Theater Buzz Archives – Page 9 Of 260

Unraveling Intimacy: How Mistress Dispeller Redefines the Marriage Drama

October 21, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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

October 14, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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

October 14, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

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.

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.

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.

September 25, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

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

The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s latest queer period romance.

September 16, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Rarely does a film carry the quiet anticipation that surrounds The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s latest queer period romance. Hermanus—already celebrated for works like Beauty (2011), Moffie (2019), and Living (2022)—has built a reputation for telling intimate stories with hefty moral weight, exploring identity, repression, and the varied textures of longing. In The History of Sound, he turns his gaze from South Africa to early 20th-century America to examine how love and music intertwine when both must be framed in shadow.

Catch The History of Sound in theaters beginning September 19th at the Laemmle NoHo, Glendale, Claremont, Town Center, and the Monica Film Center.

The film begins in 1917, with America on the brink of entering the First World War. In Boston, the New England Conservatory of Music buzzes with disciplined energy, its classrooms and practice halls filled with young musicians devoted to mastering their craft. It is here that Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), a shy, musically gifted farm boy from Kentucky, first encounters David White (Josh O’Connor), a more worldly and charismatic student whose flair for piano and song draws immediate attention, thus marking the beginning of their deep, unconventional bond.

Leaving behind the conservatory’s structured walls, the story advances to the rolling backwoods of Maine, where the two men embark on a summer expedition to record local folk music on wax cylinders. Camping under the stars, both Lionel and David relax into a profound intimacy born as much from their shared sensibilities and musical devotion as from romantic desire. In this transitional era, where the old world’s simplicity meets the looming pressures of a global conflict, it is ironically such intangibles as love, art, and music that the film holds up as unlikely exemplars of consistency and groundedness.

Ultimately, The History of Sound is an intimate character study of two men brought together by music, intellect, and the rare alignment of sensibilities. Some critics have drawn comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, noting the restrained, repressed tone and the early 20th-century setting, but the resemblance stops at this superficial level. For where Ang Lee’s film dramatized social pressure and the peril of being discovered, Hermanus’ work is far more concerned with the private, almost sacred interiority of desire than with overt drama or societal conflict. The war looms, but the heart of the film lies in what’s preserved: love, song, memory, and the myriad fruits of their timeless intermingling.

“[A] meditative tale about longing and the connection that music, as well as other art forms, can create between people.” – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

The History of Sound is a work willing to live and die by its emotional heft.” – Will Bjarnar, In Session Film

“A slow-burn kind of picture.” – Mike McGranaghan, The Aisle Seat

With Chain Reactions, director Alexandre O. Philippe takes audiences back through Hooper’s beloved masterpiece frame by gruesome frame

September 16, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear director Alexandre O. Philippe discuss Chain Reactions (releasing at the Laemmle NoHo 7 on September 19th) with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge

Few horror films have left as deep an imprint as Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Half a century after its 1974 debut, the film remains a touchstone for fans and filmmakers alike, continuing to disturb, arouse, and alienate in equal measure. With Chain Reactions, director Alexandre O. Philippe—long known for his thoughtful explorations of iconic cinematic moments—takes audiences back through Hooper’s beloved masterpiece frame by gruesome frame in an extensive deep dive into how the film continues to rattle and inspire.

Philippe has carved a niche for himself with documentaries that magnify individual films from unusual angles. 78/52 explored not all of Psycho, but specifically its infamous shower scene. Memory: The Origins of Alien looked not only at Ridley Scott’s classic, but at the deep cultural and artistic roots of its terror. Chain Reactions continues in this vein by giving the floor to five prominent cinephiles, each with their own unique relationship to Hooper’s landmark horror.

The lineup befits the stature of its subject: writer and comedian Patton Oswalt, Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, legendary novelist Stephen King, and director Karyn Kusama. Each interview is presented in full, creating a kind of oral history told in parallel lines.

While the documentary refrains from attempting to weave these voices into a single argument or narrative, that separation becomes part of its design. Instead, viewers are invited to treat each reflection as its own isolated story, bound together not by commentary from Philippe, but by the footage itself: battered 16mm prints, drive-in reels, VHS transfers, pristine restorations, and beyond.

Ultimately, Chain Reactions doesn’t try to be more than it is: five passionate people talking about a film they love. As it makes its way into theaters, the documentary stands as both a tribute and a reminder that some shocks never fade.

“An investigation into how one horror movie made for, as King puts it, “chump change,” went on to become one of the most influential films of all time.” – Emma Kiely, Collider

“Exploration of our inexplicable attraction to horror is the true theme of the brilliantly titled Chain Reactions.” – Christian Zilko, Indiewire

“Not only solidifies how a film as iconic as Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains that way, but how, even decades later, we’re still finding unique burrows within it to explore.” – Spencer Perry, ComicBook.com

Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl (2024) offers a penetrating exploration of one of cinema’s most controversial figures: Leni Riefenstah

September 10, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl (2024) offers a penetrating exploration of one of cinema’s most controversial figures: Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker whose aesthetic brilliance was inseparable from her work for the Nazi regime. Veiel’s film, which screened in Germany last year and will be opening at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center on 09/12, combines archival footage, interviews, and Riefenstahl’s own recordings to trace her extraordinary career—from her early days as a dancer and actress to her eventual status as Hitler’s personal filmmaker and beyond.

Riefenstahl’s life’s story is inescapably complex. As a young director in the early 1930s, she created alpine adventure films before collaborating closely with Adolf Hitler on propaganda masterpieces such as Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), documenting mass rallies and the 1936 Berlin Olympics with unprecedented technical innovation. Yet her acclaim was always shadowed by the moral compromises implicit in her work, a reality that Veiel confronts head-on.

The documentary draws on an extraordinary archive left behind by Riefenstahl herself, including correspondence, taped answering machine messages, and photographs from her post-war life. These materials illuminate not only her enduring claims to aesthetic purity, but also the moments when she could (or perhaps would) not acknowledge the atrocities occurring off-camera. While the evidence is often circumstantial, the film succeeds at examining the troubling intersection between her genius and the ideology her art served.

Veiel’s documentary does not shy away from the discomfort of its subject. What emerges is a portrait of a singularly gifted yet morally ambivalent artist, one whose aesthetic vision was inseparable from an ideology that caused unimaginable suffering. By examining both her celebrated technical innovations and her troubling ethical legacy, Riefenstahl challenges audiences to reckon with the complicated relationship between art and politics, genius and responsibility.

The film is as much about Riefenstahl herself as it is about the broader cultural and historical context of Germany in the twentieth century. Through meticulous research and a wealth of archival materials, Veiel presents a story that is as compelling as it is disturbing, offering viewers an unflinching look at the artist behind some of history’s most infamous films and the legacy she left behind.

“[The film is] a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“[A] welcome addition to the historically grounded rebukes to Riefenstahl and her apologists.” –Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Riefenstahl does not come to praise or reclaim the late director, but nor does it mean to bury her.” – Xan Brooks, The Guardian

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire tells the story of one of the most important moral voices of the twentieth century.

September 4, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire tells the story of one of the most important moral voices of the twentieth century. Directed by Oren Rudavsky, the film offers a deeply personal look at Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, writer, and teacher—whose life was shaped by both unimaginable tragedy and an unshakable belief in humanity’s capacity for good.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Rudavsky discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release in NYC on September 5th and Los Angeles on October 3rd.

Oren Rudavsky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for exploring Jewish identity, history, and culture, often in collaboration with fellow documentarian Menachem Daum. His films blend personal narrative with historical inquiry, illuminating the intersection of faith, memory, and social conscience.

Soul on Fire moves from Wiesel’s childhood in the Romanian town of Sighet to his deportation at age sixteen to Auschwitz, where he would ultimately lose most of his family. Through a mixture of animated sequences, rare archival footage, and Wiesel’s own words, the film brings these early years into focus while tracing the beginnings of a lifelong struggle to put memory into language.

Alongside his story of survival, the film also follows Wiesel’s rise as an author and speaker whose message reached far beyond the Jewish community. Viewers hear from family members, friends, and scholars who illuminate both the man and his mission: to point out injustice, and not let the world look away.

Wiesel’s moral reach extended to many corners of the globe. He called attention to the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews. He condemned apartheid in South Africa. He spoke out for Bosnian Muslims under siege, the victims of genocide in Rwanda, the Kurds, the Sudanese, and Argentina’s “Disappeared.” His Nobel Prize acceptance speech also included the recognition of Palestinian suffering, a reflection of his lifelong effort to encourage dialogue and understanding, eschewing static classifications of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ for a more nuanced, constantly evolving understanding of what we owe to those around us.

What emerges is a portrait of a man who never stopped asking difficult questions. How can memory shape the future? What does it mean to bear witness? Where do we draw the line between silence and action?

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire does not present easy answers, but it does offer viewers an intimate encounter with Wiesel’s humanity and all that it encompasses: his faith, his doubts, and his determination to remind the world of its responsibility to those who suffer.

“Though Rudavsky eloquently includes archival footage and judiciously applies the now overused device of animated reenactments, it is that face, those eyes, that voice, and those words that make this such a stunning film.” – Peter Keough, Doc Talk

“[This] devastating, necessary documentary concerns being a witness to history and then disseminating the horrors that the world means to forget or maybe worse . . . distort and make light of.” – Brandon Judell, Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs

“[Wiesel] wanted to create a world of witnesses, and he did so by bringing the story of the tragedy of the Holocaust to millions.” – Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post

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