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

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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.

The triumphant return of New Deal Tuesdays: $7 tickets all day long.

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Coinciding with the liberation of the term “Taco Tuesdays” from the clutches of Big Taco, Laemmle Theatres is pleased to bring back our weekly discount program New Deal Tuesdays. We first introduced it during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and although economists are now saying we will probably avoid another economic downturn any time soon, it is always a good time to encourage people to see movies as they were meant to be seen, where they are scientifically proven (research pending) to be 1000% better: in theaters.

For a limited time, we will sell all tickets for all Tuesday afternoon and evening screenings for only seven dollars. (Fine print: the discount only applies to movies we’re screening as part of regular engagements, so that excludes operas and film festivals. But those represent a fraction of the films we show.) This means that if one were to bring six friends or family members to a Laemmle movie on any given Tuesday, said person and their party could all enjoy the flick for only [7 x 7, checks calculator] $49!

What’s more, we are planning  Tuesday concessions discounts. Stay tuned to our socials to keep abreast of the developing New Deal Tuesdays tidings. Use laemmle.com/connect as a way to stay connected and get further announcements. And consider enjoying tacos before or after the movies! Tacos, too, are wonderful and affordable.

Christian Petzold’s AFIRE opens this weekend at the Royal with the filmmaker in person for a Q&A.

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Afire, German director Christian Petzold’s latest movie is, among other things, extremely funny. This comes as a delightful surprise, because his previous work — like Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), Transit (2018) and Undine (2020) — was, as Tim Grierson writes in his just-posted L.A. Times piece, noted for its “incisive character studies [with] drum-tight narratives, thematic complexity and investigations of identity,” but not overt humor. Afire is set at a vacation home by the Baltic Sea, where a pretentious novelist (a terrific Thomas Schubert) mixes awkwardly with a group of old and new friends. From the Times piece: “When we did the table read, there was just nonstop laughter,” actor Schubert says during a separate interview. “He was really surprised by that, because he didn’t necessarily see it that way. At the same time, he was relieved because we’d found the right tonality for the story.”

We open Afire this Friday at the Royal and July 21 at the Laemmle Glendale and Town Center in Encino. Petzold will participate in a Q&A after the 7:10 pm, July 15 screening at the Royal. The Los Angeles engagement is co-presented by the Goethe-Institut.

“Another masterwork about characters who are trapped by internal and external circumstances from which they find it intensely difficult to escape.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“In depicting a novice artist forced to unwrite everything to move forward, “Afire” also shows a veteran one open to self-editing, and vigorous self-renewal.” ~ Guy Lodge, Variety

“Deceptive simplicity makes way for illuminating depths.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“[Adds] another compelling and precise layer of texture to Petzold’s multifaceted oeuvre.” ~ Marina Ashioti, Little White Lies

ODD HOURS, NO PAY, COOL HAT Q&A schedule.

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Panelists FOR ODD HOURS, NO PAY, COOL HAT screenings: 
Tuesday, July 11 @ Royal 
Moderator: Paul Rachman
Panelists: Cameron Zohoori, Dillon Byron
Wednesday, July 12 @ Glendale
Moderator: Tom Putnam
Panelists: Cameron Zohoori, Dillon Byron, Bill Bullard
Thursday, July 13 @ Newhall
Moderator: Jeffrey Baumunk
Panelists: Cameron Zohoori, Jenna Dunbar

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

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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

Join Laemmle Theatres in supporting TreePeople’s new monthly giving program, The Canopy.

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A few words from Laemmle Theatres’ partners, TreePeople!

Dear friends,

TreePeople is delighted to announce our partnership with Laemmle Theatres, one of Los Angeles’ most iconic independent cinema groups. As an organization committed to protecting and expanding our local ecosystems, we are grateful for their support and shared passion for environmental sustainability. 

At TreePeople, we believe trees are not just a source of beauty but are also vital to the health and well-being of our communities. Trees provide shade, improve air quality, absorb carbon, and prevent erosion.

As you may know, TreePeople has a long and storied history. We were founded in 1973 by a concerned teenager who saw the need to address the environmental challenges facing Los Angeles. Since then, we’ve planted over three million trees, and engaged over three million volunteers. Our work has been recognized locally and nationally, and we’re proud to be part of the movement to create a more sustainable future.

TreePeople has made significant strides in supporting communities that suffer from pollution exposure and extreme heat, creating change to improve both environmental and human health. These impacts are further explored through our programming in wildfire restoration and prevention, school greening, eco-tours, residential tree distributions, community engagement, tribal relations, and a focus on our “bright spots”; areas across Southern California that are the most affected by extreme heat, pollution, seasonal flooding, and low tree canopy cover.

However, our work is far from done. The climate crisis is becoming increasingly urgent, and the need to protect and expand our urban forest is more important than ever. That’s why we would like to invite you to join our monthly giving program, The Canopy. By joining The Canopy, you will help us continue our critical work of building a greener, more resilient, and sustainable Southern California.

The Canopy is an excellent way to support TreePeople because it allows us to plan for the future with confidence. Your ongoing support will enable us to take on ambitious projects, such as planting new trees, restoring watersheds, and maintaining community green spaces. 

We are so grateful for this opportunity to tell you more about our work, and we hope that you will join our movement! Your contributions, no matter how small, will help us continue our work and build a better future for generations to come. 

Trees need People. People need Trees.

Sincerely,

TreePeople Team

 

ONLY IN THEATERS screening with Q&A this Saturday, July 8 at Vidiots in Eagle Rock.

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July 5 Update: Tickets are now on sale for this Saturday’s Vidiots screening of Only in Theaters. In addition to the film, this is one more, possibly last chance to catch an in-person Q&A with subjects Greg and Tish Laemmle and filmmaker Raphael Sbarge.

Original post from June 14: Vidiots, welcome to the L.A. exhibition scene! ONLY IN THEATERS screening w/Q&A July 8.

Los Angeles’ world class movie theater culture just got classier. By reopening the 271-seat Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock, Vidiots has joined major venues of film exhibition like the Academy Museum, the American Cinematheque, the Alamo Drafthouse, the New Beverly, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (in 2025), and REDCAT, to grassroots sites like Braindead Studios, Secret Movie Club, and Cinespia, plus, ahem, yours truly, Laemmle Theatres to further get Angelenos off their lonesome sofas and out into our one-of-a-kind megalopolis. We are in Hollywood, after all, the movie capital of the world, and it’s only fitting we have a plethora of ways to see movies the way they are meant to be seen: in public, with an audience, on big screens. Yes, home viewing is convenient. And for episodic stuff that is meant to be seen on TV, we are all for it. But comparing the experience of watching a “movie” via VOD with the act of actually seeing the same film in a movie theatre is like the debate between masturbation and sex …or a frozen meal versus a meal at your favorite restaurant. In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, Baby.”

We’re pleased the documentary about Laemmle, Only in Theaters, is among Vidiot’s first screenings. Join filmmaker Raphael Sbarge and subjects Greg and Tish Laemmle for a post-screening Q&A on July 8.

Mark Olsen of the L.A. Times has been covering Vidiot’s long road from funky, adored Santa Monica video store to Eagle Rock movie theater/cafe/video store/event space. Here’s the beginning of his latest dispatch:

When the Santa Monica video store Vidiots, which had become a local cultural institution, closed in February 2017, founders Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber had their doubts as to whether the store would ever rebound. Opened in 1985, the beloved rental shop had a collection of more than 50,000 titles on various media formats that was put into storage, potentially never to be publicly available again.

“I didn’t really think it would,” said Tauber, reflecting on whether the store could bounce back after years of financial struggle with the rise of emerging streaming services. “I know that was the plan from the beginning, but I think by the time we shut down, I was so worn out and exhausted from trying to keep the business going and all the negativity and struggle. It was really hard to imagine this was really going to happen. Of course I hoped it would, but we were just way burnt out by the time we were closing down.”

Tauber sat recently with Polinger in the comfy and inviting theater space of the revived Vidiots, which just reopened. Besides a video store, the newly renovated complex at the Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock includes a 271-seat movie theater, a beer and wine bar, and a smaller micro-cinema space that can also be used for community and educational programs.

“It has been such a transformation and such a huge endeavor, with so many obstacles along the way,” said Polinger. “It’s really a miracle that we’re here.”

Click here to read Olsen’s full article.

 

THE NIGHT OF THE 12TH “never stops sending chills up your spine.” Opening Friday at the Royal, Town Center & Glendale.

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Based on a true crime book by Pauline Guéna, The Night of the 12th [La nuit du 12] is a spellbinding French mystery that’s “both highly effective and brilliantly acted, where procedures and mindsets reveal a frayed society” (Cineuropa), posing uneasy questions about the male-dominated world of law enforcement, and their ability to handle the violent crimes routinely perpetrated against women. The film was rightly nominated for 10 César Awards, winning six, including Best Film, Adapted Screenplay, Director, Supporting Actor and Most Promising Newcomer. We’re thrilled to open the film this Friday at the Royal in West L.A., Town Center in Encino, and Glendale.
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“Its real-world mysteries eventually become existential ones, but the film never stops sending chills up your spine.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture
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“This taut and piercing thriller is one of Moll’s stronger works to date, using a genre template to delve into issues of violence, gender and policing in contemporary France.” ~ Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter
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“The grandeur of the film comes from the depth of emotion. These may be the hard-boiled characters, but they are still human.” ~ Paul Byrnes, Sydney Morning Herald

“A brutally engrossing drama.” ~ Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
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“The Night of the 12th keeps tricking us into thinking it’s a more conventional thriller than it is. ~ Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“The long and devastating fallout from a senseless act of violence affects almost everyone in this compelling reality-inspired account, which lingers in the mind in a way that few crime stories do.” ~ Helen O’Hara, Empire Magazine
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