February Screening Picks (LA)
A farewell tour of my favorite LA movie theaters
As I pack up my apartment for my imminent cross-country move, I’ve been thinking about all the quintessentially LA places that I want to go before leaving town. I’ll be back for work and to visit friends, of course, but I’m a sentimental person and I’ve lived in LA for a decade and I want to give my time here a proper send off. Aside from my beloved Musso & Frank, pretty much all of the places on my must-visit list are movie theaters. Over the last 10 years, I’ve been lucky enough to experience LA turn into a genuinely fantastic city to see films in. It makes me emotional to think about all of the movies I’ve seen here that have shaped me as an artist and as a person, from Beau Travail at Cinefamily (now Braindead) to Meek’s Cutoff at The Egyptian to Barry Lyndon at the Academy, to name a few.
I love movies, I love LA, and I love my friends… & I love seeing movies in LA with my friends. Even though we never met, David Lynch felt like an LA friend to me, always a comfort & source of insight whether through his films, his thoughts on meditation, or his morning weather reports. Turning on KCRW every morning to catch Lynch’s ever-optimistic weather dispatches made living in LA feel like magic. I’ve been re-listening to them every morning since he passed — here’s one from a few years ago today:
Anywhoo 🥲, below are a couple screenings I’m hoping to add to my mini-farewell-tour of my favorite LA theaters. As our friend David L. would say, “Everyone, have a great day!”
2/10, 4PM & 10:15PM - White Material (35mm) @ The Egyptian - Claire Denis hive, assemble! One of my most profound LA moviegoing experiences was seeing a print of Beau Travail for the first time at Cinefamily (RIP), so it feels fitting to close out my decade of living in LA with another Denis print. Nervy, risk-taking, gripping. I love her.
2/10, 7:30PM - Spellbound (35mm) @ The Academy Museum - I just tried rewatching a terrible digital copy of this, but realized there’s no point in watching Hitchcock’s visually vibiest movie in 480p. Here’s my chance to atone by seeing it properly on 35mm.
2/14, 7PM - I Am Love (35mm!) @ Braindead - The first movie I ever truly obsessed over, picking apart scenes shot by shot to try and figure out why it had such a profound effect on me. I remember seeing the poster outside my hometown movie theater and stopping in my tracks, breath knocked out of me by Tilda staring right into camera, her family’s faces obscured by the looping white titles. You never forget your first love, & this movie is mine.
2/14, 2PM & 7:30PM - The Young Girls of Rochefort / Wild At Heart (35mm) double feature @ The Academy Museum - My dream Valentine’s Day this year may be a cheeky Jacques Demy matinee, some time at LACMA, a drink at the Academy Museum bar, and then a 35mm Lynch print. Just sayin…
2/15, 7:30PM - The Matrix (in Dolby Vision 4K) @ The Academy Museum - It always cracks me up when theaters program Movies For Boys the day after Valentine’s. I don’t know what “Dolby Vision” is, but I never got to see The Matrix in theaters and am dying to. Will I drive all the way to the Academy Museum 2 days in a row? Only time will tell.
2/20, 7PM - The Annihilation of Fish (35mm) @ Los Feliz 3 - I’ve never seen this previously hard-to-find Charles Burnett film, which I believe was recently restored by the UCLA TV & Film Archive. Burnett is my favorite LA filmmaker, & I’m really excited to experience a new-to-me film of his.
2/20, 7:30PM - Touki Bouki @ Vidiots - A bona fide classic that’s rarely programmed in LA. Bone dry sense of humor, perfect 70s wardrobes, & an incredible time capsule of the streets of post-colonial Dakar — A VIBE.
2/21, 2PM - Out of Sight (35mm) @ The New Beverly - OUT OF SIGHT IS SO FUN TO SEE IN THEATERS. If I hadn’t just rewatched this in January I would 100% be going to this. Inexplicably electric chemistry between J. Lo & George Clooney. One of my favorite Soderbergh movies. A bonus that it includes a clever homage to one of my favorite movies of all time, Don’t Look Now.
2/22, 2PM - ET The Extra Terrestrial (35mm) @ The New Beverly - Listen. It’s an understatement to say that it’s been a horrible start to the year. We’re all tired, and sad, and the only thing that will make us (me) feel better on the weekend I move out of a city that I love is to watch a nice print of ET at a kids-friendly matinee screening.