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- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Friday the 13th Movie Marathons Take over L.A. Screens
Friday the 13th Movie Marathons Take over L.A. Screens originally appeared on L.A. Mag. Horror films are big business. Shudder and Screambox are streaming monster movies 24 hours a day. The Alien, Saw, and It franchises have all grossed more than a billion dollars, and Universal just spent $7 billion on their new Florida theme park where Frankenstein, Dracula the Wolf Man reign over their 'Dark Universe.' Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were the big horror baddies of the 1980s and continue to haunt the world, at least at Halloween, but only Jason gets two holidays to celebrate. This year, the only one Friday that falls on the 13th is tonight and old hockey mask is making himself known around L.A. with eight venues pulling out all the stops for the murderer from Camp Crystal Lake on his 45th anniversary. Encino producer Sean S. Cunningham got an MFA from Stanford and worked for Lincoln Center and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before releasing his first Friday the 13th film in 1980. The franchise has currently clocked twelve feature films, a TV series, books, video games and boatloads of merchandise. Cruise around Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank and you'll find store after store filled slasherabilia and horror collectibles. Today's Jason-fest sprawls out from art house cinemas to an esteemed museum to that funky revival house in Gardena. Hardcore fanatics can bunker down at the Frida Cinema, which is screening ten of the films in a two-day marathon. For those who just can't get enough Karo syrup-soaked teenagers, Vidiots has added a late-night screening of Dude Bro Party Massacre III. Be sure to check with venues in the curfew zone for the latest updates. (1980)Alamo Drafthouse DTLAVidiotsFrida CinemaRooftop Cinema Club DTLAAutry MuseumArt Theatre Long Beach (1981) Frida Cinema (1982) Frida Cinema (1984) Frida Cinema (1988) New Beverly Cinema (1989) New Beverly Cinema (1993) Gardena Cinema This story was originally reported by L.A. Mag on Jun 13, 2025, where it first appeared.
Los Angeles Times
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Why James Gandolfini was more than just Tony Soprano, plus the week's best films in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. We try not get to hung up on box office around here, but last week's opening of 'A Minecraft Movie' to more than $150 million domestically (and passing $310 million worldwide) certainly grabbed our attention. An adaptation of the popular video game directed by Jared Hess and starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black and Jennifer Coolidge, the film had the biggest opening weekend of the year to date, a welcome shot in the arm for a Hollywood that has been struggling to find its footing in a changing entertainment landscape. (Which is also perhaps a way of saying 'The Studio' is more of a documentary than we may be comfortable admitting.) In reviewing the film, Amy Nicholson noted the importance of the film being called 'A Minecraft Movie' as opposed to 'The Minecraft Movie.' 'That humble title acknowledges the hubris of forcing one story onto a game that's popular exactly because it doesn't have characters or a plot,' Nicholson wrote. 'It would be just as apropos to call this 'Jared Hess' Minecraft Movie.' Hess, the director, combines the spirit of his 2004 hit 'Napoleon Dynamite' with the game and thwack, he's made a solid comedy constructed of his own touchstones: tater tots, '80s kitsch and wannabe alpha males in a joystick-measuring contest.' Nicholson also noted Black's ongoing run as a star of children's movies, adding, 'As a child of the '90s, I should be salty that the alt-comedy superstar now belongs to grade schoolers who only know him from the 'Kung Fu Panda' movies. But if Black hooks kids on the habit of going to the movies, I'm happy to let a younger generation play with my toys.' Ryan Faughnder picked up on that last point this week as he wrote about how Hollywood has been trying ways to grab the attention of younger audiences for whom traditional film and television simply are not their primary sources of entertainment. 'There are still ways to entice young people to the movies and other traditional forms of entertainment,' wrote Faughnder. 'There are Gen Zers who love to pack repertory screenings, storm Letterboxd with their film diaries and test the limits of their AMC Stubs A-List subscriptions. When they get behind something, it can go viral. But the entertainment industry needs to figure out more smart ways to make good movies and TV shows that are relevant to young people today, and market them strategically.' Three upcoming events will spotlight the release of Jason Bailey's new book 'Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend' about the actor James Gandolfini, who died at age 51 in 2013. Though best known for his role as Tony Soprano on the groundbreaking TV series 'The Sopranos,' Gandolfini also left behind a strong legacy of film work. On Sunday there will be a screening of David Chase's 'Not Fade Away' at the Alamo Drafthouse DTLA, along with Tony Scott's 'Crimson Tide' at the Frida Cinema on Wednesday, April 16. Elsewhere, Andrew Dominik's 'Killing Them Softly' and Joel and Ethan Coen's 'The Man Who Wasn't There' will play at the Los Feliz 3 on Saturday, April 19. Bailey will be present to introduce all three screening events and sign some books. Taken together, these events are a strong overview of Gandolfini's film work as the roles grew bigger and he made for a more confident and commanding screen presence. Via email, Bailey answered some questions about the actor's work. Can you separate out Gandolfini's film roles from the TV role of Tony Soprano and the outsized impact it had on his career and legacy? Is it even possible to consider his film work on its own? It's tricky! I think it's important to situate his film work within his own initial goals as an actor — he fancied himself a character actor, a supporting player, and never envisioned the level of fame or stardom, and the assumption of further leading roles, that 'The Sopranos' brought him. (I was thinking about this recently and would pinpoint someone like Vincent D'Onofrio as having the kind of career Gandolfini was looking for.) And I think the short window of time between the end of 'The Sopranos' and his passing makes it even more difficult; it feels, in late roles like 'Enough Said' and 'Not Fade Away,' like he was just finally starting to get a handle on what his post-'Sopranos' film career would look like. But I think there were enough good, meaty roles — before, during and after the show — that showcased both his skill and his range, so we can appreciate what the film career tells us about him as an actor. 'Killing Them Softly' and 'Not Fade Away' each show different sides of Gandolfini as a performer. It is astonishing those films came out in the same year. Do you think his versatility is underappreciated? They came out in the same month — as did 'Zero Dark Thirty,' which is another, entirely different kind of role. I think his range and versatility are vastly underrated, which mostly speaks to the huge shadow Tony cast over both his career and American popular culture in general. But Tony was very far from his own personality, and not just in terms of emotion and temperament; he even sounded different, taking on that working-class Jersey dialect when he was playing tough guys, while his own voice was much more clipped and nasal. I think he made a lot of smart decisions in terms of choosing roles that were in conversation with Tony Soprano, sometimes playing similar thug types but subverting them (as in 'Killing Them Softly' or 'The Mexican'), sometimes playing characters who were 180 degrees from Tony to showcase his versatility (like 'The Last Castle' or 'In the Loop'), and sometimes playing working-class guys whose surface similarity to Tony would help him smuggle in clever nuances and variations ('The Man Who Wasn't There,' 'Not Fade Away'). What about Gandolfini, either as a performer or just as a person, did you most come to appreciate in the course of working on the book? I really came to understand and appreciate his tremendous personal warmth and charm. Everyone I interviewed, to a person, still spoke of him with such love and affection — even as they might, for example, tell me a story about him doing something flaky or dangerous or inconsiderate. People just loved him and the stories I was told, of personal support, financial generosity and genuine loyalty, were really moving. Do you have a personal favorite role of Gandolfini's, even if it is one that isn't showing around L.A.? I think 'Enough Said' is a revelatory performance, in that it was completely different from any role or any film he'd done before, but you buy him immediately. He's a totally credible romantic lead and he shows a vulnerability and fragility in that film that he hints at elsewhere, but this time it's front and center. I was told by so many of the people I interviewed that, of every role he played, that one was the closest to 'the real Jim.' Yet it took his entire career to get to a point where he felt comfortable sharing that much of himself on-screen. I'm glad we have it — but it's extra heartbreaking that he made it so close to his passing, because it hints at the direction his career might have taken, had he not left us too soon. Robert Altman's 1993 film 'Short Cuts' is currently not available on streaming (though it is on disc in a very fine set from the Criterion Collection) and so it has perhaps fallen a bit in its estimation as part of the filmmaker's overall canon. Which is why any time it screens locally is worth a notice, with two shows coming up at the New Beverly on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18. The film will be screening from a 35mm print from the Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. There is also something overwhelming and perhaps even a bit forbidding about the film, an adaptation of short stories by Raymond Carver woven together in Altman's inimitable style to become an ensemble overview of life among a loosely interconnected group of people in Los Angeles. The cast includes Jack Lemmon, Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins, Lili Taylor, Tom Waits, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr. and many more. As great as the movie is, it must be noted how white the cast is, and so it functions as a lacerating, insightful portrait of certain enclaves of the city, but cannot be taken as a portrait of the city as a whole. In his original review of the film, Kenneth Turan wrote, 'The old lion can still roar. Though tradition holds that there are no second acts in American lives, writer-director Robert Altman, never much of a traditionalist, embarks with 'Short Cuts' on the fourth or possibly fifth act of a remarkable career. Both building on what has gone before and extending outward to new boundaries, he has made a rich, unnerving film, as comic as it is astringent, that in its own quiet way works up a considerable emotional charge. … Altman is 68 now, a survivor of successes like 'M*A*S*H,' 'Nashville,' 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' and last year's 'The Player' as well as failures best not mentioned. Yet he still wants it all, still pushes his vision of film as a medium capable of supplying the widest psychological canvas on which to illustrate the way we live now.' 'After Hours' and 'Desperately Seeking Susan' At the New Beverly tonight, Saturday and Sunday will be a double-bill of Martin Scorsese's 'After Hours' and Susan Seidelman's 'Desperately Seeking Susan,' both released in 1985 and surveying New York City's downtown scene as a vital part of their storytelling. Both films also feature versatile turns by Rosanna Arquette. In 'After Hours,' Griffin Dunne plays a mild-mannered computer programmer who finds himself drawn into an extraordinary series of mishaps after he ventures downtown for a rendezvous with a mysterious woman he just met (Arquette), building to a manic, existential evening. In her review of the film, Times critic Sheila Benson called it 'sweetly ominous.' The film still stands out as something singular in Scorsese's immense filmography, with a manic, go-for-broke energy that in part came from his own frustrations with Hollywood filmmaking at the time. In an interview with Patrick Goldstein published in September 1985, Scorsese put forth ideas he has been speaking about ever since, saying, 'The problem is that since 'Star Wars' and 'Close Encounters' — which are films that I love — too much talent has gone into making those same kinds of movies. It's the whole phenomena of Hollywood knowing its audience and continually feeding it what it thinks it wants. What I'm saying is, what about the rest of us?' 'Desperately Seeking Susan' stars Arquette as a New Jersey housewife who, bored with her life, starts following a series of personal ads that appear to be a series of communications between a woman named Susan and her lover. When she goes to see Susan (Madonna, in her film debut), a bonk on the head and series of misunderstandings leads Arquette's character to believe she is Susan. Untangling their twinned identities takes over the movie. As Kevin Thomas put it in his original review, 'Leora Barish's blithe, wryly satirical script liberates Seidelman, allowing her to combine the street-wise grit of 'Smithereens' with a glorious, cockamamie sense of humor. 'Desperately Seeking Susan' couldn't be more right now, and in being so — and being itself — it's actually a lot closer to the hallowed '30s screwball comedies than films nakedly striving to emulate them. Everything about it is fresh: its wit, its people, its sound (a knockout rock score by Thomas Newman) and its look (cinematographer Edward Lachman's exterior images are so clear that they seem to have been shot just after a cleansing rain).' Madonna fans — along with Warren Beatty fans, Antonio Banderas fans and '90s aficionados, maybe less so Kevin Costner fans — should also note that Alek Keshishian's 1991 tour documentary 'Madonna: Truth or Dare' is showing at the Egyptian tonight. 'Dune' and 'The Flintstones' On Saturday, Vidiots will have two screenings with appearances by Kyle MacLachlan: first, David Lynch's 1984 'Dune' with a post-screening Q&A, followed by Brian Levant's 1994 'The Flintsones,' with an introduction by MacLachlan. 'Dune' was MacLachlan's feature film debut at age 25. As opposed to Denis Villeneuve's recent pair of blockbusters, Lynch told the saga of Paul Atreides in a single film, creating something dizzying in its ambitions and genuine otherworldliness. In his original review of the film, Michael Wilmington called it 'one of the year's most peculiar films,' adding that it was 'packed with sometimes spellbinding, sometimes splendiferous, always bizarre imagery. If it fails — and certainly it fails as the 'Star Wars'-style comic-book extravaganza those only vaguely familiar with the novel may expect — it's at least one of those memorable, spectacular failures that stick in your mind obsessively.' In a December 1984 Times interview with Dale Pollack, Lynch himself echoed that sentiment when he said, 'I thought at first 'Dune' was more adult than 'Star Wars.' But kids roll with the film. They really dig this picture because it's a new experience. I think it's a picture for a wider audience, which is contrary to what I though when I first started.' In the adaptation of the popular cartoon series, 'The Flintstones,' MacLachlan played the story's villain, Cliff Vandercave, who ensnares Fred Flintstone (John Goodman) as a stooge in a plot to purposefully tank a company. In his review of the movie, Kenneth Turan wrote, 'Whatever else people say about 'The Flintstones,' no one will claim that a chance to make a truly great motion picture was frittered away here. A live-action cartoon in every sense of the word, this re-creation of the long-running television series about suburban life in 2,000,000 B.C. has been carefully designed to be as bright and insubstantial as a child's toy balloon.' A new Oscar for stunts This week the academy announced a new category for the 100th Oscars ceremony, celebrating films released in 2027: achievement in stunt design. This brings to fruition the longstanding hope of action fans to see stunt work recognized at the Academy Awards. Over the past decade, the number of stunt professionals within the academy has tripled to more than 100, a factor that also helped create momentum for the new award. In 2023, stunt coordinators were made part of a newly created production and technology branch of AMPAS, alongside script supervisors, music supervisors and choreographers. David Leitch, who directed last year's stunt-centric 'The Fall Guy,' has been a primary force behind the campaign for the new award, along with stunt coordinator and designer Chris O'Hara. In a statement following the academy's announcement, Leitch said, 'Stunts are essential to every genre of film and rooted deep in our industry's history — from the groundbreaking work of early pioneers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, to the inspiring artistry of today's stunt designers, coordinators, performers and choreographers. This has been a long journey for so many of us. Chris O'Hara and I have spent years working to bring this moment to life, standing on the shoulders of the stunt professionals who've fought tirelessly for recognition over the decades. We are incredibly grateful.' As announced last year, the academy will also introduce a new award for casting directors, beginning with the ceremony in 2026.
Los Angeles Times
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Gas Food Lodging' and the evolving state of women filmmakers, plus the best films in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. In a turn of events that could have a potentially chilling effect on arts organizations and movie theaters around the country, this week the mayor of Miami Beach, Fla., Steven Meiner, proposed to rescind the lease of a theater operating on city-owned property for screening the recent Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land.' Made by a collective of two Israeli and two Palestinian filmmakers, the film captures the struggles of daily life in an area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, where Israeli settlers and soldiers attempt to force locals from their homes and land. The film also explores the budding friendship between two of the filmmakers, Basel Adra, a Palestinian, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli. Meiner, who said he has watched the film, declared it 'egregiously antisemitic' and 'a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.' On Wednesday, the city commission will vote on Meiner's motion to revoke the lease and stop grant funding for the O Cinema. Responding in a statement, filmmaker Abraham said, 'When the mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality, he is emptying it out of meaning. I find that to be very dangerous. 'Censorship is always wrong,' Abraham's statement continued. 'We made this film to reach U.S. audiences from a wide variety of political views. I believe that once you see the harsh reality of occupation in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, it becomes impossible to justify it, and that's why the mayor is so afraid of 'No Other Land.' It won't work. Banning a film only makes people more determined to see it.' Film critic and writer Marya E. Gates recently published the book 'Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words,' which includes career-spanning interviews with some 20 filmmakers including Allison Anders, Jane Campion, Martha Coolidge, Julie Dash, Josephine Decker, Cheryl Dunye, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, Karyn Kusama, Mira Nair, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Isabel Sandoval and Susan Seidelman. On the 19th, the Academy Museum will host a 35-mm screening of Anders' 'Gas Food Lodging,' with a conversation between Anders and Gates. On the 20th, Gates and Kusama will appear with a screening of 'Destroyer' at the Frida Cinema, and on the 21st, Gates and July will speak after a screening of 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' at Vidiots. Gates will also be on hand for book signing at these events. Gates answered a few questions about her book via email, including one on 'Gas Food Lodging,' starring Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk, about which Michael Wilmington's original 1992 review said, 'It jumps right into life, faces it with careless affection, clarity and courage.' As you were doing interviews for the book, did you find you were hearing variations of the same stories over and over again? There was definitely some overlap in the kinds of hurdles these filmmakers encounter and often it's the same hurdle any filmmaker encounters regardless of gender. It's just really hard to make a movie, to secure financing, etc. But several of the filmmakers discussed screenplays they had written that were perhaps too feminist or too much about subject matters regarding gender that were met with resistance. There are some great unmade projects I learned about — like a body-horror [film] from Karyn Kusama — that I hope maybe will still get made someday. Do you feel the conditions for women filmmakers are changing? Hopefully for the better? I think it's definitely easier for white women to sell stories centered on white women than it was 50 years ago. But there is still an extra hurdle for women of color. That said, there is one filmmaker who started working in the 1970s and one who started working in the 2010s who shared very similar stories about what it's like to navigate the film industry, and that was very eye-opening to hear such similar stories so many decades apart. It seems as much as things have changed, some aspects have, unfortunately, stayed the same. Can you talk a little about Allison Anders specifically? She has always struck me as someone who should have a much larger body of work. What, for you, makes 'Gas Food Lodging' stand out? Allison has been a dear friend for about 15 years now, and she is always so inspiring! I saw her film 'Grace of My Heart' when I was in college and it was the first time I ever remember seeing a woman lactate on-screen. It had a big impact on me. All of her films are rooted in such specific details about cis women's lives, whether it is the lactation scene or discussions of menstruation, like in 'Gas Food Lodging.' I think she also was one of the first filmmakers I became aware of who really let her female characters be messy and flawed in a way that felt real, rather than quirky or designed to be unlikable. The sisters in 'Gas Food Lodging' have a sibling antagonism that feels a lot more authentic to my experience than I often see in films where sisters always get along. I love that the girls in 'Mi Vida Loca' fight even when they are best friends. I definitely had my biggest fights as a teenager with my best friend. I think Allison really loves her characters and wants to ensure that she puts fully realized women and girls on-screen, then she crafts a super stylish, rock 'n' roll infused cinematic world for them to live in. There's nothing like her films. 'The Good Girl' On Tuesday, Vidiots will be screening 2002's 'The Good Girl,' directed by Miguel Arteta and written by Mike White in his pre-'White Lotus' years. The film stars Jennifer Aniston, then at the height of her 'Friends'-era fame, as a woman desperate to break free of the small-town life that has become suffocating to her. The cast also includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Zooey Deschanel and John C. Reilly. Arteta is scheduled to appear at the screening along with Deschanel and Reilly. In his review, Kevin Thomas wrote, 'This film, which is about how the relentless dullness of the ordinary can grind a person down, has a corrosive, comically satirical tone yet never condescends to its people, who are all the more soul-shriveling for being so real. … White and Arteta are breathtakingly aware of how people talk and behave, yet the hilarious absurdity of so much of what they observe refreshingly inspires in them compassion rather than contempt. While Arteta directs with a relaxed grace, White comes up with one painfully funny line after another, some laugh-out-loud funny, others more ironic or reflective.' 'Starting Over' and 'Semi-Tough' On Wednesday and Thursday, the New Beverly will show a double bill of Alan J. Pakula's 'Starting Over' (1979) and Michael Ritchie's 'Semi-Tough' (1977), both starring the perhaps unlikely duo of Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh. 'Starting Over,' written and produced by James L. Brooks, stars Reynolds as a man attempting to rebuild his life after his wife (Candice Bergen) abruptly leaves him. Clayburgh plays a woman he begins a new relationship with. In a set report from the film's production, Charles Champlin wrote, 'It's an unusually interesting assemblage of talents and for Reynolds in particular it is a departure, significant rather than revolutionary, from the kinds of roles that have brought him his greatest successes. … The role in fact sounds close to the Reynolds as revealed on the Johnny Carson and other talk shows, funny in a quiet and self-kidding way, and also thoughtful and perceptive, and with the ability and the drive to do more than drive cars through improbable stunts.' 'Semi-Tough' stars Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson as pro football players who share an apartment with the daughter (Clayburgh) of their team's owner and find their mutually platonic feelings toward her taking a turn for the romantic. The film also dedicates a fair amount of its story to a skewering of self-actualization seminars. In his review of the film, Champlin said, 'The gal — and she makes all the difference — is Jill Clayburgh, and it is hard to think of another current actress who could swear like a stevedore or a street urchin and collect divorces like bracelets and yet preserve a luminous and untouched innocence. … She is resilient rather than tough, a free-spirited woman who has simply not previously found the right cosigner to her particular declaration of independence.' 'Losing Ground' Any chance to see Kathleen Collins' 'Losing Ground' is worth noting, and the film will be screening at Vidiots on Thursday the 20th. Originally from 1982, the film at the time did not have a theatrical release outside the festival circuit and remained largely unseen until a 2015 restoration brought it to broader attention, allowing the movie and Collins to fully claim their proper place as part of the canon of Black independent filmmaking. With delicate, wonderful performances by Seret Scott and Bill Gunn, 'Losing Ground' is a portrait of artists and academics — and a woman on a path of self-discovery — over an eventful summer. Steven Soderbergh's 'Black Bag' The latest from director Steven Soderbergh is 'Black Bag,' from a script by his recent collaborator David Koepp following their recent collaborations on 'Kimi' and 'Presence.' The new film stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as a married couple who also happen to work for the British intelligence service, which creates a particularly complicated work-life balance. The marital thriller also stars Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela and Pierce Brosnan. In her review, Amy Nicholson wrote of Soderbergh's style, 'His core goal is to flirt with the audience, to remind adults that his movies are committed to entertaining them. And he's turning himself on as he does it, embracing whatever gets him excited to shoot a scene, from the energetic nightclub tracking shot that opens the film to pizzicato close-ups of Blanchett and Fassbender's eyeballs that feel like his own Sergio Leone kink. When you've got his energy, why keep it in your pants?' Emily Zemler spoke to Blanchett, Fassbender, Soderbergh and Koepp about the film. Koepp said the inspiration for the film came from research he did talking to CIA agents for the first 'Mission: Impossible' film. 'I was struck that many of them felt like it's really hard to maintain a relationship when you lie for a living,' Koepp recalls. 'I carried that in the back of my mind for quite some time. Marriage is the ultimate trust institution. Those of us who are in long-term marriages feel like: This is settled and this is safe. I wanted to do something where there was suspicion and unease but not about whether the person is cheating or not. It's about whether they are betraying their country or not.' SXSW wraps up We were very busy this past week in Austin, Texas, covering the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival, starting with the opening-night premiere of Paul Feig's 'Another Simple Favor,' starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick. Christina House took an astonishing number of portraits over just a few days, including cast members from 'The Last of Us,' 'The Accountant 2,' 'The Studio' and other projects. There were also video interviews with the creative teams behind projects such as 'Slanted,' 'Fantasy Life,' 'The Baltimorons,' 'The Dutchman,' 'The Threesome' and many more.
Los Angeles Times
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The ultra-rare ‘At Long Last Love' at the Frida, plus the best films in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. The South by Southwest Film and TV Festival kicks off this week and, by the time you read this, I will be in Austin, Texas, with a team from The Times to cover the festival out of our photo and video studio. Friday night's lineup of Paul Feig's 'Another Simple Favor' starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen's new series 'The Studio,' a satire of contemporary Hollywood, and Michael Shanks' midnight body-horror sensation 'Together' (co-starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco), neatly encapsulates the off-kilter ethos of the festival. Other titles to look out for include Jay Duplass' 'The Baltimorons,' Chad Hartigan's 'The Threesome,' Annapurna Sriram's 'F—toys' and Matthew Shear's 'Fantasy Life.' Not to mention Ben Affleck in 'The Accountant 2' and Nicole Kidman in 'Holland.' Festival chief Claudette Godfrey spoke about what it means to get together for an event like SXSW right now. 'Things are dark and terrible and I think that people are getting enough of that,' Godfrey said. 'To a certain extent, people have always felt like, 'Oh, I'm going to go on this trip to SXSW and take a little break' from whatever it is they're being weighed down with. And I think also if we're going to make anything better, then we're going to have to get together and figure it out.' I also spoke to actor Kate Mara about having three films at the festival, Jess Varley's 'The Astronaut,' Andrew DeYoung's 'Friendship' and Andre Gaines' 'The Dutchman.' 'I crave going all over the map with the characters that I play. So that's why I was open to doing all of these movies back-to-back,' said Mara. 'I just crave being uncomfortable. In my work, I really like to stretch myself.' Last year we featured the podcast 'You Must Remember This' as it celebrated its 10th anniversary. For the show's latest season, 'The Old Man Is Still Alive,' writer-producer-host Karina Longworth is examining the late careers of filmmakers such as Vincent Minnelli, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder and others — specifically focusing on how they did or did not keep up with the changing culture of Hollywood into the 1960s and '70s. Starting Saturday, the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana will launch a series 'At Long Last Longworth,' featuring films programmed by Longworth herself. Longworth will be there in person for a rare screening of Peter Bogdanovich's 1975 musical 'At Long Last Love,' starring Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd. 'At Long Last Love' is a fascinating film, a huge flop in its day that has now become an endearing must-see oddity. A purposeful throwback to films of the 1930s with live-sung musical numbers that lend the film an amateurish charm, it's just a delight. The response at the time of the film's release is perhaps summed up by Charles Champlin in his original review, 'Peter Bogdanovich's 'At Long Last Love' fights vainly our old ennui. His homage to Cole Porter and Cybill Shepherd is the year's most frustrating failure. The songs are as delicious as the day Porter wrote them, the intentions are honorable, the production design is impeccable, there are attractive people doing things that are intermittently amusing… and the damn thing just doesn't work.' (Your mileage may vary on whether you agree with that last line.) The movie is not available on streaming and a 2013 Blu-ray now resells for hundreds of dollars online, so this screening alone is worth the drive down to the theater. Longworth will be there in person for 'At Long Last Love,' with pre-recorded video introductions for the other films in the series, Victor Fleming's 1939 'The Wizard of Oz,' Emir Kusturica's 1993 'Arizona Dream' and Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 'Trouble in Paradise.' On March 15, Vidiots will also screen two films chosen by Longworth, Billy Wilder's 1972 'Avanti!' starring Jack Lemmon, in 35mm and Wilder's 1960 'The Apartment.' And for those who can't make it, the Vista Theater will be showing 'Trouble in Paradise' in 35mm on March 29 and 30 at 10 a.m. Longworth answered a few questions via email, both about the films in the Frida series and the latest season of 'You Must Remember This.' Why do you think 'At Long Last Love' was such a flop when it came out? And what do you like about it now? 'At Long Last Love' was released in 1975, the same year as 'Jaws,' 'Shampoo,' and 'Dog Day Afternoon.' While there had been a wave of hit period-piece musicals in the mid-to-late '60s, by 1975 that was pretty much dead. And this was a big-budget period piece musical, which celebrated the music and the movies of 1930s, so it was doubly out of time. I love how baldly uncool it is. It is a movie Bogdanovich made to please himself and the woman he was in love with (Cybill Shepherd), without a care for what the audience or the industry wanted. This, of course, is something it has been attacked for, but in this day and age marked by so much homogeneity and algorithm-chasing, I think it should be inspirational. And just personally, I love the way in which it plays on your knowledge of movies in the 1930s, if you have knowledge of movies of the 1930s. Which is actually an easier thing to strategically acquire now than it would've been in 1975. In some ways 'The Wizard of Oz' might have an opposite problem of overfamiliarity. What keeps it fresh for you? I think people may forget how many incredible sequences there are. When I was a kid, the scariest part for me was the field of poppies and I would often have to turn off the VHS tape then because I couldn't handle it. This fantasy movie for kids has such a wide range of emotion in it, all anchored by Judy Garland, whose talent is fully formed at age 17; if anything, she seems more capable of modulating her vulnerability here than she would as a full-grown woman. In the prompts for the series, 'Arizona Dream' is noted as a film to be reexamined. What about that film do you think makes it worthy of reappraisal? Is there anything specific about the extended version that you prefer? I've actually never seen any other version — this is a movie that I completely missed until I happened to be in Paris this summer when a 4K restoration of the director's cut happened to be premiering there. I found it so fascinating and wanted to advocate for it because it has seemingly fallen into such obscurity, due to unavailability but also likely because so many people involved with it, from Emir Kusturica to Johnny Depp, are now 'canceled' or considered toxic. I believe that if people feel troubled or triggered by the personal behavior of people who make movies, they should know their own boundaries and everyone else should respect those boundaries, but I compartmentalize these things. So when I watch 'Arizona Dream,' I can rationally know about all kinds of unsavory things that Vincent Gallo has been accused of, and also find his performance hilarious and touching and feel wistful about how the film opens a window into an alternate universe in which he could have become a huge movie star. Less problematic but no less impressive, for me, is Lili Taylor, who truly knocks my socks off in this film. 'Trouble in Paradise' is an elegant romantic comedy and something of a caper film. When you're watching classic Hollywood films, are you transported back to another era or do you find it is the movies that are pulled forward into our time? Put another way, are you struck by classic films that feel 'modern,' or do you like the feeling of stepping into the past while watching them? I don't know that I feel either way, to be honest. But I do think 'Trouble in Paradise' should be at the top of the watchlist for anyone who has the impression that 'old' movies are boring. As you have been researching the history of aging directors in Hollywood, has it caused you to reflect at all on the vast crop of filmmakers now working into their 70s, 80s and even 90s, including Clint Eastwood, Nancy Meyers, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Mann and others? Has the nature of a director's 'late work' changed? I don't think very much has changed at all. To see Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis' sweep the Razzies is to watch someone who gave up a significant chunk of their personal fortune to make a movie that only they could make, only to see an incredibly conservative, greed-driven industry punish him for it. There are a lot of stories like this in 'The Old Man Is Still Alive.' I'm immediately reminded of George Stevens putting on the line his standing as the 1950s' most reliable director of movies that both audiences and the academy loved, to spend over half a decade making 'The Greatest Story Ever Told'; or Vincente Minnelli ending his career with an extremely personal showcase for his daughter only to have the film taken away from him and butchered; or the ways in which Robert Evans schemed for years to get a 60-something Otto Preminger off the Paramount payroll. Especially in the stories of the recent filmmaking efforts of Eastwood, Meyers, Coppola and Mann, it feels like it would be more convenient for the industry if directors who are in their 70s and 80s (and who, admittedly, are mostly 20 years or more removed from their greatest financial successes) would just go away. At the same time, it's not like Hollywood is actively courting young filmmakers, and there is no studio system in which they can work their way up starting as a teenager or young 20-something the way many of the 'Old Man' subjects did. The directors who are pegged as the 'new generation' today largely didn't start to see success until their mid-30s at the earliest, and are now in their 40s and 50s. So there is just as tight a window in which to put together a full career as there ever was. Alan Moyle double bill Friday at the Aero will be a double bill of Alan Moyle's 1990 'Pump Up the Volume' (in a 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive) along with his 1980 film 'Times Square.' Moyle will be there for a Q&A moderated by Jake Fogelnest, an avowed fan of both films. In 'Pump Up the Volume,' Christian Slater plays an Arizona teenager who launches a pirate radio station, where his acerbic on-air persona of 'Hard Harry' galvanizes the local kids and upsets the authorities. Reviewing the film, Michael Wilmington wrote, 'The movie mixes a lot of volatile elements — modern rock, Bruce, 'Talk Radio' — into a mostly brave, topical double theme. It's about adolescent discontent and the assaults on media free speech by pressure groups and vote-hungry politicians. But there's a catch. This is also a film floating along on teen-movie archetypes and wish fulfillment. Trying to strike a balance between John Hughes and Oliver Stone, it hits neither.' In response to what he thought were misguided reviews, Charles Champlin wrote a spirited defense of the film, noting, 'There are what I've sometimes called mine-field movies: scripts that tread so fine a line they can go blooey at any step. 'Pump Up the Volume' deals more than incidentally with the power of a medium to influence behavior for good or for ill. … The young audience with which I watched the film the other night went along with it. Whatever it has or hasn't said to critics, it has set up reverberations in the audiences at which it was aimed.' And 'Times Square' is worth revisiting as well: a movie of rambunctious energy about two teenage runaways (Robin Johnson and Trini Alvarado) who form a band under the encouragement of a local DJ (Tim Curry). Michelangelo Antonioni The American Cinematheque is launching a series celebrating Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, beginning with a 35mm screening of 1966's 'Blow-Up' at the Egyptian on Saturday. Other films in the series include 1960's 'L'Avventura,' 1962's 'La Notte,' 1964's 'Red Desert' and 1970's Zabriskie Point (also in 35mm at the Egyptian). On Wednesday there will be a 35mm screening at the Aero of 1975's 'The Passenger' starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider in the story of a disillusioned journalist who assumes the identity of a gun runner. In a review published on April 8, 1975, Kevin Thomas wrote, 'At once a suspenseful adventure, a parable on the inescapability of responsibility and a tender lover story, Michelangelo Antonioni's long-awaited 'The Passenger,' starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, is a masterpiece of visual beauty and rigorous artistry that is as tantalizing as it is hypnotic. It is a major achievement by one of the world's greatest filmmakers and boasts another of those splendid portrayals from Nicholson, up for an Oscar tonight for 'Chinatown,' that are establishing him as the foremost American screen actor of his generation.' Bertolucci's '1900' Through March 13, the Vista will be playing Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 epic '1900' starring Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu in 35mm. At a little over 5 hours — making 3-and-a-half hours of 'The Brutalist' something of a warm-up — this is a rare chance to see the film in a theater. The film follows two men born on the same day, the wealthy Alfredo (De Niro) and the working-class Olmo (Depardieu), as they witness the political shifts in Italy throughout the early 20th century. Writing about the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Charles Champlin said, 'Bertolucci, whose 'The Conformist' and 'Last Tango in Paris' were widely seen in the United States, is an uncontested master of film who proves, however, to be a pretentious, condescending and ham-fisted propagandist. His bold and epic-scale enterprise ranges from the absolutely brilliant to the absolutely silly. The silliness unfortunately clusters toward the end of the film, and it puts the patience of even the most dedicated faithful to a severe test.' The Oscars If you've read this far into this newsletter, you are probably well aware that the Academy Awards happened this past weekend, with 'Anora' winning five Oscars including best picture and a record-breaking four of those going to filmmaker Sean Baker personally. I was there at the show for the first time and, along with colleagues Cerys Davies, Jessica Gelt, Kaitlyn Huamani and Amy Kaufman, tried to give some sense of what you didn't see on TV. And Ryan Faughnder considered whether the industry will actually listen to Baker's 'battle cry' on behalf of movie theaters. Amy Nicholson put the evening into perspective, writing, ' 'Anora' is about sex work, yes. But it's really about work work. The film feels wild and loose when four characters are shouting over each other at once. Yet, almost every scene is a comment on the desperation of struggling paycheck to paycheck in America.' Bong Joon Ho's 'Mickey 17' Filmmaker Bong Joon Ho has followed up his own Oscars success with 'Parasite' five years ago with the new 'Mickey 17,' a satirical science-fiction story starring Robert Pattinson as a low-ranking worker who is 'reprinted' every time he is killed in the line of duty and sent back to work. In a review of the film, Amy Nicholson wrote, 'As semi-inessential as 'Mickey 17' feels in Bong's canon, I'm at peace that he keeps asking how to give everyone's life value. He'll keep repeating the question until we come up with an answer.' Bong spoke to Josh Rottenberg about what the movie is really about, saying, 'For me, that is the point of making a sci-fi film. It seems to be a story about the future, about another planet, but it's actually a portrait of us now and the reality around us, not of somewhere far out in space.'
