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“One of the most perfect movies in the history of Japanese cinema,” UGETSU 70th Anniversary Screenings.

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By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.

We will screen Ugetsu on October 11 at our Glendale, Claremont, Royal and Newhall theaters.

Pauline Kael wrote, “This subtle, violent yet magical film is one of the most amazing of the Japanese movies that played American art houses after the international success of Rashomon in 1951.” Japanese film scholar Donald Richie called Ugetsu “one of the most perfect movies in the history of Japanese cinema.” Many later directors, including Martin Scorsese and Andrei Tarkovsky, cited it as a personal favorite.

“With rare humanity, Mizoguchi reveals the toll these misadventures take on the souls of both men and their wives, many moments an uncanny synthesis of the realistic and the otherworldly.” ~ Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice

“Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi’s most widely heralded film, is a mysterious, incantatory, and gorgeous parable.” ~ Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

“A ravishingly composed, evocatively beautiful film.” ~ Rod McShane, Time Out

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

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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.

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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.

“I was motivated to place a lens on male vulnerability that includes a more empathic and compassionate gaze.” Filmmaker Aitch Alberto on ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE.

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The many fans of Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s 2012 YA novel “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” are abuzz about the new movie adaptation, which we are pleased to open Friday at our Glendale, Santa Monica and North Hollywood theaters. It was written and directed by a fellow fan, Aitch Alberto, who wrote the following about her filmmaking journey:

When I read Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s YA novel “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” I was a different person, I read it cover to cover and it affected me to my core. At the time I didn’t understand the journey I would take but, sometimes you just jump in because life is inviting you to.

I’ve been on my journey and exploration around gender and masculinity for years and this book, these characters, and the need to tell this story have been a part of that journey, which is something I didn’t realize until recently. Ari, has been a mirror and a guide to helping me unpack my own misconceptions and internalized stereotypes around masculinity.  Dante, with his naivety and fearlessness – has inspired me to embrace and fully become who I am, without concern for the ramifications. In fact, being honest about who I am and giving young people permission to do the same has become my mission.

Ari and Dante at its core tells a story of self-discovery and acceptance. And when I think about the world today and my own journey of self-discovery, I believe there is nothing more important than standing up and fully embracing who we are and being seen for it. One great lesson from the story is that when young people and anyone really are given the room to be who they are, the process of self-discovery becomes a natural part of growing up and, ultimately, a superpower.

With the film, I was motivated to place a lens on male vulnerability that includes a more empathic and compassionate gaze. My goal for the film is to help redefine masculinity specifically for the Latinx community and present us as fully realized human beings.

I wanted to make an accessible, grounded, yet elevated teen love story, playing with perspective, where we watch Ari’s unease and emotional isolation shift and expand when Dante enters his life. And by the end of the film, they are engulfed by a bold star filled sky, a hint of exaggerated realism, holding them, finally safe in the world. Through self-acceptance, they have found their place in the universe and the universe embraces them.

Visually I was inspired by the boyish wonder of “Stand by Me”, the surreal pallet of “Virgin Suicides” and the photographic choices in “Badlands,” as well as the composition and color in the photography of William Eggleston – both musing and grounded yet with an ethereal sensibility, an almost gauzy, golden, faded photo album look. There is a naturalistic quality to the book and the script that I wanted to maintain. We wanted to bring the audience into Ari’s world, making the film an immersive experience, where there is not a big formal separation between subject and audience. ~ Aitch Alberto

Laemmle Theatres joining the second National Cinema Day, bringing America’s day at the movies to L.A. this Sunday, August 27.

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Laemmle Theatres is excited to partner with the Cinema Foundation to celebrate the second annual National Cinema Day this Sunday, August 27th.

All seven Laemmle venues will be participating in the one-day event, which celebrates the power of movies to bring us all together, and discounted admissions for all movies in all formats (including Premium Large Format screens) will be no more than $4. What’s more, we’re discounting our fresh popcorn: $2 small, $4 medium and $6 large.

To celebrate the day, choose from any of our movies, including new films opening this weekend like Golda, The Owners, Love Life, Bella! This Woman’s Place is in the House, Mutt, or King Coal. Or catch a newly restored modern classic like Oldboy. Haven’t yet seen box office phenomena Barbie or Oppenheimer? Now you can see them as they were meant to be seen, on a big screen, and for cheap!

For more details, visit NationalCinemaDay.org. Join friends, families, and communities of moviegoers at a Laemmle theater near you.

“A revenge film like none you have seen,” Park Chan-Wook’s OLDBOY is restored, remastered and back in theaters today with a post-screening filmmaker conversation.

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Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Park Chan-Wook’s cinematic masterpiece, Oldboy has been restored and remastered in stunning 4K. After being mysteriously kidnapped and imprisoned with no human contact for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik) is suddenly released without any explanation. In a twisted game of cat and mouse, he has only five days to retrace his past, track down his captors, and get his revenge.

Oldboy, which remains a cult classic and has served as inspiration for auteurs for nearly two decades, will return to theaters for the first time in 20 years. Now playing at the Laemmle Glendale and NoHo.

All screenings of Oldboy will feature a new post-screening bonus conversation about the film with director Park and filmmaker Nicolas Refn (in English and Korean with English subtitles; running time: 12 minutes).

“A revenge film like none you have seen.” ~ Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

“Oldboy is a delirious, confronting ride, a movie full of visceral shocks and aesthetic pleasures: it has an explosive immediacy and a persistent afterlife, a lingering impact that is hard to shake.” ~ Philippa Hawker, The Age (Australia)

“Both brutal and lyrical, writer-director Park Chan-wook’s existential nail-biter has torture scenes that will have you avoiding dentists, sushi bars and badly appointed hotel rooms.” ~ Jami Bernard, New York Daily News

“A dark and thrillingly horrible adventure into the realms of the unthinkable.” ~ Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“It’s mesmerizing and discomfiting, engaging the viewer on a visceral and an intellectual level.” ~ Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
“A visually beguiling trip that keeps pulling you along and keeps you wondering what fresh hell could possibly come next.” ~ Bob Townsend, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Virginie Efira on her role in the “twisted, slightly unhinged and emotionally taut psychological drama” MADELEINE COLLINS.

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We’ve been seeing a lot of the actress Virginia Efira in recent French imports, from Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016) and Benedetta (2021), Justine Triet’s Sibyl, Alice Wincour’s Revoir Paris (2022) and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children. She brings utter authenticity and a certain je ne sais quoi that captures her characters’ inner mysteries in a captivating way. Her role in Madeleine Collins, as a woman leading a secret double life split between two households in two countries, demands these qualities of her. The Hollywood Reporter described the film as a “twisted, slightly unhinged and emotionally taut psychological drama.” In a recent interview, the director/co-writer Antoine Barraud said the title “character is so complex, and at times almost perverse, and we needed to create a character that we could be happy to follow for a long time, and go a long way, without ever stopping loving her. Virginie has this ability to remain constantly intriguing: she is very beautiful, but her beauty is neither distant nor threatening, it is positive and appealing. Very quickly, I could imagine no one else but her in this role.”

We open Madeleine Collins August 18 at the Royal and Town Center and August 25 in Glendale.

Efira recently sat for an interview about the film:

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE MADELEINE COLLINS’ SCRIPT?

It’s quite rare to be sent such a brilliantly written script, which contains something so tailor-made to a genre type of cinema: in an almost mathematical way, each scene adds a new piece to a mysterious personality whose complex nature gradually builds up, but whose elements don’t necessarily seem to fit together. So, there was this thriller-like plot and then, on top of this, a line of questioning that runs all the way through the narrative: what is a person’s true self? Is it only made up of the story of your life? How does one be oneself, etc.? One of my favorite films of recent years is David Fincher’s Gone Girl: a thrilling plot, which reveals a broader and transgressive analysis of intimacy and the social representation of the couple. French cinema is sometimes cautious in its relationship with genre films, and this was perhaps the first script I received that tackled this head on.

DID YOU FIND THAT THE ROLE YOU WERE ASKED TO PLAY IN THIS FILM WAS A ROLE THAT YOU’D NEVER PLAYED BEFORE?

If something interests you, it’s usually because it allows you to experiment with something new, or because it seems intriguing. But I also feel that all the characters I’ve played could get along with each other: the heroine of Madeleine Collins‘ has something in common with Justine Triet’s Sibyl. It’s a subconscious though: you don’t really think about characters that you have or haven’t played before.

Saying that, with this character I identified a theme that interests me: a multiple identity from which outer layers are gradually peeled away, and a character emerges who no longer knows exactly what she has left to offer, in what is a progressive paring back.

Up until now, I’ve often played the opposite: women who break down, and then get back up and are stronger for it. Judith, however, starts off as a strong person and then gradually has the support she relies on taken away. She then has to find a new way of being Judith.

HOW DOES ONE PREPARE FOR A CHARACTER LIKE JUDITH?

I didn’t want Judith to appear to be different or mysterious right from the outset. There is a form of intoxication surrounding her. An aesthetic and emotional intoxication, linked to the story she tells about herself: she has succeeded in hiding a secret, she can be proud of that, it’s not what women do everyday. At the beginning, there is a certain nonchalance about her. She has a loving relationship on the one side, and a loving relationship on the other, and she doesn’t falter – yet. She takes the train, and works on the train, "Oh sorry, was I talking too loud?” And then as events unfold, a vulnerability emerges. I had to conjure this all out of nowhere.

In a role like this, you also have to accept to be a bit out of your depth, so as to be totally open to ideas on set. Certain pieces of music became my signature style: there was a track by Daft Punk – I’ve forgotten the name – which gave the character energy, and forward momentum, like someone who could smash through walls.

On a much grander scale, I remember listening to Bernard Hermann’s soundtrack for the film Vertigo. I didn’t listen to these pieces of music on set, I’m not the type of person to set myself apart when filming. I would arrive on set with all of this in my head: the pieces of music, memories of films, faces, emotions, forgotten thoughts. Then, it was just a case of trying to be open on set to whatever came my way, and open to my acting partners. You absorb something that you’re not entirely sure what it is, and which doesn’t come out exactly as you expected.

DID YOU TRY TO QUESTION WHAT WAS BEHIND JUDITH’S BEHAVIOR? AN EMOTIONAL DEFICIENCY? A FORM OF MADNESS?

We see the relationship she has with her mother. Her mother isn’t exactly very approving nor loving, she comes out with some quite nasty things when she speaks to Judith! Maybe Judith didn’t have a happy childhood. In the illicit and transgressive relationship that Judith has with Abdel, there is also this idea of something that is growing, a secret that gets bigger and bigger and which makes her unable to bear her mother any longer. She never makes a big leap,

but a series of small steps away, which lead to another and another, etc. They never speak about her relationship with Abdel being forbidden. They put it off until later, a very gradual shift gives a form of legitimacy to this relationship.

A psychiatrist would probably have things to say about Judith, and maybe even prescribe her treatment, but when I work on a character, I can’t just look at them clinically. What interests me is imagining the character beyond just the story: how you broaden the path of your daily existence, how you avoid being limited by the confines of your life, the life of someone who has probably always been the perfect wife. Can you only be one person with one name, and does that name have to conform to how people have always seen you?

DO YOU FEEL SORRY FOR JUDITH? DO YOU ADMIRE HER?

You can feel both at the same time, right? But when I was playing her, I was inside her, so the answer is neither! And without making her out to be some great Machiavellian villain, she’s someone who doesn’t do too badly in managing her affairs, and whose actions give her some sense of empowerment.

JUDITH IS ALWAYS ON THE GO. DID YOU BASE YOUR PERFORMANCE ON THIS ENERGY AND DRIVE?

Yes, she’s someone who is always in a hurry. She moves, there’s always somewhere else to be. So she’s pragmatic, she packs her suitcase, then she unpacks it when she arrives, she makes her sandwiches while she talks, and of course all this gives life to a scene. There is also a basic female element of always multitasking: someone who looks after a home – in fact two homes! – and who works at the same time; at one point, it’s not surprising that she can no longer translate her texts! Her hyperactivity is also a mask, she can’t face herself: the moment she sits still and is asked to look at herself, everything becomes blurry, like someone in a lake struggling to reach the shore.

WERE THERE SCENES THAT WERE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS TO ACT?

I had excellent acting partners who played my two spouses, as well as the young actor who plays Judith’s elder son, he was amazing. Working together, there was something different going on with each actor. Antoine Barraud left us very free with this, he’s a keen spectator and likes to wait and see what actors bring to a scene. He never outlines how he wants you to get from A to B. Some directors do. So, since there is no exact point B, even if you know what the scene is about, the way to get here was slightly different with each take. He allowed us the freedom of jumping into the unknown, and if your subconscious did things right or wrong, it didn’t matter. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea of doing the right thing. The most demanding time for me was in the scenes that required my anger and violence. I put so much into these scenes when I played them, as if my life depended on it. A bit like how a teenager would react, and my body suffered. I should probably calm down a bit.

JUDITH IS EXACTLY WHAT ABDEL AND MELVIL WANT HER TO BE. IS THE JOURNEY SHE TAKES A JOURNEY OF EMANCIPATION, LIBERATION?

Perhaps, but in Judith’s own creation of multiple personalities there’s already a notion of freedom. Responding to multiple expectations always comes down to the same basic belief: I give what is expected of me. Perhaps she is mistaken about what is expected of her. In any case, when I was working on the character, I saw in her a notion of devotion: even if Judith lies, she is always totally present in the moment, and is genuinely concerned about others, whether it be for her husbands or her children.

ANTOINE BARRAUD SUGGESTS THAT JUDITH IS LIKE AN ACTRESS AS ACTING IS A LIE…

That reminds me of something Cocteau once said: “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.”

VIRGINIE EFIRA – FILMOGRAPHY

2022 OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (d. Rebecca Zlotowski)

2022 REVOIR PARIS (d. Alice Winocour)

2021 WAITING FOR BOJANGLES (d. Régis Roinsard)

2021 MADELEINE COLLINS (d. Antoine Barraud)

2021 BENEDETTA (d. Paul Verhoeven)

2020 BYE BYE MORONS (d. Albert Dupontel)

2020 NIGHT SHIFT (d. Anne Fontaine)

2019 SIBYL (d. Justine Triet)

2018 KEEP GOING (d. Joachim Lafosse)

2018 AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE (d. Catherine Corsini)

2018 SINK OR SWIM (d. Gilles Lellouche)

2017 NOT ON MY WATCH (d. Emmanuelle Cuau)

2016 ELLE (d. Paul Verhoeven)

2016 VICTORIA (d. Justine Triet)

2016 UP FOR LOVE (d. Laurent Tirad)

2015 THE SENSE OF WONDER (d. Éric Besnard)

2015 CAPRICE (d. Emmanuel Mouret)

2013 TURNING TIDE (d. Christophe Offenstein)

2013 COOKIE (d. Léa Fazer)

2013 IT BOY (d. David Moreau)

2012 DEAD MAN TALKING (d. Patrick Ridremont)

2011 MY WORST NIGHTMARE (d. Anne Fontaine)

2010 SECOND CHANCE (d. Nicolas Cuche)

2010 KILL ME PLEASE (d. Olias Barco)

2009 LES BARONS (d. Nabil Ben Yadir)

“A Deeply Human Experience You’ll Never Have on Your Couch” ~ The New York Times on BARBENHEIMER and the power and importance of the theatrical experience.

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Seeing a movie from your sofa is convenient and pleasant but watching the same film in public takes it from passive consumption to active experience. Funny, frightening, sexy, exciting, awesome movies are 100 times funnier, scarier, sexier and more exciting when seen in public. Being in a theater with strangers allow a frisson that you just do not get at home. The laughter that Barbie elicits and the awe, fear and terror that Oppenheimer elicits make this perfectly clear.

The New York Times just posted a terrific piece about this that articulates this beautifully. It’s by the writer Mark Jacobson.

“For a moment, at least, the Barbenheimer phenomenon brought back the sensation of the movie theater as a semi-sacred public place, a space where we congregate to have an experience, made all the more transcendent by having it together.”

Here’s how it starts:

“It seemed like a miracle. The Cobble Hill Cinemas, a neighborhood joint that opened in the 1920s as the Lido and that served for decades as a venue for B-movie action films, was packed on what would ordinarily be a dead Monday night — and without a single La-Z-Boy recliner, goat cheese pizza or other modern enticement in sight. I was there with 200 or so other patrons, a gloriously mixed crowd, to see Oppenheimer, one-half of the Barbenheimer cultural moment. When the bomb finally went off in the New Mexico desert — this fulcrumatic moment in our species’ history — it was beheld simultaneously, an exhilarating common experience, which is exactly what the movie house is supposed to deliver. In the end, it didn’t matter if you liked the picture or not. What mattered is that we’d seen it together.

“After a few years in which the pandemic and streaming platforms combined to break Americans of their movie theatergoing habits, we’d surged back joyfully, triumphantly, to theaters, producing the fourth biggest domestic weekend of all time. For a moment, it was possible to forget the grim realities that still linger for the cinema business, circling like vultures. The actors’ and writers’ unions (I am a member of the latter) are still on strike with no end in sight. With far fewer products in the pipeline, there won’t be many Barbenheimer-shaped rabbits to pull out of the hat anytime soon. AMC is in trouble. So is Regal, which narrowly avoided having to close its theater in Union Square. On the day before the blockbuster weekend, the Regal UA in Staten Island, one of the last remaining theaters in that borough, closed its doors for good. The 2016 demise of the Ziegfeld means that the largest single-screen theater in Manhattan is now the relatively diminutive 571-seat Paris — which tellingly was saved by and is run by Netflix.

“In the time of streaming and 146-inch TV screens, the simple act of going out to the movies feels contrarian, even subversive. It also feels endangered. That’s grim news, because the beauty of going to the movies was never just about the films on the screens; it was about the way we all gathered to watch them.”

Click here to read the full piece.