Things to do in Los Angeles this Friday

Grab some grub from Umami Burger and a glass of sangria at this rooftop screening series, which boasts deck chairs, wireless headphones and easily one of the best views in all of Hollywood.

Grab some grub from Umami Burger and a glass of sangria at this rooftop screening series, which boasts deck chairs, wireless headphones and easily one of the best views in all of Hollywood.

Take a seat in the Skirball Cultural Center’s courtyard for this series of outdoor screenings. The Sepulveda Pass museum is showing fashion-forward films in connection with its exhibitions about fashion designer Rudi Gernreich and phtoographer Kwame Brathwaite. This year’s slate includes Funny Face, Zoolander and The Devil Wears Prada.

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings in Hollywood and Downtown L.A. 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. 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. Want to win two tickets to Rooftop Cinema Club? Enter now!

Is there such a thing as a perfect film? One that knows what it wants to achieve and does it, flawlessly, artfully and intelligently? If so, then ‘Jaws’ is as good a candidate as any. Thirty-seven years on (and reissued in a new HD print), this tale of an island community terrorised by a killer shark still feels timeless and terrifying. The characterisation is precise and acutely observed (it’s one of the great guys-on-a-mission flicks), the dialogue is witty and wise, and the plot fits together like a finely crafted watch. The performances – not just leads, but the kids, townsfolk and the grief-stricken mother too – are impeccable. Best of all is Steven Spielberg’s direction: the camera moves like a predatory animal, gliding eerily across the surface of the vast Atlantic, creating sequences of almost unbearable suspense (never mind that the scariest scene was shot in a swimming pool). It’s no wonder a generation of holidaymakers still thinks twice before stepping into the water.

It starts with the city of San Francisco, famously a town of outsiders, freaks and countercultures. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a sweetly mournful comedy that plays in a detuned register of its own, begins with an impromptu tour, motivated by the strange sight of two men on one skateboard, pumping their legs in unison like a set of oars. You’ll want to hop onboard with them (a random stranger has the same idea, chasing them down for a bit). The funky energy of this introduction—the sight of a people-mover platform gliding to a churning cloud of Michael Nyman’s horns and strings—is electric. Even though the cards will be stacked against our heroes, black and barely hanging on, you know the movie will treat them royally. They are Jimmie (soulful Jimmie Fails, whose life story becomes the film’s arc) and wannabe playwright Montgomery (Jonathan Majors, extraordinary), two adult friends who share an artistic bent. They draw, they paint, they wear the same clothes daily. They might as well be Akbar and Jeff. What Jimmie really wants is a gorgeous Victorian house—a place on Fillmore where the sun blasts through huge bay windows onto creaky wooden floors. He has one in mind; it’s the same house he grew up in, before his dad was bought out years ago. Jimmie does unauthorized touch-ups on it daily, to the chagrin of its whiny white owners. But when the property must be vacated in an ugly inheritance split (the film has compassion for even these gentrifiers, crying on their fr

Review by Joshua Rothkopf “Prepare for war,” someone who knows Latin will tell you, if you ask about that subtitle, though it’s hardly necessary intel: In these gloriously dumb—but remarkably well-staged—gun-fu flicks, the war is already here, and it lasts for an entire film. Maybe others prefer it when Keanu Reeves talks; for me, he’s more effective when he moves. John Wick’s somber suit-clad NYC assassin has become his signature role, stripping down Speed and The Matrix into something John Woo sleek. Mob thugs killed his pet pit bull in the first installment. Those guys are long gone. Though this latest John Wick adventure brings on the usual distractions—Ian McShane’s fastidious boutique-hotel proprietor, Lawrence Fishburne’s booming king of the Bowery underworld, Halle Berry's lady with vicious dogs that leap straight for the crotch—mostly these characters stay out of the way of the main attraction. Instead, we’re here for the rigorously conceived, blessedly coherent action showdowns, the work of director Chad Stahelski (also Reeves’s longtime stunt double and choreographer). Stahelski is a fight-scene Fosse and Reeves is his Gwen Verdon: Parabellum takes the hall-of-mirrors high style of the second film and pushes it into overdrive. (Those who live in glass-walled galleries shouldn't throw anything at Wick.) The level of hard-R-rated bloodletting is so delirious, you’ll ignore how bad it is for you. A closed Manhattan Bridge is the perfect site for a sword duel on spee

Taking the old-fashioned highs of an MGM musical and pairing them with the deep lows of an addiction drama, Rocketman is a turbo-charged rock fantasia that pushes hard against the boundaries of the medium as it zips through the first four decades of Elton John’s life. The songs explode from the screen, time jumps catapult the story forward with exhilarating élan, and even the emotional stuff lands, for the most part. Sure, Elton John purists will be here until Christmas pointing out the flaws in the chronology and the liberties taken with real-life events, but they’ll be doing it while dancing in the aisles. It’s a credit to director Dexter Fletcher, who really comes of age as a filmmaker here, that any thoughts of Bohemian Rhapsody fade away in the first few minutes (Fletcher was parachuted in to help finish that Queen biopic). While there are some superficial parallels between the two films, he’s saved all his good ideas for Rocketman. From the opening blast of “The Bitch Is Back,” which thrusts a young Reginald Dwight (Matthew Illesley) into a glorious, sepia-tinged dance routine outside his northwest London home, the movie is filled with vividly choreographed, imaginatively staged, wow-isn’t-cinema-great? moments. If there’s one thing Rocketman does have in common with Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a commanding central performance. Like Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury, Taron Egerton combats a lack of close physical resemblance by nailing John’s physicality in telling detail: He

Review by Joshua Rothkopf Arriving with the momentum that only 21 previous global blockbusters can provide, Avengers: Endgame is the multiplex-rattling and curiously emotional culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—at least until the next chapter. You know it’s going to be long (three hours, but there’s no need to sit out the end credits this time); you know it’s going to be high-level homework for even the most advanced fan. But what you don’t know is how deeply invested you may be in these 11 years of movies, a compendium of destruction and heroism that altered our culture but also reflected it, sometimes weightlessly, at other times grandly. Endgame often pays tribute to itself, which makes it as fascinating as it is self-serious. It taps into a live wire of doomy tragedy and phoenix-like rebirth that comics do so well. Working from an intricate screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that sometimes finds a calm within the storm, the film begins (after a brief cold open for all you Hawkeye fans) just as the whole MCU did: with Robert Downey Jr.’s neurotic Tony Stark grappling with his responsibilities. Downey is the actor upon which the franchise was launched in 2008’s whiz-bang Iron Man, and there’s a symmetry to giving him the floor during Endgame’s downbeat early stretch—when it's an operatic grief drama in which half the world’s living creatures have blown away in clouds of dust. Cities are now ghost towns, dating is apparently a disaster and even

Turns out, Pixar’s sentient toys can still make us cry: Nearly 25 years after their cinematic debut, the sweetly selfless plastic pals return in a fourth Toy Story, one charged by the animated series’ thematic essence of finding purpose in being useful to others. It’s a hopeful, immensely human chapter that echoes the franchise’s complex notions of loyalty, displacement and self-worth, doing so with humor and warmth. Working from a script by Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom (as well as six other story contributors, including ousted ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter), director Josh Cooley successfully balances all of these elements—a noteworthy achievement considering the large cowboy boots he had to fill after the epic yet nuanced Toy Story 3, one of Pixar’s more perfect achievements. The reliable company of old friends certainly helps: Now happily living with a new kid, Bonnie (voiced by Madeleine McGraw), Tom Hanks’s pull-string pardner Woody, Tim Allen’s devoted Buzz Lightyear, Joan Cusack’s feisty Jesse and the rest of the gang are back. New to the clan is Forky (Veep’s Tony Hale, adding nervy personality and genuine weirdness), an existentially confused spork with low self-esteem that the ever-imaginative Bonnie creates as a kindergarten craft project. Convinced of his status as trash (an unusually raw class dilemma for a Pixar movie), Forky get a crash course on his toyness from Woody, himself thrown by a life crisis resembling that of a retiree. Bonnie has moved on to o

There’s a lot that’s mind-bendingly corny about director Danny Boyle and writer Richard Curtis’s Yesterday, a peppy “what-if?” musical comedy that imagines a world in which the Beatles never existed. Your ability to spend time in its big-hearted, dad-joke world might lie with your tolerance for Ed Sheeran making fun of himself: If you can cope with those sort of inventions along with the film’s hit-and-miss gag rate and its happy-clappy view of modern Britain, then its endless sugar rush of Beatles covers and endearing performances from the likes of Lily James and newcomer Himesh Patel make it hard not to like. It also has a strange cameo, bold and not what you expect, and maybe the best screen jokes so far about Google searches. (Type “John Paul George Ringo” in a Beatles-less universe and what do you get? “Pope John Paul II” of course.) It all spins on a goofy high concept that blossoms in an average corner of coastal Suffolk. Jack (Himesh Patel, a real discovery) is a struggling 27-year-old singer-songwriter sick of playing to thin crowds. But his bright-eyed old friend and manager Ellie (James) is supportive—and clearly in love with him. The years of musical irrelevance end when there’s an electricity blackout across the globe, a jolt from the storytelling gods so absurd that you go with it. Jack is knocked off his bicycle and wakes in hospital to the gradual realization that not a single other soul in the world knows who the Beatles are. The most powerful moment in thi