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“Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.” ~ EEPHUS opens Thursday.

March 12, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Perhaps no other sport lends itself as well to cinema as baseball, and there have been some memorable ones over the years. The Natural, Moneyball, 42, Field of Dreams and Bull Durham spring to mind. Well, we have a funny, soul-soothing treat for you this week at our Glendale and Santa Monica theaters. “Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

The filmmakers will participate in Q&A’s in Glendale after the 7:10 PM screenings on 3/13 with writer-director Carson Lund and actor Keith William Richards and moderator Amber A’Lee Frost (Chapo Trap House) and 3/15 with writer Mike Basta, writer-actor Nate Fisher, and moderator Brandon Harris (writer, filmmaker, baseball fan). Lund is also featured on the latest episode of Greg Laemmle (huge Dodger fan and former youth baseball coach) and Raphael Sbarge’s podcast Inside the Arthouse.

Film critics adore Eephus. As of this writing, its Rotten Tomatoes score is 100% with 37 reviews.

“Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make Eephus a gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond.” ~ Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Many a true devotee will tell you that part of the game’s charm lies in its ability to facilitate socialization… Eephus is a film that understands this, and the script shuffles along with the rhythm of a baseball game.” ~ Christian Zilko, indieWire

“A modest but poignant hangout film that resonates long after the last pitch.” ~ Tim Grierson Screen International

“Carson Lund treats the power of a shared interest with profound, elegiac empathy.” ~ Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

“Eephus isn’t exactly a baseball movie — it’s something closer to movie-baseball, where characters endlessly jostle back and forth under no real time constraints, watching the day slowly pass them by, simply out of love for the sport.” ~ Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter

“Has about it a mournful, lightly absurd poetry of the mundane, a rapt attention to the intimacy of transience and the meanings we make from relics and rituals of a time we’re passing through.” ~ Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com

“Baseball is the star, the game is the story, and the only conflicts that matter are the ones that the athletes resolve in play. Nonetheless, in Lund’s keenly discerning view, the game is inseparable from the human element.” ~ Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Something about Eephus reminds me of Wiseman’s long, slow, methodical probing of institutions and of human behavior more broadly.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

“We come to Eephus expecting a metaphor for life and instead we are faced with life itself.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

“Eephus luxuriates in an unhurried afternoon of leisure.” ~ Dan Kois, Slate

Oscars 2025: The ANORA director advocates for movie theaters, and the Academy honors Robert Laemmle. Plus: Oscar Contest winners.

March 5, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

The 2025 Oscars are in the history books. It was a good night, with a funny, skilled host in Conan O’Brien and a fairly equitable distribution of statuettes for some terrific movies. It was also a good night for theatrical exhibition, better known as good, old-fashioned moviegoing. As he did during his speech accepting the Palme d’Or last year in Cannes, Anora filmmaker Sean Baker gave a passionate, trenchant speech in favor of seeing movies as filmmakers have always intended them to be seen, in theaters. After accepting the Oscar for Best Director from filmmaker (and movie theater owner) Quentin Tarantino, Baker said the following to almost 20 million Americans watching live and far more people worldwide:

“I’m going to take this time up here really quick to read something I’m very passionate about…so we’re all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater. Watching a film …in the theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together, scream in fright together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together. And in a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever. It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home, and right now the theatergoing experience is under threat. Movie theaters, especially independently owned theaters, are struggling, and it’s up to us to support them. During the pandemic we lost nearly 1000 screens in the U.S., and we continue to lose them regularly. If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture. This is my battle cry. Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will. Distributors…please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Neon did that for me, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Parents…introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters, and you’ll be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us, when we can, please watch movies in the theater, and let’s keep the great tradition of the moviegoing experience alive and well.”

You can watch his full speech here.

The always moving In Memoriam section of the Oscars broadcast was especially powerful this year. This may have been because the losses of huge talents seemed particularly heavy this year. For us at Laemmle Theatres, of course, we are still grieving the loss of Robert Laemmle, our former president and Greg Laemmle’s father. What an honor for Bob to be the first exhibitor included in the in Memoriam montage.

Finally, we are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Umpteenth Annual Laemmle Oscar Contest.

FIRST PLACE: Stefan with 18 correct answers.
SECOND PLACE: Joel with 18 correct answers.
TIE for THIRD PLACE: Kelly & Cole with 17 correct answers (plus closest run-time to actual runtime broadcast).

Check out our nifty pie charts to see how our savvy customers divined the Academy members’ choices. Last year our winner correctly guessed 21 categories, so this was a tough year. As predicted, the Best Actress category was one of the trickiest; only 10.7% guessed that Mikey Madison would win for her turn in Anora, defying the conventional wisdom that Demi Moore would win for The Substance, and that Fernanda Torres was the true dark horse for her performance in I’m Still Here. Half of our contestants thought The Wild Robot would take the Best Animated Feature prize, but the acclaimed little Latvian film Flow came out on top. Almost 25% of contestants thought Timothée Chalamet would win for Best Actor for A Complete Unknown, no doubt misled by his Screen Actors Guild Awards victory.

Winners, we will be in touch to get you your movie pass prizes. Congratulations!

Oscar winners still on screen, as they were meant to be seen: ANORA, THE BRUTALIST, NO OTHER LAND, I’M STILL HERE & FLOW.

March 5, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

If you still haven’t seen some of the films honored at the Academy Awards on Sunday, you can still see all of the following this week: Anora (winner for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Actress), The Brutalist (Best Actor, Score, and Cinematography), Flow (Best Animated Feature), I’m Still Here (Best International Film), and No Other Land (Best Feature Documentary). All are fantastic and, as one social media user posted after listening to Sean Baker’s speech extolling the virtues of seeing movies in movie theaters, “movies just hit different at the cinema.”

And if you’ve already seen these films, check out The Fishing Place, which we open Friday at the Royal. The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody wrote that it’s better than all of the ten Best Picture nominees!

“A warmhearted, bittersweet tale of father and sons,” EX-HUSBANDS with Griffin Dunne opens Friday.

February 26, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Forty years after starring in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette are back, their days of all-night Manhattan romantic misadventures given way to the sober realities of late middle age. Writer-director Noah Pritzker’s dramedy Ex-Husbands beautifully captures the low-key new milieu, in which Dunne plays a father whose faltering marriage coincides with his adult sons’ romantic troubles. (Both Pritzker and Dunne speak about the film in a recent episode of Inside the Arthouse.) Richard Benjamin, James Norton, and Miles Heizer, all terrific, costar. We open Ex-Husbands this Friday at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and the Town Center in Encino.

“A warmhearted, bittersweet tale of father and sons.” ~ Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline Hollywood

“A vibrantly charming lead turn from Griffin Dunne…Ex-Husbands is an accessible, ostensibly lightweight offering but one nevertheless carried off with expertise, intelligence and empathetic insight.” ~ Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

“An interesting, intergenerational snapshot of masculine emotional drift in the modern world. What may strike some as lightweight will connect with attuned viewers as a compassionately observed collection of just-so moments—a worthwhile cinematic novella.” ~ Brent Simon, AV Club

“Pritzker navigates his compassionate tale empathetically, portraying a refreshingly kind, gentle, and soft side of masculinity through a group of characters all stuck inside a crossroads life has thrown at them.” ~ Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert.com

“It doesn’t pretend to offer solutions to the various predicaments it considers. But Mr. Pritzker has a sagacious understanding of our various stumbles and humiliations.” ~ Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

SIDEWAYS 20th Anniversary Screening, Discussion and Book-Signing March 20, 2025 Laemmle Monica Film Center

February 26, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 20th anniversary screening of one of the most acclaimed movies of the 21st century: Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning ‘Sideways.’ The March 20 screening at the Monica Film Center is held in conjunction with the publication of the new book, ‘Sideways Uncorked: The Perfect Pairing of Film and Wine,’ written by critic and journalist Kirk Honeycutt and his wife, Mira Advani Honeycutt. Mira comes to the project with 25 years of experience as a wine journalist. They will be joined by the Oscar-nominated producer of ‘Sideways,’ Michael London.

‘Sideways,’ based on a novel by Rex Pickett, was adapted for the screen by Payne and his frequent collaborator, Jim Taylor. It follows a weeklong journey through Santa Barbara wine country by two mismatched pals, a teacher and unsuccessful writer, played by Paul Giamatti, and a part-time actor played by Thomas Haden Church. Along the way they have encounters with two tantalizing women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). The sharp, often hilarious insights into character energize the film.

When the film opened in the fall of 2004, it earned universally rave reviews. Kirk Honeycutt wrote the very first review out of the Toronto Film Festival. He declared, “The slapstick is perfectly timed and executed. As with the best comedies of Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards, laughs derive from excruciating pain, both emotional and physical.” Roger Ebert praised the film as “the best human comedy of the year—comedy because it is funny, and human, because it is surprisingly moving.” Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies.”

Both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named ‘Sideways‘ as the best film of 2004. The screenplay was named the year’s best by those two groups, along with the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Writers Guild of America. Payne and Taylor also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film earned Academy nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Acting nods for Church and Madsen.

The film had an influence beyond the world of cinema. In one key scene in the film, Giamatti declaims against merlot and declares pinot noir to be the far superior wine. Sales of pinot noir soared all over the country after the film’s release.

‘Sideways‘ ended up grossing more than $100 million, a huge score for a film that started its life as a small arthouse release.

Kirk and Mira Honeycutt will be selling and signing copies of their book before and after the screening on March 20. Alexander Payne had high praise for it: “The Honeycutts’ account of ‘Sideways‘ and its reverberations is so thorough that even I learned things I hadn’t known. A delightful, accurate chronicle with great wine tips.” Leonard Maltin called ‘Sideways Uncorked’ “an astute and entertaining book about the making of a great American film and its aftermath in the world of wine.”

Producer Michael London has many other distinguished credits, including ‘House of Sand and Fog,’ ‘The Family Stone,’ ‘The Visitor,’ ‘Milk,’ and ‘Trumbo.’

“With a small crew, we were able to work within the ebb and flow of the Camino. We became invisible and nimble, and that allowed us to film the real Camino.” THE WAY, MY WAY opens March 7.

February 19, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

The Way, My Way, which we open March 7 at our Claremont, Santa Monica, and Encino theaters, is the charming and captivating true story of a stubborn, self-centered Australian man who decides to walk the 800 kilometer-long Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route through Spain. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it… but one step at a time, it will change him and his outlook on life forever. Based on Bill Bennett’s best-selling memoir of the same name.

Bennett penned the following about The Way, My Way:

“I really didn’t want to make this film. I didn’t want to make a film about myself; about my failings and vulnerabilities, and hardships which took me right to the brink. Finally I decided to give it a shot – but then I was faced with the question: how do I make a film on the Camino and make it real?

“I decided the only way to tell my story truthfully was to shoot with a very small crew and use the actual pilgrims I’d walked with ten years earlier. Of the twenty speaking parts in the film, only four are professional actors. The rest are pilgrims.

“They proved to be stellar. They set the standard. They held the truth, the authenticity. The professional actors had to step up to the pilgrims’ benchmark. In fact, we all had to, even those of us behind the cameras.

“And with a small crew, we were able to work within the ebb and flow of the Camino. We became invisible and nimble, and that allowed us to film the real Camino.

“The decision to cast the real pilgrims dictated so many other major creative decisions for me as a director. The shooting style, the editing style, the tone of the movie, the staging and blocking of scenes – even what film gear we should use.

“It all had to point towards the authenticity of the Camino experience.

“Now having almost completed post-production, I feel I’ve achieved what I set out to do – to make a truthful film about a man who ultimately undergoes a fundamental shift in character and outlook, through walking the Camino.”

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK ~ 50th anniversary screenings of one of Australia’s premiere films.

February 19, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Before The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Peter Weir’s estimable career took off with his eerie, languorous 1975 drama Picnic at Hanging Rock. A milestone for the Australian film industry, it has stood the test of time, and we are thrilled to open a week of screenings this Friday at the Royal. The keepers of world cinema at Janus Films have released a new 4K restoration of Weir’s 1998 director’s cut. Here’s film critic J. Hoberman in the New York Times:

“Once upon a time in Australia: Three schoolgirls and their teacher vanish in broad daylight while touring a prehistoric landscape. Peter Weir’s 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock epitomizes the idea of the quasi-supernatural ‘outback uncanny’ — the incongruity of a decorous settler civilization on what appears to be an alien planet.

“Based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay that was inspired by a dream, Picnic at Hanging Rock is something of a national treasure, anointed the country’s greatest movie by the Australian Film Institute…On Valentine’s Day, 1900, the young ladies of Appleyard College, an exclusive finishing school well-stocked with Victorian knickknacks, flutter with anticipation at the prospect of a daylong excursion to Hanging Rock, a craggy volcanic formation in central Victoria dating to the Miocene epoch. Swans grace the pond, billets-doux circulate, the Romanian folk musician Gheorghe Zamfir’s pan flute fills the air.

“’What we see and what we seem are but a dream — a dream within a dream,’ the beautiful and beloved Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), muses, loosely citing a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Once the party reaches the Rock, time stands still … literally. Disregarding the orders of the school’s dragon-like headmistress (Rachel Roberts), the young French teacher, Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers (Helen Morse), allows several of the girls to explore the forbidden geological formation, led by Miranda, whom Mademoiselle compares to a Botticelli angel. The afternoon passes, the girls do not return, even as the remaining classmates fall into a languorous erotic trance. The ensuing procedural scarcely demystifies the absence.

“Hanging Rock has echoes of L’Avventura and Psycho, two movies that create an existential void when a main character vanishes less than midway through. It is more genteel yet more erotically charged than either — ‘both spooky and sexy,’ Vincent Canby wrote in his 1979 New York Times review — and, like the Rock itself, has cast a resilient spell. The actress Chloë Sevigny has namechecked Hanging Rock as a favorite film. Sofia Coppola, whose movies are often set in hermetic worlds populated by privileged young women, seems to have been especially impressed.” (Click here to read the rest of Mr. Hoberman’s piece.)