Town Center 5 Archives – Page 4 Of 75

The Weight of History: Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You

January 6, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In All That’s Left of You, writer-director Cherien Dabis crafts an expansive, emotionally grounded portrait of a Palestinian family shaped by decades of displacement, political upheaval, and inherited memory. Spanning more than seventy years, the film situates an intimate domestic story within the broader arc of Palestinian history, tracing how the consequences of one violent moment ripple backward and forward across generational lines.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear director Cherien Dabis discuss her latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its return to Laemmle Theatres beginning January 8th at the Royal, kicked off by a series of live Q&A sessions with Dabis moderated by actors Mark Ruffalo, Tatiana Maslany, and Diego Luna over its first three days, before expanding to the Town Center on January 16th.

The narrative begins with a Palestinian teenager living in the Occupied West Bank who is swept into a protest that turns suddenly and irrevocably violent. Yet rather than centering on the incident itself, the film unfolds through the voice of the boy’s mother, who recounts the personal and political forces that brought her family to this precise moment in time. From there, All That’s Left of You moves fluidly across the generations, returning to earlier chapters of family life—the loss of a home, the pressures of occupation, the persistence of love and routine—while showing how each generation carries both the scars and the hopes of those who came before.

Dabis approaches this sweeping material with a focus on the textures of daily life. Weddings, meals, schooldays, and quiet conversations are given as much weight as moments of historical rupture. The effect is cumulative and deeply affecting: history presented not as abstraction, but as something that fundamentally reshapes families from the inside out.

Visually, All That’s Left of You balances intimacy with scope, grounding its political context in faces, gestures, and lived-in spaces. The performances, including masterful contributions from members of the Bakri acting family, bring an intergenerational authenticity to the story, emphasizing continuity as much as loss.

At once a family chronicle and a political testimony, All That’s Left of You refuses simplification. It does not ask viewers to look away from pain, nor does it reduce its characters to symbols. Instead, it offers a sustained act of bearing witness: to a family, to a history, and to the enduring emotional cost of dispossession. By the time the film returns to its opening moment, that act of violence is no longer isolated, but has been integrated as part of a long, unfinished story whose consequences are still unfolding.

“A moving and intimate narrative about the toll displacement takes on generations of people.” – Lovia Gyarke, The Hollywood Reporter

“[A] considered, moving tale that effectively blends the personal and the political.” – Allan Hunter, Screen Daily

A Christmas Harmony: Why Song Sung Blue Is the Season’s Perfect Crowd-Pleaser

December 16, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Arriving on Christmas Day, Song Sung Blue is the kind of theatrical experience that feels tailor-made for the holiday season: warm, generous, and powered by the simple pleasure of shared music. Directed by Craig Brewer, the film blends biography, romance, and performance into a story about second chances and the quiet triumphs that come from believing in yourself as well as one another.

Catch Song Sung Blue in theaters beginning Thursday, December 25th at the Laemmle Glendale, Newhall, Town Center, NoHo, and Claremont to see for yourself why it’s Tish Laemmle’s favorite movie of 2025, a fun fact made even funner by this ringing endorsement of both the film and Laemmle Theatres in general made by iconic filmmaker Baz Luhrmann.

Inspired by a true story, Song Sung Blue follows Mike and Claire Sardina, a Wisconsin couple whose dreams of musical success have dimmed with time. When they form a Neil Diamond tribute band called Lightning & Thunder, what began as a modest idea becomes a lifeline. Through local gigs, long drives, and moments of doubt, the couple reconnects not just with audiences, but with the reasons they fell in love with music—and with each other—in the first place.

Hugh Jackman brings warmth, vulnerability, and charm to Mike, a performer learning to reclaim his voice after years of disillusionment. Opposite him, Kate Hudson gives one of her more versatile performances to-date as Claire, infusing the role with optimism, humor, and emotional clarity. Together, they create a portrait of partnership that feels deeply human: messy, supportive, occasionally strained, but ultimately resilient. The supporting cast—highlighted by Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens, and Jim Belushi—adds texture and humor to the world surrounding the band.

Music, however, is the film’s connective tissue. Songs like “Sweet Caroline” and “Cherry, Cherry” are woven naturally into the narrative, not as spectacle but as compelling expressions of longing, joy, and perseverance. Brewer’s direction resists gloss in favor of sincerity, allowing the actors’ performances to unfold with intimacy and ease. Rather than chasing the highs of overnight success, Song Sung Blue finds its emotional payoff in the smaller victories: the applause of a local crowd, the harmony between two voices, and the triumph of simply being seen.

As a Christmas theater-going experience, Song Sung Blue hits a rare sweet spot. It’s uplifting without being sentimental, musical without being flashy, and rooted in the belief that it’s never too late to rediscover one’s purpose. Perfect for audiences looking to close out the year with something heartfelt and communal, the film reminds us that joy often arrives not with fireworks, but with a familiar song sung together and at just the right moment.

“A family movie in the best sense of the term, a crowd-pleaser with a ton of heart.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Let-it-rip acting with the fussiness burned off.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“If the right Diamond song at the right time can turn you into mush, you’re likely to find that Brewer’s film is capable of tugging on the same heartstrings.” – Christian Zilko, IndieWire

A World Erased: Shttl Opens at Laemmle

November 25, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

This week, we’re proud to welcome Shttl (2022) to the big screen—a breathtaking, audacious film that rebuilds a vanished Yiddish-speaking village with a level of authenticity and emotional power that few works of historical cinema can match. Written and directed by Ady Walter, Shttl takes place entirely on June 21, 1941, just one day before the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, wherein Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. What follows feels less like a fast-unfolding tragedy than a prayer, a time capsule, and an elegy rolled into one.

Catch Shttl in its Los Angeles theatrical debut beginning Friday, November 28th at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center. Tickets on sale now.

The film’s craftsmanship is nothing short of bold. The dialogue is spoken entirely in Yiddish, a deliberate choice by Walter, who refused to shortcut historical fidelity. With a commitment to authenticity that extends beyond the soundtrack, Walter and his team built a full-scale shtetl set, complete with homes, a synagogue, and winding paths. The effect is immersive, culminating in the kind of reconstruction that feels less like a museum than a living, restless community.

At the center of Shttl is Mendele, played by Moshe Lobel, an aspiring filmmaker who returns to his shtetl from Kyiv to pursue his former sweetheart and confront the world he left behind. His blend of idealism, hurt, and fierce longing gives the film its emotional heart. Meanwhile, veteran actor Saul Rubinek, fluent in Yiddish, plays the local rabbi with gravitas and humanity, embodying the moral complexity of a man steeped in tradition yet unflinchingly cognizant that his world may not survive the present era.

Walter’s film doesn’t shy away from the specter of disaster. As the day progresses, a sense of dread gradually builds—not with explosions, but with intimate tension, whispered fears, and the weight of unmet obligations. Yet even as catastrophe looms, Shttl finds beauty in its quietest moments: a mother’s blessing, children playing, a philosophical debate about faith and modernity. It’s a meditation on loss, but also on connection, and how people come together to sustain their humanity even when everything they know could vanish overnight.

For audiences drawn to films that balance historical gravity with human warmth, Shttl is a rare and deeply affecting experience. It’s a tribute to a lost way of life, a mournful love letter, and a bold reminder that what we reconstruct on screen carries the power to resurrect more than just buildings—It can resurrect memory.

“A keenly observed, deeply cathartic movie… the kind of film most filmmakers dream their entire lives of making.” – Barry Levitt, SlashFilm

“Like being dropped out of a time machine into a vanished world.” – Alan Zeitlin, Unpacked Media

Art, Memory, and Moral Reckoning: Pascal Bonitzer’s Auction

November 19, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

This weekend, Laemmle Theatres welcomes back a film that unravels something far more complicated than simply bidding on a masterpiece. Auction, directed by Pascal Bonitzer, is a tense, morally charged drama that plunges into the high-stakes world of art restitution, and the human cost behind a long-lost painting.

Catch Auction in its much-anticipated theatrical return beginning this Friday, November 21st at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center. Tickets on sale now.

At the film’s center is André (played with wry charm by Alex Lutz), a Parisian auctioneer with a sharp eye and ambition to match. When he learns that a painting once believed to have been destroyed by the Nazis may actually be hanging in an unsuspecting worker’s home, he must decide whether to seize the opportunity with discretion or confront the haunting legacy that comes along with it.

What he’s found proves authentic: a wartime-provenance painting by Egon Schiele, once looted and now unexpectedly returned. But the painting’s journey doesn’t end there, for into this discovery step André’s former wife, an art appraiser played by the perceptive Léa Drucker, and his intern, a mendacious young man whose ambitions make him dangerously flexible. On the other side stands the earnest worker, suddenly aware that something in his modest life carries monumental history and value. And Bonitzer, a former Cahiers du Cinéma critic turned screenwriter, stages their entangled destinies with dry humor, intellectual rigor, and a healthy dose of optimism.

Visually, the film is elegant without being slick. Bonitzer invites us into richly textured interiors—salerooms, private homes, exam rooms where authenticity is confirmed—to show how power and legacy trade hands exchange after exchange. The film’s pace is deliberate, preserving space for questions, for hesitation, and for the weight of what it means to hold something once lost to violence.

Auction doesn’t just dramatize the art world: it skewers its fetishization, its secrecy, its ambition. But it’s not a straightforward condemnation, for the film also dwells on memory, justice, and the possibility of redemption, even as it asks how one’s moral compass might bend in the face of beauty and profit. In this way, the film is both thriller and parable, holding a mirror up to history and art’s persistent ability to provoke, wound, and heal.

Watching Auction on the big screen feels especially significant. It’s more than a movie about art; it’s a story about memory, responsibility, and how the past continues to reverberate in the present. As you settle into your seat, anticipate more than a simple bidding war: This is a meditation on who owns history, and who pays the price.

“Bonitzer… still has a knack for cutting dialogue and unexpected turnarounds.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“The more they argue over the value of “Wilted Sunflowers,” the more we sense that they are being forced to contend with the value of the argument they’re making.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Sing Out, Sing Proud: Laemmle’s Christmas Eve Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along Returns

November 19, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many, Christmas Eve brings rituals of light, warmth, and gathering. And at Laemmle Theatres, one of our most cherished traditions is a celebration of all of those things—in song, in community, and in the spirited, big-hearted world of Fiddler on the Roof. This year, we’re thrilled to bring back our annual Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along, playing the evening of December 24th at the Laemmle NoHo, Newhall, Claremont, and Glendale, and with both matinee AND evening showings at the Royal and Town Center. Get your tickets while you still can!

Whether you’ve been joining us for years or will be stepping into Anatevka for the very first time, the invitation remains the same: Come lift your voice, lean into the music, and share in a night that honors joy, resilience, and the freedom to celebrate together.

Norman Jewison’s 1971 classic, adapted from the long-running Broadway musical, remains one of the most beloved works of American cinema. Based on Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye and His Daughters,” the film follows Tevye the milkman—played with iconic warmth and humor by Topol—as he navigates tradition, change, and the unruly love stories of his five daughters in a quaint Russian village at the turn of the 20th century.

The film’s emotional range is extraordinary: exuberant one moment, aching the next. “TRADITION” explodes with communal energy; “IF I WERE A RICH MAN” turns longing into musical ecstasy; “SUNRISE, SUNSET” captures the fleeting nature of time; “ANATEVKA” balances sorrow with wry endurance. These songs do more than entertain: they hold memory, identity, and cultural inheritance inside their melodies.

And, in the shared space of a sing-along, their meaning only deepens. There’s something almost sacred about hundreds of voices rising together in laughter, lament, and love.

Laemmle’s Christmas Eve Fiddler tradition began as an affirmation, a celebration of the freedom to gather openly, joyfully, and Jewishly at a time of year when many in earlier generations felt they had to retreat from view. In light of history (as well as events ongoing today), coming together to sing feels not just festive, but vital.

This event has always been more than a screening. It’s community theater meets holiday catharsis: an evening where people dress as their favorite characters, lean fully into their off-key harmonies, and rediscover the beauty of cultural expression shared in public. Children, grandparents, longtime fans, first-timers—All are welcome in this communal chorus.

So come ready to sing at the top of your lungs, or simply to enjoy the joyful noise around you. Costumes are enthusiastically encouraged. Families are warmly invited; the film is rated G, though some themes may be complex for young children.

And remember: Fiddler sells out every year. If tradition teaches us anything, it’s not to wait for a miracle—so grab your tickets early.

The Art of the Slow Heist: Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind

October 21, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

In The Mastermind, acclaimed filmmaker Kelly Reichardt ventures into the familiar terrain of the heist movie… and then quietly rewrites its rules. Set in early 1970s Massachusetts, the film follows Josh O’Connor as J.B. Mooney, a once-aspiring architect turned husband and amateur criminal who hatches a plan to steal abstract paintings from a local art museum. But this isn’t Ocean’s Eleven: the glamour is stripped away, the stakes feel muted, and the aftermath is as mild and inconspicuous as the heist itself.

Catch The Mastermind in theaters beginning Friday, October 24th at the Laemmle Glendale, Town Center, Monica, Claremont, and NoHo 7.

Reichardt, whose past work has often focused on the imperceptible leaps of its lead characters—on a road trip, in a forest, in a lapsed mechanic’s shop, etc.—now applies that same contemplative lens to a genre whose mechanics have traditionally demanded speed and spectacle. She directs the film with her signature minimalism: restraint in gesture, economy in dialogue, and an eye trained on the void behind ambition for ambition’s sake. As in Showing Up and First Cow, the roar of a larger world remains just off-screen, yet its presence is felt in every muffled scene or stray whorl of cigarette smoke.

What distinguishes The Mastermind is that the so-called heist barely registers as its focus. The robbery unfolds almost incidentally, stripped of both glamour and tension. Instead, Reichardt lingers on the quiet details: the faint clink of museum glass being lifted, the awkward thud of stolen chairs crammed into a car, the weary stillness of J.B. returning home, where he drifts through the world of his judge father and socialite mother like an unmoored ship, steered by forces outside his reckoning. The film’s true intrigue lies not in the crime, but in its aftermath; the emotional debris left behind once that initial thrill has already faded.

O’Connor delivers an unexpectedly subdued performance. His J.B. has zero swagger, simply a quiet entitlement and a suggestion that he deserves something for nothing. Surrounding him are rich supporting performances from Alana Haim (his wife), Bill Camp (his father), and Hope Davis (his mother), each anchoring the film’s emotional weight without stepping into melodrama. Reichardt’s long-time cinematographer Chris Blauvelt and composer Rob Mazurek combine to deliver a vintage jazz score, each sax note and 16-mm texture suggesting more than what’s actually shown.

If The Mastermind feels slow, starved of the genre’s usual arrests, explosions, and triumphant escapes, that’s precisely the point. Reichardt aims to observe a man who planned to rob a museum and ultimately robbed himself. What remains is the humdrum tragicomedy of a life unraveling. And yet, in its stillness, the film finds its own power exploring such ideas as privilege, desperation, and craft hovering in the background of a genre made for thrill.

“A masterclass in the director’s own unique philosophical take on life.” – Amelia Harvey, ThatHashtagShow.com

“Reichardt has unerringly located the unglamour in the heist.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Köln 75: Capturing the Inner Jazz of a Cultural Revolution

October 14, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

Köln 75 is a vibrant, freewheeling portrait of artistic rebellion and creative awakening. Directed by Ido Fluck, the film takes its cue from a real moment in music history: Keith Jarrett’s legendary 1975 concert in Cologne, one of the most celebrated improvisations in modern jazz. But rather than simply re-staging that night, Köln 75 channels the spirit of improvisation itself, capturing the electricity, uncertainty, and sheer creative risk that defined both Jarrett’s performance and the turbulent decade that surrounded it.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Fluck discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its opening at the Laemmle Royal, Glendale, and Town Center on October 24th.

At the film’s center is Vera, played with irresistible energy by Mala Emde (And Tomorrow the Entire World). A twenty-something radio intern in a West German city alive with possibility, Vera sees in Jarrett’s upcoming concert not just a performance, but the beginnings of a cultural revolution. As she darts through offices, streets, and smoky clubs, Vera becomes both participant and chronicler, a conduit for the collision of politics, art, and desire that defined a generation. Her encounters with Jarrett—portrayed by a terrific John Magaro not as a distant icon but as a restless, searching artist—become the emotional and philosophical core of the story. Through him, the film explores how creative breakthroughs often emerge from exhaustion, frustration, and the willingness to abandon control.

Fluck’s direction mirrors the very language of jazz: fluid, unpredictable, and alive with syncopation. The editing moves like a riff: sharp one moment and lingering the next, shifting tone without warning yet always staying true to its emotional tempo. Like Jarrett’s own playing, the film finds beauty in imperfection, turning chaos into harmony through sheer instinct.

Ultimately, Köln 75 emerges as a deeply affectionate ode to the messy process of finding one’s voice. In its most luminous passages, as Jarrett’s chords ripple through the screen and Vera’s world expands in response, the film reminds us that the purest acts of creation—like the purest notes of jazz—exist only in the fleeting, miraculous moment they are born.

“A vivid vehicle for a dynamic, often very funny Emde who, at 28, is convincing as a wide-eyed, sharp-mouthed teenage force of nature.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

“Much like the musical genre that it depicts, Köln 75 is an unpredictable and non-conformist drama about the budding jazz scene in 1970s Berlin.” – Jack Walters, Loud & Clear Review

In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with a film that straddles that delicate line, balancing dark comedy, emotional drama, and pointed moral questions.

September 25, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

True stories and small deceptions often live closer together than we’d like to admit. In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with a film that straddles that delicate line, balancing dark comedy, emotional drama, and pointed moral questions.

Come see Eleanor the Great in theatres, beginning Friday, September 26th at the Laemmle Royal, Claremont, Town Center, Glendale, NoHo, and Newhall.

The story follows Eleanor Morgenstein (brilliantly played by Academy Award nominee June Squibb), a sharp-tongued nonagenarian enjoying her Florida retirement alongside her best friend, Bessie. But when Bessie dies, Eleanor’s carefully maintained world begins to crumble. Moving north to live with her daughter and grandson, she finds herself sidelined in her own family and adrift in a city she once called home. Left at the local JCC, Eleanor accidentally wanders into a meeting of Holocaust survivors. When the group mistakes her for one of their own, she chooses not to correct them—and begins retelling Bessie’s life story as her own.

At its heart, Eleanor the Great is less about deception than about the emotional currents that carry Eleanor into it. Squibb delivers a performance of rare complexity, portraying a woman who is both caustic and vulnerable, driven by a need for connection that she cannot always admit to herself. Ultimately, it is Eleanor’s bond with Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student grappling with her own grief, that becomes the film’s emotional hinge. What begins as a misunderstanding grows into a tentative friendship, each woman learning to navigate absence, longing, and the fragile ways that stories can substitute for the connections we’ve lost.

Johansson and screenwriter Tory Kamen deftly steer this relationship into morally charged territory without losing sight of the characters’ underlying humanity. The ethical questions remain thorny—Can a lie born of loneliness still hold meaning? How about connections born of a lie?—but the film resists easy answers, instead allowing its characters to stumble through contradictions much like real people do. With Hélène Louvart’s luminous cinematography giving Squibb ample space to reveal flashes of mischief, regret, and desire, Eleanor the Great becomes as much a study of performance as it is of grief.

Ultimately, Johansson’s first film as a director is both tender and unsettling. Anchored by Squibb’s distinguished performance, Eleanor the Great is less about a lie than about the longing that fuels it, and the ensuing connections that make it impossible to undo.

“Eleanor the Great may not always live up to the hyperbole of the title, but it’s still worth admiring… there’s quite a bit here that truly is pretty great.” – Jason Gorber, Collider

“June Squibb is quietly powerful and touching…” – Pete Hammond, Deadline

“Johansson’s direction is assured here, establishing the intimacy between these two older women with the kind of endearing eye usually reserved for stories about girlhood.” – Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter