Things to do in Los Angeles today

We found the murder and skulduggery of director Rian Johnson’s latest film, Knives Out, to be a dizzying pleasure. So of course we’d be interested in watching a bunch of classic whodunits that inspired the flick—and hearing from Johnson himself about them. Downtown L.A.’s Alamo Drafthouse is putting together a six-screening series dubbed Knives & Knaves, which runs on select nights from December 2 to 15. The slate includes the likes of Robert Altman’s social satire Gosford Park (Dec 2); Sidney Lumet’s cat-and-mouse Deathtrap (Dec 4); a pair of detective Poirot flicks, Evil Under the Sun (Dec 14; in 35mm) and Death on the Nile (Dec 8); and the Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier-starring Sleuth (Dec 11). Rounding out the series, Johnson will follow up a 35mm screening of The Last of Sheila on December 15 with an in-person Q&A. The 1973 mystery-game movie comes from director Herbert Ross and writers Anthony Perkins (better known as Norman Bates in Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim (yep, that Sondheim), who based their screenplay on scavenger hunts that they’d write for their industry friends in 1970s New York. Johnson will also be hosting a Q&A for Knives Out during the December 1 screening at 11am, but it looks like most tickets for that one are already spoken for. If you attend all six screenings and see Knives Out at the Drafthouse, you’ll be entered to win this sweet Mondo poster and the film’s vinyl release—just make sure to get your series passport stamped at each screening

We found the murder and skulduggery of director Rian Johnson’s latest film, Knives Out, to be a dizzying pleasure. So of course we’d be interested in watching a bunch of classic whodunits that inspired the flick—and hearing from Johnson himself about them. Downtown L.A.’s Alamo Drafthouse is putting together a six-screening series dubbed Knives & Knaves, which runs on select nights from December 2 to 15. The slate includes the likes of Robert Altman’s social satire Gosford Park (Dec 2); Sidney Lumet’s cat-and-mouse Deathtrap (Dec 4); a pair of detective Poirot flicks, Evil Under the Sun (Dec 14; in 35mm) and Death on the Nile (Dec 8); and the Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier-starring Sleuth (Dec 11). Rounding out the series, Johnson will follow up a 35mm screening of The Last of Sheila on December 15 with an in-person Q&A. The 1973 mystery-game movie comes from director Herbert Ross and writers Anthony Perkins (better known as Norman Bates in Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim (yep, that Sondheim), who based their screenplay on scavenger hunts that they’d write for their industry friends in 1970s New York. Johnson will also be hosting a Q&A for Knives Out during the December 1 screening at 11am, but it looks like most tickets for that one are already spoken for. If you attend all six screenings and see Knives Out at the Drafthouse, you’ll be entered to win this sweet Mondo poster and the film’s vinyl release—just make sure to get your series passport stamped at each screening

We found the murder and skulduggery of director Rian Johnson’s latest film, Knives Out, to be a dizzying pleasure. So of course we’d be interested in watching a bunch of classic whodunits that inspired the flick—and hearing from Johnson himself about them. Downtown L.A.’s Alamo Drafthouse is putting together a six-screening series dubbed Knives & Knaves, which runs on select nights from December 2 to 15. The slate includes the likes of Robert Altman’s social satire Gosford Park (Dec 2); Sidney Lumet’s cat-and-mouse Deathtrap (Dec 4); a pair of detective Poirot flicks, Evil Under the Sun (Dec 14; in 35mm) and Death on the Nile (Dec 8); and the Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier-starring Sleuth (Dec 11). Rounding out the series, Johnson will follow up a 35mm screening of The Last of Sheila on December 15 with an in-person Q&A. The 1973 mystery-game movie comes from director Herbert Ross and writers Anthony Perkins (better known as Norman Bates in Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim (yep, that Sondheim), who based their screenplay on scavenger hunts that they’d write for their industry friends in 1970s New York. Johnson will also be hosting a Q&A for Knives Out during the December 1 screening at 11am, but it looks like most tickets for that one are already spoken for. If you attend all six screenings and see Knives Out at the Drafthouse, you’ll be entered to win this sweet Mondo poster and the film’s vinyl release—just make sure to get your series passport stamped at each screening

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.

You can almost taste the salt on your lips while watching the new psychological horror film from The Witch’s Robert Eggers, one that will leave even the sturdiest of sea legs shaking. It’s a two-handed chamber piece about a pair of lighthouse keepers living on a remote island off the New England coast at the turn of the 20th century, and it’s lit up by mesmerizing performances by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. Dafoe is Tom Wake, an old sea dog with a clay pipe jutting from his thick beard. He’s the chief “wickie” of the lighthouse and an amalgam of clichés (which the script wittily acknowledges), including his peg leg and his love of gin, sea shanties and cooking lobster. Pattinson plays ex-logger Ephraim Winslow, recently arrived from Canada. He’s the strong-and-silent type who seems to have a skeleton or two in his closet. Both are men’s men—the quarrelsome, petty, tobacco-chomping variety. Dafoe and Pattinson deliver the script (by Eggers and his brother, Max) with incredible pathos, sounding like characters who have slipped from the pages of Melville’s Moby-Dick. The dialogue is packed with the sort of withering insults worthy of In the Loop’s Malcolm Tucker, and they lash like a hailstorm. Dafoe has a long-established reputation, but for many, Pattinson remains “that guy from Twilight,” despite sterling work with the likes of David Cronenberg, James Gray and Claire Denis. Those films showcased his talents, but Eggers draws something new from the actor. Pattinson’s

Review by Joshua Rothkopf Because it would have been unbearable otherwise, Noah Baumbach begins his churning, deeply felt divorce drama Marriage Story—easily the wisest film of his career—on a note of sweetness. Wedded Brooklyn parents Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) introduce themselves via a double diary of sorts, co-narrating as we watch snippets of their urban life: pizza slices scarfed down, bedtime stories told, subway stops missed. Both of them are unfailingly generous. Nicole makes people feel comfortable, Charlie says. He rarely gets defeated, she tells us. Each calls the other deeply competitive. Alas, that’s the trait Marriage Story is about. It’s a movie that slowly leeches itself of tenderness, of endearments small and large, climaxing in a ferocious, Bergmanesque verbal showdown (one that goes from cautious chat to wall-punching) that represents a triple triumph for the actors and their director. Rarely has Johansson, pared down and deglammed, been this aching. Never has Driver, even with his Star Wars rage monster Kylo Ren under his belt, torn into his lines with such ruined viciousness. And Baumbach transcends his own The Squid and the Whale, mounting a complex moment in a small apartment that’s almost abstract in its blankness—there’s nowhere to hide. (Presumably, he lived out some version of this scene himself. Let’s not speculate on what Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach’s ex and an obvious inspiration for Nicole, will think.) Charlie 

France’s Céline Sciamma is one of the most exciting filmmakers around—her Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood are all intimate studies of young women at points of profound change in their lives. Those earlier movies were contemporary, realist tales. Now, with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Sciamma has crafted a powerfully original story of art and love, set almost entirely on a Breton island in the 18th century, and one that operates on the level of a painterly, radical reverie that’s just to the left of reality. It’s Sciamma’s most cerebral and challenging work to date, full of ideas about artists and muses, the female gaze and solidarity. The movie feels stately and quiet at first, and you wonder if it might end up being too polite, too controlled. But it harbors a rising passion that’s devastating when it bursts into fullness. Everything begins with Marianne (Noémie Merlant) teaching an art class. A memory throws her into an extended flashback that takes up nearly the entire running time. We see her being rowed by a boatful of men to a remote island; she’s a professional painter, arriving to do a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel, hypnotically headstrong), a young woman whose mother wants a likeness of her to send to her prospective husband, a Milanese aristocrat. Already one painter has come and gone, in failure. Marianne’s challenge is to get Héloïse to unwittingly pose during the interludes when they take walks on the stormy beach or the nearby dunes. Marianne does eventual