Film Reviews & Previews
Ruth Reichl—trailblazing New York Times food critic, groundbreaking Gourmet Magazine editor, best-selling memoirist, and, for decades, one of the most influential figures shaping American food culture—grows concerned about the fate of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs as they wrestle with both immediate and systemic challenges as the pandemic takes hold.
In Food and Country, Reichl reaches across political and social divides to discover innovators who are risking it all to survive on the front lines. As one person leads her to the next, she follows the unfolding stories of ranchers in Kansas and Georgia; farmers in Nebraska, Ohio, and the Bronx; a New England fisherman; and maverick chefs on both coasts. As she witnesses them navigate intractable circumstances, Reichl shares pieces of her own life, and, in doing so, begins to take stock of the path she has traveled and the ideals she left behind. Through her eyes, we get to know the humanity and struggle behind the food we eat. As Reichl says: “How we grow and make our food shows us our values– as a nation and as human beings.
Food and Country filmmaker Laura Gabbert will participate in Q&As after the 10/9 and 10/10 screenings at the Laemmle Monica Film Center and Glendale. The regular engagement at the Royal begins on October 11.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
“What drives me as a filmmaker is finding ways to put us inside, to humanize someone else’s experience; in short to connect us. My own instincts lead me back to food stories again and again because they’re a rich prism through which to understand culture and our relationships to each other. Food is a conduit, a vehicle that connects people to people, and people to culture.
“My 2015 documentary, City of Gold, is about the late Jonathan Gold, the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Jonathan’s writing gave me a way to understand and love Los Angeles. He wrote about restaurants and food as the gateway to connection and empathy across perceived boundaries in a city bursting with multiple cultures and ethnicities. In my next culinary film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, decadent cakes became an expression and critique of contemporary excess, and laid bare our longing for community in a world of inequity and exclusion. Food and Country, my third food foray, was prompted by Covid, but it’s not actually about Covid; it’s about the people behind our food. Transcending blue state/red state politics, their resilience and ingenuity are the heart of this film.
“In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, I saw that independent restaurants were the canary in the coalmine and began to worry about the restaurant owners, chefs, and workers with whom I had grown close while making City of Gold. Knowing so many people in the food world with urgent, compelling stories that needed to be told, I felt I had to document their plight. How they would adapt to survive. I wondered how the potential loss of these businesses would change the fabric of our communities and cities.
“Just as I was preparing to film struggling Los Angeles restaurants, storied food writer Ruth Reichl reached out to me and said, “I hear we’re working on something similar. Let’s talk.” Ruth was taking a bigger picture approach to the crisis — grasping right away the devastating impact the pandemic could have on the entire food chain. Ruth and I quickly decided to join forces and began reaching out to pivotal players in food through video calls. Ruth’s stellar reputation as chronicler and voice of American food culture for the last four decades opened doors, but everywhere we turned, it was Ruth’s authenticity, curiosity, and warmth that inspired trust and elicited truth telling. People across the front lines of the food chain and political divides — from the most celebrated chefs, to food equity activists, to farmers and ranchers— wanted to talk with her. And, we would soon learn, they also wanted to open up and confide in her, and even seek solace. But the connection between Ruth and our characters is a two-way street. Just as they rely on Ruth, so too does Ruth lean on them for insight and closeness.
“Ruth and I set out to follow the unfolding stories of innovators in every corner of America experimenting to transcend a broken food system. Collectively their story is the story of all independent businesses fighting to survive an ever-consolidating industry. Their stories also hold up a mirror. How we make and grow our food tells us who we are as a country, who we are as human beings.” — Laura Gabbert
Opening this Friday at the Laemmle Royal and Glendale, Paradise is Burning is an emotional drama that navigates the complexities of society and family in working-class Swedish suburbia. Three sisters – sixteen-year-old Laura (Bianca Delbravo), twelve-year-old Mira (Dilvin Asaad), and seven-year-old Steffi (Safira Mossberg) – are left to their own devices by their absent mother. As summer approaches, the trio revels in the excitement of freedom, letting their days unfold without the constraints of adult supervision. However, when Laura receives a call that threatens to place them in foster care, she frantically searches for a substitute mother to avoid this fate. Keeping the truth hidden from her younger sisters, Laura navigates the blurred lines between the thrill of independence and the harsh realities of growing up, as the sisters’ relationships with each other are put to the test.
“Not many films can make you simultaneously think of Sean Baker, Andrei Tarkovsky, and David Lynch. Yet those are the filmmakers that come to mind when watching Paradise is Burning, the spectacular debut feature from Mika Gustafson. What feels like a straightforward family drama adds a small dose of surrealism to add some complexity, resulting in an original work that will stand as one of the most moving films of 2024.” ~ Joshua Stevens, Loud & Clear Reviews
Writer-director Mika Gustafson and co-screenwriter Alexander Öhrstrand recently sat down with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge to talk about Paradise is Burning on the new podcast Inside the Arthouse. Greg calls the film his favorite of the year so far.
“A spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy about a grief-stricken cantor who loses his voice, only to find that he’s surrounded by a chorus of well-intentioned people who are happy to speak for him.” ~ David Ehrlich, indieWire
“We get the sense that Silver would be perfectly happy just sitting there and watching these people forever, story and conflict and resolution be damned. And it really is in these characters’ close exchanges that the movie comes to life.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture
“Between the Temples emerges as a quirky and effective showcase for two actors known for playing oddball characters. Kane and Schwartzman bounce off each other so well that their work alone makes the film worth seeing.” ~ Odie Henderson, Boston Globe
“The movie is consistently funny, but its humor tends to be fairly gentle because it’s rooted in human behavior rather than in condescending, judgmental ideas about such behavior.” ~ Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“Schwartzman is very affecting as a perplexed, tragicomic galoot and Kane is a marvel.” ~ Jonathan Romney, Financial Times
“Shot wanly on film in wintertime, Between the Temples takes a while to reveal its depths – its linguistic wit, its cockeyed humor and compassion, how it can modulate from deadpan-slapstick to achingly poignant and still feel authentic in both keys.” ~ Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
“With both misery and comedy, director Nathan Silver satisfyingly captures the Jewish experience.” ~ Joey Shapiro, Chicago Reader
“The real attraction here is the interplay between the two leads, which makes Between the Temples sing.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
Introducing the new video podcast Inside the Arthouse. Hosted by Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theatres, and actor and Emmy award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, Inside the Arthouse is an insider’s perspective on filmmakers and the people responsible for the movies showing on arthouse screens across the U.S.
Episode 101: Merchant Ivory: A Conversation with Stephen Soucy is now live everywhere you get your podcasts.
Laemmle Theatres opens Merchant Ivory this Friday at the Royal/West L.A. and Town Center/Encino. In his Hollywood Reporter review, David Rooney wrote of the film, “anyone with a fondness for…what might be described as a gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation will find immense pleasure here.” Merchant Ivory director Stephen Soucy will do in-person Q&As following the 7 PM screenings at the Royal on August 30 and 31. Film critic David Ansen will moderate the Q&A on the 30th.
Learn more about Inside the Arthouse at Insidethearthouse.com.
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Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters, along with actor and Emmy Award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, are launching a new Video Podcast called INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE. The show is dedicated to highlighting new releases, repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and the key personalities who bring movies to the big screen. INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will be filmed and recorded at the Laemmle Royal Theatre, the 100-year-old theater that has been operated by three generations of Laemmles for the past half century.
Laemmle says, “My family has been dedicated to providing a home for independent, foreign and documentary film for almost a century, and we have decided to launch INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE in order to promote the release of new films that will ultimately play in arthouses all across the country.”
“Our interviews will be recorded in person or via Zoom, with filmmakers appearing large on the screen,” says Sbarge, an independent filmmaker himself. “Opening a movie in theaters requires all the support they can get, and INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, is dedicated to the celebration of seeing films in theaters.”
Their first guests include Stephen Soucy, the director of MERCHANT IVORY, a documentary about art house mainstays Ismail Merchant and James Ivory; the Golden Lion-winning director of the Swedish film PARADISE IS BURNING, Mika Gustafson; the writer and director of PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL, Cheri Lovedog and Alex Steyermark, re-released in theaters via Kino Lorber, for their 20th anniversary; and the co-directors of the new documentary UNION, out of the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, Brett Story and Steven Main.
In subsequent episodes – initially to be released every two weeks – INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will focus on new releases and repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and personalities who are responsible for bringing movies to the big screen. The first episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will premiere on August 28, 2024. The show can be found on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. For more information, visit www.insidethearthouse.com!
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present this month’s screening in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Michelangelo Antonioni’s vibrant masterpiece RED DESERT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and collected rave reviews around the world on its release over the next several months. We will show the film at five of our theaters at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 31.
Antonioni had earned critical acclaim for the three movies in his “alienation trilogy”—’L’Avventura,’ ‘La Notte,’ and ‘Eclipse’ — made during the early 1960s. RED DESERT explored some of the same themes but introduced a new element to the director’s work. The three earlier movies were all shot in black-and-white, but with RED DESERT Antonioni decided to experiment with color cinematography for the first time, and critics heralded his achievement. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann declared, “With Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT, the art of the film advances…quite simply, it is the best use of color I have ever seen in a film, exquisite in itself.” Kauffmann added, “there is a buried history of modern painting in it, from the Impressionists through Mondrian to Hopper and Wyeth.”
Monica Vitti, who had starred in all three of Antonioni’s earlier movies, has the leading role of Giuliana, the wife of an industrialist in Ravenna. She is emotionally troubled and eventually begins an affair with an employee at her husband’s factory. Carlo Chionetti plays the husband, and Richard Harris — fresh from his Oscar-nominated performance in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘This Sporting Life’ — plays her lover. Antonioni wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Tonino Guerra.
In addition to its psychological themes, the film offers prescient critique of industrial pollution, with the color cinematography contributing to this political commentary. A key collaborator was director of photography Carlo Di Palma, who worked closely with Antonioni to paint the landscapes when necessary to create the desired mood of malaise. Antonioni and Di Palma collaborated again on the director’s most successful movie, the English-language ‘Blowup,’ an Oscar nominee in 1966. Other directors around the world — including Ettore Scola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sidney Lumet — worked with Di Palma. The cinematographer later established a fruitful collaboration with Woody Allen on such films as ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ ‘Radio Days,’ and ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’
Time magazine called RED DESERT “at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by Italy’s masterful Michelangelo Antonioni.” More recently, Geoff Andrew of Time Out hailed “perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” Robbie Collin of London’s Daily Telegraph declared, “Almost half a century on, RED DESERT remains a film of rare beauty and brooding erotic intensity.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called the film Antonioni’s “most mysterious and awe-inspiring work.”
Screening one night only at the Royal in West Los Angeles, the Town Center in Encino, and Laemmle Theatres in Glendale, Claremont, and Newhall.