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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This film contains explicit depictions of sexual violence and psychological abuse that many will find deeply distressing. No one under the age of 17 will be admitted.
Acclaimed Italian poet, writer, playwright, actor, and director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s controversial final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) relocates the Marquis de Sade’s infamous 1785 novel Les 120 Journées de Sodome – which he wrote while he was imprisoned in the Bastille – to the final days of Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Salò Republic, where four Fascist elites imprison a group of boys and girls and subject them to escalating acts of psychological and physical torment. A bold exploration of how authoritarian power strips away humanity and turns bodies into commodities, the film’s unflinching and clinical style forces audiences to confront the terrifying logic behind the kind of oppression that can become normalized through bureaucratically-imposed obedience and fear.
Completed at a moment of political volatility in Italy, Salò emerged as one of the most daring anti-fascist works ever committed to film. Just weeks before the film’s release, Pasolini was murdered under circumstances that are still widely questioned. While officially labeled as a random act, a long-standing theory suggests his provocative art and activism, culminating in this scandalous cinematic work, placed him in extremely dangerous territory. Whatever the truth may be, Salò remains Pasolini’s final declaration that art must not look away from cruelty or corruption, and that silencing the artist is often the first agenda of oppressive power. Half a century later, the film and its legacy stand as a landmark in the fight against censorship, underscoring how essential it is to defend the voices that dare to confront and expose injustice.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom will be presented in its original Italian soundtrack, with English subtitles.
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Our dearly beloved Director Of Operations, Martin, is leaving us at the conclusion of this year, so we wanted to give him a proper send-off by letting him program four of his favorite films. The final film in his series, entitled The Last Dance, is legendary filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Camera Buff!
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it’s the first camera in town, he’s named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
Camera Buff is a quietly foundational film that predicted the world we live in, where everyone is a cameraman and every moment might be a movie. It also marked Kieslowski’s international breakthrough as a director with something to say. Without it, we may never have gotten The Decalogue, The Double Life of Véronique, or the Three Colors trilogy, all of which we intend to screen at The Frida Cinema in 2026.
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The members have spoken! We know it only came out a couple of years ago, but our Members Only screening for December is The Holdovers!
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
Paul Giamatti’s performance as Paul Hunham cemented him as the most beloved sad-sack teacher since Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (which we are also playing in December!), Dominic Sessa’s breakthrough performance turned him into a sudden indie darling, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s heartbreaking turn became one of the year’s most celebrated, earning her an Oscar at the 2024 Academy Awards.
We love our Film Club Members, and our monthly exclusive Film Club Members Only screenings are just one of our ways of thanking them for their support! Not a Film Club Member yet? CLICK HERE to join our growing family of fellow film-lovers and Frida Cinema supporters!
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Across our entire staff, if there was a movie we could all agree on being the definitive holiday season masterpiece of the past 25 years, it would be Todd Hayne’s Carol.
Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (are you kidding me?), the film is set in 1950s New York, and follows a shy young shopgirl and aspiring photographer, who becomes captivated by Carol Aird, an elegant woman trapped in a failing marriage. As the two grow closer, their connection deepens into a forbidden romance that threatens Carol’s custody battle for her daughter. Forced onto a road trip that becomes both an escape and a reckoning, the women must decide whether their love can survive the scrutiny and constraints of their time.
In the years since its release, Carol has become a pop-cultural touchstone that perfectly blends a holiday-season staple and queer cinematic landmark. For pop culture purposes, it’s perhaps the most GIFed slow-burn romance of the internet age. Its influence can be seen all over the rise of prestige LGBTQ+ storytelling across screens big and small. Some movies change your life forever.
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Our dearly beloved Director Of Operations, Martin, is leaving us at the conclusion of this year, so we wanted to give him a proper send-off by letting him program four of his favorite films. The penultimate film in his series, entitled The Last Dance, is Ulrike Ottinger’s Ticket Of No Return!
This first film in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy follows an unnamed woman (frequent Ottinger collaborator Tabea Blumenschein) as she drinks her way through Berlin’s various watering holes. Underscoring the scrutiny society applies to “women behaving badly,” with a literal Greek chorus questioning her actions, Ottinger’s film practically predicts the double standard imposed on late 20th-century female artists like Courtney Love.
Premiering at Cannes Critics Week in 1980 and today one of the artist’s most celebrated films, Ticket of No Return proves that “the New German Cinema didn’t live and die with Fassbinder” (Village Voice).
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Join OC Pride, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and the entire Muppet gang as they bring Charles Dickens’ beloved tale to life with The Muppet Christmas Carol!
Charles Dickens’ classic story gets the Muppet treatment as Ebenezer Scrooge (an extremely committed Michael Caine), a cold-hearted miser, is visited on Christmas Eve by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. With help from Kermit’s Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy’s Emily Cratchit, and a chorus of singing, joke-cracking Muppets, Scrooge is shown the impact of his greed — and given one last chance to open his heart and embrace the spirit of Christmas.
A little bit of Muppet mayhem is exactly what every holiday season needs. Don’t miss your chance to see this one on the big screen!
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Celebrate this holiday season with Greta Gerwig’s joyful, heart-full adaptation of Little Women from 2019. Starring an A+ cast of Saoirse Ronan, Florenge Pugh, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, and Timothee Chalamet, it’s the perfect seasonal escape on the big screen.
The film follows the four March sisters—Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth—as they navigate love and heartbreak in Civil War–era New England. Told across intertwined timelines, the film traces their journey from spirited girlhood to adulthood as they fight to define their own futures.
Bring your friends, bring your family, and ring in the holidays with a film that celebrates sisterhood and the power of following your own path. Little Women has been adapted many times, but Gerwig’s version is the best interpretation yet, and might just be her magnum opus as director.
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Our Page To Screen series is closing out the year with legendary director Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, based on the book by Nancy H. Kleinbaum.
Set in an elite New England prep school in 1959, the story follows a group of students whose lives are upended by the arrival of John Keating (Robin Williams, in one of his most beloved performances), an English teacher who urges them to think for themselves, seize the day, and find their own voices in a world determined to quiet them.
Few films capture the spark of youth and the power of a great teacher like Dead Poets Society. All these years later, it remains a moving tribute to the teachers who changed us along the way.
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Our dearly beloved Director Of Operations, Martin, is leaving us at the conclusion of this year, so we wanted to give him a proper sendoff by letting him program four of his favorite films. The second film in his series, entitled The Last Dance, is the 2018 film An Elephant Sitting Still, from director Hung Bo.
In the Northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longer-for escape from the situation they find themselves in.
A gloomy, nihilistic mediation on life, An Elephant Sitting Still is a programmer’s dream to be able to play on the big screen. Thank you again to Martin for picking this under-seen downward spiraling masterpiece.
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