Celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Fall, Tarsem Singh’s breathtaking fantasy epic, returning to the big screen in a stunning 4K restoration! Presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze, this cult favorite stars Lee Pace alongside Catinca Untaru in a one-of-a-kind cinematic adventure.

In 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman named Roy befriends a young girl in the hospital and begins telling her an epic tale of bandits, warriors, and revenge. But as the girl’s imagination takes hold, the fantastical story begins to blur with the troubled reality of the man telling it.

Filmed across 28 locations around the world, The Fall is a feast of extraordinary landscapes and pure cinematic imagination. Experience one of the most visually spectacular films ever made the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen at The Frida Cinema!

Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison star in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s enchanting supernatural romance, coming soon to The Frida Cinema!

The film follows a young widow who moves into a seaside cottage and discovers she’s not the only one living there. The ghost of its former owner, a blustery sea captain named Daniel Gregg, is none too pleased with his new tenant, but their battle of wills soon blossoms into an extraordinary bond.

With its gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, unforgettable score by Bernard Herrmann, and a young Natalie Wood in a supporting role, this beloved classic is a bittersweet romance about a connection that transcends the boundaries of life itself.

Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern is coming to The Frida Cinema! A visually stunning masterpiece of power, jealousy, and survival, the films also stars the incomparable Gong Li in one of her most celebrated performances.

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian is forced to abandon her studies and marry a wealthy older man as his fourth wife. Inside his palatial estate, a nightly ritual determines which wife receives his attention, and the privileges that come with it. Soon, the household becomes a battleground of ruthless competition.

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this landmark of Chinese cinema transforms a seemingly simple domestic drama into a devastating portrait of patriarchal power, full of Zhang Yimou’s signature sumptuous colors. 

The penultimate film in our Art House 101: Global Queer Cinema series is Joyland, Saim Sadiq’s tender, quietly radical portrait of family and the complicated ways we perform the roles society gives us.

Haider lives with his wife and extended family in Lahore, where everyone seems to have a carefully prescribed role, especially the men. When Haider secretly takes a job as a backup dancer for an erotic theater troupe, he meets Biba, a magnetic transgender performer, and the two begin a relationship that forces Haider to confront desires he has spent his life suppressing. Meanwhile, the women in his family are struggling under their own impossible expectations, creating a portrait of a household where everyone is searching for some kind of freedom.

With Joyland, Sadiq brings an extraordinary tenderness to a story about a family in contemporary Pakistan. Sensual without being sensationalistic and heartbreaking without ever losing its warmth, the film became the first Pakistani film selected for the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm. At its heart, Joyland is about what happens when the life you’re expected to want collides with the life you secretly desire. We think it’s one of the best films of the 2020s, and a perfect fit for this series!

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Blue Velvet, one of The Frida Cinema’s most beloved and enduring films.

The film follows Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student who returns to his small hometown of Lumberton after his father is injured. While walking, he discovers a severed human ear and becomes involved in investigating its origins. As Jeffrey dives deeper into the dark world of crime, he struggles with the blurred lines between innocence and corruption, while also developing a romantic relationship with Sandy (Laura Dern), a local cop’s daughter. Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper also star in this unforgettable trip into the dark underbelly of suburban life, a trademark attributed directly to David Lynch to this very day.

Blue Velvet is a touchstone for modern surrealist cinema and is widely discussed in film studies for its exploration into its psychological complexity, and the intersection of innocence and corruption. It garnered Lynch an Oscar nomination for both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, but its grip on modern pop culture branches far beyond its accolades.

Our Spielberg Summer series concludes with some post-Thanksgiving screenings of War of the Worlds, his hauntingly realistic reinvention of a Sci Fi classic that transforms an alien invasion into a terrifying story of survival.

When colossal extraterrestrial machines suddenly emerge from beneath the Earth and begin annihilating entire cities, divorced dockworker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is forced to protect his children as civilization collapses around them. As humanity struggles to comprehend the scale of the catastrophe, Ray’s desperate journey becomes a fight not to save the world, but simply to keep his family alive.

Released in the shadow of a newly changed America, War of the Worlds channels post-9/11 anxieties into some of the most intense and visceral spectacle of Spielberg’s career. Stripping away triumphalism in favor of fear, the film stands as one of his darkest works. It’s a reminder that even at his most pessimistic, Spielberg never loses sight of the human beings at the center of the story, making it the perfect film to conclude our 14 film retrospective of his work.