Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.
The Hunt For Ben Solo is coming to The Frida Cinema to present a very special screening of Star Wars: The Last Jedi!
As the Resistance struggles to survive the relentless advance of the First Order, Rey seeks out the reclusive Luke Skywalker in hopes that the legendary Jedi will help turn the tide. But as old myths are challenged and loyalties are tested, heroes and villains alike must confront the weight of the past.
Written and directed by Frida Cinema Favorite Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi pushes the Star Wars saga into bold new territory, a rare feat for blockbuster filmmaking on this scale.
Doors are at 6:00PM and the fun all starts at 6:30PM!
This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.
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The final film in our Starring Natalie Wood retrospective is the oft-requested The Great Race, the movie that paired her with the iconic duo of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis for an affectionate throwback to silent-era spectacle and early Hollywood farce!
Professional daredevil and white-suited hero, The Great Leslie, convinces turn-of-the-century auto makers that a race from New York to Paris (westward across America, the Bering Straight and Russia) will help to promote automobile sales. Leslie’s arch-rival, the mustached and black-attired Professor Fate vows to beat Leslie to the finish line in a car of Fate’s own invention.
Ms. Wood leans fully into broad comedy here, delivering rapid-fire dialogue and playful physical humor, a fun contrast to some of the her more intense performances covered in this series.
This Summer, we are celebrating the unforgettable star power of Natalie Wood with a quartet of films that showcase the unique blend of charisma and emotional intensity that made her one of Hollywood’s most beloved screen icons. This series is co-presented by the amazing folks over at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton as part of their exhibit More Than Love: The Life & Art of Natalie Wood!
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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.
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Hey dude, this is no cartoon! We’re rolling out some encores of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990!
Before superheroes ruled the multiplex, four brothers from the New York sewers saved the world with martial arts and heart. Director Steve Barron’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a box-office surprise and a practical-effects marvel. Produced on the edge of indie ingenuity, the film blended Jim Henson’s Creature Shop wizardry with street-level grit, creating a tone that felt mythic. Beneath the pizza jokes and wisecracks was something sincere…growing up in a hard (shelled?) city.
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Each holds a secret power…together they face the ultimate evil!
We’re harnessing the supernova star power of cinema icons Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, and Anita Mui in a gloriously unrestrained action extravaganza double feature of The Heroic Trio + Executioners!
From genre maestro Johnnie To, the story follows three knife-throwing, shotgun-toting, kung-fu-fighting super-heroines who must overcome their dark pasts in order to defeat an evil, baby-snatching eunuch who is terrorizing Hong Kong. Eye-popping motorcycle stunts, brain-exploding skeletons, infant cannibals, and kinetically choreographed wire work are all part of the delirium in this unstoppably entertaining cult favorite (referenced in Cheung’s international breakthrough Irma Vep), a kick-butt showcase for three of the coolest women warriors to ever hit the screen.
There will be a ten minute intermission between each film. One ticket gets you access to both movies!
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.
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A lethal secret arsenal was left behind in the jungle of Vietnam. Their job: find it and destroy it!
Legendary actor-director Sammo Hung delivers a bazooka blast of pure adrenaline with Eastern Condors, an exemplar of Hong Kong action cinema at its most entertaining.
Drawing inspiration from Hollywood war films like The Dirty Dozen, Eastern Condors follows a ragtag band of Asian American prisoners dropped into Vietnam on a secret suicide mission to prevent a cache of weapons from falling into the hands of the Viet Cong, who are more than ready for a fight. Propelled by a dynamic ensemble cast that includes the ever-charismatic Yuen Biao as a black-market trader and a superhuman Yuen Wah as a giggling martial-arts monster, this rip-roaring spectacle offers a nonstop barrage of turbocharged set pieces that defy gravity itself.
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.
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One…last…plan.
At long last, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is finally going to play at The Frida Cinema!
As the long-gestating feature expansion of the cult Canadian series Nirvanna the Band the Show, created by and starring Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, the film continues the misadventures of the two best friends. As relentlessly delusional Toronto musicians, their main goal in life is to “play a show at the Rivoli.” When their plan goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008. Yes, that is the plot synopsis of this feature film we are running for a full week at our theater.
Like the series, the movie blurs fiction and reality, staging elaborate public pranks with unsuspecting bystanders while escalating the characters’ schemes to increasingly absurd and self-destructive extremes. If you love comedy that feels like it might collapse at any second, or perhaps maybe even get its creators thrown in jail, boy do we have a movie for you and your friends to come see!
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Two hunts. Two eras. One ultimate killing machine.
Join us on Thursday, February 26th as we present both the original 1987 Predator with its 2025 predecessor Predator: Badlands in an awesome double feature hosted by Jordan Morris, the author of the upcoming Marvel comic Predator: Bloodshed!
First up is John McTiernan’s Predator (1987), which drops a team of elite commandos into the Central American jungle on what should be a routine rescue mission, only to reveal they’re being stalked by something far deadlier than any human enemy.
Then, after a short intermission, it’s time for Predator: Badlands! This contemporary sequel brings the hunt roaring into a new frontier. Trading dense jungle for harsh, open terrain where old rules no longer apply.
Doors open at 6:15PM and the films will start at 7:00PM after a brief introduction. Tickets are $15, there will be a ten minute intermission between the films, and our host for the evening, Jordan Morris (co-host of the excellent and long-running podcast Jordan Jesse Go) will be selling and signing comics in the lobby before, between, and after the films!
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Grab your history books and cruise on over to The Frida Cinema as Moviebusters are back to present a most triumphant screening of the 1989 cult classic Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure! And be sure to stay after the screening for an in-person Q&A with special guests Diane Franklin and Kimberly Kates, who played the role of Princess Joanna and Princess Elizabeth, respectively.
Bill and Ted are high school buddies starting a band. They are also about to fail their history class—which means Ted would be sent to military school—but receive help from Rufus, a traveller from a future where their band is the foundation for a perfect society. With the use of Rufus’ time machine, Bill and Ted travel to various points in history, returning with important figures to help them complete their final history presentation.
Anchored by the endlessly likable pairing of Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, the film zips through history with Socrates, Napoleon, and Joan of Arc in tow, but never loses sight of its big heart. Beneath the goofy catchphrases and mall-set mayhem is a surprisingly sincere belief in the power of showing up for one another.
Diane and Kimberly will also be signing autographs in the lobby before the film, so make sure to get there early!
This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff. Membership discounts and comp passes do not apply. Doors open at 8:00PM and the film will begin at 8:30PM.
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Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing Obex, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.
Baltimore-based writer-director Albert Birney (Strawberry Mansion, 2021 Sundance Film Festival) returns with another delightfully skewed and surreal lo-fi fantasy. Set in pre-internet 1987 and strikingly shot in monochromatic black and white, the film depicts Conor’s (Birney) lonely existence of solitary screen time, transfixed by early Macs with slowly rendering graphics and TVs aglow with the horror movie late show.
Matching these hypnotic images, Birney immerses us in a dense soundscape of warm droning synths, clacking keyboards, malevolent static, chirping cicadas, and the click and whine of dot matrix printers. The film’s dreamy nostalgia soon becomes an analog nightmare as Conor finds himself trapped in a low-tech but high-stakes video game.
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