The Official Blog of Laemmle Theatres.

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The official blog of Laemmle Theatres

FLOW may be the best animated film of the year.

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It has been another excellent year for animated features. Inside Out 2, The Wild Robot, Look Back, Art College 1994, Chicken for Linda and Memoir of a Snail stand out; Moana 2 just had a record-setting weekend; and we still have The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, The Colors Within and The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie to look forward to.

But, as Yoda said, “there is another.” The adventure-fantasy Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. From the boundless imagination of the award-winning Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis (Away), Flow is a thrilling animated spectacle as well as a profound meditation on the fragility of the environment and the spirit of friendship and community. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, it is a feast for the senses and a treasure for the heart and we open it this Friday at the Laemmle Claremont, Glendale, Monica Film Center, and Newhall.

“Critic’s Pick! Grade: A! A movie brimming with sentiment but not sentimentality, this is one of the most moving animated films in recent memory, and, beyond that, groundbreaking too. The anthropomorphic animal characters of 21st century U.S. animated features have nothing on the animal stars of ‘Flow.'” – Christian Blauvelt, Indiewire

“At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, there’s something about the purity of great animated storytelling that can shatter your heart and then make it whole again. (Think Toy Story 3.) Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’ captivating second feature, Flow, is that kind of marvel, a vividly experiential white-knuckle survival adventure that takes place in a world on the brink of ruin. Told entirely without dialogue, this tale of a cat that evolves from self-preservation to solidarity with a motley crew of other species is something quite special” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Flow is as hard to resist as a pair of plaintive, saucer-shaped eyes peering out from a bundle of fur. Gints Zilbalodis’s second feature is a rousing animated adventure in which a devastating flood obliges an independent cat to seek allies among the animal kingdom. Technical virtuosity is matched by storytelling vigour and dramatic heft in a film with a ready appeal to ailurophiles and animal lovers of all ages.”- Allan Hunter, Screen Daily

SABBATH QUEEN, the fascinating new documentary about a radical queer rabbi, opens this week with copious Q&A’s and an Inside the Arthouse interview.

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Sabbath Queen, the new documentary filmed over two decades, follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul—an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation.

Sabbath Queen followsAmichai on his lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult, rapidly
changing 21st century.

“How [Amichai] went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.” ~ Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times

“This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism.” ~ Dennis Harvey, Variety

“The director delicately contextualizes his subject’s desired legacy by threading Lau-Lavie’s harrowing familial history into the narrative.” ~ Robyn Bahr, Hollywood Reporter

The regular engagement starts tomorrow at the Royal, and we are also showing the film December 9 at the NoHo, December 10 and 12 in Glendale, and December 11 at the Town Center. Director Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d) was interviewed for Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge’s Inside the Arthouse podcast (the episode will be out Friday). He and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will participate in Q&A’s at multiple screenings along with special guests.

Thursday, December 5th at 7PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Amy Ziering

Award-winning investigative filmmaker and activist Amy Ziering is the woman behind the last decade’s most important films about sexual assault that have directly impacted American culture and politics. Ziering’s work is a lightning rod for conversation with lauded works such as The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground, The Bleeding Edge, On the Record, and Allen v. Farrow. Ziering is the recipient of countless prestigious awards including an Oscar nomination, two Emmy awards, a Peabody, an Independent Spirit Award, a duPont-Columbia award, and the George Polk Award.

Friday, December 6th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski.

Saturday, December 7th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie with journalist Jessica Yellin.

Jessica Yellin, the founder of News Not Noise. For years, Yellin worked in network news at ABC, MSNBC, and CNN, where she was the Chief White House Correspondent.

Saturday, December 7th, 4pm – 5.45pm
Afternoon SoulSpa led by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie — a meditative spa for soul and body, which is an adaptation of the Shabbat day service into an interactive musical experience which is everybody-friendly and God-optional, offering grounding, gratitude and contemplative conversations to lift up healing and hope. Location in Sawtelle. If you are interested email: [email protected].

Sunday, December 8th Sabbath Queen Editing Masterclass 10:30AM–12:30PM
Francisco Bello ACE, Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Kristin Feely, Sandi DuBowski, Brian Kates ACE
At the Laemmle Royal with Editors/Writers Francisco Bello ACE and Jeremy Stulberg ACE, Editor Kyle Crichton, and director Sandi DuBowski to discuss the process of crafting a longitudinal documentary two decades in the making. Hosted by Brian Kates ACE. Moderated by Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film and Artist Programs, Sundance Institute. In association with Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, ADE, BIPOC Doc Editors, Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship, Documentary Producers Alliance. RSVP here.

Sunday, December 8th at 1:20PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, and Caroline Libresco.
Presented by Jewish Story Partners.

Caroline Libresco is Co-Founder and Head of Granting and Programs of Jewish Story Partners. She is a leading film festival curator, producer, story advisor, and program strategist who recently wrapped nineteen years as a lead programmer at the Sundance Film Festival. Caroline is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where she serves on the Documentary Branch Executive Committee.

Sunday, December 8th at 7:10PM
Royal Theater — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski, protagonist Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Rabbi Sharon Brous.

Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, author of The Amen Effect, who offered the invocation at the DNC and Women’s March. She was named #1 on the Newsweek / The Daily Beast list of most influential Rabbis in America.

Monday, December 9th at 7PM
Laemmle Noho — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Sabbath Queen composer Joel Goodman.

An Emmy-winner and four-time Emmy nominee known for a deeply nuanced sound filled with intricate subtleties, Goodman’s diverse body of work includes scores to over 150 films and television programs that have received 5 Oscar nominations, 30 Emmy awards and over 40 Emmy nominations. He has scored over 40 films for HBO and composed the Main Theme for the long-running and critically acclaimed PBS series American Experience.

Tuesday, December 10th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski and Damona Hoffman

Celebrity dating coach Damona Hoffman has been coaching singles on how to find love online and offline for over 15 years. Her articles appear regularly in The LA Times and The Washington Post. Plus, she’s a regular on-air contributor to The Drew Barrymore Show, NPR, and NBC’s Access Daily. Damona also starred in two A+E Networks’ TV shows: #BlackLove and A Question of Love. Her weekly podcast Dates & Mates has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Huff Post, Bustle and tops the charts in the Relationships category on the major podcast platforms.

Wednesday, December 11th at 4PM and 7PM
Laemmle Town Center in Encino — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski at 4pm and Sandi DuBowski and Gabe Dunn at 7pm

Gabe Dunn is an American writer, podcaster, actor, and filmmaker. Since 2014, Dunn has hosted the YouTube comedy show and podcast Just Between Us with fellow former BuzzFeed writer Allison Raskin. Dunn also hosts the podcast Bad with Money, which launched in 2016 and which primarily focuses on personal finances, while also discussing subjects including poverty and economic oppression. Their debut young adult novel I Hate Everyone but You, co-authored with Raskin, was published in 2017 and made The New York Times bestseller list.

Thursday, December 12th at 7PM
Laemmle Glendale — Q&A with director Sandi DuBowski

“A united resistance effort: war balanced by love, bloodshed by beauty.” ~ PORCELAIN WAR opens Friday.

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“Resisting totalitarian aggression is necessary, but holding onto your humanity amid the onslaught is the ultimate pursuit of good. The making of this film — a film full of pathos and violence, porcini and dragonlets — is in and of itself this pursuit.

For its unwavering voice from inside the brutal war in Ukraine calling us to care about those who would sacrifice their lives to defend their humanity and ours, and since at present there is no Sundance Jury Award for best dog, the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary goes to Porcelain War.” — Sundance Film Festival Jury Statement (2024)

We open Porcelain War this Friday at the Monica Film Center. Co-directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev will participate in Q&A’s following the 7:30 PM screenings on November 29 and 30. Film critic Robert Abele will moderate the Saturday Q&A.

“Porcelain War masterfully illustrates the enduring power of art in the face of adversity.” ~ Awards Daily
“A combination of whimsy and devastation.” ~ Wall Street Journal
“This doc’s depiction of Ukraine war horrors will knock you down.” ~ TheWrap
“A united resistance effort: war balanced by love, bloodshed by beauty.” ~ Variety
“A powerful testament to the resilience of the artistic spirit.” ~ Toronto Star
“One more reminder of the vital force that art brings.” ~ RogerEbert.com
“Cinematic essays take many forms: few are as fragile and contemplative as Porcelain War.” ~ Screen Daily

Kubrick’s LOLITA ~ Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic.

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Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962)
Special 62nd Anniversary Screening and Discussion of a 1962 Classic
Wednesday, December 18, at 7 PM
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
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“How did they ever make a movie of ‘Lolita‘?” Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series help to answer that question — posed in all the advertising for the 1962 release — with a special screening of Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s incendiary novel. The theme of a middle-aged man obsessed with a young teenage “nymphet” was controversial when the book and movie first appeared, and the theme is perhaps even more problematic today.

However, the masterful writing and direction of the film, along with four inspired performances, have continued to keep audiences riveted. James Mason portrays the obsessed professor, Humbert Humbert, and he perfectly captures the lecherousness, unctuousness, hypocrisy, and utter lovestruck vulnerability of a professor in thrall to a sexual compulsion he cannot control. Sue Lyon, in her first starring role, brings off astonishingly varied moods. At times she seems like a whiny, petulant teenager, and at other moments she exudes worldly sophistication. As her mother, the culturally pretentious and needy Charlotte Haze, Shelley Winters gives one of the most scintillating performances of her long career.

But Kubrick’s most brilliant casting coup was choosing Peter Sellers to play Quilty, the villain of the piece who steals Lolita away from Humbert. Sellers had made a splash in a few British films but had yet to reach American movie stardom. His flair for impersonation made him an inspired choice to play Quilty, a master of disguises who torments Humbert in many different incarnations through the course of the story.

In adapting the text, Kubrick and producer James B. Harris chose to veer from the novel and introduce Sellers’ Quilty in the opening scene, as Humbert questions Quilty about his sexual history while the two play a bizarre game of ping-pong. The Saturday Review critic, Hollis Alpert, wrote of this opening scene, “There hasn’t been a scene of equal imaginativeness in movies since, perhaps, ‘Citizen Kane.’” Nabokov himself declared that Kubrick’s opening scene was “a masterpiece” and hailed the film as “absolutely first-rate.”

Although Nabokov received sole credit for the screenplay and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adaptation, the script was heavily rewritten by Kubrick and Harris. While some critics at the time were perplexed by the movie, many of the most perceptive reviewers had high praise. Writing in Partisan Review, Pauline Kael asserted, “It’s the first new American comedy since those great days in the ’40s when Preston Sturges recreated comedy with verbal slapstick. ‘Lolita‘ is black slapstick, and at times it’s so far out that you gasp as you laugh.” Critic Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who also served as special assistant to President Kennedy at the time, wrote in Show magazine that ‘Lolita‘ was “wildly funny and wildly poignant… It is beautiful and it is depraved… Kubrick renders farce and satire and comedy and pathos and melodrama and psychopathology with equal skill.”

The leading critic of the era, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, declared, “The picture has a rare power.” More recently, Leonard Maltin added, “Winters is outstanding as Lyon’s sex-starved mother.” Jon Fortgang of England’s Film4 commented, “’Lolita,’ with its acute mix of pathos and comedy, and Mason’s delivery of Nabokov’s sparkling lines, remains the definitive depiction of tragic transgression.”

Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan, authors of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies, will introduce and discuss the film with the audience. They will also be selling and signing copies of their highly acclaimed book.

P.S.: The subsequent Anniversary Classics screening will be the hugely entertaining Joan Crawford thriller ‘Strait-Jacket‘ on December 30, celebrating its 60th anniversary!

IndieCollect’s first-ever RescueFest — December 6-9 at the Monica Film Center, featuring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and more for in-person Q&A’s.

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IndieCollect’s first-ever RescueFest — December 6-9 — features 10 glorious new Indie Cinema restorations. Q&A’s with Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner (moderated by Jane Fonda), Mario Van Peebles, Chaz Ebert, Rosalind Chao, Jan Oxenberg and more. Plus “Reel Resistance” Roundtable with indie luminaries Ted Hope & Gregory Nava on Dec 8. The full schedule is here. A terrific recent Indiewire piece on the festival and its centerpiece, the Search for Intelligent Life restoration, is here. Watch the trailer!

MY SWEET LAND Q&A’s at Laemmle Glendale.

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My Sweet Land director Sareen Hairabedian will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 PM screening at the Laemmle Glendale on Friday, November 29. Abby Sun, Director of Artist Programs and Editor of Documentary Magazine, will moderate. Additional Q&A’s:
November 30 at 7:30pm: Q&A with Ms. Hairabedian moderated by Armen Karaoghlanian, Founder and CEO, Armenian Film Society.
December 3 at 7:30pm: Q&A with Ms. Hairabedian moderated by Matt Carey, Documentary Editor at Deadline.

SABBATH QUEEN filmmaker Sandi DuBowski in Person for Q&A’s.

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Sabbath Queen Q&A’s:

5-Dec 7:00 Royal, Sandi Simcha Dubowski with Amy Ziering, Producer/Director
6-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Gabe Dunn
7-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Jessica Yellin, political journalist
8-Dec 1:20 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Carolline Libresco,  film festival curator
8-Dec 7:10 PM Royal Sandi with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and Rabbi Sharon Brous, Senior & Founding Rabbi, IKAR
9-Dec 7:00 PM NoHo Sandi with Joel Goodman, the film’s composer
10-Dec 7:00 PM Glendale Sandi with Damona Hoffman, Official Love Expert, The Drew Barrymore Show

12/11 Town Center 7:00pm
Sandi Dubowski, Director
Shana Cohen, Director of Major Gifts at Keshet
 
12/12 Glendale 7:00pm
Sandi Dubowski, Director
Ondi Timoner, Documentary filmmaker

FIDDLER – it’s back! Get your tickets to have a Merry Christmas in Anatevka. And before Hanukkah even starts. Nu, what is the world coming to?

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JOIN US on DECEMBER 24th for our umpteenth annual alternative Christmas Eve! That’s right, It’s time for the return of our Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along! Screening in five shtetls: Claremont, NoHo, West L.A., Encino, and Newhall.

Belt out your holiday spirit … or your holiday frustrations. Either way, you’ll feel better as you croon along to all-time favorites like “TRADITION,” “IF I WERE A RICH MAN,” “TO LIFE,” “SUNRISE SUNSET,” “DO YOU LOVE ME?” and “ANATEVKA,” among many others.

We encourage you to come in costume! Guaranteed fun for all. Children are welcome (Fiddler is rated “G”) though some themes may be challenging for young children.

Prices this year start at $16 for General Admission and $13 for Premiere Card holders. Typically, Fiddler sells out … so don’t miss the buggy!

ABOUT THE FILM:
Originally based on Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Tevye and His Daughters,” Norman Jewison’s adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical is set in a Russian village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Israeli actor Topol repeats his legendary London stage performance as Tevye the milkman, whose equilibrium is constantly being challenged by his poverty, the prejudice of non-Jews, and the romantic entanglements of his five daughters.

P.S.: We will be screening the excellent documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen on December 16 and 17.