Culture Vulture Q2: Beethoven, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, and more.
Our long-running Culture Vulture series continues every Saturday and Sunday morning and Monday evening at our Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, Encino, and Santa Monica theaters.
April 5-7: Far Out: Life on and After the Commune ~ In 1968, a group of radical journalists leave the city and politics to live communally as organic farmers. The film examines their lives and return to the political world and how the commune became a community.
April 12-14: In Search of Beethoven ~ The makers of In Search of Mozart return with a new feature-length bio-doc about Beethoven. Director Phil Grabsky brings together the world’s leading performers and experts on Beethoven to reveal new insights into the legendary composer.
April 19-21: Art for Everybody ~ Thomas Kinkade’s pastoral landscapes made him the most collected painter of all time — and the most despised. Following his shocking death, his family discovers a vault of never-before-seen paintings that upend his entire image, revealing a complex, multifaceted American artist.
April 26-28: Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story ~ Narrated by Corin Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave as the voices of Klaus Mann and Erika Mann, Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story is the result of a remarkable pairing between fiction and nonfiction filmmakers Wieland Speck and Andrea Weiss. It depicts another remarkable relationship, that of Erika and Klaus Mann, the brilliant eldest children of German author Thomas Mann.
May 3-5: Vanya ~ Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag) brings multiple characters to life in Simon Stephens’ radical new version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions, directed by Sam Yates. Filmed live during its sold-out run in London’s West End.
May 10-12: Marcella ~ Marcella Hazan didn’t just teach Italian cooking—she changed the way America eats. Fearless, passionate, and exacting, she introduced authentic recipes to millions. Julia Child called Marcella “my mentor in all things Italian.” Featuring Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, April Bloomfield, and Lidia Bastianich, this intimate portrait reveals the bold woman who forever shaped home kitchens.
May 17-19: ADA: My Mother the Architect ~ Ada Karmi-Melamede is one of the most accomplished architects in the world, yet her work remains largely unrecognized beyond architectural circles. In the 1970s, she moved to New York from Israel, following her husband’s rising career, and spent the next 15 years balancing academia, large-scale public projects, and motherhood. In the early ’80s, after being denied tenure at Columbia, Ada left New York and her family for Israel where she designed landmarks such as the Supreme Court Building, the Open University, the Israel Institute for Democracy, and Ben Gurion University, among many others.
May 31-June 2: Michelangelo: Love and Death ~ Spanning his 89 years, Michelangelo: Love and Death takes a cinematic journey from the print and drawing rooms of Europe, through the great chapels and museums of Florence, Rome and the Vatican to explore the tempestuous life of Michelangelo. We go in search of a greater understanding of this most charismatic figure, his relationship with his contemporaries and his valuable artistic legacy.
June 7-9: A Streetcar Named Desire ~ Gillian Anderson (The X-Files, The Crown), Vanessa Kirby (The Crown), and Ben Foster (Lone Survivor) lead the cast in Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece, returning to cinemas. As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski. From visionary director Benedict Andrews, this acclaimed production was filmed live during a sold-out run at the Young Vic Theatre in 2014.
June 14-16: A Photographic Memory ~ How well can we know someone through the things they leave behind? Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed was only 18 months old when her mother, the world-travelling journalist Sheila Turner-Seed, died suddenly. Thirty years later, after she discovers more than 50 hours of audio interviews conducted by her mother, Seed hears her mother’s voice for the first time. Through a wealth of audio recordings, photographs and films, the filmmaker sets out to connect with her late mother while at the same time unveiling an invaluable archive of conversations with some of the most renowned photographers of the 20th century.
We’re still finalizing the Culture Vulture schedule beyond that, but we do have two other terrific titles locked in for July and September:
July 5-7: Heartworn Highways ~ In the mid 1970s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent country music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly long-haired Willie Nelson’s embrace of hippie attitudes and audiences, a younger generation of artists including Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and Guy Clark popularized and developed the outlaw sound. It borrowed from rock, folk and bluegrass, with an edge that was missing from mainstream Nashville country. This newly restored documentary includes rarely captured performances of these musicians as they perfected this then-new style and helped change the course of country music history.
September 27-29: Inter Alia ~ Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Saltburn) is Jessica in the much-anticipated next play from the team behind Prima Facie. Jessica Parks is a smart Crown Court Judge at the top of her career. Behind the robe, she is a karaoke fiend, a loving wife and a supportive parent. When an event threatens to throw her life completely off balance, can she hold her family upright? Writer Suzie Miller and director Justin Martin reunite following their global phenomenon Prima Facie, with this searing examination of modern motherhood and masculinity.
The bio-documentary JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE opens tomorrow.
Tomorrow we’ll be opening Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, the new documentary about the singer-songwriter. Filmmaker Varda Bar-Kar will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:00 o’clock shows on Thursday, April 3 at the Laemmle NoHo and April 4 and 5 at the Monica Film Center, as well as after the 1:00 o’clock show at the Laemmle Glendale on April 5. Ms. Ian will join her for the NoHo and Santa Monica screenings. The filmmaker is also featured on the latest episode of Raphael Sbarge and Greg Laemmle’s video podcast Inside the Arthouse.
Director’s Statement: “The pandemic began when I finished my music documentary Fandango at the Wall (HBO/MAX), about a transformative musical convergence at the border between the United States and Mexico. Before Fandango, I had made another music documentary called Big Voice (Netflix) about a high school choir director and his most advanced ensemble. I love experimenting with the alchemy of combining film with music and wanted to continue working in that genre.
“Conversations about identity and how we identify were buzzing at that time. I considered my own identity. How do I identify? Do I feel represented in mainstream media? I resist defining my identity since definitions mainly serve to box us in. I am a free thinker, a bisexual woman, born Jewish, now with a Buddhist bent, and an artist. Like all artists, I am an outsider. I am capable, a roll-up-your-sleeves can-do-it kind of person, and I am an optimist. I don’t see many women like me represented in the media.
“I sat with the question, ‘If I made a film about a female artist with whom I closely identify, who would she be?’ Janis Ian popped into my mind. Her name hit me like a lightning strike. Yet I knew nothing about her outside of a lingering high school memory of listening to her masterful album Between the Lines and crying because her music penetrated my isolation, making me feel seen and heard. Her music assured me that I was not alone. Her music meant the world to me at that time.
“Through research, I discovered that Janis Ian has a significant body of work spanning 60 years. I compiled lengthy playlists of my favorite of her songs – many I had never heard before. I discovered she had written a riveting autobiography called Society’s Child. I could not put the
book down. I learned that not only has Janis made significant contributions to the music world, but she is also a social justice champion and an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. She has endured tremendous hardships and overcome them one after another. Her story of commitment to
artistry and incredible resilience inspired me.
“How could it be that a film had not yet been made about her? This might sound crazy, and maybe it is, but I felt it was my destiny to make a film about Janis.
“I am forever grateful that Janis entrusted me with her magnificent musical story, and I am excited to share it with the world. I am also thankful to my unstoppable producing team and creative collaborators for working with me to overcome a myriad of obstacles and challenges to bring Janis Ian’s story to the screen so that today’s audiences can feel seen and heard just as I did when I listened to Between the Line so many years ago.”
THE PENGUIN LESSONS, the latest film from THE FULL MONTY director Peter Cattaneo.
Starring Oscar nominee Steve Coogan, The Penguin Lessons is a poignant dramedy inspired by a true story, set against the backdrop of Argentina’s political turmoil in 1976.
Tom (Coogan), a disillusioned Englishman, arrives in Buenos Aires to teach at a prestigious boarding school, expecting an easy experience. But as the city spirals into crisis, and his students remain unteachable, Tom’s life takes an unexpected turn when he rescues an oil-slicked penguin from a nearby beach. The bird’s surprising loyalty and unique presence forces Tom to confront his own repressed past and awaken to the responsibilities of both personal and political change.
Directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty, Military Wives), this heartwarming film shows how even the most unlikely connections can spark profound change and self-discovery. We open the film at six of our seven theaters this Friday, March 28.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: When I first read Tom Michell’s memoir The Penguin Lessons, I instinctively felt it could make a wonderful film. Tom’s tale of the unexpected bond between man and penguin in the setting of a British private school in 1976 Buenos Aires, captured my imagination and inspired me to tell this unique, original story on the big screen. Just like Tom’s rich source material, Jeff Pope’s adaptation captures the humor, heart, and complexities of the story flawlessly. Through his script, Jeff brilliantly finds the heart of an intriguing lead character.
At the start of the story, Tom is clearly in need of fixing. Yet, somehow, with Steve Coogan in the role, Tom’s grumpiness and cynicism maintains a dry humor that makes him enjoyable and entertaining to watch. As his character forms an emotional bond with the penguin Juan Salvador, Steve swings between heartbreak and warmth seamlessly, showing remarkable range as his character gradually comes back to life.
In his portrayal of Tom’s growing empathy for the pupils and staff of St George’s College, and his awakened political awareness, Steve gives a truly outstanding performance. His work in the film amazes me, and I feel so fortunate that he was the one to bring Tom to life. Working with screen legend Jonathan Pryce was an honor. His natural instinct for balancing humor and gravitas make him the perfect actor to play headmaster Buckle. Collaborating with him and Steve in two-hander scenes were some of the most enjoyable days I have experienced as a director.
At script stage, we decided to expand on the source material, adding elements that reflect the atrocities carried out by the military dictatorship at the time our story unfolds. Our lead character, Tom is somewhat shielded from events unfolding on the streets of Buenos Aires, not only by the school’s walls, but also by his own blinkered outlook. However, we felt we couldn’t tell a story set in 1976 Argentina without addressing the brutal inhumanity that was taking place. The key was to find the right balance, showing the tragic impact of the regime on two of our supporting characters, whilst keeping the story of Tom’s redemption and awakening at the center of the narrative. I hope that through a movie with broad appeal, those in the audience who know little or nothing about Argentina’s history will be made aware and find themselves motivated to find out more.
The Latin American cast including Vivian El Jaber, Alfonsina Carrocio and Ramiro Blass, as well as being terrific actors, were all valuable collaborators when it came to recreating an authentic mood of 1976 Argentina. Although laced with period detail, I aimed to give the film a timeless, fable-like quality.
Juan Salvador, is a small Magellanic penguin. Like all our favorite pets, his charm comes partly from his imperfections. He can be stubborn. He’s quite scruffy, and he stinks of pungent fish. Working to capture him on camera called for an unorthodox, naturalistic approach. I encouraged the cast and crew to stay patient and reactive, embracing the unexpected from the penguin. This way, I found the door was opened to unscripted magic. His little moments of spontaneity brought joy to the cast and crew alike and resulted in some of my favorite scenes in the film. – PETER CATTANEO
WORKING WITH THE PENGUINS: Coogan worked closely with two real penguins, Baba and Richard for most of the film. He spent weeks getting to know them before filming began, visiting their living quarters, talking to them, and holding them to build familiarity. Coogan mentioned, “By the time I was on set, I was comfortable picking them up. When we said goodbye, it was very emotional. They disarm you. Human beings are too inward-looking and preoccupied with things that aren’t important. These birds remind you not to take everything so seriously.”
Peter Cattaneo highlighted that different penguins have slightly different personalities. Some are more active, some are friendly, others more reserved. Initially the team didn’t know what to expect, having only seen penguins in zoos.
While some scenes used a puppet or robot penguin, most featured the real birds, which required Coogan to adapt to their unpredictable behavior and use his improvisation skills to handle unexpected moments on set. Coogan noted, “Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of improvisation in my career, so I know not to freeze when animals aren’t behaving as planned. You lean into it instead of pushing back against it. That can lead to some of the best moments.” Coogan developed a strong bond with the penguins, finding their presence disarming and a reminder not to take life too seriously, making saying goodbye to them an emotional experience.
“It’s a fantasy, a comedy, a musical, and a tragedy all at once.” Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN Opens Friday at the Royal, March 28 in Glendale.
From Bilge Eberi’s recent New York Magazine piece about the new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman is A Woman:
“I don’t know whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy,” Jean-Luc Godard said about his film A Woman Is a Woman in 1961, not long before it opened. “At any rate, it’s a masterpiece.” The director, who at the time had released just one feature, was being characteristically cheeky. Later in that same interview, he admitted that the movie was an uneasy mix of influences. Shot in CinemaScope and color, it was meant to be a spectacle, “a set designer’s film,” that he had deliberately improvised and rushed. Though A Woman Is a Woman (now on the big screen again in a 4K restoration) is billed as a “neorealist musical,” in truth it is neither. It has music but almost never when anyone’s singing. The production stole shots on the street amid the unsuspecting working-class pedestrians of Strasbourg–Saint-Denis, but Godard often used these images for absurd scenarios. The visual scheme is deliberately dissonant, with the bold primary colors of the costumes and the set dressing clashing against drab, gray, real-life backgrounds.
This gorgeous film’s premise is a simple, humanist, and not particularly dramatic one, of the type that the Italian neorealists treasured, but it’s been given an absurd, comic-romantic spin. A young woman, Angela (played by Godard’s muse and future wife Anna Karina), wants to have a baby, but her distant boyfriend, Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy), doesn’t want to impregnate her because he has a bicycle race that weekend, so his best friend, Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who also pines for her, steps in.
The director had completed two features before A Woman Is a Woman. 1960’s lovers-on-the-run caper Breathless, still the most iconic of New Wave films, had been a phenomenon, while the political drama Le petit soldat (shot in 1960 but not released until 1963) was held back by controversy. Heavily anticipated, A Woman Is a Woman came at a kind of make-or-break moment for the Nouvelle Vague; its subsequent box-office failure, alongside the financial disappointment of Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960), would prompt some pundits to prematurely proclaim the movement’s demise.
In truth, things were just getting started. A Woman Is a Woman would establish Karina as a star. She won a Best Actress award at that year’s Berlin Film Festival. Watching her saunter, stare, smile, and sigh through this movie, it’s not hard to see how an entire generation of cinephiles fell in love — not just with her, but with the idea of her, and with the incipient world she represented. Her colorful costumes and playful delivery convey effervescence, and yet there’s a deep sadness within. Originally from Denmark, she stumbles with French dialogue and pronunciation, and we can sense the awkwardness; Godard even includes a couple of blown takes. He’s in love with her imperfections, and so are we. But what an incredibly tough position to be in as a performer.
The picture also furthered the invigorating experimentation that defined so much of the director’s monumental career. Breathless had started as a somewhat conventional project that Godard turned into an irreverent formal free-for-all; the noirish, plaintive Le petit soldat had enough genre elements to mistake it for something more traditional. But A Woman Is a Woman seems to have been conceived by someone who sought first and foremost to demystify the filmmaking apparatus.
It has the rhythms, gestures, and mood of a musical, often without the actual music. A song might start right before cutting out completely in the next shot. Direct sound clashes with expressionistic (and sometimes just plain nutty) audio choices. Loud, cartoonish sound effects punctuate each line in a lovers’ squabble. An ostensibly serious scene starts with the actors curtseying to the audience. Angela works at a strip club where women’s clothes come off not through dances but via jump cuts; their faces are expressionless and their bodies immobile, as if they’ve been reduced to deadpan pin-up poses. One night, Angela and Emile have an argument where they refuse to speak to each other, communicating entirely via book titles, each of which they pick out while lugging a giant floor lamp around for illumination. The most coordinated thing anyone does in the movie might be to gracefully and rhythmically brush the dirt off their feet before going to bed.
But beneath all this color and artifice and levity runs something deeper and more personal. It’s not just Karina’s performance that conveys a subdued, counterintuitive melancholy. Godard’s subsequent films with his muse (as well as a couple without her, such as his 1963 masterpiece Contempt) would be inspired by their tumultuous relationship, and here, too, amid all these stylistic flourishes, we sense a very real anxiety — about love, about family, about commitment, about the future, and about the fundamental inscrutability of relationships. Director and actress had already broken up and gotten back together before making A Woman Is a Woman; it wouldn’t be the last time. Not long after the shoot ended, Karina would discover she was pregnant, and they would hastily marry; she would miscarry a couple of months later. Their marriage continued in increasingly chaotic fashion. They made eight films together, including a couple after their final separation and a couple in the middle of it.
Though Godard always tended to be gnomic about such matters in interviews (honestly, he tended to be gnomic about pretty much everything), his work embodied the personal storm. His formal daring was inextricably linked to the emotional turbulence in his life: The frantic innovation of his films is a projection of a mind and a heart at unrest. In deconstructing cinema, the movies seek to deconstruct life itself. (For Godard, I doubt there was much of a difference between the two.) A Woman Is a Woman, despite its surface frivolity, its confectionary experimentalism, is about a man and a woman who don’t understand one another, but who somehow love each other even more because of it. It’s a fantasy, a comedy, a musical, and a tragedy all at once.
“The French public’s relationship to movies and movie theaters is ‘almost mystical.'” The New York Times on the resurgence of moviegoing in France.
It says a lot that the grandest French movie theaters are designed by famous architects. (Renzo Piano designed the Pathé Palace in Paris.) Over the weekend, the New York Times published a fascinating glimpse into cinema’s profound place in French culture and how that strength has led to a renaissance of moviegoing. “France was one of the few countries that saw an increase in movie theater attendance last year over 2023, with more than 181 million attendees, an uptick of nearly a million. Brazil, Britain and Turkey also saw an increase.”
One reason is the French version of American exceptionalism: The French people believe their culture is superb. The national government agrees and backs up that conviction with subsidies of tiny cinemas in small towns and supporting schoolchildren’s field trips to movie theaters. “In a statement, the National Center for Film and Moving Images, or CNC, the French government film agency, chalked up the industry’s recovery from the pandemic to ‘the artistic and industrial excellence of our model of cultural exception,’ a reference to national policies meant to promote and protect French culture.”
But the French reverence for cinema is not mere nationalism. Citizens simply feel a “moral obligation to support the arts.” If you go to the Pathé Palace website, you’ll see that right now they’re mostly showing American movies you can see at Laemmle Theatres, and one of the photos accompanying the article shows a theater box office featuring stills from David Lynch films.
“Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.” ~ EEPHUS opens Thursday.
Perhaps no other sport lends itself as well to cinema as baseball, and there have been some memorable ones over the years. The Natural, Moneyball, 42, Field of Dreams and Bull Durham spring to mind. Well, we have a funny, soul-soothing treat for you this week at our Glendale and Santa Monica theaters. “Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
The filmmakers will participate in Q&A’s in Glendale after the 7:10 PM screenings on 3/13 with writer-director Carson Lund and actor Keith William Richards and moderator Amber A’Lee Frost (Chapo Trap House) and 3/15 with writer Mike Basta, writer-actor Nate Fisher, and moderator Brandon Harris (writer, filmmaker, baseball fan). Lund is also featured on the latest episode of Greg Laemmle (huge Dodger fan and former youth baseball coach) and Raphael Sbarge’s podcast Inside the Arthouse.
Film critics adore Eephus. As of this writing, its Rotten Tomatoes score is 100% with 37 reviews.
“Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make Eephus a gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond.” ~ Jessica Kiang, Variety
“Many a true devotee will tell you that part of the game’s charm lies in its ability to facilitate socialization… Eephus is a film that understands this, and the script shuffles along with the rhythm of a baseball game.” ~ Christian Zilko, indieWire
“A modest but poignant hangout film that resonates long after the last pitch.” ~ Tim Grierson Screen International
“Has about it a mournful, lightly absurd poetry of the mundane, a rapt attention to the intimacy of transience and the meanings we make from relics and rituals of a time we’re passing through.” ~ Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com
“Something about Eephus reminds me of Wiseman’s long, slow, methodical probing of institutions and of human behavior more broadly.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
“Eephus luxuriates in an unhurried afternoon of leisure.” ~ Dan Kois, Slate
Oscars 2025: The ANORA director advocates for movie theaters, and the Academy honors Robert Laemmle. Plus: Oscar Contest winners.
SECOND PLACE: Joel with 18 correct answers.
TIE for THIRD PLACE: Kelly & Cole with 17 correct answers (plus closest run-time to actual runtime broadcast).
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