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“One of the most original American thrillers in years,” HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE opens Friday.

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Thrilling film critics (and alarming a Kansas City intelligence agency enough to release a bulletin calling the movie a security threat), we’re excited to open How to Blow Up a Pipeline this Friday at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center and April 21 at the Newhall, NoHo and Claremont.
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“Incendiary and furious, confident and courageous, the new thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline boasts not only the best title of the year so far but also the best score, cast and itchy, charged, electric directorial vision.” ~ Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

“One of the most original American thrillers in years, and one that draws from a deep well of movie history as it develops its characters and sets up its plot twists.” ~ Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

“The way that filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber pulls off what feels like a tightly wound Hollywood potboiler on what we imagine is little more than a studio caterer’s budget is, in itself, a textbook how-to example.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone
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“An incendiary, ticking-clock thriller about a group of self-styled insurgents with echoes of Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves and Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama.” ~ Adam Nayman, The Ringer

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING 35th anniversary screening with guest Lena Olin April 12.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our first movie of 2023: a 35th anniversary screening of Philip Kaufman’s erotic masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, adapted from the acclaimed novel by Czech author Milan Kundera. Kaufman wrote the screenplay with veteran French writer Jean-Claude Carriere (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Tin Drum, The Return of Martin Guerre), and they earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay of 1988. The film earned a second Oscar nod for the stunning cinematography by Sven Nykvist. The screening is Wednesday, April 12, at 7 PM at our Royal Theatre in West L.A. Film critic Stephen Farber will attend to moderate a Q&A with co-star Lena Olin, who will join via Zoom.

Set in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal Soviet invasion that followed, the film follows the romantic and political adventures of a lusty surgeon named Tomas. Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis had his first starring role in the picture, after earning attention for his strong supporting performances in A Room With a View and My Beautiful Laundrette two years earlier. One year after Unbearable, Day-Lewis earned his first Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot. The two important women in Tomas’s life are portrayed by Lena Olin as an artist and Juliette Binoche as an aspiring photographer. Eventually Tomas marries Binoche’s Tereza, but she remains troubled by his constant philandering.

Olin had first made her mark in several plays and films directed by Ingmar Bergman, and after Unbearable, she appeared in many important films all over the world. Binoche was a newer face in 1988, but she too went on to become a major international star. A decade later she won an Oscar in another acclaimed adaptation, The English Patient. The international supporting cast of Unbearable includes Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson, Stellan Skarsgård, and Donald Moffat. Award-winning editor Walter Murch cut the film and Saul Zaentz and Paul Zaentz produced.

The story begins as an erotic comedy but takes a darker turn during the Russian invasion. Kaufman took a unique approach in dramatizing this traumatic event, blending newsreel footage of the invasion with staged scenes that were actually filmed in Paris (since Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet rule when filming commenced in 1986). When Tomas refuses to denounce his own anti-Russian writing from before the invasion, he loses his job, and he and Tereza must struggle to survive.

Critical response to the film was overwhelmingly positive. Variety called Unbearable “a richly satisfying adaptation.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley agreed that Kaufman’s film was an “eloquent adaptation of Milan Kundera’s erotic novel” and added that the film “stirs the heart, the hormones and the head.” Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert declared, “What is remarkable… is not the sexual content itself, but the way Kaufman has been able to use it as an avenue for a complex story, one of nostalgia, loss, idealism and romance.”

Lena Olin will participate in a Q&A before the screening on April 12. To recall some of Olin’s many other credits, she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Paul Mazursky’s Enemies: A Love Story and also co-starred in such films as Romeo is Bleeding, Havana, Night Falls on Manhattan, the Oscar-winning The Reader, and Chocolat and Casanova, both directed by her husband, Lasse Hallstrom. During our conversation Olin will also discuss her newest film with Hallstrom, the biographical drama Hilma, opening at the Royal and Town Center on April 14.

New York Times on WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? ~ “How Cold War Politics Destroyed One of the Most Popular Bands in America.”

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The Times just published a fascinating feature by rock critic Alan Light about the documentary we’re opening today at the Monica Film Center, with one-night screenings next week at the Laemmle NoHo, Claremont, Town Center and Glendale. (The filmmaker and a member of the band will participate in several Q&As; full schedule here.) The sub head: “A new documentary chronicles the strange, intrigue-filled saga of Blood, Sweat & Tears and its disastrous Eastern Bloc tour in 1970.”

The full piece is worth reading but it begins: “Last year, Rolling Stone compiled a list of “The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History.” Near the top, alongside very high-profile errors in judgment like Decca Records’ rejection of the Beatles, there was a much less familiar episode: the time Blood, Sweat & Tears embarked on an Eastern European concert tour, underwritten by the State Department while the Vietnam War was raging. The reputation of the U.S. government was in tatters for young people, meaning the band looked, as the magazine put it, like “propaganda pawns — which is, more or less, what they were.”

“Now the band members are telling their side of this bizarre story in the new documentary What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? While everyone involved agrees with Rolling Stone’s conclusion — that the band’s career never recovered from that 1970 tour — the saga turns out to be more complicated than was previously known.

““This isn’t a music doc, it’s a political thriller,” the director John Scheinfeld said in a telephone interview. “It’s about a group of guys who unknowingly walked into this rat’s nest, and how political forces impacted a group of individuals.””

Read the full piece here.

Upcoming Reel Talk with Stephen Farber screenings: ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET; IT AIN’T OVER; BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER; YOU HURT MY FEELINGS..

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Veteran film critic Stephen Farber’s popular Reel Talk screening series is now based at our Royal Theatre, where you can see a variety of outstanding films from the U.S. and around the world, including many top awards contenders, and then meet the filmmakers for provocative and revealing discussions led by Stephen. Recent guests and titles have included Paul Weitz and Andrew Miano, writer-director and producer of Moving On; John Scheinfeld and Bobby Colomby, director and lead band member from What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?; Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern, screenwriters of 80 for Brady; and Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska, director/co-writer and co-writer/producer of the Oscar-nominated film EO. Next up:

April 24: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; May 1: It Ain’t Over; May 3: Book Club: The Next Chapter; May 15: You Hurt My Feelings.

A-WOP-BOP-A-LOO-BOP! The untold story of the larger-than-life legend who changed music, LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING in theaters April 11.

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There are just a few giants that belong on a Mount Rushmore of rock ‘n’ roll, the people who created a genre of music that electrified the world. One certainty is Chuck Berry. The other is Little Richard. Director Lisa Cortés’ new documentary Little Richard: I am Everything tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance footage that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Throughout his life, Richard careened like a shiny cracked pinball between God, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. The world tried to put him in a box, but Richard was an omni-being who contained multitudes – he was unabashedly everything.

Little Richard at Wrigley Fields, Los Angeles, 2 September 1956.

We’re thrilled to screen Little Richard: I am Everything for one night only at our Claremont, Encino, North Hollywood, Glendale and Newhall theaters. Come experience the movie the Hollywood Reporter called “wildly entertaining;” the Chicago Reader called “exhilarating;” Essence called “profound;” Variety called “exhilarating;” the Toronto Star called “the definitive documentary on a complicated icon;” and Film Threat said “brilliantly connects the past, present and future.”

“Quirky, touching, and well-played fun,” THE INNOCENT opens April 7 at the Royal.

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Part crime thriller, part family farce, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows with panache and pathos the dangerous lengths two men go for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, a museum educator and widower whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries Michel (Roschdy Zem), one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary. Once on parole Michel tries to start a legitimate life for Sylvie’s sake but soon reverts to his old ways, with the suspicious Abel continually — and ineptly — spying on his stepfather until roped into one of the ex-con’s schemes. Noémie Merlant, wonderful as always, co-stars. We open the film April 7 at the Royal.

“Few caper comedies have this much heart, and few romantic dramas offer such an appealingly nutty plot.” ~ Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

 

“A humanistic story wrapped in a fun, punchy exterior, much like the French synth-pop music throughout its soundtrack.” ~ Claire Shaffer, New York Times

“The Innocent is quirky, touching, and well-played fun.” ~ Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com
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“The Innocent is the first movie of Cannes 2022 to give me that belly aching, knee slapping laughter that I desperately needed.” ~ Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Garrel here delivers a witty and elegantly constructed film that joyfully draws parallels between acting and lying, being and pretending, while remaining breezy, fun, eminently accessible and even welcoming.” ~ Elena Lazic, The Playlist
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WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? opens March 31.

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A fascinating documentary/political thriller with a classic rock band at the heart of the action, What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? involves the U.S. State Department, the Nixon White House, the governments of Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland and documentary footage that has been suppressed for over 50 years by one or all of the above. We open the film March 31 at the Monica Film Center with special one-night screenings and Q&As April 3 at the NoHo, April 4 at the Claremont and April 5 at the Glendale. The full Q&A schedule is here.

Director’s statement:

In early 2020, just prior to the worldwide explosion of COVID 19, Bobby Colomby, an acquaintance and  founding member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, called me for a friendly check in. As a fan of the band in its  heyday, I innocently asked him, “What the hell happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?” 

Bobby proceeded to tell me the story of the events surrounding the Iron Curtain Tour. He mentioned that a documentary film crew had accompanied the band to shoot material for what was intended to be a theatrical documentary. That film was never released and Bobby had no idea what became of it. 

  

I loved the mystery and intrigue behind this story, but would we be able to find that documentary footage or enough audio/visual material to tell the story effectively? I also love a good treasure hunt. So, as the  pandemic was shutting the country down, my team and I began a search. Soon enough, we found references to National General Television Productions as having been the company behind the  documentary and that their crew had shot 65 hours of footage during the Iron Curtain Tour. 

We cast a wide net around the world to locate this footage, contacting anyone and everyone who had a connection to National General or the film crew, as well as private archives, independent storage facilities and film labs. It was one dead end after another. It appeared that the footage and related elements had completely vanished.  

And then, finally, success. While searching for the raw footage, we stumbled upon a pristine print of a  53-minute version of the documentary that had been edited for television syndication. This was an  unexpected find as no such version was ever broadcast. A new high-definition transfer was made from this print and watching it provided a fascinating time capsule of our nation, the world, and this group of nine young men on an unprecedented adventure from 50 years earlier. I knew then we had the makings of  a fantastic documentary and, indeed, 40 minutes of the “lost” Blood, Sweat & Tears documentary is the  backbone of our film. 

Some additional heavy digging led us to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where we ultimately uncovered five raw audio tapes that were recorded live during concerts on the Iron Curtain Tour. The band had a mobile 8-track machine on the tour and we later determined that their engineer had recorded a total of 18 tapes, but only these five were found. 

Our search into the private collections of band members and others who were on the Iron Curtain Tour yielded hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and memorabilia. I never gave up hope of finding the 65 hours of original footage. However, after two full years of chasing down every lead and digging  deep into vaults across the country as well as government storage facilities in Washington, D.C., Maryland  and Virginia, we came up empty. The mystery of what became of that material remains.

This film sheds light on history through a fascinating lens. It’s not a biography of the band, nor is it just for music lovers or fans of Blood, Sweat & Tears. It’s a compelling story that explores a unique moment in time and has surprisingly powerful resonance and parallels to what’s going on in the world today. ~ John Scheinfeld

“A pity party that has no business being so much fun,” UNA VITA DIFFICLE opens in the U.S. after a 62 year wait.

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The long-awaited U.S. premiere of Dino Risi’s Una Vita Difficile, starring one of the most beloved of all Italian actors, Alberto Sordi (Mafioso, Il Boom, Fellini’s The White Sheik and I Vitelloni, etc.), was greeted with big crowds and admiring reviews when Rialto Pictures opened its restoration in New York last month. Laemmle Theatres opens the film about a resistance fighter-turned-journalist and his wife (Lea Massari) navigating life in post-war Italy on Friday, March 17 at the Royal and Town Center and March 24 at the Monica Film Center and Laemmle Glendale.

The New York Times’ critic A.O. Scott hailed it as “a stellar specimen of commedia all’italiana.” In his review for Air Mail, Michael Sragow proclaimed, “Alberto Sordi triumphs at jet-black comedy…(he’s) Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their prime, rolled into one.”

In Italy, Una Vita Difficile has long been cherished as a highlight of the 1950s and 60s golden age of Italian comedy, which also gave the world Big Deal on Madonna Street, Divorce Italian Style, Mafioso, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and Risi’s own Il Sorpasso (made the year after Una Vita Difficile). While these and others were major arthouse hits in the U.S., Una Vita Difficile was inexplicably never released here…until now.

 

“A stellar specimen of commedia all’Italiana by a true maestro of the form. Pulsate[s] with the breathlessness and disorientation of a country simultaneously grappling with the past and speeding toward a confusing future…Belongs in the company of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Risi’s Il Sorpasso. It also stands by itself as an exuberant bad time, a pity party that has no business being so much fun.” — A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“It sounds absurd to even contemplate: an unreleased 1961 epic romance starring the legendary Alberto Sordi that tackles the decades after WWII — a mixture of sentiment and grand historic sweep that the Italians always did so well — that’s somehow just getting a U.S. release.” — Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine

“Risi’s deft seriocomic panorama, from Mussolini’s fall to the rise of the postwar Roman oligarchy…Alberto Sordi triumphs at jet-black comedy when the antihero fails as an idealist, a husband, even as a sell-out. The closest America has come to Sordi is Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their prime, rolled into one.” — Michael Sragow, Air Mail