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Our Filmic Cup Runneth Over: Drink Deep of the Oscar-Nominated Foreign Features and Documentaries.

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Now is the time to enjoy fantastic films from around the world. All five of the Oscar-nominated documentary features — THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, THE CAVE, FOR SAMA, AMERICAN FACTORY and HONEYLAND are in theaters now, before the awards show on February 9. Four of the five Oscar nominees for Best International Feature — LES MISÉRABLES, PAIN AND GLORY, PARASITE and HONEYLAND (deservedly, it’s nominated twice!) are now in theaters.

We hope to open the Polish drama CORPUS CHRISTI, the fifth foreign film nominee and the dark horse in the race, on March 6 at the Monica Film Center, Playhouse and Town Center.

The film is about 20-year-old Daniel, who is released and sent to a remote village to work as a manual laborer after spending years in a Warsaw prison for a violent crime. The job is designed to keep him busy, but Daniel has a higher calling. While imprisoned he became deeply religious and now aspires to join the priesthood, but his criminal record makes it impossible. When Daniel arrives in town, one quick lie allows him to be mistaken for the town’s new priest, and he sets about tending to his newfound flock. An international sensation with an electrifying lead performance by a previously unknown actor, CORPUS CHRISTI is the twelfth Polish film to earn an Oscar nomination. Only one of them has taken home the prize, IDA in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B27ORUHlp6E&t=4s

THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT 55th Anniversary Screening with Co-Star Paula Prentiss.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present one of the most delightful comedies of the 1960s, THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT, produced by a top-flight group of filmmakers and actors. We will be joined by one of the film’s stars, Paula Prentiss, one of the most gifted comediennes to emerge during that era.

HENRY ORIENT is a rare example of a female-centric movie that takes on added relevance at a time when critics are clamoring for more movies that reflect women’s experiences. The film had its origins in a novel written by Nora Johnson and based partly on her own experiences at a posh girls’ school in Manhattan.

The main characters are two of the girls at the school, played by charming newcomers Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth in their film debuts. The two heroines develop a crush on a second-rate pianist, the flamboyant Lothario Henry Orient, played to the hilt by the brilliant Peter Sellers. Johnson admitted that the plot was based in part on her own teenage infatuation with real-life pianist and wit Oscar Levant.

Sellers broke through to full-fledged stardom in 1964. The acclaimed anti-war satire, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ opened early in the year, with Sellers cast in three different roles. In the spring of that year he introduced the character of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the comedy classic, ‘The Pink Panther,’ and that film was so successful that he brought back the character in ‘A Shot in the Dark later that year.’

THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT premiered as the Easter attraction at Radio City Music Hall, and it was the official American entry at the Cannes Film Festival in May. In addition to Sellers and Prentiss, the adult cast included Angela Lansbury as Walker’s imperious mother, Tom Bosley (a Broadway veteran who would go on to win new audiences in popular TV series like ‘Happy Days’ and Lansbury’s ‘Murder, She Wrote’), Phyllis Thaxter, and Bibi Osterwald.

The behind-the-scenes talent was equally impressive. Nora Johnson wrote the screenplay with her father, acclaimed writer-director Nunnally Johnson, whose credits include the Oscar-winning ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ‘Roxie Hart,’ ‘The Three Faces of Eve,’ and ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ HENRY ORIENT was the first film produced by Jerome Hellman, who won an Academy Award five years later for producing ‘Midnight Cowboy.’ The picture was the third directed by George Roy Hill, who went on to make ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ ‘The Sting’ (Oscar winner for Best Picture and Best Director), ‘A Little Romance,’ and ‘The World According to Garp.’

Cinematographers Boris Kaufman (an Oscar winner for ‘On the Waterfront’) and Arthur J. Ornitz (‘A Thousand Clowns,’ ‘Serpico’) brought lyricism to their depiction of Manhattan, and the great composer Elmer Bernstein (‘The Magnificent Seven,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘The Great Escape,’ ‘True Grit,’ ‘Airplane!,’ and ‘Far from Heaven’) contributed one of his most memorable scores.

All of this talent impressed the critics. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther hailed “one of the most joyous and comforting movies about teenagers that we’ve had in a long time…a juicily tart and sassy go-round.” Time magazine called it “bright, breezy, and brimming with fun.”

The picture was named one of the year’s ten best by the National Board of Review. It was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical of the Year, and it also received a nomination from the Writers Guild of America as Best Written American Comedy.

Over the years the movie has turned into a cult favorite. Writing in The New Yorker in 2012, almost 50 years after the film’s release, John Colapinto called HENRY ORIENT “one of the most enduringly funny and moving American movies ever made.” Leonard Maltin described it as a “marvelous comedy of two teenage girls who idolize eccentric pianist Sellers and follow him around N.Y.C.”

Prentiss plays one of the women pursued by Sellers, whose trysts are constantly interrupted by the two girls. Prentiss made her screen debut in the enormously successful spring break comedy, ‘Where the Boys Are,’ in 1960. She went on to star with Rock Hudson in Howard Hawks’ ‘Man’s Favorite Sport,’ and she appeared with Sellers again in ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ She also co-starred in such films as ‘In Harm’s Way,’ Mike Nichols’ ‘Catch 22,’ ‘The Parallax View,’ and the chilling feminist thriller ‘The Stepford Wives.’ In the late ’60s she starred with her husband, Richard Benjamin, in the acclaimed TV sitcom ‘He & She.’

Our 55th anniversary screening of THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT with co-star Paula Prentiss in-person, screens Tuesday, January 28, at 7pm at the Royal in West L.A. Click here for tickets.

FELLINI SATYRICON 50th Anniversary Screenings January 22 in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series launch 2020 and the new decade with the 50th anniversary of the American release of FELLINI SATYRICON, the first installment of our monthly Abroad program.

The provocative adaptation of Petronius’s Satyricon, written in the first century AD during the reign of Nero in imperial Rome, is our fourth presentation of the films of Federico Fellini, one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the history of cinema. Fellini garnered the third of four directing Oscar nominations for this effort; the Anniversary Classics Series has now showcased all of these nominated films, including La Dolce Vita, 8 ½, and Amarcord.

FELLINI SATYRICON, written by the Italian director with frequent collaborators Brunello Rondi and Bernardino Zapponi, is a freeform adaptation, emulating the fragmentary nature of Petronius’s work that survived. Petronius retold “degenerate” versions of Roman and Greek myth, and Fellini was fascinated by the gaps in the narrative, choosing a style that simulated hallucinatory dreams.

In the fevered tale, two students, Encolpius (Martin Potter) and Ascyltus (Hiram Keller), pursue the love of their young slave Giton (Max Born) through nine episodes of lurid hedonism. Petronius was a sensualist who celebrated and mocked decadence simultaneously, and Fellini matched that vision in the students’ travels and adventures in “grotesque drama and lurid fantasy,” as noted by Roger Ebert. Fellini achieved that effect through the vivid use of color, which was an ironic embrace of a medium the director disdained earlier in his career, preferring black-and-white hues in the 1950s and early 1960s in masterpieces like La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, and La Dolce Vita.

Another frequent collaborator, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, fully realized Fellini’s vision; as described by TV Guide, “The masterful cinematography and stunning use of color, achieved through the use of deliberately artificial light sources, lend the film an almost hypnotic sheen.”

Fellini was questioned why he employed non-Italian actors to play the leads, and he elaborated on his casting choices, “They looked innocent…with Italians there is always a feeling of morality, but the Anglo-Saxon face has something detached, something crazy, something elegant.”

Critical reception varied from measured appraisals such as Rex Reed, who saw it as an “explosion of madness and perversion, designed like grand opera of the absurd,” to full endorsement from the New York Times’ Vincent Canby, calling it “the quintessential Fellini film, a travelogue through an unknown galaxy, a magnificently realized movie of his and our wildest dreams.”

In a retrospective review in 2001, Roger Ebert wrote, “It is so much more ambitious and audacious than most of what we see today that simply as a reckless gesture, it shames these timid times.”

See it Wednesday, January 22nd at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

2020 OSCARS SPOTLIGHT: DOCUMENTARIES at the Monica Film Center & Playhouse.

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We are thrilled to announce that beginning this weekend we will be screening all of the documentaries short-listed for the 2020 Oscars. Together the 15 films offer a breathtaking portrait of our world, from the micro — the freelance Mexico City ambulance drivers of Midnight Family and the Macedonian beekeeper of Honeyland — to macro —  the data theft crisis depicted in The Great Hack and the savage forced family planning of One Child Nation, all told with peak cinematic genius. The final five Oscar nominees will be announced January 13 and the 92nd annual Academy Awards ceremony is set for Sunday, February 9, but all of these documentaries are as good as the finest fiction films and well worth your time to experience with the big canvass of a movie screen.

December 28-29

MAIDEN is the story of how Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World in 1989.

THE GREAT HACK uncovers the dark world of data exploitation with astounding access to the personal journeys of key players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal. (Also playing January 3-9 at the Laemmle Glendale.)

AQUARELA takes audiences on a deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water. Captured at a rare 96 frames-per-second, the film is a visceral reminder that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of Earth’s most precious element.

ADVOCATE ~ Since the early 1970s, Jewish-Israeli attorney Lea Tsemel has made a career out of defending Palestinians in Israeli courts: from feminists to fundamentalists, from non-violent demonstrators to armed militants, including suicide bombers.

THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM follows two dreamers and their beloved dog when they make a choice that takes them out of their tiny L.A. apartment and into the countryside to build one of the most diverse farms of its kind in complete coexistence with nature.

January 4-5

MIDNIGHT FAMILY ~ In Mexico City’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a private ambulance, competing with other for-profit EMTs for patients in need of urgent help. As the Ochoas try to make a living in this fraught industry, they struggle to keep their dire finances from compromising the people in their care.

HONEYLAND ~ Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. When an unruly family moves in next door, what at first seems like a balm for her solitude becomes a source of tension as they, too, want to practice beekeeping, while disregarding her advice.

FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. (Also playing December 28 & 29 at the Royal.)

THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY ~ A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis – the personal and political fuse to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. Combining unprecedented access to leaders past and present, including Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, with accounts of her own family’s complex past, filmmaker Petra Costa witnesses their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.

THE APOLLO chronicles the unique history and contemporary legacy of the New York City landmark, the Apollo Theater.

January 11-12

KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE ~ At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, four women decide to fight back, setting themselves on a journey that will change their lives and their country forever. Without political experience or corporate money, they build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Their efforts result in a stunning upset.

THE CAVE is an unflinching story of the Syrian war. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where Dr. Amani Ballor and her female colleagues have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the patriarchal culture that exists above.

Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, APOLLO 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, and made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin household names.

AMERICAN FACTORY ~ In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

China’s One Child Policy may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. The sweeping ONE CHILD NATION explores the ripple effect of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another. (Also currently playing at the Laemmle Glendale through at least January 2.)

Fellini, Godard, and Renoir Begin Our Anniversary Classics Abroad Series for 2020.

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We are delighted to announce the first four films of 2020 in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series! A companion to our American repertory film series Anniversary Classics, our Abroad program screens great foreign films one Wednesday every month at three venues simultaneously: the Royal in West L.A., the Glendale, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

Laemmle patrons with a Premiere Card save $3 on tickets and receive 20% food and drinks! Learn about the perks of our Premiere Card here.

January 22: FELLINI SATYRICON
Federico Fellini’s surreal depictions of ancient Rome is loosely based on Petronius’s Satyricon, written during the reign of the Nero and set in imperial Rome. The film is divided into nine episodes and follows the scholar Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus as they try to win the heart of the young boy Gitón, whom they both love. Roger Ebert said, “It is so much more ambitious and audacious than most of what we see today that simply as a reckless gesture, it shames these timid times.” Click here for tickets.

February 19: ALPHAVILLE
In ALPHAVILLE, Jean-Luc Godard’s hard-boiled detective/science fiction fusion, Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), comes to Alphaville, the capital of a totalitarian state, in order to destroy its leader, an almost-human computer called Alpha 60. While on his mission, Lemmy meets and falls in love with Natacha (Anna Karina), the daughter of the scientist who designed Alpha 60. Their love becomes the most profound challenge to the computer’s control. Click here for tickets.

March 18: EAST/WEST
EAST/WEST, French director Regis Wargnier’s (Indochine) romantic period drama, is set in 1946 when Stalin launched a propaganda campaign offering amnesty to Russians who had settled in the West. Alexei Golovin (Oleg Menshikov) decides to takes his young French wife Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and son Serioja with him on the long journey back to his homeland but Stalin’s offer is not what it appeared. This 1999 Best Foreign Language nominee also stars Catherine Deneuve and Bohdan Stupka. Click here for tickets.

April 22: FRENCH CANCAN
Jean Renoir’s musical dramedy chronicles the revival of Paris’ most notorious dance as it tells the story of a theater producer who turns a humble washerwoman into a Moulin Rouge star. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said, “The glorious final sequence, in which the cancan is finally unveiled to the rowdy audience, is some kind of masterpiece, perhaps the equal of anything Renoir ever achieved: wild, free, turbulent, exhilarating.” Click here for tickets.

Again, we will show all Anniversary Classics Abroad films at three venues, the Royal, Playhouse, and Glendale, at 7pm. Come experience these classics of world cinema as they were intended to be experienced, on a big screen in a dark auditorium full of fellow cinephiles. Click here for full details.

Culture Vulture 2020 Commences.

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Begin the new year and the new decade by taking in some of the esoteric cinema of our Culture Vulture series, now entering its seventh year.

January 13 & 14 ~ THE PRADO MUSEUM: A COLLECTION OF WONDERS celebrates the 200th anniversary of the storied Prado Museum — one of the most-visited museums in the world.  Hosted by Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons, this cinematic journey offers viewers a spell-binding experience, telling the story of Spain and beyond, through the works of Vélazquez, Rubens, Titian, Mantegna, Bosch, Goya, El Greco, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSIvsf5-COg

 

AFTERWARD January 20 & 21 ~ Jerusalem-born trauma expert Ofra Bloch forces herself to confront her demons in a journey that takes her to Germany, Israel and Palestine. Set against the current wave of fascism and anti-Semitism sweeping the globe, AFTERWARD delves into the secret wounds carried by victims as well as victimizers, through testimonies ranging from the horrifying to the hopeful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSw1jeyE6NI

 

GAUGUIN FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON January 27 & 28 ~ This fascinating new cinema event, Gauguin from the National Gallery, London, opens with a brand-new documentary about the life and work of Paul Gauguin, one of the world’s most popular and important artists. Filmed in Tahiti, France, the Marquesas Islands and the UK, this cinematic film explores Gauguin’s extraordinary – and at times controversial – artistic achievement, with commentary from his descendants, artists and world experts. It is followed by an exclusive private view of the National Gallery exhibition, The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Gauguin Portraits.

https://vimeo.com/365857943?utm_source=Full+Exhibitor+List&utm_campaign=0f6f2c4ca5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_19_04_37&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_11aeb814de-0f6f2c4ca5-216267177

 

IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN February 3 & 4 ~ The makers of IN SEARCH OF MOZART return with a new feature-length bio-doc about Beethoven. Director Phil Grabsky brings together the world’s leading performers and experts on Beethoven to reveal new insights into the legendary composer.

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

 

February 10 & 11 ~ EARTH was filmed at seven locations that humans have transformed on a grand scale: Entire mountains being moved in California; a tunnel being sliced through rock at the Brenner Pass; an open-cast mine in Hungary; a marble quarry in Italy; a copper mine in Spain; the salt mine used to store radioactive waste in Wolfenbüttel; and a tar sands landscape in Canada. Initially shown from above as abstract paintings, these terrains are subsequently explored on the ground: The film weaves together observational footage of machines in operation with conversations with the workers.

February 17 & 18 ~ MATTHEW BOURNE’S ROMEO + JULIET has been hailed as ‘the single most eagerly awaited dance show for 2019’ by The Daily Telegraph. This passionate and contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic story of love and conflict is set in the not-too-distant future in ‘The Verona Institute.’ Here ‘difficult’ young people are mysteriously confined by a society that seeks to divide and crush their youthful spirit and individuality. Our two young lovers must follow their hearts as they risk everything to be together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsSFV8B4CI4

 

February 24 & 25 ~ GISELLE touches upon great and universal romantic themes. In this brand new production, renowned choreographer Alexei Ratmansky brings a fresh perspective to one of the oldest and greatest works of classical dance, giving the audience an opportunity to discover this iconic ballet anew.

GOLDFINGER Starring Sean Connery: 55th Anniversary Screening on December 30th in West L.A.

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As a special moviegoing treat for the holiday season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the movie that is generally regarded as the best in the spectacularly successful 007 franchise, GOLDFINGER (1964).

When it opened in December 1964, the third James Bond film scored an instant success that insured the durability of the series. It is now the longest-running franchise in cinema history, with a new entry coming in the spring of 2020, almost 60 years after Bond made his first screen appearance. Even with a lot of spectacular followup films, GOLDFINGER remains—shall we say—the gold standard.

Roger Ebert called it his favorite Bond film, and in 2006 Entertainment Weekly also named it as the best of the Bonds. It remains the highest rated Bond movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 97 per cent positive.

This film includes all the elements that Bond fans adore—thrilling action sequences, drily witty dialogue, nefarious and memorable villains, a bevy of Bond girls headed by Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore, and a title song that may be the best loved of all Bond theme songs, written by John Barry, Anthony Newley, and Leslie Bricusse and sizzlingly performed by the inimitable Shirley Bassey.

Sean Connery exudes charisma, and the cast includes Gert Frobe as the greedy Goldfinger, Harold Sakata as his sadistic henchman Oddjob, Shirley Eaton as one of Bond’s paramours who meets a dire fate, and series regulars Bernard Lee as M, Desmond Llewelyn as Q, and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny. Guy Hamilton (who went on to direct three more Bond films) directed the screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, from the Ian Fleming novel.

The story centers around Goldfinger’s plot to rob Fort Knox, and since U.S. authorities would not allow anyone inside the national mint, even for research purposes, the brilliant production designer Ken Adam (who designed several of the Bond pictures and won two Oscars, including one for Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) used pure imagination to build the set at Pinewood Studios outside London.

The film was also the first Bond movie to introduce a series of elaborate gadgets, including an Aston Martin DB5, that helped Bond to foil his adversaries. Stunt coordinator Bob Simmons played a crucial role in orchestrating the spectacular fight scenes, and the movie was the first Bond film to win an Oscar—for sound effects editing.

The film’s budget was $3 million, which was the cost of the first two Bond movies (Dr. No and From Russia With Love) combined, and it made back its cost after just two weeks in release. Interest was so high in December 1964 that the DeMille Cinema in New York stayed open for 24 hours straight to accommodate the crowds.

Reviews were also enthusiastic. In London Derek Prouse of the Sunday Times called it “superbly engineered…most entertainingly preposterous,” and the Guardian hailed “the most exciting, the most extravagant of the Bond films.”

Donald Zec of the Daily Mirror added, “Ken Adam’s set designs are brilliant.”

In the United States, Boxoffice Magazine praised the film as “so cleverly directed at breakneck speed by Guy Hamilton that patrons scarcely have time to catch their breath.”

For this special screening, enjoy a Bond trivia contest and other fun extras. And you might want to have a martini before the show. “Shaken, not stirred,” of course.

Our 55th anniversary screening of GOLDFINGER begins at 7pm on Monday, December 30th at the Laemmle Royal in West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

After a 45-Year Run, Laemmle to Leave the Music Hall.

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With a wistful acknowledgement that all things must pass, Laemmle Theatres announces that Thursday, November 21, 2019 will be our last day screening movies at the Music Hall. We began operating the theater in 1974 and have shown literally thousands of movies from all over the planet. Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE was one of the first films we played there. LA CAGE AUX FOLLES and MY LIFE AS A DOG were hits at the Music Hall. One tiny highlight of countless funny highlights was Jason Schwartzman standing on the desk in the tiny office behind the box office in 1999 to autograph the RUSHMORE poster on the wall with “Rock on, Music Hall! Jason Schwartzman.”

Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle said, “It has been my family’s privilege to operate the Music Hall for 45 years but it’s time to end our stewardship. For the sake of efficiency, we plan to use the other screens in our circuit to provide a platform for the types of films we’ve been showing in Beverly Hills.”

There is a distinct possibility of a renaissance, and movies and moviegoers will return to 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, but if it happens it will be after a hiatus and with different operators.

Check out CinemaTreasures.org for some history of the Music Hall.