Q&A’s for HIGH TIDE:10/25 – In-Person Q&A at the NoHo with Actor/Executive Producer Marco Pigossi and Actor James Bland of HIGH TIDE following the 7:10 pm performance.10/26- In-Person Q&A at the NoHo with Writer/Director/Producer Marco Calvani, and Actor/Executive Producer Marco Pigossi of HIGH TIDE following the 7:10 pm performance.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 60th Anniversary October 30 at the Royal.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, the seventh and penultimate picture of Roger Corman’s film adaptations of the works of American literary titan Edgar Allan Poe. The film stars horror icon Vincent Price, Corman’s “muse of the macabre,” who top-lined seven of the eight Poe films. The film is widely regarded as the best installment in the series and Corman’s personal favorite of all his films. We present ‘The Masque of the Red Death‘ on one night only, Halloween Eve, Wednesday, October 30 at 7:00 PM at the historic Royal Theatre (celebrating its centennial year) in West Los Angeles.
Producer-director Roger Corman, who died earlier this year, was one of the most prolific independent filmmakers in movie history. He specialized in low-budget cinema and was the self-appointed “king of the B movie,” producing a steady stream of exploitation titles that spanned six decades and multiple genres. In 1960 he turned to the works of an author he admired, Edgar Allan Poe, the nineteenth-century master of gothic poetry, detective fiction, mystery, and the macabre. He began with a stylish if frugal version of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which found critical and commercial success, with Price in the lead, and launched a well-received and popular Poe franchise. In 1964 Corman ventured to the U.K. for the last two films of the series, commencing with ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ Britain was an appropriate set for Poe’s tale of plague-ravaged 14th century Europe, which was devastated by the Black Death.
Price plays Prince Prospero, a malevolent overlord who terrorizes his peasantry amidst the Red Death. After his domain is depopulated, he retreats behind his castle walls with “light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court” (Poe) to wait out the plague. Trapped with him there are his devil-worshiping mistress (Hazel Court), an abducted young couple from the local village (David Weston and Jane Asher), and a particularly debauched guest (Patrick Magee). Using leftover sets from ‘Becket,’ Corman’s principal production designer for all his Poe films, Daniel Haller, and cinematographer (and future auteur) Nicholas Roeg crafted a sumptuous, “colorful symphony of the macabre.” Citing Roeg’s contribution, Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian called the film “an expressionist horror ballet, extravagantly shot.”
Corman employed frequent screenwriter-collaborator Charles Beaumont (‘The Intruder,’ ‘The Premature Burial,’ ‘The Twilight Zone’) and R. Wayne Campbell to meld two Poe stories, “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Hop Frog” with the final product. It would later b praised by TV Guide as “the most intelligent and literate of the Poe series.” The New York Times called it “astonishingly good,” and The Times U.K. gave this assessment: “High camp meets high art in this cheeky Roger Corman flesh-feast that aspires to lofty ideals. However, monologues about the nature of God and terror, as well as psychedelic dream sequences, give the film an unexpected weight. A marvel.” Indeed, other critics have cited the film as echoing the works of Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel, two directors Corman greatly admired.
Price received his best notices of the Poe series, with Variety citing him as “the best interpreter of the Poe character, and he succeeds in creating an aura of terror.” Poe, the most famous American author of the 19th century, remains renowned in the 21st century for his pioneering detective fiction, horror tales, and haunting verse. As Bradshaw pointed out in his Guardian review, “Corman’s formal artistry and conviction on a limited budget…with his iconic Poe adaptations did more than anyone in academe to establish the author’s position in the literary canon.”
“It’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS Opens October 18.
In Exhibiting Forgiveness, which we open on October 18 at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, NoHo and Town Center, Tarrell (Andre Holland) plays an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Andra Day), and their young son, Jermaine. Tarrell’s artwork excavates beauty from the anguish of his youth, keeping past wounds at bay. His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile.
Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family. Tarrell and La’Ron learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving in this raw and deeply moving film.
“This is a powerful film about the limits of forgiveness, and the ways religion is often misused as a tool for total redemption, no matter the sin.” ~ Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
“An emotionally wrenching drama set to resonate with those who have also had to confront the complicated equation of radical forgiveness.” ~ Benjamin Lee, Guardian
“Exhibiting Forgiveness sends you out on a note of hope, but it’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” ~ Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“There are more strengths than weaknesses in Exhibiting Forgiveness, especially when it comes to the performances, which hook us to the emotional grooves of Tarrell’s family.” ~ Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter
“It’s painful and it doesn’t necessarily heal, but it’s a full experience, exceptional in its craft, with performances that cannot be dismissed or be forgotten.” ~ William Bibbiani, TheWrap
“Andre Holland brings immense feeling to his role as an artist haunted by childhood trauma, and writer-director Titus Kaphar’s semi-autobiographical feature debut is suffused with pain, anger and sorrow.” ~ Tim Grierson, Screen International
“Tarrell’s non-judgmental approach embraces shades of grey rather than seeing things in black and white. He doesn’t vilify anyone, nor does he try and mine heroism in suffering.” ~ Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express
“As Tarrell, Holland gives a soulful performance, radiating pain and anguish.” ~ Jourdain Searles, indieWire
“Art comes to the rescue, as Exhibiting Forgiveness lends its healing hand on everyone, on and off the screen.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar
“As an artist grappling with the psychological damage done by his estranged father, Holland is a wonder of tightly contained hurt and anger. He’s got great scene partners in John Earl Jelks, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Andra Day.” ~ Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Exhibiting Forgiveness doesn’t flinch from showing how dysfunctional familial relationships wound and scar repeatedly. But the film itself isn’t cynical or bitter, illustrating how art holds the power to not only help us process and recover but transform.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“True to its name, the film puts the concept of forgiveness on display and asks us to spend some time in front of it and consider it from all angles.” ~ Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine
“Exhibiting Forgiveness proves you do not need other people’s acknowledgement or approval to find forgiveness within yourself.” ~ Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood Daily
FOOD AND COUNTRY Director Laura Gabbert: “Ruth [Reichl] and I set out to follow the unfolding stories of innovators in every corner of America experimenting to transcend a broken food system.”
Ruth Reichl—trailblazing New York Times food critic, groundbreaking Gourmet Magazine editor, best-selling memoirist, and, for decades, one of the most influential figures shaping American food culture—grows concerned about the fate of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs as they wrestle with both immediate and systemic challenges as the pandemic takes hold.
In Food and Country, Reichl reaches across political and social divides to discover innovators who are risking it all to survive on the front lines. As one person leads her to the next, she follows the unfolding stories of ranchers in Kansas and Georgia; farmers in Nebraska, Ohio, and the Bronx; a New England fisherman; and maverick chefs on both coasts. As she witnesses them navigate intractable circumstances, Reichl shares pieces of her own life, and, in doing so, begins to take stock of the path she has traveled and the ideals she left behind. Through her eyes, we get to know the humanity and struggle behind the food we eat. As Reichl says: “How we grow and make our food shows us our values– as a nation and as human beings.
Food and Country filmmaker Laura Gabbert will participate in Q&As after the 10/9 and 10/10 screenings at the Laemmle Monica Film Center and Glendale. The regular engagement at the Royal begins on October 11.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
“What drives me as a filmmaker is finding ways to put us inside, to humanize someone else’s experience; in short to connect us. My own instincts lead me back to food stories again and again because they’re a rich prism through which to understand culture and our relationships to each other. Food is a conduit, a vehicle that connects people to people, and people to culture.
“My 2015 documentary, City of Gold, is about the late Jonathan Gold, the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Jonathan’s writing gave me a way to understand and love Los Angeles. He wrote about restaurants and food as the gateway to connection and empathy across perceived boundaries in a city bursting with multiple cultures and ethnicities. In my next culinary film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, decadent cakes became an expression and critique of contemporary excess, and laid bare our longing for community in a world of inequity and exclusion. Food and Country, my third food foray, was prompted by Covid, but it’s not actually about Covid; it’s about the people behind our food. Transcending blue state/red state politics, their resilience and ingenuity are the heart of this film.
“In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, I saw that independent restaurants were the canary in the coalmine and began to worry about the restaurant owners, chefs, and workers with whom I had grown close while making City of Gold. Knowing so many people in the food world with urgent, compelling stories that needed to be told, I felt I had to document their plight. How they would adapt to survive. I wondered how the potential loss of these businesses would change the fabric of our communities and cities.
“Just as I was preparing to film struggling Los Angeles restaurants, storied food writer Ruth Reichl reached out to me and said, “I hear we’re working on something similar. Let’s talk.” Ruth was taking a bigger picture approach to the crisis — grasping right away the devastating impact the pandemic could have on the entire food chain. Ruth and I quickly decided to join forces and began reaching out to pivotal players in food through video calls. Ruth’s stellar reputation as chronicler and voice of American food culture for the last four decades opened doors, but everywhere we turned, it was Ruth’s authenticity, curiosity, and warmth that inspired trust and elicited truth telling. People across the front lines of the food chain and political divides — from the most celebrated chefs, to food equity activists, to farmers and ranchers— wanted to talk with her. And, we would soon learn, they also wanted to open up and confide in her, and even seek solace. But the connection between Ruth and our characters is a two-way street. Just as they rely on Ruth, so too does Ruth lean on them for insight and closeness.
“Ruth and I set out to follow the unfolding stories of innovators in every corner of America experimenting to transcend a broken food system. Collectively their story is the story of all independent businesses fighting to survive an ever-consolidating industry. Their stories also hold up a mirror. How we make and grow our food tells us who we are as a country, who we are as human beings.” — Laura Gabbert
“I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas.” ~ THE OUTRUN filmmaker on bringing the memoir to the screen.
Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, The Outrun follows a young Scotswoman (the always-fantastic Saoirse Ronan) as she returns to the wild beauty of her native Orkney Islands hoping to come to terms with her past and heal after living life on the edge in London. The director/co-writer Nora Fingscheidt sat for an in-depth interview with Filmmaker Magazine in which she details her process — from writing the screenplay with Liptrot, to working with Ronan, as well as the director of photography, editor, and sound designers. An excerpt:
Filmmaker: Because addiction is a sensitive subject matter and in this case, it’s your co-writer Amy Liptrot’s real life, I am wondering what sort of responsibility you felt in telling this true story. How did you collaborate with her on the page and elsewhere? How did you approach her story?
Fingscheidt: It’s a very challenging book to translate into a film because it is so personal and internal; much of it is about memory. But what makes it so beautiful is Amy’s thought process about the world. And I thought the film needed to be really nerdy in a way [especially when it came to her environmental pursuits]. So I pitched this approach to both Amy and our producers. And then I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas. There is childhood, music, London, Orkney, sound elements, facts about the world… And then I went through it again and put all the little moments that I thought have to be in the film on different cards and arranged them. Then I wrote a treatment.
And from that moment on, we started to collaborate really closely. Amy read every version, and we spent hours on Zoom. She isn’t a celebrity who’s used to having their life portrayed. And her parents are there in the story. So I felt that I had to include her and protect her at the same time. Every decision that we made for the adaptation in changing, fictionalizing or dramatizing things, we made together. One of the first things we did is change her name to have a healthy creative distance. Amy suggested Rona, which is the name of a Scottish island. Saoirse loved it—it’s almost like Ronan. And it also has Nora in it. And it is the island behind the horizon when Amy was sitting on the outrun. So the character name was a mixture of the three of us.
Filmmaker: Did Saoirse spend time with Amy in crafting her performance, or did she approach it more freely to not do an impersonation?
Fingscheidt: Very early on she asked me, “Do you want me to sound like Amy?” Because Saoirse is Irish, we knew she would have to take on another accent. And we said, please don’t try and sound like Amy. Find your own voice, your own interpretation of Rona. That gave her a lot of liberty. She is a very physical actor, so she took quite a while preparing with a London choreographer, Wayne McGregor, whom she has worked with before. They worked a lot on how Rona moves: when she’s with her parents, when she’s happy-drunk or messy-drunk or trying to hide it; when she’s in a good mood or when she loses control. She also worked with a dialogue coach to get into this talk process. That physicality, the voice, and then the experiences like helping deliver lambs on the farm that we did at the pre-shoot helped her get into the bones and guts of Rona’s character.
We’re excited to open The Outrun on October 4 at the Royal, NoHo, Town Center, and Newhall.
The delicately crafted queer Hong Kong drama ALL SHALL BE WELL opens Friday at the Royal.
This Friday we’re proud to open the terrific Hong Kong drama All Shall Be Well at the Royal. Written and directed by Ray Yeung, it’s about the aftermath of a death in a gay couple. It’s currently rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. A sampling of top critics’ reactions:
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“The indignity of being someone’s spouse while they are alive and merely a friend after their death is the theme of this moving film, which brims with compassion and uses a silky light touch.” ~ Natalia Winkelman, New York Times
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“A picture of cruel realities. It’s a deliberate, nimble drama, one about major slights, class imbalance, and rampant homophobia.” ~ Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
“Anger is alien to Yeung’s style but it is sometimes justified, and without it, All Shall Be Well is a plea for understanding that should by now, by rights, be a demand.” ~ Jessica Kiang, Variety
“All Shall Be Well is undoubtedly an old-fashioned drama, but it is no less effective for that classic structure.” ~ Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
“All Shall Be Well illustrates Yeung’s keen eye for the nuances of social dynamics, especially regarding matters of wealth and class that many may prefer to skirt around when it comes to family.” ~ Josh Slater-Williams indieWire
“Yeung’s latest feature is generous but never indulgent, taking the approachable genre of the family drama and placing it in the context of topical issues in today’s queer Hong Kong.” – Olivia Pope, Asian Movie Pulse
THE LAST SEDUCTION 30th anniversary screening October 8 with Director John Dahl in person.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of John Dahl’s sexy neo-noir thriller, ‘The Last Seduction.’ A fantastic Linda Fiorentino plays a reincarnation of the treacherous femmes fatales of 1940s classics like ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and ‘Double Indemnity.’ Bill Pullman and Peter Berg play the patsies whom she entraps. Bill Nunn and J.T. Walsh co-star. The dark, twisty screenplay was penned by Steve Barancik. We’ll screen the film at the Royal at 7 PM on Tuesday, October 8 and host Mr. Dahl for an in-person post-screening Q&A.
Fiorentino plays Bridget Gregory, who steals a payoff that her crooked lawyer husband has scored in a drug deal and flees to a small town in upstate New York. There she seduces a naïve young man played by Berg and eludes and outsmarts her husband, a detective, and all other men who try to get the better of her. The character’s name may be a kind of homage to the character of the treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) in ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ the film that helped to launch the film noir cycle in 1941.
In the 1940s the rigid Production Code mandated that femmes fatales be punished for their misdeeds, but Hollywood morality had changed in recent years, and characters played by Kathleen Turner in ‘Body Heat’ and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct got away with their crimes. Fiorentino’s character took the new amorality even further. According to Roger Ebert, who ranked the film one of the 10 best of 1994, ‘The Last Seduction’ “gives us a diabolical, evil woman and goes the distance with her… We keep waiting for the movie to lose its nerve, and it never does.” Leonard Maltin agreed that the film is a “sizzling, sexy thriller from modern film noir expert Dahl and writer Steve Barancik.”
The New York Times’ Janet Maslin called the film “a devilishly entertaining crime story,” and she added, “Both Mr. Dahl, who directs this film with stunning economy, and Ms. Fiorentino, whose performance is flawlessly hard-boiled, exult in the sheer wickedness of Bridget’s character.” Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle agreed that Fiorentino’s character was “the most full-blown yet utterly believable femme fatale to come along in years.” Fiorentino was named best actress of the year by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the London Film Critics Circle.
Dahl had previously demonstrated a flair for film noir in ‘Kill Me Again’ and ‘Red Rock West.’ He went on to direct ‘Rounders,’ ‘You Kill Me,’ and ‘Joy Ride,’ along with episodes of acclaimed TV series ‘Dexter,’ ‘Ray Donovan,’ ‘Billions,’ and ‘Yellowstone.’
“It’s a story of how we survive our parents, and the beauty of that survival.” Filmmaker Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio on IN THE SUMMERS, opening September 20 at the Royal and September 27 at the Town Center and NoHo.
Winner of the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, In the Summers is a brilliant portrayal of resilience and survival that follows siblings Violeta and Eva. They live in California with their mother, but every summer travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to spend time with their loving but unpredictable father, Vicente. Over the course of four formative summers that span adolescence to early adulthood, Violeta and Eva learn to appreciate their father as a person.
Lovia Gyarkye of the Hollywood Reporter wrote that “the feature is a visual poem, an enveloping four-stanza ode to experiences shared by a man and his daughters.”
“These understated scenes of familial intimacy introduce Lacorazza Samudio as a director with a deft hand for crafting character development from lived-in behavior rather than dialogue…In the Summers is the type of personal, confidently executed first outing that should hopefully put the filmmaker on an auspicious track to produce other keenly humanist work.” ~ Carlos Aguilar, Variety
“The most impressive work belongs to that of Residente, a Puerto Rican rapper otherwise known as René Pérez Joglar. As [Vicente], Residente avoids the pitfalls of playing bad fathers… Residente finds the subtlety in his flaws…Because of this attention to the environment that shapes these hot days, In the Summers is brimming full of its characters’ internal aches rendered elegantly across time.” ~ Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire
In the Summers actor Sasha Calle will participate in a Q&As at the Royal on Friday, September 20.
Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio’s statement:
“My father was a brilliant and beautiful man. Maybe the smartest person I’ve ever known. He had a love of science he wanted to share, even when his audience wasn’t eager. I knew he was prone to anger and drinking and probably drugs. But there was a lot I didn’t understand until he died.
“I was in a bad car accident with my father and sister when I was young, one where I was severely injured and suffered traumatic brain trauma. What I thought happened was there was a car accident, an ambulance came, and we were taken to the nearest hospital, and eventually we recovered. What I found out after his death, was that he had to drag our bodies from the wreckage and walk down a deserted road until someone stopped to help him. That realization took the car accident, which I have always thought of as my trauma, and made me realize it was also his trauma. Our shared trauma. It made me realize there was a deeper complexity to my father. A deeply wounded, chaotic, man raised me but he also had a deep love for his daughters.
“And so I started the long process of creating In the Summers. My aim was to explore this human who, for better or worse, was the root of so much of me. During this process I kept asking, can we make amends? For our missteps, our words, our actions? Or will they forever define us? The closer I get to finishing this film the more I realize that the issue is with the question. Life is far more complex.
“In the Summers explores Latine identity through its characters and how it intersects with fatherhood, addiction, trauma, sexuality and access to opportunity. It’s a story of how we survive our parents, and the beauty of that survival. This is a personal film for me not only because it is inspired by my life but because I want to see complex Latine and Queer characters shown in an honest way. Thank you for considering this project and having the opportunity to tell my story.”
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