Film Reviews & Previews
Stay warm and emulate Frère Jacques: All BECOMING COUSTEAU ticket buyers for the Friday, October 29 screenings at the Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall, Town Center, and Playhouse* get a free beanie while supplies last!
*at the Playhouse, starting with the 7:30 PM show.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present one of the screen’s most iconic romances, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961), with a 60th anniversary screening on November 10 at the Royal Theatre in West LA. Audrey Hepburn stars as Holly Golightly, and besides the image of Hepburn in that famous black Givenchy dress, the most enduring legacy of the movie is the song “Moon River,” composed by Henry Mancini for Hepburn, and a “melody of a lifetime.”
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S was adapted from a popular Truman Capote novella and brought to the screen by director Blake Edwards and writer George Axelrod, with considerable alterations to the story about a flighty call girl from the country aspiring to the high life in New York City. Capote had envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the role, but it was Audrey Hepburn who immortalized Holly Golightly for the screen. Henry Mancini provided the Oscar and Grammy-winning soundtrack that accompanied her amorous adventures. TIFFANY’S was a box office hit and nominated for five Academy Awards, including Hepburn for Best Actress and Axelrod for Best Screenplay. Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer wrote one of the most popular songs of the twentieth century, “Moon River,” and the pair won an Oscar (double winner Mancini also won for his score).
New York magazine epitomized the praise for the movie, which helped launch the Fabulous Sixties in American culture, by stating, “a film that not only captures the sedate elegance of a New York long gone, but that continues to entrance as a love story, a style manifesto, and a way to live.” Our guest, author Sam Wasson, reinforces that notion by titling his book about the making of the movie, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. He will discuss the film in a Q&A before the screening, and the newly revised edition of his critically lauded book will be available for purchase and signing. The New York Times cited it as “a bonbon of a book…as well tailored as the little black dress the movie made famous.” Wasson is also the author of the acclaimed best seller The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood.
The 60th anniversary of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, also starring George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney, and Buddy Ebsen, will screen on Wednesday, November 10, at 7:30 PM at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Tickets on sale now at Laemmle.com/ac
FINDING KENDRICK JOHNSON director Jason Pollock and executive producer Jenifer Lewis will participate in a Q&A at the NoHo following the 7:15 PM screening on Friday, October 29.
On July 5th, 1968, The Doors lit up the storied stage of the Hollywood Bowl with a legendary performance that is widely considered to be the band’s finest captured on film. Performing on the back of their 3rd album release “Waiting For The Sun” and the US #1 single “Hello, I Love You,” the quartet had been honing their live performances over the previous two years and were in absolute peak form.
Now, on November 4th, 2021, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Doors final studio album L.A. WOMAN (1971), The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition will transform movie theaters into concert venues, giving Doors fans around the world the closest experience to being there live alongside Jim Morrison, John Densmore, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, who stated, “the magic that has been done to enhance the picture and sound quality of this show will make everyone feel as though they have a front row seat at the Hollywood Bowl.”
In celebration of L.A. WOMAN, this special event includes a brand-new musical performance and a conversation with John Densmore, Robby Krieger and Doors Manager, Jeff Jampol, filmed exclusively for the big screen. Here’s a clip:
This theatrical “Special Edition” release creates an in-cinema experience for fans like no other. The film has now been remastered in stunning Dolby ATMOS® (where available) and 5.1 surround sound by Bruce Botnick, the original engineer & mixer for The Doors who recorded the live performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968 and co-produced L.A. WOMAN. Here’s another clip:
Meticulously restored from original camera negatives and remixed and mastered using original multi-track tapes, The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition features the concert in its entirety, including “Hello, I Love You”, “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)”, “Light My Fire” and “The End.”
Opening Night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season will be a historic occasion—the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer, FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES. Laemmle Theatres will screen the opera live on Saturday, October 23 at our Claremont and Pasadena theaters. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Grammy Award–winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s moving memoir, which The New York Times praised after its 2019 world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as “bold and affecting” and “subtly powerful.” Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, the opera tells a poignant and profound story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship. James Robinson and Camille A. Brown—two of the creators of the Met’s sensational recent production of Porgy and Bess—co-direct this new staging; Brown, who is also the production’s choreographer, becomes the first Black director to create a mainstage Met production. Baritone Will Liverman, one of opera’s most exciting young artists, stars as Charles, alongside sopranos Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta and Latonia Moore as Billie.
From Zachary Woolfe’s New York Times piece September 23 piece A Black Composer Finally Arrives at the Metropolitan Opera: Terence Blanchard, best known for scoring Spike Lee films, reopens the 138-year-old opera company with FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES:
“In 1919, William Grant Still was in his 20s — many years from the eminence he would later enjoy as the widely acknowledged “dean” of Black American composers. But he had already begun to write operas, and he boldly approached the nation’s most important company: the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We have no evidence he got an answer. Two decades later, Still was far more established, with his “Afro-American Symphony” widely performed. In 1935, he sent the Met “Blue Steel,” its music infused with jazz and spirituals. “Not worthy of consideration,” a company official wrote in an internal submissions ledger. Then Still wrote another opera, “Troubled Island,” about the Haitian revolution, with a libretto by the poet Langston Hughes. “The Metropolitan was our first target, logically enough,” he later recalled. That, too, was dismissed. “It would be a mere waste of time,” a 1942 entry in that submissions ledger went, “to go into details about this opera which is an immature product of two dilettantes.” The Met, the country’s largest performing arts institution, opened in 1883, and in its 138 years has put on some 300 titles. Not one has been by a Black composer.
“Until now. Closed for a year and a half by the pandemic and rocked by the nationwide uprising for racial justice, the company will reopen on Monday with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” by Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter and composer best known for scoring a host of Spike Lee films. “It’s a phenomenal honor, and it’s an overwhelming thing,” Blanchard, 59, said after a recent rehearsal. “But at the same time it’s bittersweet. I was just in St. Louis and heard the William Grant Still piece.” (Still’s one-act “Highway 1, U.S.A.” was done there this summer.) “And I’m like, OK, he was around. I’m honored, but I’m not the first qualified person to be here, that’s for sure.””
Click here to read the rest of the piece.
From Charles M. Blow’s September 29 New York Times piece It Wasn’t Just My Life on That Stage. So Was My Purpose:
“I strongly believe in therapy, the idea of talking things out, working them through, as a way of making it over. A therapist once told me that I liked to keep my glass filled to the brim, but in so doing, there was no space for the extra and unexpected in life. When those things came, as they surely would, I would inevitably feel overwhelmed because my cup would always overflow. His analysis was spot on, and it has stayed with me. I have tried at times not to keep my cup so full, but that instinct feels foreign to me. If I am not on the edge of too much, I don’t feel like myself, I don’t feel like I’m living up to my potential and aspirations.
“And so I have adjusted in another way: I have learned not to bask in any adulation too fully or feel any pain too deeply. I have learned to keep my life as even and steady as I can, so that I can better survive it and also better enjoy it. This is one reason the past few days have felt so otherworldly to me. On Monday, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the opera composed by Terence Blanchard and based on my memoir of the same name, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was the first opera on that stage by a Black composer in the institution’s 138-year history.”
Click here to read the rest of the piece.
Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau was one of the 20th century’s great explorers, a filmmaker and beloved adventurer who documented the exotic wonders below the ocean with pioneering equipment that yielded a Cannes Film Festival-winning film, two Academy Awards®, and a pair of iconic and long-running television shows, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” and “The Cousteau Odyssey.” His work became synonymous with life on the sea and on his famous boat, the Calypso. He authored over 50 books on his aquatic life and invented the Aqua-Lung, advancing the boundaries of scuba diving. Yet, it was as an environmentalist that Cousteau would have his most lasting impacts, alerting the world about the warming oceans decades before the climate crisis made headlines. Instrumental in protecting Antarctica and taking part in the first Earth Summit, Cousteau’s insight into what needs to be done for the planet continues to inspire generations.
In BECOMING COUSTEAU, from National Geographic Documentary Films and opening October 22 at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall, Playhouse and Town Center, two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (All In: The Fight for Democracy, What Happened, Miss Simone?) poured through 550 hours of archival material and rarely-seen footage to let Cousteau’s films, words and recollections tell his own story. BECOMING COUSTEAU shines a spotlight on the man many of us grew up worshipping yet knew very little about while introducing him to a new generation. After prospecting for oil companies to support his globe-trotting adventuring, he had a late-in-life awakening and became the first great advocate for ocean preservation. Cousteau led a somewhat fractured family life, checkered with great loss, but he remained true to his one great love — the sea. Over 100 hours of audio journal entries, interviews and observations from collaborators and crew members add to this inside look at Cousteau. The documentary also chronicles his first wife and collaborator Simone Melchior (known aboard the Calypso as “The Shepherdess”), his family experiences, his second wife Francine Triplet, the creation of The Cousteau Society and the crucial work they do, and his evolution into one of the most important environmental voices of the 20th century, whose words and images are more vital today than ever.
“Succeeds beautifully in its goal of reminding viewers of Jacques Cousteau’s important legacy of underwater exploration and environmental activism.” ~ Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“BECOMING COUSTEAU will well serve as a reminder and clarifier for those who remember him from their youth, and an invigorating introduction for those meeting him for the first time.” ~ Todd McCarthy, Deadline Hollywood Daily
“Compelling throughout, BECOMING COUSTEAU will make you want to strap on some flippers, grab a mask and plunge into an ocean near you.” ~ Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Hammer to Nail
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present FRENCH CANCAN, one of the best late films created by master director Jean Renoir: a rousing tribute to the 19th century world that his celebrated father, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and other Impressionists created in their paintings. Set mainly in Montmartre and the original Moulin Rouge nightclub in the 1890s, the film chronicles the revival of the cancan that electrified Paris. This film marked Renoir’s return to filmmaking in France after a lengthy exile caused by World War II.
Renoir’s main character, a theatrical impresario named Henri Danglard, is portrayed by legendary French actor Jean Gabin, who had worked with Renoir in the 1930s in The Lower Depths, La Bete Humaine, and the director’s antiwar masterpiece, La Grande Illusion. Gabin, for decades the face of French cinema, creates a vivid character in FRENCH CANCAN, a producer who has the restlessness of an artist, always seeking new challenges—and new romances in his personal life. The principal women in his life are portrayed by Francoise Arnoul and Maria Felix, with the legendary singer, Edith Piaf, in a tasty supporting role.
One of the critics who endorsed the film in the 1950s was Francois Truffaut, who was writing criticism before he embarked on his directing career. Truffaut considered FRENCH CANCAN a milestone in the history of color cinema. He observed that one scene of a dance class “reminds us of a Degas sketch,” and he added that Renoir’s direction was “as vigorous and youthful as ever.”
Later reviews also endorsed the film, especially after footage cut from the initial release was restored. Leonard Maltin paid tribute to the “brilliantly beautiful restored version” and called the film “an impressive, enjoyable fiction about beginnings of the Moulin Rouge and impresario Gabin’s revival of the cancan.” Roger Ebert called the film “a delicious musical comedy that deserves comparison with the golden age Hollywood musicals of the same period.” In The Guardian Peter Bradshaw wrote, “The glorious final sequence, in which the cancan is finally unveiled to the rowdy audience, is some kind of masterpiece, perhaps the equal of anything Renoir ever achieved: wild, free, turbulent, exhilarating.”
This musical delight will play at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 13, at four Laemmle theatres: the Royal in West L.A., the Playhouse in Pasadena, the Laemmle Glendale, and the Laemmle Newhall.
In the summer of 2018, a short outing after soccer practice became a two-week saga of survival and a story that soon captured the world’s attention. Monsoon rains had trapped twelve boys and their coach in a labyrinthian cave in Northern Thailand, and within days thousands of people had descended on the area to try to help. But were the boys even still alive? Anticipation and anguish hung in the air until they were found, trapped in a pitch-black chamber two kilometers deep into the cave. The next question—immediate, obvious, and confounding—was how to get them out.
THE RESCUE, the latest feature documentary from Academy Award-winning directors and producers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, brings alive one of the most perilous and extraordinary rescues in modern times. With exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen material, the film takes us into the infamous cave, highlights the efforts of the Royal Thai Navy SEALs and US Special Forces, and details the expert cave divers’ audacious venture to dive the boys to safety.
THE RESCUE keeps viewers on the edge of their seats as it shines a light on the high-risk world of cave diving, the astounding courage and compassion of the rescuers, and the shared humanity of the international community that united to save the boys. In the tradition of their earlier films FREE SOLO and MERU, Vasarhelyi and Chin document a profoundly daring physical feat, laying bare the details of the seemingly impossible rescue.
Reviews have been rapturous:
“THE RESCUE keeps you on the edge of your seat for every minute, even if you already know the outcome.” ~ Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“A stunning documentary of bone-deep moral resonance and cinematic mastery that deserves to be experienced on the big screen.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Variety
THE RESCUE “unfolds with stunning precision, letting the people who were there tell the story, and never softening their unique personalities.” ~ Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT
“Our films attempt to examine questions that transcend their subject matter. Our film MERU is about climbing, but really, it’s about friendship and mentorship. Our film FREE SOLO is about free soloing a mountain, but really, it’s about making intentional decisions about what we want to achieve in life and the sacrifices we make. THE RESCUE is about an impossible rescue, but really, it’s about moral responsibility. When we have the skill set to rescue someone, do we bear the burden to do so even if we put ourselves at risk? It’s also a story about the common humanity that brings us together rather than what divides us.
“All these stories are about overcoming insurmountable odds. They feature unexpected heroes. And they invite the audience into specific worlds in a deep and authentic way. In THE RESCUE, that’s the world of cave diving. Cave diving is very dangerous and very difficult. So why do the cave divers do it? What’s their motivation, experience, inspiration? As a climber, Jimmy knows how vital it is that every last detail be right. Our films are defined by that level of exactitude.
“We wanted to make this movie for many of the same reasons that the story of the Thai children trapped in the cave captivated the hearts and minds of the world in 2018. It was an against-all-odds story that gave you hope. It brought out the best in people who united from many different nations to help these kids. There’s a line in the film that says, “Generosity is the beginning of everything,” and that’s ultimately what the film is about.
“But creating THE RESCUE was very challenging. It has all the ingredients of a film you shouldn’t or can’t make: Everything’s pitch black in the cave. It’s underwater and muddy. The main event is over; you can’t shoot footage of it, and the archival sources are scattered all over the world. And, of course, the pandemic hit. We were scheduled to go to Thailand in spring 2020, but as the shoot neared, it became clear that it was too risky to travel internationally. We did interviews by Zoom and focused on building trust and rapport remotely. We were dealing with different cultures, different languages, different time zones; and there were numerous constraints, but ultimately the story is still moving. The children, the cave divers, the Thai Navy SEALs, the US Special Forces and an entire community all showed us what great courage looks like.
“The story of the rescue is filled with numerous coincidences that could be seen as more than coincidence. There’s a fairy-tale quality to the story. We couldn’t help but be struck by the fact that just as the boys were trapped in place in 2018, the whole world was trapped in place while we were making this movie. And yet, in 2018 the world came together to help the boys. THE RESCUE reminds us that amazing things are possible when people have integrity and a sense of responsibility for each other.”
Asked in an interview, “What would you like the audience to take from the film?” they replied:
Jimmy Chin: I hope people are inspired by the humanity of the global community of rescuers, the courage of the divers and Thai Navy Seals and the bravery of the kids. I want people to come out of the theater asking themselves “Could I ever do that? Would I have made the same choices?” I think the divers really exemplified great moral courage. They didn’t have to go back in. I hope people are moved by seeing what great moral courage looks like and how people are able to achieve great things and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds through perseverance and determination.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi: I think it’s the absolute morality of Rick. He felt an absolute obligation to figure out how to save the kids. If only we all did what’s fundamentally decent and responsible… that’s interesting. It’s about the common thread we all share — about finding your place in the world. We see the divers evolve emotionally. We see their attention to detail and methodology. We cherish that, love it, want to honor and respect it. Truth is so much stronger than fiction.