Fans of atmospheric horror and psychological dread are in luck! The next film in our Hallucinations series is 1971’s Let’s Scare Jessica To Death!
Recently released from a mental institution, Jessica moves to the countryside with her husband and a friend, hoping for peace and a fresh start. Instead, she finds whispers in the orchard, strangers in the lake, and the creeping suspicion that either she’s being haunted—or she’s slipping back into madness. Directed by John Hancock, scored with ghostly minimalism, and photographed like a faded dream, this is New England horror at its most hushed and haunting.
Released in 1971 to little fanfare and growing cult reverence, it remains one of the most quietly devastating and psychically destabilizing horror films of its era.
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”. Plante will introduce each film with some behind-the-scenes history and critical context. With Hallucinations, The Frida Cinema wants to build a communal space for lovers of Weird Cinema. 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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From the scorched deserts of California to the inner depths of one man’s ambition comes There Will Be Blood, a monumental American saga—and one of the greatest films of the 21st century, now getting a few encores as part of our One Banger After Another: The Films Of Paul Thomas Anderson series.
Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a titanic, Oscar-winning performance as Daniel Plainview, a silver miner turned oilman whose thirst for power burns brighter than the derricks he erects across the West. As towns rise and morals fall, Plainview wages war—against the land, against the Church, and eventually, against his own humanity. Across from him: Paul Dano, pulling double duty as twin brothers and spiritual adversaries, locked in a violent dance of faith and greed.
Shot by Robert Elswit in apocalyptic beauty and scored with nerve-jangling dread by Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood is a film that doesn’t just depict America’s creation myth—it bleeds it.
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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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Oliver Stone’s The Doors: The Final Cut is a psychedelic firestorm—a feverish vision of the ‘60s rock myth, driven by rebellion, poetry, and the endless search for something beyond the veil. But at the center of it all is Val Kilmer, vanishing into the role of Jim Morrison with such uncanny depth, voice, and electricity that even bandmates couldn’t tell where the frontman ended and the actor began.
Following Morrison’s meteoric rise—from UCLA film student to rock god to haunted wanderer—the film pulses with chaos, charisma, and the tragic gravity of a man burning too bright, too fast. It’s a swirling mix of surreal imagery, concert ecstasy, and Stone’s trademark intensity, backed by iconic music that still rattles the bones.
Come celebrate another one of Kilmer’s most celebrated performances loud on the big screen!
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Licorice Pizza closes out our Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective at The Frida—young, wild, and stumbling into love.
The year is 1973. The streets of the San Fernando Valley are paved with shag carpet, gas lines, and impossible dreams. And in the middle of it all: Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), child actor and hustle king, and Alana Kane (Alana Haim), adrift and electric, unsure of what she wants—except, maybe, everything.
Licorice Pizza is PTA at his loosest and most lovingly chaotic—a meandering and utterly sincere coming-of-age epic that captures the awkwardness of growing up and falling in love. With a supporting cast that includes Bradley Cooper as a deranged Jon Peters, Benny Safdie as a local politician, and every storefront in The Valley as a supporting character, the film is a mixtape of growing up in Southern California.
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Come see Paul Thomas Anderson’s elegant masterpiece, Phantom Thread, as it was meant to be seen: on the big screen!
Set in the haute-couture world of 1950s London and wrapped in lace and poisonous glances, Phantom Thread is a love story—though maybe not the kind you bring home to mother. Daniel Day-Lewis (always brilliant) is Reynolds Woodcock, a genius dressmaker obsessed with beauty, routine, and control. Enter Alma (Vicky Krieps), a quiet waitress who upends his world—not with chaos, but with her own willpower, as graceful and unrelenting as his.
What begins as muse and artist becomes something far more unsettling—a power struggle played out through fashion, food, and the sharp edge of devotion. Jonny Greenwood’s lush, aching score swells like a secret, and Anderson’s camera moves like hands through fabric.
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s shaggy dog detective story in flip-flops and a denim jacket, Inherent Vice adapts Thomas Pynchon’s psychedelic noir into a deliriously funny trip through the fogged-out tail end of the 1960s.
Joaquin Phoenix is Doc Sportello—private eye, deeply stoned romantic, and very possibly the last good man in Los Angeles—as he stumbles through a tangled conspiracy involving real estate developers, surf saxophonists, runaway girlfriends, and something called the Golden Fang.
With a killer cast (Josh Brolin! Katherine Waterston! Owen Wilson! Reese Witherspoon! Martin Short!), a dreamy Jonny Greenwood score, and PTA’s most straight-up goofy film to date, Inherent Vice is a smokey ode to things slipping away one step at a time.
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A film about power, persuasion, and the impossible hunger for meaning, The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson’s haunting American odyssey—equal parts postwar character study and cosmic riddle.
Joaquin Phoenix is Freddie Quell, a drifting, volatile Navy veteran untethered in the wake of WWII. Philip Seymour Hoffman is Lancaster Dodd, a charismatic cult leader who sees something in Freddie—something primal, dangerous, maybe divine. Their connection is…combustible.
Shot in stunning 65mm and lit like a dream slipping into a nightmare, The Master floats through smoky banquet halls, ocean liners, and desert retreats, all while unspooling big questions with no easy answers. It’s a film of gestures, glances, and eruptions—a push and pull between control and chaos.
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Back by popular demand, Punch-Drunk Love—Paul Thomas Anderson’s strangest, sweetest, and most unexpectedly explosive film, is back at The Frida Cinema for one night only. Starring Adam Sandler in the performance of his career, this isn’t just a love story—it’s a pressure cooker disguised as a rom-com, wrapped in harmonium chords and shimmering blue light.
Sandler is Barry Egan, a painfully lonely novelty toilet plunger salesman with seven sisters, a hair-trigger temper, and a secret stash of pudding cups he’s collecting to hack a frequent flyer program. Enter Lena (Emily Watson), and suddenly, Barry’s life teeters from implosion to unlikely redemption—while being chased by phone sex scammers and Philip Seymour Hoffman at full “shut up shut up shut up” intensity.
Punch-Drunk Love is PTA at his most deceptively small, strangely romantic, and vibrantly unhinged.
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