Join us for some special weekend encores of Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s love letter to coincidence and a cry for connection, is the kind of maximalist, go-for-broke filmmaking that few dare to attempt.
Simultaneously epic and intimate, Magnolia (1999) is a film that feels like a storm—swirling with regret, redemption, rage, love, and the deep, deep need to be heard. Across one long day in the San Fernando Valley, lives collide: game show kids, dying fathers, broken lovers, estranged children, and one motivational speaker with a heart full of rot.
Featuring an all-timer ensemble—Tom Cruise (in an Oscar-nominated role), Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Melora Walters, Jason Robards, and more—Magnolia is a symphony of raw performances, tracking shots, Aimee Mann songs, and unexpected grace.
Read More
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.
Read More
Our second Volunteer Of The Month screening comes courtesy of the amazing Ashley, as she has picked Strange Days, now celebrating its 30th anniversary!
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and dropped into theaters at the tail end of 1995, Strange Days imagined the future as 1999—and it still feels prophetic. A blistering mix of cyberpunk noir, apocalyptic paranoia, and visceral street-level urgency, the film follows Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a black-market dealer of “playback” clips—full-sensory VR experiences recorded straight from the mind—who stumbles onto a murder, a conspiracy, and a revolution in the making.
Set during the final 48 hours of the millennium in a decaying, riot-torn Los Angeles, Strange Days explodes with Y2K anxiety, racial tension, police brutality, and techno-addiction—all filtered through Bigelow’s kinetic, hyper-physical direction and a pounding industrial score.
Read More
Celebrate 25 years of Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love with a brand new 4K restoration and a post-screening nine minute short film entitled In The Mood For Love 2001.
In The Mood For Love: Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past 25 years of cinema.
In The Mood For Love 2001: Initially conceived as one third of a triptych about food, In the Mood for Love was expanded into a stand-alone feature that won immediate recognition as a modern-day classic. Another third—intended as the “dessert,” as Wong Kar Wai has put it—was, until now, only screened during his masterclass at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Now available in wide release for the first time, In the Mood for Love 2001 demonstrates the director’s masterful ability to generate palpable atmosphere and striking characterizations on a miniature canvas—with In the Mood for Love stars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk once again providing the sizzling chemistry— evoking the mystery of transient, unexpected connections in the modern city through his inimitable romantic touch.
Read More
Celebrate coming of age in America with a double feature of American Graffiti and Dazed And Cofused as part of of our Fireworks At The Frida series! Before there were cell phones, apps, or curfews that mattered, there were nights like these—fast cars, cheap beer, perfect soundtracks, and too many big questions for one summer to answer.
American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas)
One last night before college, 1962: four friends hit the streets of Modesto, California, chasing girls, chasing cars, and wondering what comes next. George Lucas’ nostalgic cruiser is the original coming-of-age night-out movie—an ode to golden oldies, neon diners, and growing up when you’re not quite ready to.
Dazed and Confused (1993, dir. Richard Linklater)
It’s the last day of school in 1976, and the teens of Austin, Texas are ready to get high, get loud, and maybe think about the future… later. Richard Linklater’s laid-back classic is a stoned love letter to aimless youth, cruising backroads, and those nights that feel like they’ll never end. Featuring Matthew McConaughey in his breakout role and one of the all-time great rock soundtracks.
There will be a 15 minute intermission between both films. One ticket gets you full access to two movies!
Read More
Celebrate coming of age in America with a double feature of Dazed And Confused and American Graffiti as part of of our Fireworks At The Frida series! Before there were cell phones, apps, or curfews that mattered, there were nights like these—fast cars, cheap beer, perfect soundtracks, and too many big questions for one summer to answer.
Dazed and Confused (1993, dir. Richard Linklater)
It’s the last day of school in 1976, and the teens of Austin, Texas are ready to get high, get loud, and maybe think about the future… later. Richard Linklater’s laid-back classic is a stoned love letter to aimless youth, cruising backroads, and those nights that feel like they’ll never end. Featuring Matthew McConaughey in his breakout role and one of the all-time great rock soundtracks.
American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas)
One last night before college, 1962: four friends hit the streets of Modesto, California, chasing girls, chasing cars, and wondering what comes next. George Lucas’ nostalgic cruiser is the original coming-of-age night-out movie—an ode to golden oldies, neon diners, and growing up when you’re not quite ready to.
There will be a 15 minute intermission between both films. One ticket gets you full access to two movies!
Read More
Celebrate the birthday of visionary director Jean Cocteau as we present a special run of Beauty and the Beast!
Born July 5th, 1889, Jean Cocteau was a poet, painter, playwright, and filmmaker whose imagination knew no borders—and no film better captures his singular vision than La Belle et la Bête (1946), a masterpiece of surreal romanticism that turns a fairy tale into living myth.
Starring Josette Day as the gentle, radiant Belle and the great Jean Marais as the tortured, leonine Beast, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is a marvel of shadow, texture, and cinematic illusion. Made just after WWII on a shoestring budget and with raw ingenuity, the film conjures real magic without special effects. This isn’t Disney–it’s real cinema magic.
Read More
July’s Volunteer Of The Month pick is Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, courtesy of River!
A meticulously crafted tale of murder, theft, pastry, poetry, and polite panic, The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson at his most whimsical, melancholic, and madcap. Set in a fictional Eastern European republic between the wars, the film charts the adventures of legendary concierge Gustave H. (a pitch-perfect Ralph Fiennes) and his loyal lobby boy Zero as they’re swept into a plot involving a stolen painting, a greedy family, prison breaks, fascists, and a disappearing world of civility.
Blending Anderson’s signature pastel-perfect aesthetics with a screwball crime caper and a poignant elegy for lost elegance, the film boasts an ensemble bursting at the seams: Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Keitel, Léa Seydoux, Jude Law, and—of course—Bill Murray.
Read More
You sold it last month, so Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera (2004) is coming back for a one-night-only encore!
A lavish, operatic fever dream of unrequited love and pure spectacle, this bold adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic stage musical transforms the beloved Broadway production into a grand cinematic spectacle bursting with candlelit catacombs, crashing chandeliers, and soaring ballads. Starring Gerard Butler as the tortured Phantom, Emmy Rossum as the angel-voiced Christine, and Patrick Wilson as the dashing Raoul, Schumacher’s take is a maximalist and unapologetic in a way only he could do!
Boasting a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film was received poorly upon its initial release. Come see it on the big screen and judge for yourself!
Read More
The final film in our Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema series is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 masterwork After Life!
In After Life, the recently deceased arrive at a waystation between this world and the next. Their task? To choose a single memory from their lives to take with them into eternity. A small team of counselors helps each soul re-create that memory on film, allowing them to move on—leaving everything else behind.
With a mix of actors and real interviews, After Life blurs the line between fiction and documentary, imagination and memory. The result is a quietly transcendent film that contemplates the meaning of life not through grand events, but through small, deeply human moments.
Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema is a curated 12-film trip through the evolution of Japan—from the quiet post-war resilience of the 1940s all the way to the radical reinventions of the 1990s. Each Monday this July-September, we will explore a new facet of this incredible nation’s cinematic journey throughout the 20th century! All films will be presented in their original Japanese language with English subtitles!
Read More
