Q&A's Archives – Laemmle Theatres

It’s Identity vs. Politics in Chase Joynt’s ‘State of Firsts’

June 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

“Transgender for everyone” is a dog-whistle phrase the current administration frequently uses to scare conservative parents. Yet with additional punctuation, “transgender, for everyone,” it could sum up the campaign of Sarah McBride, the first transwoman elected to Congress. Chase Joynt’s new documentary State of Firsts follows her campaign, its immediate aftermath, and how it changes her along the way.

Catch State of Firsts at the Laemmle Glendale beginning July 2^nd. Director Chase Joynt will participate in Q&As following the 7:30 PM shows on Thursday, July 2 and Friday, July 3, as well as the 3:10 PM show on Sunday, July 5.

Joynt, a professor of gender studies at the University of Victoria, is also an acclaimed documentarian usually focusing on transgender history, in films like No Ordinary Man and Framing Agnes. Here, he gets to chronicle history in real-time: a personal “first” like the others implied in the title. Sarah McBride looked to be the first trans woman elected to Congress in the same year – 2024 – in which she also anticipated the first Black female president, who would have been the first president of South Asian descent as well. That McBride won while Kamala Harris lost reveals an electorate more complex than some pundits might have it.

On his official university faculty page, Joynt states that he is often asked, “Are you a film person invested in gender theory or a gender studies person who also makes films?” He evidently saw a similar dichotomy in McBride, who wanted to run to represent her constituents primarily, but constantly found herself being pushed into representing every transgender American. For her, politics and the personal are intertwined more in her advocacy for affordable health care than her gender – her husband, a trans man, died of cancer at the age of 28, mere days after they got married.

Through much of the film Joynt’s cameras focus closely on McBride’s face as she’s driving her car. The road trips between campaign stops offer a convenient place to talk, but they also capture emotional nuance and convey the sense that she is very much in control of her path and message. Once she is elected, she notably starts taking the train like her mentor Joe Biden, and the visual metaphor is immediate – now she’s being swept along by the currents of government, forced to be one of many passengers rather than a lone driver.

McBride’s home state of Delaware in 2024 already seems like a time and place far removed from our own, a mere two years later. At least from what we see, McBride receives a mostly positive reception as she goes door to door and talks to ordinary people in public. The menace represented by her opponents, pre-election, mostly comes through in threatening signs, and Joynt periodically narrows the aspect ratio, pointedly boxing McBride’s image in, when he intersperses national news footage.

Once she is elected – hardy a spoiler, since she’s in Congress now – a far more deranged response ensues. In the face of such opposition, can McBride maintain her stance of being the patient listener who’ll talk nicely to her political opponents, or become more confrontational as the situation dictates? The movie offers hints, but you can follow along in real life too.

This July 4^th, State of Firsts reminds us that independence is for everyone.

“In following McBride’s campaign, Joynt confidently transitions from the highly stylised modes of his previous works. “ – Pat Mullen, POV.

“McBride’s grace, steadfastness, and perseverance are the stuff of true heroism. Joynt captures this essential moment of LGBTQ+ history with dignity and respect.” – Frank J. Avella, Edge Media Network.

‘Peter Asher’: The Man Behind the Music

June 17, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many music fans, Peter Asher is one of those names that seems to appear everywhere once you start paying attention. A member of the British Invasion duo Peter & Gordon, head of A&R for the Beatles’ Apple Records, producer of landmark albums from James Taylor to Linda Ronstadt, and a trusted collaborator to generations of artists, Asher has spent more than six decades helping shape popular music from both center stage and behind the scenes.

The new documentary Peter Asher: Everywhere Man traces that remarkable career, revealing how one seemingly modest figure repeatedly found himself at pivotal moments in music history. Helmed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, the film combines archival footage, contemporary interviews, and performances from Asher’s acclaimed live storytelling show to create a portrait of a life that often feels stupefyingly interconnected.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear co-directors Goldfine and Geller discuss their fascinating new release with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning with a special Q&A on June 22nd at the Laemmle Royal.

Asher’s story begins in an unusually artistic household in London. His sister Jane Asher’s relationship with Paul McCartney brought the Beatles directly into the family orbit, with McCartney at one point living in the Ashers’ home. Numerous songs that would become part of popular music history were written there, and the documentary delights in recounting how Peter found himself witnessing events that would later seem legendary.

Yet Everywhere Man makes clear that Asher was never merely a bystander. As one half of Peter & Gordon, he scored international hits, including “A World Without Love,” a Lennon-McCartney composition that topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Later, as an executive at Apple Records, he signed a young James Taylor, beginning a partnership that would help define the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s.

The documentary is particularly compelling when examining Asher’s influence as a producer and manager. Working with Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, he helped shape the polished California sound that dominated popular music throughout the decade. Along the way, he pushed for greater recognition of studio musicians, insisting that the talented players behind classic recordings receive proper credit on album sleeves—a practice that seems obvious today but was far from standard at the time.

What emerges is not simply a history of one career, but a tour through several eras of popular music, featuring everyone from the Beatles and Marianne Faithfull to Elton John, Diana Ross, and Randy Newman. The result is an entertaining and affectionate documentary about a man whose influence extends far beyond the spotlight. Even viewers who don’t immediately recognize Peter Asher’s name may discover that they already know much of the music—not to mention the stories—that he helped usher into the world.

“The pleasure of Everywhere Man is that every time you think you’ve seen the wildest piece of Peter Asher adjacency, the next chapter proves you wrong.” – Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

“[The] film does an amazing job tracking the arc of a career of an artist who was really just about everywhere.” – Brad Auerbach, Entertainment Today

Homoerotic Hitchcock: ‘Strangers on a Train’ at 75

June 10, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the movie that launched Hitchcock’s greatest decade of moviemaking, the 1951 suspense classic Strangers on a Train.

On Wednesday, June 24, at 7 p.m., attend the 75th anniversary screening at Laemmle’s Royal, complete with a Q&A with Stephen Rebello, Author of Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitcchock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train and Hitchcockian Thrillers.

Hitchcock had started his career in England with such top thrillers as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Hollywood quickly came calling, and when Hitchcock moved to America, he won his only Best Picture Oscar for Rebecca in 1940. He continued with other classic films Foreign Correspondent, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, and Notorious.

But in the late 1940s the Master of Suspense hit a dry spell, when his films The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, and Stage Fright failed to connect with audiences. Searching for inspiration, he landed on Patricia Highsmith’s first acclaimed novel, Strangers on a Train, a story drenched in homoeroticism and perverse psychology. Highsmith, who was herself gay (she later wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley and a lesbian-themed novel, Carol, that was turned into an acclaimed 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara), provided the inspiration that Hitchcock needed.

Strangers tells the story of a chance meeting between a handsome tennis star, Guy Haines, and a charming but deranged aristocrat, Bruno Anthony. Bruno has read about Guy’s problems with his estranged wife and suggests half-jokingly that if they swap murders (Bruno wants to get rid of his disapproving father), neither would have a discernible motive for the murders they commit. Guy does not take the suggestion seriously, but when Bruno kills Guy’s wife, he expects Guy to return the favor.

The screenplay is credited to acclaimed mystery writer Raymond Chandler and female writer Czenzi Ormonde, but Chandler actually contributed very little to the movie; he and Hitchcock did not get along. Nevertheless, the script is tightly structured and consistently gripping. Like many Hitchcock movies, Strangers is distinguished by several memorable set-pieces, including the murder at an amusement park, a tense tennis match, and the climax on board a carousel spinning wildly out of control. But it also has the psychological depth of the Master’s best movies. Defying the Production Code, which had a strict prohibition against depictions of homosexuality, Hitchcock and his screenwriters clearly delineate the attraction that Bruno feels toward the handsome tennis champ. Robert Walker, the star of several lighter pictures, relishes his stab at villainy, and he is well matched with Farley Granger, who had starred in Hitchcock’s Rope and was gay in real life.

Ruth Roman, Laura Elliott, Norma Varden, Leo G. Carroll, and Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia round out the cast. Robert Burks, who earned an Oscar nomination for his cinematography, went on to work with Hitchcock again on Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and North by Northwest, among others. Oscar-winning composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who had worked with Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, wrote the effective score.

Stephen Rebello, who will be doing a Q&A at the screening, is the author of the best-selling Alfred Hitchock and the Making of Psycho (which was turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren) and Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time. He has written for Movieline, GQ, Playboy, and other publications.

The Last Great Maestro: Inside ‘Bernstein’s Wall’

May 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

There was a time in American culture when a conductor could become something close to a national celebrity: part educator, part activist, part showman, and part mystic. Few embodied that role more completely than Leonard Bernstein, whose larger-than-life presence animated concert halls, television screens, political movements, and Broadway stages alike. Douglas Tirola’s Bernstein’s Wall revisits that extraordinary life not through conventional talking-head retrospection, but almost entirely through archival footage, home movies, and Bernstein’s own words, allowing the composer and conductor to narrate his story at his own impeccable tempo.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear director Douglas Tirola discuss his latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch one of his live post-screening Q&As running May 21-23rd at the Laemmle Glendale, Royal, and Town Center theaters.

Rather than unfolding as a straightforward cradle-to-grave biography, Bernstein’s Wall assembles an impressionistic portrait of a man whose myriad passions—for music, politics, teaching, sociology, and more—were inseparably intertwined. The result feels less like a summary than an attempt to capture the restless energy that made Bernstein such a singular public figure throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

For audiences primarily familiar with Bernstein as the composer of West Side Story, the film offers a broader look at the figure who became one of the defining cultural personalities of postwar America. Bernstein was not merely a conductor but a communicator, someone who approached classical music with evangelical enthusiasm and a rare ability to make it feel accessible without diminishing its complexity. The documentary’s many clips from his televised lectures and Young People’s Concerts reveal his innate talent for speaking about music with warmth, humor, and genuine conviction, treating audiences not as passive listeners but as treasured participants in something emotionally and spiritually vital.

The film also captures the sheer physical electricity of Bernstein as a performer. Watching him conduct, drenched in sweat and completely consumed by the music, one understands why he inspired such devotion. Tirola repeatedly emphasizes Bernstein’s ability to embody music rather than simply direct it, transforming orchestral performance into a kind of emotional theater all its own.

Bernstein’s Wall also thoughtfully explores the tensions that shaped Bernstein’s personal life, addressing his sexuality with unusual candor while drawing from deeply personal letters that illuminate the emotional strain placed upon his marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein’s outspoken activism, too—from civil rights advocacy to antiwar protests—remains central to this portrait of artist-as-advocate, particularly in relation to his now-infamous 1970 fundraiser for the Black Panthers that inspired Tom Wolfe’s term “radical chic.”

Yet for all its historical scope, Bernstein’s Wall is ultimately less about legacy than vitality, as the film continually returns to Bernstein’s overwhelming appetite for life itself. The result is a moving reminder of a singular artist who believed deeply in the power of music not merely to entertain, but to awaken something larger within us.

“A lovely film that will appeal to Bernstein’s most ardent fans, while warmly inviting neophytes into his world.” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

“A thoughtfully constructed tribute that lacks neither cultural and political context nor intimate personal perspective.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Modern Love, Unfiltered: The Bold Charm of ‘Two Women’

April 28, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

There’s a mischievous spark at the heart of Two Women, a film that takes a familiar setup—restless relationships, suburban routines—and flips it into something unexpectedly playful, warm, and quietly subversive. Directed with a light but assured touch by Chloé Robichaud, this Montreal-set comedy finds humor and honesty in the messiness of modern love.

Catch Two Women in theaters beginning May 1st at the Laemmle Monica and Town Center, followed by a special screening and Q&A hosted by Not Your Daddy’s Films following the 7:10 p.m. show on May 2nd at the Monica.

The story centers on two neighbors, Violette and Florence, who form an unspoken bond over their shared dissatisfaction at home. Violette, adjusting to new motherhood, finds herself adrift in a marriage that has lost all sense of intimacy, while Florence, navigating her own partner’s lack of libido, feels similarly disconnected. Their apartments may only be a balcony apart, but emotionally, they’ve both been stranded for some time.

What follows isn’t subtle: both women begin having affairs, embarking on a string of clandestine hookups that quickly spiral into something both comedic and unexpectedly revealing. Yet what might sound like a setup for moralizing instead plays out with a surprising lightness, for rather than framing this infidelity as purely destructive, Two Women treats it as a catalyst—messy, impulsive, and often funny—for the characters to confront what’s missing in their lives and to begin to discover what they actually want.

At the center of it all are two standout performances. Karine Gonthier-Hyndman brings a subtle emotional evolution to Florence, charting her journey from quiet detachment to a more awakened, self-assured presence. Opposite her, Laurence Leboeuf gives Violette a lively, layered warmth, balancing the character’s natural humor with an undercurrent of vulnerability. Together, they create a dynamic that feels genuinely lived-in, less like a traditional movie friendship and more like something instinctive and real.

Robichaud’s direction keeps the tone buoyant even as the film brushes up against larger questions about relationships, expectations, and autonomy. There’s a sense that Two Women is less interested in offering definitive answers than in simply letting its characters explore the questions themselves. That openness extends to the film’s humor, which leans into awkwardness and absurdity without ever losing sight of its characters’ humanity.

Ultimately, Two Women is a film about connection: between friends, between partners, and (perhaps most importantly) with oneself. It’s playful without being trivial, thoughtful without being heavy, and anchored by performances that make every twist feel earned. In a landscape where stories about relationships often follow well-worn paths, this one finds its own rhythm—and invites audiences to enjoy the ride.

“[The film’s] reflections on modern relationships are engagingly comical, cynical and ultimately tender. ” – Allan Hunter, Screen Daily

“[Two Women is] unafraid of sex and female pleasure in a way that feels so rare in modern films.” – Jesse Saunders, Movie Jawn

Floaters Q&A Schedule

April 9, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Floaters opens Friday, July 17 at the Royal and Town Center, and the run is packed with special Q&As featuring the filmmakers and cast. Here’s the full lineup:

Date	Time	Theatre	Q&A Guests
Fri, July 17	4:00 PM	Royal	Producers Shai Korman and Andra Gordon.
Fri, July 17	7:30 PM	Royal	Producers Shai Korman and Andra Gordon with actors Jackie Tohn, Seth Green, Jillian Jordan and Ben Krieger. Moderated by Raiders of the Lost Podcast.
Sat, July 18	7:30 PM	Royal	Actors Jackie Tohn, Sarah Podemski, Jillian Jordan, Ben Krieger and Bekah Zornosa. Special event moderated by Jonah Platt as part of a live taping of Being Jewish with Jonah Platt.
Sun, July 19	4:15 PM	Town Center	Hosted and moderated by Talia Light Rake of Heavy Shovel with producer Shai Korman.
Sun, July 19	7:30 PM	Town Center	Producer Shai Korman.
Sun, July 19	7:30 PM	Royal	Producer Andra Gordon and actor Ben Krieger. Moderated by Adam Rotstein.

Get tickets and showtimes at laemmle.com →

Law as Labyrinth: Loznitsa’s ‘Two Prosecutors’

March 25, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors is less a historical drama than a slow descent into a meticulously ordered nightmare. Set in 1937 at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge, the film follows a young, newly promoted prosecutor, Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), whose belief in the integrity of the Soviet legal system has not yet been eroded by experience. So when a blood-written letter alleging systemic torture and fabricated charges from a political prisoner crosses his desk, Kornyev does something both admirable and, in this world, dangerously naïve: he takes it seriously.

Catch filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa for a series of live Q&As regarding his latest work following the 7 p.m. showing at the Laemmle Glendale on March 24th or the Laemmle Royal on March 26-27th.

Kornyev’s journey begins in Bryansk, where Loznitsa immediately establishes the film’s governing logic: obstruction not through force, but through delay. Doors remain closed, officials are perpetually “unavailable,” and requests are met with polite deflection. Kornyev merely waits, wielding his patience as a bureaucratic weapon. When he finally gains access to the prisoner, Stepnyak (Aleksandr Filippenko), the encounter is shocking not only for the man’s physical deterioration but for the clarity of his accusations. A former legal mind himself, Stepnyak describes a system that has turned inward, devouring its own architects in order to sustain the illusion of order. Convinced this must be an isolated case of local corruption rather than a structural reality, Kornyev travels to Moscow to bring the case to higher authorities, placing his faith in the idea that somewhere, at the top, justice still exists.

Loznitsa, whose background in documentary filmmaking informs his rigorously controlled style, stages much of Two Prosecutors in long, static takes that deny the audience conventional emotional cues. The camera rarely moves; instead, dread accumulates within the frame. Offices, corridors, and waiting rooms become indistinguishable from prison cells, suggesting that confinement is not a matter of walls but of systems. Even moments of apparent absurdity—a talkative stranger on a train, an encounter with a man too frightened to move—carry a disquieting sense of design, as though every interaction is part of an invisible web closing around Kornyev.

Though rooted in Stalinist history and adapted from a suppressed work by dissident writer and gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, Two Prosecutors resonates far beyond its period setting. Loznitsa is not simply reconstructing the past, but mapping the anatomy of authoritarian logic, where procedure replaces morality and complicity is cultivated through cynicism and inertia.

By the time Kornyev begins to understand the true nature of the system he has appealed to, the film has already made its devastating point. This is not a story about whether justice will prevail, but about how long one can believe in it once the evidence proves otherwise.

“A very disturbing parable of the insidious micro-processes of tyranny.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“[A] compelling, meticulous, mordantly relevant historical drama.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

‘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