Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
Last week I mentioned the emerging situation in Miami Beach, where the city’s mayor, Steven Meiner, had put forth a resolution to terminate grant funding and the lease for the local art house O Cinema, specifically because of screenings of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”
In a city commission meeting on Wednesday, Meiner withdrew his resolution, saving the group from having to vote on what outside legal experts considered a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, one with the potential of opening the city up to ongoing litigation.
In his remarks during the meeting, Meiner characterized his concerns over the screenings as a matter of “public safety” and added, “You know, a couple of individuals joke that I made the movie more popular by doing what I did than the Academy Awards did. And they might be right. That was not my intent. I knew this would create a dialogue.”
In a press conference on Tuesday ahead of the city commission meeting, O Cinema’s CEO Vivian Martel said, “O Cinema will not be silenced and neither will our community. This is about more than just a film. It’s about the fundamental right of free expression, artistic integrity and the role of independent cinemas in our community.”
45 years of EZTV in L.A.
An image from “Vertical Blanking,” part of the program celebrating EZTV.
(EZTV)
With nine programs across six local venues, the ambitious series “Video Capital of the World: 45 Years of EZTV in L.A.” celebrates a pioneering local microcinema and arts organization that began in the early 1980s as a vital part of the city’s queer and alternative communities.
In a 1987 interview with The Times, video artist Michael J. Masucci, who will be present at numerous events in the series, likened being a part of EZTV to being in the music group the Ramones.
“People may not know your name but everybody (in the film/video/art world) has heard of EZTV as an entity,” said Masucci. “They don’t know specifics about us, but they have a very rabid sense about what we do. We’re really like punk rock was, and that’s fine.”
In the process of making the project a preservation initiative by digitizing archival tapes, organizers of the retrospective discovered just how full an evening at EZTV could be, with performances, poetry, shorts, an in-house soap opera and two or more feature-length videos.
“We’re really trying to evoke the space,” programmer Elizabeth Purchell said about how every show is designed to feel like an event.
Alex Gootter, co-director of the programming group Hollywood Entertainment, said they came across photos of the chairs used in the original EZTV gallery space in West Hollywood, where the programs could go on for 5½ hours, and noted, “That looks like the least comfortable chair I’ve ever seen. People were either built different or the stuff was that compelling. Or both.”
“It’s like you’re going to someone else’s house and you’re watching TV for the night,” said Purchell. “That was kind of the ambience of it.”
Venues for the series are REDCAT, Brain Dead Studios, Whammy! Analog Media, 18th Street Arts Center, the Velaslavasay Panorama and L.A. Filmforum/2220 Arts + Archives.
Among the programs are a retrospective of an art, performance and music duo known as Vertical Blanking, a night of comedies, a night of lesbian erotic videos, a tribute to the multihyphenate artist Kate Johnson and a 45th-anniversary screening of EZTV founder John Dorr’s “SudZall Does It All!,” made with a black-and-white security camera for the reported price of $10.
In what will surely be a highlight, the 1983 feature “Blonde Death,” a riff on teen exploitation pictures made by author James Robert Baker under the pseudonym James Dillinger, will screen as part of a re-creation of the program known as “American Perversions,” which was shown timed to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Ken Camp’s experimental gay horror feature “Highway Hypnosis” also will play that night as part of the show.
EZTV prefigured the recent rise of microcinemas but also captured something specific about the era of the early 1980s.
“I would say they were both of their time but also ahead of their time,” said Purchell. “They really had this kind of utopian idea, which of course didn’t really pan out the way that they’d hoped it would. But at the same time, I think it’s worth celebrating the fact that someone like John Dorr had this kind of visionary idea that in the future, everyone was going to be making their films on video, things are going to be more available to the regular person who just wants to make a movie.”
“I think people are still catching up to this idea of a space that can show everything,” said Gootter. “And that is fine art alongside popular or accessible entertainment. It’s about things that are non-commercial, but also it’s worth proving what is commercial and what is desirable to see with an audience, an audience that hasn’t been exposed to it yet.
‘Noir City: Hollywood’
Annette Bening, John Cusack and Anjelica Huston in the movie “The Grifters.”
(Suzanne Hanover / Miramax Films)
The American Cinematheque is presenting “Noir City: Hollywood” through March 30, with 23 films and a special spotlight on the women of film noir. (The program is partly in conjunction with a newly revised and expanded edition of TCM host Eddie Muller’s book “Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir.”)
Among the standouts are a 35mm screening on Saturday at the Egyptian of 1949’s “Flamingo Road,” which reteamed director Michael Curtiz and star Joan Crawford after “Mildred Pierce,” and Sunday’s show of 1946’s “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Barbara Stanwyck.
On March 29, there will be showings of archival 35mm prints of Robert Parrish’s 1951 “Cry Danger” and John H. Auer’s 1954 “Hell’s Half Acre.” The series concludes March 30 with a 35mm archival print of Joseph Losey’s 1951 “The Prowler” and a 35mm print of Billy Wilder’s 1951 “Ace in the Hole.”
And for people who like more contemporary neo-noirs, there are some juicy titles with great guests planned. On Saturday, “The Last Seduction” will screen at the Egyptian in a 35mm print with director John Dahl in person. On Sunday “The Grifters” will screen in 35mm with actor Annette Bening for a Q&A moderated by Muller.
“Destroyer” screens March 29 with director Karyn Kusama and screenwriter Phil Hay for a Q&A moderated by Muller. And March 30 brings a showing of “Bound,” with Muller speaking with actor Jennifer Tilly.
Points of interest
Bong Joon Ho and John Carpenter at the Academy
Kurt Russell on the set of 1982’s “The Thing.”
(Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images)
To celebrate its new exhibit celebrating the work of filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, the Academy Museum will have the filmmaker present for a series of screenings this weekend. On Saturday, Bong will be in conversation with director John Carpenter following a 4K presentation of Carpenter’s 1982 “The Thing.”
On Sunday there will be 4K screenings of Bong’s 2017 “Okja,” with Bong and actor Steven Yeun in person, as well as 2019’s Oscar winner “Parasite,” with Bong appearing again for a Q&A.
On Monday there will be a screening of Bong’s first English-language film, 2013’s “Snowpiercer.”
The Bong-Carpenter event sold out in only a few hours (there will be a standby line) and promises to be one of the momentous film-nerd gatherings of the year. “The Thing” has only grown in stature over the years. It was Carpenter’s biggest-budget film to date, and his first Hollywood studio project, and was seen to have disappointed critics and audiences upon its initial release. (Perhaps in parallel to Bong’s own current “Mickey 17.”)
In a July 1982 interview with The Times’ Dale Pollock, Carpenter expressed some surprise at the film’s underperformance. “I’m puzzled,” he said, “mostly because I feel that I’ve made one of my best films, a very powerful, dramatic movie.”
Then only 34, Carpenter added, “I don’t think you could get much stronger, more powerful and more frightening than ‘The Thing.’ What else can you do?”
LAFCA and Brad Bird double bill
A scene from the animated movie “The Incredibles.”
(Disney / Pixar)
The L.A. Film Critics Assn. is hosting another evening at the Egyptian Theatre on Wednesday, and this time it is an animated double bill of 1999’s “The Iron Giant” and 2004’s “The Incredibles” with director Brad Bird appearing between films for a conversation moderated by Variety critic Peter Debruge.
Set in a small Maine town in 1957, “The Iron Giant” is the tale of a young boy who befriends an extraterrestrial robot who has crashed nearby. As Kenenth Turan wrote, “Straight-arrow and subversive, made with simplicity as well as sophistication, ‘The Iron Giant’ remembers the wonder of being a child and understands how to convey that in a media-savvy age.”
“The Incredibles” is the comic tale of a family of superheroes attempting to live in suburban anonymity until they are called upon for a new assignment. At the time of the film’s release, The Times wrote, “Bird has dreamed the animator’s big dream of doing it all, and he’s made it come true. He has created the unprecedented film that is not just a grand feature-length cartoon but a grand feature, period, a piece of animation that’s involving across a spectrum of comedy, action, even drama. And he’s done it by working within the confines of one of the staples of cartoons and comic literature, the superhero.”
‘Kundun’
Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin, center, in the movie “Kundun.”
(Mario Tursi / Touchstone Pictures)
On Sunday, Martin Scorsese’s 1997 “Kundun” will have a rare 35mm screening at the Aero. The film is somewhat notorious among Scorsese-heads, in part for its hilarious reference in “The Sopranos,” when Michael Imperioli’s hapless Christopher Moltisanti shouts “Marty! ‘Kundun,’ I liked it!” across a velvet rope. But also because it feels so outside of what Scorsese was known for at the time, even as its restless spiritual journey is perfectly in tune with the uncertainty and desire at the heart of so much of his work.
The film concerns the young life of the 14th Dalai Lama. With cinematography by Roger Deakins, costume and production design by Dante Ferretti and music by Philip Glass, the movie takes on a hypnotic quality that is unique in Scorsese’s filmography. (In a sense it might be seen as a cousin to “Mishima,” a film by Scorsese’s frequent collaborator Paul Schrader, which we mentioned here a few weeks ago.)
In his review at the time, Kenneth Turan wrote, “‘Kundun’ is a stunningly beautiful object offered in tribute to a holy man, a gorgeous film that is nevertheless burdened by the defects of its virtues. Careful and respectful, it is everything a movie about the Dalai Lama should be except dramatically involving. … The difficulty is one of tone. Pure goodness is by definition a tricky subject to film, and being reverential and even worshipful toward ‘his Holiness,’ as the filmmakers call him, can stand in the way of drama.”
‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’
A scene from the movie “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.”
(Murray Close / Sygma via Getty Images)
On Thursday, Vidiots will screen Peter Greenaway’s 1990 “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” which is not available on streaming. When the film first came out, much was made of the fact it was released unrated rather than accept the X rating it was given — a frequent PR strategy of distributor Miramax. The film’s eye-popping costumes were designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.
Deliberately provocative, the film stars Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren as the thief and the wife of the title. Gambon plays a mobster who takes over a restaurant while his wife’s affections wander elsewhere.
In a review at the time, Kevin Thomas wrote, “Greenaway is a man of distinctive ideas and insights who this time out has expended his abilities and perception — and those of many others — on an exercise in grossness.”
In other news
Free screening of ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’
The cast and crew of “The Ballad of Wallis Island” at the Los Angeles Times 2025 Sundance studio.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
On Monday we’ll have another Indie Focus screening event at the Culver Theater. Fresh from appearing at Sundance and SXSW will be “The Battle of Wallis Island” followed by a Q&A with director James Griffiths and co-stars/co-writers Tom Basden and Tim Key. Basden also wrote the music for the film’s story of a once moderately successful folk-rock duo (featuring an earthy, relaxed Carey Mulligan) who are reunited on a remote island by a eccentric lottery winner (Key).
The film is warm and charming and should make for a very fun evening. I spoke to the team behind the film back when it premiered at Sundance, talking about expanding the film from the 2008 short it was based on, filming on a remote island and whether we will ever get the “Carey Mulligan Sings” album seemingly promised by the fact she keeps singing in movies.
