These are exciting times in Los Angeles if you’re a movie buff, with this week seeing the revival of two of the city’s great movie palaces as the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Vista in Los Feliz are turning on their neon lights once more. On any given night in the city, a glance at the invaluable Revival Hub calendar will have at least 10 different repertory screenings going on and while multiplexes may still be recovering from the pandemic, savvy programmers have lured back crowds with exciting screenings made to feel like true events and the passionate audiences themselves have become a main attraction.
As it’s become increasingly obvious that there will never be a world in which everything will be available at your fingertips at home, both the area’s theaters and video stores have got the goods that make the obscene cost-of-living worth it as a film fan when you always have such incredible options to slip into the dark to enter another world and with just about something for everyone, we wanted to highlight these havens around Hollywood where you have to go if you haven’t been already and how places you may have been are well worth revisiting now in this current renaissance.
2220 Arts Featuring Mezzanine and Acropolis Cinema
You could stage just about any performance at 2220 Arts at the edge of Filipinotown in a structure that can appear out front like a giant barn, usually with a small sandwich board sign out front announcing the magic happening within. Once inside, there’s a platform for music at the former music club known as the Bootleg Theater, along with a bar and on evenings when there’s screenings in the back, the front transforms into a comfy retreat for casual conversation when there’s always plenty to talk about before and after, given the space that Andrew Maxwell and Peter Kolovos have opened up for artists in Los Angeles. This has been a particular boon to cinephiles when 2220 Arts became the de facto home of Los Angeles Film Forum, which looks to keep screening avant garde and experimental cinema in the city for their 40th year in 2025 when their future was put in doubt by the sale of their former home of the Egyptian, and the compound has welcomed in two programmers as daring in their presentation as the the artists they present with Micah Gottlieb’s Mezzanine and Jordan Cronk’s Acropolis Cinema.
The latter has specialized in extending a release to contemporary international cinema that might not otherwise secure a screen in Los Angeles, going so far as to bring in much of the Locarno Film Fest for an annual event in the spring and regularly serving as the spot to catch the latest from Hong Sangsoo. (You can look no further than November 18th for a screening of Wang Bing’s four-hour garment factory documentary “Youth,” which drew raves at Cannes and the New York Film Fest, to understand the important role Acropolis plays in the city’s theatrical landscape for films that have no obvious fit elsewhere.)
Meanwhile, Mezzanine has carved out a sacred space primarily for repertory cinema that is truly special, launching in the winter of 2022 with a screening of “The Tree of Knowledge,” a touching Danish coming-of-age film that hadn’t seen the inside of a Los Angeles theater since 1983 when it played at the city’s Filmex Film Fest. In the months since, every film that Gottlieb’s programmed, even contemporary work from Arnaud Desplechin (“Deception”) and Claire Simon (“Our Body”), has felt like a discovery with a warm welcome at the door when one is often presented with program notes and a scintillating discussion to follow when guests have ranged from esteemed critics such as Serge Daney and Melissa Anderson to filmmakers Sean Baker and Courtney Stephens presenting favorites of their own with Lars Von Trier’s “The Idiots” and Robert Kramer and John Douglas’ “Milestones,” respectively, making room for art in the entertainment capital of the world. 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, www.2220arts.org
Academy Museum
It’s hard not to feel like you’re at the Oscars inside the regal 952-seat David Geffen Theater where the seats feel like cashmere and the spherical structure that houses it requires a strut to your seat across a bridge that has one literally walking across a red carpet. (Its smaller sibling the 277-seat Ted Mann Theater somehow feels no less impressive.) However, the programming at the Academy Museum has expanded the kinds of cinema that is being honored well beyond the main event in March, drawing upon its specific branches of artisans for screenings that spotlight pinnacles of their work — sound designers can take credit for screening “Master and Commander” in all its glory with a state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos system in place — and adventurous curation that takes full advantage of their global reach, pulling the finest prints of films for recent tributes to Sammo Hung and Lourdes Portillo. (An upcoming fete for “Parasite” star Song Kang Ho promises some real rarities stateside.)
The opening of the Academy Museum in 2021 took some of the sting out of its next door neighbor LACMA taking a wrecking ball to the Bing Theater where screenings had been hosted since the ‘70s in anticipation of a redesign of the whole complex, and while ongoing construction of that museum has made walking around the Miracle Mile a bit of a challenge, let alone trying to find a parking space, a calm will come over you as you enter the Academy space with its cavernous lobby and the driving force behind most of the activities at the museum is a sense of escapism that’s been a part of movies’s allure since their inception.
That feeling of getting deeper has extended to the cinemas where the Academy’s calendar of screenings is often tied to its exhibits, but a celebration of Almodovar, for instance, can lead to a selection of his influences from “Johnny Guitar” to “Eyes Without a Face” and an unveiling of Ben Burtt’s “Behold,” a unique permanent exhibit reflecting cinematic imagining of making first contact, unfolding in a loop both as a one-of-a-kind screen and in its narrative form, extends to a career-spanning conversation in the theater. With weekends full of activities for families accompanying screenings ranging from “An American Tale” to “Ernest & Celestine” and the occasional weeknight held for experimental filmmakers amidst carefully curated limited series, there is always something going on that’ll spur your own thank you to the Academy, even if you don’t end up taking home a trophy. 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, www.academymuseum.org
American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre, Egyptian and Los Feliz 3
This past April, the American Cinematheque curated a tribute to the great cinematographer Owen Roizman that wouldn’t have been complete without “The Heartbreak Kid,” Elaine May’s second feature that’s been notoriously difficult to procure after its rights fell into the hands of a pharmaceutical company. A print was located at the BFI National Archive, but the costs associated with transporting it to America would far exceed what could be made at the box office even with full houses. Yet there were an impossibly young Charles Grodin, Cybil Shepherd and Jeannie Berlin not only for one night at the Aero where the film played like gangbusters, but after being sold out, Cinematheque programmers booked it across town at the Los Feliz 3 for two more screenings, which still might not have made this a profitable bit of business on its own, but the kind of investment in cultivating a crowd that keeps coming back that is invaluable.
Since the Cinematheque sold their stake in the Egyptian to Netflix – yet will retain programming of it on weekends (and in good hands on weeknights with former IFC Center maestro John Vanco taking over booking responsibilities for Netflix) – the organization has not only fulfilled but likely exceeded the vision that its founders Sydney Pollack, Gary Abrahams and Gary Essert had for it to extend the latter two’s programming at Filmex, the L.A. film fest that brought international cinema to the city through the 1970s and early ‘80s.
Seeds had already been planted for something of a revolution with Beyond Fest, the fall genre festival first cobbled together by Cinematheque head of programming Grant Moninger and Christian Parkes as a tribute to “Suspiria” composers Goblin becoming an event on par with any other in the world on top of a reliable rotation of repertory classics and series sponsored by international consulates such as German Currents and Recent Spanish Cinema. However, unburdening themselves of the day-to-day operations of the Egyptian at its pricey perch in Hollywood opened up a variety of exciting possibilities for the Cinematheque, bringing on more programmers than they’ve had before as well as having more flexibility than ever after taking the central screen at the Los Feliz 3. (Remarkably, a comprehensive retrospective of Terence Davies was mobilized this month after his passing just a few weeks ago, and after Nicolas Cage said there were five scripts he just had to do at Beyond Fest, lo and behold, those films will be screening in the lead up to the release of “Dream Scenario.”)
It can be far tougher than it once was to get a ticket to top events where Larry Karaszewski and Paul Thomas Anderson lurk as regular moderators, but there’s an engaged membership unlike the organization has ever had before, encouraging regular attendance with series such as the cult haven of Cinematic Void and the black-and-white matinees Sunday Print Edition (taking advantage of the newly installed reel-to-reel 35mm projector at the Los Feliz 3) and creating the trust necessary to take a chance on films that one might otherwise shy away from. Moninger recently promised rare nitrate prints at the Egyptian when it’s one of only a handful in the world that can project the flammable format, but now if anyone knows about handling something precious, it seems like it’s the Cinematheque. The Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave, Santa Monica; the Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd; and the Los Feliz 3, 1822 N Vermont Ave; americancinematheque.com
ARRAY
It may be sporadic, but any time that ARRAY, Ava DuVernay’s creative campus in the heart of Filipinotown, opens its doors to the public, you know it’s a special occasion. The Amanda Cinema named after the filmmaker’s aunt who instilled in the director her own love for movies has already done the same for countless others since 2019, but DuVernay and her team designed the compound with great care and consideration given to the entire lifespan of a film – they are born there, when her own production offices are within its walls, they are screened there and they are allowed the room to breathe and spark conversations on the campus’ two open air courtyards and a central gathering space, more often than not lined with all the food necessary to keep the good times going. (The fact that DuVernay has her own Ben & Jerry’s flavor hasn’t hurt.)
When ARRAY Releasing, the company’s distribution arm, has specialized in intimate dramas, their public premieres at the theater have the opposite feel of the glitzy affairs happening across town where instead of looking across at a crowd made faceless in blinding lights, a real personal connection can be felt in the room between a filmmaker and the audience.
Director of Programming Mercedes Cooper has seized on this potential in staging in-depth master classes with Niecy Nash-Betts and Mira Nair about their craft in recent years and curated a refreshing respite this past summer with “Hollywood Africans,” a series inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat where titles were selected from the VHS collection he kept and was crafted in partnership with his estate. ARRAY has sought to make their events as widely available as possible, expanding to the virtual space with ARRAY Play livestreams and recaps – soon set to broadcast a performance from the campus by Kris Bowers, playing music from his score for “Origin” on November 17th, but if you can make it in, you’ll find it’s one of the most vibrant scenes in L.A. ARRAY HQ, 180 Glendale Blvd #5826, arrayplay.com
Be Kind Video
The intersection of Magnolia and Hollywood Way in Burbank has quietly evolved into the best place for a movie collector to spend a lazy afternoon, sifting through the bins of DVDs and Blu-rays at Atomic Records or browsing the shelves of Dark Delicacies for making-of books, genre memorabilia you can find nowhere else or fantasy and horror novels that no doubt have inspired some of your favorite filmmakers. (That these are all within a block’s walk of Porto’s Bakery really makes it possible to make a day of it when you can stop for a potato ball for sustenance.)
The newest addition Be Kind Video may be small in size, but they’re doing big things with a collection of over a thousand VHS tapes available to buy and DVDs and Blu-rays to rent. However, owner Matthew Renoir has focused on giving an experience to the customer before they get home with their movie when stepping foot inside the store means laying tracks on the carpet from “The Shining,” laid out in front of an old cathode-ray tube TV. Dripping in nostalgia for those who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s glued to the tube, you’ll naturally find plenty of fanboys milling about, but the store has steadily built a real community of all ages and dispositions, curious about this relative rarity nowadays and a steady diet of compelling screenings, from evenings composed of Saturday morning cartoons where customers are encouraged to bring their own cereal to more full-fledged film feasts such as screenings of “Fright Night” and “Small Soldiers” with directors Tom Holland and Joe Dante, respectively, showing up for relaxed Q & As. Be Kind Video, 3601 1/2 Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank; www.bekindvideo.com
Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum
When the Billy Wilder Theater reopened in the fall of 2021, patrons were welcomed back with an enormous surprise — all screenings would be free, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor. The gift was initially announced as covering a year, but it’s now stretched to at least three, greatly goosing attendance at the theater inside the Hammer Museum where the additional opening of Lulu, Alice Waters’ first restaurant outside of her beloved Bay Area restaurants Chez Panisse and Cafe Fanny, makes the possibility of dinner and a movie a tantalizing draw. In fact, the theater and the chef have collaborated a few times with “Food and Film” screenings where a special menu is served next door, but programmers at the rejuvenated cinema have been serving up plenty of feasts of their own, with career retrospectives of Wayne Wang, Theo Angelopoulos and cinematographer and frequent Claire Denis collaborator Agnes Godard, a tribute to Todd Haynes that may or may not have involved a pristine new print of “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” and a sensational survey of recent Indigenous Cinema.
What’s been really exciting, however, are the inventive double features that have really shown the creativity of programmers such as the series “American Neorealism, Part Two: 1984-2020” and “Making Waves,” centered on filmmakers emerging from the BIPOC experience, which many times would put filmmakers of different generations in conversation with one another, creating fascinating exchanges such as in the latter where one could see “Time” director Garrett Bradley’s first feature “Below Dreams” in tandem with Richard Linklater’s directorial debut “It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books,” with both tackling impressionable twenty somethings on the road, or in the former where Walter Thompson-Hernández could quite directly engage one of his idols in conversation when he took to the stage with Charles Burnett after a screening of his recent Sundance-winning short “If I Go Will They Miss Me” and before Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” played. Still a home in the spring to the invaluable Celebration of Iranian Cinema series and presenting untold riches from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, including their ongoing Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, throughout the year, the Billy Wilder has always offered something priceless, but now that it is in every sense of the term, there’s no excuse not to visit one of the best theaters in town. Billy Wilder Theater, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., www.cinema.ucla.edu/billy-wilder-theater
Brain Dead Studios
In October 2020, it was surreal to see the marquee lit up again at what used to be the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax, not only because few theaters in general had attempted reopening just yet, but because many thought it was dead for good, not only coming back from the time its projectionist put a hit out on its owner, who was also his lover, but its most recent reincarnation as the Cinefamily came to an end every bit as ugly. It turns out, the dead part was right, but only as it appears in the name of Kyle Ng’s clothing and apparel brand, which fits right in on the street where sneaker shops regularly draw endless lines but the movie theater has seemed always seemed like an outlier, even when Cinefamily found success. (A recent profile in GQ gives some insight why Ng would put his money into a movie theater when he told the magazine, “I’m a for-profit business, but my business is built off culture. If we’re saying we’re a lifestyle brand, then we need to create culture.”)
Brain Dead Studios reflects Ng’s ambitions of cultural connectivity when the lobby can act as a showroom for Brain Dead apparel, the back patio of the theater has become an espresso bar during the day where guest chefs regularly pass through and can provide unusual concessions for the theater side, which shows seven to 10 films on average a week. Mezzanine and the unspeakably nifty Museum of Home Video have guest programmed there, and when left to their own devices, you could take in a triple bill of “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” “Blow Out” and “Spaceballs” all in the same night. The theater has built up its cool cred with screenings of “Atlanta” director Hiro Murai’s music videos, a 20th anniversary screening of the Bob Dylan curiosity “Masked and Anonymous” with director Larry Charles on hand, and formally daring new releases such as the John Wilson-produced “Carpet Cowboys” and Godfrey Reggio’s “Once Within a Time.” Still standing since 1942, one of L.A.’s oldest theaters feels like one of it’s freshest. Brain Dead Studios, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., studios.wearebraindead.com
Cinefile Video
At this point, Cinefile is as much of an institution as the 90-year-old Nuart Theater that it planted down roots alongside in 1999, catering to the same varied tastes that the venerable arthouse that helped make “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” a midnight phenomenon and has screened nearly every Godard film in its initial release and rerelease has. Started by former clerks at Vidiots, Sebastian Matthews, who owned the record store Touch Vinyl around the corner, took over in 2013 when the 40,000-plus collection of movies in all formats from VHS to Laserdisc to DVD and Blu-rays was at risk of being dismantled. A short doc by Alyssa Wheeler gives a good idea what would’ve been lost.
Even after the record store succumbed to a tragic fire, Mathews has valiantly kept the doors of Cinefile open and one can easily spend more time browsing the aisles than it would take to watch a full-length feature, particularly when it has kept up the tradition of carrying titles that no one else has – at first, bootlegs in its initial incarnation, and now more legit with clerks keep an eye on international home video releases to bring in hard-to-find foreign films and streaming-only titles in the U.S. (Thanks to a Chinese release, you can rent “The Underground Railroad” without subscribing to Amazon.) They regularly take customer requests into account as they fill in the few gaps they have in their collection and made Mondays worth looking forward to over the summer with mayhem-filled screenings at the store where one could pull up a chair and enjoy “Combat Shock” and “Don’t Panic” without judgment. Cinefile Video, 11280 Santa Monica Blvd, www.cinefilevideo.com
Lumiere Cinema
One of the last movie theaters in Los Angeles where you’ll find those comfy, overstuffed and once ubiquitous movie theater seats from the late ‘80s to early ‘90s, without having to worry about whether the electric recline is functioning properly or the faux leather has hardened and splintered, the Lumiere Cinema has become the best place in Los Angeles to settle in for a film and for films to settle in themselves. When Laemmle let go of the Music Hall, its Beverly Hills theater, employees Luis Orellana, Lauren Brown, and Peter Ambrosio banded together to keep one of the oldest theaters in the city alive and turned the great disadvantage of most independent arthouses into one of its great strengths, perhaps not getting first crack at the hottest titles when chains demand exclusivity at the start of their runs, but extending their life for months with a proper big screen presentation.
For moviegoers waiting for word of mouth or just may not have had the time as films seem to slip and out of the city without notice, this has been a great blessing and while every week, an obvious few openings look to fulfill their contractual obligations before hitting Redbox – and God bless ‘em for helping to keep the lights on – the trio shows exquisite curatorial taste, offering nearly 20 films daily in their three cinemas at one showing a day that can often look like a world class film festival with films from around the world of all genres from filmmakers that can range from just starting out to modern masters and certainly they have appreciated having a place they can call home in the city, with the theater’s walls now lined with posters filled with personal inscriptions. After surviving the lockdown and fending off a bid to have the real estate for the theater stolen from right under them, the Lumiere’s resilience has been inspiring and is single-handedly salvaging second-run theatrical in Los Angeles. Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, www.lumierecinemala.com
The New Beverly
It seems crazy to think now, but there was uncertainty in the air when Quentin Tarantino took over full-time operations of the cherished single screen on Beverly Boulevard after being a benevolent landlord for years to original owner Sherman Torgan and then his son Michael, who valiantly kept the double bills running after his father’s passing. (Filmmaker and former employee Julia Marchese’s “Out of Print” remains an enjoyable and comprehensive history.) Nothing seemed like it needed to be changed at the theater where you could catch movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s in the type of environment in which they first entered the world with a little wear-and-tear on the seats that made it feel all the more authentic and without pretense. One could easily imagine Tarantino prying open his personal collection of rare IB Tech prints of true deep cuts like the 1966 Italian spy spoof “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die” as he would at one of his legendary retro film festivals in Austin, Texas a little more, but otherwise, there appeared no need to fix much of anything, except the theater’s notoriously small bathrooms, so a turnover of the staff and a year-long renovation in 2018 came as a shock.
The shock may now be in just how much excitement surrounds the New Bev, frequented by a younger and more diverse audience than in the old days and while many double feature pairings look to be handpicked by the boss, each monthly calendar drop goes well beyond grindhouse expectations with Tarantino’s insistence that every film screens in celluloid seemingly opening up opportunities rather than limiting what can be shown. If not for the New Bev’s policy, prints might never have been struck for Netflix-bound “Okja” and “Glass Onion,” which were accompanied to the theater by their directors, and it continues to be a theater where Al Pacino might stop by to surprise audiences after a screening of “The Panic in Needle Park,” but equally surprising are the number of indie films from the era that Tarantino came up in, making space for Cheryl Dunye’s personal print of “The Watermelon Woman” and a tribute to “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love” producer Dolly Hall. Concession stand choices include a rotating craft soda selection, White Castle sliders and vegan hot dogs in honor of Bong Joon Ho and Tarantino’s investment in the property has gone well beyond money, building buzz for screenings on his must-listen Video Archives podcast with Roger and Gala Avery in addition to his visits, as well as his staff, to Pure Cinema Podcast, hosted by Elric Kane and Brian Saur. While Tarantino turned heads again when taking over the Vista, another venue that’s main area of upgrade appeared to be its bathrooms, Los Angeles is in for a real treat, if the New Bev is any indication. The New Beverly, 7165 Beverly Blvd., www.thenewbev.com
Secret Movie Club
One of the most triumphant screenings I’ve ever seen in Los Angeles was in the summer of 2019 when Secret Movie Club founder Craig Hammill gave the royal treatment to John Woo, screening “The Killer” at the Vista Theatre where he had arranged for the filmmaker to place his handprints in cement outside. It’s one thing to lavish such attention to a legend like Woo, who appeared to be seriously moved by the standing ovation that greeted him, but it’s telling that the Secret Movie Club was equally reverential when hosting a three-film salute to “Morris from America” director Chad Hartigan, who hadn’t seen his latest film “Little Fish” in a theater when it premiered during the pandemic, last December. After starting out with midnight screenings at the Vista of generally accepted classics on 35mm, the pandemic forced Secret Movie Club to change things up as well, still finding a way to give audience a good time by first partnering with Electric Dusk Drive-In to show movies in the Glendale Sears Parking Lot and when it was safe to return to theaters, they found a more permanent home in the Arts District.
Sneak up to the second floor of the former toy factory at the corner of Bay and Wilson Street and you’ll find the closest approximation to the passionate film societies that existed before the dawn of home video, where it isn’t unusual to screen “Invasion U.S.A.” with Chuck Norris one night followed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Querelle” the next and a months’ lineup could go a long way towards checking off blind spots from cinematic history. Although they have the good taste to show a double bill of Jean Renoir’s “The River” and “Rules of the Game,” true refinement is also reflected in showing a triple bill of “Fast and Furious” movies parts one, three and six and knowing that many in the audience are filmmakers themselves, the mission has broadened beyond showing movies to help make them as they host workshops and hold feedback screenings where budding auteurs can figure out what they have. This Friday November 10th, the theater is hosting a screening of Dennis Hauck’s “Too Late,” which the director notoriously resisted making available on any format other than celluloid, having timed out scenes to unfold in 13-minute single takes because that was the length of the film reel. It’s hard to imagine the evening, complete with a live acoustic set after the screening by Hauck and footage for his next feature “Al’s Brand” shot by the late Halyna Hutchins, happening anywhere else, but some things are simply too good to keep secret. Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, www.secretmovieclub.com
USC
While USC has always been regarded as one of the best film schools around the country, less well-known is that if one doesn’t need to use the equipment, you can actually get a free education there, due to the diligent programming of Alessandro Ago, who has managed the university’s robust screening series as its director of programming and special projects since 2009. Although the students naturally come first, almost all of the films that come through the Ray Stark Family Theatre, the Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre and the Norris Cinema Theatre on campus are open to the public with an RSVP and usually have plenty of great seats left. Beyond having a weekly array of the latest films ranging from documentaries and foreign films to blockbusters and streaming titles that will rarely see the big screen, there are frequently special events programmed in collaboration with the various departments on campus – recently, a seven-film series “War, Justice and Democracy in the Films of Steven Spielberg” has brought out screenwriters who have worked with the director on some of his most lauded dramas and on the other side of the coin, this week’s Comedy Festival promises both a screening of Please Don’t Destroy’s “The Treasure of Foggy Mountain” and a 30th anniversary of Robert Townsend’s “The Meteor Man” with the filmmakers in attendance.
Ago’s own roots will be on display when welcoming in a New Italian Cinema series in December where films without U.S. distribution will be making their L.A. debuts, but his touch is seen throughout the year in a schedule where films from the American Genre Film Archive are as much a part of the program as the movies of famed USC alum Kevin Feige and although he’s appeared to step back more these days to let students handle moderating duties for Q & As, post-film discussions continue to be an enriching experience for not only aspiring filmmakers but it seems the filmmakers as well in the laid-back environment. The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street; The Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre, RZC 119, Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, 3131 S. Figueroa Street; Norris Cinema Theatre at the Frank Sinatra Hall, 3507 Trousdale Parkway; www.cinema.usc.edu/events
Vidéothèque
Only recently did Vidéothèque leave its home of 20 years in South Pasadena for a new location in Highland Park where the aisles are wider for more comfortable browsing, but the shelves are as packed as ever with 45,000-plus movies to choose from at the most charming video store you’ll find south of Pacific Northwest rental meccas Scarecrow Video in Seattle and Movie Madness in Portland. (As one might imagine, the move hasn’t been cheap, and owner Mark Wright has a worthwhile GoFundMe going to help cover the costs.) Every week, the titles of new releases are artistically scrawled on a white board behind the counter and you could rent “Barbie,” sure, but also that limited edition of New German Cinema progenitor “Red Sun” that boutique label Radiance recently put out that you’d be unable to find in L.A. other than by ordering online. It’s where looking alphabetically can only do so much good when sections are divided along the lines of a cinephile’s brain – of course, there is a horror section, but then there’s are subsets for ‘50s and ‘60s horror and Elvira movies and directors Frank Henenlotter and Curtis Harrington have equity with rows of their own next to Sam Raimi and Clive Barker.
If you go into Vidéothèque looking for one thing, they’ll have it, but still you’ll find yourself checking out with something else when the collection is organized to organically expand one’s interests and now with a backroom dedicated to music, including a modest selection of vinyl records to go with their DVDs and Blu-rays of Miles Davis and Nick Cave that are bound to include both concert films and films they’ve scored, and an inviting front lobby filled with great gift possibilities such as cartoonist Nathan Gelgud’s T-shirts and totes touting Varda and Almodovar’s entire filmographies and gorgeous Chirashi posters to sit alongside employee picks. The store is even getting ready to host their first screenings in their new digs with Friday nights in November dedicated to “French Kissin’ in the USA” with the Richard Gere remake of “Breathless” on November 10th and Bobby Roth’s “Heartbreakers” on November 17th, and while they may be only just making themselves feel like they’re at home, it’s bound to feel the same way for those looking for the ultimate video store experience. Vidéothèque, 4102 N. Figueroa St., www.vidtheque.com
Vidiots
People may have thought that they were just going to check out something for the weekend at Vidiots’ old haunts in Santa Monica where even sitting less than a mile from the beach, the movies beckoned. But in building a movie collection over 60,000 titles strong since starting out in 1985, Cathy Tauber and Patty Pollinger had created a community where running into people skimming the shelves for something to watch was likely to bring as much joy as whatever an ultimate selection was. In a place where many of the most famous filmmakers resided, you could easily bump into the person that made the film you were holding in your hand, and notes of appreciation lined the walls. Both rising rent and a dwindling demand for physical media would lead Tauber and Pollinger to close their doors in 2015, but with the help of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, the two tucked away their massive home video holdings, much of which has never made it to streaming, and found a tireless advocate in Maggie Mackay, a former programmer at the L.A. Film Fest, who spearheaded an effort to reimagine the movie mecca as a nonprofit where the community came first.
Standing in the lobby of either Vidiots’ rental section or in the adjoining Eagle Theater, a former church used by televangelists that now spreads the gospel of cinema as a repertory house, one is reminded of the notion that movies are only completed by their audience when it feels like attendees are all deeply invested. In a literal financial way, this is true when Vidiots was rebuilt over three years of fundraising (an effort that is ongoing), but even just having opened their doors in the summer, there’s an emotional connection that is hard to describe, but has already taken hold as the theater has hosted screenings of “Stop Making Sense” with the Talking Heads in the house, a tribute to the late Julia Reichert where longtime partner Steve Bognar presented a work-in-progress about her life, and raucous screenings of “Road House” and “Jennifer’s Body.” Vidiots also keeps the movies rolling around the clock, housing a 36-seat microcinema that plays new indie and arthouse releases, and for those who would rather do their browsing for things to watch at home online, much of the catalog can be scoped out there and growing in number by the day. Still, if anywhere could lure Angelenos out of the house, it’s this place where you really can feel like you’re a part of something special. Vidiots, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd., www.vidiotsfoundation.org
WHAMMY!
The front door of WHAMMY! faces away from Sunset Boulevard, and from punching its address into Google Maps, you could make the mistake of thinking you’ve reached an income tax office instead. But walk around the corner to the back and you’ll find an inviting patio and stacks upon stacks of video cassettes, marking territory that feels gloriously underground in every sense of the term when films of the VHS era that never made the leap to digital line the shelves – don’t expect to find a single 4K disc here, let alone a DVD. However, owners Jessica Gonzales and Eric Varho offer a pristine experience, particularly when the store converts into a microcinema at night, offering some of the most adventurous cinema in L.A. Even the lowest quality materials — and by extension, typically the rarest — look sharp with crisp projection and a nice sound system, and while Whammy has become a natural environment for films that have a countercultural sneer and satire to them, it may also be home to some of the most sincerely moving screenings imaginable when filmmakers who have thought their films were completely lost or certainly under appreciated on their initial release can see them newly appreciated, whether it was Paul Lynch, director of the 1983 Canadian thriller “Cross Country,” or Peter Sellars, who acted alongside Molly Ringwald and Woody Allen in Jean-Luc Godard’s rarely screened “King Lear” from 1987.
Recently, it was difficult not to get a little choked up when Chris Shields noted in his introduction of a screening of “Video Diary of a Lost Girl,” which he co-wrote with director Lindsay Denniberg, that the screening of the 2012 phantasmagoric odyssey of a sexual vampire brought together a bunch of the people involved in its making from across the country that had dispersed after production wrapped. Naturally when the screening ended and Denniberg implored people to keep in touch since their next film “Killer Makeover” is on the way, it was not social media handles being projected onto the screen, but her web address handwritten on chopped up VHS boxes, making the kind of endearing adjustment to the digital age that Whammy has where there’s no small amount of charm in remaining analog. WHAMMY!, 2514 Sunset Blvd. (entrance in the back), www.whammyanalog.com