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Enter our Top Five Films of 2024 contest! Bonus: Read Greg Laemmle’s list.

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Can you name your five favorite films released last year? Enter our contest here, use our handy-dandy drop-down menus to quickly choose five, and you’ll automatically be entered into a raffle to win a gift card! Also, we’ll create an overall customer top ten list from all the entries.  In case you need your memory jogged, Greg Laemmle composed the following:
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“I’m actually kind of glad that we are only asking for everyone’s five favorite films this year.  Yes, we will compile all the submissions and ultimately turn it into a Laemmle Patron Top 10 list, so maybe that’s a cheat. But as I sit here looking at my top films from 2024, it’s actually kind of helpful to try to distinguish between the films that are merely really good, and the ones that are most memorable.
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“First, I need to confess that even though I am the person responsible for selecting which films we are going to exhibit, I admit that there are films we are playing (or have played) that I did not see myself. I try to see everything, but it’s not always possible. Also, I have this “thing” about seeing films in a movie theatre and not at home, which makes it doubly hard to see everything. So if you don’t see THE BRUTALIST, EMILIA PÉREZ or THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (among others) on my list, it’s not because I didn’t care for these critical and awards favorites. It’s because I still need to catch up with them at an actual screening.
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“If I could submit a Top 10 list, it would likely include ANORA, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, CONCLAVE, DIDI, DUNE: PART TWO, THELMA or VERMIGLIO. These, and others, are all really good. And on another day or in another situation, they might even crack the Top 5. But as I sit here typing at this moment in time, I believe the following are the five movies from 2024 that will most stick with me.
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“#5 – HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS – Without a doubt, the film that had me laughing the most in 2024. Yes, it is perhaps a bit overstuffed with gags. But hey, they didn’t exactly have a budget for test screenings. Whatever the filmmakers of this indie gem lacked in dollars, though, was more than made up by their ingenuity and verve. I’m worried about what could happen to filmmakers like Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews if they are not supported in the studio system. But also really excited to see what kind of energy they could pump into a Marvel-type film. So go ahead, Hollywood. Give them the keys to the hot rod and see what happens. Whatever it is, it won’t be cookie-cutter boring.
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“#4 – PARADISE IS BURNING – This little gem deserved a lot more attention, and it is hard to understand why it was basically ignored when released at the tail end of summer. Director Mika Gustafson was awarded the Best Director prize at the Venice Film Festival when the film premiered in 2023, along with Best First Film prize at the subsequent London Film Festival. But when released stateside, it was ignored by both the New York Times and the local rag. That’s a real shame, because this tale of three sisters growing up in quasi-feral conditions in Sweden is the real deal, with a trio of young performers who will knock your socks off.
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“#3 – GAUCHO GAUCHO. Co-directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s previous film was the Oscar-nominated film THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS, which was one of the first films we showed on reopening the theaters in April 2021. And what a great film that was. But GAUCHO GAUCHO is even more beautiful to look at. It is incredibly frustrating that the film was barely available in theatres. Hopefully there will be more opportunities to see it on the big screen down the road. In the meantime, you should be able to find it on the new Jolt streaming service. It’s relatively short, so just hide your phone, lock away your remote after hitting play, and allow yourself to be immersed in this beautiful documentary. You won’t be sorry.
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“#2 – HARD TRUTHS. This isn’t necessarily an easy film. Director Mike Leigh drops us into this film about family dynamics mid story and maybe leaves us without a typical ending too. But he has clearly worked with his cast to create such an extensive backstory for each and every actor, that it just doesn’t matter. Or at least, it didn’t matter to me. If there is any justice in the world, Marianne Jean-Baptiste will be rewarded with an Oscar nomination for her work in this film.
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“#1 – I’M STILL HERE. Fernanda Torres may have been a surprise winner of the Best Actress in a Drama prize at the Golden Globes. But after seeing this film, you will understand why the Globe voters went with her over better-known nominees. She delivers the truest, most lived-in performance of any screen performer this year, and she is superbly aided in this by director Walter Salles, working from a screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega. At this point, it would be a shock if the film is not nominated for the Best International Feature prize.  But if it were up to me, it would be competing for Best Film.”

New weekly series: Worldwide Wednesdays! Great new films from around the globe.

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Laemmle Theatres is pleased to announce our new weekly series of fresh international films, Worldwide Wednesdays. See below for the current schedule. Some are older films enjoying new restorations, but most are newer obscure films that we want to bring to a broader L.A. audience. Putting them in a weekly series format will hopefully help with create more awareness and help overcome the absence of what used to be a reliable marketing platform for smaller foreign films like these, critics’ reviews in the L.A. Times Calendar section. Also this format allows the films to play in multiple venues all over L.A. County rather than forcing interested audiences to schlep to a single location. The films, however, come from many thousands of miles away!
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January 22, 25 & 26, Eat the Night, France, 2024 ~ Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever) is a bittersweet, apocalyptic love story with a modern MMORPG twist.

January 29, February 1 & 2, Oceans are the Real Continents, Cuba/Italy, 2023 ~ Three stories of migration, exile, and memory develop in the Cuban town of San Antonio De Los Baños, a place that time forgot. Alex and Edith, a young couple in their 30s, build their lives upon small gestures, reminisces, and a deep connection amidst the nation’s ruins. Milagros survives selling peanut cones on the street, spending her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Nine-year-old best friends Frank and Alain go to school and dream of emigrating to the U.S. to become baseball players.

February 5, 8 & 9, Sujo, Mexico/France/USA, 2024 ~ After a sicario is murdered, four-year-old Sujo is left orphaned and at risk. With his aunt’s help, he survives in the isolated countryside, facing hardship and danger tied to his identity. As a teenager, he rebels and joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo seeks to escape his violent past, but when his father’s legacy resurfaces, he confronts the fate that seems destined for him.

February 12, 15 & 16, Ma Mère, France/Portugal/Austria/Spain, 2004 ~ Ma Mère takes place in the Canary Islands, where the film’s family shares a home. The mother Hélène (Isabelle Huppert), cool and in charge, and her teenaged son Pierre (Louis Garrel), a pious Catholic back from boarding school, discuss his father’s infidelity; the next they learn that he has died in a car crash. Hélène launches into a wild series of parties, gradually involving her son in her drugging, drinking and sex-fueled nights out.

February 19, 22 & 23, The Blond Boy from Casbah, France, 2023 ~ Filmmaker Antoine travels to his birthplace, Algiers, with his young son to present his new film: an account of his childhood in mid-20th century Algeria during the country’s civil war. As he wanders through the city, the filmmaker immerses us in the moments of happiness, laughter, and tears of his childhood – spent between school, friends, and his Jewish family. Growing up in the final moments of Algeria’s pre-independence period, the young Antoine discovers his profound fascination with cinema and starts to understand who he truly is.

February 26, 29 & 30, Amal, Belgium, 2023 ~ Amal is a powerful film by acclaimed Belgian-Moroccan director Jawad Rhalib, is a thought-provoking drama that explores the transformative power of education and self-expression. The title character is a teacher who courageously confronts fundamentalism through literature, offering a moving exploration of courage and compassion. Starring Lubna Azabal (The Blue Caftan, Incendies), Fabrizio Rongione (Two Days, One Night), and Catherine Salée (The Unknown Girl), Amal tackles urgent themes of identity, tolerance, and acceptance.

March 5, 8 & 9, My Motherland, France, 2023 ~ The celebrated actress Fanny Ardant plays the role of France, a wealthy Frenchwoman living alone in her Parisian apartment since the death of her husband. When she hears on the radio that the Singa association puts homeless migrants in contact with people who can take them in, she decides, against the advice of her friends and family, to take in Reza, a young Hazara Afghan refugee. Directed by Benoit Cohen, My Motherland is based on his own book Mohammad, My Mother, and Me, which is based on his mother’s experience welcoming a young Afghan refugee. This deeply personal film beautifully captures the complexities of navigating identity and belonging.

March 12, 15 & 16, Born for You, Italy, 2023 ~ Born for You tells the moving true story of Luca, a single gay Catholic man who in 2017 adopted Alba, a child with Down syndrome who was abandoned in the hospital shortly after being born. Thirty heterosexual families rejected her before the court decided to entrust her to him: with him, the legal foster care register for singles was inaugurated in Italy. Luca was, in fact, the first case in Italy of a single, gay person successfully adopting a daughter. But his was not a charitable gesture, nor to fight a system set against him and others like him: he simply wanted a family.

April 16, 19 & 20, Love Hotel, Japan, 1985 ~ Newly restored! A tale of two broken souls. A call-girl named Yumi, “night-blooming flower,” and Tetsuro, a married man with a debt to the yakuza, have a violent rendezvous in a cheap love hotel. Years later, haunted by the memory of that night, they reconnect and begin a strange love affair. Determined to finish what they started, they return to the scene of their first macabre passion. With a taste for wicked absurdity and coursing with undercurrents of operatic emotion, at times veering into near-musical territory, Love Hotel is moved by the irrational forces that attract two bodies together. It’s a film with a uniquely materialist sense of eros manifested in Shinji Somai’s long takes, each shot a tightrope-like predicament flushed with earthly tension and livewire physicality. Made in the same year as Typhoon Club, this elegiac erotica is one of Somai’s most bewitching and unnervingly romantic works, a high-water mark of Nikkatsu Studio’s legendary Roman Porno cycle of films.

BREAKING AWAY with actors Dennis Christopher and Paul Dooley in person Tuesday, January 14 at the Laemmle NoHo.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning 1979 hit ‘Breaking Away‘ with costar Paul Dooley joining for an in-person Q&A after the screening. The movie earned five Oscar nominations in all, including Best Picture and Best Director for Peter Yates, and it won the Oscar for the Original Screenplay by Steve Tesich. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical of the year, and it won the Writers Guild award for Best Original Screenplay. Many years later, when the American Film Institute compiled a list of the most inspiring movies in history, ‘Breaking Away‘ ranked in the top 10.

Tesich based the script in part on his own experiences at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. The story tells of the bond between four young working-class men raised in the town but unable to afford college. They are scorned by the college students in town and called “cutters” because of their families’ work as stonecutters in the local quarry. The four young men are played by newcomers Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, and Jackie Earle Haley. Christopher’s parents are played by Paul Dooley and Barbara Barrie, and the snooty college kids include actors Hart Bochner and Robyn Douglass.

Christopher’s Dave, the leading character, becomes obsessed with Italian bicycle racers and Italian culture in general, to the dismay of his working-class father, played by Dooley. Eventually he decides to enter the local bicycle race dominated by the college students, and he becomes a symbol to his pals of the possibilities of transcending their humble backgrounds.

Critics were swept up in the story’s inspirational message. Roger Ebert called ‘Breaking Away‘ “a wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin agreed and declared, “Here is a movie so fresh and funny it didn’t even need a big budget or a pedigree.” Variety summarized the overwhelmingly positive reviews, calling the film “a thoroughly delightful light comedy, lifted by fine performances from Dennis Christopher and Paul Dooley.”

Dooley got his start working several times with director Robert Altman on such films as ‘A Wedding,’ ‘Health,’ and he had a leading role in Altman’s offbeat romantic comedy ‘A Perfect Couple.’ In Altman’s musical adaptation of ‘Popeye,’ Dooley played the role of Wimpy. He also costarred in such films as ‘Paternity,’ ‘Sixteen Candles,’ Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Underneath,’ ‘Runaway Bride,’ ‘A Mighty Wind,’ and ‘Happy, Texas.’ He provided one of the voices in the ‘Cars’ animated movies, and he also had prominent roles on such popular TV series as ‘thirtysomething’, ‘My So-Called Life,’ ‘Dream On,’ ‘The Practice,’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’

GAUCHO GAUCHO filmmakers on Inside the Arthouse.

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Acclaimed filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, three-time Sundance honorees who previously took audiences to the secret corners of the Italian countryside in search of white truffles with The Truffle Hunters, recently sat down with Inside the Arthouse hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge to talk about their latest striking nonfiction work. Gaucho Gaucho paints an Argentinian western with images and sounds of operatic beauty, building on their earlier success with The Last Race, a film that explored the last stock car racetrack on Long Island.

Kershaw and Dweck’s focus is now on the vast mountains of Argentina, expressed in stunning black-and-white photography, and a small community of gauchos who hold profound connections to the surrounding nature and their own traditions. As older generations dispense their wisdom, the film keeps its eye toward a new generation which continue to fight for their families’ legacies in a modern world.

“These filmmakers have enormous reserves of love and empathy for traditions that miraculously survive in spite of the modern world. And their compassion has never looked more cinematic.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar

“An affecting tone poem which ruminates on the passage of time and the passing of traditions from one generation to the next.” ~ Tim Grierson, Screen International

Paul Schrader’s moving OH, CANADA, starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, and Jacob Elordi, opens Friday.

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In Paul Schrader’s new film Oh, Canada, which we open Friday at the Monica Film Center, NoHo, and Town Center, Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi play a man at opposite ends of his life, deciding how to live it. Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, and Victoria Hill co-star.

Schrader said this about his film:

“When friend and author Russell Banks (Affliction) took ill I was weighing other story possibilities. I realized that mortality should be the subject. Russell had researched and written a book about dying when he was healthy titled, Foregone. He’d wanted to call it Oh, Canada (there was a conflict with Richard Ford’s Canada), and asked if I would use his original title. So Foregone became Oh, Canada.

“Leonard Fife became a successful documentary filmmaker after fleeing to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Sick and dying in Montreal, he is interviewed by his former students. ‘I made a career out of getting people to tell me the truth,’ he says, ‘Now it’s my turn.'”

 

“Paul Schrader and Richard Gere, reunited for the first time since 1980’s American Gigolo, are at the peak of their powers.” – Chuck Bowen, Slant

“Energized by the reunion of its director, Paul Schrader, and its star, Richard Gere, in their first collaboration since American Gigolo.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Richard Gere gives his best performance in years.” – Hannah Strong, Little White Lies

“Takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning… to sincerely moving effect.” – Justin Chang, The New Yorker 

Culture Vulture 2025 ~ more screenings, more places!

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Our eclectic Culture Vulture series returns this weekend. After ten years of screening filmed theater, opera, ballet/dance, gallery/art, and much more at our Town Center/Encino, Glendale, Monica Film Center/Santa Monica, and Claremont 5 theaters, we are now adding our Newhall theater. What’s more, we will now show the films on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:00 A.M. and Mondays at 7:00 P.M. Tickets are now on sale for the first nine films of the new year:
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February 1-3: Art and Life: The Story of Jim Phillips ~ Embark on the epic ride of Jim Phillips, the genius behind skateboarding and rock culture’s electrifying art. Drawing inspiration from his life in Santa Cruz, California, Jim helped shape the golden era of skateboarding. This documentary explores Jim’s dynamic life and career, showcasing his iconic work that has defined an era and secured his place in modern art history. Jim’s story is a profound narrative of resilience, passion, and enduring artistic vision.
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February 8-10: Perugino: Eternal Renaissance is a journey to discover Perugino, one of the most revered artists of the 15th Century and to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of his death. Journey through Italy to discover his great masterpieces, from the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel to the two rooms entirely dedicated to him in the National Gallery of Umbria. Spectators will be led on a guided discovery of the artist’s harmonious work: a perfect balance between man and nature, realism and idealism, as seen in paintings such as “The Delivery of the Keys” in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, “Lamentation over the Dead Christ” in the Galleria Palatina in Florence, the “Pietà” and “Agony in the Garden” in the Uffizi Gallery.
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February 22-24: Three-time Olivier Award-winner Sharon D. Clarke is joined by Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who; Sex Education) in this joyful reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. While assuming the role of a dutiful guardian in the country, Jack lets loose in town under a false identity. Meanwhile, his friend Algy adopts a similar facade. Hoping to impress two eligible ladies, the gentlemen find themselves caught in a web of lies they must carefully navigate. Max Webster (Life of Pi) directs this hilarious story of identity, impersonation and romance, filmed live at the National Theatre in London.
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March 1-3: Florence and the Uffizi Gallery is a multi-dimensional journey through the city that was the cradle of the Italian Renaissance. Get an exclusive tour through the most beautiful and representative works of art of the period from Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, to Leonardo and Botticelli, with a detailed central chapter dedicated to the treasure house containing their masterpieces: the Uffizi Gallery.
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March 8-10: Welcome to Yiddishland offers an upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists rediscovering and revitalizing the endangered Yiddish language through progressive and provocative creative works. As we journey through Yiddishland—not a homeland, but a heartland without borders—we travel across continents, from Melbourne to Berlin, New York to Haifa, meeting a diverse array of individuals who find solace, identity, and inspiration in Yiddish language and culture.
March 15-17: Utilizing the third act motifs of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters as a jumping off point, Dmitry Krymov’s Fragment focuses in on Olga (Samanta in this production), the eldest of the three sisters. Like many of Chekhov’s heroes who attempt to overcome fate, she is doomed to fail, but it is in the attempt itself that she becomes so close and dear to the audience. Ultimately, we empathize with and love this very recognizable person who can’t adequately protect herself, her love, or her home.
March 22-24: The Dawn of Impressionism ~ What led to that first groundbreaking Impressionists show 150 years ago? Who were the maverick personalities that wielded their brushes in such a radical and provocative way? The spectacular Musée d’Orsay exhibition brings fresh eyes to this extraordinary tale of passion and rebellion. The story is told not by historians and curators but in the words of those who witnessed the dawn of Impressionism: the artists, press and people of Paris, 1874. See the show that changed everything on the big screen. Made in close collaboration with the Musee d’Orsay and National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
March 29-31: Seven-time BAFTA Award-winner Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge, The Trip) plays four roles in the world premiere stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove. When a rogue U.S General triggers a nuclear attack, a surreal race takes place, seeing the Government and one eccentric scientist scramble to avert global destruction. This explosively funny satire is led by a world-renowned creative team including Emmy Award-winner Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, Veep) and Olivier Award-winner Sean Foley (The Upstart Crow, The Play What I Wrote).
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April 5-7: Far Out: Life On and After the Commune traces fifty years in the lives of a group of New England writers, activists and artists. In 1968, in the middle of a left-wing faction fight, a group of radical journalists left New York City for the country, where they became pioneers in the back-to-the-land and organic farming movement. Blending contemporary interviews and a remarkable trove of original archival footage, Far Out is lively, humorous, inspiring and irreverent. The film is vital, telling the history but hewing to the universal themes of how we grapple–over a lifetime–with politics, relationships, morality, spirituality, civic engagement and finding our home.

SABBATH QUEEN, the fascinating new documentary about a radical queer rabbi, opens this week with copious Q&A’s and an Inside the Arthouse interview.

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Sabbath Queen, the new documentary filmed over two decades, follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul—an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation.

Sabbath Queen followsAmichai on his lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult, rapidly
changing 21st century.

“How [Amichai] went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.” ~ Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times

“This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism.” ~ Dennis Harvey, Variety

“The director delicately contextualizes his subject’s desired legacy by threading Lau-Lavie’s harrowing familial history into the narrative.” ~ Robyn Bahr, Hollywood Reporter

The regular engagement starts tomorrow at the Royal, and we are also showing the film December 9 at the NoHo, December 10 and 12 in Glendale, and December 11 at the Town Center. Director Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d) was interviewed for Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge’s Inside the Arthouse podcast (the episode will be out Friday). He and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will participate in Q&A’s at multiple screenings along with special guests.

Thursday, December 5th at 7PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Amy Ziering

Award-winning investigative filmmaker and activist Amy Ziering is the woman behind the last decade’s most important films about sexual assault that have directly impacted American culture and politics. Ziering’s work is a lightning rod for conversation with lauded works such as The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground, The Bleeding Edge, On the Record, and Allen v. Farrow. Ziering is the recipient of countless prestigious awards including an Oscar nomination, two Emmy awards, a Peabody, an Independent Spirit Award, a duPont-Columbia award, and the George Polk Award.

Friday, December 6th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski.

Saturday, December 7th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie with journalist Jessica Yellin.

Jessica Yellin, the founder of News Not Noise. For years, Yellin worked in network news at ABC, MSNBC, and CNN, where she was the Chief White House Correspondent.

Saturday, December 7th, 4pm – 5.45pm
Afternoon SoulSpa led by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie — a meditative spa for soul and body, which is an adaptation of the Shabbat day service into an interactive musical experience which is everybody-friendly and God-optional, offering grounding, gratitude and contemplative conversations to lift up healing and hope. Location in Sawtelle. If you are interested email: [email protected].

Sunday, December 8th Sabbath Queen Editing Masterclass 10:30AM–12:30PM
Francisco Bello ACE, Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Kristin Feely, Sandi DuBowski, Brian Kates ACE
At the Laemmle Royal with Editors/Writers Francisco Bello ACE and Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Editor Kyle Crichton, and director Sandi DuBowski to discuss the process of crafting a longitudinal documentary two decades in the making. Hosted by Brian Kates ACE. Moderated by Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film and Artist Programs, Sundance Institute. In association with Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, ADE, BIPOC Doc Editors, Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship, Documentary Producers Alliance. RSVP here.

Sunday, December 8th at 1:20PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, and Caroline Libresco.
Presented by Jewish Story Partners.

Caroline Libresco is Co-Founder and Head of Granting and Programs of Jewish Story Partners. She is a leading film festival curator, producer, story advisor, and program strategist who recently wrapped nineteen years as a lead programmer at the Sundance Film Festival. Caroline is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where she serves on the Documentary Branch Executive Committee.

Sunday, December 8th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Rabbi Sharon Brous.

Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, author of The Amen Effect, who offered the invocation at the DNC and Women’s March. She was named #1 on the Newsweek / The Daily Beast list of most influential Rabbis in America.

Monday, December 9th at 7PM
Laemmle Noho — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Sabbath Queen composer Joel Goodman.

An Emmy-winner and four-time Emmy nominee known for a deeply nuanced sound filled with intricate subtleties, Goodman’s diverse body of work includes scores to over 150 films and television programs that have received 5 Oscar nominations, 30 Emmy awards and over 40 Emmy nominations. He has scored over 40 films for HBO and composed the Main Theme for the long-running and critically acclaimed PBS series American Experience.

Tuesday, December 10th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Damona Hoffman

Celebrity dating coach Damona Hoffman has been coaching singles on how to find love online and offline for over 15 years. Her articles appear regularly in The LA Times and The Washington Post. Plus, she’s a regular on-air contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show, NPR, and NBC’s Access Daily. Damona also starred in two A+E Networks’ TV shows: #BlackLove and A Question of Love. Her weekly podcast Dates & Mates has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Huff Post, Bustle and tops the charts in the Relationships category on the major podcast platforms.

Wednesday, December 11th at 4PM and 7PM
Laemmle Town Center in Encino — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski at 4pm and Sandi DuBowski and Gabe Dunn at 7pm

Gabe Dunn is an American writer, podcaster, actor, and filmmaker. Since 2014, Dunn has hosted the YouTube comedy show and podcast Just Between Us with fellow former BuzzFeed writer Allison Raskin. Dunn also hosts the podcast Bad with Money, which launched in 2016 and which primarily focuses on personal finances, while also discussing subjects including poverty and economic oppression. Their debut young adult novel I Hate Everyone but You, co-authored with Raskin, was published in 2017 and made The New York Times bestseller list.

Thursday, December 12th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski

Kubrick’s LOLITA ~ Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic.

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Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962)
Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic
Wednesday, December 18, at 7 PM
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
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“How did they ever make a movie of ‘Lolita‘?” Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series help to answer that question — posed in all the advertising for the 1962 release — with a special screening of Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s incendiary novel. The theme of a middle-aged man obsessed with a young teenage “nymphet” was controversial when the book and movie first appeared, and the theme is perhaps even more problematic today.

However, the masterful writing and direction of the film, along with four inspired performances, have continued to keep audiences riveted. James Mason portrays the obsessed professor, Humbert Humbert, and he perfectly captures the lecherousness, unctuousness, hypocrisy, and utter lovestruck vulnerability of a professor in thrall to a sexual compulsion he cannot control. Sue Lyon, in her first starring role, brings off astonishingly varied moods. At times she seems like a whiny, petulant teenager, and at other moments she exudes worldly sophistication. As her mother, the culturally pretentious and needy Charlotte Haze, Shelley Winters gives one of the most scintillating performances of her long career.

But Kubrick’s most brilliant casting coup was choosing Peter Sellers to play Quilty, the villain of the piece who steals Lolita away from Humbert. Sellers had made a splash in a few British films but had yet to reach American movie stardom. His flair for impersonation made him an inspired choice to play Quilty, a master of disguises who torments Humbert in many different incarnations through the course of the story.

In adapting the text, Kubrick and producer James B. Harris chose to veer from the novel and introduce Sellers’ Quilty in the opening scene, as Humbert questions Quilty about his sexual history while the two play a bizarre game of ping-pong. The Saturday Review critic, Hollis Alpert, wrote of this opening scene, “There hasn’t been a scene of equal imaginativeness in movies since, perhaps, ‘Citizen Kane.’” Nabokov himself declared that Kubrick’s opening scene was “a masterpiece” and hailed the film as “absolutely first-rate.”

Although Nabokov received sole credit for the screenplay and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adaptation, the script was heavily rewritten by Kubrick and Harris. While some critics at the time were perplexed by the movie, many of the most perceptive reviewers had high praise. Writing in Partisan Review, Pauline Kael asserted, “It’s the first new American comedy since those great days in the ’40s when Preston Sturges recreated comedy with verbal slapstick. ‘Lolita‘ is black slapstick, and at times it’s so far out that you gasp as you laugh.” Critic Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who also served as special assistant to President Kennedy at the time, wrote in Show magazine that ‘Lolita‘ was “wildly funny and wildly poignant… It is beautiful and it is depraved… Kubrick renders farce and satire and comedy and pathos and melodrama and psychopathology with equal skill.”

The leading critic of the era, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, declared, “The picture has a rare power.” More recently, Leonard Maltin added, “Winters is outstanding as Lyon’s sex-starved mother.” Jon Fortgang of England’s Film4 commented, “’Lolita,’ with its acute mix of pathos and comedy, and Mason’s delivery of Nabokov’s sparkling lines, remains the definitive depiction of tragic transgression.”

Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan, authors of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies, will introduce and discuss the film with the audience. They will also be selling and signing copies of their highly acclaimed book.

P.S.: The subsequent Anniversary Classics screening will be the hugely entertaining Joan Crawford thriller ‘Strait-Jacket‘ on December 30, celebrating its 60th anniversary!