Greg Laemmle Archives – Laemmle Theatres

From ‘Cutting Through Rocks’ to ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’: Two Oscar-Nominated Portraits of Courage and Willpower

February 24, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Two of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature could hardly be more different in setting or scale—one unfolding in a remote Iranian village, the other in the intimate spaces of a Colorado home—yet both pulse with urgency, personality, and the stubborn insistence on living fully.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear directors Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Ryan White discuss their latest films with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch them in person when Cutting Through Rocks returns to the Laemmle Royal on February 26th, kicked off by a live Q&A with Eyni after the 7 p.m. showing, followed by Come See Me in the Good Light on February 28th, beginning with a pair of Q&As featuring Ryan White following the Saturday night and Sunday matinee showings at the Laemmle Noho.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s Cutting Through Rocks introduces us to Sara Shahverdi, a headscarf-clad former midwife in northwest Iran who opens the film wrestling a metal door back into place with a buzzsaw. It’s an image that doubles as a thesis, as Shahverdi has spent her life defying expectations: riding motorcycles, working construction, advocating for girls’ education, and pushing back against child marriage in a deeply conservative region. When she runs for village council, hoping to become its first elected councilwoman, the film embeds with her over several years, capturing both the grassroots thrill of her campaign and the backlash that follows.

Shahverdi is no abstract symbol; she’s charismatic, funny, impatient, and strategic. She rallies women in living rooms, challenges men in council chambers, and leverages her past as a midwife into political capital. The result is a rousing, clear-eyed portrait of incremental revolution, proving Shahverdi’s own personal mantra that, sometimes, one small step can make all the difference in the world.

If Cutting Through Rocks is about carving space within rigid systems, Come See Me in the Good Light turns inward, illuminating the interior landscape of love and mortality. Directed by Ryan White, the film follows celebrated spoken word poet Andrea Gibson and their longtime partner writer Megan Falley after Gibson is diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer. Yet what might sound like familiar “cancer documentary” terrain quickly becomes something far more singular: funny, profane, luminous, and fiercely alive.

Gibson, once a touring poet who commanded stages like a rock star, meets their illness not with platitudes but with radical candor. The film moves between chemotherapy appointments and kitchen-table laughter, between whispered fears and bawdy jokes. The lovers measure life in three-week increments between blood tests, yet refuse to surrender their intrinsic biases toward joy. White interweaves archival performance footage with scenes of present-day intimacy, building toward a final public reading that lands with the emotional force of a championship game.

Taken together, these two nominees remind us not only of the documentary genre’s extraordinary range, but of the commonalities that unite us from across the world. Catch these Oscar-nominated documentaries back on the big screen at Laemmle Theatres and see for yourself why they’re among the year’s most celebrated nonfiction films.

‘Starman’ and the Case for Cosmic Curiosity

February 10, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Robert Stone’s documentary Starman is a reflective, wonder-driven journey through the history of space exploration, scientific imagination, and one of humanity’s most enduring questions: Are we alone? Rather than building a conspiracy or chasing sensational revelations, the film takes a more intimate and philosophical route, centering on one remarkable figure—NASA engineer, mission planner, and science-fiction collaborator Gentry Lee—and using his life and outlook as a guide through decades of cosmic discovery.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse on February 11th to hear Gentry Lee and Robert Stone discuss their mind-expanding documentary with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or come to the Laemmle Glendale for a series of post-viewing Q&As running February 13-16th.

Now in his eighties, Lee proves an unexpectedly magnetic on-screen presence. Sharp, funny, and visibly thrilled by the prospect of the unknown, he serves as the film’s narrator and emotional anchor. His career connects him directly to many of NASA’s landmark achievements, including the Viking missions to Mars and the Galileo mission to Jupiter, as well as creative collaborations with Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke. Through Lee, the film links the technical realities of planetary science with the imaginative power of science fiction, showing how each has fueled the other’s progress across the generations.

Starman unfolds largely through extended conversations with Lee, interwoven with rich archival footage and a wide-ranging visual collage: historic NASA imagery, cultural touchstones from classic science-fiction films, television broadcasts, and deep-space photography. The result is less a straight chronological history than a flowing meditation on curiosity, ambition, and perspective. The documentary repeatedly returns to the emotional impact of first contact with cosmic imagery: the transformative power of seeing Earth from afar, the shock of planetary landscapes, and the strange mix of triumph and anticlimax that followed the initial moon landing.

At its most interesting, Starman wrestles with ambiguity. Lee openly embraces uncertainty about extraterrestrial life, arguing that the absence of proof is not a disappointment but rather a motivation to continue searching. One of his recurrent ideas—that advanced civilizations may be rare not because they never arise, but because they don’t last—gives the film a quiet philosophical edge. Space exploration, in this view, becomes a mirror held up to Earth: a reminder of our fragility, responsibility, and intrinsically shared fate.

Gentler and more personal than most modern space documentaries, Starman aims less to dazzle than to rekindle, inviting viewers not just to look outward, but to rediscover the nearly forgotten thrill of simply looking up.

“Full of extraordinary footage, Robert Stone’s blissed-out mind-bender of a movie meditates on the possibilities of life in the universe.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“[Gentry Lee] commands the screen every time he is on it telling stories about his involvements with the space program as well as his associations with some of the greatest scientific and science fiction writers of all time.” – Dan Pal, PalCinema

‘The Love That Remains’: Comedy, Melancholy, and the Strange Work of Letting Go

February 3, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

With The Love That Remains, Hlynur Pálmason shifts gears from the icy severity of Godland and the simmering grief of A White, White Day to deliver a warm yet quietly devastating portrait of a family learning how to (co-)exist after a marriage ends. Set against Iceland’s imposing yet luminous landscapes, the film follows a separated couple and their three children across the uneasy months following their split, blending domestic realism with eccentric surrealism to capture the strange emotional limbo that follows love’s collapse. Both gently comic and deeply melancholic, the film becomes less about the breakup itself than about what persists in the wake of its dissolution: habit, tenderness, resentment, and the stubborn bonds that refuse to vanish on schedule.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse on February 4th to hear Pálmason discuss his latest work with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its debut at the Laemmle Royal and Glendale theaters beginning February 6th.

Rather than tracing a traditional narrative arc, Pálmason presents a series of vignettes that drift between everyday routine and flights of imagination. Magnus, or Maggi (Sverrir Gudnason), works long stretches aboard a fishing trawler, returning home to a family life that no longer fully includes him. His estranged wife Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir), an artist attempting to push her work into larger spaces, appears steadier but no less burdened, balancing her creative ambitions with the emotional labor of parenting children still adjusting to their new reality.

Their interactions carry an awkward familiarity: shared meals, casual conversations, lingering frustrations, and moments when their prior intimacy briefly resurfaces. But Pálmason repeatedly interrupts these naturalistic scenes with flashes of surreal humor and dreamlike invention: a monstrous rooster stalks Magnus’s nightmares, an art-world charlatan meets an exaggerated fate, and a medieval sword drops inexplicably from the sky beside the children’s play area. These moments lighten the film’s tone while also underscoring the emotional chaos lurking beneath its surface, reflecting how heartbreak rarely unfolds in tidy, realistic beats.

Shot by Pálmason himself on richly textured film stock, the Icelandic landscapes become more than mere scenic backdrops, but dynamic entities that mirror the characters’ emotional isolation while offering tantalizing glimpses of calm and continuity. Everyday play, family pets, and the rhythms of work and weather continue even as adult relationships falter.

What makes The Love That Remains so affecting is its refusal to offer easy resolution. Instead, Pálmason captures the uncomfortable truth that love does not simply disappear—It mutates, lingers, and occasionally resurfaces in unexpected forms. The result is a film that is tender, odd, and quietly profound, finding humor and grace in the messy process of learning how to live with the fractured pieces of our best-laid plans.

“There’s a deceptive sweetness to [its] simple, hypnotic rhythms.” – Clint Worthington, RogerEbert.com

“Pálmason’s fourth feature is an album of achingly felt, morbidly funny and increasingly haywire scenes from a marriage.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

A Private Life: Rebecca Zlotowsky’s Unlikely Psychological ‘Whodunit’

January 13, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life, a delightfully hard-to-classify mystery-thriller starring actress Jodie Foster in her most significant French-language role in decades, offers a uniquely human story of doubt, memory, and emotional reckoning. Set largely in Paris, the movie follows Lilian Steiner, an American psychoanalyst whose ordered professional life begins to unravel after the unexpected death of one of her long-term patients. What unfolds is less a conventional mystery than a richly layered exploration of how we process loss, guilt, identity, and the private truths we carry inside us.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Zlotowski discuss her latest work with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its opening at the Laemmle Royal on January 16th.

The narrative begins with Lilian’s professional and personal worlds colliding when her patient is pronounced dead by suicide. Convinced that there’s more to the story, she launches an investigation that moves from psychological inquiry to sleuthing through records, recordings, and personal interactions.

Foster’s performance is central to the film’s distinctive tone. While A Private Life marks her first French-language leading role, it builds on a long (if intermittent) history of working in French cinema, including smaller but memorable appearances in the likes of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement (2004). That experience shows in the ease and precision of her delivery here, grounding Lilian’s twitchy intelligence, emotional restraint, and gradual unraveling in a performance that feels fully at home in its Parisian setting. Daniel Auteuil complements her with a weathered, effortless presence as Gabriel, a foil and ex-partner whose familiarity with Lilian underscores the film’s thematic interests in memory, connection, and the stories we tell ourselves about the people we once loved.

Zlotowski’s direction embraces a playful ambiguity: flirting with Hitchcockian suspense, nodding at noir tropes, and even indulging in quirky dreamlike sequences that blur the boundary between reality and invention. Yet the heart of the film remains firmly in the relationships at its core, particularly the tentative reconnection between Lilian and Gabriel, as well as Lilian’s growing self-awareness as she interrogates what motivates her own desperate search for truth.

Both visually and tonally, the film feels Parisian in spirit: elegant stairwells, warm café interiors, and a palette that supports both the introspective melancholy and the lighter, more compassionate moments shared between its characters. With its distinctive blend of mystery, comedy, drama, and character study, A Private Life offers audiences something all-too-uncommon: a story that entertains while inviting reflection on how the inner lives we guard shape the lives we live.

“A throwback to the sort of character-driven dramas that defined Foster’s early career.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“A genial, preposterous psychological mystery caper.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

The Weight of History: Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You

January 6, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In All That’s Left of You, writer-director Cherien Dabis crafts an expansive, emotionally grounded portrait of a Palestinian family shaped by decades of displacement, political upheaval, and inherited memory. Spanning more than seventy years, the film situates an intimate domestic story within the broader arc of Palestinian history, tracing how the consequences of one violent moment ripple backward and forward across generational lines.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear director Cherien Dabis discuss her latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its return to Laemmle Theatres beginning January 8th at the Royal, kicked off by a series of live Q&A sessions with Dabis moderated by actors Mark Ruffalo, Tatiana Maslany, and Diego Luna over its first three days, before expanding to the Town Center on January 16th.

The narrative begins with a Palestinian teenager living in the Occupied West Bank who is swept into a protest that turns suddenly and irrevocably violent. Yet rather than centering on the incident itself, the film unfolds through the voice of the boy’s mother, who recounts the personal and political forces that brought her family to this precise moment in time. From there, All That’s Left of You moves fluidly across the generations, returning to earlier chapters of family life—the loss of a home, the pressures of occupation, the persistence of love and routine—while showing how each generation carries both the scars and the hopes of those who came before.

Dabis approaches this sweeping material with a focus on the textures of daily life. Weddings, meals, schooldays, and quiet conversations are given as much weight as moments of historical rupture. The effect is cumulative and deeply affecting: history presented not as abstraction, but as something that fundamentally reshapes families from the inside out.

Visually, All That’s Left of You balances intimacy with scope, grounding its political context in faces, gestures, and lived-in spaces. The performances, including masterful contributions from members of the Bakri acting family, bring an intergenerational authenticity to the story, emphasizing continuity as much as loss.

At once a family chronicle and a political testimony, All That’s Left of You refuses simplification. It does not ask viewers to look away from pain, nor does it reduce its characters to symbols. Instead, it offers a sustained act of bearing witness: to a family, to a history, and to the enduring emotional cost of dispossession. By the time the film returns to its opening moment, that act of violence is no longer isolated, but has been integrated as part of a long, unfinished story whose consequences are still unfolding.

“A moving and intimate narrative about the toll displacement takes on generations of people.” – Lovia Gyarke, The Hollywood Reporter

“[A] considered, moving tale that effectively blends the personal and the political.” – Allan Hunter, Screen Daily

Father Mother Sister Brother: Jim Jarmusch’s Quiet Meditation on Family Ties

January 6, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, winner of the coveted Golden Lion at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, offers a signature turn from one of independent cinema’s most distinctive voices, culminating in a gentle, contemplative triptych that quietly observes the tangled, often unspoken dynamics between children and their parents. Opening January 9th at the Laemmle Monica, Claremont, NoHo, and Glendale theaters, the film invites audiences into three subtly interconnected stories about siblings, aging, and legacy, all rendered with the iconoclastic filmmaker’s characteristic blend of wit, understatement, and emotional precision. Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Jarmusch discuss his latest work with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its debut.

Structured in three chapters set in New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris, Father Mother Sister Brother foregrounds ordinary domestic encounters over flashy, overt drama. In the first story, adult siblings Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) make a quiet, tentative journey to visit their widowed father (Tom Waits) at his remote home, negotiating the awkwardness and muted affection that define long years of estrangement. Jarmusch’s direction attends closely to how the three characters move and speak around one another, revealing a lifetime of shared history through pauses, glances, and half-finished thoughts.

The second segment moves to Dublin, where an accomplished novelist (Charlotte Rampling) receives her rarely-seen daughters Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) for an annual tea. Here, the emotional choreography is just as rife: politeness, competition, and unspoken disappointment circulate beneath measured exchanges, offering a quietly sharp exploration of how adult relationships with parents can continue to bear the marks of youth.

In the final story, set in Paris, twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) sift through their deceased parents’ belongings, reminiscing and confronting the traces of the lives that shaped them. Minimalist but resonant, this segment emphasizes memory, loss, and the ways shared history lingers in objects and quiet conversations.

While some viewers may find Jarmusch’s pared-back rhythms and emphasis on silence challenging, the film’s rewards lie in its textured, patient observation of ordinary life and its capacity to reflect shared human experience without forcing tidy resolutions. The cast—a blend of longtime Jarmusch collaborators and fresh faces—brings this world to life with subtle (yet thematically crucial) commonalities, underscoring the film’s unstated hypothesis that, whatever differences may exist between us, family dynamics follow a universal language.

In a cinematic landscape that often equates drama with spectacle, Jarmusch’s latest anthology stands apart as a humane, reflective study of the ties that bind us—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes silently, but always with a strange, persistent tenderness.

“What makes the triptych of thematically connected snapshots memorable is its deftly unfussy observation of the unknowability that can endure among people who share the same bloodlines.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“[The film’s] laid-back, liquid rhythms are a perfect mood-setter for a film that also understands that loving someone doesn’t mean you know them all that well.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

Greg Laemmle’s Top Ten Movies of 2025

December 31, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

I’m still trying to make sense of 2025. The year in general, and the year in film. After the pandemic shut down and the Hollywood strikes, the mantra for many in the exhibition business was to, “survive to ’25,” with the feeling that this was the year we would get past the hangover of those twin impacts. But sadly, the year ended up being marked by a number of Hollywood films that provided more hype than actual entertainment. On top of that, a number of indie and art films – in my opinion – suffered from filmmaker overreach. I’m hoping that in 2026, producers (and editors) will feel empowered to rein in some of this, so that audiences can get more films that are both enjoyable and illuminating.

As for overall trends, the North American box office is going to come in just shy of $9 billion. It would have been nice to cross that number, but we did get close, and we did have a slight increase over 2024. Numbers are still down about 20% (plus or minus) on pre-pandemic levels, but showing some strength. People still want to see movies in movie theatres. There just needs to be a more consistent supply of diverse genres to engage different audiences. Maybe we can get there in 2026. Or maybe we will see a further decline in production as we see one of our legacy studios get folded into another company.

: Frankenstein

I still love seeing movies in a movie theatre. I believe there are others like me out there. As I type this, people are buying tickets to see Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and the latest Knives Out installment, WAKE UP DEAD MAN even though these pictures have been out on platforms for weeks. Why? Because the best way to see a movie is in a movie theatre. You’re not escaping into another world when you sit on your couch. That’s more like hiding from reality. Getting out of the house. Sharing space with strangers. Fully turning yourself over the storyteller. That’s what happens when you see a movie the way it is meant to be seen. So thank you to those who are back regularly. And to those who haven’t fully returned, this is a good time to resolve to try something different in the new year.

For me (and in alphabetical order), here were the Top 10 movies of 2025.

ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU – Filmmaker Cherien Dabis has every reason to be angry about how her family was displaced during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. And to be sure, there is pain and anguish in her multi-generational tale that spans 70 years in a family story. But there is also more understanding and empathy than I can recall in any other film on the same subject. And with three members of the Bakri family in key roles, including the amazing Mohammad Bakri who recently passed away, the film provides a master class in acting. Shortlisted for the Best International Feature Oscar, this one is, in my opinion, the finest foreign language film of the year.

BLACK BAG – There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing a master filmmaker craft a well-oiled genre picture. And in BLACK BAG, Steven Soderbergh is at the top of his game. This tightly paced spy thriller may not have a lot to say about world affairs and such. But at just a hair over 90 minutes, the film is tightly constructed, well acted, and a fun watch.

: Blue Sun Palace

BLUE SUN PALACE – A beautiful film about the loneliness and displacement of the immigrant experience. The film features a trio of amazing performances, led by veteran actor Lee Kang-sheng, and marks first time director Constance Tsang as someone to watch.

DEAD MAN’S WIRE – Where many veteran directors delivered interesting but bloated films this year, director Gus van Sant, working from a terrific script by Austin Kolodney, reminds us with DEAD MAN’S WIRE what a terrific filmmaker he is. Based on a true story of an armed kidnapping, the film is packed with great acting, led by Bill Skarsgard in the lead role. So far, this one hasn’t gotten a lot of Oscar buzz. But it deserves it, so I encourage you to search it out as it goes wider in January.

DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT – Veteran actress Embeth Davidtz worked both behind and in front of the camera with this story of white farmers in post-colonial Rhodesia. Based on a popular memoir by Alexandra Fuller, the film features perhaps the year’s best performances by a child actor.

: Ghost Trail

GHOST TRAIL – One of the year’s moviegoing highlights for me was catching this film in March at a Rendezvous With French Cinema screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Director Jonathan Millet, a documentarian making his first feature, delivers a Hitchcockian thriller with this story of a Syrian refugee in France trying to track down their former torturers from the Assad regime. Ignored by major critics, this one truly deserves another look.

THE PLAGUE – Charlie Polinger’s debut feature really floored me. Working with a cast of unknown young actors, Polinger tells a story of pre-adolescent bullying that is deeply resonant of his experiences as a kid, but also with much to say about our current political and cultural moment. With great cinematography, some of the year’s best sound design, and other technical achievements, this may be the one of the best debut features of the year.

PREDATORS – My favorite documentary of the year. Since it didn’t make the Academy’s short list, I guess I didn’t see enough docs this year. Or maybe this film was just hit some viewers in an uncomfortable way. While the film does not spare from scrutiny the folks who created the To Catch a Predator TV-series, it also confronts us as audience members with our role in turning the pursuit of justice into entertainment.

: A Private Life

A PRIVATE LIFE – A curious blend of romance, mystery and comedy, Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language picture may not be the tightest film of the year story-wise. But I still found enough to enjoy that I saw it twice, and am ready to go back for a third helping. Stars Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil have perhaps the best on-screen chemistry of any screen couple this year, delivering a totally believable portrayal of a divorced couple rekindling the spark.

SORRY, BABY – Distributor A24 is ending the year on a high note with the box office success of MARTY SUPREME. But for me, this is the best film they had on their schedule in 2025, and I just wish they had been able to get more people to see when it came out in the summer. Eva Victor writes, directs and stars in this comedy, which deftly combines humor with a dark and difficult storyline.

: Song Sung Blue

Honorable Mentions – RENTAL FAMILY and SONG SUNG BLUE . Telling a sentimental story on screen may seem like something easy. But it isn’t. The Hallmark Channel may have a monopoly on telling formulaic stories, but these two films delight in appealing to our emotions without being manipulative or insulting. I encourage you to see them both. And it’s OK if you get a little misty eyed. We all need a good cry every now and then.

–Greg Laemmle.

Calling All Laemmle Moviegoers! Submit Your Top 5 Films of 2025

December 31, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 3 Comments

As another incredible movie year comes to a close, we want to hear from you. What were your five favorite films of 2025?

Critics everywhere are weighing in—from major outlets like Variety, IndieWire, Rolling Stone, TIME, the LA Times, and beyond—but now it’s your turn to have a say. Whether your list leans arthouse, international, documentary, studio spectacle, or something gloriously unclassifiable, we want to know what films moved, thrilled, challenged, and/or stuck with you long after the credits rolled.

Was it Josh Safdie’s ballsy sports dramedy Marty Supreme? Ryan Coogler’s vampiric period piece Sinners? Paul Thomas Anderson’s screwball adventure One Battle After Another? Richard Linklater’s cinephile dream Nouvelle Vague? Or something quieter, stranger, or more under-the-radar that critics missed but you didn’t? Consensus is optional—conviction is not.

Submit your personal ‘Top 5 Films of 2025’ by clicking here and you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win one of three $25 Laemmle Gift Cards, perfect for future movie nights, concessions, or merch. One entry per person, open to everyone, and no wrong answers (we promise).

In addition to the contest, all submissions will be tallied and compiled into a Laemmle Patrons’ Top 10 Films of 2025: a collective snapshot of what our audience loved most this year, beyond critics’ lists and awards chatter.

Need inspiration? Feel free to browse the many year-end lists circulating from critics and publications, but don’t feel bound by consensus. This is about your year in movies: the films you championed, revisited, debated, or maybe even defended passionately in the lobby afterward.

We can’t wait to see what rises to the top. Lights down, pens up—Let’s make some lists. 🎬

Explore some sample lists from…