Cloud, the stylish and subversive new thriller from suspense-maverick Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) has finally arrived at The Frida Cinema!
The story follows Yoshii, an ambitious, yet directionless, young factory worker from Tokyo who side hustles in the murky realm of black market reselling, cheating buyers and sellers alike. After swindling his way into loads of cash, Yoshii gradually attempts to disconnect from humanity, moving out of the city, shunning his girlfriend, and entrusting duties to his new, devoted assistant.
Before long his life is plagued by a series of mysterious, sinister incidents that threaten to upend his success and bring about a most violent demise. A master of carefully simmering tension to a bloody crescendo, Kurosawa delivers a searing portrait of digital greed and vengeance.
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This August, The Frida Cinema proudly presents Greenaway & Nyman, a film series celebrating four of the most iconic collaborations between filmmaker Peter Greenaway and composter Michael Nyman. We close our series with Greenaway’s 1989 masterpiece The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, a lurid, operatic masterpiece of gluttony, sumptuous beauty, and brutal vengeance, all set to Nyman’s famously haunting score, and almost entirely within the lavish confines of a French restaurant.
Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), a grotesquely boorish gangster, terrorizes guests and staff with his vulgarity and violence night after night at a fancy restaurant named Le Hollandais. His long-suffering wife Georgina (Helen Mirren), who quietly endures his abuse, begins a passionate affair with a gentle bookseller (Alan Howard), meeting him in secret among the restaurant’s corridors, kitchens, and storerooms. What unfolds is a richly stylized operatic tragedy, with color-coded sets that shift with each room, vibrant costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier, and one of Michael Nyman’s most iconic scores.
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This August, The Frida Cinema proudly presents Greenaway & Nyman, a film series celebrating four of the most iconic collaborations between filmmaker Peter Greenaway and composter Michael Nyman. Our series’ third film is 1988’s Drowning by Numbers, Greenaway’s wickedly playful and morbid game of murder, repetition, and structure.
Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, and Joely Richardson star as three women from the same family, all of whom are each named Cissie Colpitts. Under seemingly rational pretenses, each woman drowns her own husband — but rather than seek justice, local coroner Madgett (Bernard Hill) becomes complicit, lured by his own ambitions. Structured like a counting game by literally placing the numbers 1 through 100 sequentially within its visuals and dialogue, Drowning by Numbers is an exercise in visual beauty marked by escalating absurdity, a grimly comic dark fable about rules, rituals, fate, and numbers.
Nominated for the Palm d’Or at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, Drowning By Numbers took home the festival’s Best Artistic Contribution prize, and won the Best Director Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.
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Super Yaki and Mise en Scènt are invading The Frida to celebrate the 25th anniversary of McG’s Charlie’s Angels with a totally free screening! Join us for exclusive merch, movie magic, and a brand-new scent drop!
Come for the slow-mo hair flips and killer soundtrack, stay for the giveaways, exclusive merch, and the in-person debut of our brand-new Concession Stand Candle 3-Pack. This 3-pack features scents inspired by our favorite cinematic snacks—popcorn, cherry slushy, and chocolate bar—and will be available exclusively at the screening, ahead of its online release. A portion of proceeds from this event (and the full week of programming) will go directly to our host theaters, in support of the independent venues that keep film culture thriving.
Saddle up, Angels—it’s time to celebrate 25 years of sexy struts, fierce female leads, and summertime moviegoing!
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Long before the tracking shots and 70mm epics, Paul Thomas Anderson burst onto the scene with Hard Eight—a sleek, slow-burn neo-noir about lost souls who take us in…and the secrets they bring with them.
The legendary Philip Baker Hall stars as Sydney, a professional gambler with ice in his veins and a soft spot for the desperate. When he meets down-on-his-luck John (John C. Reilly), he offers him more than just a hand up—he offers him a future. But when a cocktail waitress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and a reckless criminal (Samuel L. Jackson) enter the mix, things unravel fast—and quiet dignity turns to blood-soaked reckoning.
Shot with precision and restraint, and humming with tension beneath every word, Hard Eight is a masterclass in economy, tone, and atmosphere. It’s PTA at his most subtle—and still unmistakably him.
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Our Page To Screen series, presented by Arvida Book Co in Tustin, is bringing you Stephen King and Rob Reiner’s classic, Stand By Me, in July!
Before King’s stories were all haunted hotels and killer clowns, there was The Body—and from it came Stand by Me, a film that captured the raw, unfiltered ache of growing up like few others ever have. Set in 1959 and told through the memory of a now-grown writer, the film follows four boys—Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern—on a two-day trek to find a dead body… and maybe figure out who they are in the process.
Starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell in breakout roles, and narrated with perfect wistfulness by Richard Dreyfuss, Stand by Me balances humor, heartbreak, and the slow, quiet realization that childhood doesn’t last forever. It’s about stories, scars, and the people who shape us—no matter how far we drift.
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Jackie Chan’s Police Story is turning 40 years old—and we’re bringing it back to the big screen at The Frida Cinema for a limited run!
Before CGI, before Hollywood figured out who Jackie Chan was, and before every action hero pretended to risk their life for the shot—there was Police Story. Directed by and starring Chan at the absolute height of his powers, this Hong Kong masterpiece redefined the genre with bone-breaking stunts, insane choreography, and a perfect blend of comedy, chaos, and pure cinematic adrenaline.
Chan plays Inspector Chan Ka-Kui, a cop framed for murder who takes on a corrupt system with nothing but fists, loyalty, and an unbreakable moral code. What follows: exploding shanty towns, bus-top chases, and one of the most legendary mall-set finales in action history. (Yes, that glass-shattering pole-slide.)
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Jack Hill’s Coffy is coming back to The Frida Cinema, guns blazing and ready to burn it all down courtesy of our friends at See It On 16MM!
Long before Tarantino crowned her a legend, Pam Grier became one with Coffy—an explosive, no-holds-barred blaxploitation classic that put her front and center as the fiercest, flyest, most fearsome avenger in ’70s cinema. Dressed to kill (and very often undressed to kill), Coffy is a nurse by day, vigilante by night, taking down the pushers, pimps, and politicians who poisoned her little sister with heroin.
Directed by cult master Jack Hill, Coffy is pure grindhouse satisfaction: outrageous action, killer dialogue, sleazy villains, slow-motion shotgun blasts, and Grier—an absolute force of nature in every frame. This isn’t just revenge—it’s a revolution in heels.
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Banned. Protested. Worshipped. See It On 16MM is back with another screening on celluloid, and this time it’s John Waters’ dirty masterpiece Pink Flamingos!
Welcome to Baltimore’s trashiest backyard, where the grass is plastic, the chickens are nervous, and Divine reigns supreme. Part shock comedy, part underground rebellion, Pink Flamingos (1972) is John Waters’ cult atomic bomb—an unholy hybrid of sleaze, satire, and pure punk provocation that shattered the rules of good taste and built a throne from the pieces.
Starring the legendary Divine in her filth-crowned breakout role, Pink Flamingos follows a depraved battle for the title of “Filthiest Person Alive,” with kidnappings, foot-licking, meat theft, and one very infamous dog-walk that sealed the film’s place in midnight movie infamy. The competition? Mink Stole and David Lochary as the Marble family—suburban perverts running a black market baby ring out of a pink split-level. It only gets worse (and by worse, we mean better) from there.
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A titan of repertory cinema, Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece Heat, is back at The Frida Cinema for some August encores!
A towering epic of crime and consequence, Heat is the film where everything came together: De Niro vs. Pacino, Mann at full power, and Los Angeles lit like a dream you don’t want to wake up from. It’s a genre-defining masterpiece that changed the way crime films look, sound, and move.
Robert De Niro is Neil McCauley, a master thief planning one last score. Al Pacino is Vincent Hanna, the obsessive LAPD detective on his trail. Their lives orbit each other in parallel—both masters of their craft, both isolated by it. When they finally sit down face-to-face in a now-legendary diner scene, the movie bends time around them.
With a killer ensemble cast (our beloved Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Natalie Portman, Jon Voight, and many more), an iconic synth-and-guitar score by Elliot Goldenthal, and shootouts that redefine the word intense, Heat is more than a crime film–it’s pure cinema.
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