Free Members-Only Screening: Pacific Rim
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 pm
7:30 pm | Includes conversation with director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro
Writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s first film in seven years is another in his unique and personal blends of fantasy, science fiction and action. Set in the near future, Pacific Rim stars Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost, the leader of a band of resistors to the hungry and ominous creatures that have erupted from a fissure in the Pacific Ocean’s floor. These horrors have engaged humans in a war that has lasted for years and basically left humans near defenseless. Mankind’s only hope is the resuscitation of a strategy that has been to known to have limited success and is by now nearly obsolete: the Jaeger. These massive and outdated robots were mankind’s first line of defense until rendered useless. The Jaeger, a war robot so gigantic and complex that it requires two pilots, is about to return to action with a pair of new pilots at its helm—the skilled Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and the untried Mako (Rinko Kikuchi). After several projects that failed to see fruition, del Toro marshaled his will and stamina to helm an all-out action/monster spectacle, which he wrote with Travis Beacham—the supporting cast includes newcomer to del Toro films Charlie Day and the director’s mainstay, Ron Perlman.
2013/color/125 min./DCP | Scr: Travis Beacham, Guillermo del Toro; dir: Guillermo del Toro; w/ Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikiuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman and Diego Klatenhoff
Ticketing Information
Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members can reserve their tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18. | Tickets are free. | Limit two tickets per membership | Proof of member status is required to reserve tickets. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
Spotlight on Bruno Dumont
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 pm
7:30 pm
A philosophy professor turned filmmaker, France’s Bruno Dumont has created one of the most controversial filmographies of recent decades. His stark, gnomic films owe a debt to the sobriety and sparseness of Robert Bresson. Precisely rendering a puzzling modern world rife with bestial desires, surreal enigmas, sublime vistas, and deafening silences, Dumont’s films offer a primal vision of humanity as an eternal roundelay on the edge of the void. His characters, almost always portrayed by non-professional actors, are outliers to authority or morality who abide only to their own, often paradoxical and mystical, perspectives to dangerous ends.
Hors Satan (Outside Satan) | 7:30 pm | Los Angeles premiere
Dumont distills his enigmatic vision of humanity’s struggle with transcendence into a minimalist, hypnotic allegory set amid the rough-hewn, windswept Cote d’Opale. An unnamed and gruff vagrant, with a double-barrel shotgun and a pale goth-tinged waif at his side, proves a fateful presence for this rugged hamlet. Is he ridding the village of evil? Or is he evil itself? Is he performing miracles or senseless violent crimes? Devoid of a musical score, Hors Satan is completely attuned to the rustling ambient sounds of its settings and characters. Rife with ravishing open-air panoramas shot by longtime Dumont cinematographer Yves Cape (also responsible for the crystalline look of Claire Denis’ White Material and Gianni Amelio’s The First Man). Hors Satan is “a sight to behold with an elemental formal vocabulary mainly comprised of wide establishing shots (a strata of horizontal landscapes) and close-ups (faces and hands) that conspire in an entrancing monumental minimalism bathed in the sort of mystical crepuscular and early-morning light famously featured in Dutch genre painting. It’s [Dumont’s] most formally precise film… With a striking refinement and reduction of his palette, and a sly sense of humour, Dumont has reached a new level in his filmmaking.”—Andrea Picard, Cinema Scope.
2011/color/110 min./Scope/35mm | Scr/dir: Bruno Dumont; w/ David Dewaele, Alexandra Lematre.
La Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus) | 9:30 pm
Dumont’s directorial debut was one of the most acclaimed first films of the past fifteen years, receiving the prestigious Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Jean Vigo prize and other accolades. Set in a rural, Northern backwater (Bailleul, Dumont’s hometown) similar to the coastal hamlet of Hors Satan, this menacing feature follows a gang of ne’er do well bikers, chiefly epileptic skinhead Freddy, as they loaf over a listless, searing summer. Dumont’s style—contemplative, elliptical, clinical—is as fully formed as is his expansive vision of a world at once contemporary in its banalities and timeless in its perils and rhythms.
1997/color/96 min./Scope/35mm | Scr/dir: Bruno Dumont; w/ David Douche, Marjorie Cottreel, Kader Chaatouf, Sébastien Delbaere
Ticketing Information
$5 for Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members. Members of these three groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18. | Limit two tickets per membership | | Price includes both films on double-bill. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
$7 for LACMA members, students with valid ID and seniors (62+); $10 for the general public. Members of these four groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Thursday, June 27. | Two ticket limit. Price includes both films on double-bill. $5 admission for second film only available at the door. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org.
PLEASE NOTE: Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after purchase, or on the night of the screening any time before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
Free Screening: Spotlight on The New York Times’ Op-Docs
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 pm
7:30 pm | Includes a conversation with filmmakers Heidi Ewing, Jessica Yu, Roger Ross Williams and Casey Neistat and Op-Docs producer/curator Jason Spingarn-Koff
Co-Presented by The New York Times Film Club
A selection of the finest short videos from The New York Times provocative and popular Op-Docs section will be shown this evening, and award-winning directors of chosen films will be in attendance. In November of 2011, The New York Times created the Op-Docs series, an exciting video addition to the paper’s Opinion/Editorial section. Op-Docs accepts and commissions short video pieces from directors with a specific and involving point of view, each of which is subjected the Times‘ rigorous fact-checking process. One of the earliest additions to the collection was a short by Academy Award®-winning director Errol Morris. Later films have ranged from straightforward single-person subject films to performance segments to inventive experimental shorts, by directors including Laura Poitras, Casey Neistat, Heidi Ewing and Academy Award®-winners Jessica Yu and Roger Ross Williams. Documentary filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff (2010′s Life 2.0) is the producer and curator of the series, and will be in attendance along with Op-Docs directors.
Ticketing Information
Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members can reserve their tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18. | Tickets are free. | Limit two tickets per membership | Proof of member status is required to reserve tickets during advance reservation period. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
New York Times Film Club members must RSVP to www.nytfilmclub.com for this screening.
LACMA member and general admission tickets can be reserved starting at 5 pm on Thursday, June 27. | Tickets are free. | Two ticket limit | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
Live Read, directed by Jason Reitman
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 25 at 5:00 pm
8:00 pm
Writer-director Jason Reitman brings a special one-time only summer edition of his Live Read series to Film Independent at LACMA. Reitman’s series, which showcases a classic screen script read live on stage by a group of actors performing the material together for the very first time, will receive a singular twist in this July edition.
Ticketing Information
$15 for Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members. Members of these three groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 25. | Limit two tickets per membership. | Live Read tickets available online only via Eventbrite at liveread.eventbrite.com. No phone or walk-up sales will be available for this event. | Live Read tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA on the day of the event from 11 am until the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
$25 for LACMA members, students with valid ID and seniors (62+); $40 for the general public. Members of these groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Thursday, June 27. | Limit two tickets. | Live Read tickets available online only via Eventbrite at liveread.eventbrite.com. No phone or walk-up sales will be available for this event. | Live Read tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA on the day of the event from 11 am until the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
PLEASE NOTE: Live Read tickets available online only via Eventbrite at liveread.eventbrite.com. No phone or walk-up sales will be available for this event. Live Read tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA on the day of the event from 11 am until the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
Up in Smoke
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 pm
7:30 pm | Includes a conversation with co-screenwriter and cast member Cheech Marin
After having conquered stages and records with their comedy act, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong—better known as Cheech and Chong—turned to what was, in 1978, the final frontier: film. And in doing so, they invented a new subgenre: the stoner comedy. In Up in Smoke, which they wrote and their manager, Lou Adler, directed, a pair of stoners, Man (Chong) and Pedro (Cheech), out to escape the oppressive hand of the establishment and, more importantly, their parents, hit the road in search of freedom. And, later, their aimless voyage in a van made of the miracle substance “fiberweed” takes Man and Pedro on a mythic search for sex, weed, food, weed, rock and roll and, of course, weed. Smoke has the amiable, shaggy attention span of its intended audience, and Cheech and Chong weave some of their most popular comic routines into the fabric of the… narrative.
The movie stays on track through some crafty conceits, such as Tom Skerritt as a paranoiac Vietnam vet, Stacy Keach as an even more tightly wound cop looking to nab Pedro and Man on whatever charges he can find (or invent out of whole cloth). Their fervor slyly adds momentum to the proceedings, as well as the intensity from everyone else, from Strother Martin to Edie Adams, as respectable folk trying to get Pedro and Man stand up straight, at the very least. Though Smoke didn’t initially find critical approbation, it quickly attracted an audience, becoming one of ’78′s biggest hits. And the film managed to garner some critical praise; in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote, “this piece of stoned-hippie foolishness, starring the comedy team Cheech and Chong, who wrote the script, is fairly consistently funny.”
1978/color/86 min./Panavision/35mm | Scr: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong; dir: Lou Adler; w/ Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Strother Martin, Edie Adams, Tom Skerritt, Stacy Keach
Ticketing Information
$5 for Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members. Members of these three groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18. | Limit two tickets per membership. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
$7 for LACMA members, students with valid ID and seniors (62+); $10 for the general public. Members of these four groups can purchase tickets starting at 5 pm on Thursday, June 27. | Two ticket limit | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org.
PLEASE NOTE: Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after purchase, or on the night of the screening any time before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
Free Screening: Prince Avalanche
Member tickets on sale Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 pm
7:30 pm | Includes a conversation with writer/director David Gordon Green and cast member Emile Hirsch
Writer-director David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche is a unique take on road comedy—a comedy about a road crew, focusing on two guys, Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) working on painting lines on a road instead of finding themselves by traveling on it. But their side-by-side work, and slow-and-steadily increasing irritation with each other, becomes a journey of self-discovery of the type most often found in films about fellow travelers. Using the 2011 Icelandic comedy Either Way as source material, on Avalanche, Green burrowed his way back into the type of low-fi, low-budget and plot-averse moviemaking that gave him his start—films such as his stellar 2000 feature film directorial debut George Washington—rather than the movie star garrulous quality of his studio films, such as Pineapple Express and Your Highness. Adapting the Icelandic Way allowed Green the opportunity to focus on the emotional theme that serves as a specialty for the writer/director—the modern masculine ego, with all of its insecurities and pettiness. The struggle to be heard without having one’s feelings hurt informs the interplay between Alvin and Lance. Avalanche made its debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; at its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, Green won the Silver Bear for Best Director in his first trip to that event with a film.
2013/color/94 min./Scope/DCP | Scr/dir: David Gordon Green; w/ Emile Hirsch, Paul Rudd.
Ticketing Information
Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members can reserve their tickets starting at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18. | Tickets are free. | Limit two tickets per membership | Proof of member status is required to reserve tickets. | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
LACMA member and general admission tickets can be reserved starting at 5 pm on Thursday, June 27. | Tickets are free. | Two ticket limit | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org
PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.
