This holiday season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present two sweeping cinematic epics: Oliver Stone’s Nixon and David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, the latter celebrating its 60th anniversary. Though separated by three decades and worlds apart in style, these films form a captivating double feature: one a feverish psychological portrait of American power, the other an expansive romantic epic set against the convulsions of revolutionary Russia. Together, they reflect cinema’s enduring ability to illuminate the human stakes behind history’s most turbulent eras.
Get your tickets today to see Nixon on December 21st, featuring an in-person Q&A with director Oliver Stone alongside author Tim Grieving to discuss his new book on legendary composer John Williams, or Doctor Zhivago on December 30th, both playing at the Laemmle Royal.
Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) remains one of the filmmaker’s boldest achievements. Rather than approaching Richard Nixon as a political symbol, Stone crafts a bruised, haunted character study of a man who carried childhood wounds into the Oval Office. Anthony Hopkins delivers a mesmerizing performance as Nixon, capturing him in all his yearning, paranoia, cunning, and profound isolation. Then there’s John Williams’ brooding, elegant score, which guest speaker Tim Grieving argues ranks among the composer’s most underrated works. His and Stone’s post-screening conversation promises an illuminating look into the film’s creation, its political resonance, and the musical architecture that gives it shape.
Seen nearly three decades after its release, Nixon feels startlingly contemporary, its themes of secrecy, ambition, partisan rage, and the weight of personal demons on public decision-making continuing to echo. Stone’s approach, blending documentary grit with operatic intensity, constructs not a straightforward biopic but a cautionary American tragedy.
If Nixon examines a presidency from the inside out, Doctor Zhivago (1965) offers a radically different but equally powerful meditation on individuals swept into history’s path. Even sixty years after its making, David Lean’s adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize–winning novel remains one of cinema’s most beloved epics: a story of love, revolution, and moral endurance set during Russia’s collapse into modernity. Omar Sharif gives one of his finest performances as Yuri Zhivago, a poet and physician who is forced to navigate the conflicting directives of loyalty, passion, and survival, while Julie Christie’s luminous turn as Lara elevates the film into mythic territory.
Lean’s filmmaking—full of painterly compositions, sweeping landscapes, and meticulous craftsmanship—creates a world that feels both intimate and vast. The film’s visual grandeur is matched by Maurice Jarre’s iconic score, whose themes have become synonymous with cinematic romance. Yet for all its beauty, Doctor Zhivago is fundamentally a story about how political upheaval reshapes the contours of private life, and how love endures even as the world fractures.
Screened across consecutive weekends at the Laemmle Royal, these Anniversary Classics invite audiences to rediscover the emotional, historical, and artistic power of these two landmark films. Whether exploring the shadows of American politics or the passions of a Russia in revolt, Nixon and Doctor Zhivago remind us why great cinema remains one of the profoundest tools we have for understanding both our past and our present.
