June Screening Picks (LA)
I had an ill-advised 4pm cold brew before writing this so apologies if the prose is particularly all over the place.
New releases (& limited re-releases) to catch in theaters this month: The Phoenician Scheme, Materialists, 28 Years Later, F1, Hot Milk, 7 Walks With Mark Brown, Dogtooth (4K), Happiness1 (4K), Brokeback Mountain
JUNE SCREENINGS (LA)
6/7, 7PM - Le Cercle Rouge (35mm) @ The New Beverly - Yves Montand, Alain Delon, gorgeous cinematography, JEWEL HEIST — a pretty perfect movie IMO. I’m researching a heist feature at the moment and have been meaning to revisit this French classic…wish I was in town to see it on 35mm.
6/8-6/12 - Caught By The Tides @ Los Feliz 3 - Many pals & favorite writers (cc
) have said this is their favorite film of the year thus far. Jia Zhangke’s 2018 feature Ash is Purest White really got under my skin after a screening at ICA in London, and I can’t wait for this new film that sounds even more ambitious — using fiction and doc footage shot over the course of the last two decades.6/9, 7PM & 10PM - Paddington & Paddington 2 @ Los Feliz 3 - Can’t really imagine a better way to spend an evening than watching P1 & P2 b2b. Everyone’s favorite bear is back as a “marmalade chaser” to counter program this month’s Bleak Week series.
6/12, 8PM - Bad Education (35mm) @ Braindead - Any shitty day is pretty much guaranteed to improve by seeing one of Pedro Almodóvar’s movies in theaters. I rewatched Bad Education not too long ago and was floored by how structurally complex it is without sacrificing any emotion or taking you out of the world of the film.
6/15, 3:30PM - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Director’s Cut) @ Vidiots - I rewatched Close Encounters on a date a couple years ago and he kept talking during all the good bits. Maybe fly solo for this one for maximum Spielbergian emotional immersion.
6/17, 7:30PM & 9:40PM - All About My Mother & Talk To Her (35mm) @ The New Beverly - Recommending THREE Almodóvar movies this month and I better not hear y’all complaining. The real world is a mess and I want to crawl into Almodóvar’s head and never leave. During the lead up to the 2016 election I saw a Pedro movie every night at Cinefamily and it saved me. All About My Mother & Talk To Her are in my top 5 favorite Almodóvar films for sure, and make a perfect double feature. When Talk To Me came out I kept thinking it was a rerelease of Talk To Her and was disappointed every time I realized it was a horror movie I would absolutely never see.
6/18, 1PM & 7:30PM - Notorious @ The Egyptian - Screening as part of The Egyptian’s Hitchcock series (I also highly recommend the under-watched Shadow of a Doubt)! Notorious is the only film to stay in my Letterboxd 4 since I started using it. As I wrote in my piece on Notorious, Babygirl, and romantic thrillers:
“I’ve always loved romantic thrillers. The best of them protect a romantic core while being clear-eyed about the injustices and hypocrisies of the world at large, like Hitchcock’s alcoholic, noir-laced thriller Notorious, where Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant play spies engaged in a steamy game of cat-and-mouse in the ruins of a world shattered by WWII. The magic trick of that film – and of the genre in general – is that in spite of its critical eye toward the cruelties of the world at large, it preserves a seed of hope for its damaged heroes: that by allowing love to pierce the heavy veil of world-weary cynicism, we can break our self-destructive cycles and start over. Love (and lust) are what save Bergman and Grant, rather than endanger them. There’s a radical, evergreen call to action concealed at the heart of the romantic thriller: to strive — in spite of real and present danger — to understand and embrace The Other, and understand ourselves better in turn.”
6/18, 4:30PM - It Happened One Night @ Vidiots - The perfect rom com. Really just gets better every time you watch it. Ever since American audiences were cheated out of a theatrical run for the new Bridget Jones movie earlier this year, I’ve been longing to see more rom coms in theaters.
6/28, 6PM - The Beguiled @ Braindead - Insane choice to omit the source material’s Black female character Mattie aside, this is one of Coppola’s best-crafted films. I love how she blocks her female ensemble cast, communicating their shifting dynamics with carefully-choreographed looks and gestures. One of the more truthful films about how groups of women communicate.
6/29, 7PM - House of Flying Daggers (35mm) @ Vidiots - Get there early and sit up front to avoid the classic Vidiots subtitles issue…though I think you could probably just vibe through this movie on visuals alone.
xoH
It's not summer without Spielberg.