It’s a million dollars worth of adventure!
Our Classic Movie Nights series sets sail with the swashbuckling Errol Flynn classic Captain Blood!
Peter Blood, a wrongfully convicted Irish physician, is sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean after being accused of treason. But when he is purchased by the beautiful Arabella Bishop, Blood escapes captivity, takes command of a pirate ship, and sets out on a life of adventure on the high seas.
Captain Blood is the film that transformed Errol Flynn into an international movie star, launching one of the great screen careers of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, White Christmas), this rousing 1935 adventure is a landmark of the classic Hollywood swashbuckler. Sword fights, romance, pirates…it’s got it all!
Please make sure to get to this showtime early, as our beloved Marketing Director, Bekah, will be doing a pre-screening presentation on the film!
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Based on the beloved fantasy novel by Peter S. Beagle, 1982’s The Last Unicorn is a beautiful – and beautifully strange – animated fantasy. The film follows a solitary unicorn (Mia Farrow) who learns that she may be the last of her kind. Setting out to find other surviving unicorns, she encounters bumbling magician Schmendrick (Alan Arkin) and spirited Molly Grue (Tammy Grimes), who join her on a journey that leads to the castle of the sinister King Haggard (Christopher Lee). Featuring iconic storybook animation by Rankin/Bass, The Last Unicorn has endured as a singular cult classic, equally beloved as a cherished family favorite and a genuinely strange piece of 1980s fantasy.
Part of our Unsung 80’s Soundtracks series, The Last Unicorn’s is built around an unlikely collaboration between composer Jimmy Webb and the the harmony-rich folk-rock of America, who perform the film’s songs. Webb wrote the score as well as the songs, including the haunting title track, “The Last Unicorn,” which became one of America’s most enduring songs from the film. America also performs “Now That I’m a Woman,” “In the Sea,” and “That’s All I’ve Got to Say,” while Webb’s orchestral score gives the film much of its wistful, dreamlike quality. A ’70s soft-rock trio scoring an animated medieval fantasy may seem like an unlikely pairing, but somehow, it works perfectly.
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An Ordinary Man Forced to Become An Extraordinary Hero.
Join us at The Frida Cinema on September 9th as Nostalgic Nebula presents a 35th anniversary screening of The Rocketeer!
Set against the backdrop of 1938 Los Angeles, the film follows stunt pilot Cliff Secord, whose life is turned upside down after he discovers a mysterious rocket pack that allows him to take to the skies. But with the FBI, mobsters, and Nazi spies all racing to claim the incredible invention, Cliff must become an unlikely hero to protect both the woman he loves and the future of aviation itself.
Be sure to show up early for behind-the-scenes clips and answer trivia questions about The Rocketeer and your other favorite retro-futuristc movies!
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Before he gave us The Lady Eve, writer-director Preston Sturges delivered one of Hollywood’s great love letters to the movies with Sullivan’s Travels, a hilarious and heartfelt comedy that asks one timeless question: what good are movies in difficult times?
Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won’t be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise and sets off on a journey, aiming to “know trouble” first-hand. When all he finds is a train ride back to Hollywood and a beautiful blonde companion, he redoubles his efforts, managing to land himself in more trouble than he bargained for when he loses his memory and ends up a prisoner on a chain gang.
More than eighty years later, Sullivan’s Travels’ message feels as vital as ever. If you’ve ever wondered whether movies can change lives, this is one of the greatest arguments ever put forward! Come see this classic on the big screen!
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There’s only one way to win the girl of your dreams: floor it!
Our Hallucinations series for August is getting revved up as we explore the weird world of the extremely-rarely-screened 90s film Motorama!
A ten year old boy gets tired of life with abusive parents and cashes in his piggy bank and steals a Mustang. He rides off into a surreal America playing “Motorama,” a game sponsored by Chimera Gas Company. He has various encounters with different people, and eventually reaches the Chimera Gas Company where he finds they are not playing by the rules of the game.
Praised for its loopy Americana and bizarre tone while widely derided as a punishingly dark and occasionally cruel film that isn’t for everyone, look at this as more of an R-rated Pee-wee’s Big Adventure than anything else! Who wouldn’t wanna watch that!?
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Nu-Classics is back at The Frida Cinema, as this time around, our beloved host Maggie Mae Fish is joined by novelist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis for a very special screening celebrating thirty years since the release of Independence Day!
Strange phenomena surface around the globe. The skies ignite. Terror races through the world’s major cities. As these extraordinary events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that a force of incredible magnitude has arrived. Its mission: total annihilation over the Fourth of July weekend. The last hope to stop the destruction is an unlikely group of people united by fate and unimaginable circumstances.
Upon its release in 1996, Independence Day became a global phenomenon, redefining what audiences expected from summer movie spectacle. Its earnest patriotism and larger-than-life action paved the way for many blockbusters that came after. Whether you’re revisiting it for the hundredth time or experiencing it on the big screen for the first time, this is the kind of movie that reminds us why theaters were built to be loud! Also…come on, a movie with Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum?
Lindsay Ellis is a novelist and video essayist residing in Long Beach, CA. After studying Cinema Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she earned her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts with a focus in documentary and screenwriting. As a video essayist she wrote and co-hosted the fiction-focused web series It’s Lit! for PBS Digital Studios. She continues to make video essay and documentary content for YouTube and the streaming service Nebula. Her novels include Apostles of Mercy, Truth of the Divine and Axiom’s End, which was a New York Times best seller. Her nonfiction debut, Degenerates, a survey of how fascists and authoritarians appropriate and censor the arts, is slated for release in 2028.
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From the Amazon’s forbidden depths comes…Creature from the Black Lagoon!
Cinematic Void is invading The Frida Cinema again to present one of the crown jewels of Universal’s monster canon that introduced audiences to the unforgettable Gill-man!
When scientists exploring the Amazon River stumble on a “missing link” connecting humans and fish, they plan to capture it for later study. But the Creature has plans of his own, and has set his sights on the lead scientist’s beautiful fiancée, Kay.
Combining atmospheric underwater photography and unforgettable creature effects, the film remains a marvel of 1950s genre filmmaking. More than seventy years later, the Gill-man still stands among cinema’s most iconic monsters, re-surfacing from the depths every so often to captivate new generation of moviegoers.
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He was tricky. They were better.
We couldn’t let another 4th of July weekend go by without playing the 1999 cult classic Dick, starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams!
Best friends Betsy Jobs and Arlene Lorenzo accidentally stumble into the center of the Watergate scandal after witnessing the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Before long, the two teenagers find themselves working as dog walkers for President Richard Nixon, becoming unlikely White House insiders while unknowingly unraveling one of the biggest political scandals in American history.
Anchored by winning performances from its two iconic leads, Dick gleefully remixes real historical events with outrageous fiction to create one of the sharpest and silliest comedies of the late ’90s! Don’t miss it on the big screen!
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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.
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Our Spielberg Summer series ventures off-path and into the Fall as we visit the future in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a haunting Science Fiction fairy tale that stands among the director’s most ambitious and deeply misunderstood works.
In a world where advanced robots live alongside humans, a young android named David (Haley Joel Osment) is programmed with the ability to love. When he is abandoned by the family he was created to join, David embarks on an extraordinary journey to become “real,” believing it is the only way to win back the affection he longs for.
Originally developed by Stanley Kubrick and ultimately realized by Spielberg, A.I. is an unsettling vision of technological loneliness. Over two decades later, its questions about what it means to love feel more relevant than ever, revealing a far more profound than many audiences recognized upon its release.
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