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The Art of the Everyday: Peter Hujar’s Day and the Beauty of a Vanishing Moment

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Peter Hujar’s work has always carried an aura of stillness: photographs that seem to breathe, portraits that reveal as much about the viewer as they do the subject. In his newest film, Peter Hujar’s Day, filmmaker Ira Sachs channels that same quiet electricity. Adapted from Linda Rosenkrantz’s 2021 book of the same name, the film distills a single day in the photographer’s life into an intimate, searching character study, anchored by exquisite performances from both Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Sachs discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release at the Laemmle Royal on Friday, November 7th, followed by the Glendale on Nov. 14th. Director Ira Sachs and author Linda Rosenkrantz will participate in a Q&A following the 5:10 p.m. show on Sunday, Nov. 9 at the Royal.

The Art of the Everyday: Peter Hujar’s Day and the Beauty of a Vanishing Moment

Whishaw plays the legendary photographer not as a mythic figure, but as a fully lived-in presence: mercurial, tender, impatient, sharp, and unexpectedly funny. The film invites us into his rhythms—late mornings, cigarettes, half-finished thoughts, bursts of creative clarity—skillfully capturing the myriad subtle ways that an artist’s mind moves through the world. Sachs resists nostalgia or biography-by-checklist; instead, he constructs a film that feels observational, almost diaristic, as if we’re seated in the room beside Hujar, absorbing the day as he does.

Much of the film’s texture comes from the presence of Linda Rosenkrantz, played with luminous precision by Rebecca Hall. Rosenkrantz, a close friend and confidante of Hujar’s, recorded conversations with him in 1974 that later became the foundation of her book. Hall captures her subject’s mixture of curiosity, affection, and intellectual playfulness, qualities that draw Hujar out and give the film its emotional backbone. Through their dialogue, we glimpse two artists who understand each other deeply, even (perhaps especially) when they challenge each other’s ideas and modes of being.

The Art of the Everyday: Peter Hujar’s Day and the Beauty of a Vanishing Moment

Visually, the film mirrors Hujar’s own aesthetic. The camera lingers on faces, gestures, light falling across skin, and moments that feel simultaneously spontaneous and carefully composed. Music is used sparingly, giving the film a contemplative hush that heightens the emotional subtlety of Whishaw’s and Hall’s performances.

Rather than offering a sweeping biography, Peter Hujar’s Day stays tightly focused on a microcosm: one day, one set of conversations, one friendship that mattered enormously. In that narrow frame, Sachs finds something expansive that speaks to the fragility of creative lives, the intimacy of collaboration, and the fleeting, miraculous nature of artistic clarity.

“Imagine if My Dinner With Andre allowed for the characters to continue talking away from the table.” – Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com

“[A] salute to the hidden transcendence of the everyday.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Whishaw and Hall forego showiness for a quiet, shorthand-filled take on these old bohemian pals.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

An Evening of Hitchcock & Herrmann

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North by Northwest screening with Oscar winner Paul Hirsch and author Steven C. Smith on November 5th at 7:00 PM at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present “An Evening of Hitchcock and Herrmann,” celebrating the collaboration of two of the most influential masters of cinema, director Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann, with a screening of one of their greatest triumphs, North by Northwest (1959). This special event coincides with the publication of Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores That Changed Cinema by Steven C. Smith. Academy Award-winning film editor Paul Hirsch, a friend and close collaborator of Herrmann, who was an integral part of the last years of Herrmann’s life, joins us for an introductory discussion of the film on Wednesday, November 5th at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

An Evening of Hitchcock & Herrmann

North by Northwest, a spy thriller with elements of action, suspense, humor, and romance, is the perfect showcase for the talents of both Hitchcock and Herrmann. They first teamed up in 1955, and over the following decade turned out such seminal masterworks as Vertigo, North By Northwest, and Psycho, thus cementing Hitchcock’s reputation as the “master of suspense” while proving Herrmann as the ideal musical partner for Hitchcock’s visual mastery.

The film’s plot hangs on the premise of mistaken identity. When a Manhattan advertising executive (Cary Grant) is chased across the country by a sinister spy ring mistakenly targeting him as a government agent, as well as by the police, who think him a murderer, he must think fast (and move even faster!) in order to elude his pursuers. With Oscar nominations for original screenplay (Ernest Lehman), film editing (George Tomasini), and color art/set decoration, not to mention additional superlative work by cinematographer Robert Burks (Rear Window, Vertigo, The Music Man), the movie is perhaps the ultimate source of pure entertainment in the entire Hitchcock canon.

Herrmann sets the film’s tone by placing his opening title music over a memorable abstract credit sequence designed by Saul Bass, which Herrmann described as a “kaleidoscopic orchestral fandango designed to kick off the exciting route which follows.” Along the way, Grant encounters nefarious villains (James Mason, Martin Landau); a mysterious, alluring blonde (Eva Marie Saint); and “helpful” government agents headed by Leo G. Carroll, with the action deftly underscored by Herrmann’s propulsive music.

An Evening of Hitchcock & Herrmann

A critical and commercial smash, North by Northwest has received rapturous reviews ever since its 1959 premiere. Penelope Houston of Sight and Sound called it a “gleefully mischievous chase thriller” while citing Hitchcock’s “unmatched ingenuity.” The Hollywood Reporter touted the tongue-in-cheek element amid the cloak-and-dagger, with apt praise for Grant and the “ice-covered volcano” played by Eva Marie Saint. The New York Times enthused, “a suspenseful and delightful Cook’s tour of the most photogenic spots in these United States all done in brisk, genuinely witty and sophisticated style.”

Renowned for its distinctive set pieces of a menacing crop duster and a memorable climax on Mt. Rushmore, North by Northwest has consistently been ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. In 1995, it was inducted into the National Film Registry for “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.”

Paul Hirsch won the Academy Award for film editing for Star Wars in 1977. During his distinguished career, spanning five decades and 40+ films, he has collaborated with Brian De Palma on eleven films including Sisters, Carrie, Blow Out and Mission: Impossible; John Hughes on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; and received a second Oscar nomination for the biopic Ray in 2005. His collaboration with Herrmann in the 70s helped to resurrect the maestro’s A-list career. He recently published his memoir, A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away.

Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy-nominated journalist and producer of more than 200 documentaries about music and cinema. In addition to Hitchcock and Herrmann, he is the author of the definitive biographies, A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, and Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer.

An Evening of Hitchcock & Herrmann

“An Evening of Hitchcock and Herrmann” with a screening of North By Northwest plays one night only, Wednesday, November 5 at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Royal Theater (continuously operating as a movie theater since 1924). Discussion and Q&A with Paul Hirsch and Steven C. Smith will take place before the screening.

A book sale and signing will accompany the event.

Nouvelle Vague: Linklater’s Love Letter to the French New Wave

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With Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater turns his lens on one of cinema’s most electrifying moments: the birth of the French New Wave, inviting us to observe how a revolution in filmmaking quietly came to life. Shot in French, in black-and-white, and in a boxy 4:3 frame, the film brings back the heady Paris days of 1959, when Jean-Luc Godard and his Cahiers du Cinéma peers set out to reinvent cinema itself—and, against all odds, actually succeeded.

Come experience Nouvelle Vague in theaters, beginning Friday, October 31st at the Laemmle Royal, Claremont, Glendale, and NoHo 7.

Nouvelle Vague: Linklater’s Love Letter to the French New Wave

Rather than dramatizing the legendary finished product À bout de souffle [Breathless], Linklater focuses on the process of its creation. We watch Godard pitch his radical proposal to a skeptical producer, assemble a cast of willing conspirators, and wrestle with the chaos of what develops when limited means meets infinite ambition. The film unfolds in cafés, cramped apartments, and dim cutting rooms, where ideas collide faster than film stock can capture them.

Linklater’s directorial approach is both affectionate and incisive. He recreates the textures of the period with meticulous care—grainy cinematography, reel-change marks, and jittery hand-held movement—but his real interest lies in unpacking the spirit of risk that defined the New Wave. Yet Nouvelle Vague doesn’t attempt to imitate Godard’s jump-cuts or anarchic cool; instead, it channels something closer to Truffaut’s warmth and curiosity; that tender belief in cinema as both laboratory and love affair.

Among the cast, Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard and Zoey Deutch’s Jean Seberg both ground and fortify the film’s emotional backbone. Marbeck faithfully captures Godard in all his restlessness and self-doubt, while Deutch lends Seberg an air of grace and melancholy, embodying the paradox of a star who feels both essential and expendable in someone else’s vision. Their uneasy rapport becomes the heart of the film, as a portrait of two artists suspended between devotion and doubt.

Nouvelle Vague: Linklater’s Love Letter to the French New Wave

While Nouvelle Vague may lack the raw insurgency of its inspiration, it triumphs as a thoughtful and exuberant reflection on the act of creation itself. Beneath its wry humor and intelligence runs a current of affection for those who dare to see life as cinema, and cinema as life. In the end, it is a film that reminds us of why movies matter: not because they preserve the past, but because they keep it perpetually alive.

“It’s a savory pleasure to be able to step into this time machine and luxuriate in the company of people who thought that movies were the only thing that mattered.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“A cinephile’s film through and through.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A slick Steadicam ride through a historic, tumultuous moment.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

The Art of the Slow Heist: Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind

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In The Mastermind, acclaimed filmmaker Kelly Reichardt ventures into the familiar terrain of the heist movie… and then quietly rewrites its rules. Set in early 1970s Massachusetts, the film follows Josh O’Connor as J.B. Mooney, a once-aspiring architect turned husband and amateur criminal who hatches a plan to steal abstract paintings from a local art museum. But this isn’t Ocean’s Eleven: the glamour is stripped away, the stakes feel muted, and the aftermath is as mild and inconspicuous as the heist itself.

Catch The Mastermind in theaters beginning Friday, October 24th at the Laemmle Glendale, Town Center, Monica, Claremont, and NoHo 7.

The Art of the Slow Heist: Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind

Reichardt, whose past work has often focused on the imperceptible leaps of its lead characters—on a road trip, in a forest, in a lapsed mechanic’s shop, etc.—now applies that same contemplative lens to a genre whose mechanics have traditionally demanded speed and spectacle. She directs the film with her signature minimalism: restraint in gesture, economy in dialogue, and an eye trained on the void behind ambition for ambition’s sake. As in Showing Up and First Cow, the roar of a larger world remains just off-screen, yet its presence is felt in every muffled scene or stray whorl of cigarette smoke.

What distinguishes The Mastermind is that the so-called heist barely registers as its focus. The robbery unfolds almost incidentally, stripped of both glamour and tension. Instead, Reichardt lingers on the quiet details: the faint clink of museum glass being lifted, the awkward thud of stolen chairs crammed into a car, the weary stillness of J.B. returning home, where he drifts through the world of his judge father and socialite mother like an unmoored ship, steered by forces outside his reckoning. The film’s true intrigue lies not in the crime, but in its aftermath; the emotional debris left behind once that initial thrill has already faded.

The Art of the Slow Heist: Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind

O’Connor delivers an unexpectedly subdued performance. His J.B. has zero swagger, simply a quiet entitlement and a suggestion that he deserves something for nothing. Surrounding him are rich supporting performances from Alana Haim (his wife), Bill Camp (his father), and Hope Davis (his mother), each anchoring the film’s emotional weight without stepping into melodrama. Reichardt’s long-time cinematographer Chris Blauvelt and composer Rob Mazurek combine to deliver a vintage jazz score, each sax note and 16-mm texture suggesting more than what’s actually shown.

If The Mastermind feels slow, starved of the genre’s usual arrests, explosions, and triumphant escapes, that’s precisely the point. Reichardt aims to observe a man who planned to rob a museum and ultimately robbed himself. What remains is the humdrum tragicomedy of a life unraveling. And yet, in its stillness, the film finds its own power exploring such ideas as privilege, desperation, and craft hovering in the background of a genre made for thrill.

“A masterclass in the director’s own unique philosophical take on life.” – Amelia Harvey, ThatHashtagShow.com

“Reichardt has unerringly located the unglamour in the heist.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Unraveling Intimacy: How Mistress Dispeller Redefines the Marriage Drama

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In Mistress Dispeller, director Elizabeth Lo ventures into a genre of her own creation. Her follow-up to the acclaimed Stray (2020) presents an unsettling and intimate docudrama set in mainland China, where the peculiar profession of “mistress dispelling” is now part of a booming market. The film peers behind the scenes of a marriage, an affair, and the intervention of a professional named Wang Zhenxi, offering a quietly compelling exploration of love, loyalty, and control.

Catch Mistress Dispeller in theaters beginning Friday, October 24th at the Laemmle Monica Film Center and NoHo 7.

Unraveling Intimacy: How Mistress Dispeller Redefines the Marriage Drama

Lo’s vision is unmistakably her own. Where Stray focused on abandoned dogs and human neglect in Istanbul, here she turns her lens to human relationships in crisis—not through sensational extremes, but with a restrained, observational calm. She and her cinematographer team let the camera linger on nuanced interpersonal dynamics: a wife’s anxious shopping trip, a husband’s distracted gaze, the mistress’s self-awareness as she negotiates a role she didn’t ask for. In the final analysis, Mistress Dispeller is not about spectacle, but the subtle clashing between confrontation and conformity.

The film introduces us to Mrs. Li, who quietly recruits Teacher Wang to dismantle the connection between her husband and the woman he’s been seeing on the side, Fei Fei. Lo captures this unorthodox dynamic with a humane detachment, refusing to vilify any participant. Even as cultural norms and power imbalances become visible, empathy remains the guiding light. What emerges is a portrait of a marriage not collapsing, but recalibrating, and of people not defeated, but learning to endure.

Unraveling Intimacy: How Mistress Dispeller Redefines the Marriage Drama

Though the subject matter could easily slip into tabloid territory, Lo’s filmmaking resists such banal classification. There are no confessions in stormy rooms, no sensational betrayals caught mid-explosion. Instead, there are conversations in soft tones, eyes averted, secrets kept because silence is part of the contract, and it is in such understatement that the film’s power ultimately resides. The subject feels somehow unadorned, authentic, but also strange and slightly off-kilter in a way that unsettles our own assumptions about fidelity and intervention.

Mistress Dispeller blossoms as a subtle investigation of what it means to stay married when the rules never quite fit you. Lo confronts the idea of agency under imposed systems—Chinese or otherwise—and asks: What is the cost of preserving appearances, resisting corrosion, and keeping a marriage intact? The film’s reward lies less in clear resolutions than in the ambiguous space between duty, love, and desire.

“Teacher Wang gradually morphs into… a Chinese Esther Perel, a relationship therapist tasked with getting severely private people to recognize their true feelings, amid a culture that hasn’t necessary [sic] trained them for ‘self-care’.” – Tomris Laffly, Variety

“[T]he innate goodness and human vulnerability of these people shines through.” – Leslie Felperin, The Guardian

Painting Change: Inside the Uplifting World of Artfully United

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More than a decade in the making, Artfully United traces the work of Mike Norice, a Los Angeles muralist whose expansive, colorful pieces are not just art, but acts of reclamation in neighborhoods too often shut out from visibility and voice.

Catch Artfully United in theaters beginning October 17th at the Laemmle Glendale, highlighted by an in-person Q&A with both Mike Norice and producer Christopher Walters following the 7:45pm showing, moderated by radio personality Tammi Mac.

Chris Walters first met Norice thirteen years ago in the latter’s boutique on Melrose Avenue, an encounter that ignited a collaboration and a creative mission that would persist across time, geography, and mutual adversity. Together with director Dave Benner, Walters follows Norice from his roots in Watts through dozens of cross-country trips and prolonged mural projects, capturing not only the final painted walls but the sweat, doubt, and resolve that underlies each stroke.

Painting Change: Inside the Uplifting World of Artfully United

Rooted as much in quiet reflection as in sweeping public murals, the film traces how Norice’s life shaped his art, from a childhood marked by a teacher mother and an incarcerated father to the spiritual and communal values that serve as guideposts in the creation of art that feels both profoundly personal and powerfully collective. Each mural becomes a gathering place, a message, and a mirror—echoes of hope, defiance, and renewal painted across the city’s worn walls.

Visually, Artfully United doesn’t shy away from spectacle. Murals tower and sprawl, color bursts through grime, and entire city blocks become open-air galleries. But the film also balances those sweeping images with moments of presence and proximity: Norice selecting his palette, a neighbor’s quiet response to a newly finished mural, hands smeared with paint beneath a muted dusk light. These smaller moments anchor the film emotionally, reminding us that transformation is not only seen, but felt.

Painting Change: Inside the Uplifting World of Artfully United

Walters has called the journey “the experience of a lifetime,” crediting Norice’s artwork, activism, and faith for inspiring communities in Los Angeles and beyond. When the credits roll, viewers will recognize that Norice’s murals are more than just decorations; they are living gestures of solidarity, symbols of what art can be when it reaches beyond aesthetics into the realm of belonging.

Ultimately, Artfully United is more than a portrait of its artist. It is a meditation on place, loss, renewal, and how visual creativity can become a force for collective healing, demonstrating how much stronger spirits can become when we prioritize beauty in the unlikeliest of places.

“A powerful documentary about art, transformation, and the enduring strength of community.” – Jon Stojan, LA Weekly

Köln 75: Capturing the Inner Jazz of a Cultural Revolution

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Köln 75 is a vibrant, freewheeling portrait of artistic rebellion and creative awakening. Directed by Ido Fluck, the film takes its cue from a real moment in music history: Keith Jarrett’s legendary 1975 concert in Cologne, one of the most celebrated improvisations in modern jazz. But rather than simply re-staging that night, Köln 75 channels the spirit of improvisation itself, capturing the electricity, uncertainty, and sheer creative risk that defined both Jarrett’s performance and the turbulent decade that surrounded it.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Fluck discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its opening at the Laemmle Royal, Glendale, and Town Center on October 24th.

Köln 75: Capturing the Inner Jazz of a Cultural Revolution

At the film’s center is Vera, played with irresistible energy by Mala Emde (And Tomorrow the Entire World). A twenty-something radio intern in a West German city alive with possibility, Vera sees in Jarrett’s upcoming concert not just a performance, but the beginnings of a cultural revolution. As she darts through offices, streets, and smoky clubs, Vera becomes both participant and chronicler, a conduit for the collision of politics, art, and desire that defined a generation. Her encounters with Jarrett—portrayed by a terrific John Magaro not as a distant icon but as a restless, searching artist—become the emotional and philosophical core of the story. Through him, the film explores how creative breakthroughs often emerge from exhaustion, frustration, and the willingness to abandon control.

Fluck’s direction mirrors the very language of jazz: fluid, unpredictable, and alive with syncopation. The editing moves like a riff: sharp one moment and lingering the next, shifting tone without warning yet always staying true to its emotional tempo. Like Jarrett’s own playing, the film finds beauty in imperfection, turning chaos into harmony through sheer instinct.

Köln 75: Capturing the Inner Jazz of a Cultural Revolution

Ultimately, Köln 75 emerges as a deeply affectionate ode to the messy process of finding one’s voice. In its most luminous passages, as Jarrett’s chords ripple through the screen and Vera’s world expands in response, the film reminds us that the purest acts of creation—like the purest notes of jazz—exist only in the fleeting, miraculous moment they are born.

“A vivid vehicle for a dynamic, often very funny Emde who, at 28, is convincing as a wide-eyed, sharp-mouthed teenage force of nature.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

“Much like the musical genre that it depicts, Köln 75 is an unpredictable and non-conformist drama about the budding jazz scene in 1970s Berlin.” – Jack Walters, Loud & Clear Review

In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with a film that straddles that delicate line, balancing dark comedy, emotional drama, and pointed moral questions.

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True stories and small deceptions often live closer together than we’d like to admit. In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with a film that straddles that delicate line, balancing dark comedy, emotional drama, and pointed moral questions.

Come see Eleanor the Great in theatres, beginning Friday, September 26th at the Laemmle Royal, Claremont, Town Center, Glendale, NoHo, and Newhall.

The story follows Eleanor Morgenstein (brilliantly played by Academy Award nominee June Squibb), a sharp-tongued nonagenarian enjoying her Florida retirement alongside her best friend, Bessie. But when Bessie dies, Eleanor’s carefully maintained world begins to crumble. Moving north to live with her daughter and grandson, she finds herself sidelined in her own family and adrift in a city she once called home. Left at the local JCC, Eleanor accidentally wanders into a meeting of Holocaust survivors. When the group mistakes her for one of their own, she chooses not to correct them—and begins retelling Bessie’s life story as her own.

At its heart, Eleanor the Great is less about deception than about the emotional currents that carry Eleanor into it. Squibb delivers a performance of rare complexity, portraying a woman who is both caustic and vulnerable, driven by a need for connection that she cannot always admit to herself. Ultimately, it is Eleanor’s bond with Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student grappling with her own grief, that becomes the film’s emotional hinge. What begins as a misunderstanding grows into a tentative friendship, each woman learning to navigate absence, longing, and the fragile ways that stories can substitute for the connections we’ve lost.

Johansson and screenwriter Tory Kamen deftly steer this relationship into morally charged territory without losing sight of the characters’ underlying humanity. The ethical questions remain thorny—Can a lie born of loneliness still hold meaning? How about connections born of a lie?—but the film resists easy answers, instead allowing its characters to stumble through contradictions much like real people do. With Hélène Louvart’s luminous cinematography giving Squibb ample space to reveal flashes of mischief, regret, and desire, Eleanor the Great becomes as much a study of performance as it is of grief.

Ultimately, Johansson’s first film as a director is both tender and unsettling. Anchored by Squibb’s distinguished performance, Eleanor the Great is less about a lie than about the longing that fuels it, and the ensuing connections that make it impossible to undo.

“Eleanor the Great may not always live up to the hyperbole of the title, but it’s still worth admiring… there’s quite a bit here that truly is pretty great.” – Jason Gorber, Collider

“June Squibb is quietly powerful and touching…” – Pete Hammond, Deadline

“Johansson’s direction is assured here, establishing the intimacy between these two older women with the kind of endearing eye usually reserved for stories about girlhood.” – Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter