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: precise and just slightly dangerous.
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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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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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Magnolia, a love letter to coincidence and a cry for connection, is the kind of maximalist, go-for-broke filmmaking that few dare to attempt—and no one does like Paul Thomas Anderson.
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.
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A titan of repertory cinema, Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece Heat, is back at The Frida Cinema as part of our Val Kilmer Tribute series!
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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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