Last year, I introduced an adventures-in-moviegoing-style column to the Year in Review series. This year, I christen it At the Movies, in tribute to my favorite writer and critic, Roger Ebert. In April 2025, it will be 12 years since his death, but he is never far from my mind or my heart, and whether consciously or not, I carry him with me every time I walk into the theater.
In the spring, I read Matt Singer’s essential Opposable Thumbs, which recounts the history of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert as professional rivals entered into a mutually beneficial pact that evolved into a unique brotherhood. It also tells the tale of Siskel and Ebert™, the cultural force that would define the way generations watched, discussed, and thought about movies. It gets my highest Last Cinema Book Club recommendation. (Remember when I tried to make that a thing? Perhaps I’ll bring it back.)
I wrote the following in this piece last time around: “We’ll start in my neighborhood, a scant 10-minute walk from my front door, at the Highland Park Theater, itself the subject of closure rumors. As of now, it survives.” From the time I published those words, it would survive just another 51 days. The 100-year-old theater closed Feb. 29, 2024.
Community chatter about potentially reopening it started pretty much immediately but died out quickly after. It sits vacant, the marquee marked by graffiti. Most days, you still can see inside. Despite the end-of-February closure, for a while, someone continued to update the posters in the lobby. The last such update came with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which released May 10. That poster still hangs, and there is something haunting about that ghost of a theater forever advertising a film it never got to show and probably never will.
There are many such haunted houses in the city, the most prominent of which is probably the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. One of the COVID pandemic’s many economic casualties, the dome just sits there at that vacant intersection, waiting for some hero of the cinema to come save it. It supposedly was set for a 2025 reopening, but the last anyone heard about that was in 2023. I’ll give it a couple more years, then start the Last Cinerama Dome Standing Fund and buy it myself, if necessary. Quentin Tarantino can’t save them all.
And, that’s as fine a transition as any to a May 22 screening of Pulp Fiction at Tarantino’s own New Beverly Cinema. The theater hosted a week of showings to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the film’s triumphant debut at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. Though I had seen the film bordering on 50 times, I had never seen it on the big screen. It was like seeing it with fresh eyes. Everything that is radical and inventive and shocking about that film – the kinds of rough edges that get sanded away by cultural ubiquity – felt new and exciting again.
A couple weeks before, I caught Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low at the New Beverly, as well. It’s hardly breaking new ground to call it one of the great director’s best. I look forward to Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reinterpreting and remixing the premise for our modern age with a film that is slated to come out in 2025.
Staying on that side of town, the programming at the Academy Museum continues to impress, as one might expect. A couple days before Pulp Fiction at the New Bev, I visited the Academy for a screening of the Telugu megahit RRR. This was my fourth viewing but first in a theater. It is a spectacle that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible with the loudest speakers, both of which describe the Academy Museum to a ‘T.’ The crowd was raucous and lively, cheering and hooting and hollering. Super fans compared résumés – ‘I’ve seen it 15 times in theaters’; ‘I’ve seen it 20!’ I had a wonderful time, but once is enough, thanks.
On the other hand, a couple days after my birthday in July, the Academy screened a film I could never tire of watching. The Addams Family is on a short list of films that potentially could lay claim to the title of movie I have seen the most times in my life. My best guess puts it right at the top, just ahead of Addams Family Values. It was shown as part of the Branch Selects program, in which a different branch of the Academy selects a movie each week that represents the best of its craft. This particular screening was hosted by the Makeup and Hairstylists branch and was preceded by an introduction by Kevin Haney, one of the film’s makeup artists.
Seeing it on the big screen was a reminder of what a miracle that film is. It could have been a cash grab, a relatively untapped piece of IP, generated to prey on Boomer nostalgia. In that respect, it worked and was a massive hit. But, it is also a beautifully crafted piece of art when it didn’t need to be. The depth and texture of the set design. The inventiveness of the camera moves. Of course, that wonderful makeup. Those performances. A C+ movie would have been a hit. These artists went for the A+ and the extra credit. Their reward: a legacy as a multigenerational cultural touchstone.
From one gothic treat to another, my annual sojourn to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for its Halloween programming consisted of a night under the stars watching modern horror anthology classic Trick ‘r Treat. Director Michael Dougherty made a surprise appearance before the screening to talk a little about the difficulty in getting the film made. He seemed genuinely moved to be speaking to a thousand-plus fans who made the trip out to demonstrate their love for his creation.
The programming of the American Cinematheque is a highlight of any year of moviegoing. I didn’t make it out to the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica as much as might have liked, though advanced screenings of Nickel Boys and Nightbitch were particular highlights. Likewise, I still have not attended a film at the newly reopened Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, but I expect to rectify that in 2025. On the other hand, I found myself at the Los Feliz 3 often for many of the Cinematheque’s wonderful offerings.
In July, I caught an early showing of Sean Wang’s excellent coming-of-age film Dìdi. Wang and cast members Izaac Wang and Joan Chen hung out for a truly insightful Q&A afterward. In October, I attended a special double bill of Guy Maddin’s Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton and My Winnipeg, part of a tribute to the filmmaker in honor of his latest release, Rumours. Maddin spoke afterward and was exactly as rye, prickly, and brilliant as I had always hoped.
Finally, in December, the Cinematheque presented a series of Steve McQueen films around the release of Blitz. I attended a late-night showing of Lovers Rock, widely considered the crowning achievement of the filmmaker’s monumental Small Axe. You’ll hear no argument from me, and it was an absolute privilege to see this Amazon-produced pandemic release on the big screen, where it belongs.
There were other special experiences this year such as catching writer-director-star Lake Bell and cast at the Eagle Theatre for a 10th anniversary screening of her excellent debut, In a World; a very early screening of the magnificent Sing Sing at the Alamo Drafthouse with a live-streamed cast Q&A afterward; and the Alamo’s Bob Dylan Costume Party attached to an advanced showing of A Complete Unknown.
But, I’d like to close with some thoughts on three movies that reminded me of what I love so much about the cinema. I saw a lot of blockbusters this year and probably caught more movies in IMAX than in any previous year that I can recall. Dune Part II, Twisters, Alien: Romulus, etc. Spectacle is alive and well on the big screen. I support that fully. I am a great enjoyer of popcorn and soda and explosions and stunning vistas and grand images projected to unfathomable heights.
This year, however, what I appreciated most were the movies with the opposite intent. If cinema is the only church I attend – and it is – then occasionally, I’d like that church to be a place of reflection and meditation, of peace, calm, and tranquility. So much of life is noise and distraction that to find two hours, more or less, to be unburdened, unbothered, and untethered feels like a necessary balm for the spiritual wounds we endure.
Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, Ryuske Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light could rightly be classified as slow cinema, but I prefer to think of them as the cinema of mindfulness. There is no room for split attention. You are either fully in or fully out. These films insist that you be present in the moment, that you engage your mind, body, and spirit, and that you give yourself over to these filmmakers and their worlds. It’s a rare and humbling thing when it happens, and it speaks to everything I want from the cinema. Here’s to another great year at the movies.
