Laemmle Theatres

Greg Laemmle’s Top Ten Movies of 2025

December 31, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

I’m still trying to make sense of 2025. The year in general, and the year in film. After the pandemic shut down and the Hollywood strikes, the mantra for many in the exhibition business was to, “survive to ’25,” with the feeling that this was the year we would get past the hangover of those twin impacts. But sadly, the year ended up being marked by a number of Hollywood films that provided more hype than actual entertainment. On top of that, a number of indie and art films – in my opinion – suffered from filmmaker overreach. I’m hoping that in 2026, producers (and editors) will feel empowered to rein in some of this, so that audiences can get more films that are both enjoyable and illuminating.

As for overall trends, the North American box office is going to come in just shy of $9 billion. It would have been nice to cross that number, but we did get close, and we did have a slight increase over 2024. Numbers are still down about 20% (plus or minus) on pre-pandemic levels, but showing some strength. People still want to see movies in movie theatres. There just needs to be a more consistent supply of diverse genres to engage different audiences. Maybe we can get there in 2026. Or maybe we will see a further decline in production as we see one of our legacy studios get folded into another company.

: Frankenstein

I still love seeing movies in a movie theatre. I believe there are others like me out there. As I type this, people are buying tickets to see Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and the latest Knives Out installment, WAKE UP DEAD MAN even though these pictures have been out on platforms for weeks. Why? Because the best way to see a movie is in a movie theatre. You’re not escaping into another world when you sit on your couch. That’s more like hiding from reality. Getting out of the house. Sharing space with strangers. Fully turning yourself over the storyteller. That’s what happens when you see a movie the way it is meant to be seen. So thank you to those who are back regularly. And to those who haven’t fully returned, this is a good time to resolve to try something different in the new year.

For me (and in alphabetical order), here were the Top 10 movies of 2025.

ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU – Filmmaker Cherien Dabis has every reason to be angry about how her family was displaced during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. And to be sure, there is pain and anguish in her multi-generational tale that spans 70 years in a family story. But there is also more understanding and empathy than I can recall in any other film on the same subject. And with three members of the Bakri family in key roles, including the amazing Mohammad Bakri who recently passed away, the film provides a master class in acting. Shortlisted for the Best International Feature Oscar, this one is, in my opinion, the finest foreign language film of the year.

BLACK BAG – There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing a master filmmaker craft a well-oiled genre picture. And in BLACK BAG, Steven Soderbergh is at the top of his game. This tightly paced spy thriller may not have a lot to say about world affairs and such. But at just a hair over 90 minutes, the film is tightly constructed, well acted, and a fun watch.

: Blue Sun Palace

BLUE SUN PALACE – A beautiful film about the loneliness and displacement of the immigrant experience. The film features a trio of amazing performances, led by veteran actor Lee Kang-sheng, and marks first time director Constance Tsang as someone to watch.

DEAD MAN’S WIRE – Where many veteran directors delivered interesting but bloated films this year, director Gus van Sant, working from a terrific script by Austin Kolodney, reminds us with DEAD MAN’S WIRE what a terrific filmmaker he is. Based on a true story of an armed kidnapping, the film is packed with great acting, led by Bill Skarsgard in the lead role. So far, this one hasn’t gotten a lot of Oscar buzz. But it deserves it, so I encourage you to search it out as it goes wider in January.

DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT – Veteran actress Embeth Davidtz worked both behind and in front of the camera with this story of white farmers in post-colonial Rhodesia. Based on a popular memoir by Alexandra Fuller, the film features perhaps the year’s best performances by a child actor.

: Ghost Trail

GHOST TRAIL – One of the year’s moviegoing highlights for me was catching this film in March at a Rendezvous With French Cinema screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Director Jonathan Millet, a documentarian making his first feature, delivers a Hitchcockian thriller with this story of a Syrian refugee in France trying to track down their former torturers from the Assad regime. Ignored by major critics, this one truly deserves another look.

THE PLAGUE – Charlie Polinger’s debut feature really floored me. Working with a cast of unknown young actors, Polinger tells a story of pre-adolescent bullying that is deeply resonant of his experiences as a kid, but also with much to say about our current political and cultural moment. With great cinematography, some of the year’s best sound design, and other technical achievements, this may be the one of the best debut features of the year.

PREDATORS – My favorite documentary of the year. Since it didn’t make the Academy’s short list, I guess I didn’t see enough docs this year. Or maybe this film was just hit some viewers in an uncomfortable way. While the film does not spare from scrutiny the folks who created the To Catch a Predator TV-series, it also confronts us as audience members with our role in turning the pursuit of justice into entertainment.

: A Private Life

A PRIVATE LIFE – A curious blend of romance, mystery and comedy, Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language picture may not be the tightest film of the year story-wise. But I still found enough to enjoy that I saw it twice, and am ready to go back for a third helping. Stars Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil have perhaps the best on-screen chemistry of any screen couple this year, delivering a totally believable portrayal of a divorced couple rekindling the spark.

SORRY, BABY – Distributor A24 is ending the year on a high note with the box office success of MARTY SUPREME. But for me, this is the best film they had on their schedule in 2025, and I just wish they had been able to get more people to see when it came out in the summer. Eva Victor writes, directs and stars in this comedy, which deftly combines humor with a dark and difficult storyline.

: Song Sung Blue

Honorable Mentions – RENTAL FAMILY and SONG SUNG BLUE . Telling a sentimental story on screen may seem like something easy. But it isn’t. The Hallmark Channel may have a monopoly on telling formulaic stories, but these two films delight in appealing to our emotions without being manipulative or insulting. I encourage you to see them both. And it’s OK if you get a little misty eyed. We all need a good cry every now and then.

–Greg Laemmle.

Calling All Laemmle Moviegoers! Submit Your Top 5 Films of 2025

December 31, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 3 Comments

As another incredible movie year comes to a close, we want to hear from you. What were your five favorite films of 2025?

Critics everywhere are weighing in—from major outlets like Variety, IndieWire, Rolling Stone, TIME, the LA Times, and beyond—but now it’s your turn to have a say. Whether your list leans arthouse, international, documentary, studio spectacle, or something gloriously unclassifiable, we want to know what films moved, thrilled, challenged, and/or stuck with you long after the credits rolled.

Was it Josh Safdie’s ballsy sports dramedy Marty Supreme? Ryan Coogler’s vampiric period piece Sinners? Paul Thomas Anderson’s screwball adventure One Battle After Another? Richard Linklater’s cinephile dream Nouvelle Vague? Or something quieter, stranger, or more under-the-radar that critics missed but you didn’t? Consensus is optional—conviction is not.

Submit your personal ‘Top 5 Films of 2025’ by clicking here and you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win one of three $25 Laemmle Gift Cards, perfect for future movie nights, concessions, or merch. One entry per person, open to everyone, and no wrong answers (we promise).

In addition to the contest, all submissions will be tallied and compiled into a Laemmle Patrons’ Top 10 Films of 2025: a collective snapshot of what our audience loved most this year, beyond critics’ lists and awards chatter.

Need inspiration? Feel free to browse the many year-end lists circulating from critics and publications, but don’t feel bound by consensus. This is about your year in movies: the films you championed, revisited, debated, or maybe even defended passionately in the lobby afterward.

We can’t wait to see what rises to the top. Lights down, pens up—Let’s make some lists. 🎬

Explore some sample lists from…

The Hollywood Reporter

Variety

IndieWire

Rolling Stone

RogerEbert.com

Time

NY Post

LA Times

And finally, from our very own Greg Laemmle.

Anniversary Classics Presents: Revisiting Henry & June With Philip Kaufman

December 31, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

First on the 2026 docket for Laemmle Theatres’ Anniversary Classics Series comes Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June, a film that helped redraw the boundaries around what American cinema could openly explore. Released in 1990, it was the first film to receive the NC-17 rating, a designation that became inseparable from its reputation, but which only partially explains its lasting appeal. More than a provocation, Henry & June is a lush, literary meditation on desire, authorship, and the porous line between lived experience and art.

Get your tickets today to see Henry & June on Sunday, January 11th, 2026 at the Laemmle Royal, kicked off by a pre-screening discussion with director Philip Kaufman moderated by Stephen Farber, ex-president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (which will be honoring Kaufman with their Career Achievement Award the day prior) and host of Reel Talk at Laemmle Theatres.

Set in 1930s Paris, the film draws from the diaries of Anaïs Nin, whose encounters with the fledgling writer Henry Miller (still working on his masterpiece-to-be Tropic of Cancer) and his enigmatic wife June catalyze both personal and creative awakenings. Kaufman treats this triangle less as a conventional erotic drama than as a shifting constellation of gazes and power. Anaïs, played with quiet intensity by Maria de Medeiros, begins as an observer—absorbing, recording, translating sensation into language—before gradually stepping into her own erotic and artistic agency. Fred Ward’s Henry is all swagger and verbal excess, while Uma Thurman’s June is an apparition, at once muse, manipulator, and mirror for the myriad desires projected onto her.

What distinguishes Henry & June is its attention to interiority. Kaufman visualizes thought and memory as tactile experiences: ink bleeding across paper, shadows pooling in lamplit rooms, bodies framed as if already being remembered. The film’s eroticism is inseparable from its interest in writing itself, in how confession, exaggeration, and performance shape identity. Sex here is never reduced to spectacle for its own sake, but a language through which the characters attempt to define themselves.

Following Henry & June’s release, the controversy surrounding its NC-17 rating often obscured how carefully crafted the film really is. Its sensuality is deliberate and measured, rooted in atmosphere rather than shock, while its emotional core lies in Anaïs’s struggle to reconcile intimacy with autonomy. Kaufman resists easy moralizing, allowing contradictions to coexist: freedom and dependency, inspiration and exploitation, love and self-invention.

Seen today, Henry & June feels less like a boundary-pushing outlier than a throwback to a brief moment in time when American studios were willing to support adult, intellectually curious filmmaking that trusted audiences to engage with such complexity. Its frankness remains striking, but so does its elegance, as well as its belief that erotic experience can be cinematic without being reductive or vulgar. More than three decades on, the film endures as a portrait of artists in formation and as a sensual inquiry into how stories—especially the ones we tell about ourselves—come into being.

Chlorinated Cruelty in Charlie Polinger’s The Plague

December 23, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

In The Plague, writer-director Charlie Polinger delivers a bracing, tactile descent into adolescent cruelty and contagion, crafting a horror film that feels less interested in jump scares than in the slow seep of dread. Set within the pressure-cooker ecosystem of a boys’ water polo camp, the film uses genre as a prism, refracting familiar rites of passage into something diseased, hallucinatory, and quietly devastating. With its brutal group dynamics, The Plague often feels like a modern, chlorine-soaked Lord of the Flies, where social order erodes not on some remote desert island but in plain sight.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to catch writer-director Charlie Polinger discussing his debut film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release on December 24th at the Laemmle Royal.

From its opening moments, The Plague announces its intentions through sound and image. Polinger’s approach is intensely sensory, and nowhere is that clearer than in his score, which pulses with a discordant, off-kilter rhythm. Rather than underlining emotions, the music destabilizes them, oscillating between menace and melancholy while subtly complementing the film’s meticulous sound design: splashes echo too loudly, breathing feels amplified, and the ordinary acoustics of locker rooms and pool decks take on an oppressive weight.

Visually, The Plague is just as unsettling. The cinematography leans into sickly color palettes and claustrophobic framing, transforming sunlit pools and suburban spaces into arenas of quiet menace. Polinger and his cinematographer repeatedly trap characters at the frame’s edge or obscure them behind bodies, water, or architecture, reinforcing the film’s fixation on hierarchy and exclusion.

The cast grounds the film’s escalating unease with remarkable precision. Joel Edgerton brings a coiled intensity to his role as an authority figure whose presence looms larger than his screen time, embodying the institutional blindness that has allowed such abuse to metastasize. The younger ensemble, led by Everett Blunck and Kayo Martin, delivers performances of unnerving authenticity, capturing the volatility of adolescents caught between bravado, fear, and complicity. Their interactions reveal how quickly cruelty can become currency in closed systems, and how survival often depends on knowing when to look away.

That cruelty manifests most explicitly through the film’s body horror, which Polinger deploys with remarkable restraint. The physical affliction at the center of The Plague is never treated as spectacle for its own sake; instead, it becomes a grotesque metaphor for how shame and violence spread when left unchecked, infecting bodies and communities alike.

By the time The Plague reaches its unsettling conclusion, it has established Polinger as a filmmaker with a precise command of mood and an unflinching eye for social rot. Anchored by its inventive score and unnerving cinematography, the film lingers long after its final frame, less like a scream than an infection you can’t quite shake.

“An eerie sense of unreality runs through The Plague… Polinger uses horror conventions to tease out the psychic terror and intimidation of pre-teen social codes.” – Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter

“A film that harnesses its many offbeat and potent powers in service of a unique strain of reassurance.” – Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire

Snapshots: This Year’s Shortlist for Best Documentary and International Feature

December 23, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Each year, the Academy’s documentary and international feature shortlists offer an early snapshot of the stories, styles, and concerns shaping global cinema. This season, 15 documentaries and 15 international features have advanced to the shortlist stage in their respective categories, from which just five nominees apiece will ultimately be selected. Reaching this point alone signals extraordinary distinction, marking these films as some of the most resonant and accomplished works released worldwide this year.

Documentary Features

Brandon Kramer’s Holding Liat follows the family of Liat Beinin Atzili after she is taken hostage from her kibbutz during the October 7th attacks, capturing the emotional toll of waiting while navigating grief, fear, and fragile hope. Kramer avoids sensationalism, allowing viewers to feel the weight of time as it stretches unbearably forward. Holding Liat returns to Laemmle Theatres on January 16th, with advance shows featuring Q&As with the filmmakers at Glendale on January 14th and the Royal on the 15th.

Brittany Shyne’s Seeds offers a lyrical portrait of Black farmers in the American South, tracing generations of agricultural knowledge passed down through land, labor, and memory. Shot in black-and-white, the film observes these farmers’ daily rituals (planting, harvesting, repairing equipment) with reverence and care while more broadly addressing the systemic forces that have threatened Black land ownership for decades. Shyne’s approach is contemplative rather than didactic, allowing the resilience, dignity, and perseverance of her subjects to speak for themselves. Seeds opens at Laemmle’s Glendale January 23rd.

International Features — Returning to Laemmle Theatres in early January 2026

Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice (South Korea), adapted from Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Axe, offers a bleakly comic portrait of economic precarity pushed to its logical extremes. The film centers on Man-su, a longtime paper company employee whose comfortable life unravels after a corporate buyout leaves him unemployed. As financial pressure threatens his home and family, Man-su’s desperation hardens into calculation, leading him on a methodical, morally chilling effort to ‘eliminate’ rival job candidates, reframing professional competition as literal survival.

In The President’s Cake (Iraq), Hasan Hadi offers a deceptively simple coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of authoritarian rule. Told through the eyes of a young girl tasked with baking a cake to honor Saddam Hussein, the film balances innocence and menace, revealing how political power infiltrates even the smallest rituals of childhood.

In Oliver Laxe’s Sirat (Spain), middle-aged dad Luis travels with his son Esteban to a rave in southern Morocco in search of his missing daughter, only to be swept into a nomadic convoy pushing deeper into an increasingly unstable landscape. As rumors of global conflict spread and the desert becomes increasingly militarized, the narrative shifts from communal drift to stark survival. When tragedy fractures the group, Sirat becomes a meditation on grief and forward motion, asking what it means to keep walking when meaning itself has collapsed.

Petra Volpe’s Late Shift (Switzerland) turns its attention to the pressures of contemporary labor, unfolding over the course of a single night in a Swiss hospital. With mounting urgency, the film observes a nurse pushed to her limits by understaffing and impossible demands. Volpe’s clear-eyed direction transforms everyday professional stress into a gripping ethical drama about care, responsibility, and systemic neglect.

Cherien Dabis’s All That’s Left of You (Jordan) centers on a Palestinian teenager swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank, where a sudden act of violence sends shockwaves through his family. From that rupture, the narrative expands outward as his mother recounts the personal and political forces that shaped the critical moment, threading past and present together. Rather than offering a single perspective, the film unfolds as an act of bearing witness, honoring survival not as abstraction, but as something lived, remembered, and passed down.

Annemarie Jacir’s Palestine 36 (Palestine) revisits the 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British colonial rule, foregrounding the human cost of resistance and focusing on intimate relationships shaped by betrayal, loyalty, and survival. Jacir brings emotional depth and political clarity to a story rarely depicted on screen, offering a work that feels both historically grounded and urgently contemporary.

Together, these shortlisted films reflect a cinema attuned to moral complexity and the enduring consequences of power, memory, and choice. Catch them in theaters before awards season really takes off!

Happy Holidays!

To the loyal patrons of the Claremont 5 – Closing

December 20, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 2 Comments

It is with a sense of reflective pride that we announce the sale of the Laemmle Claremont property to a new owner. Proud of all the wonderful independent, and award-winning films that we have brought to The City of Trees and PhDs since our opening in 2007. And proud to report that the new owner intends to continue operating a movie theater at this location, marking the beginning of an exciting new chapter for this venue.

“Of all the possible outcomes, we feel that this is truly the best option for Laemmle, the new owner, and the community,” according to Laemmle President Greg Laemmle. “It’s an overused term, but in this case, this really is a win-win situation.”

A handover will happen toward the end of January, 2026. Patrons can continue to use Premiere Card balances, gift certificates and Frequent Moviegoer Vouchers

“Thank you to the Claremont community for 18 years of patronage. It is sad to say goodbye, but we truly believe that we are leaving you in good hands,” said Greg Laemmle in closing

Groundbreaking ceremony: August 4th, 2005

From left to right: Jon Tolkin, the Manager of Claremont Village Expansion and Claremont Village Inn – Jay Reisbaum (VP of Laemmle Theatres) – Bob Laemmle (owner) – Bob Laemmle loved driving out to check on the progress of construction so that he could visit the Some Crust Bakery on Yale Ave

The Claremont 5 was built from the ground up by Laemmle Theatres and opened to the public on Friday July 27th, 2007. The first five films booked were Hairspray, My Best Friend, No Reservations, Sunshine and Sicko. The theater had 5 auditoriums with stadium seating and wall-to-wall screens. The houses ranged in size from 113 to 250 seats.

Finding Harmony in Wartime: The Choral and the Power of Collective Song

December 16, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In The Choral, writer Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner reunite for a thoughtful period drama that finds grace, humor, and resilience in the unlikeliest of places: a Yorkshire choral society during the First World War. Anchored by a powerful performance from Ralph Fiennes as the enigmatic Dr. Henry Guthrie, the film offers a portrait of a community seeking harmony—at once musical and human—in the face of loss and disruption.

Catch The Choral in theaters beginning December 25th at the Laemmle Royal, with an expansion to other theaters coming in January.

Set in the fictional mill town of Ramsden in 1916, The Choral explores what happens when music becomes not just performance, but a cherished source of purpose. With most of the town’s men already enlisted on the Western Front, the local choral society finds its ranks dangerously thin. In response, it appoints Dr. Guthrie, a cultured and unconventional choirmaster recently returned from Germany and met with suspicion for his background and aesthetic sensibilities. Tasked with leading the group, he proposes an ambitious performance of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, a spiritually rich oratorio that resonates deeply with a community acutely aware of its own mortality.

Fiennes embodies Guthrie with both gravitas and warmth, portraying a man whose intellect and devotion to music are inseparable from his own private sorrows. Around him, an ensemble cast—featuring Roger Allam as a grieving mill owner and Simon Russell Beale as Elgar himself—creates a tapestry of characters whose collective journey toward mounting a successful choral performance becomes a testament to the restorative power of art and beauty amid wartime disruption.

Alan Bennett’s screenplay is marked by his characteristic wit and emotional honesty. He balances the weight of loss with sharp dialogue and unexpected moments of levity, inviting audiences into a world where communal bonds are tested by war and yet strengthened by shared purpose. The film doesn’t shy away from the era’s anxieties—patriotism, class divisions, and suspicion of outsiders, etc.—but what emerges is a story less about the battlefield than the home front’s quiet courage.

The Choral may not be a rousing blockbuster in the conventional sense, but it’s precisely its reflective tone and ensemble performances that give it strength. It’s a film about how, in communities fractured by war and uncertainty, coming together in song can become a kind of salvation, a way to honor what was lost and to imagine something like grace.

“An unsentimental but deeply felt drama which subcontracts actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“A reminder that life goes on, just like a song, even when it seems like everything should stop in the face of so much horror.” – Kate Erbland, IndieWire

“The film is best when it chafes quietly against our expectations of gentle British comfort viewing…” – Guy Lodge, Variety

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

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