Adventure – Page 3 – The Frida Cinema

Hook

Posted on June 12, 2026

Our Spielberg Summer series flies to Neverland with Hook, the once-maligned fantasy film that time has steadily re-appraised as one of Spielberg’s most heartfelt flights of imagination!!!

When grown-up lawyer Peter Banning (the former Peter Pan) returns to Neverland after Captain Hook kidnaps his children, he must rediscover the boy he forgot in order to lead the Lost Boys and face his old enemy. Along the way, he’s guided by Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts), challenged by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), and slowly drawn back into a world of belief.

Initially met with mixed reception and criticized for its tone and excess, Hook has since been embraced by many as a deeply personal story about adulthood’s erosion of wonder and the struggle to reclaim it. Beneath the spectacle and whimsy is a film about imagination and the cost of forgetting how to play, revealing Spielberg’s enduring belief that growing up doesn’t have to mean letting go.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Posted on June 12, 2026

Our Spielberg Summer series returns to a world of pure adventure with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the heartfelt capper to one of cinema’s greatest action trilogies ever!

When Indiana Jones sets out to find his missing father, Dr. Henry Jones Sr., he’s pulled into a globe-spanning race against Nazis for the Holy Grail itself. Joined by his father (Sean Connery), Indy must navigate a lifetime of unresolved tension (oh and like booby traps and stuff) as the search becomes as much about family as it is about legend.

Spielberg’s take on the buddy comedy, The Last Crusade is one of his most effortlessly (at least…he makes it look that way) entertaining films, balancing whip-smart humor with his knack for old school thrills. With Ford and Connery at the center of your movie, you can’t really lose.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Posted on June 12, 2026

Our Spielberg Summer series goes a little darker with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the wildly pulpy sequel that pushed blockbuster adventure into uncharted territory.

When Indiana Jones finds himself in a remote Indian village stripped of its children and sacred stones, he follows the trail to a sinister cult operating beneath an ancient palace. Joined by a skeptical nightclub singer and a brave young boy, Indy descends into a nightmare as he fights to free the enslaved children and recover the stolen Sankara stones.

Stripped of the comfort and romance of its predecessor, Temple of Doom is a literal roller coaster cimeatic event. It’s Spielberg at his most unrestrained, mixing fairy-tale darkness with explosive spectacle.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Posted on June 12, 2026

He is afraid. He is totally alone. He is 3,000,000 light years from home.

Our Spielberg Summer series phones home with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, one of the most beloved family films ever made and a landmark of modern American cinema.

When a lonely young boy named Elliott discovers a stranded alien hiding near his home, the two form an unlikely friendship that changes both of their lives. As E.T. becomes part of Elliott’s family, the children must help their otherworldly companion evade government authorities and find a way back home before it’s too late.

Few films capture the wonder of childhood as beautifully as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg transforms a simple story of friendship into something genuinely magical. Decades after audiences first watched that bicycle lift off against the moonlit sky, the film, like so many others from Spielberg, continues to inspire awe from audiences across the globe.

Enhanced Accessibility: this film has Closed Captioning, Assisted Listening, and Audio Description capability!

A Knight’s Tale

Posted on June 6, 2026

Brian Helgeland’s medieval action comedy A Knight’s Tale is getting a very special late-night encore on June 20th to celebrate its 25th anniversary!

William Thatcher (the unforgettable Heath Ledger) is a peasant who disguises himself as a noble knight to compete in jousting tournaments across Europe. With the help of his loyal friends, including a witty writer named Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), William rises through the ranks of the tournament circuit, all while hiding his true identity. Along the way, he falls in love with a noblewoman and faces off against the ruthless Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), his main rival.

With its energetic blend of medieval action and humor, A Knight’s Tale quickly became (and has remained) one the 21st century’s most beloved cult classics!

Jason and the Argonauts

Posted on May 15, 2026

Our Art House for Families series is headed to Ancient Greece (pretty timely, no?) for Jason and the Argonauts! Before CGI armies and digital creatures, movie monsters were crafted by hand, and few artists ever did it better than Ray Harryhausen.

Jason, a fearless sailor and explorer, returns to his home land of Thessaly after a long voyage to claim his rightful throne. He learns, however, that he must first find the magical Golden Fleece. To do so, he must embark on an epic quest fraught with fantastic monsters and terrible perils.

More than sixty years later, Jason and the Argonauts still delivers the kind of tactile cinematic wonder that inspired generations of filmmakers, from blockbuster directors to lifelong fantasy fans discovering these creatures for the very first time.

Our Art House for Families series celebrates the magic of moviegoing across generations all summer long. From silent comedy and international classics to science fiction and fantasy adventures, the series invites longtime cinephiles and first-time art house audiences of all ages to discover some of cinema’s most enduring films together on the big screen. This event is sponsored in part by the City of Santa Ana.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

Posted on May 15, 2026

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is up next in our Art House for Families series!

Director Karel Zeman conjures a story that follows the adventures of the legendary, boastful baron, whose whirlwind exploits take him from the moon to eighteenth-century Turkey to the belly of a whale and beyond.

A rainbow-esque marvel that blends live action with techniques including stop-motion, cutout collage, puppetry, painted backdrops, and antique tinting, Zeman’s film is an exhilarating visual delight and a warmhearted whirl through a bygone age too entrancing to have existed.

This film is presented in its original Czech language, with English subtitles.

The Black Cauldron

Posted on April 15, 2026

Hidden by darkness. Guarded by witches. Discovered by a boy. Stolen by a king. Whoever owns it will rule the world. Or destroy it!

We’ve added an encore of Disney’s rarely-screened gem The Black Cauldron!

Taran is an assistant pigkeeper with boyish dreams of becoming a great warrior. However, he has to put the daydreaming aside when his charge, an oracular pig named Hen Wen, is kidnapped by an evil lord known as the Horned King. The villain hopes Hen will show him the way to The Black Cauldron, which has the power to create a giant army of unstoppable soldiers.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad: Hosted by Arnold Leibovit

Posted on April 13, 2026

From the Land Beyond Beyond…From The World Past Hope and Fear…The Frida Cinema is proud to present a brand new 4K restoration of the most influential fantasy adventures ever made: Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad! See it the way audiences did in 1958, larger than life on the big screen! This special event includes a rare on-screen video appearance by child star Richard Eyer, along with two additional George Pal Academy Award®-winning Puppetoons, celebrating the golden age of fantasy filmmaking.

In this landmark stop-motion adventure, the legendary sailor Sinbad journeys to the mysterious Island of Colossa to save Princess Parisa, his fiancée, who has been magically shrunken by the evil sorcerer Sokurah. Along the way Sinbad confronts a towering Cyclops, battles a sword-wielding animated skeleton in one of the most famous duels in motion picture history, faces a giant two-headed Roc, and ultimately fights a fire-breathing dragon in a spectacular fantasy climax–adventure, monsters, and magic Featuring groundbreaking Dynamation effects by Ray Harryhausen and a thunderous, unforgettable score by Bernard Herrmann!

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad became one of the top-grossing films of 1958 and helped redefine fantasy filmmaking for generations to come–a giant-screen fantasy experience that launched a thousand filmmakers. Its influence can be seen in the work of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, John Landis, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Rick Baker and many others.

Hosted by producer-director Arnold Leibovit, who was inspired by the film as a child, later met and directed Ray Harryhausen in The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal, and stayed in touch with him for over 30 years. Leibovit also had the opportunity to meet George Pal and correspond with him for more than a year, and became a longtime friend of Pal’s widow, Mrs. Zsoka Pal. For decades, he has worked to restore and preserve the Puppetoons and carry forward the legacy of classic fantasy filmmaking. In 2008, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and hailed as one of the finest fantasy films ever made, noted for its stunning color photography, imaginative creatures, and Bernard Herrmann’s thrilling score.

Doors open at 6:00PM and the show starts at 7:00PM! Tickets are $20 to this event. Frida Cinema comp passes and member discounts do not apply.

The African Queen

Posted on March 25, 2026

The greatest adventure a man ever lived…with a woman!

The penultimate film on our Bogie Fest series sees everybody’s favorite Hollywood tough guy taking on his greatest opponent ever…Katharine Hepburn! It’s John Huston’s The African Queen, the movie that finally landed Mr. Bogart his first and only Oscar!

Set against the chaos of World War I in East Africa, the film pairs two people who, on paper, should never work. Humphrey Bogart is Charlie Allnut, a scruffy, gin-soaked riverboat captain whose loyalties extend about as far as his next drink. Katharine Hepburn is Rose Sayer, a prim, devout missionary whose world has been defined by order, restraint, and moral certainty. Then…their world collapses. What begins as survival quickly becomes something else: a borderline absurd plan to take the boat downriver and attack a German warship.

Huston leans into the physicality of it all: the mud, the insects, the heat, the relentless push of the river. It’s not the ideal romantic backdrop, but with talent like Bogart and Hepburn on screen, they somehow make it all work.