Every week, Marquee L.A. highlights exceptional films, screenings, and film events in the Greater Los Angeles area. Click here to sign up for future email newsletters.
This week, director Mary Lambert is honored at a UCLA retrospective at the Billy Wilder, complete with in-person appearances from Ellen Barkin and Jodie Foster, as well as Lambert, for a screening of Siesta. The Egyptian has a four-day slate honoring the late Rutger Hauer, and Quentin Tarantino’s personal vision of 1969 Hollywood plays the New Beverly in 35mm.
SIESTA (1987)
dir. Mary LambertAugust 4, 7:00 PM at the Billy Wilder TheaterThe Billy Wilder has a great “Weekend with Mary Lambert” program coming up, with a double-feature of her two Pet Sematary films — plus this very rare screening of arthouse erotic thriller Siesta, Lambert’s first feature, in which Ellen Barkin plays a skydiver whose fractured memory is as hazy as the film’s narrative. Barkin will appear at this screening, along with co-star Jodie Foster and Lambert, editor Glenn Morgan, and executive producer Julio Caro. That lineup makes this one of August’s most essential film events. Rutger Hauer Remembered
August 8-11 at the Egyptian TheatreRutger Hauer, who died on July 19, could humanize nearly any character, whether murderous android, romantic fantasy figure, or a blinded veteran-turned-swordsman. Throughout his five-decade career, one of the great and consistent pleasures of watching the Dutch actor at work was the potential to be surprised by the ways in which he could add robust dimension with little more than a shrug or a glance. Beyond Fest and the American Cinematheque are honoring Hauer with four days of screenings of his 1980s American genre work. There’s a DCP of Blade Runner and 35mm prints of a string of his 1980s genre work, including Ladyhawke, The Hitcher, Blind Fury (the aforementioned film about a blind swordsman, loosely based on the 17th Zatoichi movie, Zatoichi Challenged) and one later film, 2011’s Hobo With a Shotgun. 35mm/DCP | INFO Los Angeles Latino International Film FestivalRuns through August 4 at the TCL Chinese and TCL Chinese 6In the second year of its relaunched state, the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival boasts a slate of 17 features — more than half of which are directed by women — highlighting the breadth of voice and experience in the Latinx community. Founder Edward James Olmos, who got the fest off the ground in 1997, directs the closing night feature, The Devil Has a Name. For a more in-depth guide to the festival, check out the L.A. Times feature on the lineup. ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)dir. Quentin TarantinoPlays Through August 31 at the New Beverly CinemaQuentin Tarantino’s vision of late-‘60s Hollywood — a hangout movie about two friends coming to terms with a changing world, in which things get truly crazy — is seductive and wonderfully divisive. It’s playing on 35mm at a few theaters, such as the Vista and the new Alamo Drafthouse, and on 70mm at the Cinerama Dome. The 35mm projection at the director’s own theater, the New Beverly, is particularly good, however, and supported by some unique pre-show elements. Alternately, you can catch the show at the Bruin in Westwood Village, a theater which (spoiler alert!) has some significant screen time in the movie. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) / SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (1941)dir. Billy Wilder / Preston SturgesAugust 2, 7:30 PM at the Aero TheatreThe Aero reopens after being closed for most of July for a handful of improvements. This double feature of masterpieces by Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges — two very different movies about broken Hollywood dreams — is a great way to get back to the theater. The Aero will also be doing midnight shows, starting with the original Child’s Play on August 2. VAGABOND (1985)dir. Agnès VardaAugust 2, 5:50 PM at the Norton Simon MuseumThis is among Agnès Varda’s greatest films. It opens on a dead body, then rolls back, episodically and occasionally in documentary style, through the last weeks of the woman’s life. The exceptional Sandrine Bonnaire plays this woman, Mona, who is never truly known. Her identity steadily dissipates even as she reveals much about those who come into contact with her. (Speaking of Varda, on August 6, her earlier film, Cleo From 5 to 7, plays at the Skirball Cultural Center.) WALKER (1987)dir. Alex CoxJuly 27, 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine ArtsRepo Man filmmaker Alex Cox blended mid-‘80s attitudes and period storytelling to create this nasty satire of democratic imperialism. Ed Harris stars as a heavily fictionalized version of American mercenary William Walker who, funded by a wealthy industrialist and backed by hired guns, seizes control of Nicaragua. Cox litters the movie with anachronisms (a helicopter and computer monitors are seen in this 1850s-set story, for instance) to make explicit links between past and present. Walker sees the director in his most furiously anarchic mode. |
