Another homo movie by Gregg Araki.
The first chapter in the groundbreaking Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, Totally F***ed Up, is back at The Frida Cinema!
Shot on grainy 16mm with the raw energy of a punk mixtape, the film follows six queer teenagers searching for connection while navigating a world that seems determined to reject them. Told through diary confessions, the film captures the exhilaration and uncertainty of growing up on the margins at the height of the AIDS crisis.
An independent filmmaking landmark, Totally F**ed Up announced Gregg Araki as one of American cinema’s boldest new voices. More than thirty years later, its restless spirit and unapologetic celebration of queer youth remain every bit as vital, making it the perfect place to begin our journey through one of the most singular filmographies of the last three decades.
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Shhhh..Maddie’s Secret is finally sneaking its way to The Frida Cinema!
Comedian, writer, and actor John Early’s critically acclaimed directorial debut stars himself as Maddie, a plucky dishwasher who leaps to viral superstardom at a trendy food content creation company. While her life seems picturesque–complete with an adoring husband (Eric Rahill), ride-or-die best friend (Kate Berlant) and a cupboard full of woman-owned ethically-sourced chili crisp to boot–mounting professional pressures threaten to reawaken a hidden secret from her troubled past.
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For our final screening in our Broadway Thursdays: Segerstrom Center at The Frida series, we’re dying to bring you the wickedly funny cult classic Death Becomes Her!
Longtime rivals Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp will stop at nothing to outshine one another, until a mysterious potion promises youth and beauty forever. But immortality comes with a few unexpected side effects, and their decades-long feud quickly descends into increasingly outrageous acts of revenge, all while their bewildered plastic surgeon Ernest Menville is caught in the middle.
Years ahead of its time, Death Becomes Her blends razor-sharp satire with groundbreaking visual effects and gloriously camp performances from Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossellini. It’s the kind of deliciously over-the-top crowd-pleaser that only gets better with age.
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Celebrate Art House Theater Day 2026 with a 4K restoration of Car Wash, also celebrating 50 years since its initial release!
This day-in-the-life cult comedy focuses on a group of friends working at Sully Boyar’s Car Wash in the Los Angeles ghetto. The team meets dozens of eccentric customers — including a smooth-talking preacher, a wacky cab driver and an ex-convict, while cracking politically incorrect jokes to a constant soundtrack of disco and funk. Some of the workers find romance as the day moves along, but most are just happy to get through another shift.
Fueled by a stacked cast that includes standout comedic turns from Richard Pryor and George Carlin, the film moves to the rhythm of its era’s funk-infused soundtrack and loose, improvisational energy. Light on its feet but rich in character, Car Wash turns an ordinary job into a day-long portrait of exhaustion and unexpected joy.
Art House Theater Day (AHTD) is an annual program of AHC that brings audiences together to celebrate all that art house theaters, and independent film, contribute to our cultural landscape: ambitious and innovative art that provokes, challenges, entertains, and inspires.
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Not all girls want to play with dolls.Not all girls want to play with dolls.
See It On 16mm is back at The Frida with Todd Solondz’s painfully funny coming-of-age comedy-drama Welcome to the Dollhouse.
Seventh-grader Dawn Wiener occupies an unenviable place in the social hierarchy: ignored at home, ridiculed at school, and perpetually caught between childhood and adolescence. As she stumbles through the everyday cruelties of suburban life, Dawn struggles to find connection in a world that seems determined to leave her behind.
A mix of cringe-inducing humor and heartbreaking honesty, Welcome to the Dollhouse captures the awkwardness of adolescence more vividly than almost any film before or since. Writer-director Todd Solondz refuses to sentimentalize growing up, finding comedy in life’s most uncomfortable moments.
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July’s Hallucinations pick is the delightfully strange Musical Fantasy Tomorrow, featuring an early leading performance from the incomparable Olivia Newton-John!
In a whimsical future where science, music, and imagination collide, a brilliant young inventor and his eccentric companions set out on an adventure that spans planets, generations, and dimensions.
Released years before Grease would make her an international icon, Tomorrow offers a fascinating glimpse of Olivia Newton-John at the dawn of her screen career. Overflowing with colorful visuals and catch tunes, Tomorrow is a charming reminder that we used to make movies like this!
Hosted by Polygon’s editor-in-chief Chris Plante, Hallucinations is a monthly event that spotlights movies that challenge our expectations of story, style, and “good taste”. We invite guests to bond over films that change what we expect from the medium, the world, and themselves. So come early, stay late, make friends, and watch something strange, surprising, or just shamelessly sick.
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We’ve added encores of the enduring coming-of-age classic The Graduate!
Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), fresh out of college and disillusioned with life, finds himself stuck between his older lover, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and her daughter (Katharine Ross).
Both a biting satire of suburban conformity and a timeless portrait of youthful uncertainty, The Graduate captured the anxieties of a generation coming of age in a rapidly changing America. Revered for its star-making performance from Dustin Hoffman and elevated by the unforgettable music of Simon & Garfunkel, the film perfectly balances sharp comedy with genuine melancholy, a tone often imitated, but never replicated.
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We are celebrating ten years of our beloved volunteer Sammy Trujillo, as his Volunteer of the Month pick for July is the very timely Jafar Panahi film Offside!
During the 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain, numerous young women are caught and rounded up for dressing as men so they could gain access to the game. Guarded by several soldiers in a holding pen, the women attempt to keep updated on the score.
Shot during a real World Cup qualifier, Offside crackles with the energy of live sports and the immediacy of documentary filmmaking. Panahi crafts a film that is as entertaining as it is politically resonant, always showcasing his knack for quiet acts of resistance Nearly two decades later, Offside is rarely seen on the big screen, so thank to Sammy for highlighting it!
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Our Staff Pick for the moth of July comes courtesy of our wonderful Director of Box Office Operations, Jill, as she has chosen Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough Irma Vep!
Starring an absolutely magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself, she plays a Hong Kong action movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 crime serial Les vampires. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes nightmare as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision.
Balancing elements of silent cinema, martial arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Ali Farka Touré into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Irma Vep is a witty reflection on the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment.
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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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