The official blog of Laemmle Theatres
A black market smuggler is solicited by the CIA to help take down Flight TWA 800 and to cover up the Nicaraguan blackmail attempt on the Agency after the release of the online article “Dark Alliance’ by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Gary Webb.
COURIER-X star Udo Kier will participate in a Q&A after the 7:00 PM screening on Saturday, October 22nd.
With humor and compassion, Silver Skies chronicles the unexpected events that occur when a group of eccentric seniors have their lives turned upside down by the sale of their beloved apartment complex.
On August 1st, 1966, a sniper rode the elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire, holding the campus hostage for 96 minutes. When the gunshots were finally silenced, the toll included 16 dead, three dozen wounded, and a shaken nation left trying to understand. Combining archival footage with rotoscopic animation in a dynamic, never-before-seen way, TOWER reveals the action-packed untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors of America’s first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others.
TOWER explores this untold history through the first-person stories of seven specific characters: two students who were shot that day, the two police officers who ended the siege, two civilians who inserted themselves into the story to provide aid to victims and police, and the radio reporter who broadcast live from the scene for more than an hour and a half, and whose broadcast was picked up nationally, bringing the events in Austin to listeners around the nation.
Director’s Statement:
“It’s impossible to separate the University of Texas tower shootings, America’s first mass school shooting, from the current spate of school shootings that seem to happen now with increasing regularity. With the 50th anniversary of America’s first school shooting approaching, I realized that the time to explore this untold history was now – and that through a creative approach, aimed at young audiences we could aim to explore themes of mental health, guns, public policy and media response to public tragedies all through the nuanced and personal lens of first hand accounts.
“Growing up in Texas, I’ve had curiosity about the Tower shootings since my 7th grade Texas history teacher recounted her experiences as a student on campus that terrible day. Her firsthand visceral account stuck with me for over 35 years and it is still the direct inspiration for my approach. I realized that through the visually exciting medium of rotoscopic animation, there was a dynamic opportunity to turn this history on its head. By focusing solely on witness accounts, we could seamlessly weave re-created animated memories of those who were there with the ample archival footage from the day to create an action-packed telling that was both immediate and emotionally charged.
“Our approach is unique for a documentary, as is the structure of TOWER. The first hour of the film is set entirely in 1966, the action performed by a cast of young actors, based on the actual interviews of living survivors – these actions and interviews are then animated. It is late in the telling when one by one, the actual survivors are revealed in vibrant moments that expose the breadth of their humanity through the 50-year window of history. It’s a creative opportunity that keeps the audience guessing about who survived and who did not. Through this approach, we can engage millennials in in this relevant, untold history, at a time when active shooters on school campuses and other public places has become almost commonplace. Working with the survivors of this terrible day and reframing this history has been my greatest professional privilege.”
TOWER director-producer-editor Keith Maitland is the Emmy-nominated Director of THE EYES OF ME, a year-in-the-life of four blind teens, which broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and received a Barbara Jordan Media Award. Director of documentary features, commercials, and TV series, his credits also include seven seasons with NBC’s LAW & ORDER as an AD. Keith is currently developing narrative and documentary projects, and leading filmmaking workshops for incarcerated teens. He is a graduate of The University of Texas.
Beginning September 30th at the Royal we are pleased to feature Chabrol 5 x 5, a series five of Claude Chabrol‘s (1930-2010) best: Betty, The Swindle, Torment, Color of Lies and Night Cap. A founding father of French New Wave cinema, Chabrol’s fascination with genre films, and the detective drama in particular, fueled a lengthy and celebrated string of thrillers, which explored the human heart under extreme emotional duress. Chabrol began as a contributor to the celebrated film magazine Cahiers du Cinema alongside such legends as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard before launching his directorial career in 1957. He quickly established himself as a versatile filmmaker whose innate understanding of genre tropes informed the complex triangular relationships at the center of many of his films, which frequently served as a prism through which commentary on class conflict could be obliquely addressed. The talent he displayed in depicting these dark deeds, as well as his status among the pantheon of French New Wave cinema, underscored his significance as one of his native country’s most prolific and wickedly gifted craftsmen.
Showtimes change daily. Click on the date for that day’s schedule: 9/30, 10/1, 10/2, 10/3, 10/4, 10/5, 10/6.
Two months from today we Americans might, finally, elect our very first female President, so it’s appropriate in the weeks leading up to that day we will be screening a series of excellent movies by and about girls and women filmed and set in places as diverse as the Negev Desert in Israel, Lyon, France, Mongolia, Tunisia and the USA.
First up is FATIMA, which we open September 16 at the Royal. The title character lives in Lyon with two daughters: fifteen-year-old Souad, a teenager in revolt, and 18-year-old Nesrine, who is starting medical school. Fatima speaks French poorly and is constantly frustrated by her daily interactions with her daughters. Her pride and joy, they are also a source of worry. While recovering from a fall, Fatima begins to write to her daughters in Arabic thoughts she has never been able to express in French. Writing in the New York Times, Stephen Holden called it “a small miracle of a film.” In the Hollywood Reporter, Leslie Felperin wrote that “FATIMA offers a gentle, affecting celebration of the fortitude and intelligence of an Algerian cleaning lady struggling to raise her two daughters in contemporary France.” The film won the Cesars Awards for Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for Best Actress this year.
The next week, also at the Royal, we’ll open the gorgeous documentary CAMERAPERSON. Look through the lens of master American documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson (“Darfur Now,” ‘The Invisible War,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Citizenfour”) at a Brooklyn boxing match; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into the film, creating a tapestry of footage collected over Johnson’s 25-year career. Through a series of juxtapositions, she explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the interaction of reality and crafted narrative. “Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson delivers a uniquely insightful memoir-cum-critical-treatise on the nature and ethics of her craft.” (Nick Schager, Variety) “Surprisingly emotional and heartfelt … CAMERAPERSON is a stunning achievement…makes a strong argument to assert the person behind the camera – who they are, how they live, and how they interact with others as a crucial focal point in the process of filmmaking.” (Katie Walsh, The Playlist)
On October 7th we’ll open AS I OPEN MY EYES at the Royal and Playhouse. The film depicts the clash between culture and family as seen through the eyes of a young Tunisian woman balancing the traditional expectations of her family with her creative life as the singer in a politically charged rock band. Director Leyla Bouzid’s musical feature debut offers a nuanced portrait of the individual implications of the incipient Arab Spring. “Like so many of the finest portraits of real life political events, the director has cleverly kept the story small, while hinting at a much bigger picture…Bouzid has joined the ranks Arab female filmmakers worth keeping tabs on.” (Kaleem Aftab, indieWIRE) “Leyla Bouzid displays considerable talent for dramatizing how young people eroticize peril and risk due to a lack of experience.” (Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine)
Also on October 7 at the Royal and Playhouse we’ll begin screening SAND STORM. Set in a Bedouin village in Israel, the movie follows a mother and daughter trapped by their community’s social norms. As Jalila, a 42-year-old Bedouin woman, must host her husband’s marriage to a second, younger woman, she uncovers her daughter’s affair with a boy from her university — a liaison that’s both forbidden and could shame the family. A moving film about two generations of Arab woman negotiating their identities and desires, SAND STORM is at its core a powerful story of resistance and female empowerment. “Filmmaker Elite Zexer…quickly immers[es] us in her Bedouin village setting and deftly manipulating our emotions so that our sympathies are torn and turned on a dime. Building on her award-winning short “Tasnim” – whose character here is minor but, in keeping with the film’s complexity, hints at more than one possible future – Zexer’s first feature deservedly took home the World Cinema Dramatic prize at Sundance earlier this year.” (Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film) “One of the most-admired films at this year’s Sundance…a lovely, deeply affecting film.” (Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine)
And, ending the year on a high note, a film you can bring young daughters, granddaughters and nieces (and their male counterparts) to, THE EAGLE HUNTRESS. The film follows Aisholpan, a 13-year-old girl, as she trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter, and rises to the pinnacle of a tradition that has been handed down from father to son for centuries. Set against the breathtaking expanse of the Mongolian steppe, the film features some of the most awe-inspiring cinematography ever captured in a documentary, giving this tale of a young girl’s quest the force of an epic narrative film. Narrated by Daisy Ridley, who played the heroine in “Star Wars: the Force Awakens”) “Aisholpan offers a real-life, profoundly inspiring testament to disregard age-old societal constraints and forge ahead with your passion.” (Jordan Raup, The Film Stage)
Some of the production company Merchant Ivory’s greatest triumphs are adaptations of E.M. Forster novels. There are three of them: A Room with a View (1985), Maurice (1987) and Howards End (1992), which is one of their undisputed masterpieces. Based on Forster’s 1910 novel, Howards End is a saga of class relations and changing times in Edwardian England. Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson, who won the Best Actress Oscar for this performance) and her sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) become involved with two couples: a wealthy, conservative industrialist (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife (Vanessa Redgrave), and a working-class man (Samuel West) and his mistress (Niccola Duffet). The interwoven fates and misfortunes of these three families and the diverging trajectories of the two sisters’ lives are connected to the ownership of Howards End, a beloved country home. A compelling, brilliantly acted study of one woman’s struggle to maintain her ideals and integrity in the face of Edwardian society’s moribund conformity. We played Howards End to packed, rapt houses in 1992 and are thrilled to open this fully restored digital version September 2nd at the Royal, Playhouse, Town Center and Claremont.
We’ll also soon screen two by Michelangelo Antonioni: Blow-Up (1966) and La Notte (1961). The latter, just restored by our friends at Rialto Pictures and opening at the Royal and Playhouse on September 16, takes place during a day and a night in the life of a troubled marriage, set against Milan’s gleaming modern buildings, its gone-to-seed older quarters, and a sleek modern estate, all shot in razor-sharp B&W crispness by the great Gianni di Venanzo. With Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau starring, Antonioni creates his most compassionate examination of the emptiness of the rich and the difficulties of modern relationships. Writing in his book Devotional Cinema, Nathaniel Dorsky said of La Notte, “the real beauty of the film, the real depth of its intelligence, continues to lie in the clarity of the montage — the way the world is revealed to us moment by moment. The camera’s delicate interactive grace, participating with the fluidity of the characters’ changing points of view, is profound in itself.”
Blow-Up, Antonioni’s first English-language production, is widely considered one of the seminal films of the 1960s. Thomas (David Hemmings) is a nihilistic, wealthy fashion photographer in mod swinging London. Filled with ennui, bored with his “fab” but oddly desultory life of casual sex and drugs, Thomas comes alive when he wanders through a park, stops to take pictures of a couple embracing, and upon developing the images believes that he has photographed a murder. Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles co-star. In his review at the time, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times recognized just the film’s prescience, calling it “a fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed.” Blow-Up came out 50 years ago, so we are celebrating it on September 13th at the Monica Film Center as part of our Anniversary Classics series with film critic Stephen Farber.
Beginning September 30th at the Royal we are pleased to screen Chabrol 5 x 5, a series featuring five of Claude Chabrol’s best, all fully restored and digitally remastered: Betty, The Swindle, Torment, Color of Lies and Night Cap. A founding father of French New Wave cinema, Chabrol’s fascination with genre films, and the detective drama in particular, fueled a lengthy and celebrated string of thrillers, which explored the human heart under extreme emotional duress. Chabrol began as a contributor to the celebrated film magazine Cahiers du Cinema alongside such film legends as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard before launching his directorial career in 1957. He quickly established himself as a versatile filmmaker whose innate understanding of genre tropes informed the complex triangular relationships at the center of many of his films, which frequently served as a prism through which commentary on class conflict could be obliquely addressed. The talent he displayed in depicting these dark deeds, as well as his status among the pantheon of French New Wave cinema, underscored his significance as one of his native country’s most prolific and wickedly gifted craftsmen.
Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents our tribute to the sagebrush genre with the Anniversary Classics Western Weekend, a five film round-up of some of the most celebrated westerns in movie history.
The star-studded lineup features John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Kevin Costner, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef and others.
The films include John Ford’s masterpiece THE SEARCHERS, popular Oscar winner DANCES WITH WOLVES, spaghetti western supreme THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, and rediscoveries of the irreverent THE PROFESSIONALS and the elegiac THE MISFITS.
So saddle-up for a three day celebration August 12-14; the stagecoach stops at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Each program will be introduced by Sheriff Stephen Farber, President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
| Date | Title | Tickets |
| 08/12 at 7:30PM | THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) | Available |
| 08/13 at 2:15PM | DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) | Available |
| 08/13 at 7:15PM | THE PROFESSIONALS (1966) | Available |
| 08/14 at 2:15PM | THE SEARCHERS (1956) | Available |
| 08/14 at 5:15PM | THE MISFITS (1961) | Available |
Tickets for individual shows are available NOW on Laemmle.com and at the Ahrya Fine Arts box office:
Anniversary Classics Western Weekend Ticket Specials (Available only at Box Office):
We open our sagebrush weekend with the “third and best of Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars’ trilogy… the quintessential spaghetti Western,” according to Leonard Maltin. The trilogy became the most popular of the hundreds of European Westerns made in the 1960s and 70s. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, set during the Civil War in New Mexico, is actually a prequel to A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, all of which starred Clint Eastwood as Blondie, or the Man with No Name. Leone and his screenwriters considered the film a satire with its emphasis on violence and deconstruction of Old West romanticism.
Made in 1966 and released in the U.S. at the end of 1967, the movie was propelled to big box office when composer Ennio Morricone’s main theme became a hit instrumental recording for Hugo Montenegro in 1968. The film had mixed critical reaction in its day but has been reevaluated and embraced through the decades, and is now considered one of the great Westerns. Also starring Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, with cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli.
Screens in a 4K digital restoration on Friday, August 12, at 7:30 PM.
This film won seven Oscars in 1991, including Best Picture and Best Director Kevin Costner. (It was the first Western to be named Best Picture since Cimarron took the prize in 1931.) It remains one of the most popular Western films of all time, with one of the few positive and honest portrayals of Native American culture. And it is a genuine historical epic that deserves to be seen on the big screen, where its spectacular battle scenes and buffalo hunt can be fully appreciated.
Time magazine’s Richard Schickel praised the film by saying, “As a director, Costner is alive to the sweep of the country and the expansive spirit of the western-movie tradition.”
Special guest speakers at this showing will include actress Mary McDonnell, who was Oscar-nominated for her performance in the film and earned a second nomination for John Sayles’ Passion Fish two years later. Screens Saturday, August 13, at 2:15 PM.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1966, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Hollywood veteran (and past Oscar winner) Richard Brooks. This irreverent Western boasts plenty of sardonic humor and turns many of the values of the genre upside down, but it does not skimp on production values or striking cinematography (by Oscar winner Conrad Hall). “Taut excitement throughout” was the verdict of Leonard Maltin.
The four “professionals” of the title are played by Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, with an outstanding supporting cast headed by Jack Palance, Claudia Cardinale, and Ralph Bellamy. And be sure to stay to savor the movie’s last line, drolly delivered by Lee Marvin, one of the great kickers in Western film history. Screens Saturday, August 13, at 7:15 PM.
One of the finest collaborations of John Wayne and director John Ford is also one of the most influential and admired Westerns in history. At the time of its release, The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther called it “a ripsnorting Western,” but its reputation grew in later years.
In 2008 the American Film Institute named it the greatest of all Westerns. Its story of obsession and revenge influenced many later directors, including Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader, and one of the most haunting scenes in the film was imitated in George Lucas’s Star Wars. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a bitter Civil War veteran who is determined to track down the Comanches who murdered his brother’s family and abducted his two nieces.
The Monument Valley locations where the movie was filmed are now iconic, and Wayne’s portrayal of the relentless, bigoted Edwards is one of his richest performances. The supporting cast includes Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, and Natalie Wood. Special guest speaker will be Wood’s younger sister, Lana Wood, who plays little Debbie, the girl kidnapped by the Comanches in the film’s opening section. Wood’s other credits include many popular TV series and her role as a Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever. Screens Sunday, August 14, at 2:15 PM.
We close the weekend with a modern take on the oater genre. This 1961 film’s themes of outsiders and non-conformists misplaced in contemporary society, with no new undiscovered frontiers, provide a fitting elegy to the Western.
Directed by John Huston from an original screenplay by playwright Arthur Miller, with apt black-and-white cinematography by Russell Metty, this drama took on a heightened valedictory tone when it became the final film for both co-stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe (married to Miller at the time).
Monroe’s portrayal of a lonely divorcee is among her best roles, and Gable’s aging cowboy is considered the greatest performance of his career. He died 12 days after completing filming. A superb ensemble includes Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, and Thelma Ritter.
Although a box office failure at the time, the British Film Institute notes that The Misfits “scores…in the remarkable intensity of the performances and the delineation of the characters’ complex relationships. It remains one of the finest works of all involved.” Screens Sunday, August 14, at 5:30 PM.
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant looms just 35 miles from Times Square. With over 50 million people living in close proximity to the aging facility, its continued operation has the support of the NRC —Nuclear Regulatory Commission — but, as depicted in the documentary Indian Point, it has stoked a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community, including a vocal anti-nuclear contingent concerned that the kind of disaster that happened at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant could happen there. In the brewing fight for clean energy and the catastrophic possibilities of government complacency on oversight, director Ivy Meeropol presents a balanced argument about the issues surrounding nuclear energy and offers a startling reality check for our uncertain nuclear future.
Ms. Meeropol says, “My goal with this film is to present a story of great complexity through the people who are most invested in this industry – the owners of the plant, the workers at the plant and the activists who want to shut it all down.
“By focusing on one nuclear power plant during it’s dramatic struggle to remain viable, I believe we can gain a deeper understanding of the greater issues and questions that plague the world re: how to safely provide energy.
“Going inside Indian Point was essential to me, it drove my curiosity and as a filmmaker I try to bring that curiosity to the screen believing that audiences too want to see inside, and know who works there and what they do there, all day, every day.
“This is not a film about whether nuclear power is good or bad. As the repercussions of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster continue to unfold, the relevant questions to me are: do we continue operating aging plants, especially one like Indian Point which is situated in the middle of the largest population of any nuclear power plant in the nation, and if so, who or what organization will make sure these plants are run safely? This is a film that welcomes all perspectives, voices from all sides of the issue, especially those who work at the plant and who are often overlooked in this debate.
“What is this grand bargain we’ve made with ourselves to power the world and how can we make sure it doesn’t destroy us? It’s a huge question and one best told through the lens of one plant and the handful of characters that care what happens to it.”
