Repertory Cinema Archives - blog.laemmle.com

THE LION IN WINTER 55th Anniversary Holiday Season Screening with Author-Historian Jeremy Arnold November 29.

November 20, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 55th anniversary of The Lion in Winter (1968), the Academy Award-winning historical drama (with comedy undertones) that netted screen legend Katharine Hepburn a third Best Actress Oscar. Hepburn leads a powerhouse cast including acting icon Peter O’Toole, and future major stars Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton in their film debuts. The film plays one night only Wednesday, November 29 at 7:00 PM at the Royal in West Los Angeles, with an introduction by author Jeremy Arnold, who will sign copies of his newly revised book “Christmas in the Movies.”

Set during Christmas 1183, England’s King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) summons a holiday court at Chilon in his continental empire to choose his successor among his three sons: Richard the Lionhearted (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle), and his favorite, John (Nigel Terry). He releases his wife and the mother of their sons, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) from imprisonment for the occasion. Also in attendance are Henry’s mistress Alais (Jane Merrow), and her brother, the young King Philip of France (Timothy Dalton). As the principals squabble over the succession, intrigue, one-upmanship, and treachery are unleashed in the ensuing power struggle.

Based on a play by James Goldman (a Broadway flop in 1966), the film adaptation by Goldman and director Anthony Harvey, a former film editor (Lolita, Dr. Strangelove) just two years later proved to be a resounding success at both the box office and with critics of the day. Roger Ebert welcomed “a literate script handled intelligently,” while Renata Adler of The New York Times praised the “dramatic and comic energy” on display by the spirited cast. An effusive Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times awarded the film “top honors for the most literate movie of the year, and for the finest and most imaginative and fascinating evocation of an historical time and place.” AMPAS bestowed seven nominations including Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Costume Design, with Oscar wins for Goldman’s screenplay, John Barry’s effective music score, and Hepburn’s Best Actress turn (her third win in an historic tie with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl).

Hepburn recalled what attracted her to the part of Eleanor of Aquitaine, “I think she had what I’ve always held as important: love of life but without sentimentality. She was something I’ve always tried to be–completely authentic.” O’Toole had the unique opportunity to revisit a character he had previously played (a younger Henry II in 1964’s Becket) and triumphed once again. Hepburn would go on to win a fourth Best Actress Oscar in 1981, while O’Toole had to settle for an Honorary Oscar in 2003 among eight nominations. Hopkins would become one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, winning two Best Actor Oscars in his lengthy career. Dalton enjoyed decades of success and movie immortality when he inherited the role of James Bond in 1987 for two films as Agent 007. In The Lion in Winter all four have a rousing good time, as the Village Voice noted, “scenery chewing has rarely been so artful.”

“Once upon a midnight dreary,” Price, Corman, Karloff & Lorre! THE RAVEN 60th Anniversary Screening October 19.

October 4, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Update October 12: This screening has been cancelled.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of THE RAVEN (1963), the fifth film of Roger Corman’s cinematic adaptations of the works of American literary titan Edgar Allan Poe. The movie, written by acclaimed horror, fantasy, and mystery author Richard Matheson, stars horror icons Vincent Price and Boris Karloff in a rare big screen collaboration, and co-stars Peter Lorre, Hazel Court, and future superstar Jack Nicholson early in his career. The horror comedy plays one night only, Thursday, October 19 at 7 PM at the Royal in West Los Angeles. For added fun there will be a Poe/Corman trivia contest before the movie.

Producer-director Roger Corman, who began his career in the 1950s, is one of the most prolific independent filmmakers in movie history. Corman specialized in low budget cinema and is regarded as the “king of the B movie” with a steady diet of exploitation titles that spanned six decades and multiple movie genres. In 1960 he turned to the works of an author he had read and admired growing up, Edgar Allan Poe, the nineteenth century inventor of detective fiction and master of mystery and the macabre, and made a stylish if frugal version of The Fall of the House of Usher, hiring Vincent Price for the lead and acclaimed author Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, I am Legend, Somewhere in Time) to write the screenplay adaptation. The movie’s unexpected critical and commercial success spawned seven more Poe films in five years. The Raven, the fifth film, was released in January 1963 and was the first outright feature-length comic take on Poe’s most celebrated poem. The worldwide reception afforded the poem in 1845 made Poe the most famous American author of the 19th century, and he remains beloved in the 21st century for his pioneering detective fiction, horror tales, and haunting verse.

Matheson’s story lightens considerably the tone of the mesmeric poem, with the invention of sorcerer characters (Price and Karloff) who duel over Price’s wife (Hazel Court). Peter Lorre, transformed by Karloff into a raven, induces Price to help him break the spell and rescue Court. They are aided by Lorre’s son, played by Nicholson. Corman retained venerable cinematographer Floyd Crosby, production designer Daniel Haller, and composer Les Baxter from the prior Poe films to continue the atmospheric style which marks all the films. Matheson’s choice to inject humor throughout the movie led critics to pick up on the tongue-in-cheek tone, with one reviewer calling it “less of a Raven, and more of a lark.” Leonard Maltin found it a “funny horror satire [with the] climactic sorcerers’ duel a highlight.

This would be Matheson’s final Poe adaptation after writing House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and Tales of Terror (1962). Price would continue as the principal Poe player to the end of the eight-film series with Tomb of Ligeia in 1964. All the Poe/Corman films entrenched Price as a legendary horrormeister, but in The Raven he would demonstrate his comic chops along with unexpected humorous turns from Boris Karloff and an improvising Peter Lorre. A young Jack Nicholson is the bonus in this affectionate, amusing homage to the genius of Edgar Allan Poe.

National Silent Movie Day: See Restored Classic THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD September 27.

September 20, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

In honor of Silent Movie Day, we are presenting screenings of Irving Cummings’ THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926), a pioneering disaster and special effects movie, starring Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien. A highlight of this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the film has been restored with a lush musical soundtrack by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. We are screening the film September 27 only at our Royal, Glendale, Claremont and Newhall theaters.

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD re-creates one of the greatest disasters in American history, when, in 1889, over 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lost their lives. In her first major role, Gaynor plays a teenage girl smitten with dashing engineer O’Brien, whose pleadings about the imminent collapse of the local dam are ignored. It’s up to Gaynor to ride through the streets à la Paul Revere to warn the townspeople of the imminent disaster. After 97 years, the movie’s flood sequence is still a pre-CGI marvel of optical effects, matte paintings, and miniatures.

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD has been newly restored in 4K by The Film Preserve, Ltd. and The Maltese Film Works, from 35mm elements preserved at George Eastman Museum. Noted preservationists Robert Harris and James Mockoski (archivist for Francis Ford Coppola) worked on the restoration.

Academy Award winners and film scholars Ben Burtt (sound designer of Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more) and Craig Barron (visual effects supervisor for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Batman Returns, and more), have recorded a 30-minute illustrated conversation deconstructing the movie’s visual effects, that will be screened following the feature.

Oscar-winner NOWHERE IN AFRICA 20th anniversary screenings September 20.

September 6, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present 20th anniversary screenings of the Academy-Award winning film NOWHERE IN AFRICA as the next entry in the Anniversary Abroad Series of notable international films. (Following our September 13 screening of SOYLENT GREEN at the Royal with special guest Leigh Taylor-Young.) Coinciding with the High Holidays, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is about a German Jewish refugee family relocating to Kenya to escape the Nazis just before the outbreak of WWII, will play for one night only, September 20 at four Laemmle locations (Royal, Glendale, Claremont, and Newhall).

The Foreign Language Film (AKA International) Oscar winner in 2003, based on the autobiographical novel by Stefanie Zweig, was adapted for the screen by writer-director Caroline Link, who had been previously nominated in the same category for her 1996 film Beyond Silence. The story concerns the Redlich family, Walter (Mirab Ninidze), his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler), and their daughter Regina (Lea Kurka as younger, Karoline Eckertz as older) who flee Nazi persecution in Germany in 1938. Walter leaves behind his law profession and becomes the manager of a British-owned farm in Kenya. While his nine-year-old daughter Regina takes to her new African life, his snobbish wife Jettel has difficulty with the family’s reduced status. They are attended by their Kenyan cook Owuor (beautifully played by Sidede Onyulo), who offers an African perspective to the tale. With the outbreak of WWII, the family is interned by the British along with all German citizens, an ironic twist since they had fled Germany to avoid such a fate in their homeland. The war and their plight put even more pressure on the strained relationship of Walter and Jettel, with Regina (now a teenager) caught in the middle.

Admiration from critics of the day included assessments from Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, who said the film was, “laced with poignancy, conflict, urgency, and compassion.” Roger Ebert praised Link for her “interest in good stories and vivid, well-defined characters.” Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune cited it as “a lovely film with a deeply humane perspective.” Rita Kempley in the Washington Post called it a “consistently absorbing family saga that is primarily a safari of the soul.” Newsweek’s David Ansen noted, “an absorbing tale of cultural displacement. It’s also a remarkable, complex examination of a marriage…with its lush cinematography and lush score, (it) has the sturdiness of an old-fashioned Hollywood epic.” Some critics even called it perfect Oscar bait at the time, and the Academy members agreed, rewarding it with the Foreign Language Film Oscar.

SOYLENT GREEN 50th Anniversary Screening September 13 with Special Guest Leigh Taylor-Young.

August 30, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary of the prophetic sci-fi classic, ‘Soylent Green.’ The sole surviving cast member, Leigh Taylor-Young, will join to share memories of making this powerful movie. This still-timely film, set in New York in 2022, was one of the first to address issues of pollution, global warming, overpopulation, and an epidemic of homelessness. In many ways it predicted the dark future imagined in ‘Blade Runner,’ made a decade later.

The script was adapted by Stanley R. Greenberg from an acclaimed novel, ‘Make Room! Make Room!,’ by Harry Harrison. The director, Richard Fleischer, was no stranger to science fiction, having made the hit movies ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ and ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ along with a wide range of films in many different genres. Charlton Heston portrays a police detective trying to solve the murder of an executive at the mysterious Soylent Corporation, which leads him to uncover a diabolical conspiracy. In addition to Leigh Taylor-Young, the supporting cast includes Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Brock Peters, and Paula Kelly. But the most memorable performance is given by Edward G. Robinson, in his final screen appearance.

The Hollywood Reporter declared that the film “conjures a terrifying vision of the future.” Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film “a clever, rough, modestly budgeted but imaginative work.” ‘Soylent Green‘ won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film of the year.

Actress Leigh Taylor-Young first came to prominence on the popular “Peyton Place” TV series of the 1960s. She made her feature film debut in the hit 1968 comedy, ‘I Love You Alice B. Toklas,’ starring Peter Sellers, written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker. Her other film roles include ‘The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,’ which marked one of the first screen roles for Robert De Niro, and ‘Jagged Edge,’ starring Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges. She also co-starred in many popular TV series, including “Dallas” and “Picket Fences,” for which she won an Emmy. In recent years she has also been active in humanitarian and spiritual activities for the United Nations and other organizations.

The movie’s trailer posed the question, “What Is the Secret of Soylent Green?” If you don’t know the answer to that question, be sure to attend our 50th anniversary screening. And even if you do know, you will be startled by the movie’s timeliness and engaged by the conversation with our delightful guest speaker.

Honoring Paul Reubens with a screening of PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE at the Royal August 28.

August 23, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to the late Paul Reubens with a screening of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), the directorial debut of acclaimed filmmaker Tim Burton, at the Royal on Monday, August 28 at 7 pm. Reubens, a comic celebrity here in L.A., was catapulted to national fame with his inspired creation, the man-child Pee-wee Herman.

The movie, basically a live-action cartoon, has a simple plot: Pee-wee Herman, a nerdy pre-pubescent boy in an adult’s body, searches for his most prized possession, a fire-engine red-and-white bicycle, which has been stolen. His comic odyssey takes him across the country, where he encounters an assortment of kooky characters. Former animator Burton previews his trademark quirky visual style in a series of vignettes scripted by Reubens and Phil Hartman. Both Reubens and Burton, working in a heightened natural landscape, make the zany and surreal trip seem credible as Pee-wee’s journey is suffused with rampant silliness, aided by tyro film composer Danny Elfman’s distinctive music. Pee-wee’s uninhibited antics and giddiness found reviewers both perplexed and enchanted. Some critics of the day made comparisons with notable and classic clowns of earlier eras such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Jerry Lewis. Others, such as the Christian Science Monitor, saw “a true original—a comedy maverick and film like no other.”

Two additional films (Big Top Pee-wee in 1988, and Pee-wee’s Big Holiday in 2016), a Saturday morning children’s series, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” and a live Broadway show in 2010 among numerous other appearances would all demonstrate the cross-generational appeal of Reubens’ creation. Burton would go on to helm films which defined his Hollywood generation, including Beetlejuice, Batman, Ed Wood, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Alice in Wonderland, all in a decades-long collaboration with Elfman. But all that big-screen success started with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, a comic lark with lasting pop culture significance. As Robert Lloyd, television critic of the Los Angeles Times, noted in a recent appreciation, “Paul Reubens is gone, but his ‘corny’ alter ego will live on in his own ‘unique’ universe…long live Pee-wee Herman.”

30th Anniversary Screenings of Michelle Yeoh’s THE HEROIC TRIO August 9.

July 26, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Before she demonstrated dazzling fight skills in Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning spectacle ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,’ and before she became the first Asian performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once,’ Michelle Yeoh demonstrated her action movie skills and commanding presence in THE HEROIC TRIO in 1993. Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present 30th anniversary screenings of that martial arts extravaganza to remind moviegoers of Yeoh’s stellar history. Screening at the Laemmle Claremont, Newhall, Glendale and Royal.

The actress had been working in Hong Kong cinema for a decade when she co-starred with Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung in this entertaining action film. Yeoh plays Invisible Woman, Mui portrays Wonder Woman, and Cheung depicts Thief Catcher, three women who band together to foil a kidnapping plot devised by the Evil Master (portrayed by Shi-Kwan Yen). Damian Lau co-stars as the police inspector who heads up the official investigation. The picture is directed by Hong Kong cinema veteran Johnnie To.

Variety praised the film as a “flashy kung fu super-heroine adventure full of solid production values.” Tony Rayns, an expert in Asian cinema, wrote for England’s Sight and Sound, “Its design and mise en scene are expansive and occasionally exhilarating.” The San Francisco Examiner called the movie “a ” And the Austin Chronicle added, “’THE HEROIC TRIO is a live-action comic book and captures the quirky spirit and shrewd logic of the medium better than both ‘Batmans’ put together.”

The movie was successful enough to inspire a sequel later that same year, and Yeoh went on to demonstrate her talents in a rich variety of movies, culminating in her Oscar win this past March. Enjoy an early glimpse of her talents in this rarely revived action spectacle made 30 years ago.

Bergman, Deneuve, Buñuel, Fellini, Eustache and more: The Anniversary Classics Abroad series returns with THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE.

June 28, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore

We’re re-launching our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad series, screening superb foreign films once or twice a month at our West L.A., Glendale, Claremont and Newhall theaters.

First up, The Mother and the Whore, newly restored. After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May ’68 the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache’s own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with a startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

“Three and a half hours long, The Mother and the Whore is both epic and intimate, ethnographic in its cultural detail and subjective in its exposure of the raw nerves of body and psyche.” ~ Amy Taubin, Village Voice

“A classic that remains as burningly alive and shocking today as it was in 1973.” ~ Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

“The Mother and the Whore made an enormous impact when it was released. It still works a quarter-century later because it was so focused on its subjects, and lacking in pretension.” ~ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The full schedule:

July 19 ~ The Mother and the Whore
August 9 ~ The Heroic Trio
August 30 ~ Belle De Jour
September 20 ~ Nowhere in Africa
October 11 ~ Ugetsu
November 1 ~ 8 1/2
November 21 ~ Babette’s Feast
December 13 ~ Fanny & Alexander