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Show Me the Popcorn! Buy Tickets Online and Save on Concessions.

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Listen up Laemmle-ites!

For a limited time, receive $1 off concessions for EACH ticket you buy on Lammle.com.  We know, “unthinkable!”  But we made it happen.

Here’s the scoop:

• Good at all Laemmle locations EXCEPT the Fine Arts.

• No menu restrictions – good for ANY concession item!  “Even booze?” you ask.  “Yes, indeed!” we reply.

• Not valid for merchandise.

• You can only use savings for ONE purchase, in-person, during the show you purchased tickets for.

• You can’t redeem it for cash.  Meaning, there’s no money back if the price of your order comes in below the value of your discount. (But hey, if that does happen, you’ll get your entire order gratis!  Not too shabby.)

To access these savings, simply buy your next movie on our website.  Your ticket confirmation info will specify the amount of your discount.  Just print out or be ready to present on your phone at the concessions stand.

Of course, such things never last!  Offer expires on December 12th.

So get in while the gettin’ is good…

 

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: American Youth Symphony with Rich Capparela December 15

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LAEMMLE LIVE proudly ushers in the 2019 holiday season with the new American Youth Symphony Brass Ensemble, performing classical and holiday melodies. Beloved radio host Rich Capparela returns to host the festivities.

Forrest Johnston, trumpet

Tyler Norris, trumpet

Valerie Ankeney, french horn

Michael Dolin, trombone

Errol Rhoden, tuba

Founded in 1964 by renowned conductor Mehli Mehta, the American Youth Symphony inspires the future of classical music by training the next generation of professional musicians and building new audiences for orchestral music.  AYS presents ambitious seasons that feature thoughtful programming of exceptionally high quality, covering a breadth of symphonic music, including beloved classics, film scores, chamber works, and contemporary pieces. AYS is committed to reflecting the diversity of Los Angeles in its programming, representing artists and composers of all genders, generations, and ethnicities. AYS is also committed to equity within the orchestra, by holding blind, free auditions, and by paying musicians instead of charging tuition. AYS concerts are presented for free or low cost, at world-class concert halls and local community venues alike, with the goal of welcoming anyone who is interested to enjoy this beautiful art form. https://aysymphony.org/

RSVP USING EVENTBRITE

This is a Free Event
Sunday, December 15, 2019
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

GOING ATTRACTIONS, a Love Letter to Historic Movie Theaters, to Premiere October 24 at Our Historic Ahrya Fine Arts with Director & Expert Q&A’s.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Culture Vulture series present GOING ATTRACTIONS: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace, a tribute to the spectacular monuments created as temples for the enjoyment of movies.

The film’s L.A. run kicks off Thursday, October 24 with the world theatrical premiere at the historic Ahrya Fine Arts, followed by a discussion with filmmaker April Wright and subject Escott O. Norton, executive director of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation. Several of the film’s other subjects will be in attendance as well!

Other countries built palaces for royalty. In the United States, we built them to watch movies.

Following the premiere, GOING ATTRACTIONS will play for a week, from October 25-31, at the Music Hall (showtimes here), and Monday, October 28 & Tuesday, October 29 at four additional Laemmle theatres — the Claremont, Playhouse, Royal and Town Center — as part of the Culture Vulture series (see list of shows and ticketing links below).

GOING ATTRACTIONS captures the splendor and grandeur of the great historic cinemas of the U.S., built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them: Giant screens, thousands of seats, ornate interiors, amazing marquees, in-house organs and orchestras, and air conditioning back when peoples’ homes had none. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts — with a special focus on Los Angeles, which enjoys two separate historic theater districts (downtown and Hollywood).

“I feel passionately about both the text — these beautiful structures —  and the subtext of GOING ATTRACTIONS, how we have changed so much in the past 50 years as a people in how we spend our time, socialize and experience entertainment,” director April Wright said. “Our content is personalized now, at our fingertips — but I fear we are losing something important by not having the local, communal experiences we used to have with our friends, families and fellow movie-going audiences.”

“Awesome and Wonderful!” — TC Kirkham, ECinemaOne

Escott O. Norton, who will participate in a Q&A at the October 24 premiere.

Culture Vulture screenings:

Claremont:
Oct. 28, 7:30 pm
Oct. 29, 1 pm
Playhouse:
Oct. 28, 7:30 pm
Oct. 29, 1 pm
Royal:
Oct. 28, 7:30 pm
Oct. 29, 1 pm
Town Center:
Oct. 28, 7:30 pm
Oct. 29, 1 pm

Speakers after three of the Culture Vulture screenings:

Mon., Oct. 28 7:30 pm at the Playhouse: David Saffer, LAHTF board member, and Ross Melnick, film historian, UCSB professor
Mon., Oct. 28 7:30 pm at the Royal: Mike Hume, LAHTF board member and filmmaker April Wright
Tue., Oct. 29 1 pm at the Town Center: filmmaker April Wright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9bMiEt8_xQ

Forty-Fifth Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN on October 16th

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for October: Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1974.

The film was one of the movies, following Marcel Ophuls’ monumental documentary ‘The Sorrow and the Pity,’ that scrutinized French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.

Malle’s movie tells a fictional but provocative story, written by the director and novelist Patrick Modiano, about a teenage boy who savors the power he accrues when he joins the Gestapo during the final months of the war.

LACOMBE LUCIEN takes place in 1944, after the Allies have landed in Normandy but the Nazis are still fighting to retain their hold on the country. Lucien Lacombe is an uneducated peasant boy who first tries to escape his humdrum life by volunteering for the Resistance.

When they reject him for being too young, he stumbles into an opportunity working for the Gestapo in his town and discovers a taste and talent for brutality. His loyalties are complicated, however, when he falls in love with a beautiful Jewish girl who is in hiding with her father and grandmother.

Malle found a brand new actor, Pierre Blaise, to play the part of Lucien. He was working as a woodcutter when Malle discovered him. Although his debut performance was highly acclaimed, Blaise’s career was cut tragically short when he died in a car crash just a year after the release of the film. But Aurore Clement, cast as the young Jewish girl, went on to have a long and rewarding career in French cinema, even appearing in some American movies like ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Paris, Texas.’

Distinguished European actors Therese Giehse and Holger Lowenadler filled out the cast. Lowenadler, who played Clement’s cultivated father, was voted best supporting actor of the year by both the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review.

Critics praised the film for its dispassionate insight into how perfectly ordinary people could be seduced by a taste of power and violence. Pauline Kael wrote, “Malle’s film is a long, close look at the banality of evil; it is—not incidentally—one of the least banal movies ever made.”

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “’Lacombe Lucien’ is easily Mr. Malle’s most ambitious, most provocative film.” Leonard Maltin called it a “subtle, complex tale of guilt, innocence, and the amorality of power; masterfully directed.”

Although it is a vivid historical recreation, the film remains startlingly timely in its examination of the deadly lure of fascism.

LACOMBE LUCIEN screens Wednesday, October 16, at 7PM in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

New Restoration of Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN Starring Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau Opens October 11 at the Playhouse, Royal & Town Center.

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Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN (1976), a long-unseen masterwork from the director of The Servant and Accident and writer Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers), starring Alain Delon, with a special appearance by Jeanne Moreau, opens Friday, October 11 at Laemmle’s Playhouse/Pasadena, Royal/West L.A. and Town Center/Encino.

MR. KLEIN was blacklisted American director Losey’s first film in French, with a screenplay by Solinas and assistant director Fernando Morandi, and an uncredited Costa-Gavras (Z), who was originally to direct. In a full-length article in a recent issue of the New Yorker, critic Anthony Lane calls Rialto Picture’s reissue of MR. KLEIN “an event” and adds that “all good films come to those who wait.” Lane compares MR. KLEIN to another film about the Occupation, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, which Rialto released in the U.S. for the first time in 2006.

Alain Delon in Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN (1976). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal

An indictment of French complicity on the eve of the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, with Claude Levy (one of the chief interviewees in Marcel Ophüls’ The Sorrow and the Pity) as historical consultant, MR. KLEIN was received coldly by French audiences, who objected to its depiction of wartime collaboration. Yet it still went on to represent France for the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or and would win three Césars (French Oscars) for Best Film, Director, and Production Design by the legendary Alexandre Trauner, whose remarkable credits include everything from Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise and Jules Dassin’s Rififi to Orson Welles’ Othello and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.

Occupied Paris, 1942. Alain Delon’s Catholic Robert Klein seems to be sitting pretty, with attractive mistress Juliet Berto (Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating), and an apartment crammed full of expensive paintings, sculpture, tapestries — and mirrors — most of which he’s bought at fire sale prices from Jews eager to emigrate/flee. But then he finds a Jewish newspaper delivered to his doorstep, and the protests and desperate search for his Aryan heritage begins, so desperate that his attempts to establish his identity start to come second to a frenzied search for his doppelgänger, a search that comes to an unforeseen, but perhaps inevitable end.

“For hunters of rarities and students of wartime oppression, the emergence of MR. KLEIN will be an event to match that of another fierce appraisal of Occupied France, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, which finally arrived on American screens in 2006, thirty-seven years after it was made. All good films come to those who wait.”
— Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“MR. KLEIN remains as strong and thought-provoking a film as it was over 40 years ago.” — Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents

“Long unseen and worth revisiting…a historical reconstruction with a modernist tone, evoking both Kafka and Borges.” — J. Hoberman

“Played off Losey’s acquired paranoia from the McCarthy days…it has insidious things to say about the bonhomie of collaboration…Delon’s KLEIN, numb but deeply intelligent, cut off from society by some masquerade but then through the discovery of alienation itself, is extraordinary…It is a film of frozen, listless faces, the perfect currency of occupation.” — David Thomson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvEzNeiQLI&feature=youtu.be

Paulo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo Conjure Berlusconi in LORO, Opening September 27 at the Royal and October 4 at the Playhouse, Claremont & Town Center.

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Sex, drugs, power, and vice: welcome to the mid-2000s Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, the egomaniac billionaire Prime Minister who presides over an empire of scandal and corruption. Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio) is an ambitious young hustler managing an escort service catering to the rich and powerful. Determined to move up in the world, Sergio sets his sights on the biggest client of all: Berlusconi (Toni Servillo), the disgraced, psychotically charming businessman and ex-PM currently plotting his political comeback. As Berlusconi attempts to bribe his way back to power, Sergio devises his own equally audacious scheme to win the mogul’s attention. Exploding with eye-popping, extravagantly surreal set-pieces, the dazzling, daring new film from Academy Award-winning director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) is both a wickedly subversive satire and a furious elegy for a country crumbling while its leaders enrich themselves.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

Loro, a film in two parts, is a fictional story, a sort of costume drama, which narrates probable or invented facts that took place in Italy, between 2006 and 2010.

Using a variety of characters, Loro seeks to sketch, through glances or intuitions, a moment of history – now definitively closed – which, in a very synthetic vision of events, might be defined as amoral and decadent, but also extraordinarily vital.

And Them [Loro] also seeks to describe certain Italians, simultaneously new and old. Souls in an imaginary, modern purgatory who decide, on the basis of heterogeneous impulses such as ambition, admiration, love, self-interest, personal advantage, to try to revolve around a sort of paradise in flesh and blood: a man by the name of Silvio Berlusconi.

Toni Servillo e Elena Sofia Ricci. Foto di Gianni Fiorito.

These Italians, to my eyes, contain a contradiction: they are predictable but indecipherable. A contradiction which is a mystery. An Italian mystery which the film tries to deal with, but without being judgmental. Inspired only by a desire to understand, and adopting a tone which today, rightly, is considered revolutionary: a tone of tenderness.

But here comes another Italian. Silvio Berlusconi. The way I imagined him.

The story of the man, above all, and only in a marginal way of the politician.

Someone might object that we know plenty not only about the politician, but also about the man.

I doubt that.

Nella foto Toni Servillo. Foto di Gianni Fiorito.

A man, as far as I am concerned, is the result of his feelings more than a biographical total of facts. Therefore, within this story, the choice of facts to be recounted does not follow a principle of relevance dictated by the news agenda of those days, but only tries to dig, groping in the dark, in the man’s conscience.

What, then, are the feelings that stimulated Silvio Berlusconi’s days in this period? What are the emotions, the fears, the delusions of this man in dealing with events that appear to loom like mountains? This, for me, is another mystery the film deals with.

Men of power in the generations before that of Berlusconi were other mysteries, because they were unapproachable. Remember there was a time when we spoke of the disembodiment of power.

Toni Servillo. Photo by Gianni-Fiorito.

Silvio Berlusconi, instead, is probably the first man of power to be an approachable mystery. He has always been a tireless narrator of himself: think, for example, of the picture story Una storia italiana that he had sent to everyone in Italy in 2001, and for this reason too he inevitably became a symbol. And symbols, unlike mere mortals, are public property. And therefore, in this sense, he also represents a part of all Italians.

But, naturally, Silvio Berlusconi is much more. And it is not easy to provide a synthesis. For this reason I have to appeal to a much better man than me: Hemingway.

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway writes: “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.” Paraphrasing things, perhaps the most concise image we can have of Silvio Berlusconi is that of a bullfighter. ~ Paolo Sorrentino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SC9H6LnZxc

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: Elemental Music with Rich Capparela October 13

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RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

LAEMMLE LIVE proudly presents talented faculty members from Santa Monica-based Elemental Music, performing Rondo from Duo 2 – Opus 81 by Friedrich Kuhlaum, Sao Paulo Shimmer by Jonathan Cohen and Mozart Clarinet Quintet K. 581. Beloved radio host Rich Capparela returns to host

Since 2004, Elemental Music has provided over 2,000 young musicians with high-quality music education experiences. Elemental Music envisions a community where youth are inspired and empowered through quality music education. Students study with expert teachers to hone their musical technique while learning the art of collaboration and responsibility. Elemental Music offers exciting ensembles for elementary school students in nearly all instruments and voice, as well as beginning programs for guitar and strings, and even an advanced full orchestra for middle school students.

“I feel the real kind of happy in my heart!” This is the exclamation of an Elemental Music student overflowing with joy after performing in his very first orchestra concert. As a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to inspiring, training, and nurturing young musicians in Santa Monica and surrounding communities, Elemental Music teachers witness special moments like this all season long!

Emily Senchuk, Christie Glaser, flutes

Amanda Walker, clarinet

Susan Rishik and Sam Lorenzini, violins

Josephine Moerschel, viola

Betsy Rellig, cello

RSVP USING EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event
Sunday, October 13, 2019
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

25th Anniversary Screenings of BELLE EPOQUE September 18 in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in their monthly Abroad program with 25th anniversary screenings of the American release (and Oscar winner) of the delightful Spanish comedy BELLE EPOQUE. The Academy Award winner for foreign-language film will play at three Laemmle locations: West Los Angeles, Glendale, and Pasadena on September 18.

Starring Penelope Cruz (Oscar winner for Vicky Christina Barcelona) in only her second film, the period pastorale is set in 1931 with the beginning of the disruptive Spanish Civil War, chronicling the amorous adventures of a young Army deserter, Fernando (Jorge Sanz), who seeks refuge in the country house of a reclusive old anarchist painter, Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez). After finding employment as the household cook, Sanz also finds his carnal appetites stimulated by Gomez’ four daughters, played by Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil, Miriam Diaz-Aroca, and Cruz. As the youngest of the siblings, Cruz impatiently awaits her turn as the amorous partner of Sanz. As the sexual games seemingly reach a climax, the return of the opera singer family matriarch from a world tour with her manager-lover brings the plot to a boil.

Writer-director Fernando Trueba (co-scripting with Rafael Azcona and Jose Luis Garcia Sanchez) concocts the right recipe of food and sex, with a soupçon of political commentary, and the result charmed the Academy, audiences, and critics of the day.

Roger Ebert noted how the film celebrated sensuality and the human body: “Here is a film so inviting you would love to sit in the sun with old Manolo and his friend the priest and talk about the great matters of life.”

Leonard Maltin found the film a “delightfully earthy, cheery comedy.”

The Washington Post enjoyed the “sun-soaked lyricism” and found the performances ingratiating, extolling the film as a “recipe for sensual self-expression.”

Upon receiving the Oscar, Trueba paid tribute to his inspiration in his acceptance speech, “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him, but I just believe in Billy Wilder, so …thank you, Mr. Wilder.”

Our 25th anniversary presentation of BELLE EPOQUE screens on Wednesday, September 18th at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP