Join us for some cheeky encores of Charade—Stanley Donen’s irresistible mix of romance and suspense that pairs two of Hollywood’s brightest stars at the height of their powers.

After Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) falls for the dashing Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband’s World War II cronies, Tex (James Coburn), Scobie (George Kennedy) and Gideon (Ned Glass), who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines. But why does Peter keep changing his name?

Often dubbed “the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made,” Charade pairs up Hepburn and Grant along with some witty dialogue and glamorous locations for some of the most flirtatious thrills of all time!

In this twisty thriller, a tennis coach at a tropical resort finds himself at the center of a missing persons mystery. Tom (Sam Riley) teaches tennis during the day and parties at night. When an enigmatic tourist (Stacy Martin) arrives, Tom is unable to shake the feeling he has met her before. Tension and attraction grow, until her husband (Jack Farthing) disappears, and the police suspect Tom.

Please join us for some encores of the extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi, directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang. The film is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films!

The story follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-age father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity.

This intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century. Don’t miss it up on the big screen!

Charles Burnett’s cinematic masterpiece Killer of Sheep, magnificently restored in 4K with sparkling picture and sound, is kicking off our Three By Charles Burnett series! The film evokes the everyday trials, fragile pleasures, and tenacious humor of blue-collar African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Burnett made it on a minuscule budget with a mostly nonprofessional cast, combining keen on-the-street observation with a carefully crafted script.

The story centers on Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a slaughterhouse worker battling exhaustion and disconnected from his wife, his children, and himself. Stan and his neighbors struggle just to get by, let alone get ahead. Only the kids, leaping from roof to roof, seem to achieve a mobility that eludes their elders. Burnett’s film focuses on everyday life in Black communities in a manner rarely seen in American cinema – combining lyrical elements with a starkly neorealist, documentary-style approach that combines deep nuance with riveting simplicity.

A long-awaited dream to play on the big screen, god-level director John Woo’s Hong Kong action masterpiece, Hard Boiled, is finally coming to The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration!

Mobsters are smuggling guns into Hong Kong. The police orchestrate a raid at a teahouse where an ace detective loses his partner. Meanwhile, the two main gun smugglers are having a war over territory, and a young new gun is enlisted to wipe out informants and overcome barriers to growth. The detective, acting from inside sources, gets closer to the ring leaders and eventually must work with the inside man directly.

Hard Boiled is routinely placed in the top tier of action cinema, not just of the 1990s, not just of Hong Kong, but of all time. For many critics and fans, it represents the peak of John Woo’s “heroic bloodshed” era, combining balletic gunplay and emotional melodrama that filmmakers ripped off for decades to come.

Our Hong Kong Action Essentials series explores the time from the mid-’80s through the early ’90s, where Hong Kong filmmakers rewrote the grammar of action cinema forever. Directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, and Lau Kar-Leung fused balletic gunplay, risky stunts, martial arts virtuosity, and raw emotional intensity into a new cinematic language that would be oft-imitated but never replicated. (sorry, The Matrix, we love you too!) Join us every month in 2026 as we explore this golden age where style and emotion collided to change movies forever.