June 2017 events calendar for Los Angeles

The masters of al fresco rooftop movie viewing are returning for their third season of screenings on the Montalbán's rooftop, and we have the exclusive details. Known for excellent film choices and a steady supply of snacks and booze, Rooftop Cinema Club is your snazzy, comfortable and less stressful alternative to other outdoor movie screenings. Taking full advantage of the Montalbán rooftop's beautiful city view, RCC promises to offer some of the most unique and incredible movie-going opportunities for film lovers throughout 2017. You don't even need to bring your own blanket or camping chair—Rooftop Cinema Club provides you with your very own comfy lawn chair, as well as blankets on request for the ultimate cozy experience. And instead of listening to the movie over loudspeakers, you'll get a set of wireless headphones so you never have to miss a word. The series is packed with a wide selection of audience favorites, kicking things off in April with Blade Runner, and carrying on with classics like Back to the Future and recent hits, including Moonlight.  The first batch of tickets is on sale now—click below to purchase general admission tickets for $19 or brand-new Rooftop Love Seats for $29. Doors open at 6pm each night and screenings begin at sunset. See you on the rooftop!

A major statement on the subject of civilization in free fall, writer-director Trey Edward Shults’s nerve-shredding domestic thriller joins the rarified company of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road and the handful of intimate post-apocalyptic scenarios that puncture through to our deepest fears. Shults, whose first feature, Krisha (2015), turned the crucible of one Thanksgiving weekend into a hair-raising psychodrama, again burrows deep into the idea of families in extremis. This time, he’s got two clans, but you wouldn’t call them friendly neighbors: Caked in grime and clad in biohazard masks, they’re citizens of a ruined world that’s forgotten how to trust. Confidently, the movie tosses you into the deep end with no time to process: In an unspecified woods, an old man covered in black boils is wheelbarrowed to an unmarked grave, shot to death by crying caretakers and incinerated in a pit. He leaves behind an adult daughter, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), her bearded, intense husband Paul (Joel Edgerton, uneasy with his rifle and heartbreakingly sympathetic) and their 17-year-old son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). In the flickering lantern light of the movie’s electricity-free universe—Drew Daniels’s cinematography works in a gorgeous, ash-etched palette—they have survival down to a science. Their fortified home, covered in wood planks and lined with plastic sheeting, has only one double-locked entrance, the red door a warning to anyone who might approach. Yet someone does appr

Before seeing Wonder Woman, I had a sinking feeling. It’s been more than a decade (and Halle Berry’s 2004 bomb Catwoman) since a female star headlined a superhero film and saved the world. I had visions of middle-aged male studio execs huddled together in a conference room googling feminism and group-thinking how to make a lady-hero. Would the result feel like a two-and-a-half-hour tampon commercial? Actually, no. Wonder Woman is the real deal, a rollicking action adventure in the tradition of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a fully functioning sense of humor and the year’s most deliciously evil baddie. The film has a wobbly opening on a women-only island where hot chicks in fabulous ancient Greek sandals appear to have wandered in from a Dolce & Gabbana campaign. This is Themyscira, where the Amazon tribe has lived in peace for thousands of years. Former Miss Israel Gal Gadot (Gisele in the Fast & Furious franchise) is Diana, their princess, who was sculpted from clay and brought to life by Zeus. The island’s tranquility is broken by the arrival of a cocky U.S. soldier played by Star Trek’s Chris Pine. The actor knows he’s here as eye candy and does his spin on the usual smoking-hot sidekick with self-deprecation. The plot is functional. It’s World War I and Pine is a spy who has discovered that the Germans’ evil chemist, Maru (Elena Anaya)—a.k.a. Doctor Poison—is cooking up a dirty bomb to wipe out Allied soldiers on the front. So Diana volunteers to save humankind, strapp

It isn't summer in LA until the first cemetery screening brings hoards of movie-lovers to Hollywood Forever, toting folding chairs, picnic blankets, snack spreads and lots of booze. Each year, Cinespia brings classic cult favorites to the hallowed resting place of such Hollywood greats as Rudolph Valentino and Bugsy Siegel. An inspired concept, and one Angelenos line up for hours to partake in, enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It's an LA rite of passage, a quintessential summer experience and one of the best film venues in the city. Just be sure to get your ticket early, arrive early, pee early... it's getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.

The L.A. Conservancy offers a delightful summer time machine in the form of live entertainment and classic films, screened across Downtown's grand old movie palaces throughout the month of June. This year's lineup includes vintage crowd-pleasers like On the Waterfront and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea alongside some modern classics like Jaws, E.T. and L.A. Confidential. Most screenings include a special introduction and a post-film Q&A. Members of the conservancy can snag discounted tickets early; peep the schedule for showtime and location deats.

A major statement on the subject of civilization in free fall, writer-director Trey Edward Shults’s nerve-shredding domestic thriller joins the rarified company of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road and the handful of intimate post-apocalyptic scenarios that puncture through to our deepest fears. Shults, whose first feature, Krisha (2015), turned the crucible of one Thanksgiving weekend into a hair-raising psychodrama, again burrows deep into the idea of families in extremis. This time, he’s got two clans, but you wouldn’t call them friendly neighbors: Caked in grime and clad in biohazard masks, they’re citizens of a ruined world that’s forgotten how to trust. Confidently, the movie tosses you into the deep end with no time to process: In an unspecified woods, an old man covered in black boils is wheelbarrowed to an unmarked grave, shot to death by crying caretakers and incinerated in a pit. He leaves behind an adult daughter, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), her bearded, intense husband Paul (Joel Edgerton, uneasy with his rifle and heartbreakingly sympathetic) and their 17-year-old son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). In the flickering lantern light of the movie’s electricity-free universe—Drew Daniels’s cinematography works in a gorgeous, ash-etched palette—they have survival down to a science. Their fortified home, covered in wood planks and lined with plastic sheeting, has only one double-locked entrance, the red door a warning to anyone who might approach. Yet someone does appr

Eat|See|Hear travels to different locales throughout the city each Saturday during the summer, showing cult flicks on an inflatable HD screen taller than your average Malibu mansion. Bring your own bites or sample snacks from the impressive roster of resident food trucks and show up early for a set from local LA bands. Parking is free at most of the venues, and tickets for screenings at the Autry even include admission to the museum. What's more? If you want to skip the crowds and stroll in casually during the opening credits, spring for an exclusive "Fashionably Late" pass. All of the events dog-friendly, and a portion of ticket sales benefit Best Friends Animal Society in support of NKLA.

Before seeing Wonder Woman, I had a sinking feeling. It’s been more than a decade (and Halle Berry’s 2004 bomb Catwoman) since a female star headlined a superhero film and saved the world. I had visions of middle-aged male studio execs huddled together in a conference room googling feminism and group-thinking how to make a lady-hero. Would the result feel like a two-and-a-half-hour tampon commercial? Actually, no. Wonder Woman is the real deal, a rollicking action adventure in the tradition of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a fully functioning sense of humor and the year’s most deliciously evil baddie. The film has a wobbly opening on a women-only island where hot chicks in fabulous ancient Greek sandals appear to have wandered in from a Dolce & Gabbana campaign. This is Themyscira, where the Amazon tribe has lived in peace for thousands of years. Former Miss Israel Gal Gadot (Gisele in the Fast & Furious franchise) is Diana, their princess, who was sculpted from clay and brought to life by Zeus. The island’s tranquility is broken by the arrival of a cocky U.S. soldier played by Star Trek’s Chris Pine. The actor knows he’s here as eye candy and does his spin on the usual smoking-hot sidekick with self-deprecation. The plot is functional. It’s World War I and Pine is a spy who has discovered that the Germans’ evil chemist, Maru (Elena Anaya)—a.k.a. Doctor Poison—is cooking up a dirty bomb to wipe out Allied soldiers on the front. So Diana volunteers to save humankind, strapp

Everyone in Baywatch seems amused to be in a movie version of Baywatch—how could they not be? (Their expressions range from “Is this really happening?” to “This is really happening.”) The laughs in director Seth Gordon’s surprisingly fun and self-mocking comedy don’t sneak up on you so much as hail you from a mile off with an air horn and then bonk you over the head as you approach. This is a film in which lifeguard Dwayne Johnson leaps out of the water (in slo-mo) with a rescued paraglider in his arms, while porpoises flip behind him in celebration. That moment also brings the film’s title, text rising from the deep like a repressed giggle that won’t go away. The generous—radical?—thing about Hollywood’s version of the tush-ogling ’90s TV phenomenon is that, pretty quickly, it makes you feel in on the joke. Taking lessons from 2012’s wonderfully silly 21 Jump Street (in which Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill scientifically proved that bad television need not result in bad filmmaking), Baywatch owns its preposterousness with every barked line of self-serious dialogue and stuffed-to-bursting wet suit. The actors are what save it. Not only does Johnson build on his subversive 
persona of hulking, dim-witted likability, 
but he’s joined by Neighbors’ Zac Efron, today’s reigning king of the hazy one-liner, who plays cocky yet disgraced Olympic swimmer Matt Brody, nicknamed the Vomit Comet. (Confused by his bodacious lifeguard team’s role in routing out crime, Efron’s Brody says it

Bachelorette parties—and plenty of the bachelor ones, I’ve noticed—are never just about the booze and the partying. There’s always that slightest twinge of jealousy, a bruised hint of abandonment, a recklessness about to spin out of control. So it goes with the tonally uneven Rough Night, a half-borrowed comedy that quickly kicks its one night of female carousing into the realm of terrible decisions. You can feel the film’s desperation right under the surface: The script (by Broad City’s Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs) wants to join the company of Bridesmaids or Bachelorette, but respectively, it’s neither warm nor cool enough. Instead it settles for a coke-fueled mania that doesn’t cohere into anything apart from a handful of funny moments. Rough Night’s quintet of stars are dazzlers stuck in a middle gear; watching them play off each other is its own kind of pleasure, regardless of the takeaway. Scarlett Johansson is capable of a starchy kind of humor (see her SNL hosting), and that’s the energy she supplies here as Jess, an awkward state-senator candidate who’s currently losing in local polls to a competitor who's intentionally deploying dick picks. Taking a break from the combat, Jess gathers her college friends, including clingy Alice (Jillian Bell), secretive Blair (Zoë Kravitz), loud-and-proud Frankie (Ilana Glazer) and Jess’s semester-abroad confidante, Pippa (Kate McKinnon, stealing another summer movie with an outrageous Aussie accent and bug eyes). The Miami Bea

The racing world is changing in this latest Cars escapade from Pixar. A new generation of fast, efficient motors have arrived on the scene, and a dramatic crash leaves an aging Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) facing retirement. Unfortunately for any parents bored of the franchise or irritated by the premise—why would cars go to a bar and grill? Why?—the now–not-so-cocky racer is refusing to hang up his tires. Despite his flabby wheels and creaky joints, Lightning is desperate to keep racing and to avoid becoming merchandise (ironic, considering Disney is already selling Cars 3 swim trunks). In an attempt to get his engine revving, he joins a new training facility, complete with track simulators, VR and perky personal trainer Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo). Her story of self-doubt and female inclusion is engaging, while the rest of the plot meanders toward the race to potentially end all races where Lightning aims to beat his latest nemesis, newbie Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer). Cars 3 is entertaining enough, delivering the baseline visual joys of this series’s sweeping landscapes and attention to detail. There’s a lot of predictable mush about following your dreams, turning negatives into positives and having the confidence to truly believe in yourself. It’s all well and good for the under-12s, but this movie never packs the kind of emotional punch we know Pixar is capable of.

A horror film with the power to put a rascally grin on the face of that great genre subverter John Carpenter (They Live), Get Out has more fun playing with half-buried racial tensions than with scaring us to death. To some, that will come as the slightest letdown: The movie is a touch too in love with its big idea—that meeting your white girlfriend’s parents might be hazardous to your health (even if, as we hear, they “would have voted for Obama a third time”). Chris, a serious young photographer (Daniel Kaluuya), clearly adores Rose (Girls’ Allison Williams). Still, their imminent trip out of the city to her family’s secluded mansion fills him with dread. That randomly darting deer they smash with their car on the way up doesn’t help Chris’s fraying nerves, and the way the animal stares him down during its last gasps feels like a warning. Get Out is sharp and cutting during its buildup—you’ll never want this section to end—and the addition of two awkwardly ingratiating adults (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) makes a comic meal out of white liberal privilege with every “cool” handshake and turn of phrase (“Hug me, my man!” Rose’s dad exclaims, drawing Chris in). Meanwhile, the movie brews a fine tension between the limits of parental largesse and Chris’s own independence, while a disquieting number of black servants look on like wide-eyed zombies. The writer-director of these vignettes is Jordan Peele, of the defunct but essential Comedy Central show Key & Peele. Wh

The virtue of courage is high up on the list of Disney princess must-haves (just below kindness, beauty and a strapping prince in tight pants). So three cheers for Dreamgirls director Bill Condon and star Emma Watson for having the courage to make a live-action musical adaptation of Disney's adored Beauty and the Beast with 2017 gender politics and a diverse cast. Not only is this new Belle the studio's most feminist princess to date, the update boasts the first (and second) interracial kiss to ever appear in a Disney movie, as well as the first openly gay character. And it's all done with a lovely feeling of integrity. Today's Beauty and the Beast is a lavish pull-out-all-the-stops musical. Watson brings sincerity to the role of Belle, the only bookworm in an 18th-century French village. (Her singing isn’t bad either). Luke Evans is hilarious as her sexist meathead suitor, Gaston, whose charming come-ons include: "Do you know what happens to spinsters in the village when their fathers die? They beg for scraps." Josh Gad (who voiced Olaf the snowman in Frozen) is Gaston's adoring sidekick Le Fou. The pair’s one-sided bromance is a highlight. Belle’s inventor dad (Kevin Kline) is on his way to market when he takes a wrong turn and finds himself locked in the gothic castle belonging to the Beast (Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey, hiding behind a furry face and a CGI-supplanted physique). Of course, the Beast is actually a dashing prince, transformed by a kind witch as punishmen