Things to do in Los Angeles on Saturday

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings to LEVEL in 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 camping chair—Rooftop Cinema Club provides you with your very own comfy lawn chair (with optional blankets for purchase to up the coziness). 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. Find the full schedule on their site, or in our outdoor movie calendar.

It isn’t summer in L.A. until the first cemetery screening brings hoards of movie-lovers to Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 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. For each evening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, pack a picnic (yes, booze is allowed), pose in the themed photo booth and enjoy DJ sets, dance parties and all sorts of other magical mischief that’d otherwise be strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, with summertime screenings at the cemetery and a few off-site ones on either end (usually at L.A. State Historic Park and, sometimes, inside historic theaters during the off-season).  For 2026, Cinespia’s 25th(!) season in the cemetery, September wraps up the summer season with Josie and the Pussycats (Sept 5), The Sandlot (Sept 6) and Goodfellas (Sept 12), though you can expect an October return for Halloween with Corpse Bride (Oct 3), Carrie (Oct 10), Jennifer’s Body (Oct 30) and The Thing (Oct 31). In addition, Cinespia is teaming up with See’s Candies this year to sell specially branded candy boxes during screenings. The outdoor screenings are 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, pee early… it’s a popular...

Santa Monica has really been stepping it up lately in the community programming department. Case in point: Tongva Twilight, a brand-new summer series offering free live music and films on Saturday nights, produced by Rum & Humble. Expect a lineup of big band ska, salsa, yacht rock and New Orleans funk, as well as music-themed films and free popcorn on select nights. Pack a picnic and enjoy an evening of entertainment with an ocean backdrop.

Each fall for the past 20 years, the Getty Villa’s Outdoor Classical Theater series has brought a dramatic work to life—often with a unique spin—in the museum’s outdoor, ancient-Greece-style amphitheater. This time around, the Latino Theater Company takes on the tale of the heroine Antigone, setting Sophocles’s story instead in Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and incorporating Aztec mythology. Enjoy the ocean breeze while you dine on concessions like esquites, tortas, tamales and Mexican wedding cookies, then settle in for the show.

For dinner and a movie, all in one, just follow the food trucks. During the spring, summer and fall, Street Food Cinema throws together a series of outdoor parties that include screenings of some of our favorite movies, paired with an assortment of gourmet food trucks and even a live music performance from a cool local band. The screenings are held in venues across L.A. into October and alternate from week to week, so make sure to check the schedule. Some of the outdoor venues are dog-friendly, allowing you to bring your four-legged cinema lover along. See more of this season’s outdoor movie screenings in L.A.

Ready or not, spooky season is slowly stalking its way ever closer. The clearest sign? Universal Studios has already announced the first haunted house set to inhabit its Hollywood-adjacent theme park for Halloween Horror Nights—and it’s a big one. Sinners will get its own haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood this year (as well as the theme park’s Orlando location). The commercial and critical favorite from 2025 is a natural fit for Horror Nights. Guests will be transported back to Club Juke in 1930s Mississippi and have to survive the night while dodging vampires Remmick, Bert and Joan—as well as the warring Smoke and Stack. The Warner Bros. film won four Oscars this year, for screenplay, best actor, cinematography and original score—so just imagine how awesome the blues soundtrack will be set to screams. Halloween Horror Nights will run on select evenings from September 3 to November 1. Tickets cost $77 to $107, depending on the night; with Express Pass add-ons, options range from $249 to $399. You can also opt for early access or the R.I.P. tour if you have the desire (and funds). See more of the best haunted houses in L.A.

Catch free outdoor movies at Burton Chace Park. Bring a low-back chair to claim a first-come, first-served space. Tickets aren’t required, but RSVPs are appreciated to stay up to date on any changes.

You might have seen ads on Instagram over the past couple of months for Hospital of Emotions—a colorful, cartoony flyer that heralds a site-specific art pop-up located in a real hospital with the tagline “a place to heal your heART.” The conceit intrigued me off the bat: 70 artists (both local and international) given hospital rooms as a canvas to transform as they wished. Hospital of Emotions ads are also referring to it as “the experience of the year.” We’re only in May so that’s still TBD, but I do think the exhibition—which is inhabiting the former St. Vincent Medical Center in Westlake and is officially open to the public as of May 27—is well worth your time. While the entire experience is hospital-themed—you walk through a waiting room and are given an intake form and hospital wristband, employees are in doctors’ coats—it’s not the cheesy type of immersive exhibition (read: selfie factory) that you might expect. Instead you’ll find 80 rooms filled with thought-provoking, visually dazzling and, yes, eminently photogenic installations. But there’s both style and substance here. And though the tickets are definitely on the pricey side, there’s so much to see—I spent nearly two hours there during my visit—that it (almost) makes up for it. The rooms are organized by theme; you start at the top of the building in the “Resilience Department” and make your way through clusters of rooms inspired by feelings like joy, sadness, anger, grief, fear and hope. The emphasis on...

For more than 50 years, this venue has drawn theater aficionados to its storied, open-air stage for engaging productions in a magical setting. The 299-seat amphitheater in Topanga Canyon hosts audiences of all ages for plays from a wide range of genres, from Shakespearean classics to folk tales. This season, catch William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as a stage version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Noël Coward’s Waiting in the Wings and The People of Pompeii, a new dark comedy Bernardo Cubría wrote in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfires.

Ponyo loves Sosuke! And we love this exhibition at the Academy Museum dedicated to the wholesome Hayao Miyazaki film. Studio Ghibli donated more than 100 objects to the Academy Collection, and you’ll find everything from an animation desk to colorful art boards to dozens of frame-by-frame pencil drawings of the scene when Sosuke first finds Ponyo. Though you may recognize a couple of items from the museum’s debut Hayao Miyazaki retrospective, the vast majority of Ponyo pieces are new—and some have never been displayed in North America before. It’s also a colorful and super kid-friendly exhibition; you can watch clips of the gorgeously hand-drawn movie, recreate the wave-running scene and even make your own stop-motion animation. You’ll find it on the museum’s second floor, inside the first few galleries of the “Stories of Cinema’ space.