A powerful socialite and a promising ballet dancer begin a dangerous affair. When he secretly crosses the US-Mexico border, she takes desperate measures to protect their future together.

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.

Pillow Talk, the endlessly charming Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy that helped define the golden age of Hollywood rom-coms, is coming back to The Frida Cinema with some matinee encores!

Playboy songwriter Brad Allen’s succession of romances annoys his neighbor, interior designer Jan Morrow, who shares a telephone party line with him and hears all his breezy routines. After Jan unsuccessfully lodges a complaint against him, Brad sets about to seduce her in the guise of a sincere and upstanding Texas rancher. When mutual friend Jonathan discovers that his best friend is moving in on the girl he desires, however, sparks fly.

Directed by master craftsman Michael Gordon and decked out in glamorous costumes and jazzy set design, Pillow Talk is studio-era comfort cinema at its most fun and quotable. The film earned Doris Day her first Academy Award nomination and cemented one of the most beloved screen pairings in movie history.

Only monsters play God.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, the movie he was born to make, is finally coming alive at The Frida Cinema starting on February 27th!

The story follows a brilliant but egotistical scientist (played by Oscar Isaac) who brings a monstrous creature to life in a daring experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

The film has now received 9 Academy Award nominations for the 98th Academy Awards (2026), including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Jacob Elordi’s transformative performance as The Monster. The film also scored major technical nominations for cinematography, original score, costume design, makeup/hairstyling, production design, and sound. 

Thank you to Netflix for allowing us to play this gorgeous creation where it belongs to be seen: on the big screen.

Baz Luhrmann’s electrifying reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is bursting back onto the big screen at The Frida Cinema!

In this contemporary (to 1996, at least) take on William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard’s dialogue remains.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes at the height of ’90s stardom, Romeo + Juliet is a charming MTV-era style take on the timeless tragedy with a proper pop soundtrack and a love that burns eternal.

He whips out his sword and relieves his victims of their heads!

The legendary midnight movie sensation, Shogun Assassin, is coming to The Frida Cinema thanks to our good friends over at that See It On 16mm!

Following the murder of his wife at the hands of an evil shogun, an avenging ronin (Tomisaburo Wakayama) roams the countryside with his young son, and the boy’s sword-shooting baby carriage, in tow, dispatching ninja assassins with steely resolve in operatically stylized flurries of hallucinatory violence.

With its pulsing synth soundtrack (co-written by Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders) and delirious action set pieces (kinetically edited whirlwinds of flashing blades, spurting blood, and severed limbs) Shogun Assassin proved an instant cult favorite that has bubbled its way up from the underground to the mainstream thanks to its influence on artists ranging from the Wu-Tang Clan to Quentin Tarantino.