A long-awaited dream to play on the big screen, god-level director John Woo’s Hong Kong action masterpiece, Hard Boiled, is finally coming to The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration!
Mobsters are smuggling guns into Hong Kong. The police orchestrate a raid at a teahouse where an ace detective loses his partner. Meanwhile, the two main gun smugglers are having a war over territory, and a young new gun is enlisted to wipe out informants and overcome barriers to growth. The detective, acting from inside sources, gets closer to the ring leaders and eventually must work with the inside man directly.
Hard Boiled is routinely placed in the top tier of action cinema, not just of the 1990s, not just of Hong Kong, but of all time. For many critics and fans, it represents the peak of John Woo’s “heroic bloodshed” era, combining balletic gunplay and emotional melodrama that filmmakers ripped off for decades to come.
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Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who has gifted us such films as Aquarius (NYFF54) and Bacurau (NYFF57), returns with the thrillingly unpredictable The Secret Agent.
A dynamic, shape-shifting epic set in Mendonça’s hometown of Recife during the late 1970s, The Secret Agent won Best Director award at Cannes. Wagner Moura was also deservedly honored as Best Actor at the festival for his magnetic performance as a widowed former university researcher whose life has been violently upended by the greed and vengeance of a government bureaucrat.
On the run and living under an alias during the country’s military dictatorship, he tries to escape, while also reconnecting with the young son he had to leave behind. Even this brief description cannot fully prepare the viewer for the zigzagging subplots and delights of Mendonça’s eccentric and affectionate ode to the movies and the Brazil of his youth—and to maintaining individuality amid abuses of power.
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He’s not Freddy, he’s not Jason…he’s real. HorrorBuzz continues its 2026 series with the 40th anniversary of one of the most unsettling and influential films of the 1980s: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
Loosely inspired by the confessions of real-life murderer Henry Lee Lucas, the movie follows drifter Henry (played by iconic silver screen “that guy” Michael Rooker) and his volatile accomplice Otis as they navigate a bleak Chicago landscape. When Otis’s sister Becky moves in, Henry’s flat affect and unpredictable behavior begin to reveal something far darker beneath the surface.
Horror Movie Night takes filmgoing to another level with a full night of entertainment, including a themed HMN Video Pres-how, Trivia, Games, Prizes, and another outstanding horror short from HorrorBuzz’s The Screaming Room Film Festival at Midsummer Scream.
Doors open and video pre-show video begins promptly at 7:30 pm. Games, prizes, and short film begin at 8:00PM. Feature starts at 8:30PM.
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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Alright, see…join us for April’s Classic Movie Nights pick: the James Cagney gangster flick Angels With Dirty Faces!
Cagney plays Rocky Sullivan, a two-bit punk who grows into a full-blown gangster with the whole neighborhood full of kids. Trying to set him straight is his old pal Father Jerry, played by Pat O’Brien, now on the right side of the law and sweating bullets over whether those kids are gonna follow the wrong horse.
Directed by Michael Curtiz of Casablanca and White Christmas fame, this is an old school, real-deal Warner Brothers gangster picture, culminating in one of the greatest endings in cinema history.
Make sure to get to the screening early, as our Marketing Director Bekah will be doing a very informative and entertaining presentation on the film before it starts!
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An annual holiday tradition unlike any other, Bekah’s Cozy Christmas Double is back for a third year! And this time, she’s picked the dynamic duo of The Thin Man and After The Thin Man!
The Thin Man: Retired detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his quick-witted, glamorous wife Nora (Myrna Loy) return to New York for the holidays, only to get swept into a murder investigation involving a missing inventor, a nervous family, and a trail of clues that only Nick’s reluctant brilliance can untangle. Their martini-fueled banter and impeccable chemistry turn a standard whodunit into one of the era’s most sparkling comedies.
After The Thin Man: Picking up right where the first film ends, Nick and Nora return to San Francisco, where a family dinner quickly spirals into another murder case—this time involving Nora’s unstable cousin, her missing husband, and a lovesick third party played by a young James Stewart. Once again, Nick reluctantly takes the case, and once again Nora dives in with enthusiasm, cocktails in hand.
Seen together, these films showcase the rare magic of screen icons William Powell and Myrna Loy: two actors whose charm mixed so well with soft cynicism. Their style defined a whole era of sophisticated studio comedies and shaped the DNA of the modern mystery-romance, proving that a detective story could be as much about love as it is about clues.
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The second film presented by Cinematic Void as part of this year’s January Giallo at The Frida is a free screening of A Hyena In The Safe, now with a brand new 4K restoration courtesy of Celluloid Dreams!
One safe. Six keys. Six robbers, each expecting their cut of a diamond heist when they finally meet to divide their spoils after months in hiding. But before they can open the safe that guards their glittering hoard, they are mysteriously killed, one by one. With fear and suspicion growing among the shrinking group of survivors, it becomes clear that one of them is trying to take all the diamonds for themselves!
Thank you to Celluloid Dreams for letting us present this beautifully restored version, bringing the film in high definition to the big screen for the first time!
This event is being co-presented by the fine folks at the American Cinematheque!
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From Chinese filmmaker Diao Yinan (Black Coal, Thin Ice), The Wild Goose Lake is a sleek, moody neo-noir that is headlining our Lost Films Of Covid series.
The story follows a gangster that ends up making a mistake that causes every gun on both sides of the law to point at him. While on the run, he comes across a mysterious woman who might get him out of trouble or make things worse.
The Wild Goose Lake is a fatalist love sotry that’s also a portrait of outcasts looking for a way out in a city that won’t stop closing in. Back in 2020, we streamed it online at our website during lockdown. But now is finally the time to see it on the big screen.
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.
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A brand new 4K restoration of High And Low is coming to The Frida Cinema as part of fourteen film retrospective on the films of Akira Kurosawa! Thank you to Janus Films for restoring this masterpiece and allowing us to play it.
The story of High And Low follows an executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.
This highly influential domestic drama, adapted Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.
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Akira Kurosawa kicked off the 1960s with his underrated film noir piece The Bad Sleep Well, screening at The Frida Cinema as part of our ongoing retrospective on the works of the legendary Japanese director.
The story is simple: a vengeful young man marries the daughter of a corrupt industrialist in order to seek justice for his father’s suicide. What follows is a film that combines elements of Hamlet and noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.
Continuing his legendary collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, The Bad Sleep Well is a lesser-known stroke of genius in the filmmaker’s canon, but great nonetheless. See it on the big screen, where it rarely plays!
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Celebrate 75 years since the original release of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon with a new 2K restoration from Janus Films!
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accounts of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife, which director Akira Kurosawa presents with striking imagery and an ingenious use of flashbacks.
This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema—and a commanding new star by the name of Toshiro Mifune—to the Western world.
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