Dinosaurs, Dragons, and Aliens, Oh My! 5 Selections from Godzilla’s Showa Era
Longtime writer Reggie Peralta selects 5 films from the legendary Showa-Era Godzilla films.
Volunteer of the Month Sydney Dayan on Twilight
Yet it’s a movie we’re playing next week that YA fiction fans and glitter enthusiasts are ready to sink their teeth into: Twilight, the beloved vampire romance from Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke!
Serious Movies for Serious Men: The 4 Most Underrated Coen Brothers Films
He has risen! After some 20 years of rumors and false starts, Jesus Quintana, the unofficial breakout star of The Big Lebowski, has finally got a movie of his own! As much a remake of the French dramedy Going Places as it is a Big Lebowski spin-off, The Jesus Rolls sees John Turturro not only step back into the infamous purple bowling gear but into the director’s chair as well.
Volunteer of the Month Joey Barrera on Call Me by Your Name
A film we’ve had the pleasure of playing before, Frida guests will get to see it again thanks to our February Volunteer of the Month, Joey Barrera!
Sensory Overload: The Fantastical Films of Ken Russell
Love is in the air, but so is something else this month at the Frida! Our second WTF Wednesday screening commemorates the 40th anniversary of Altered States with a vibrant new 4K restoration of the film!
Unspeakable Cinema: The 5 Most Lovecraftian Horror Films
It’s hard to believe that the first month of 2020 is already almost over, but we’re ending January at the Frida with a bang! Alongside Bong Joon-Ho’s monster hit Parasite, we’re presenting a weeklong run of Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space! Starring Nicolas Cage, it’s looking to be his wildest movie since Mandy, which blew Frida guests away with its gritty story and kaleidoscopic color scheme when it played here a little over a year ago.
Volunteer of the Month Sam Feldstein on The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford
Released a little over 10 years ago, it’s perhaps fitting that we’re screening Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as we enter the new decade. An epic drama that puts a revisionist spin on the classic Western legend, the film garnered praise for its cinematography and performances by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck but underperformed at the box office.
The Devil & Father Christmas: Twisted Christmas Triple Feature
Keep an out for monsters though as they’ll be lurking in the pine trees and doing their best to give you a holiday fright. If you stay strong and brave the scares, you’ll get to see three of the most off-the-wall movies to ever grace the holiday season.
Volunteer of the Month Leonardo Ostergren on The Color Purple
A smash hit upon its release in 1985, The Color Purple raked in a staggering $142 million against a $15 million budget and earned 11 Academy Award nominations.
The King of Cinema: 5 Great Non-Gangster Scorsese Films
Whether it’s about the long-awaited debut of The Irishman or controversial comments he made about the Marvel movie franchise, it seems impossible for Martin Scorsese to stay out of the news cycle.
Volunteer of the Month Paul Hernandez on Paprika
The last feature film to be made by the anime innovator before his death, it’s as thought-provoking as it is mind-bending, with many citing its heady sci-fi story as an antecedent (or, as others contend, an uncredited inspiration) for Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
Outta Sight Like Dolemite: A Beginner’s Guide to Blaxploitation
Activist groups charged the movies with feeding into racist stereotypes about African-Americans, with the National Urban League, the NAACP, and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference even going as far as to organize a coalition to combat what they saw as the films’ malign influence.
Seeing Red: The Colorful Chills of Hammer Horror
True to its nickname, the British company pumped out a series of horror films that terrified audiences around the world throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Breaking sharply from the stagy, black and white paradigm established by Universal’s Monster Movies, Hammer breathed new life into the genre with a flashy style that can best be described as Technicolor Gothic.
I Have to Return Some Videotapes: 5 Nostalgic ‘80s Movies Nobody Remembers
It does take place, after all, in the ‘80s, an era skewered for its vapid consumerism and spiritual emptiness by some like American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis and remembered for its vibrant arts and culture by others like me who were too young to actually be there. Of course, this perception is shaped in no small part by the movies of the time, with films like Ghostbusters, The Goonies and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (to say nothing of a certain Netflix original series) making the decade feel real to viewers born years after the wall came down and shoulder pads went out of style.
Francis Ford Coppola — A Million Feet of Film
This August brings Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now back to the big screen. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is a 4K restoration with state-of-the-art sound. For a film experience that was already like IMAX before anyone knew what IMAX was… Yeah, this is a big deal. After all, we’re talking about a seminal work of American art which scholars of the future will reference when discussing the fall of the American Empire.
