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“One of the most original American thrillers in years,” HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE opens Friday.

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Thrilling film critics (and alarming a Kansas City intelligence agency enough to release a bulletin calling the movie a security threat), we’re excited to open How to Blow Up a Pipeline this Friday at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center and April 21 at the Newhall, NoHo and Claremont.
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“Incendiary and furious, confident and courageous, the new thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline boasts not only the best title of the year so far but also the best score, cast and itchy, charged, electric directorial vision.” ~ Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

“One of the most original American thrillers in years, and one that draws from a deep well of movie history as it develops its characters and sets up its plot twists.” ~ Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

“The way that filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber pulls off what feels like a tightly wound Hollywood potboiler on what we imagine is little more than a studio caterer’s budget is, in itself, a textbook how-to example.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone
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“An incendiary, ticking-clock thriller about a group of self-styled insurgents with echoes of Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves and Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama.” ~ Adam Nayman, The Ringer

“Quirky, touching, and well-played fun,” THE INNOCENT opens April 7 at the Royal.

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Part crime thriller, part family farce, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows with panache and pathos the dangerous lengths two men go for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, a museum educator and widower whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries Michel (Roschdy Zem), one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary. Once on parole Michel tries to start a legitimate life for Sylvie’s sake but soon reverts to his old ways, with the suspicious Abel continually — and ineptly — spying on his stepfather until roped into one of the ex-con’s schemes. Noémie Merlant, wonderful as always, co-stars. We open the film April 7 at the Royal.

“Few caper comedies have this much heart, and few romantic dramas offer such an appealingly nutty plot.” ~ Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

 

“A humanistic story wrapped in a fun, punchy exterior, much like the French synth-pop music throughout its soundtrack.” ~ Claire Shaffer, New York Times

“The Innocent is quirky, touching, and well-played fun.” ~ Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com
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“The Innocent is the first movie of Cannes 2022 to give me that belly aching, knee slapping laughter that I desperately needed.” ~ Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Garrel here delivers a witty and elegantly constructed film that joyfully draws parallels between acting and lying, being and pretending, while remaining breezy, fun, eminently accessible and even welcoming.” ~ Elena Lazic, The Playlist
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Oscar Doc Features – A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS, NAVALNY & ALL THAT BREATHES

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The already formidable 15 films shortlisted for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar have been whittled down to five, and it’s no exaggeration to say they’re all masterpieces that hit about 100 times harder when seen in a theater. People just had a chance to see Fire of Love on Valentine’s Day, and we’ve been playing All the Beauty and the Bloodshed for weeks (but Thursday is the last day!). We are bringing the remaining three to a big screen near you, so now is your chance.
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We’ll have Navalny at the Monica Film Center for 02/24 – 03/02.
A House Made of Splinters plays weekend shows in Glendale (02/25 – 02/26) and at the Royal (03/04 – 03/05).
And we’ll have All that Breathes on March 1 in Glendale and March 2 at the Royal.

“Breathtaking, slow burn, poetic journey” GODLAND opens February 10 at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center.

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The struggle between the strictures of religion and our own brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in Godland, a stunning psychological epic from director Hlynur Pálmason. In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness attuned to both the majesty and terrifying power of the natural world.

We open Godland February 10 at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center.

“This transfixing drama is certainly austere. But there’s also a marvelously odd vein of sneaky humor running through it, along with an unpredictability that keeps you glued.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Godland tells a story of natural wonder, elemental beauty and human folly.” ~ Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“An engrossing account of a voyage to the dark side of permanent daylight.” ~ Wendy Ide, Screen International
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“It’s a breathtaking, slow burn, poetic journey through an utterly gorgeous hell for this Danish missionary-colonialist-photographer.” ~ Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net

“A work of handcrafted beauty,” THE BLUE CAFTAN opens February 10 at the Royal.

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“The blue caftan, both the clothing and the piece of cinema, are crafted like an elegant act of welcome resistance.” ~ Namrata Joshi, New Indian Express
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“Not only about abiding love, but also about a deep, unspoken understanding between two people who are committed to each other.” ~ Shubhra Gupta, Indian Express
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“Touzani has introduced the caftan as a symbol, and it’s touching to see how the film uses it in the end.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety
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“Stunning…working with an intricacy that rivals that of the craftsman at the center of her film, the auteur crafts a surprisingly warm story that subverts expectations at almost every turn.” ~ Christian Zilko, indieWire
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“One of the most visually ravishing pictures of all time,” THE CONFORMIST opens February 3 at the Royal, February 10 at the Laemmle Glendale.

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Never has The Conformist been more timely. The new restoration of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 masterpiece about a repressed Italian who becomes a fascist hitman is inspiring a lot of thoughtful journalism. “It’s not the ideology that attracts people to fascism,” writes Eric Alterman in the American Prospect. “It’s the permission it offers to ordinary people to behave like thugs.” In his recent New York Magazine/Vulture review, headlined “It’s Time to See The Conformist Again,” critic Bilge Ebiri describes the film as “one of the most visually ravishing pictures of all time.” Ebiri’s piece is well worth excerpting at some length:

“All great films, at some point, ask the question: Who am I? The greatest films go beyond asking this on a narrative level; through their very form, they embody the question of identity. And what makes Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) the very greatest of movies isn’t just its staggering, legendary beauty, but its maze-like journey into its protagonist’s — and, by extension, its creator’s — mind.

“The Conformist has just been rereleased in a lovely new 4K restoration, which is certainly cause for celebration given that it’s one of the most visually ravishing pictures of all time. (It’s currently playing New York’s Film Forum, and will soon travel around the country.) There’s no real debate over Bertolucci’s achievement; this is one of those canonical titles whose place in history is a given at this point. You can see its influence in The Godfather series, in Taxi Driver, in movies as varied as Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Dick Tracy, Call Me by Your Name, and Clueless — and yet, it remains as startling and revolutionary as it was upon original release, in part because few filmmakers nowadays are willing to embrace the sensuous and the monstrous at the same time. You never quite know what you’re supposed to feel at any given moment of The Conformist, because it asks you to feel everything.”

  

Some praise from past years:

“Bertolucci’s boldest and most expressive film.” – Calum Marsh, Village Voice

“It’s easy to overlook how stark The Conformist‘s political and allegorical message is because it’s just so damn beautiful.” – Aja Romano, Vox

“One of the greatest-looking movies ever made.” – Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader

“Bernardo Bertolucci is a master of turning harsh realities into free-flowing dreams and fantasies of sex and power into bracing, often uncomfortable moments of truth…The Conformist is perhaps his richest and most beautiful work.” – Max O’Connell, IndieWire

We are proud to open The Conformist at the Royal on February 3 and the Laemmle Glendale on February 10.

Based on Stefan Zweig’s final novella, CHESS STORY “shows how incredibly quickly a seemingly firmly anchored free world can tip over into a dictatorship.”

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Vienna, 1938: Austria is occupied by the Nazis. Dr. Josef Bartok (Oliver Masucci) is preparing to flee to America with his wife Anna when he is arrested by the Gestapo. As a former notary to the deposed Austrian aristocracy, he is told to help the local Gestapo leader gain access to their private bank accounts in order to fund the Nazi regime. Refusing to cooperate, Bartok is locked in solitary confinement. Just as his mind is beginning to crack, Bartok happens upon a book of famous chess games. To withstand the torture of isolation, Bartok disappears into the world of chess, maintaining his sanity only by memorizing every move. As the action flashes forward to a transatlantic crossing on which he is a passenger, it seems as though Bartok has finally found freedom. But recounting his story to his fellow travelers, it’s clear that his encounters with both the Gestapo and with the royal game itself have not stopped haunting him. Adapted with opulent attention to period detail by filmmaker and opera director Philipp Stölzl, Chess Story brings Stefan Zweig’s stirring final novella to life.

Chess Story opens January 20 at the Monica Film Center.

“Stölzl craftily melds the genres of period drama and psychological thriller, not for the purposes of reheated nostalgia, but to shed a cold light on the recursions of historical trauma.” ~ William Repass, Slant Magazine

“The adaptation of Chess Story is one of the rare cases in which the film has not only managed to leave the original behind, but to surpass it. Visually intoxicating.” ~ Süddeutsche Zeitung

“This film…moves because of Oliver Masucci, who acts with fantastic despair. And because of the wonderful Birgit Minichmayr.” ~ Der Spiegel
 

STATEMENT BY DIRECTOR PHILIPP STÖLZL

“I encountered The Royal Game [the alternative title of Chess Story] at a very early age. Zweig’s mysterious and impressive story etched itself into my memory and is one of those stories that have accompanied me in one way or another through my entire life. When Philipp Worm and Tobias Walker told me about their plans to make a new film version, I was delighted, read the screenplay with interest – and loved it.

“Our aim was to make a sensuous, intense feature film that would appeal to a wider audience with a brilliant cast, tight production and powerful visuals that really fill the whole screen. The contrast between claustrophobic imprisonment and the expanse of the ship that pounds across the Atlantic to America through the endless mist creates a field of tension in which Zweig’s literary metaphor can be told as a “big” story.

“The nice thing about the very courageous approach of screenwriter Eldar Grigorian to The Royal Game is that it represents a kind of condensation of the surreal secret that the novella already contains. The Kafkaesque pitch Zweig has chosen for his narrative becomes a decisive inspiration on the journey of the material to the big screen.

“On the one hand there is the intense, restrictive chamber play about the duel between Bartok and Gestapo man Böhm, who interrogates him and has him tortured. Then there is the – seeming – voyage to America and on board the game against the silent and enigmatic world chess champion. The persistent mist gives the journey something surreal, as if the giant ship were a barge of the dead, and the passengers mere ghosts. For this reason, the fact that this all turns out to be a dream in Bartok’s head is not a denouement or a surprise in the traditional sense, but more the final chord of a gloomily poetic tale. And finally, the prisoner’s battle against his own insanity in the solitary confinement cell, which he tries to escape from with his “mental chess” and at the same time achieves the opposite, sliding further in instead. Here, the film is an intense trip, because we are very close to our protagonist and accompany him down into the abyss and mental confusion.

“All these narrative levels are interwoven and initially “make sense.” But the longer Bartok is in solitary confinement and loses touch with reality, the more mysterious things become on the ship, the more the audience also become lost in a labyrinth that resembles an oppressive daydream. To this extent I would say that in this film, Zweig’s more distanced experimental design becomes a cathartic, intense and emotional vexatious game that will hopefully enchain and grip the audience.

“Zweig’s story did not end the way the film does. The bleak, dismal ending of his novella expresses the fear of impending Nazi world rule. We, however, know that it turned out differently, that it became light again after a dark night. And we want the audience to leave the cinema with this meaningful and encouraging certainty.

“The backdrop to all this is the true story about Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. This political level of The Royal Game makes the film timelessly relevant because it shows how incredibly quickly a seemingly firmly anchored free world can tip over into a dictatorship. It tells of how thin the layer of skin of a civilisation is and how close to the surface barbarism lies. And it tells us in this way to be alert.” ~ Philipp Stölzl, 19 October 2020

“If watching a Jafar Panahi film is something of a political act, then it is also a soul-nourishing one.” NO BEARS opens Friday at the Royal, January 20 at the Claremont, Glendale and Town Center.

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A statement from Jafar Panahi, unjustly imprisoned since July 2022 by the fascist theocrats in Tehran:

“We are filmmakers. We are part of Iranian independent cinema. For us, to live is to create. We create works that are not commissioned. Therefore, those in power see us as criminals. Independent cinema reflects its own times. It draws inspiration from society. And cannot be indifferent to it.

“The history of Iranian cinema witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and to ensure the survival of this art. While on this path, some were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence. No matter where, when, or under what circumstances, an independent filmmaker is either creating or thinking about creation. We are filmmakers, independent ones.”

Some of the copious praise for No Bears, the film he finished just before being arrested:

“If watching a Jafar Panahi film is something of a political act, then it is also a soul-nourishing one.” ~ Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

“[Panahi’s] work has not astonished like this in some time.” ~ Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com
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“There’s an urgency and a currency to No Bears that is evident even if you didn’t know Panahi is currently serving a six-year sentence for “producing anti-government propaganda,” both of which add a sting to its final act. You leave feeling like you’ve just seen a truly extraordinary late work produced by one of the era’s greatest working auteurs, quickly followed by the sense of experiencing a sucker punch when you remember that the man driving away from the scene of the crime onscreen isn’t able to go anywhere once that screen fades to black.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone
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“Panahi, whose courage and honesty are beyond doubt, has made a movie that calls those very qualities into question, a movie about its own ethical limits and aesthetic contradictions.” ~ A.O. Scott, New York Times
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“It’s a fierce critique of small-town traditionalism and religious dogma. But while this is an angry and ultimately devastating movie, it’s also a surprisingly playful and inventive one.” ~ Justin Chang, NPR’s Fresh Air
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“There’s no way to watch this film without feeling mournful, or fearing for the man who made it.” ~ Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine