The Inside the Arthouse duo Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge recently interviewed Vermiglio filmmaker Maura Delpero. The conversation begins with her description of the movie’s inspiration — a dream and a nighttime visitation from her late father. A prize winner at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, the Hollywood Foreign Press has nominated Vermiglio for Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe, and the Academy shortlisted it for their Best International Feature prize. We are proud to open the film this Friday at the Royal.
STRAIT-JACKET 60th Anniversary Holiday Screening December 30.
Keeping a holiday tradition, this year Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of the Joan Crawford camp classic Strait-Jacket (1964) for one night only, Monday, December 30, at 7:30 PM at the historic Royal Theater in West Los Angeles.
Crawford, one of the great stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, had a career revival with the huge success of the psychological horror classic ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ in 1962. Looking for new roles, she apparently couldn’t miss an opportunity for self-parody when she chose to star as an axe murderess in the latest project from independent producer-director and huckster showman William Castle, Strait-Jacket.
Castle specialized in low budget exploitation movies with gimmick marketing and hit box office pay dirt with such titles as ‘House on Haunted Hill,’ ‘The Tingler,’ and ’13 Ghosts.’ He tried to up his game with Strait-Jacket, hiring Robert Bloch, the writer of the book Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ was based upon; cinematographer Arthur Arling (‘Love Me or Leave Me,’ ‘Pillow Talk’); production designer Boris Leven (‘West Side Story,’ ‘The Sound of Music’)’ and snaring A-list star Crawford. Bloch concocted a sordid tale of a convicted axe murderess released from an asylum twenty years after chopping up her unfaithful husband. She returns to the scene of the crime to reconcile with her grown daughter (Diane Baker) but then new murders begin and guess who the prime suspect is?
Even with all that talent, Strait-Jacket got a mixed reception from reviewers. On the positive side, Variety reported “Miss Crawford does well by her role, delivering an animated performance.” Leonard Maltin was equally enthusiastic, saying “Crawford’s strong portrayal makes this one of the best in the ‘Baby Jane’ genre of older-star shockers.” At the other end of the critical spectrum, Bosley Crowther in The New York Times was not impressed, stating, “Joan Crawford has picked some lemons, very sour lemons, in her day, but the worst of the lot is Strait-Jacket.” Judith Crist in the New York Herald Tribune took the middle ground, asserting, “It’s time to get Joan Crawford out of these housedress horror B movies and back into haute couture.” A 2010 assessment in The Village Voice called Crawford “indefatigable” but noted that in the role of a woman trying to be convincing in a new maternal role, “Crawford is as uncomfortable as a Tingler down your shirt.”
Although the movie was a hit, Castle did not climb into the A ranks until 1968, producing Roman Polanski’s horror classic ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ On the other hand, it was all downhill for Crawford after this final box office success. She worked for Castle again in a lesser vehicle, ‘I Saw What You Did,’ then traveled to England to finish her career with similar material in ‘Berserk’ and the worst film of her long career, the sci-fi horror turkey ‘Trog’ in 1970.
“A glorious romantic confection unlike any other in movie history,” THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG 60th anniversary screenings start Friday at the Royal!
An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.
“A glorious romantic confection unlike any other in movie history.” ~ The Washington Post
“Elevates the quotidian to the spectacular…Umbrellas’ palette of sherbet-colored pastels remains undimmed.” ~ Melissa Anderson, Village Voice
“Demy’s masterpiece.” ~ Mike D’Angelo, A.V. Club
“Retains its direct appeal to the eyes, ears, and tear ducts.” ~ Slant
“One of the most brain-quiveringly beautiful films ever to flood a screen.” ~ Eileen G’Sell, Hyperallergic
“A surprisingly effective film, touching and knowing and, like Deneuve, ageless…a bold, original experiment.” ~ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
SABBATH QUEEN, the fascinating new documentary about a radical queer rabbi, opens this week with copious Q&A’s and an Inside the Arthouse interview.
Sabbath Queen, the new documentary filmed over two decades, follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul—an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation.
Sabbath Queen followsAmichai on his lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult, rapidly
changing 21st century.
“How [Amichai] went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.” ~ Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times
“This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism.” ~ Dennis Harvey, Variety
“The director delicately contextualizes his subject’s desired legacy by threading Lau-Lavie’s harrowing familial history into the narrative.” ~ Robyn Bahr, Hollywood Reporter
The regular engagement starts tomorrow at the Royal, and we are also showing the film December 9 at the NoHo, December 10 and 12 in Glendale, and December 11 at the Town Center. Director Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d) was interviewed for Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge’s Inside the Arthouse podcast (the episode will be out Friday). He and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will participate in Q&A’s at multiple screenings along with special guests.
Thursday, December 5th at 7PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Amy Ziering
Award-winning investigative filmmaker and activist Amy Ziering is the woman behind the last decade’s most important films about sexual assault that have directly impacted American culture and politics. Ziering’s work is a lightning rod for conversation with lauded works such as The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground, The Bleeding Edge, On the Record, and Allen v. Farrow. Ziering is the recipient of countless prestigious awards including an Oscar nomination, two Emmy awards, a Peabody, an Independent Spirit Award, a duPont-Columbia award, and the George Polk Award.
Friday, December 6th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski.
Saturday, December 7th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie with journalist Jessica Yellin.
Jessica Yellin, the founder of News Not Noise. For years, Yellin worked in network news at ABC, MSNBC, and CNN, where she was the Chief White House Correspondent.
Saturday, December 7th, 4pm – 5.45pm
Afternoon SoulSpa led by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie — a meditative spa for soul and body, which is an adaptation of the Shabbat day service into an interactive musical experience which is everybody-friendly and God-optional, offering grounding, gratitude and contemplative conversations to lift up healing and hope. Location in Sawtelle. If you are interested email: [email protected].
Sunday, December 8th Sabbath Queen Editing Masterclass 10:30AM–12:30PM
Francisco Bello ACE, Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Kristin Feely, Sandi DuBowski, Brian Kates ACE
At the Laemmle Royal with Editors/Writers Francisco Bello ACE and Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Editor Kyle Crichton, and director Sandi DuBowski to discuss the process of crafting a longitudinal documentary two decades in the making. Hosted by Brian Kates ACE. Moderated by Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film and Artist Programs, Sundance Institute. In association with Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, ADE, BIPOC Doc Editors, Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship, Documentary Producers Alliance. RSVP here.
Sunday, December 8th at 1:20PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, and Caroline Libresco.
Presented by Jewish Story Partners.
Caroline Libresco is Co-Founder and Head of Granting and Programs of Jewish Story Partners. She is a leading film festival curator, producer, story advisor, and program strategist who recently wrapped nineteen years as a lead programmer at the Sundance Film Festival. Caroline is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where she serves on the Documentary Branch Executive Committee.
Sunday, December 8th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Rabbi Sharon Brous.
Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, author of The Amen Effect, who offered the invocation at the DNC and Women’s March. She was named #1 on the Newsweek / The Daily Beast list of most influential Rabbis in America.
Monday, December 9th at 7PM
Laemmle Noho — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Sabbath Queen composer Joel Goodman.
An Emmy-winner and four-time Emmy nominee known for a deeply nuanced sound filled with intricate subtleties, Goodman’s diverse body of work includes scores to over 150 films and television programs that have received 5 Oscar nominations, 30 Emmy awards and over 40 Emmy nominations. He has scored over 40 films for HBO and composed the Main Theme for the long-running and critically acclaimed PBS series American Experience.
Tuesday, December 10th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Damona Hoffman
Celebrity dating coach Damona Hoffman has been coaching singles on how to find love online and offline for over 15 years. Her articles appear regularly in The LA Times and The Washington Post. Plus, she’s a regular on-air contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show, NPR, and NBC’s Access Daily. Damona also starred in two A+E Networks’ TV shows: #BlackLove and A Question of Love. Her weekly podcast Dates & Mates has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Huff Post, Bustle and tops the charts in the Relationships category on the major podcast platforms.
Wednesday, December 11th at 4PM and 7PM
Laemmle Town Center in Encino — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski at 4pm and Sandi DuBowski and Gabe Dunn at 7pm
Gabe Dunn is an American writer, podcaster, actor, and filmmaker. Since 2014, Dunn has hosted the YouTube comedy show and podcast Just Between Us with fellow former BuzzFeed writer Allison Raskin. Dunn also hosts the podcast Bad with Money, which launched in 2016 and which primarily focuses on personal finances, while also discussing subjects including poverty and economic oppression. Their debut young adult novel I Hate Everyone but You, co-authored with Raskin, was published in 2017 and made The New York Times bestseller list.
Thursday, December 12th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski
Kubrick’s LOLITA ~ Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic.
Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962)
Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic
Wednesday, December 18, at 7 PM
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
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“How did they ever make a movie of ‘Lolita‘?” Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series help to answer that question — posed in all the advertising for the 1962 release — with a special screening of Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s incendiary novel. The theme of a middle-aged man obsessed with a young teenage “nymphet” was controversial when the book and movie first appeared, and the theme is perhaps even more problematic today.
However, the masterful writing and direction of the film, along with four inspired performances, have continued to keep audiences riveted. James Mason portrays the obsessed professor, Humbert Humbert, and he perfectly captures the lecherousness, unctuousness, hypocrisy, and utter lovestruck vulnerability of a professor in thrall to a sexual compulsion he cannot control. Sue Lyon, in her first starring role, brings off astonishingly varied moods. At times she seems like a whiny, petulant teenager, and at other moments she exudes worldly sophistication. As her mother, the culturally pretentious and needy Charlotte Haze, Shelley Winters gives one of the most scintillating performances of her long career.
But Kubrick’s most brilliant casting coup was choosing Peter Sellers to play Quilty, the villain of the piece who steals Lolita away from Humbert. Sellers had made a splash in a few British films but had yet to reach American movie stardom. His flair for impersonation made him an inspired choice to play Quilty, a master of disguises who torments Humbert in many different incarnations through the course of the story.
In adapting the text, Kubrick and producer James B. Harris chose to veer from the novel and introduce Sellers’ Quilty in the opening scene, as Humbert questions Quilty about his sexual history while the two play a bizarre game of ping-pong. The Saturday Review critic, Hollis Alpert, wrote of this opening scene, “There hasn’t been a scene of equal imaginativeness in movies since, perhaps, ‘Citizen Kane.’” Nabokov himself declared that Kubrick’s opening scene was “a masterpiece” and hailed the film as “absolutely first-rate.”
Although Nabokov received sole credit for the screenplay and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adaptation, the script was heavily rewritten by Kubrick and Harris. While some critics at the time were perplexed by the movie, many of the most perceptive reviewers had high praise. Writing in Partisan Review, Pauline Kael asserted, “It’s the first new American comedy since those great days in the ’40s when Preston Sturges recreated comedy with verbal slapstick. ‘Lolita‘ is black slapstick, and at times it’s so far out that you gasp as you laugh.” Critic Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who also served as special assistant to President Kennedy at the time, wrote in Show magazine that ‘Lolita‘ was “wildly funny and wildly poignant… It is beautiful and it is depraved… Kubrick renders farce and satire and comedy and pathos and melodrama and psychopathology with equal skill.”
The leading critic of the era, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, declared, “The picture has a rare power.” More recently, Leonard Maltin added, “Winters is outstanding as Lyon’s sex-starved mother.” Jon Fortgang of England’s Film4 commented, “’Lolita,’ with its acute mix of pathos and comedy, and Mason’s delivery of Nabokov’s sparkling lines, remains the definitive depiction of tragic transgression.”
Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan, authors of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies, will introduce and discuss the film with the audience. They will also be selling and signing copies of their highly acclaimed book.
P.S.: The subsequent Anniversary Classics screening will be the hugely entertaining Joan Crawford thriller ‘Strait-Jacket‘ on December 30, celebrating its 60th anniversary!
SABBATH QUEEN filmmaker Sandi DuBowski in Person for Q&A’s.
Sabbath Queen Q&A’s:
5-Dec 7:00 Royal, Sandi Simcha Dubowski with Amy Ziering, Producer/Director
6-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Gabe Dunn
7-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Jessica Yellin, political journalist
8-Dec 1:20 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Carolline Libresco, film festival curator
8-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Rabbi Sharon Brous, Senior & Founding Rabbi, IKAR
9-Dec 7:00 PM NoHo Sandi with Joel Goodman, the film’s composer
10-Dec 7:00 PM Glendale Sandi with Damona Hoffman, Official Love Expert, The Drew Barrymore Show
12/11 Town Center 7:00pm
Sandi Dubowski, Director
Shana Cohen, Director of Major Gifts at Keshet
12/12 Glendale 7:00pm
Sandi Dubowski, Director
Ondi Timoner, Documentary filmmaker
FIDDLER – it’s back! Get your tickets to have a Merry Christmas in Anatevka. And before Hanukkah even starts. Nu, what is the world coming to?
JOIN US on DECEMBER 24th for our umpteenth annual alternative Christmas Eve! That’s right, It’s time for the return of our Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along! Screening in five shtetls: Claremont, NoHo, West L.A., Encino, and Newhall.
Belt out your holiday spirit … or your holiday frustrations. Either way, you’ll feel better as you croon along to all-time favorites like “TRADITION,” “IF I WERE A RICH MAN,” “TO LIFE,” “SUNRISE SUNSET,” “DO YOU LOVE ME?” and “ANATEVKA,” among many others.
We encourage you to come in costume! Guaranteed fun for all. Children are welcome (Fiddler is rated “G”) though some themes may be challenging for young children.
Prices this year start at $16 for General Admission and $13 for Premiere Card holders. Typically, Fiddler sells out … so don’t miss the buggy!
ABOUT THE FILM:
Originally based on Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Tevye and His Daughters,” Norman Jewison’s adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical is set in a Russian village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Israeli actor Topol repeats his legendary London stage performance as Tevye the milkman, whose equilibrium is constantly being challenged by his poverty, the prejudice of non-Jews, and the romantic entanglements of his five daughters.
P.S.: We will be screening the excellent documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen on December 16 and 17.
Tickets for THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, Almodóvar’s first English-language film, go on sale on Friday.
On December 20th we are opening Pedro Almodóvar’s first movie in English, The Room Next Door, at the Royal. We’ll bring it to Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, North Hollywood, and Encino in January. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton star as two friends who reconnect after decades apart and embark on an unusual new phase of their friendship. Writing in Time Magazine, Stephanie Zacharek describes how “the colors of The Room Next Door are its secret message, a language of pleasure and beauty that reminds us how great it is to be alive. If it’s possible to make a joyful movie about death, Almodóvar has just done it.”
“The Room Next Door, as driven by the scalding humanity of Swinton’s performance, lifts you up and delivers a catharsis. The movie is all about death, yet in the unblinking honesty with which it confronts that subject, it’s powerfully on the side of life.” ~ Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“In these intensely moving moments it feels as if the two artists — [James] Joyce and Almodóvar — are connecting across time, desperate to express the ineffable, and keen to capture a creative moment that honours both the living and the dead.” ~ Kevin Maher, Times
“The Room Next Door turns into something spiky, unnerving, and at times joyously silly.” ~ Leo Robson, New Statesman
Almodóvar, Moore, and Swinton spoke about the film over the weekend at a Deadline Contenders panel discussion. “It’s wonderful. He really honors the female experience,” said Moore. “I think it’s something that he talks about, sitting under the kitchen table when his mother was talking to her friends and absorbing those stories and how powerful they were, and understanding that point of view. I think he’s always in that feminine point of view. Like I said, he honors that world. You feel very, very seen as an actor when you work with Pedro.”
“I’m a very dull or heady director,” said Almodóvar. “I say to the actors many, many, many things, and what I learned about these two is that perhaps I don’t need to say so much information to the actors. There was one very important [scene of Moore reading] the letter at the end. For me, it was very important. I was almost crying when I talked to her and I said, ‘Well, Julianne, this is what I want for this letter.’ [She] said, ‘Pedro, please let me do it, and after that, you give me all the indications.’ And she was right. When she just read it, I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t intervene, but it was more than perfect. So I learned by then that perhaps I don’t need to tell them so many things to the actors.”
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