Theater Buzz Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Fifty Years Haven’t Dulled Sidney Lumet’s ‘Network’

July 20, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

To celebrate Arthouse Theatre Day on July 30, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of the classic expose of television, Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet.

Don’t miss out and be mad as hell! Network screens Thursday, July 30th at 7 p.m. at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

The film received 10 Academy Award nominations and won 4 Oscars in 1976, including one for Chayefsky and three for actors Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, and Beatrice Straight. That tied the all-time record for acting Oscars for a single film. The 5 acting nominations that it received also tied a record. In close to 100 years of Academy Awards, no film has ever earned more than 5 acting nods, and only a handful have received that many. The cast also includes William Holden, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty, and William Prince.

Chayefsky and Lumet set out to satirize the growing commercialization of television news, which began in the ’70s and has only mushroomed in recent decades. When news anchor Howard Beale, played by Finch, seems to be having a breakdown on the air, sober-minded executives want to fire him, but the head of the entertainment division, played by Dunaway, sees his crazed rantings as a potential boon to network ratings. Indeed Beale’s anthem, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more,” captures the imagination of gullible members of the viewing public.

Consider how many real-life personalities since 1976 have been allowed to rant and rave over the airways under the guise of being fearless truth tellers.

Reviews for the film were actually mixed, but most were positive. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby called Network “brilliantly, cruelly funny.” Leonard Maltin claimed that the “entire cast explodes,” and he added, “Paddy Chayefsky’s outrageous satire on television looks less and less like fantasy as the years pass.” Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin agreed with Maltin and wrote in 2011, “No predictor of the future—not even Orwell—has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote Network.”

Will it still make audiences laugh, or is the the satire too close to the truth these days? There’s only one way to find out — come and watch Network on the big screen again.

Ross McElwee Revisits Personal Loss and Cinema in ‘Remake’

July 14, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Long before blogging and social media, Ross McElwee was turning a movie camera on his own life, processing his own reality through the films he made, like 1985’s groundbreaking documentary Sherman’s March. His latest, Remake, offers the biggest personal challenge to date – emotionally coming to terms with the death of his son.

Catch both Remake and a new restoration of Sherman’s March this Friday, July 17^th at Laemmle’s Royal.

Whatever the ostensible, assigned topic of McElwee’s documentaries – be it General Sherman or Big Tobacco – the real pleasures of his movies come when he tends to get sidetracked and return to the subject of his own life. For his last couple of films, In Paraguay and Photographic Memory, he cut directly to the chase and started with his family. Photographic Memory spotlighted his complicated relationship with his son, Adrian; fourteen years later, he’s dealing with Adrian’s death from drug addiction.

There is an originally assigned topic to Remake – Sherman’s March was being considered for a Hollywood remake as a fiction film, and McElwee signed a deal that allowed him to make a film about the making of the new film. As the movie stalled in development, however, Adrian spiraled downward and ultimately died. Adrian was himself an aspiring filmmaker, and Remake is made up of footage shot by him as well as his father.

McElwee’s narration remains as steadily deadpan as always, like he can reason his way through anything, but in this case he only comes up with more questions that require answers from the heart rather than the head. He’s always been masterful at self-analysis, yet it’s clear that he now realizes its inadequacy in the face of such a blow. The best he can do is keep Adrian alive on film, and try to understand him by seeing the world through his camera. At a certain age, Adrian stopped wanting to be the subject of his father’s films – in death, his shared credit as cinematographer and editor offers a glimpse at the artist he might have become. It’s clear that he followed somewhat in his father’s footsteps, trying to understand his own life through the camera lens, but having his own addiction as a topic didn’t allow him enough distance. The elder McElwee, naturally, wonders how much of this is his fault as a father.

The reuse of footage from his older films is a common McElwee technique, done both because he doesn’t assume audiences have seen all his films, and because the footage takes on new context when viewed as flashback rather than contemporary commentary. In Remake, he takes short side quests to catch up with some of the characters from Sherman’s March, now four decades older, using the old scenes for contrast. Audiences don’t have to make do with those snippets, as Sherman’s March in its entirety, now remastered in high definition, will be playing alongside Remake in theaters. Indeed, it is even more effective as a time capsule than it was as contemporaneous Boomer self-reflection. Particularly in light of all McElwee’s subsequent movies about himself as a family man, filmed evidence of his awkward single life during the Reagan administration stands as a slice of verite Americana, unpolished by the image-consciousness of the era.

“Even in a film as sombre as “Remake,” one of the joys of [Ross] McElwee’s method is the freedom with which he constructs his movies. “ – Richard Brody, The New Yorker.

“Both an elegy for a son and a meditation on artistic purpose, this autobiographical documentary transforms unbearable personal loss into a powerfully intimate probe of memory, creativity, and family legacies. “ – Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue.

Dan Curtis’ ‘House of Dark Shadows’ Brings Barnabas to the Big Screen

July 14, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Long before the sparkling Cullen vampires wowed YA fans, a bloodsucker named Collins caught the imagination of America’s youth. Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 60th anniversary tribute to the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which premiered June 27, 1966.

We will screen the first theatrical movie based on the series, House of Dark Shadows (1970) for one night only, July 27 at the Laemmle NoHo at 7:00 p.m.

The television series focused on the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine and the wealthy Collins family, incorporating unprecedented supernatural elements for a daytime serial. Produced by Dan Curtis, the series had become an enormous success and pop cultural phenomenon after the introduction of 170-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins (stage actor Jonathan Frid) almost a year into the run, with Frid emerging as an unconventional “matinee idol.”

Curtis capitalized on the popularity of the TV series by fashioning a fast-paced feature-film adaptation, basically a condensed version of the storyline about Barnabas, cursed as a vampire in 1795. Inadvertently awakened in the 20th century, he wreaks terror on his contemporary ancestors at Collinwood while seeking to recreate his lost 18th century love as his vampire bride. The film featured most of the original TV cast: Joan Bennett, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Roger Davis, Grayson Hall, John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, Louis Edmunds, Thayer David, et al. Welcomed by fans seeing their favorite characters on the big screen, the film was a solid box office hit. When the series was abruptly canceled in 1971, its cult status propelled it through several decades of syndication, short-lived primetime remakes, and an ill-conceived “camp” movie version by Tim Burton in 2012, which was rejected by the ardent followers of the original series, who keep the show’s legacy alive.

To attract viewers outside of the fan base, House of Dark Shadows was sold as a straightforward vampire movie, emphasizing a more sinister side of Barnabas with increased shock and blood and giving a sanguine conclusion to the character. Horror filmmaker Rob Zombie offered a 21st-century assessment: “A prime example of everything done right when turning a TV show into a movie…essentially 200 episodes of storyline distilled down to a spectacular 97 minutes of gothic horror. It’s like an epic American version of a Hammer film.”

“The poetic finale is a tour-de-force of superb gothic imagery and galvanising horror.” – Alan Jones, Radio Times.

“Genuine chills and surprises. Blows away the TV show.” – Gerry Shamray, Cleveland.com.

Mystery and the Immigrant Experience in Guido Chiesa’s ‘For the Love of a Woman’

July 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In 1970s Rhode Island, all cold grays and blues, a mother dies in hospital, and her estranged adult daughter barely feels anything. In a 1930s moshav in British Mandate Palestine, all vibrant colors as memories tend to be, a widower hires an attractive newcomer to be his housekeeper. These are different women, yet their stories entwine a family mystery in Guido Chiesa’s For the Love of a Woman.

Catch For the Love of a Woman at Laemmle’s Royal and Town Center 5 starting Friday, July 10^th. Star Mili Avital will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:00 p.m. Royal show on July 11, as well as the 1:00 p.m. TC5 show and the 4:00 p.m. Royal show on July 12.

For the Love of a Woman is loosely based on Meir Shalev’s novel The Loves of Judith, also known as As a Few Days or The Four Meals, but it adds a lot in the adaptation. Only the scenes set in the ’30s are from the novel, though the format of nesting stories remains the same, turning the book’s wraparound narrative into the story being uncovered by the new framing device, set 40 years later and invented for the film. Director Chiesa, an Italian immigrant who worked with Michael Cimino and Jim Jarmusch, has turned the story from a riff on Jewish folktales to a meditation on the immigrant experience. What does a person lose when they leave the homeland…and how might they find it again?

Mili Avital, the acclaimed Israeli actress whose Hollywood breakthrough was as the female lead in Stargate, plays Esther, a middle-aged woman who is handed a mystery upon her mother’s death. Prior to succumbing to dementia she left Esther a letter and a piece of jewelry, telling her to take it to Israel and look for the name “Judith.” With the assistance of a family friend who lives there, she discovers an old farmhouse, and under pretense of wanting to buy it, meets the heir, a university professor (Ori Pfeffer) whose actual given name is Zayde, or “Grandpa.”

As Esther asks more questions about the house, Zayde reveals his own family history, mostly focusing on the quirky circumstances that led to his having three fathers. All of them pined for one woman, Yehudit, or Judith (played by Romanian actress Ana Ularu), who had a secret backstory of her own. Moshav communities, like kibbutzes, involve shared resources and collectivism; this story humorously suggests that might extend to women too. Yet Yehudit is nobody’s property; she owns her sexuality, and the men eventually fall in line. Especially when she gives birth to Zayde (standing up, no less!), without knowing which of her triptych of lovers is the dad. “Who does he look like?” they ask. “Me,” she responds.

Chiesa’s filmography consists primary of Italian films, sometimes depicting political/historical moments, as in Working Slowly (Radio Alice) or Johnny the Partisan, and sometimes comedies both romantic and family-related, like 30 Nights With My Ex or Belli di Papa. Taking on an English-language movie about the Israeli immigrant experience is a bold leap, but he draws on his experience with both family complications and political history, along with his own experience as an import, to reveal that sometimes there is universality in the specifics.

Ties to two cultures can make a person’s life feel divided; different people bridge the divide in different ways, but it all stems from the same root feeling. One need not be either Italian or Israeli to connect to the journeys Esther and Zayde take, and their realizations that key elements of their pasts have been missing. For the Love of a Woman reveals that there may be sorrow in the lost connections, but there’s joy in making new ones, and the former can directly fuel the latter.

“With a moving story, beautiful direction and a cast and crew that execute with precision this is a film not to be missed.” – Ricky Archuleta, Film Threat

“Some films sweep you away with breathtaking action. Others quietly capture your heart. For the Love of a Woman belongs firmly in the second category, blending romance, mystery and family history into a thoughtful, emotionally rewarding film.” – Mira Temkin, Splash

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.

Daniel Roher’s ‘Tuner’: When the Piano Man Goes Bad

June 29, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 2 Comments

While movie industry observers have noted the surprise success of smaller movies this summer like Obsession and Backrooms, there’s another one slowly and steadily holding on arthouse screens everywhere: Daniel Roher’s Tuner. Now about to enter its third smash month in theaters, the first narrative film from the acclaimed documentarian behind Navalny and The A.I. Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist blends crime, romance, jazz piano, and even a touch of real-life super power in the tale of a piano tuner whose nimble fingers and ears also serve him well at safe-cracking.

You can still catch Tuner at Laemmle’s Town Center and Laemmle’s Monica Film Center.

One key reason not to miss Tuner in theaters is the distinctive sound design by Maximilian Behrens, whose audio work on The Zone of Interest contributed greatly to that film’s overall impact. Behrens’ work puts us directly inside the head of Niki (The White Lotus‘ Leo Woodall), who has hyperacusis, a condition that makes loud noises painful and debilitating, but allows him to hear other things inaudible to most humans. As he listens for distinctions between piano notes, or for tumblers in a lock to slide into place, we feel it. Mercifully, when the sounds of the world go in the other direction, the movie only gives us a small taste of the pain that forces Niki to wear earplugs and headphones almost 24-7.

Roher takes a break from real-world existential threats like Vladimir Putin and Artificial Intelligence to focus on much more personal stakes. Niki’s irascible mentor Harry (a scene-stealing Dustin Hoffman) has angrily and temperamentally canceled his own Medicare, and refuses to eat healthy; before long, he’s stuck with a hospital bill he can’t afford. Piano tuning, even for New York’s rich and careless, doesn’t earn Niki enough to help, so he takes the slightly less legal route, working for an unethical “security” company that skims from clients’ safes.

Meanwhile, a romance is blossoming with hard-working piano prodigy Ruthie (model-turned actress Havana Rose Liu) who reminds him of himself before the hearing condition made playing literally painful. He wants to help her, but the erratic, spontaneous needs of his illegal work threaten to tear him away.

Unmoored from the demands of documentary reality, Roher treats the story like a parable; it involves some extreme coincidence, but treats it as karmic justice. The ending is designed to get audiences talking, and perhaps arguing, the moment they leave the theater. And the director couldn’t have asked for a better cast to anchor his first drama. Jean Reno shows up as a musical maestro, Tovah Feldshuh gives as good as she gets playing Hoffman’s wife, Herbie Hancock appears as himself, and Lior Raz brings lived-in menace to Niki’s criminal boss Uri. Prior to being an actor, Raz was an IDF commando and a bodyguard for Arnold Schwarzenegger; he doesn’t have to do much to persuade a viewer of his inherent threat level.

Be sure to catch Tuner in theaters while you still can. With its canny, subjective soundscapes, original numbers by Marius de Vries (La La Land), and carefully-selected jazz classics, you’ll want the premium speaker experience. But the story might just stick in your head as well.

“Roher knows that in crime flicks, as in jazz, pacing is everything: he reveals just enough but allows the audience to fill in the gaps.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer.

“It’s a thrill to watch this kind of original, adult moviemaking that’s all too rare these days.” – Katie Walsh, Tribune.

‘Romería’: Carla Simón’s Moving Portrait of Loss, Identity, and Belonging

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Over the course of three features, Carla Simón has quietly established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European cinema. Following her acclaimed debut Summer 1993 and the Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs, the Spanish filmmaker returns with Romería, a deeply personal coming-of-age drama that continues her exploration of family, memory, and the lingering impact of loss.

Catch Romeria in theaters beginning July 1st at the Laemmle Glendale.

The title translates roughly to “pilgrimage,” an apt description for the journey undertaken by Marina (newcomer Llúcia Garcia), an eighteen-year-old preparing to leave home to study filmmaking. Before she can begin that next chapter, however, she must travel to the Galician city of Vigo in search of documents connected to her late father, whose death years earlier left crucial gaps in her understanding of both her family history and herself.

Raised apart from her father’s relatives, Marina arrives as both an outsider and a blood relation. Her extended family welcomes her warmly enough on the surface, inviting her on boat trips, beach outings, and sprawling family gatherings, yet beneath the hospitality lies a more complicated reality. Old wounds remain unhealed, uncomfortable truths have been buried, and differing accounts of the past begin to challenge everything Marina thought she knew about her parents.

Like Simón’s previous work, Romería unfolds through intimate observations rather than dramatic confrontations. The filmmaker has a remarkable gift for capturing the rhythms of family life: overlapping conversations around crowded tables, casual moments of affection, and the subtle tensions that emerge when multiple generations inhabit the same space. Yet as Marina pieces together fragments of her family’s history, Romería expands beyond a straightforward search for answers. Her mother’s diaries, camcorder recordings, and the stories told by her relatives create a layered portrait of two people she barely knew, as what begins as a realistic family drama gradually opens into something more lyrical and impressionistic. Simón incorporates dreamlike passages and flashes of imagined memory, allowing the boundaries between history, recollection, and personal mythology to blur. These touches of magical realism give emotional shape to experiences that can never be fully recovered, only reimagined.

Both tender and quietly heartbreaking, Romería confirms Simón’s status as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Drawing from deeply personal material while touching on universal questions of identity and belonging, she has created a film that is at once a family portrait, a coming-of-age story, and a meditation on the subtle ways that each of us carries the residue of our forebearers.

“Carla Simón’s story of a young woman untangling a web of family secrets cements the filmmaker’s aptitude for naturalism while also marking a bold new step towards magical realism.” – Sophia Satchell-Baeza, British Film Institute

“A kind of road movie by sea, journeying in pursuit of some sense of self-completion.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

John Early’s ‘Maddie’s Secret’ Finds Heart Beneath the Camp

June 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

John Early has spent years building a reputation as one of contemporary comedy’s most distinctive voices, whether through scene-stealing performances in projects like Search Party and Stress Positions, or his singular stand-up and musical work. That history makes Maddie’s Secret an especially surprising directorial feature debut. While the film contains plenty of the heightened absurdity and comic precision that fans of Early will recognize, it ultimately reveals itself as something far more sincere: a melodrama about eating disorders, self-worth, and modern womanhood disguised as a campy made-for-television movie.

Catch Maddie’s Secret in theaters beginning June 26th at the Laemmle Monica.

Early stars as Maddie Ralph, a shy but gifted home cook working behind the scenes at a trendy food-media company. Her life changes overnight when a homemade cooking video goes viral, transforming her from anonymous dishwasher to the face of the brand. This sudden attention, however, reawakens her long-suppressed struggle with bulimia. Desperate to conceal her relapse from her loving husband Jake (Eric Rahill) and best friend Deena (Kate Berlant), Maddie tells an impulsive lie that quickly spirals beyond her control.

The premise sounds like the setup for broad satire, and Maddie’s Secret certainly pokes fun at influencer culture, wellness trends, online therapy apps, foodie celebrity, and other fixtures of contemporary life. Yet Early’s screenplay consistently resists easy cynicism, treating its characters with affection and finding humor in their quirks without reducing them to punchlines. Even the broadest personalities feel grounded by an underlying emotional honesty.

That tonal confidence is especially evident in Early’s performance. Playing Maddie could easily have become an exercise in caricature, but he approaches the character with remarkable empathy. Maddie is funny, anxious, talented, vulnerable, and deeply human. The film never treats her eating disorder as a joke, even as it finds comedy in the myriad social pressures, cultural expectations, and personal contradictions that surround it.

What ultimately distinguishes Maddie’s Secret is its refusal to choose between irony and sincerity. In an era when many comedies keep their subjects at arm’s length, Early allows himself to care deeply about his protagonist and the struggles she faces. The film is frequently funny, occasionally outrageous, and unexpectedly moving. By the time it reaches its emotional climax, what initially seemed like a clever genre exercise has transformed into something infinitely richer: a compassionate portrait of a woman trying to reconcile the person she is with the person she believes she should be.

For a filmmaker making his feature directing debut, it is an impressively assured achievement. Campy and heartfelt, and unlike much else in contemporary cinema, Maddie’s Secret announces John Early as a filmmaker worth watching.

“A lesser film would find more cynicism and mockery in the text, but Maddie’s Secret is a testament to the art of trying, finding optimism, and approaching life empathetically.” – Peyton Robinson, RogerEbert.com

“Brimming with style and spirit up to the final scene.” – Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times

“A film of real kindness.” – Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire