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Spend the week talking with filmmakers!

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We host filmmaker Q&As all the time but we may set a record this week, we have so many. Come participate! Just don’t say, “my question is more of a comment, really.”
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Thursday, 2/22: Io Capitano writer/director Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah) will participate in a Q&A after the February 22 screening at the Royal. Los Angeles Times film critic Robert Abele will moderate.
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Also: The Omicron Killer actors Paugh Shadow, Bai Ling, Felissa Rose, Kianna Skye and Tony Diaz will participate in a Q&A following the February 22 screening at the Monica Film Center. Richard Bernstein will moderate.
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Also: Seagrass actress Ally Maki will participate in a Q&A after the February 22 screening at the Royal.
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Friday, 2/23: The Arc of Oblivion executive producer Werner Herzog and filmmaker Ian Cheney will participate in a Q&A at the Laemmle NoHo following the 7:20 PM screening on Friday, February 23. Joseph Gordon-Levitt will moderate.
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February 23-26: The following Veselka screenings will feature filmmaker Q&As: Fri. 2/23 7:10p, Sat. 2/24 7:10p, Sun. 2/25 4:10p, Mon. 2/26 7:10p.
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Friday, 2/23-28: Multiple Drugstore June screenings will feature cast & crew Q&As. Click here to learn more.

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Saturday, 2/24: Ingress producer Sienna Beckman, writer-director-actor Rachel Noll James and actor Johnny Ferro will participate in a Q&A following the 4 PM screenings at the Laemmle Glendale on Saturday & Sunday, February 24 & 25.

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Monday, 2/26: Shayda writer-director Noora Niasari will participate in a Q&A after the February 26 screening at the Royal (via Zoom). Film critic Stephen Farber will moderate.
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February 26-29: In Tribute to Norman Jewison: Jesus Christ Superstar actors Ted Neeley and Yvonne Elliman will attend all screenings to speak about Mr. Jewison, answer questions, sign autographs, and take photos with fans at the February 26-29 screenings.
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Wednesday, 2/28: All February 28 screenings of Origin will feature a pre-recorded introduction by and post-screening Q&A with filmmaker Ava Duvernay. Also: The February 28 screening Mambar Pierrette will feature an introduction by Jordan Cronk, film critic, programmer and founder of Acropolis Cinema.

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Thursday, 2/29: Mad Props director Juan Reinoso and the film’s host, Tom Biolchini, will participate in a Q&A after the February 29 screening at the Royal.
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Cherry on top: Dune: Part Two opens February 29.

“Brevity is the soul of wit” and much more: the 2024 Oscar-nominated shorts open this Friday.

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As usual, Shakespeare put it best (with, of course, a touch of irony, putting the words in the mouth of the long-winded Polonius). We open the animated shorts this Friday at the NoHo and Newhall; February 23 at the Town Center, Glendale, and Claremont; and March 1 at the Monica Film Center. We open the live action shorts this Friday at the Glendale and Newhall; February 23 at the NoHo and Claremont; and March 1 at the Town Center and Monica Film Center. We open the short documentaries Friday at the Royal and Town Center; we’ll also screen them Saturday and Sunday mornings at the Newhall, Glendale and Claremont starting the next day.

The animated nominees:

Our Uniform – Yegane Moghaddam, 7 min., Iran (in Farsi); Letter to a Pig – Tal Kantor and Amit R. Gicelter, 17 min., France/Israel (in Hebrew); Pachyderm– Stéphanie Clément and Marc Rius, 11 min., USA (in English); Ninety-Five Senses – Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess, 13 min., USA (in English); War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko – Dave Mullins and Brad Booker, 11 min., USA; Also screening: Wild Summon – Karni Arieli and Saul Freed, 14 min., UK (in English, narrated by Marianne Faithfull); nominated for a BAFTA and a Cristal Award at the Annecy International Animated film Festival; and I’m Hip – John Musker, 4 min., USA; nominated for a Cristal Award at the Annecy International Animated film Festival.

From ‘Letter to a Pig.’

The live action nominees:

The After – Misan Harriman and Nicky Bentham, 18 min., UK (in English); Red, White and Blue – Nazrin Choudhury and Sara McFarlane, 23 min., USA (in English); Knight of Fortune – Lasse Lyskjær Noer and Christian Norlyk, 25 min., Denmark (in Swedish/Danish); Invincible – Vincent René-Lortie and Samuel Caron, 29 min., Canada (in French); The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar – Wes Anderson and Steven Rales, 40 min., US/UK (in English).

From ‘The After.’

The documentary nominees:

Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó – Sean Wang and Sam Davis, 17 min., USA (in Mandarin); The Barber of Little Rock – John Hoffman and Christine Turner, 35 min., USA (in English); Island in Between – S. Leo Chiang and Jean Tsien, 20 min., Taiwan (in English/Mandarin); The ABC’s of Book Banning – Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic, 27 min., USA (in English); The Last Repair Shop – Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, 39 min., USA (in English).

From ‘The ABCs of Book Banning.’

Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawkat in the mesmerizing DRIFT, opening Friday at the Monica Film Center.

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From the producers of Call Me By Your Name and Nomadland, Drift follows Jacqueline (Cynthia Erivo), a refugee on a Greek island. As she tries to survive, cope with her past and gather  strength, she begins a healing friendship with a rootless tour guide (Alia Shawkat). We open the film this Friday at the Monica Film Center.
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“Erivo’s screen debut as a producer and one of her most impressive screen performances to date.” ~ David Canfield, Vanity Fair
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“Drift, a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents.” ~ Natalia Winkelman, New York Times
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“Drift is measured, sensitive and devastating, and works just the way it is.” ~ Alexandra Heller-NicholasAWFJ.org

“Erivo is such an intuitive and understated performer, and Chen so nuanced in his own approach, that Drift never feels didactic.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety

“Erivo’s full-bodied commitment to the role, capturing how even the worst experiences can become a part of you, results in a performance so powerful that it’s occasionally too difficult to watch.” ~ Siddhant Adlakha, indieWire

“Solemn and stirring.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
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“Not only has Singapore director Anthony Chen set himself a tough task in this ambitious adaptation, he has also notably succeeded in making viewers see the world through very different eyes.” ~ Todd McCarthy, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“Bold, creative and unflinching…alive with unpredictable political energy,” DISCO BOY with Rogowski opens Friday in Glendale and Santa Monica.

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Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature Disco Boy follows Aleksei (Franz Rogowski), a young Belarusian on the run from a past he must bury. In a form of Faustian pact, he becomes a member of the French Foreign Legion in exchange for the promise of French citizenship. Far away, in the Niger Delta, Jomo is a revolutionary activist, engaged in armed struggle to defend his community. Aleksei is a soldier, Jomo a guerrilla fighter. Because of one more senseless war, their destinies will intertwine. We opens Disco Boythis Friday at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center.
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“In its final scenes, Disco Boy echoes the troop and solo dance movements from the much revered Beau Travail, a mad and nervy move a young director would only dare when he has a lead as riveting and emotionally daring as Franz Rogowski.” ~ Chuck Wilson, Village Voice

“Bold, creative and unflinching, Disco Boy is alive with unpredictable political energy.” ~ Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ.org
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“This is bold film-making: a movie that wants to dazzle you with its standalone setpieces, but also to carry you along with its storytelling.” ~ Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“Getting in, getting down, and getting out as a style-hopping sizzle reel, Disco Boy heralds a promising new talent who totally has the moves.” ~ Ben Croll, indieWire

“Disco Boy doesn’t want for boldness or surprise — Abbruzzese’s hot, fluxional command of sound and image keeps us curious.” ~ Guy Lodge, Variety
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“A sensuous, striking film experience.” ~ Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter

Featuring “a shattering performance and made all the more devastating because it’s so subtle,” HOW TO HAVE SEX opens Friday in Glendale and Santa Monica.

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Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, How to Have Sex is a vibrant and authentic depiction of the agonies, ecstasies and ride-or-die glory of young female friendship, from rising British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker. Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday, drinking, clubbing and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. As they dance their way across the sun-drenched streets of Malia, they find themselves navigating the complexities of sex, consent and self-discovery. We open the film this Friday at the Laemmle Glendale and Monica Film Center.

In a recent interview with Film Inquiry, Walker spoke about the film’s potent impact on audiences: “We didn’t really know the scale of it when we were making it. We kind of felt like it was quite personal. And then as we put it out into the world, we saw that.”

“Walker often lets the camera linger on McKenna-Bruce’s face and eyes that convey all the things she can’t find the words for. It is a shattering performance and made all the more devastating because it’s so subtle.” ~ Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

“Described by its director as loosely autobiographical, How to Have Sex is built around a subtle but devastating rug-pull that exposes the culture of sex and consent in the same way F Scott Fitzgerald put the Jazz Age on blast in The Great Gatsby.” ~ Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK)
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“McKenna-Bruce’s fearless lead is both emotionally exposing and very finely calibrated, slipping from exuberance to anxiety to desperation sometimes in a single shot.” ~ Jonathan Romney, Financial Times

“As enthralling as it is important, How To Have Sex neatly depicts the joy and pain of teenage girlhood.” ~ Sophie Butcher, Empire Magazine

“Manning Walker’s film lays out the minefield of sexual education and consent for a post-#MeToo generation, with a precision to its ambiguities that will draw gasps from its characters’ contemporaries and elders alike.” ~ Guy Lodge, Variety

“In its frankness and often frightening candor, How to Have Sex is of a piece with coming-of-age dramas like Thirteen and The Diary of a Teenage Girl, with a dash of the lascivious, neon-colored bacchanalia of Spring Breakers thrown in for good measure.” ~ Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

“How to Have Sex is a stressful and infuriating watch because its arc isn’t reserved for fictional characters. Instead, it serves as the jumping point for bigger conversations that are all too common, timely as they are heartbreaking.” ~ Anne T. Donahue, Globe and Mail
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“[It] could easily have become a simplistic cautionary tale, a racier version of an after-school special. Instead, Walker’s delicate eye and feel for rhythm lend the movie an ominous cadence.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

“A different kind of Greek tragedy — no grand myth, just a heart-sore, everyday observation of what the world does to girls and what the world makes girls do to themselves.” ~ Jessica Kiang, Los Angeles Times

“Glimpses into a very specific corner of girlhood’s ups and downs and the unshakeable beams of sisterhood make Walker’s How To Have Sex unforgettably relatable.” ~ Peyton Robinson, RogerEbert.com

“It’s a coming-of-age story centered on a sexual awakening—an almost hackneyed premise, but one that, in Walker’s hands (as both writer and director), produces results of unusual emotional intensity.” ~ Richard Brody, New Yorker
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Oscar Docs – all five nominated features playing this weekend at the Monicas.

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Have you seen all five of the fantastic films nominated for Best Feature Documentary Oscars? If you missed one or two, this weekend is your chance because we’ll be screening the full quintet this weekend at the Monica Film Center and, in the case of The Eternal Memory, also the Laemmle Glendale.

20 Days in Mariupol: An Associated Press team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggles to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

Bobi Wine: The People’s President: This gripping documentary charts the inspiring activism of Bobi Wine, the pop star-turned-politician seeking to end Uganda’s brutal dictatorship. Rising from the ghetto slums of Kampala to be one of the country’s most beloved superstars, Bobi begins to use his music to call out corruption, then becomes an Independent Member of Parliament to defend the rights of his people.

The Eternal Memory: Augusto and Paulina have been together and in love for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife has since become his caretaker. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto is no stranger to building an archive of memory, having been responsible for that Herculean task following the Pinochet dictatorship and its systematic erasure of collective consciousness. Now he turns that work to his own life, trying to hold on to his identity with the help of his beloved.

Four Daughters: This riveting exploration of rebellion, memory, and sisterhood reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, unpacking a complex family history through intimate interviews and artful reenactments to examine how the Tunisian woman’s two eldest were radicalized.

In To Kill A Tiger, Ranjit, a farmer in Jharkhand, India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the survivor of sexual assault. In India, where a rape is reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30%, Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.

Moviegoers, start your guesses! The Umpteenth Annual Laemmle Oscar Contest has begun.

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The Oscar nominations are out and it was a terrific, historic year for movies. From Variety:

“Lily Gladstone made history as the first Native American nominated for best actress, for her towering role as Mollie Burkhart in the crime thriller “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Colman Domingo became the first Afro Latino nominated in best actor for his powerhouse performance in the civil rights drama “Rustin.” He’s joined by fellow Black nominee Jeffrey Wright for “American Fiction.” This is only the second time in Oscar history where more than one Black actor, who wasn’t either Will Smith or Denzel Washington, was nominated for the leading prize. The first was the 2004 lineup with Don Cheadle (“Hotel Rwanda”) and eventual winner Jamie Foxx (“Ray”).

“Wright’s co-star Sterling K. Brown was nominated for best supporting actor for his turn as Clifford “Cliff” Ellison, a recently divorced gay man. This marks the first time a Black lead actor was nominated alongside a supporting actor from the same film (it’s happened previously for actor and supporting actress, or actress and supporting actress).

“Domingo and best supporting actress nominee Jodie Foster (“Nyad”) also made Oscar history: It’s the first time two openly LGBTQ actors have been nominated for playing LGBTQ characters.

“Two Black women were nominated for supporting actress: Danielle Brooks for “The Color Purple” (as that film’s sole nominee) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph for “The Holdovers.” They were joined by America Ferrera for “Barbie,” the ninth Latina actress ever nominated in the category, and the first since 2021 winner Ariana DeBose.

“First-time director and screenwriter Celine Song made history as the first Asian woman nominated for best original screenplay for “Past Lives.”

“Women also had strong showings across multiple categories. In original screenplay, a woman hasn’t been nominated since Emerald Fennell won for 2020’s “Promising Young Woman.” This year features three female scribes recognized with “Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet), “May December” (Samy Burch) and “Past Lives” (Celine Song). Adapted screenplay has a sole nominated woman with Greta Gerwig from “Barbie” (along with Noah Baumbach).”

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” the forever-linked hits that appealed to both mass and class audiences, are well represented with a combined 21 nominations, although Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were snubbed for Best Director and Actress, respectively. Still, both could still take home trophies for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture (Robbie was one of the “Barbie” producers). “Oppenheimer” is the favorite to take home Best Picture, but maybe it won’t, and that’s where you come in because it’s time for our Umpteenth Annual Laemmle Oscar Contest! If you, dear moviegoer, can accurately predict how the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will vote in all 23 categories, (or close to it), you will win movie passes good at all Laemmle venues! These contests are always close so we have a tie-breaker question: try to guess the running time! The 96th Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday, March 10 and we’ll announce the winners soon afterwards. Good luck!

Laemmle Moviegoers’ Top Ten Films of 2023 Revealed!

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And the Top Ten Customer-Chosen films of 2023, ranked in order from 1 to 10 are (drum roll, please…):

  1. Oppenheimer
  2. Past Lives
  3. Killers of the Flower Moon
  4. Anatomy of a Fall
  5. The Holdovers
  6. Barbie
  7. May December
  8. Poor Things
  9. The Zone of Interest
  10. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
What a terrific list! Especially gratifying to see an excellent popular entertainment like Spider-Verse instead of pretentious Oscar bait whose titles shall go unmentioned. Half of these are still in theaters, in case you missed them or want to see them one more time as they were intended. The Zone of Interest, in particular, must be seen cinematically for its Oscar-nominated sound design alone. We’ll send gift cards to our randomly chosen winners Ted Bronson, Eve Fowler and Josh Messite. Thanks to everyone for playing!