Fireworks, parades, patriotic bunting—and one sound that doesn’t belong. A scream? A gunshot? A tire blowout? No Fourth Of July celebration at The Frida would be complete without Brian De Palma’s 1981 masterpiece Blow Out!

John Travolta gives one of his best performances as Jack Terry, a sound technician for low-budget horror flicks who accidentally records a political assassination while gathering ambient sound one night. What follows is a paranoid plunge into reel-to-reel surveillance, media manipulation, and a conspiracy no one wants to hear.

A riff on Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Coppola’s The Conversation, but soaked in De Palma’s signature split-diopter style and operatic tension, Blow Out turns patriotic imagery into a nightmare canvas—stars and stripes flickering under streetlamps and firecrackers masking murder. Featuring Nancy Allen, John Lithgow in full psycho-mode, and a finale that literally weaponizes Independence Day spectacle, this is one of the sharpest political thrillers of the 1980s and one of De Palma’s true masterpieces.

Batter up! The Sandlot has made the starting lineup for our Fireworks At The Frida week!

The year is 1962. The neighborhood is endless summer. And the only thing bigger than the legend of “The Beast” is the size of the laughs, heart, and pure baseball magic in The Sandlot—the ultimate coming-of-age classic for anyone who’s ever played a game with a taped-up ball and a dream.

Directed by David Mickey Evans and narrated with perfect golden-hour nostalgia, The Sandlot follows new kid Scotty Smalls as he fumbles his way into a ragtag crew of backyard ballplayers led by the mythic Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez. There are scraped knees, Fourth of July night games, fairground crushes, lost baseballs, and epic attempts to recover a Babe Ruth–signed ball from the clutches of one monstrous dog next door. You’re killin me, Smalls!

Join us for the heart and soul of our Fireworks At The Frida series, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington! 

Sent to fill a Senate seat as a political pawn, Smith instead uncovers a web of graft and greed. What follows is a political trial by fire—and one of the most legendary speeches in film history. But for all its soaring speeches and small-town sentiment, Capra’s film is no naïve civics lesson; it’s a clear-eyed look at how power distorts purpose, and how standing alone can still mean something.

With brilliant support from Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, and a gallery of weary insiders and hopeful outsiders, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is both timeless and timely—especially in a week devoted to wrestling with American identity.

Our Technicolor Summer series continues with one of the most lavish and visually stunning musicals ever put to film: An American in Paris!

This dazzling musical tells the story of Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly), a former American GI turned struggling painter who’s trying to make a name for himself in the City of Light. His art catches the eye of a wealthy benefactor, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), but Jerry’s heart belongs to someone else—Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), a spirited young dancer with a complicated past.

With music by George and Ira Gershwin and direction by Vincente Minnelli, An American in Paris is a feast for the senses and a celebration of the intoxicating magic of post-war Paris.

In the early 1930s, the 3-strip Technicolor process was introduced to audiences, inviting them to experience a world dripping with vibrant saturation for the very first time. The Technicolor Summer series ranges from familiar classics to rarely-screened gems all Summer long!

Celebrate the birthday of visionary director Jean Cocteau as we present a special run of Beauty and the Beast!

Born July 5th, 1889, Jean Cocteau was a poet, painter, playwright, and filmmaker whose imagination knew no borders—and no film better captures his singular vision than La Belle et la Bête (1946), a masterpiece of surreal romanticism that turns a fairy tale into living myth.

Starring Josette Day as the gentle, radiant Belle and the great Jean Marais as the tortured, leonine Beast, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is a marvel of shadow, texture, and cinematic illusion. Made just after WWII on a shoestring budget and with raw ingenuity, the film conjures real magic without special effects. This isn’t Disney–it’s real cinema magic.

Splish Splash! Waterworld is turning 30 years old this Summer, and our friends at Nostalgic Nebula are bringing it back to the big screen for a one-night-only extravaganza! Following the screening will be an in-person Q&A with writer Peter Rader, who will give us an insight into the mysteries of Waterworld, its monsters, mutants and human inhabitants. 

Before Mad Max went to Fury Road, before CGI drowned cinema in pixels, there was Waterworld—a $175 million aquatic epic starring Kevin Costner as a gilled drifter navigating a sunken Earth, jet skis, pirates, and the last scraps of dry land. Mocked in its day and mythologized ever since, Waterworld has become a cult classic of the highest (sea) order: big, bizarre, and brimming with real stunts, raging fires, floating sets, and wild ambition.

From Dennis Hopper’s villainous Deacon to Jeanne Tripplehorn’s perfectly ’90s grit, this is a film that shouldn’t work—but somehow, gloriously, does. And 30 years later, it’s never looked wetter.

And Nostalgic Nebula isn’t just screening the film—they’re plunging into the deep end! Show up early at 5:30PM for a pre-show celebration featuring: Behind-the-scenes footage from the flooded set, pop culture references and parody appearances, cast & crew interviews, and other rare, lost media from the wild world of Waterworld!

Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead is coming (back from the grave) to The Frida Cinema for its 40th Anniversary as part of our Fireworks At The Frida week!

What if Night of the Living Dead got punk, got louder, and got way, way messier? Enter 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead—the film that gave zombies the power to run, talk, and specifically request brains. A gleefully anarchic horror-comedy that helped redefine the undead for an entire generation, this movie turns graveyards into dance floors and medical supply warehouses into apocalyptic battlegrounds.

Directed by Dan O’Bannon (co-writer of Alien) and featuring a killer soundtrack of ’80s punk and death rock (The Cramps, 45 Grave, T.S.O.L.), the film follows a group of hapless employees and way-too-cool punks as they accidentally unleash a toxic gas that reanimates corpses—starting with a tar-covered nightmare named Tarman and escalating into full-blown zombie chaos.