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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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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