Town Center 5 Archives – Page 5 Of 76

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

The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s latest queer period romance.

September 16, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Rarely does a film carry the quiet anticipation that surrounds The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s latest queer period romance. Hermanus—already celebrated for works like Beauty (2011), Moffie (2019), and Living (2022)—has built a reputation for telling intimate stories with hefty moral weight, exploring identity, repression, and the varied textures of longing. In The History of Sound, he turns his gaze from South Africa to early 20th-century America to examine how love and music intertwine when both must be framed in shadow.

Catch The History of Sound in theaters beginning September 19th at the Laemmle NoHo, Glendale, Claremont, Town Center, and the Monica Film Center.

The film begins in 1917, with America on the brink of entering the First World War. In Boston, the New England Conservatory of Music buzzes with disciplined energy, its classrooms and practice halls filled with young musicians devoted to mastering their craft. It is here that Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), a shy, musically gifted farm boy from Kentucky, first encounters David White (Josh O’Connor), a more worldly and charismatic student whose flair for piano and song draws immediate attention, thus marking the beginning of their deep, unconventional bond.

Leaving behind the conservatory’s structured walls, the story advances to the rolling backwoods of Maine, where the two men embark on a summer expedition to record local folk music on wax cylinders. Camping under the stars, both Lionel and David relax into a profound intimacy born as much from their shared sensibilities and musical devotion as from romantic desire. In this transitional era, where the old world’s simplicity meets the looming pressures of a global conflict, it is ironically such intangibles as love, art, and music that the film holds up as unlikely exemplars of consistency and groundedness.

Ultimately, The History of Sound is an intimate character study of two men brought together by music, intellect, and the rare alignment of sensibilities. Some critics have drawn comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, noting the restrained, repressed tone and the early 20th-century setting, but the resemblance stops at this superficial level. For where Ang Lee’s film dramatized social pressure and the peril of being discovered, Hermanus’ work is far more concerned with the private, almost sacred interiority of desire than with overt drama or societal conflict. The war looms, but the heart of the film lies in what’s preserved: love, song, memory, and the myriad fruits of their timeless intermingling.

“[A] meditative tale about longing and the connection that music, as well as other art forms, can create between people.” – Ben Rolph, Discussing Film

The History of Sound is a work willing to live and die by its emotional heft.” – Will Bjarnar, In Session Film

“A slow-burn kind of picture.” – Mike McGranaghan, The Aisle Seat

Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl (2024) offers a penetrating exploration of one of cinema’s most controversial figures: Leni Riefenstah

September 10, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl (2024) offers a penetrating exploration of one of cinema’s most controversial figures: Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker whose aesthetic brilliance was inseparable from her work for the Nazi regime. Veiel’s film, which screened in Germany last year and will be opening at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center on 09/12, combines archival footage, interviews, and Riefenstahl’s own recordings to trace her extraordinary career—from her early days as a dancer and actress to her eventual status as Hitler’s personal filmmaker and beyond.

Riefenstahl’s life’s story is inescapably complex. As a young director in the early 1930s, she created alpine adventure films before collaborating closely with Adolf Hitler on propaganda masterpieces such as Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), documenting mass rallies and the 1936 Berlin Olympics with unprecedented technical innovation. Yet her acclaim was always shadowed by the moral compromises implicit in her work, a reality that Veiel confronts head-on.

The documentary draws on an extraordinary archive left behind by Riefenstahl herself, including correspondence, taped answering machine messages, and photographs from her post-war life. These materials illuminate not only her enduring claims to aesthetic purity, but also the moments when she could (or perhaps would) not acknowledge the atrocities occurring off-camera. While the evidence is often circumstantial, the film succeeds at examining the troubling intersection between her genius and the ideology her art served.

Veiel’s documentary does not shy away from the discomfort of its subject. What emerges is a portrait of a singularly gifted yet morally ambivalent artist, one whose aesthetic vision was inseparable from an ideology that caused unimaginable suffering. By examining both her celebrated technical innovations and her troubling ethical legacy, Riefenstahl challenges audiences to reckon with the complicated relationship between art and politics, genius and responsibility.

The film is as much about Riefenstahl herself as it is about the broader cultural and historical context of Germany in the twentieth century. Through meticulous research and a wealth of archival materials, Veiel presents a story that is as compelling as it is disturbing, offering viewers an unflinching look at the artist behind some of history’s most infamous films and the legacy she left behind.

“[The film is] a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“[A] welcome addition to the historically grounded rebukes to Riefenstahl and her apologists.” –Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Riefenstahl does not come to praise or reclaim the late director, but nor does it mean to bury her.” – Xan Brooks, The Guardian

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire tells the story of one of the most important moral voices of the twentieth century.

September 4, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire tells the story of one of the most important moral voices of the twentieth century. Directed by Oren Rudavsky, the film offers a deeply personal look at Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, writer, and teacher—whose life was shaped by both unimaginable tragedy and an unshakable belief in humanity’s capacity for good.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Rudavsky discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release in NYC on September 5th and Los Angeles on October 3rd.

Oren Rudavsky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for exploring Jewish identity, history, and culture, often in collaboration with fellow documentarian Menachem Daum. His films blend personal narrative with historical inquiry, illuminating the intersection of faith, memory, and social conscience.

Soul on Fire moves from Wiesel’s childhood in the Romanian town of Sighet to his deportation at age sixteen to Auschwitz, where he would ultimately lose most of his family. Through a mixture of animated sequences, rare archival footage, and Wiesel’s own words, the film brings these early years into focus while tracing the beginnings of a lifelong struggle to put memory into language.

Alongside his story of survival, the film also follows Wiesel’s rise as an author and speaker whose message reached far beyond the Jewish community. Viewers hear from family members, friends, and scholars who illuminate both the man and his mission: to point out injustice, and not let the world look away.

Wiesel’s moral reach extended to many corners of the globe. He called attention to the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews. He condemned apartheid in South Africa. He spoke out for Bosnian Muslims under siege, the victims of genocide in Rwanda, the Kurds, the Sudanese, and Argentina’s “Disappeared.” His Nobel Prize acceptance speech also included the recognition of Palestinian suffering, a reflection of his lifelong effort to encourage dialogue and understanding, eschewing static classifications of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ for a more nuanced, constantly evolving understanding of what we owe to those around us.

What emerges is a portrait of a man who never stopped asking difficult questions. How can memory shape the future? What does it mean to bear witness? Where do we draw the line between silence and action?

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire does not present easy answers, but it does offer viewers an intimate encounter with Wiesel’s humanity and all that it encompasses: his faith, his doubts, and his determination to remind the world of its responsibility to those who suffer.

“Though Rudavsky eloquently includes archival footage and judiciously applies the now overused device of animated reenactments, it is that face, those eyes, that voice, and those words that make this such a stunning film.” – Peter Keough, Doc Talk

“[This] devastating, necessary documentary concerns being a witness to history and then disseminating the horrors that the world means to forget or maybe worse . . . distort and make light of.” – Brandon Judell, Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs

“[Wiesel] wanted to create a world of witnesses, and he did so by bringing the story of the tragedy of the Holocaust to millions.” – Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post

An “embrace of what makes us unknowable yet worthy of forgiveness,” A LITTLE PRAYER opens Friday at the Claremont, Newhall, Royal and Town Center.

August 23, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

The excellent new American indie film A Little Prayer stars David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck; Matewan; Lincoln; many, many more) as a man trying to protect his daughter-in-law when he finds out that his son is cheating on her. Filmmaker Angus MacLachlan also wrote Junebug, the 2005 comedic drama that featured Amy Adams’s breakthrough role, and his new film features a similar star-making turn by the young actress Jane Levy as the daughter-in-law.

MacLachlan wrote the following about his movie:

“I began writing A Little Prayer in 2016 when my daughter was 15. She’s now 21. And I realize in retrospect that I was writing about parenting adult children. How you still want to protect them and tell them what to do, and you can’t.

“Family, and the life I observe, is a subject I find myself returning to again and again in my work. The push-pull of love, loyalties, secrets, and eternal ties. I wanted to tell a story about the people around me: their humor, pathos, and courage. It is what I find endlessly fascinating. We shot the film in my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2022.

“The central relationship in my film – that of Bill and his daughter-in-law Tammy – is in some ways a simulacrum of the fact that I no longer have the same responsibility to guide my own daughter through her adult life. The theme of loving someone enough to let them go is reflected back to me in this story.” — Angus MacLachlan, Director

“A Little Prayer is spare yet brisk, and it unfolds with a graceful, almost musical sense of modulation: Camp and Weston, both veterans of MacLachlan’s work, strike bracing high notes of acerbic wit.” ~ Justin Chang, The New Yorker

“Everyone is good to great, but [A Little Prayer] belongs to Strathairn and Levy, whose bond becomes the center of the film.” ~ Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

“There is much to enjoy in watching MacLachlan’s A Little Prayer play out, and an equal amount of wisdom to be gleaned from it.” ~ Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

“A tough, touching film.” ~ Ty Burr, Ty Burr’s Watch List (Substack)

“MacLachlan’s writing style is at once honest and slightly elevated, the kind we’re used to hearing on stage, where the structure of the entire script matters, and subtext is every bit as important as what’s spoken.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety

“Small-scale and finely tuned.” ~ Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter

“Laid out in scenes of everyday verisimilitude and quietly gathering heartache, MacLachalan weaves a tale of human frailty and strained connection rare in its avoidance of histrionics and its embrace of what makes us unknowable yet worthy of forgiveness.” ~ Robert Abele, TheWrap

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