Kirsten Dunst in the 2006 movie “Marie Antoinette,” playing at the Academy Museum on Aug. 13.
(Leigh Johnson / Columbia Pictures)
The 10 movies you need to see in L.A. this month
- Share via
John Carpenter discusses his most radical movie, Sofia Coppola presents “Marie Antoinette” with star Kirsten Dunst, and Todd Haynes goes glam in 35mm. September is a good month to live in Los Angeles and go to the movies. The repertory scene continues to offer up an avalanche of riches, with local programmers outdoing themselves.
These screenings feature special guests, archival prints and other surprises. Consider our guide a handy catch-all of the best repertory screenings of the month, reserved for older films playing in unique circumstances.
Whatever your plans may be, change them for the following 10 events.
Planning your weekend?
Stay up to date on the best things to do, see and eat in L.A.
Showing Movie Movies
‘Barry Lyndon’ (Academy Museum, Sept. 3)
Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Stanley Kubrick’s movies have a way of accruing luster as the years go by. That still doesn’t account for how this 1975 epic of a gambler (Ryan O’Neal) exploiting the Napoleonic Wars to his own personal advantage has risen to the top tier of his work, generally reserved for space babies and hedge mazes. It may just be that this is an incredibly gripping, well-paced story, sparked by humor and the occasional duel to the death. Or that it looks absolutely gorgeous. It should be trumpeted more, but the Academy Museum will be playing a brand new print on 35mm and even if you think you know this one backward and forward, there’s no substitute for watching it in a sold-out crowd of first-timers.
“Barry Lyndon” is playing Sept. 3 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
“Barry Lyndon” is playing Sept. 3 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
‘Amadeus’ (Academy Museum, Sept. 6)
Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Los Angeles Philharmonic Association)
Unquestionably the greatest of the ’80s Oscar best-picture winners, director Miloš Forman’s adaptation of playwright Peter Shaffer’s tale of genius and jealousy succeeds so robustly because it has the good sense to puncture its own sense of grandeur. Mozart is, very often, a buffoon — and let’s praise the bewigged Tom Hulce, often overshadowed by F. Murray Abraham’s scheming Salieri, a villain for the ages. But when these immortal melodies and off-the-cuff revisions spurt out like liquid gold, you can hear how intimidating competing with Mozart must have been. You’ll be in a theater that seats a thousand. Everyone will be rapt.
“Amadeus” is playing Sept. 6 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
“Amadeus” is playing Sept. 6 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
‘Stranded in Canton’ (Whammy, Sept. 7)
Experimental film Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Eggleston Artistic Trust)
William Eggleston redefined color photography through the richness and vibrancy of his images, though his only film as director was shot in 1974 but never screened until 2005. It finds him working with an early black-and-white portable video system fitted with special lenses, capturing a woozy clash between the old, weird America and a modernizing South via a series of booze-soaked and drug-addled hang-outs that are both captivating and unsettling. Eggleston’s film will be getting its first L.A screening in more than 15 years at the new space for Whammy Analog Media, presented in partnership with 7th House and Los Angeles Filmforum.
“Stranded in Canton” is playing Sept. 7 at Whammy Analog Media. Tickets here.
“Stranded in Canton” is playing Sept. 7 at Whammy Analog Media. Tickets here.
Thoughts on our guides? Let’s hear it!
We’re gathering feedback on how our guides can better serve you and help you find the next great restaurant, hike or activity in Los Angeles.
‘Velvet Goldmine’ (Vidiots, Sept. 7)
Musical Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Peter Mountain / Miramax Films)
With an investigative structure drawn from no less than “Citizen Kane,” Todd Haynes uses 1970s glam rock to explore identity and how we become the people we are. Though Haynes initially wanted to make a movie more directly drawn from the life of David Bowie (he was denied and had to go fictional), the abstracted end result somehow feels fuller and more inventive, getting at the heart of the transformative essentials of teenage fandom and its trace elements that linger into adulthood. This rare 35mm screening at Vidiots should feel like a sexy, inviting party, while Haynes’ take on the 1950s romantic melodrama, 2002’s “Far From Heaven,” will screen at the Academy in 35mm on Sept. 23.
“Velvet Goldmine” is playing Sept. 7 at Vidiots. Tickets here.
“Velvet Goldmine” is playing Sept. 7 at Vidiots. Tickets here.
‘Red Desert’ (New Beverly, Sept. 10, 11)
Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Cineriz)
It can be argued that no director — certainly none as formally severe as Michelangelo Antonioni — had a muse as necessary as Monica Vitti. She is the angel that makes his movies watchable. Vitti is exquisitely neurotic; your heart breaks for her loneliness. She opens the film’s floodgates of emotion. Usually, 1964’s “Red Desert” is discussed as a landmark in color: There are stories about how they painted whole fields of grass some delicate shade to please Antonioni’s imperious vision. That kind of praise strokes the ego of filmmakers and their sycophants. Let this movie be the women’s picture it truly is. Vitti survives a lot of obnoxious men and factory smoke. It’s an experience that doesn’t really work at home; go with a crowd.
“Red Desert” is playing Sept 10, 11 at the New Beverly Cinema. Tickets here.
“Red Desert” is playing Sept 10, 11 at the New Beverly Cinema. Tickets here.
‘Marie Antoinette’ (Academy Museum, Sept. 13)
Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Leigh Johnson / Columbia Pictures)
This could easily become the screening event of the year, with writer-director Sofia Coppola and star Kirsten Dunst in person for a 20th anniversary 4K screening of what has arguably become the filmmaker’s defining work. That’s a long road from when the movie was roundly rejected following its initial premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. In subsequent years, “Marie Antoinette” has been enthusiastically embraced by audiences for its spiky, energetic depiction of the young French queen amid the suffocating finery of Versailles and gilded world of royal protocol. It has become an allegory for the pressures of being a young woman in any era.
“Marie Antoinette” is playing Sept. 13 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
“Marie Antoinette” is playing Sept. 13 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
‘Dr. Strangelove’ (Aero, Sept. 19)
Comedy Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images)
The movie’s frantic apocalyptic tone seems to be making a comeback: The trailer for the new Tom Cruise film “Digger” is clearly made by a Kubrick obsessive and our real-life news brings us ever closer to dark nuclear absurdities. It’s never a bad time to return to this one, but this screening will be special: Author Jonathan Lethem and filmmaker Jason Reitman will mix it up in a panel moderated by none other than former Times film critic Kenneth Turan. TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz will also be on hand to speak to the film’s lasting resonance. Even with all this guest firepower, though, the star is and always will be Kubrick, to whom Mankiewicz’s latest edition of his podcast, “The Plot Thickens,” is devoted.
“Dr. Strangelove” is playing Sept. 19 at the Aero Theatre. Tickets here.
“Dr. Strangelove” is playing Sept. 19 at the Aero Theatre. Tickets here.
‘Heaven Knows What’ (Brain Dead, Sept. 19)
Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
Arielle Holmes, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie, making the movie “Heaven Knows What.”
(Eleonore Hendricks / Radius)
Though they have for now gone their separate ways, brothers Josh and Benny Safdie remain distinctive as artifacts of the push-and-pull of their combined sensibilities: a detailed sense of reality, a romantic sweep and a showman’s flair. Based on the unpublished memoir of the film’s electrifying star, Arielle Holmes, depicting her life as a young drug addict caught up in a toxically self-destructive relationship with another junkie (Caleb Landry Jones), the film is a terrifying cautionary tale told with operatic panache. “Heaven Knows What” also stands as a tribute to sweetly comic actor Buddy Duress, who died from an overdose in 2023.
“Heaven Knows What” is playing Sept. 19 at Brain Dead Studios. Tickets here.
“Heaven Knows What” is playing Sept. 19 at Brain Dead Studios. Tickets here.
‘Beginners’ (Vidiots, Sept. 20)
Comedy-Drama Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Andrew Tepper / Focus Features)
In this loosely autobiographical story by writer-director Mike Mills, Ewan McGregor stars as an L.A. graphic designer dealing with the recent death of his father, played by an Oscar-winning Christopher Plummer as a gay man who came out late in life. Mills began exploring his own idiosyncratic cinematic language in a movie that deepens the connections between culture and emotions, how objects and events become imbued with meaning, creating films that feel discursive, essayistic and genuinely vulnerable. Presented as part of “An Evening With Mike Mills” at Vidiots with the filmmaker present, the event will also include a showing of Mills’ 2021 film “C’mon C’mon.”
“Beginners” is playing Sept. 20 at Vidiots. Tickets here.
“Beginners” is playing Sept. 20 at Vidiots. Tickets here.
‘They Live’ (Academy Museum, Sept. 27)
Sci-Fi Action Tickets
-
- Share via
-
(Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images)
The special guest of the evening, director John Carpenter, has wonderful anecdotes about all his movies, which he made during a time of risk-taking. But when it comes to “They Live” — yes, the 1988 movie about secret sunglasses that let you see the aliens among us — something extra comes alive in him, something that still stings. That’s partly due to the movie being a last stand, a moment when Carpenter summoned all his strength and capital to make a radical film that’s taken years to find its audience. It’s a political movie, like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and it hones the filmmaker’s widescreen minimalism to its sharpest edge. Go and encourage him to make another one.
“They Live” is playing Sept. 27 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
“They Live” is playing Sept. 27 at the Academy Museum. Tickets here.
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
No matching entries.
Please reset filters to see all entries.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Most Read in Movies
Top
