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“Dark jewel of 1960s British cinema” THE SERVANT restored and screening at the Royal April 15-21.

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“So powerful…the movie detonates before our eyes.” Palme d’Or nominee AHED’S KNEE opens April 1.

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We are opening the Israeli film AHED’S KNEE April 1 at the Glendale, Royal and Town Center and it’s a scorcher. As critic Guy Lodge put it, “Nadav Lapid does not make polite films: they spit and snarl and get way up in your face, brashly and constantly switching tack to disrupt your viewing pleasure, even if that means interrupting their own train of thought.”
A film of radical style and splenetic anger, AHED’S KNEE accompanies a celebrated but increasingly dissociated director (Avshalom Pollak) to a small town in the desert region of Arava for a screening of his latest film. Already anguished by the news of his mother’s fatal illness, he grows frustrated with a speech-restricting form he is encouraged to sign by a local Ministry of Culture worker (Nur Fibak). The confrontation ultimately sends him into a spiral of rage aimed at what he perceives as the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of the Israeli government.

“Cuts to the heart of Lapid’s visceral genius and…points a new path forward for one of the world’s most irrepressible filmmakers.” ~ David Ehrlich, Indiewire

“What makes AHED’S KNEE so powerful is the way the movie detonates before our eyes.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

“Political outrage fuses with personal anguish in the Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s raucous, hard-edged dramatic rant about a filmmaker in crisis.” ~ Richard Brody, New Yorker

 

“It’s a howl of rage.” ~ A.O. Scott, New York Times

“AHED’S KNEE is a radical film for an Israeli movie – or for any movie.” ~ Jason Solomons, TheWrap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6lnWirRxhQ

Exclusive clip from the upcoming French comedy THE ROSE MAKER.

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On April 1 we’ll open THE ROSE MAKER at the Claremont, Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Catherine Frot stars as one of France’s greatest artisanal horticulturalists, whose rose business is on the brink of bankruptcy. When her secretary hires three inexperienced ex-convicts, they must team up to rescue the business in this verdant comedy. Enjoy this clip for a whiff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbAxOiZ-Irs

Moviegoers, last chance to catch the Oscar nominated films in theatres.

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For cinephiles, there is nothing like awards season, when studios and distributors release their finest films in hopes of garnering rapturous reviews, capturing audiences’ attention, and earning accolades, none more coveted than an Academy Award. The 2021-2022 season comes to a close this Sunday at 6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA and on a TV screen near you, but there’s still time to see the nominees. We’re playing the animated and live action shorts at the NoHo and bringing them back to Glendale and we have the documentary shorts on Saturday and Sunday at the Royal.  Some of these films, like THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, PARALLEL MOTHERS, LICORICE PIZZA, DRIVE MY CAR and FLEE, are so good they’re worth seeing twice. On Laemmle Virtual Cinema, see LUNANA and ASCENSION.  All terrific. Enjoy!
Riz Ahmed in Best Live Action Short nominee THE LONG GOODBYE.

“Solidarity is a magnificent way to reinvent oneself.” Catherine Frot on her role in THE ROSE MAKER, opening April 1 at the Playhouse and Royal.

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The French rightly pride themselves on their artisanal traditions, from fine wines to bread, cheeses and more. That storied culture is increasingly at odds with modern, massive corporations trying to maximize profits, which can radically reduce quality. (This recent Guardian story about baguettes is a case in point.) The “lovingly made light drama” The Rose Maker dramatizes this dynamic. The film follows Eve, one of France’s greatest artisanal horticulturalists, whose rose business is on the brink of bankruptcy. When her secretary hires three inexperienced ex-convicts, they must team up to rescue the business in this verdant comedy. The movie is “a tender dramedy about apprenticeship, striving for excellence, and the passing down of savoir-faire.” (City of Lights, City of Angeles Film Festival)

Lead actress Catherine Frot was recently interviewed about her work on the film:

Q: What attracted you to The Rose Maker?

A: I was initially drawn to the character’s personality and also her arc: that of a woman who was a glory in her profession, who is no longer a glory but who will nevertheless experience a rebirth by accepting the help of people who have also hit rock bottom. People who are in trouble, locked in their solitude but who, despite their differences, end up finding their salvation in solidarity. I was first touched by the social dimension and the humanity of The Rose Maker. And then I realized that the roses were very important in the charm of this tale of helping hands, that they were even essential, that they gave it an indescribable poetry and a heady perfume. I must admit that I didn’t pay much attention to these flowers before. The film introduced me to them. I feel like I’ve made an extraordinary journey into an unknown land. I no longer look at roses in the same way. I know what their beauty requires in terms of care and know-how and today they touch me and make me dream.

Q: Let’s get back to Eve.

A: For an actress, Eve is an irresistible character, because she is so complex and will evolve so much. At the start of the film, she is proud, upstanding, courageous, closed in on herself; a sort of uptight but bruised boss lady who only keeps going thanks to her “monomaniacal” passion for roses. She was a queen in her field, stronger competitors have taken her crown, and yet she continues to fight for the survival of her business with quite incredible panache. Eve is a bit like an oak. On the surface, she is as solid as a rock, and yet she is weakened by wounds she believes to be invisible: the death of her father, the decline of her business and… the anonymity into which she has fallen. The unexpected arrival of three people in search of identity and social integration is enough to make this stubborn woman give up, question herself, and let a feeling develop in her that, as a childless woman, she thought she would never be able to experience: that of passing something on. Playing someone who comes out of her shell and transforms herself is always exciting, all the more so if, as is the case here, she is driven by an exclusive and totally disinterested passion. In a certain way, Eve “takes after” roses. She lives only for the perpetuation of beauty, something completely useless, fleeting, obsolete and yet fundamental and primordial. Eve undergoes a sort of spiritual quest which borders on poetry and which also gives rise, at times, to a certain humor.

Q: Eve is an artisan. While her work is based on taste and intuition, it also requires skill, meticulousness and precision. Playing her required learning quite a few things. Did this add to your desire to take the part?
A: Oh yes! I love to give the illusion on screen that I have mastered skills that I don’t have in everyday life. In fact, that is one of my great joys as an actress. For example, I still have wonderful memories of the cooking lessons I was given for Haute Cuisine or the piano virtuosity lessons I took for The Page Turner. For The Rose Maker, I had to learn about hybridization. It is a skill that requires a lot of precision and I loved it. My teacher was Madame Dorieux, the owner of the rose garden in which we shot the film. I really like these periods of learning the trade that my characters practice. For me, they are like schools of life. Even if I forget them quickly afterwards, I retain the pleasure I had in learning the gestures of professions that would have remained completely foreign to me otherwise.

Q: Are costumes important for you?
A: They are essential. They allow me to fully “inhabit” my character. With Pierre Pinaud and the costume designer, I spent a lot of time thinking about Eve’s clothes. She is a modern company manager with a manual job but, at the same time, she cherishes the memory and the working methods of her father. We imagined her a little masculine, in clothes that are both modern and old-fashioned, practical but with an outdated elegance. I immediately thought of the floppy necktie, the hat and the pipe. The pipe, which she seems to smoke on the sly, out of nostalgia for her father, is also a tangible expression of her contradictions, since at one point she, whose job is to appreciate the fragrance of roses, asks her young employee to stop smoking so as “not to spoil his sense of smell”. I love it when someone’s contradictions are also revealed in the accessories of their daily life.
Q: You didn’t know Pierre Pinaud. What kind of director is he?
A: He is charming, really, touching, elegant, poetic and tactful at the same time. He is a man who lives in and for beauty. He is a garden of flowers all by himself. His film is called The Rose Maker, because for him, undeniably, the rose is at the center of his film, the rose, its history and its perpetuation which is symbolized here by the fight of a woman. It is also thanks to this approach that, beyond its social dimension, his film exudes such poetry, sensuality and emotion.
Q: A word about your partner, Melan Omerta, who plays Fred, and who was making his feature debut here.
A: Melan was the best in the screen tests… and he has an incredible presence. It’s pretty crazy, he comes from a rap background, knew little or nothing about film, yet he immediately had a feel for the camera. Performing with him was both intense and simple. He gives off an incredible amount of emotion. He is a great discovery.
Q: We get the impression that The Rose Maker is a film that has particularly touched you.
A: That’s true. It’s a very beautiful, refined, very well written and constructed film. At the same time, it is very rich. It exposes the difficulties of a small family business in the face of large corporations, it takes stock of a profession facing great difficulties, it portrays an endearing woman in her struggle to survive without renouncing her moral values, and in her stubbornness to maintain a floral tradition, and it shows that solidarity is a magnificent way to reinvent oneself. The fact that the link between all these facets is the passion for a flower that is the image of eternal beauty merely adds to its singularity!

Brevity is the soul of wit: The 2022 Oscar-nominated short films are now playing everywhere.

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This Friday we’ll expand our screenings of the 2022 Oscar-nominated short films — live action, animated and documentary — to almost all our venues so cinephiles from throughout L.A. County and beyond can enjoy them theatrically. Robert Abele of the L.A. Times weighed in on his favorites:

Documentaries: “The Queen of Basketball is a joyous portrait of college legend, breakthrough Olympian, and only ever female NBA draftee Lusia “Lucy” Harris, a gifted athlete without a professional league of her own. Harris died in January, but here she’s a wry chronicler of her underappreciated majesty, making Queen a fitting film obituary. Matt Ogens’ percussively energized, heartfelt Audible takes us into the tightknit huddle of high schoolers in the successful football program at the Maryland School for the Deaf, their Big Game preparation a poignant metaphor for the feelings of pride, loss and community that make them different from, but also no different than, any teenager facing an uncertain world…Looking back on a childhood choice (and seizing on a wild coincidence) is the province of veteran experimental filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt’s When We Were Bullies, a wonderfully intimate, collage-styled reckoning with memory, hurt and the ethics of storytelling.”

From WHEN WE WERE BULLIES. Courtesy of ShortsTV.

Live action: “The nerviest conscience buster is Aneil Karia’s The Long Goodbye, a companion film to actor/rapper Riz Ahmed’s same-named album. He plays one of many members of a large British-South Asian family in a bustling house preparing for a wedding until a violent reality intrudes, leading to a wall-breaking rap about race, history and nationalism that Ahmed delivers like a frontline soliloquy. On the more Black Mirror end of things is KD Davila’s Kafkaesque satire Please Hold, which fuses our blind fascination with all things contactless, online and privatized with our inability to reform a byzantine justice system, following it to a not-too-far-off conclusion for someone like innocent Latino 20-something Mateo (Erick Lopez).”

From PLEASE HOLD. Courtesy of ShortsTV.

Animation: “Lives marred by cruelty factor into the hand-drawn Boxballet and stop-motion Bestia. The former, from Anton Dyakov, brings together a hulking, banged-up pugilist and an up-and-coming ballerina for a wordless-but-not-soundless meeting of sensitive souls. The latter is Chilean animator Hugo Covarrubias’ slow-burning, textural glimpse — set during the country’s military dictatorship — of the corrosive duality in a policewoman’s daily life with her dog, her body and her demons. The eerie airlessness of the dollhouse-like settings and the porcelain shine on the puppets are memorably unsettling.’

From BESTIA.

“Influential designer/animator Alberto Mielgo, who sparked the aesthetic of Into the Spider-Verse, is another wizard with texture and visual depth. His meditative The Windshield Wiper poses the question “What is love?” to a man in a café, then seeks clues in a series of vignettes with couples around the world. Mielgo’s urbanized hybrid of the painterly and the digitized is hypnotic and its own example of an artist’s love.’

From THE WINDSHIELD WIPER.

“British animator Joanna Quinn’s enthusiasm for the wiggly expressiveness of traditional animation, meanwhile, makes her latest romp starring middle-aged feminist factory worker Beryl, Affairs of the Art, a raucous delight. (The last Beryl short was in 2006.) Now hellbent on becoming a “hyperfuturist artiste,” drawing-obsessed Beryl (voiced as ever by Menna Trussler) relays a family history of sibling rivalry, imperiled pets, morbid curiosities and eccentric tastes, while Quinn’s masterful caricatures and love of bulbous bodies in motion would make Da Vinci blush, laugh and be jealous simultaneously. Drawing becomes riotously, beautifully alive in Quinn’s vaudeville of aging and anatomy, but so does the wonderfully personal message delivered through her never-too-late-to-try heroine: There’s power in passion, whenever it strikes you in life.”

From AFFAIRS OF THE ART.

Please note that the animated shorts are not MPAA rated but if they were they’d likely receive an R or NC-17 rating. Only adults will be admitted.

https://vimeo.com/678295462/7a10ce4892

“Haroun shows how the strength of sisterhood extends beyond family to unite women in resistance.” LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS opens this Friday at the Royal.

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Celebrated Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (A Screaming Man) makes a remarkable return to his home country with Lingui, The Sacred Bonds, in which a mother struggles to secure an abortion for her pregnant teen daughter. Honest and poignant, gorgeously shot and superbly acted, this official submission to the 2022 Academy Awards is a stunning vision of female solidarity. Film critics have noticed:

“Haroun has a gift for distilling volumes of meaning in his direct, lucid, balanced visuals, which he uses to complement and illuminate the minimalist, naturalistic dialogue.” ~ Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Achouackh Abakar Souleyman and Rihane Khalil Alio. All photos courtesy of MUBI.

“It’s a bracing work that passes quickly in 87 minutes. But the world it shows us, etched in fully felt performances and beautifully hued compositions, feels vividly, sometimes overwhelmingly present.” ~ Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Rihane Khalil Alio.

“Beautiful to look at, impeccably shot and boasts a righteous, perfectly judged, weapon-wielding climax.” ~ Kevin Maher, Times [UK]

Achouackh Abakar Souleyman and Rihane Khalil Alio.

“Haroun shows how the strength of sisterhood extends beyond family to unite women in resistance, and the movie’s powerful vision of their furtive heroism reflects the overwhelming forces that they confront.” ~ Richard Brody, New Yorker

Rihane Khalil Alio.

“As we tag along with Harouns characters, we learn to appreciate their story as a small, but vivid study of lives that are so much more than their progressive developments.” ~ Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com

Rihane Khalil Alio.

“But it’s the silent allegiances of sisterhood, a near-underground network operating to safeguard women’s rights, which exercise Haroun’s imagination throughout this excellent piece.” ~ Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph [UK]

Rihane Khalil Alio and Achouackh Abakar Souleyman.

“The intense, focused performances from the two central women keep this drama in a hyper-alert state.” ~ Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Writer-director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

“A beautiful portrait of community.” ~ Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DFew16WifY

“Touchingly absurd and absurdly touching,” BRIGHTON 4TH comes to L.A. February 11 via Tbilisi, Georgia and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

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In this portrait of parental sacrifice and the love of a father for his son, former wrestler Kakhi (played by real-life Olympic champion Levan Tediashvili) embarks on a journey from his home in the Republic of Georgia to visit his son Soso (Giorgi Tabidze) in the Russian-speaking neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. There he finds him living in a shabby boarding house populated by a colorful group of fellow Georgian immigrants. Soso is not studying medicine, as Kakhi believed, but is working for a moving company and has accrued a $14,000 gambling debt to a local Russian mob boss. Kakhi sets his mind to helping his hapless son out of his debt, leading to situations as often comic as they are dire. Lensed by Oscar®-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (The Trial of the Chicago 7, Nebraska), Levan Koguashvili Brighton 4th won three major awards at the Tribeca Film Festival – Best International Film, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay – and is Georgia’s official submission to the 94th Academy Awards®.

Laemmle Theatres is proud to open Brighton 4th on February 11 at our Encino, Pasadena and West L.A. theaters.

“Touchingly absurd and absurdly touching… A slow-burn family drama infused with welcome doses of deadpan dark humor.” ~ Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

(l. to r.) Levan Tediashvili (Kakhi) and Giorgi Tabidze (Soso) shopping on the boardwalk of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in Brighton 4th, directed by Levan Koguashvili. Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

“A tragicomedy that sneaks up on you stealthily before flooring you with an emotional sucker punch in the final reel.” ~ Matt Fagerholm, RogerEbert.com

(l. to r.) Nadezhda Mikhalkova (Lena) and Giorgi Tabidze (Soso) on the beach in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in Brighton 4th, directed by Levan Koguashvili. Image courtesy of Lorber.

“The melancholy-infused narrative neatly balances rueful humor with genuine sweetness.” ~ Alissa Simon, Variety

Levan Tediashvili (Kakhi) in Brighton 4th, directed by Levan Koguashvili. Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

“A near-perfect, semi-comic portrait of the low-rent Georgian enclave in Brighton Beach.” ~ Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

Levan Tediashvili (Kakhi) in Brighton 4th, directed by Levan Koguashvili. Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

“A touching and surprising exploration of masculinity that features a stunning central performance from former Olympic wrestling champion Levan Tediashvili.” ~ Kaleem Aftab, Cineuropa

Levan Koguashvili, director of Brighton 4th. Photo credit: Eliso Sulakauri

“Koguashvili deftly blends tones in his vividly realised snapshots of Georgian manhood.” ~ Wendy Ide, Screen Daily

“A compelling portrait of the Eastern European community that exists in Brighton, [featuring] a great performance by Tediashvili, in his first film role.” ~ Christian Gallichio, The Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6R0js4LoqI