Laemmle’s Royal, complete with a Q&A with Stephen Rebello, Author of Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitcchock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train and Hitchcockian Thrillers.

Hitchcock had started his career in England with such top thrillers as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Hollywood quickly came calling, and when Hitchcock moved to America, he won his only Best Picture Oscar for Rebecca in 1940. He continued with other classic films Foreign Correspondent, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, and Notorious.

But in the late 1940s the Master of Suspense hit a dry spell, when his films The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, and Stage Fright failed to connect with audiences. Searching for inspiration, he landed on Patricia Highsmith’s first acclaimed novel, Strangers on a Train, a story drenched in homoeroticism and perverse psychology. Highsmith, who was herself gay (she later wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley and a lesbian-themed novel, Carol, that was turned into an acclaimed 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara), provided the inspiration that Hitchcock needed.

Strangers tells the story of a chance meeting between a handsome tennis star, Guy Haines, and a charming but deranged aristocrat, Bruno Anthony. Bruno has read about Guy’s problems with his estranged wife and suggests half-jokingly that if they swap murders (Bruno wants to get rid of his disapproving father), neither would have a discernible motive for the murders they commit. Guy does not take the suggestion seriously, but when Bruno kills Guy’s wife, he expects Guy to return the favor.

The screenplay is credited to acclaimed mystery writer Raymond Chandler and female writer Czenzi Ormonde, but Chandler actually contributed very little to the movie; he and Hitchcock did not get along. Nevertheless, the script is tightly structured and consistently gripping. Like many Hitchcock movies, Strangers is distinguished by several memorable set-pieces, including the murder at an amusement park, a tense tennis match, and the climax on board a carousel spinning wildly out of control. But it also has the psychological depth of the Master’s best movies. Defying the Production Code, which had a strict prohibition against depictions of homosexuality, Hitchcock and his screenwriters clearly delineate the attraction that Bruno feels toward the handsome tennis champ. Robert Walker, the star of several lighter pictures, relishes his stab at villainy, and he is well matched with Farley Granger, who had starred in Hitchcock’s Rope and was gay in real life.

Ruth Roman, Laura Elliott, Norma Varden, Leo G. Carroll, and Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia round out the cast. Robert Burks, who earned an Oscar nomination for his cinematography, went on to work with Hitchcock again on Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and North by Northwest, among others. Oscar-winning composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who had worked with Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, wrote the effective score.

Stephen Rebello, who will be doing a Q&A at the screening, is the author of the best-selling Alfred Hitchock and the Making of Psycho (which was turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren) and Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time. He has written for Movieline, GQ, Playboy, and other publications.

The Needle, the Noise, the Nineties: ‘Trainspotting’ Turns 30

May 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Three decades after its original release, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting remains one of the most electrifying cinematic gut-punches of the 1990s, a film that somehow manages to be hilarious, horrifying, exhilarating, and deeply sad often within the same scene. Returning to theaters for its 30th anniversary fresh off a new 4k restoration, Boyle’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s cult novel still feels startlingly alive, retaining the same manic energy and confrontational honesty that made it an instant cultural landmark upon its release in 1996.

Catch Trainspotting on its 30th anniversary tour beginning June 4th at the Laemmle Glendale, Newhall, and NoHo 7.

Set amid the economic stagnation and restless youth culture of Edinburgh, Trainspotting follows Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his circle of friends as they drift through heroin addiction, petty crime, self-destruction, and fleeting attempts at escape. Yet what distinguished the film then, and what continues to distinguish it now, is its refusal to settle into easy moralism. Boyle never romanticizes addiction, but neither does he flatten it into a simple cautionary tale. The film understands the seductive pull of oblivion just as clearly as it does the devastation left in its wake.

Much of that awareness comes from Boyle’s direction, which exploded onto screens with a style that felt entirely novel for its time. Hyperactive editing, surreal visual detours, needle-drop music cues, and fourth-wall-breaking narration combine to plunge viewers directly into Renton’s fractured state of mind. The now-iconic soundtrack, ranging from Iggy Pop to Underworld, became inseparable from the film’s identity, helping transform Trainspotting into not merely a movie but a full-fledged cultural phenomenon.

Watching it today, it is striking how much of Boyle’s later career already seems present here in embryonic form: the propulsive momentum of Slumdog Millionaire, the visceral intensity of 127 Hours, and the restless experimentation that would come to define one of the most eclectic directing careers of the last thirty years. Since Trainspotting, Boyle has gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Director, helm the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, and cement himself as one of contemporary cinema’s most energetic and unpredictable filmmakers. But Trainspotting remains, for many, the film most inseparable from his singular artistic identity.

The anniversary arrives at a moment when the story itself is once again evolving, with a stage musical adaptation of Trainspotting set to launch this July in London’s West End, bringing Renton and company back to the city where their story began. That continued reinvention speaks to the film’s enduring resonance across generations. What once felt shocking and immediate has now also become historical: a snapshot of 1990s disaffection that somehow never lost its pulse.

For all its stylization and dark humor, Trainspotting endures because beneath the bravado lies something painfully human. Renton’s famous “Choose Life” monologue lands differently at 30 than it did at 20—not merely as satire, but as the exhausted cry of someone trying, however imperfectly, to imagine the possibility of another kind of existence. So whether it’s your first-ever viewing or a stroll down memory lane, get your tickets now and prepare to be entertained.

‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ Returns to Big Screens Uncut

May 5, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theaters and the Anniversary Classics Series present two screenings of the provocative and lyrical sci-fi classic, Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, which marked pop superstar David Bowie’s debut in a lead role on the big screen.

For the film’s 50th anniversary, it will screen Wednesday, May 20, at Laemmle’s NoHo at 7 p.m.; and Wednesday, May 27, at Laemmle’s Royal at 7 p.m. Oscar-nominated actress Candy Clark will appear at both screenings to share memories of her co-star, the director, and her long film career.

The film was adapted by Paul Mayersberg from the novel by Walter Tevis, who also wrote the novel that inspired Paul Newman’s classic, The Hustler. Rip Torn, Buck Henry, and Bernie Casey co-star in the film. Bowie plays a visitor from a distant planet who travels to Earth to find water for his dying planet. He quickly amasses great wealth as an industrialist, but his plans are scotched by a couple of devious antagonists as well as by his love affair with a good-hearted woman played by Clark.

Roeg did the celebrated 2nd unit photography on the Oscar-winning masterpiece from 1962, Lawrence of Arabia. He went on to be the chief cinematographer on such films as Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death, John Schlesinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd, and Richard Lester’s Petulia, among other films. He made his directorial debut (sharing credit with Donald Cammell) on the 1970 cult favorite, Performance, which introduced another pop music icon, Mick Jagger, to dramatic filmmaking. Roeg made his solo directing debut on the exquisite Australian adventure, Walkabout, and followed with the classic thriller, Don’t Look Now, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.

Cinematographer Anthony Richmond, who worked with Roeg on Don’t Look Now, joined him again on The Man Who Fell to Earth. Shot mainly in New Mexico, the film was again notable for its striking visual style. The music for the film was coordinated by John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, with original score by Japanese composer Stomu Yamash-ta.

Most of Roeg’s films divided the critics, and this one was no exception, though it boasted a series of extraordinary reviews. At the time of its release, Richard Eder of The New York Times declared, “There are quite a few science-fiction movies scheduled to come out in the next year or so. We shall be lucky if even one or two are as absorbing and as beautiful as The Man Who Fell to Earth.” The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote a mixed review of the film in 1976 but described Bowie as “the most romantic figure in recent pictures, the modern version of the James Dean lost-boy myth.” Years later, Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out confirmed Eder’s evaluation and called The Man Who Fell to Earth “the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s.”

Robert Hawkins of Variety added to the praise for the film: “Bowie’s choice as the ethereal visitor is inspired… Candy Clark, as his naïve but loving mate, confirms the winning ways that won her an Oscar nom in American Graffiti… Her intimate scenes with Bowie… are among the pic’s highlights.”

One of these sex scenes, in which the two played with guns, led the distributor to cut some 20 minutes from the film before the 1976 release. This scene and others were restored when Rialto took over the release, and Laemmle will be screening the uncut version at both anniversary screenings.

Candy Clark earned her Oscar nomination for her warm portrayal of a local girl in George Lucas’s nostalgic breakthrough film, American Graffiti, in 1973. Her other movies include John Huston’s Fat City, Jonathan Demme’s Citizens Band, Blue Thunder, At Close Range, The Informant, and a wide range of television appearances over the decades. At both screenings Ms. Clark will participate in Q&As following the screenings, and will sign and sell her recent book of star photos, Tight Heads.

Anniversary Classics Presents: Revisiting the Cult Classic ‘Harold and Maude’

March 18, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series are proud to present a tribute to the late Bud Cort with a screening of his most famous movie, the offbeat romantic comedy Harold and Maude, on Wednesday, March 25th at 7:30 p.m. at the Laemmle NoHo.

Cort first attracted attention in two films directed by Robert Altman, the Oscar-winning black comic hit M*A*S*H and the eccentric comedy Brewster McCloud. He also played one of the student protestors in The Strawberry Statement, one of a handful of movies about student rebellion produced in the early 1970s. Yet it wasn’t until he joined forces with Ruth Gordon, Oscar-winning co-star of Rosemary’s Baby, to play one of the oddest couples in movie history, that the talented young actor was launched into what would ultimately develop into a decades-long career.

Cort plays Harold, a death-obsessed young man determined to commit suicide, at least until he meets the vibrant 79-year-old Maude and gradually falls in love with her. Before their chance encounter, Harold spends his days staging elaborate fake suicides to shock his wealthy, emotionally distant mother and attending strangers’ funerals for entertainment, drifting through life with a morbid detachment that borders on performance art. Maude, by contrast, lives with mischievous spontaneity: stealing cars she fancies, rescuing trees slated for demolition, and approaching each moment with irreverent wonder. Their unlikely friendship grows (while sneakily developing into the most improbable of romances) through a series of adventures that gently dismantle Harold’s fascination with death, as Maude introduces him to the pleasures, absurdities, and quiet rebellions that make life worth living. Set against a rich backdrop of early-1970s countercultural whimsy, their relationship challenges social expectations and invites Harold (and, ultimately, the audience) to reconsider what it means to truly embrace being alive.

Written by Colin Higgins as the basis for his Master’s thesis at UCLA and directed by Hal Ashby, Harold and Maude was a critical and financial flop when it first opened in December of 1971. Major critics like Roger Ebert, and Vincent Canby of The New York Times, panned the film, and it struggled to find an audience. Pauline Kael gave it a mixed review, noting that it flaunted a bizarre concept, but granted that it had “been made with considerable wit and skill,” also noting the considerable impact it had on young viewers: “Many young moviegoers have returned to this eccentric film repeatedly (in 1974, one 22-year-old claimed to have seen it 138 times).” The venerable New York Review of Books called it “a philosophical black comedy for grandparents and grandchildren.”

It wasn’t until 1983, twelve years after its initial release, that the film finally turned a profit, and that Cort, Gordon, and the filmmakers received their long-overdue royalty checks. In the years that followed, the critics, too, gradually gave the film a second look, and in 1997 it was tagged for preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. By 2004, Entertainment Weekly ranked it #4 on its list of the top 50 cult films of all time. Rarely has the phrase “aged like fine wine” been a more apt descriptor for a work of art.

Ashby and Higgins, for their part, also went on to much bigger successes, the former directing a number of acclaimed, Oscar-nominated films such as The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There, while the latter penned the smash-hit comedy Silver Streak, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, followed by a successful directorial run with Foul Play and 9 to 5.

With a deep and memorable cast including Vivian Pickles and the prolific Cyril Cusack, as well as an iconic soundtrack by Cat Stevens—filling in admirably for Elton John, who recommended him for the project after dropping out—Harold and Maude has plenty to offer its viewers, whether seeing it for the first… or 139th time.

Join us in remembering Bud Cort, in his most iconic role, at Harold and Maude‘s one-night-only screening at the Laemmle Noho.

Summer, Youth, and Self-Discovery: Rediscovering Satyajit Ray’s ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’

February 24, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

A journey into the countryside becomes something far richer in Days and Nights in the Forest, the quietly radiant 1970 film from Indian master Satyajit Ray. Long regarded as one of Ray’s foremost (if relatively underappreciated) achievements, this film serves as a reminder of why he remains one of world cinema’s most revered humanists—a filmmaker of uncommon grace, wit, and emotional intelligence.

Catch the newly restored Days and Nights in the Forest beginning February 6th at the Laemmle Royal, or February 13th at Glendale.

On the surface, the premise is simple: Four young professionals from Kolkata escape the pressures of city life for a few carefree days in the forests of eastern India. They arrive with cigarettes, bravado, and a pocketful of assumptions. They bribe a caretaker to secure lodging they never reserved. They drink too much. They talk too loudly. They treat the rural landscape as backdrop to their own amusement. Ray sketches these early episodes with a light touch that feels almost casual, airy, even playful. But a closer inspection reveals that what seems effortless is in fact exquisitely composed.

Ray builds the film from contrasts: urban and rural, privilege and poverty, men and women, innocence and experience. His camera often frames characters in medium groupings, encouraging us to observe them in relation to one another rather than as isolated heroes. There is no single protagonist here; instead, we’re invited to study a small social ecosystem. Time passes gently. Conversations drift. Meaning accumulates.

When two women vacationing nearby, Aparna and Jaya, enter the men’s orbit, the film’s tone subtly shifts. Banter gives way to vulnerability; posturing reveals insecurity. Ray’s women, clear-eyed and self-possessed, register the men’s arrogance with bemusement rather than outrage. The flirtations and conversations that follow are modest on their face—a walk, a game of badminton, shared laughter—yet they carry the quiet charge of lives tilting off course.

The film’s most celebrated sequence arrives during a picnic, when the six characters play a memory game, each adding the name of a famous figure to an ever-growing list. It might sound inconsequential, but in the rhythms of hesitation and recall, in the glances exchanged and the names chosen, whole inner worlds flicker into view. Ray orchestrates the scene with the delicacy of chamber music. Nothing is underlined; everything resonates.

What makes Days and Nights in the Forest endure is its refusal of easy symbolism or tidy moralizing. Ray does not punish his characters, nor does he absolve them. He simply watches with compassion, irony, and patience as they brush up against their own limitations. The revelations are often small, but they linger. Only after viewing the entire film do you realize just how much it has revealed: about class and conscience, about love and pride, and about the uneasy passage from youth toward self-knowledge.