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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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 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.
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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!
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Closing our the August portion of our Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema series is Demon Pond! The story follows a Tokyo academic that stumbles into a remote village with a strange obsession: the locals ring a bell daily to prevent a mythical dragon from rising from the nearby pond and flooding the region. What begins as eccentricity becomes uncanny, as the boundaries between folklore and madness begin to blur.
Adapted from Kyōka Izumi’s 1913 play and reimagined with a theatrical, dreamlike visual language by New Wave master Masahiro Shinoda, this is a ghost story told in the language of myth and ritual. Part parable, part fever dream, Demon Pond is less about monsters and more about what it means to believe—and what it costs to stop.
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!
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Join us for a special one-off screening of indie darling Guacamole Yesterdays, and stick around after the show for an in-person Q&A with director Jordan Noel and writer/producer Hudson Phillips!
After a devastating separation, cartoonist Ames (Sophie Edwards, This World Alone) begins therapy with a specialist (Adetinpo Thomas, Hawkeye) who employs an experimental technology that enables Ames to relive and reshape the memories of her relationship with her husband, Franklin (Randy Havens, Stranger Things). As Ames revisits moments from their first date to their final goodbye, the boundaries between memory and reality start to dissolve. To avoid losing herself completely, she must confront the truth she’s been desperately avoiding.
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Our annual Segerstrom at the Frida series showcases films that inspired upcoming stage adaptations at OC’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts! Join us as our 2025 series continues with 2004 tearjerker The Notebook!
Directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook tells the decades-spanning love story of Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel McAdams), two young lovers from different social worlds who fall deeply for one another during a summer in the 1940s. Their bond is tested by class divides, war, and the passage of time, but through it all, Noah remains steadfast in his devotion. Framed by an elderly man reading their story from a notebook to a woman in a nursing home, the film explores memory, endurance, and the transformative power of love. Highlighted by lush cinematography and sweeping emotion, The Notebook has become a hallmark of early 2000s romantic cinema.
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Our annual Segerstrom at the Frida series showcases films that inspired upcoming stage adaptations at OC’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts! Join us as we present a couple of encores of Baz Luhrmann’s eye-popping 2001 musical Moulin Rouge!
A fever dream of romance, music, and heartbreak in turn-of-the-century Paris, Moulin Rouge! stars Ewan McGregor as Christian, a penniless writer who falls madly in love with the dazzling courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman), star performer at the titular famed cabaret. Set against the backdrop of the bohemian underworld and bursting with mash-ups of modern pop songs reimagined through Luhrmann’s hyper-stylized lens, Luhrmann’s vision is a sensory whirlwind of color, musica, and passion that blends theatrical spectacle with melodramatic tragedy, as love and art collide under the threat of greed and ambition. Winner of the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, the film was also nominated for Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Makeup, Best Sound, and Best Picture of the Year.
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This year’s Segerstrom at The Frida series kicks off with Some Like it Hot, Billy Wilder’s hilarious 1959 screwball comedy that follows two down-on-their-luck musicians, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), who witness a gangland massacre and flee Chicago disguised as women in an all-female band on their way to a Florida resort. On the run, they become Josephine and Daphne, traveling with the enchanting Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a singer with dreams of marrying a millionaire. Romantic entanglements and mistaken identities spiral out of control in a Florida resort, culminating in what many consider to be one of the funniest comedies of all time.
See the movie. then experience the brand new Tony and Grammy Award-winning stage musical! Running October 7 – 19 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, experience the “glorious, toe-tapping, razzle-dazzling” (Deadline) Some Like it Hot! Visit scfta.org/events/2025/some-like-it-hot for info and tickets!
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The final film in our Technicolor Summer series reaches the celestial with A Matter of Life and Death—a visionary romance that floats between worlds, from war-torn Earth to the halls of a fantastical afterlife, in one of the most inventive films ever made.
David Niven stars as Peter Carter, a British RAF pilot who miraculously survives a doomed jump from his burning plane—only to fall in love with June (Kim Hunter), the American radio operator who heard his final words. But Peter was meant to die, and when the otherworldly authorities realize their clerical error, he must plead his case for life in a cosmic courtroom, where love itself becomes the ultimate argument.
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, this genre-defying masterpiece blends romance, fantasy, and philosophical inquiry with dazzling visual artistry.
In the early 1930s, the 3-strip Technicolor process was introduced to audiences, inviting them to experience a world dripping with vibrant saturation for the very first time. The Technicolor Summer series ranges from familiar classics to rarely-screened gems all Summer long!
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