Things to do in Los Angeles this Friday

It isn’t summer in L.A. 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. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, most recently for August: Point Break (Aug 3), Boyz n the Hood featuring a John Singleton tribute from Questlove and DJ Pooh (Aug 10) and Psycho (Aug 24). Of particular note: the 9th Annual Slumber Party on August 24, with a trio of sleepover staples including Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Jawbreaker. Angelenos line up for hours to partake in the concept—and to enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It’s an L.A. 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 (doors open at 6:45pm), pee early… it’s getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.

It isn’t summer in L.A. 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. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, most recently for August: Point Break (Aug 3), Boyz n the Hood featuring a John Singleton tribute from Questlove and DJ Pooh (Aug 10) and Psycho (Aug 24). Of particular note: the 9th Annual Slumber Party on August 24, with a trio of sleepover staples including Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Jawbreaker. Angelenos line up for hours to partake in the concept—and to enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It’s an L.A. 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 (doors open at 6:45pm), pee early… it’s getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.

It isn’t summer in L.A. 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. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, most recently for August: Point Break (Aug 3), Boyz n the Hood featuring a John Singleton tribute from Questlove and DJ Pooh (Aug 10) and Psycho (Aug 24). Of particular note: the 9th Annual Slumber Party on August 24, with a trio of sleepover staples including Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Jawbreaker. Angelenos line up for hours to partake in the concept—and to enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It’s an L.A. 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 (doors open at 6:45pm), pee early… it’s getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.

Madame Tussauds Hollywood is hosting a rooftop screening series, and somehow House of Wax isn’t on the slate. But you will find a trio of screenings paired with facsimilies of their stars: Crossroads with wax figures of Britney Spears and Zoe Saldana, a Golden Girls marathon with Betty White’s wax look-alike and Magic Mike with a guest performance by the Hollywood Men.

For two weeks each summer, Outfest, the world’s largest gay and lesbian film festival, takes over the gay social calendar in Los Angeles with a slew of parties, screenings and galas that attract a veritable who’s who of out filmmakers, actors and bold-faced below-the-line names. Each year, the centerpiece events of the festival are the opening and closing night galas, which tend to be booze-fueled schmoozefests where introductions are easygoing and the opportunities for networking with celebrigays of all stripes is plentiful.

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!

Film review by Joshua Rothkopf  The most perfect movie that will ever be made about its subject, Apollo 11 takes the purest documentary idea imaginable—telling the story of the first journey to the moon and back using only the footage captured in the moment—and rides it all the way home. Conceptually, it’s a masterstroke: Other films have leaned into narration or interviews, while Damien Chazelle’s brooding First Man took a somewhat incidental leap into personal grief. But by mining a trove of archival NASA footage (much of it unseen since 1969, or ever), disciplined filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller places an unmistakable emphasis on the thousands of people who toiled in modest synchronicity, pulling off America’s greatest mission without a hitch. Apollo 11 will bring you to tears: It’s a reminder of national functionality, of making the big dream happen without ego or divisiveness. Miller’s exhilarating first act supplies an emotional catharsis that’s rare in nonfiction (or, frankly, movies in general). Quietly, the rocket is rolled out on a massive tractor platform. Crickets chirp on a hot July night. In the astronauts’ blindingly white dressing room, the three-man crew—Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin—suit up. Their personal backstories receive flurries of silent images: wedding photos, military service, children. These flashes play like insistent memories; it’s the kind of subliminal device a dramatic director might use to reveal a character’s psychology. A

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

Can a movie as modest as The Wrestler, wrapped up in spandex, sweat and a stolen kiss to Ratt’s “Round and Round,” be 2008’s best? The year certainly hasn’t lacked for grandeur (or at least size), but consequence has been in short supply. Here, finally, is a film that, through its very intimacy, touches on love, money, dreams and death in a way that will pile-drive you through the mat. The pounder is one Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Rourke, in an astounding career revision), once a 1980s superstar, but now plying his cash-poor trade in smelly veterans’ halls in Jersey. The body’s seen better days, but the hair, a peroxide mane, remains brilliant, and the spirit is willing.The original script by Robert Siegel, a former editor-in-chief at The Onion, could have coasted on the comic anachronism of this Reaganite warrior, but it courts risk, putting our hearts in our throats. It sends Randy two angels: a seen-better-days stripper (Tomei, fearless), who, for a moment, awakens in him a dream, and a bitterly estranged daughter (Wood), who may yet be his salvation. Siegel also throws the Ram a stroke and double-bypass surgery. As the camera sweeps the wintry Asbury Park boardwalk, The Wrestler takes on Kazan-level poetics, the big man suddenly seeming small and fragile. Who is the magician of such a spell? Darren Aronofsky, nearly a goner with his ludicrous The Fountain, rebounds as strongly as Rourke; if you want, you can sift out his preoccupations with cosmic metaphysics in this compl

Review by Joshua Rothkopf Unusually for a horror director, Ari Aster knows the real world is awful enough. Life doles out plenty of pain. Hereditary, his 2018 feature debut and probably the scariest movie in a decade, basically went: My grief over a family tragedy is so unbearable, it must be caused by witches. (When that turned out to be the case, you weren’t shocked so much as relieved.) Midsommar, Aster’s ruinous, near-psychedelic latest, goes something like this: My grief over a family tragedy is so unbearable, it’ll make me cling to a bad boyfriend. If that doesn’t sound like horror to you, allow me to introduce you to many toxic relationships. And if you’re still unconvinced, Aster will hit you over the head with a giant hammer wielded by Swedish pagan cultists. Horror is what happens to people who are already emptied out and vulnerable. It’s an insight that has already yielded Aster two world-class performances, first from Hereditary’s Toni Collette as a ragged, raging mother at sanity’s end, and now from Midsommar’s apple-cheeked Florence Pugh as Dani, an Ativan-popping grad student trembling with concern for her suicidal sister. Pugh is exquisitely neurotic in these early scenes—she’s such a handful that when the movie cuts away to the guy squad of her frustrated boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor, deft in a tricky part), all of them seething in unison at her constant imposition, you almost feel sorry for them. But then comes the wail from deep inside Christian’s p

Tarantino's powerful homage/reworking of the heist-gone-wrong thriller - stealing ideas from Kubrick's The Killing and Scorsese's Mean Streets, among others - is probably the final word (or frame) on the subject. A bunch of colour-coded crooks (Mr White, Mr Pink, etc), previously unknown to each other, chosen and named by ageing capo Joe Cabot (Tierney) and his son Nice Guy Eddie (Penn), execute a jewellery robbery. The job done, the getaway fucked up, they reassemble at a warehouse to get what's coming to them. Tarantino engineers their demise from the interaction of their character flaws - there is certainly no honour among these talkative thieves - with the inexorable logic of a chess grandmaster. Despite the clockwork theatrical dynamics - most of the action is restricted to the warehouse - the film packs a massive punch. It's violent, intelligent, well written (by Tarantino) and acted (Buscemi, Roth and Penn take the prizes). A tour de force.

A sprawling, discursive fresco: three stories bookended by a prologue and epilogue. In the first story, a mobster (Travolta) is charged with looking after the irresponsible wife (Thurman) of his vengeful boss. In the second, a washed-up boxer (Willis) tries to trick the Mob by failing to throw a fight. And in the third, two hitmen (Travolta and Jackson) carry out a job, only to call on the services of a 'cleaner' (Keitel) when it gets messier than planned. It's the way Tarantino embellishes and, finally, interlinks these old chestnuts that makes the film alternately exhilarating and frustrating. There's plenty of sharp, sassy, profane dialogue, and there are plenty of acute, funny references to pop culture, though the talk sometimes delays the action, and the references sometimes seem self-consciously arch. And there are, too, the sudden lurches between humour and violence - shocking, but without moral depth. What writer/director Tarantino lacks, as yet, is the maturity to invest his work with anything that might provoke a heartfelt emotional response to his characters. Very entertaining, none the less.