Evil takes many forms.
Play It By Fear (@playitbyfear.33) continues their brand new Sunday Scaries series by delving into the dark world of Robert Eggers’ 2016 New England nightmare The VVitch.
In 1630, a farmer relocates his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of a forest where strange, unsettling things happen. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, each family member’s faith, loyalty and love are tested in shocking ways.
Never too far from our programming line, The VVitch has stood the test of time over the past ten years, forever changing the landscape of Indie Horror as we know it.
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Just added: Robert Daniels, the Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com, will be giving a pre-recorded introduction before each screening of The Annihilation Of Fish!
Robert has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reverse Shot, Screen Daily, and the Criterion Collection. He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto to the Berlinale and Locarno. He lives in Chicago, and is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association
The final film in our Three By Charles Burnett series is his charming 1999 drama The Annihilation Of Fish, now restored in a beautiful 4K restoration!
Lynn Redgrave plays Poinsettia, a former housewife with an imagined lover in the form of 19th-century composer Giacomo Puccini. She moves into a Los Angeles boarding house with an energetic landlady (Margot Kidder) where she meets a Jamaican widower, Fish (James Earl Jones), who has recently been released from a mental institution despite his continued battles against unseen demons. In the face of personal challenges and differences, the couple grows together and begins to discover new things about themselves and the nuances of love and happiness.
Released in partnership with Milestone Films, restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
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William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is coming to The Frida Cinema as part of our Page To Screen series!
Based on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, the timeless story follows orphan Heathcliff, as he is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.
This adaptation remains one of the definitive screen versions of Brontë’s novel and a landmark of Golden Age Hollywood romantic drama, admired for its visual poetry and enduring performances from Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier.
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A slow-burning masterwork of the early 1990s, To Sleep With Anger is a singular piece of American mythmaking that we are honored to include as part of our Three By Charles Burnett series!
In a towering performance, Danny Glover plays the enigmatic southern drifter Harry, a devilish charmer who turns up out of the blue on the South Central Los Angeles doorstep of his old friends. In short order, Harry’s presence seems to cast a chaotic spell on what appeared to be a peaceful household, exposing smoldering tensions between parents and children, tradition and change, virtue and temptation.
Interweaving evocative strains of gospel and blues with rich, poetic-realist images, To Sleep with Anger is a sublimely stirring film from an autonomous artistic sensibility; a portrait of family resilience steeped in the traditions of African American mysticism and folklore.
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Just added: Frida Board Member/Trivia Night host Atalia Lopez (Chapman University) and Porter Gilberg (Frida Director of Development) will join us Monday 2/9 at 8:00PM for a pre-screening presentation on the film’s literary history and cinematic influences. An interactive discussion will take place immediately following the film.
Celebrate 40 years since the release of Donna Deitch’s swooning and sensual first film, Desert Hearts!
Groundbreaking upon its 1986 release, the 1959-set film, an adaptation of a beloved novel by Jane Rule, stars straitlaced East Coast professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver), who arrives in Reno to file for divorce, but winds up catching the eye of someone new, the younger free spirit Cay (Patricia Charbonneau). From there, the movie becomes a touching and slow seduction that unfolds against the breathtaking desert landscape.
With smoldering chemistry between its two leads, an evocative jukebox soundtrack, and vivid cinematography by Robert Elswit, Desert Hearts beautifully exudes a sense of tender yearning and emotional candor.
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A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s marvel Millenium Mambo is coming back to The Frida as a Volunteer Of The Month pick courtesy of the amazing Shreshta!
Thee film stars Shu Qi (The Assassin) as an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards Jack Kao’s suave, sensitive gangster. Structured as a flashback to the then-present from the then-future of 2011, it’s a transfixing trance-out of a movie, drenched in club lights, ecstatic endorphin-rush exhilaration, and a nagging undercurrent of ennui.
Thank you to our friends at Kino Lorber for the stunning 4K restoration of this evocative portrayal of youth and Taipei at the turn of the millennium.
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Just added: the Executive Director of CAIR-LA, Hussam Ayloush, will be speaking after the 12:45PM screening on Saturday, February 7th!
All That’s Left Of You is Jordan’s official selection to these 98th Academy Awards, and has just been nominated for an upcoming Indie Spirit Award! We are bringing the film to The Frida for a week-long run!
In the Occupied West Bank of the 1980s, a Palestinian teenager is swept into a protest that changes the course of his family’s life. Reeling from its aftermath, his mother, Hanan, shares the story that led them to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, this epic drama traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, revealing not only the scars of displacement, but the unbreakable spirit of survival.
Writer-director Cherien Dabis stars alongside Saleh Bakri in this sweeping, epic tale of a family’s love and struggle across generations in post-Nebka Palestine. All That’s Left Of You premiered at Sundance and played in Telluride. Garnering acclaim and strong awards buzz as one of the year’s best dramas, a ‘must-see’ for theatrical audiences.
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Charles Burnett’s cinematic masterpiece Killer of Sheep, magnificently restored in 4K with sparkling picture and sound, is kicking off our Three By Charles Burnett series! The film evokes the everyday trials, fragile pleasures, and tenacious humor of blue-collar African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Burnett made it on a minuscule budget with a mostly nonprofessional cast, combining keen on-the-street observation with a carefully crafted script.
The story centers on Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a slaughterhouse worker battling exhaustion and disconnected from his wife, his children, and himself. Stan and his neighbors struggle just to get by, let alone get ahead. Only the kids, leaping from roof to roof, seem to achieve a mobility that eludes their elders. Burnett’s film focuses on everyday life in Black communities in a manner rarely seen in American cinema – combining lyrical elements with a starkly neorealist, documentary-style approach that combines deep nuance with riveting simplicity.
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You sold it out, so we’re bringing it back! Join us for a couple additional screenings of the Drew Barrymore-starring Cinderella adaptation: Ever After.
Danielle, a vibrant young woman, was forced into servitude after the death of her father when she was a young girl. Danielle’s stepmother, Rodmilla, is a heartless woman who forces Danielle to do the cooking and cleaning, while she tries to marry off the eldest of her two daughters to the prince. But Danielle’s life takes a wonderful turn when, under the guise of a visiting royal, she meets the charming Prince Henry.
Over the past 25 years, Ever After has earned a reputation as the definitive grounded, feminist retelling of Cinderella. Many viewers, especially our beloved Millenial moviegoers, consider it the best non-animated version of the fairy tale ever put to screen.
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In this twisty thriller, a tennis coach at a tropical resort finds himself at the center of a missing persons mystery. Tom (Sam Riley) teaches tennis during the day and parties at night. When an enigmatic tourist (Stacy Martin) arrives, Tom is unable to shake the feeling he has met her before. Tension and attraction grow, until her husband (Jack Farthing) disappears, and the police suspect Tom.
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