The Official Blog of Laemmle Theatres.

Laemmle Theatres

Film Reviews & Previews

You are here: Home / Theater Buzz / Town Center 5

SABBATH QUEEN filmmaker Sandi DuBowski in Person for Q&A’s.

by Leave a Comment

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?

by Leave a Comment

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.

by 1 Comment

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.”

 Tickets for THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, Almodóvar's first English-language film, go on sale on Friday.

“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

Tickets for THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, Almodóvar's first English-language film, go on sale on Friday.

“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.”

Tickets for THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, Almodóvar's first English-language film, go on sale on Friday.

“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.”

INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE ~ new podcast episode with Professor Ross Melnick on the 100th anniversary of Arthouse Cinema.

by Leave a Comment

The newest episode of Inside the Arthouse just dropped and it’s a fascinating one. Hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge discuss the centenary of arthouse film with professor, historian, author and Academy Film Scholar Ross Melnick. It’s a lively conversation about the amazing history of arthouse film — Where it started, how far it’s come, and where is it today. Laemmle, third generation arthouse theater owner, adds his perspective, as the trio explores the last century considers the future of arthouse.

Here’s a taste from the beginning of their conversation:

ROSS MELNICK:  The history of arthouse theaters is about a hundred years old.  It really starts around 1925 with Simon Gould and the film guild and the beginning of what were then called “little cinemas.”  So the little cinemas grew out of what was called the “little theaters.”  Little theaters were performing arts theaters across the country.  There were almost 5000 of them.

RAPHAEL SBARGE:  Like vaudeville, kind of?

ROSS MELNICK:  No, actually, literally for performing arts.  For plays and performances that were avant-garde, experimental, off of the…mainstream.  And there’s a growing movement in the ’20s to kind of push away from mainstream narratives and create theaters, legitimate theaters, that were for live performances.  This is across the country.  And so, inspired by little theaters, little cinemas grew, sometimes even in previously legitimate houses, to start showing films that were also experimental, avant-garde and, in this case, often foreign.  They were sort of growing out of an interest in foreign films and if you — with the risk of boring you, let me take you back just a few years earlier, which is that World War I happens between ’14 and ’18.  And when it’s over there’s a huge anti-German sentiment in the United States.

GREG LAEMMLE:  Massive.

ROSS MELNICK:  Massive, to say the least.  And no one wants to show German films.  The only person that’s willing to show a German film is himself a German-American.  A guy named Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, who most people know as Roxy and who, of course, is the person who created Radio City Music Hall.  He founded it.  He ran the Roxy, the Capitol, the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli.  All the major movie houses or many of the major movie houses in New York were run by Roxy.  And when Roxy, underneath Samuel Goldywn — we’ll come back to Samuel Goldywn and later we’ll talk about a different company that his progeny ran — but when Roxy ran the Capitol Theater, he was really interested in this movie called Madame Du Barry.  It’s an Ernst Lubitch film.  1919.  Roxy saw it and said, “I’m going to bring this movie here.”  And he took that nine-reel film, and he cut it to six.  He made new inter-titles…and he released it as Passion.  The Capitol Theater in New York was 5,300 seats.

RAPHAEL SBARGE:  Oh, my God.

ROSS MELNICK:  So it’s the largest theater in the United States.  It was also a trade industry darling…and Roxy was running it and thought, “I’m going to bring this film.”  So it broke the unofficial German boycott, the anti-German boycott, and suddenly there was this massive hit of a foreign film.

Watch the whole conversation here:

Stephen Bogart and the BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES filmmakers in person for Q&A’s this week at the Royal and Town Center.

by Leave a Comment

Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes in-person Q&A’s with director Kathryn Ferguson: Friday, 11/15, 7:20 PM at the Royal, moderated by Grae Drake (Entertainment Journalist and Film Critic, Rotten Tomatoes & MovieFone); Saturday, 11/16, 7:10 PM show at the Town Center, moderated by Claudia Puig (NPR Film Critics/President L.A. Film Critics Association). Stephen Bogart will participate in a Q&A after the Saturday, 11/16, 1:20 PM show at the Royal; Scott Mantz (former Access Hollywood film critic) will moderate.

Steve McQueen’s masterful BLITZ opens Friday.

by Leave a Comment

Tomorrow we open Blitz, the latest film English filmmaker Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Occupied City), at the Claremont, Glendale, Monica Film Center, Newhall, and Town Center. Starring Saoirse Ronan, it follows the stories of a group of Londoners during the events of the British capital bombing in World War II. Top film critics have been singing its praises:

“McQueen—a director who understands we can only look forward by looking back—gives us a new lens through which to examine WWII in this masterful film.” ~ Emily Zemler, Observer

“I’ve been to whole film festivals with less cinema than Steve McQueen packs into just two hours.” ~ William Bibbiani, TheWrap

“The quiet puncturing of the myth of WWII solidarity on the homefront feels nearly as visceral a shock to the system… It’s not Blitz’s sensory-overload sturm und drang that leaves you gasping for breath. It’s the sneak attack.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone

“McQueen makes a point of integrating into the film what is rarely seen in movies of this sort: a sharp depiction of racism among Londoners, the enraging sort that has so calcified it still surfaces when people are just trying to survive.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

“Blitz is a welcome reminder that a bruised, searching and flawed home front, in the waning days of empire, was its own fascinating emotional terrain too.” ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“This is a movie about the way resilience can blossom from vulnerability. No child asks to be a victim of war; sometimes survival, with your soul intact, is the best possible outcome.” ~ Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine

“Blitz, while not exactly a movie for children, is nonetheless a story about a child, and it has powerful moments of wonderment, humor and even joy.” ~ Justin Chang, NPR

“Arguably the most heroic character in the film is the city. And Blitz is, instantly, one of the great “London Movies.” ~ Kevin Maher, Times (UK)

“It’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS Opens October 18.

by 1 Comment

In Exhibiting Forgiveness, which we open on October 18 at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, NoHo and Town Center, Tarrell (Andre Holland) plays an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Andra Day), and their young son, Jermaine. Tarrell’s artwork excavates beauty from the anguish of his youth, keeping past wounds at bay. His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile.

Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family. Tarrell and La’Ron learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving in this raw and deeply moving film.

“This is a powerful film about the limits of forgiveness, and the ways religion is often misused as a tool for total redemption, no matter the sin.” ~ Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

“An emotionally wrenching drama set to resonate with those who have also had to confront the complicated equation of radical forgiveness.” ~ Benjamin Lee, Guardian

“Exhibiting Forgiveness sends you out on a note of hope, but it’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” ~ Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“There are more strengths than weaknesses in Exhibiting Forgiveness, especially when it comes to the performances, which hook us to the emotional grooves of Tarrell’s family.” ~ Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

“It’s painful and it doesn’t necessarily heal, but it’s a full experience, exceptional in its craft, with performances that cannot be dismissed or be forgotten.” ~ William Bibbiani, TheWrap

“Andre Holland brings immense feeling to his role as an artist haunted by childhood trauma, and writer-director Titus Kaphar’s semi-autobiographical feature debut is suffused with pain, anger and sorrow.” ~ Tim Grierson, Screen International

“Tarrell’s non-judgmental approach embraces shades of grey rather than seeing things in black and white. He doesn’t vilify anyone, nor does he try and mine heroism in suffering.” ~ Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express

“As Tarrell, Holland gives a soulful performance, radiating pain and anguish.” ~ Jourdain Searles, indieWire

“Art comes to the rescue, as Exhibiting Forgiveness lends its healing hand on everyone, on and off the screen.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar

“As an artist grappling with the psychological damage done by his estranged father, Holland is a wonder of tightly contained hurt and anger. He’s got great scene partners in John Earl Jelks, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Andra Day.” ~ Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“Exhibiting Forgiveness doesn’t flinch from showing how dysfunctional familial relationships wound and scar repeatedly. But the film itself isn’t cynical or bitter, illustrating how art holds the power to not only help us process and recover but transform.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News

“True to its name, the film puts the concept of forgiveness on display and asks us to spend some time in front of it and consider it from all angles.” ~ Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine

“Exhibiting Forgiveness proves you do not need other people’s acknowledgement or approval to find forgiveness within yourself.” ~ Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas.” ~ THE OUTRUN filmmaker on bringing the memoir to the screen.

by Leave a Comment

Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, The Outrun follows a young Scotswoman (the always-fantastic Saoirse Ronan) as she returns to the wild beauty of her native Orkney Islands hoping to come to terms with her past and heal after living life on the edge in London. The director/co-writer Nora Fingscheidt sat for an in-depth interview with Filmmaker Magazine in which she details her process — from writing the screenplay with Liptrot, to working with Ronan, as well as the director of photography, editor, and sound designers. An excerpt:

Filmmaker: Because addiction is a sensitive subject matter and in this case, it’s your co-writer Amy Liptrot’s real life, I am wondering what sort of responsibility you felt in telling this true story. How did you collaborate with her on the page and elsewhere? How did you approach her story?

Fingscheidt: It’s a very challenging book to translate into a film because it is so personal and internal; much of it is about memory. But what makes it so beautiful is Amy’s thought process about the world. And I thought the film needed to be really nerdy in a way [especially when it came to her environmental pursuits]. So I pitched this approach to both Amy and our producers. And then I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas. There is childhood, music, London, Orkney, sound elements, facts about the world… And then I went through it again and put all the little moments that I thought have to be in the film on different cards and arranged them. Then I wrote a treatment.

 "I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas." ~ THE OUTRUN filmmaker on bringing the memoir to the screen.

And from that moment on, we started to collaborate really closely. Amy read every version, and we spent hours on Zoom. She isn’t a celebrity who’s used to having their life portrayed. And her parents are there in the story. So I felt that I had to include her and protect her at the same time. Every decision that we made for the adaptation in changing, fictionalizing or dramatizing things, we made together. One of the first things we did is change her name to have a healthy creative distance. Amy suggested Rona, which is the name of a Scottish island. Saoirse loved it—it’s almost like Ronan. And it also has Nora in it. And it is the island behind the horizon when Amy was sitting on the outrun. So the character name was a mixture of the three of us.

Filmmaker: Did Saoirse spend time with Amy in crafting her performance, or did she approach it more freely to not do an impersonation?

Fingscheidt: Very early on she asked me, “Do you want me to sound like Amy?” Because Saoirse is Irish, we knew she would have to take on another accent. And we said, please don’t try and sound like Amy. Find your own voice, your own interpretation of Rona. That gave her a lot of liberty. She is a very physical actor, so she took quite a while preparing with a London choreographer, Wayne McGregor, whom she has worked with before. They worked a lot on how Rona moves: when she’s with her parents, when she’s happy-drunk or messy-drunk or trying to hide it; when she’s in a good mood or when she loses control. She also worked with a dialogue coach to get into this talk process. That physicality, the voice, and then the experiences like helping deliver lambs on the farm that we did at the pre-shoot helped her get into the bones and guts of Rona’s character.

We’re excited to open The Outrun on October 4 at the Royal, NoHo, Town Center, and Newhall.