Valentine’s Day is for movie lovers, plus the week’s best films in L.A.
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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week wraps up another season of The Envelope podcast. In our latest episode, Yvonne Villareal spoke with Coralie Fargeat, writer-director of “The Substance,” while I spoke with Brady Corbet, director and co-writer of “The Brutalist.” As a bonus episode, Yvonne also spoke with Colman Domingo for “Sing Sing.”
And Glenn Whipp caught up with “Anora” writer-director Sean Baker on Tuesday night, following the film’s wins at the DGA and PGA Awards last weekend. Though Baker’s “The Florida Project” had earned an Oscar nomination for Willem Dafoe, Baker did not necessarily see “Anora’s” tale of a Brooklyn stripper as more accessible to a wider audience.
“There was not one moment when we were making ‘Anora’ that I was like, ‘I’m doing this for a mainstream audience,’” Baker said. “To tell you the truth, it was very like, ‘I’m making this for the people who like my crazy stuff. I’m making this for the people who like “Red Rocket.” I’m going to be giving it to them.’”
“Except for when we were leaving for Cannes and you said, ‘This is going to be a nice, relaxing trip,’” Samantha Quan, Baker’s wife and producing partner, reminded him. “You thought it was too commercial, so it wasn’t going to win anything.”
“I also thought it was too funny,” Baker replied. “Historically, comedies haven’t won too many awards there.”
“Anora” ended up winning the Palme d’Or.
Show your love on Valentine’s Day
The venues of Los Angeles have really outdone themselves this Valentine’s Day, screening a wide array of movies for lovers and the lonely alike.
The Academy Museum will have an afternoon screening of Jacques Demy’s 1967 musical “The Young Girls of Rochefort” starring Catherine Deneuve and her sister Françoise Dorléac — a candy-colored confection that was the follow-up to “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”
In the evening, the museum will follow up with a 35mm screening of a print from the Joe Dante, Jon Davison, Tim Hunter Collection at the Academy Film Archive of David Lynch’s 1990 Palme d’Or winning “Wild at Heart” starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as lovers on the run.
Mezzanine will host the West Coast premiere of a new 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 2001 “In Praise of Love,” an essayistic collage of storytelling and imagery. Reviewing the film for The Times when it was originally released, Manohla Dargis wrote, “Godard has always made films that are as thrilling for their ideas and ideals as for the sheer beauty of their images; the difference here is that for the first time in years he’s more interested in turning us on than in turning us off. He really did think movies could change the world and he still does.”
Brain Dead Studios will have a 35mm screening of Luca Guadagnino’s 2010 international breakthrough, “I Am Love,” starring Tilda Swinton, followed by Karyn Kusama’s 2009 cult horror-comedy “Jennifer’s Body,” starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.
The Gardena Cinema will be showing John Waters’ 1990 rock-and-roll juvenile delinquents musical “Cry-Baby,” starring Johnny Depp.
Vidiots will show Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s 1995 “Party Girl,” starring Parker Posey. The event will feature Von Scherler Mayer and music supervisor Bill Coleman, refreshments of falafel and babganouj (on-theme for the movie) and entertainment and karaoke with drag performer Anya Body.
The American Cinematheque will show Michael Curtiz’s 1942 “Casablanca” at the Aero and a late show of Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 “Only Lovers Left Alive” at the Aero.
Earlier in the evening, the Los Feliz 3 will be showing James L. Brooks’ “Broadcast News” with an introduction by Esther Zuckerman, who will also be signing her new book, “Falling in Love at the Movies: Rom-Coms From the Screwball Era to Today,” before the screening.
Nitrate Festival
Among the many ways in which Los Angeles is among the world’s best cities for moviegoing are the multiple venues capable of projecting nitrate film, the film stock that was discontinued because it was so flammable and dangerous. The American Cinematheque is launching another edition of its Nitrate Film Festival that will showcase how beautiful and wonderful these rare prints are.
The series begins tonight with a screening of William Dieterle’s 1948 romantic drama “Portrait of Jennie,” starring Joseph Cotton and Ethel Barrymore. Screening from a print from the George Eastman Museum collection, the event will be introduced by the museum’s collection manager, Deborah Stoiber.
On Saturday, there will be a screening of Vincente Minnelli’s 1944 “Meet Me in St. Louis” from a print from the Library of Congress that will be introduced by Vanessa O’Neil, granddaughter of the film’s star, Judy Garland. Also on Saturday will be Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1950 “Gone to Earth” in a print from the George Eastman Museum, also introduced by Stoiber.
Later titles in the series include Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 “Rope,” in a print from the Library of Congress, and Jack Conway’s 1930 remake of “The Unholy Three” (notable as Lon Chaney’s only talkie) from a print from the Museum of Modern Art.
Most of the films screen more than once, so catch them when you can.
Points of interest
2 by Michael Roemer
Mezzanine will feature the West Coast premieres of 4K restorations of two films by Michael Roemer. On Tuesday, there will be a screening of 1982’s “Pilgrim, Farewell” at Brain Dead Studios and on Thursday, a screening of 1976’s “Dying” will unspool at 2220 Arts + Archives.
Roemer is still alive at age 97, and the recent revival of his work — thanks to a series of releases by the Film Desk — has been such an exciting discovery. Originally premiering at the Venice Film Festival and broadcast on PBS, “Pilgrim, Farewell” stars Elizabeth Huddle and Christopher Lloyd as a couple coming to terms with her terminal cancer.
“Dying,” also broadcast on public television, is a documentary that follows three people at the end of life. A film that presents a rare, intimate, up-close view of death somehow also becomes about what it means to be alive.
Ida Lupino
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is launching a two-night tribute to Ida Lupino, the British-born actor who became a Hollywood star and transformed herself into a filmmaker. Tonight will see a 35mm screening at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater of 1953’s “The Bigamist,” directed by and co-starring Lupino from a screenplay written by her then-husband, Collier Young. In the film, Lupino plays a woman in Los Angeles who strikes up a relationship with a traveling salesman (Edmond O’Brien) without knowing he already has a wife (Joan Fontaine) in San Francisco.
Author Alexandra Seros will be on hand Sunday to sign copies of the book “Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur: From Film Noir to the Director’s Chair.” There will also be screenings of three shorter works Lupino made for television, including her appearance on the series “This Is Your Life,” a new digital preservation of a satirical sitcom “Mr. Adams and Eve” and a restoration world premiere of a 30-minute noir written and directed by Lupino.
In other news
‘No Other Land’
The Oscar nominated documentary “No Other Land” continues to expand around the country, being self-released by its filmmaking team. Directed by an Israeli-Palestinian collective of Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, the film captures the struggles of the people of the West Bank area known as Masafer Yata to hold onto their homes in the face of military occupation, while Abraham and Adra form a friendship that crosses seemingly unbreachable divides.
In his review of the film, Tim Grierson wrote, “‘No Other Land’ examines an unconscionable and ongoing atrocity and simply lets it play out in all its unresolved anguish. Few recent documentaries seem so committed to insisting viewers sit in their despair without any glimmer of release or catharsis. … ‘No Other Land’s’ sense of grim futility is very much the point — it’s what the strong count on in order to suppress those who oppose them. Anyone who sees this devastating film may share in that sense of hopelessness. But we can no longer say we had no idea what was going on.”
I spoke with Adra and Abraham about the challenges of making the film and getting it seen by the right people. Abraham noted, “I have this feeling that the people who really need to see the film in the United States are those who maybe have a different political opinion than me and Basel. And I think these are the people who are not necessarily the ones going to the film festivals. We want to reach those people specifically.”
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