The official blog of Laemmle Theatres
The Oscar nominations are out and it was another excellent cinematic year. As always, some categories will be more unpredictable than others. Last year, most contestants 59.5% thought Lily Gladstone would win Best Actress for Killers of the Flower Moon, while only 29.7% correctly divined that Emma Stone would win for Poor Things. This year, Best Picture may be the most challenging category; there are at least six real possibilities. That’s where you come in because it’s time for our Umpteenth Annual Laemmle Oscar Contest! If you, dear cinephile, can accurately predict how the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will vote in all 23 categories, (or close to it), all while coping with the fact that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was snubbed for her stupendous turn in Hard Truths, 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 97th Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday, March 2 and we’ll announce the winners (with snazzy charts) soon afterwards.
A very entertaining way to improve your odds is to watch the Oscar-nominated shorts. We’ll start screening all of them — the animated, live action, and documentary — beginning February 14.
Good luck!
January 22, 25 & 26, Eat the Night, France, 2024 ~ Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever) is a bittersweet, apocalyptic love story with a modern MMORPG twist.
January 29, February 1 & 2, Oceans are the Real Continents, Cuba/Italy, 2023 ~ Three stories of migration, exile, and memory develop in the Cuban town of San Antonio De Los Baños, a place that time forgot. Alex and Edith, a young couple in their 30s, build their lives upon small gestures, reminisces, and a deep connection amidst the nation’s ruins. Milagros survives selling peanut cones on the street, spending her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Nine-year-old best friends Frank and Alain go to school and dream of emigrating to the U.S. to become baseball players.
February 5, 8 & 9, Sujo, Mexico/France/USA, 2024 ~ After a sicario is murdered, four-year-old Sujo is left orphaned and at risk. With his aunt’s help, he survives in the isolated countryside, facing hardship and danger tied to his identity. As a teenager, he rebels and joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo seeks to escape his violent past, but when his father’s legacy resurfaces, he confronts the fate that seems destined for him.
February 12, 15 & 16, Ma Mère, France/Portugal/Austria/Spain, 2004 ~ Ma Mère takes place in the Canary Islands, where the film’s family shares a home. The mother Hélène (Isabelle Huppert), cool and in charge, and her teenaged son Pierre (Louis Garrel), a pious Catholic back from boarding school, discuss his father’s infidelity; the next they learn that he has died in a car crash. Hélène launches into a wild series of parties, gradually involving her son in her drugging, drinking and sex-fueled nights out.
February 19, 22 & 23, The Blond Boy from Casbah, France, 2023 ~ Filmmaker Antoine travels to his birthplace, Algiers, with his young son to present his new film: an account of his childhood in mid-20th century Algeria during the country’s civil war. As he wanders through the city, the filmmaker immerses us in the moments of happiness, laughter, and tears of his childhood – spent between school, friends, and his Jewish family. Growing up in the final moments of Algeria’s pre-independence period, the young Antoine discovers his profound fascination with cinema and starts to understand who he truly is.
February 26, 29 & 30, Amal, Belgium, 2023 ~ Amal is a powerful film by acclaimed Belgian-Moroccan director Jawad Rhalib, is a thought-provoking drama that explores the transformative power of education and self-expression. The title character is a teacher who courageously confronts fundamentalism through literature, offering a moving exploration of courage and compassion. Starring Lubna Azabal (The Blue Caftan, Incendies), Fabrizio Rongione (Two Days, One Night), and Catherine Salée (The Unknown Girl), Amal tackles urgent themes of identity, tolerance, and acceptance.
March 5, 8 & 9, My Motherland, France, 2023 ~ The celebrated actress Fanny Ardant plays the role of France, a wealthy Frenchwoman living alone in her Parisian apartment since the death of her husband. When she hears on the radio that the Singa association puts homeless migrants in contact with people who can take them in, she decides, against the advice of her friends and family, to take in Reza, a young Hazara Afghan refugee. Directed by Benoit Cohen, My Motherland is based on his own book Mohammad, My Mother, and Me, which is based on his mother’s experience welcoming a young Afghan refugee. This deeply personal film beautifully captures the complexities of navigating identity and belonging.
March 12, 15 & 16, Born for You, Italy, 2023 ~ Born for You tells the moving true story of Luca, a single gay Catholic man who in 2017 adopted Alba, a child with Down syndrome who was abandoned in the hospital shortly after being born. Thirty heterosexual families rejected her before the court decided to entrust her to him: with him, the legal foster care register for singles was inaugurated in Italy. Luca was, in fact, the first case in Italy of a single, gay person successfully adopting a daughter. But his was not a charitable gesture, nor to fight a system set against him and others like him: he simply wanted a family.
April 16, 19 & 20, Love Hotel, Japan, 1985 ~ Newly restored! A tale of two broken souls. A call-girl named Yumi, “night-blooming flower,” and Tetsuro, a married man with a debt to the yakuza, have a violent rendezvous in a cheap love hotel. Years later, haunted by the memory of that night, they reconnect and begin a strange love affair. Determined to finish what they started, they return to the scene of their first macabre passion. With a taste for wicked absurdity and coursing with undercurrents of operatic emotion, at times veering into near-musical territory, Love Hotel is moved by the irrational forces that attract two bodies together. It’s a film with a uniquely materialist sense of eros manifested in Shinji Somai’s long takes, each shot a tightrope-like predicament flushed with earthly tension and livewire physicality. Made in the same year as Typhoon Club, this elegiac erotica is one of Somai’s most bewitching and unnervingly romantic works, a high-water mark of Nikkatsu Studio’s legendary Roman Porno cycle of films.
Acclaimed filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, three-time Sundance honorees who previously took audiences to the secret corners of the Italian countryside in search of white truffles with The Truffle Hunters, recently sat down with Inside the Arthouse hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge to talk about their latest striking nonfiction work. Gaucho Gaucho paints an Argentinian western with images and sounds of operatic beauty, building on their earlier success with The Last Race, a film that explored the last stock car racetrack on Long Island.
Kershaw and Dweck’s focus is now on the vast mountains of Argentina, expressed in stunning black-and-white photography, and a small community of gauchos who hold profound connections to the surrounding nature and their own traditions. As older generations dispense their wisdom, the film keeps its eye toward a new generation which continue to fight for their families’ legacies in a modern world.
“These filmmakers have enormous reserves of love and empathy for traditions that miraculously survive in spite of the modern world. And their compassion has never looked more cinematic.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar
“An affecting tone poem which ruminates on the passage of time and the passing of traditions from one generation to the next.” ~ Tim Grierson, Screen International
In Paul Schrader’s new film Oh, Canada, which we open Friday at the Monica Film Center, NoHo, and Town Center, Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi play a man at opposite ends of his life, deciding how to live it. Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, and Victoria Hill co-star.
Schrader said this about his film:
“When friend and author Russell Banks (Affliction) took ill I was weighing other story possibilities. I realized that mortality should be the subject. Russell had researched and written a book about dying when he was healthy titled, Foregone. He’d wanted to call it Oh, Canada (there was a conflict with Richard Ford’s Canada), and asked if I would use his original title. So Foregone became Oh, Canada.
“Leonard Fife became a successful documentary filmmaker after fleeing to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Sick and dying in Montreal, he is interviewed by his former students. ‘I made a career out of getting people to tell me the truth,’ he says, ‘Now it’s my turn.'”
“Paul Schrader and Richard Gere, reunited for the first time since 1980’s American Gigolo, are at the peak of their powers.” – Chuck Bowen, Slant
“Energized by the reunion of its director, Paul Schrader, and its star, Richard Gere, in their first collaboration since American Gigolo.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Richard Gere gives his best performance in years.” – Hannah Strong, Little White Lies
“Takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning… to sincerely moving effect.” – Justin Chang, The New Yorker
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