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“I just wanted to look at that moment of girlhood where you are shifting away from being ostensibly under the protection of your parents, but also realizing like, ‘Oh, I’m actually not protected by the world. I have to figure out my own, my own way forward.’” India Donaldson on her new film GOOD ONE.

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In India Donaldson’s fantastic debut film Good One, 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) embarks on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros) and his oldest friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). As the two men quickly settle into a gently quarrelsome, brotherly dynamic, airing long-held grievances, Sam, wise beyond her years, tries to mediate. But when lines are crossed and Sam’s trust is betrayed, tensions reach a fever pitch, as Sam struggles with her dad’s emotional limitations and experiences the universal moment when the parental bond is tested. Selected for both Sundance and Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Good One is an emotionally expansive work that probes the limits of familial trust, understanding, and ultimately, forgiveness.

We open Good One this Friday in Santa Monica and a week from Friday in North Hollywood.

The nation’s film critics are not holding back. A small sample:

“Collias captures something gossamer here, a quiet shift into adult womanhood that happens, literally, overnight. She’s the new moon, ready to emerge. But unlike the moon, she makes her own light.” ~ Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine

“In its lived-in quality and gathering churn, Good One is a dream of an indie, from the craft in every frame to the humor, epiphanies and mysteries that gird its portraiture.” ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“Its most distinctive quality is how much Donaldson and her trio of actors … trust the subterranean, and allow it to do its work far beneath the surface, between the words.” ~ Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com

“So much of the grace and, ultimately, the emotional resonance of Good One lies in Collias’ performance, and how she turns a symphony of reaction shots into a portrait of a woman caught in a crossfire of middle-aged male malaise.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone

“Subtly dark, humorous, and wise, Good One leans into its wilderness backdrop in all of its liberating (and, sometimes, paradoxically claustrophobic) properties.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar

Donaldson has sat for several recent interviews to talk about her film. Here’s an excerpt from one with Jordan Raup of The Film Stage:

The best directorial debut of the year, India Donaldson’s Good One, is a carefully-observed portrait of both womanhood and fatherhood, capturing the 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias, in a revelatory breakthrough performance) who embarks on a camping trip in the Catskills with her father (James Le Gros) and his best friend (Danny McCarthy). As the men are in the middle of a midlife crisis of sorts, Sam is witness to their mindless banter and subtle indecencies, culminating in a piercing point of no return.

Ahead of the film’s limited release beginning this Friday, I spoke with Donaldson about the character dynamics, the film’s subtle accumulation of details, the Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Kelly Reichardt films she watched as inspiration, and the journey from Sundance to New Directors/New Films to the Cannes Film Festival.

The Film Stage: Can you talk about how you initially formed the dynamic between these three characters? In some ways, it feels like an update on Old Joy but with an entirely new perspective.

India Donaldson: When I wrote the script, it was like deep COVID, and I was living back at home for the first time since high school, basically. And I have two half-siblings who at the time were in high school and I was kind of reflecting. I never thought about, before this moment, exploring that moment in film or writing. But through them this triangulation happened where I was reflecting on my own teen years and memories, of the ways that I dealt with conflict, the ways that I was avoidant of conflict, just my qualities of being in the world as a teenager. And how I felt like I had spent my 20s kind of trying to beat back certain instincts I had––to please or this kind of thing that had worked for me as a teenage girl, I feel like it wasn’t working for me in my professional life. I felt like I didn’t have the confidence to really pursue what I wanted to pursue, all these things. I just wanted to look at that moment of girlhood where you are shifting away from being ostensibly under the protection of your parents, but also realizing like, “Oh, I’m actually not protected by the world. I have to figure out my own, my own way forward.”

If you just look at the logline you could think it’s like a coming-of-age movie, but I feel like throughout the movie you learn she’s actually more mature in some ways, and level of maturity is not defined by age. She’s picking up on different social cues. What was it like writing her character and after you met Lily, did her character expand? 

The character was on the page for sure, but the moment I met Lily and saw her audition, she just had added this edge to the character. I was always kind of nervous about the character that she would come across as too much of a doormat. That it would be sort of unsatisfying to watch somebody repeatedly act kind of in service of these men and their needs and struggle with that. Lily just had this quality where even when the character’s at her most obedient, I could always feel her pushing against it. Because I think Lily herself has a natural kind of rebellious [spirit]. She’s a real freethinker and has this incredible confidence that the character doesn’t have. But I think it bleeds into the performance and so it evolved in that sense. As soon as it was sort of in her hands, the character became more powerful to me. Which was a cool thing to discover.

“When Universal’s Basketball Team Played in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics.” ~ Universal Studios basketball & Laemmle.

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From Greg Laemmle:
Robert Laemmle was an All-City basketball player at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz and went on to play college basketball for L.A. City College and L.A. State. He was recruited to play at Seattle University, where he would have been the power forward opposite one of the finest small forwards of all time, Elgin Baylor. Seattle’s loss, however, ended up paying big dividends for L.A. moviegoers.
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Bob had no knowledge of this recent story from The Ankler and was amazed to hear of Carl Laemmle Jr.’s love of the game.  And even before reading the story, Bob (who is almost 89-years old) asked if Sam Balter and Frank Lubin were on the team.  In his later career as a broadcaster, Sam Balter interviewed my father and complimented him on how he played the game. And even if he was a generation older than Bob Laemmle, the two played together on Amateur Athletic Union teams in the late 1950s.

Repertory Central – Upcoming Classics include THE CONVERSATION, ARMY OF SHADOWS, PARIS, TEXAS and BASQUIAT.

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Wasn’t it fabulous getting to see Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI on the big screen?  Well, there’s more where that came from. Get fired up for Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS, Wim Wenders’s PARIS, TEXAS, and Julian Schnabel’s BASQUIAT in the coming weeks, plus our one-night screening of LEGENDS OF THE FALL (with director Ed Zwick in person for a Q&A).  We’re planning even more for the fall. Add to these all the award-season films coming to Laemmle screens, that is a lot of rewarding moviegoing!
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THE CONVERSATION follows lonely wiretapping expert and devout Catholic Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who is hired to record a seemingly innocuous conversation in San Francisco’s Union Square between two lovers (Frederick Forsythe and Cindy Williams). Upon re-hearing the tapes, however, Caul believes he may put the couple in danger if he turns the material over to his client (Robert Duvall). But what one hears can ultimately turn out to be quite different from what was actually recorded. Opens this Friday at the Laemmle Royal, Town Center, and Glendale.
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ARMY OF SHADOWS opens August 16 at the Royal and Town Center: A gorgeous restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 epic of the French Resistance during World War II, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (perhaps best known for Belle de Jour), the film draws on the wartime experiences of Kessel and Melville himself, both active members of the Resistance and Free French Forces. This is the first time the film has been released in the U.S.
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PARIS, TEXAS opens August 30 at the Royal. New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. PARIS, TEXAS follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski).
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BASQUIAT, opening September 13 at the Laemmle NoHo, depicts the meteoric rise of the brilliant artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright in one of his first roles. Starting out as a street artist, living in Thompkins Square Park in a cardboard box, Jean-Michel is “discovered” by Andy Warhol’s art world and becomes a star. But success has a high price, and Basquiat pays with friendship, love, and, eventually, his life.

LEGENDS OF THE FALL 30th Anniversary Screening Director Ed Zwick in person August 15.

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LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994)
30th Anniversary Screening
Director Ed Zwick in person, signing his book Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions
Thursday, August 15, at 7 PM, Royal Theatre

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of Ed Zwick’s ‘Legends of the Fall,’ his hit Western epic starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas, and Julia Ormond. The screening is presented in conjunction with the recent publication of Zwick’s best-selling memoir, ‘Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood.’ Zwick will participate in a post-screening Q&A along with the film’s award-winning editor Steven Rosenblum (Oscar-nominated for his work on Zwick’s ‘Glory’ and ‘Blood Diamond’), and he will be selling and signing copies of his book.

‘Legends of the Fall‘ was based on a highly praised novella by Jim Harrison and centers on a family in Montana during the early years of the 20th century. Susan Shilliday and William Wittliff wrote the screenplay. Hopkins plays the patriarch of the family, and his three sons are played by Pitt, Quinn, and Thomas. The film deals with the mistreatment of indigenous people during that period in history and also includes vivid scenes set during World War I, when all three brothers enlist to fight Germany. After the war, they become entangled with Irish bootleggers during the Prohibition era. Ormond is the Eastern woman loved by all three brothers. The cast also includes Karina Lombard, Tantoo Cardinal, and Gordon Tootoosis.

The film won an Oscar for John Toll’s stunning cinematography and also received nominations for art direction and sound. The following year, Toll won a second Oscar for shooting Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart.’ Steven Rosenblum, who edited many of Zwick’s movies, also worked on ‘Braveheart.’ The score for ‘Legends‘ was composed by another of Zwick’s frequent collaborators, James Horner (an Oscar winner for ‘Titanic’).

Made on a budget of $30 million, the film earned $160 million, making it a major hit and one of the most popular films during the 1994-1995 Oscar season. Although reviews were mixed, many critics praised the film. Variety wrote, “Zwick imbues the story with an easy, poetic quality…the actors, working as an ensemble, are near perfect in their service of the material.” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers singled out Brad Pitt, declaring that Pitt “proves himself a bona fide movie star, stealing every scene he’s in.” The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Wilmington wrote, “the landscapes, photographed by John Toll, majestically backdrop all the personal and cultural furies.” Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer concurred: “Check your cynicism at the door, and just revel in its enormity.”

Zwick’s book chronicles his career from his early days writing for television and includes piercingly candid reminiscences of his landmark shows ‘thirtysomething’ and ‘My So-Called Life,’ along with his features ‘About Last Night,’ ‘Glory,’ ‘Courage Under Fire,’ ‘The Last Samurai,’ ‘Blood Diamond,’ ‘Defiance,’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (for which he won an Oscar for Best Picture). The book recounts his conflicts with Matthew Broderick, Julia Roberts, and Pitt, as well as studio executives like the infamous Harvey Weinstein. But Zwick also includes praise for his closest collaborators and many incisive reflections on the essential tenets of moviemaking.

“A puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and CHINATOWN,” ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS opens Friday at the Royal.

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Nineteen nineties small-town China. A woman’s body washes up in the local river. The chief of police, Ma Zhe, is tasked with heading up the investigation. An obvious perp leads to a hasty arrest, though the mystery lingers in Ma Zhe’s mind. What kind of darkness is truly at play here? Director Wei Shujun’s murky throwback film noir, gritty, textured film grain captures the pulpy proceedings. Torrents of rain envelop the characters as they descend into madness in pursuit of the truth. Equal parts atmospheric tour-de-force and beguiling puzzler, Only the River Flows is a masterfully styled ode to a bygone cinematic era and a sharp-edged portrait of provincial paranoia. The film, starring Zhu Yilong, is based on Yu Hua’s popular short novel Mistakes by the River. We open the film this Friday at the Royal.

“In a seamy offbeat world englobing the gleaming surfaces of Park Chan-wook’s terrific Decision to Leave, all scuzzed-up and grimy and the Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice with seams of absurdist dark comedy, Wei Shujun’s inventive riff on Asian-noir gives the expanding subgenre something its Chinese contributions often lack: a pitch-black sense of humor. Like the greatest genre exponent, Raymond Chandler, Wei cares less about logistics than about mood in this rainy, grainy movie (DP Chengma shoots on film in low light, giving the images a lovely dirty texture), lending the film in a cool retro vibe and a schlocky Brian De Palma-style opening. Humanizing quirks and flourishes abound, providing profundity to this touchingly melancholic portrait of small-town desperation.” -Variety.

  "A puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and CHINATOWN," ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS opens Friday at the Royal.

“An enigmatic, progressively more engrossing noir directed by Wei Shujun, structurally inventive, if not downright format-twisting. The cinematography is genuinely star-making.” ~ Screen International

"A puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and CHINATOWN," ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS opens Friday at the Royal.

“A film noir that’s so vintage it comes wrapped in crackling celluloid and old cassette tapes. Written and directed by Wei Shujun, the movie is a puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville, Chinatown, and Memories of Murder.” ~ Hollywood Reporter
"A puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and CHINATOWN," ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS opens Friday at the Royal.

Wei Shujun was born in 1991 in Beijing, China. He started his career as an actor at age 14. He completed his master’s degree at the Communication University of China. His films include On the Border (short, 2018, Special Jury Award at Cannes Film Festival), Striding into the Wind (2020, Official Selection Cannes Film Festival) and Ripples of Life (2021, Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes). 

THE TERMINATOR 40th Anniversary Screening with Producer Gale Anne Hurd Thursday at the Laemmle NoHo!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 40th anniversary screening of one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time, THE TERMINATOR, the movie that spawned one of the screen’s most profitable film franchises. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his most iconic role, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. We’re screening it as part of Art House Theater Day on Thursday, July 25 at 7 PM at the NoHo and will host producer Gale Anne Hurd for a Q&A. You might ask, is this really an indie film? Spoiler alert…it is!

“Knowing that many people have never seen the film or missed out on seeing it on the silver screen, I couldn’t be more thrilled to celebrate THE TERMINATOR‘s 40th anniversary with its return to cinemas on Art House Theater Day,” said producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead, Armageddon). “People may wonder if THE TERMINATOR is truly an indie film. As the film’s producer, I can assure you it is. Jim Cameron and I made the film for $6.4 million, which included a completion bond and a 10% contingency. We had a variety of co-financiers, pre-sold rights and our distribution was through Orion Pictures rather than a major studio – the very definition of an indie film, both then and now. We hope you’ll enjoy the nostalgic experience of seeing it this summer!”

Writer-director Cameron and producer Hurd had both apprenticed at Roger Corman’s low-budget factory, New World Pictures, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they joined forces to create THE TERMINATOR. Their original screenplay (with co-writer William Wisher, inspired by works of Harlan Ellison) chronicles the battle for the survival of the human race against Skynet, a synthetic intelligent machine network of the future. In 2029, an automaton killer, T-800 (Schwarzenegger) is dispatched through time to assassinate an unsuspecting waitress, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984, who turns out to be the future mother of the twenty-first–century human resistance leader, John Connor. To protect her, Connor sends guerrilla fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The ensuing chase, with the seemingly unstoppable Schwarzenegger, a laconic, leather-clad, and lumbering destruction machine pursuing Connor and Reese through the streets of Los Angeles, is a model of low-budget efficiency and resourcefulness.

Contemporary critics embraced the sci-fi suspense thriller, with Kirk Ellis of the Hollywood Reporter calling it “a genuine steel metal trap of a movie.” Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader characterized its “almost graceful violence…(has) the air of a demented ballet,” and Janet Maslin in The New York Times cited it as a “B-movie with flair.” The film was a genuine sleeper, and its success led to several sequels, a television series and video games. The latest incarnation of the series, Terminator: Dark Fate, with Cameron returning to a creative role, is set to open theatrically later this year. The film that started it all, THE TERMINATOR, was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2008.

Cameron, of course, became one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Hollywood, staying in the sci-fi world for several landmark films (Aliens, The Abyss, Avatar) and winning Oscars for a venture into the past, Titanic, the biggest box-office hit of the twentieth century. Schwarzenegger went on to movie superstardom and political success. His terse line reading in the film, “I’ll be back,” is ranked 37th of the American Film Institute’s all-time great movie quotes, and his character Terminator is ranked as the 22nd greatest movie villain. Our guest, Gale Anne Hurd emerged as one of the most successful female producers of the era, with Aliens, Alien Nation, and Armageddon among her hits.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964) 60th Anniversary Screenings.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present this month’s screening in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Michelangelo Antonioni’s vibrant masterpiece RED DESERT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and collected rave reviews around the world on its release over the next several months. We will show the film at five of our theaters at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 31.

Antonioni had earned critical acclaim for the three movies in his “alienation trilogy”—’L’Avventura,’ ‘La Notte,’ and ‘Eclipse’ — made during the early 1960s. RED DESERT explored some of the same themes but introduced a new element to the director’s work. The three earlier movies were all shot in black-and-white, but with RED DESERT Antonioni decided to experiment with color cinematography for the first time, and critics heralded his achievement. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann declared, “With Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT, the art of the film advances…quite simply, it is the best use of color I have ever seen in a film, exquisite in itself.” Kauffmann added, “there is a buried history of modern painting in it, from the Impressionists through Mondrian to Hopper and Wyeth.”

Monica Vitti, who had starred in all three of Antonioni’s earlier movies, has the leading role of Giuliana, the wife of an industrialist in Ravenna. She is emotionally troubled and eventually begins an affair with an employee at her husband’s factory. Carlo Chionetti plays the husband, and Richard Harris — fresh from his Oscar-nominated performance in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘This Sporting Life’ — plays her lover. Antonioni wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Tonino Guerra.

In addition to its psychological themes, the film offers prescient critique of industrial pollution, with the color cinematography contributing to this political commentary. A key collaborator was director of photography Carlo Di Palma, who worked closely with Antonioni to paint the landscapes when necessary to create the desired mood of malaise. Antonioni and Di Palma collaborated again on the director’s most successful movie, the English-language ‘Blowup,’ an Oscar nominee in 1966. Other directors around the world — including Ettore Scola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sidney Lumet — worked with Di Palma. The cinematographer later established a fruitful collaboration with Woody Allen on such films as ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ ‘Radio Days,’ and ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’

Time magazine called RED DESERT “at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by Italy’s masterful Michelangelo Antonioni.” More recently, Geoff Andrew of Time Out hailed “perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” Robbie Collin of London’s Daily Telegraph declared, “Almost half a century on, RED DESERT remains a film of rare beauty and brooding erotic intensity.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called the film Antonioni’s “most mysterious and awe-inspiring work.”

Screening one night only at the Royal in West Los Angeles, the Town Center in Encino, and Laemmle Theatres in Glendale, Claremont, and Newhall.

Glendale Arts Summer Soiree “Under A Thousand Stars” to Honor Laemmle Theatres’ Greg & Tish Laemmle.

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Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle and his wife Tish Laemmle are being honored by the good folks at Glendale Arts “in recognition of their unparalleled legacy of dedication to independent filmmakers and the art of storytelling on the screen.” Glendale Arts is an award-winning 501(c)3 non-profit organization that generates opportunities throughout greater Los Angeles to showcase, promote, encourage, and engage with the arts. From their announcement:

Glendale Arts proudly announces the organization’s highly-anticipated Summer Soiree “Under A Thousand Stars” to be held on Saturday, July 27, 2024 from 7:00-10:00 P.M. at ace/121 Gallery. Tickets for the event of the season are now available for purchase here.

Guests are invited to revel in the dazzling beauty of the gallery, transformed into an elegant indoor/outdoor spectacle of art and performance. The inspirational evening will comprise epicurean delights, artful mixology, a silent auction featuring original works of art by emerging and renowned artists from the Los Angeles area and beyond, and a celebratory program highlighting GA’s dynamic programmatic pillars – the Glendale International Film Festival, Solo Fest, and ace/121 Gallery.

A highlight of the event will be the presentation of The Aura, Glendale Arts’ inaugural award honoring luminaries who power the arts. The first-ever recipients of The Aura are Laemmle Theatres Head Greg Laemmle and his wife Tish Laemmle, Art in the Arthouse Curator at the family-run theatres which have brought the best of foreign and independent cinema to Los Angeles for over 85 years. The Laemmles will be honored in recognition of their unparalleled legacy of dedication to independent filmmakers and the art of storytelling on the screen.

Summer Soiree proceeds benefit Glendale Arts, the city’s premier arts non-profit. Funds raised will support GA’s mission to cultivate year-round opportunities for artists and audiences to convene around mutually enriching experiences that promote creativity, foster meaningful connections, and build community through the performing, cinematic, and visual arts mediums.

“We are excited to bring supporters and community, business, and industry leaders together for a night that salutes the transformative power of the arts,” said Glendale Arts Board Chair Marci DeSousa. “The Summer Soiree will not only showcase the heart and soul that drives Glendale Arts’ mission, but will also celebrate what distinguishes GA as a unique non-profit with local roots, regional impact, and a global footprint.”