Our 21st Century Cult series heads back down to Bikini Bottom as we present special matinee encores of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie from 2004!

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie takes our beloved underwater fry cook to new cinematic heights—on a quest to save Mr. Krabs, recover King Neptune’s stolen crown, and prove once and for all that being a “kid” doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero. Bursting with surreal gags, sea shanties, and a David Hasselhoff cameo, it’s a deliriously funny deep-sea odyssey that captures the show’s weird genius on a bigger, bolder scale. Goofy? Absolutely. Glorious? You bet your yellow sponge butt it is!

A24 invites you to experience The Legend Of Ochi, a world where mysterious creatures, myths, and adventures await!

In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a shy farm girl named Yuri is raised to fear an elusive animal species known as ochi. But when Yuri discovers a wounded baby ochi has been left behind, she escapes on a quest to bring him home.

This is a see-it-on-the-biggest-screen-you-can-find-and-bring-the-whole-family kind of movie. Every frame is a painting. Every moment pulses with emotion. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll even get to see another great Willem Dafoe performance! Fans of old school Amblin, Jim Henson, and Studio Ghibli will have a great time.

Ochi is your new best friend and you will love him!

The penultimate film in our Akira Kurosawa retrospective is his epic 1985 masterpiece, Ran, now restored in glorious 4K thanks to Rialto Pictures!

A grand and visually breathtaking epic that transposes Shakespeare’s King Lear into the chaotic feudal era of 16th-century Japan of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran stars screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord who decides to divide his vast domain among his three sons in hopes of securing peace in his final years. Instead, his decision ignites a violent power struggle, as betrayal and ambition shatter his family and plunge the region into civil war. Stripped of power and driven into madness, Hidetora becomes a ghost of his former self, wandering through the wreckage of a world he once ruled.

With its masterful use of color, and meticulously staged battle sequences, Ran is both an intimate tragedy, and a large-scale historical spectacle.  In delivering his haunting and majestic summation of his lifelong explorations of power, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of human ambition, Kurosawa employs sweeping landscapes, intricate battle sequences, and vivid color symbolism to create a world teetering on the edge of chaos.

About the Restoration
Ran’s original 1985 production was made possible through a French-Japanese collaboration between Kadokawa and French producer Serge Silberman, with distribution later handled by companies such as Orion and Studiocanal. That international partnership was rekindled decades later when Kadokawa and Studiocanal brought on French laboratory Éclair to restore the film in 4K under Studiocanal’s supervision, using the original negative as its source. Much of the restoration was completed manually, frame by frame, with color grading approved by Masaharu Ueda, one of Ran’s three cinematographers and a longtime collaborator of Kurosawa.

For the first time in over 5 years, The Frida Cinema is proud to bring back one of greatest films of all time–Jaws! For Memorial Day Weekend only, come celebrate Steven Spielberg’s industry-changing, pop culture-shifting, era-defining movie right where it belongs to be seen: on the big screen with a packed crowd! 

When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town’s chief of police, a young marine biologist, and a grizzled hunter embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again.

What else can be said about Jaws that hasn’t been said by every film scholar for the past fifty years? Featuring career-best work from its all-star cast of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton, the film has kept audiences from ever going back into the ocean (or their pool…or bathtub) for the better part of a century. It’s one of the best examples of man vs man, man vs himself, man vs society, and man vs nature ever put on celluloid. 

Hundreds of Beavers, one of the most entertaining and enduring independent films of the past decade, is coming to The Frida Cinema for one last hurrah (or ho-ho-ho?) on Friday, December 5th & Saturday, December 6th!

Called “gonzo cinema distilled from Buster Keaton to George Miller” (LA Times), “one of the most inventive comedies in years” (RogerEbert.com), that “puts most big screen comedies to shame,” (The Daily Beast), this impossible indie has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon — selling out theaters, melting Letterboxd & Rotten Tomatoes, and putting audiences worldwide into stitches.

In the early 1800’s, Jean Kayak, a drunken applejack salesman, finds himself stranded in a surreal winter landscape with nothing but his dim wits to guide him. Against a backdrop of ruthless elements and forest creatures – all played by actors in full-sized mascot costumes – Kayak develops increasingly complex traps in order to win the hand of a mischievous lover. When he discovers that the Beavers have formed their own secret society, he must infiltrate their lair to uncover their secrets and win the day.

Equal parts silent-era stunt work, Looney Tunes energy, and pure filmmaking lunacy, this is a cult hit that’s too much dam fun to stream alone at home!

Encores added! Step into a world where folklore nightmare and innocence walk hand in hand as we present the long-awated Soviet classic Viy! This hallucinatory delight of Eastern European cinematic magic is sure to satisfy fans of gothic and folk horror! Get ready to be haunted.

Viy is Soviet cinema’s first officially sanctioned horror film—and it doesn’t hold back. Adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s macabre tale, this supernatural fever dream follows a hapless seminarian forced to spend three nights praying over the body of a witch. What begins as eerie restraint explodes into phantasmagoric spectacle, complete with flying coffins, demonic hordes, and otherworldly visions rendered with wild, hand-crafted ingenuity.