Joe Dante’s Christmas time creature feature comedy Gremlins is one of our very favorite holiday films, so let’s play it again! 

The story begins when Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) receives a mysterious, adorable creature called a Mogwai as a Christmas gift from his father. With strict care instructions—no bright light, no water, and no feeding after midnight—Billy struggles to follow the rules, inadvertently unleashing a horde of mischievous, destructive gremlins on his quiet town. As the creatures wreak havoc, Billy and his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) race to stop the chaos and save their community.

Gremlins remains a beloved cult classic that redefined holiday-themed films and practically invented the need for the PG-13 rating. It’s funny, scary, and filled with holiday cheer all at the same time. 

The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit? More like The Bat, The Cat, and The Penguin! Tim Burton’s 1992 pop masterpiece Batman Returns is coming back to The Frida Cinema! We believe wholeheartedly that it’s the ultimate Christmas movie, filled to the brim with gothic spectacle and holiday glam. 

The monstrous Penguin, who dwells in the sewers beneath Gotham, joins up with corrupt mayoral candidate Max Shreck to topple the Batman once and for all. But when Shreck’s timid assistant Selina Kyle finds out, and Shreck tries to kill her, she’s transformed into the sexy Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin and Shreck to destroy Batman, but sparks fly unexpectedly when she confronts the caped crusader.

With an all-star cast of Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, and in incomparable Michelle Pfeiffer, Burton took the success of Batman (1989), and doubled down in the best way possible, creating the template that every sequel should strive for. 

A candy-coated fever dream of holiday excess, Jim Carrey’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas is finally making its way to our screens!

When it hit theaters in 2000, How the Grinch Stole Christmas wasn’t just another family holiday movie — it was a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon. Ron Howard and his crew turned Dr. Seuss’s 1957 classic into a live-action spectacle dripping with turn-of-the-millennium maximalism. Carrey’s Grinch is still one of the great comic performances of the era mixing weird creature effects with a full-blown existential meltdown. It’s the role that cemented him as the only actor unafraid (or unhinged enough) to try to out-Seuss Dr. Seuss.

Two decades later, How the Grinch Stole Christmas remains a strange and wonderful artifact of a bygone blockbuster era: a holiday movie made with the scale of a theme-park ride. It was easy to write off a movie like this at the time, but honestly? I don’t think we realized how good we had it. 

Cinematic Void is closing our their year at The Frida Cinema by presenting a special 30th anniversary screening of the The Day Of The Beast, putting the “antichrist” in “Christmas”! 

The story revolves around a Basque Roman Catholic priest dedicated to committing as many sins as possible, a death metal salesman from Carabanchel, and the Italian host of a TV show on the occult. These go on a literal “trip” through Christmas-time Madrid to hunt for and prevent the reincarnation of the Antichrist.

Director Álex de la Iglesia balances slapstick comedy and supernatural mayhem with ease, making The Day of the Beast is a gonzo cult classic that filled with crowd-pleasing holiday cheer.

Bust out those plastic spoons! Tommy Wiseau’s enduring 2003 cult classic The Room is back at The Frida for its monthly screening!

Wiseau’s peerless magnum opus finds the auteur who shaped a generation taking on the arts of acting, writing, casting, directing, editing and more. What’s even more remarkable: he’s mastered them all. The multi-talented director stars as Johnny, a big-time banker working in gorgeously shot San Francisco. His fiancée Lisa, seemingly a happy part of a successful relationship, has wandering eyes…for Tommy’s best friend Mark. Cinema has never witnessed such betrayal!

An intense, sensual thriller–at least as it was intended by Wiseau–The Room is an intricately knit web of sweet secrets and bitter lies that interrogates the very form of drama itself, as well as a truly unforgettable piece of cinema.