Volunteer of the Month pick, selected by one of September’s Volunteers of the Month – The Amazing Trevor!
Set in the smoggy sprawl of 1970s Los Angeles, Shane Black’s (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3) The Nice Guys stars Ryan Gosling stars as Holland March, a bumbling private eye barely keeping it together. When his path collides with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a tough-as-nails enforcer with a knack for violence, the unlikely duo find themselves investigating the apparent suicide of a porn star and the disappearance of a young woman, leading to the unraveling of a conspiracy that winds from the seedy underbelly of Hollywood to the highest levels of power.
Fast, funny, and packed with action, The Nice Guys is a stylish throwback to mismatched-detective classics – a buddy-cop mystery / neo-noir comedy that’s laced with irreverent humor, outrageous set pieces, and two irresistible lead performances.
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Join our partners in crime at Cinematic Void for a high-octane night of neo-noir cool with a special screening of The Driver, Walter Hill’s ice-cold crime thriller that helped define the modern getaway film.
The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal as a nameless wheelman—no small talk, no attachments, just precision driving. On his tail is a relentless detective (Bruce Dern) willing to bend every rule to catch him, and in the middle is Isabelle Adjani’s enigmatic “Player,” who may or may not be tipping the game in someone’s favor.
With its minimalist dialogue, brutalist LA cityscapes, and pulse-pounding car chases shot without a hint of CGI, The Driver is all tension, style, and attitude—part existential noir, part stripped-down action poetry. If you’re a fan of Thief, Drive, or To Live and Die in L.A., this is the film that lit the fuse.
Make sure to show up at 7:30PM for the world famous CV Preshow—packed with vintage trailers, lost media, and other grimy goodies from the Celluloid Void. Tickets to this one-off event are $15.
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November’s Hallucinations screening is Isao Fujisawa’s lost wonder Bye Bye Love!
Lost and nihilistic drifter Utamaro chances upon Giko, a femme shoplifter who immediately catches his eye. One thing leads to another: the couple soon find themselves on the lam for murder. This provides for a delightful pretext to explore notions of societal malaise, free love and gender fluidity in a rapidly evolving 1970s Japan, as both Utamaro and Giko begin to know each other on the road by way of a variety of surrealistic, psychedelic and frank sexual encounters.
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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Our Hallucinations series is back in September with a brand new 4K restoration of Night Of The Juggler, starring James Brolin!
Night of the Juggler drops you into a sweltering, sweaty New York City in freefall. When an ex-cop’s daughter is kidnapped by a maniac, he tears through the city like a human wrecking ball—dodging traffic, screaming through subway tunnels, and punching his way across five boroughs. It’s part thriller, part urban nightmare, part sweaty fever dream where every street corner feels like the edge of a riot.
It’s the kind of movie that makes you feel like you ran the whole thing yourself—and you might still be out of breath by the end credits.
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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Step into the gritty, electric world of 1970s Harlem as Flickrhappy presents Black Caesar, with a very special Q&A after the film with the legendary Fred Williamson!
Directed by exploitation auteur Larry Cohen, this hard-hitting gangster epic follows Tommy Gibbs, a shoeshine boy turned ruthless crime boss, in a tale packed with ambition, betrayal, and a legendary funk score by James Brown. Don’t miss this rare big-screen presentation featuring Fred “The Hammer” Williamson live in-person for a post-screening Q&A! Hear behind-the-scenes stories and firsthand reflections from the icon himself, in a conversation moderated by Josiah Howard, author of Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide.
Whether you’re a longtime fan or discovering this cult classic for the first time, Black Caesar delivers a cinematic punch you won’t forget.
This program is a venue rental engagement. Member discounts and Frida Cinema comp passes not valid. 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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David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch isn’t just an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ infamous novel—it’s a hallucinatory biographical fantasia, blending Burroughs’ life, addiction, and text into one grotesque and exhilarating fever dream. And now it’s been restored in a brand new 4K restoration!
Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill’s pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work — which he doesn’t remember writing.
Starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider—and featuring otherworldly creature effects by Chris Walas (The Fly)—Naked Lunch is Cronenberg at his most cerebral and disturbing.
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Slick. Sweaty. Deadly. William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. turns 40 years old this year—and it still hits like a bullet to the chest.
Coming off the heels of The French Connection and Sorcerer, Friedkin delivered this sun-scorched, Reagan-era crime thriller with the intensity of a punk rock opera. When a reckless Secret Service agent (William Petersen in his breakout role) sets out to take down a ruthless counterfeiter (a cold-blooded Willem Dafoe), the lines between justice and obsession dissolve in a haze of money, betrayal, and blood.
With its iconic Wang Chung synth score, daring car chases, and razor-sharp style, To Live and Die in L.A. is pure ’80s noir heat!
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The curtain falls on our Dario Argento restrospective with a scream. For the final act, we present Opera—a film that distills all of the maestro’s obsessions into one glorious, nightmarish aria.
A young opera singer, thrust into the spotlight during a cursed production of Macbeth, finds herself stalked by a sadistic killer who forces her to watch as her friends die in increasingly elaborate set pieces. What follows is Argento’s most technically virtuosic and perversely beautiful film, where horror and high art bleed into one another—sometimes literally.
Featuring infamous sequences involving needles taped beneath the eyes, flocks of vengeful ravens, and a thunderous metal-infused score, Opera is both a love letter to cinema and a howl of rage from a filmmaker pushing the Giallo form to its breaking point. As the camera swoops, the bodies fall, and the aria rises, Opera reminds us: no one stages death like Dario Argento.
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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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