10. BREATHLESS (1960) on 16mm at Video Archives Cinema Club
The jump cut: that is my immediate association with Godard’s BREATHLESS (1960). I still see the editing technique as illustrated in a Bordwell and Thompson textbook used for Intro to Film my freshman year of college. A still of Jean Seberg in a convertible side by side with a still of Seberg in the same car but clearly different location. A simple enough explanation that it’s top of mind all these years later.
BREATHLESS got a small run in 35mm on the Vista main screen and in 16mm on the Video Archives screen to coincide with Richard Linklater’s NOUVELLE VAGUE (2025) contemporary retelling of the production of the film that launched the French New Wave. I didn’t have to think about it too long, I knew from the go that I was going to opt for the Video Archives 16mm projection.
A small indulgence to comment on the microcinema experience:
The twenty-seat Video Archives Cinema Club tucked away behind an unassuming door at the Vista was the theater I spent the most time at in the back half of 2025. There’s a slight intimidation factor upon walking into any microcinema for the first time. There’s no disappearing here amongst a throng of moviegoers in a dimly lit theater.
No, a microcinema’s lights might be Walmart bright white upon crossing over its threshold, metal folding seats unfurled a few minutes before showtime and most definitely a heart felt film intro whether to three moviegoers or a full house anyone of which could bring on some social anxiety. I refer to this because Video Archives Cinema Club is unique among microcinema in that the seats are comfortable, the lighting is delicate and yet it is the most intimidating of the lot.
The entrance to Video Archives Cinema Club has the feel of a speakeasy.. “Am I at the right door, is this really it?” is the feeling I first had attending. Then you open that door, take two steps in and the eyes of every patron and the projectionist can’t help but turn to take you in as you’re now standing at the top of a short staircase overlooking the theater’s four rows of seats.
The Video Archives regulars tend to arrive early and take the coveted back row seats. The first two rows you’re going to be straining your neck for the duration, the third row (my preference) perfectly fine, but it’s the back row that has the best sight line.
There’ll be banter amongst the regulars and the man behind the Cinema Club, Matt, positioned on the raised projection platform in the back. You won’t be included, that will take time, but when you are, it’s with open arms and warm greetings. And that’s the case with any microcinema, they are amongst the warmest cinema communities going, they’re the resting bitch face of the movie going world: the intimidation isn’t their fault, it’s just how they look.
But back to BREATHLESS:
The 16mm projector at the Video Archives Cinema Club is in the room with you; it’s not tucked away in a booth and that means it’s really with you. The sound of the film unspooling dominates the small room and it transported me back to how I imagine the film clubs around the country felt in getting their hands on 16mm French New Wave prints for the first time.
The film is timeless, Seberg is radiant, Belmondo equally tragic and it makes you want to take to the streets with a camera in hand. But even more than the film it was the experience of seeing it on this particular day, on that particular print, in that particular theater that I’ll never forget and that sums up what I seek out in revival cinema more than anything.
9. HOWARD THE DUCK (1987) on 70mm at American Cinematheque Aero
The Ultracinematheque 70 Fest features many of the titles you’d expect (I saw THE SEARCHERS at the Egyptian during the fest as one example) and then some titles that leave you asking, “They made a 70mm of that movie??” HOWARD THE DUCK (1987) is one of the latter titles. This movie hit me at a certain age and I remember watching it on VHS or cable many many times.
I also am certain it’s been since the late 80s that I saw it. At the time of its release it was widely considered the biggest bomb of the year and certain critics even saw fit to call it the worst film ever made. Bullocks! It is wild to watch a big budget comic book movie made almost forty years ago after the onslaught of whatever this CGI comic book hell we’ve lived through will be called.
The practical craft taken to make this movie is over the top, it looks absolutely fantastic. It’s not a rip roaring time through the entire two hours but it provides zaniness and laughs galore. A friend of mine brought his 10 year old and the kid couldn’t believe this was considered a bad movie when it came out. He loved it! I understand the sentiment.
Director Willard Huyck was on hand to do a Q&A with Cinematic Void’s Jim Branscome post screening and it’s just a delight to see a director who was pilloried in his time get to see something he put that much effort into still playing to a grateful crowd all these years later.
8. PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990) dir. Rick King, on 35mm at Brain Dead pres. by Hollywood Entertainment
Continuing on with the theme of “maligned in its time features” comes PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990) from director Rick King. I did not know this movie existed and seems fairly crazy to me given it’s a Corey Haim-teen-action-rollerblading-gang-flick set in post-apocalyptic Venice, California. This would have ticked many many boxes for me in 1990.
Alas, I was meant to see the movie in 2025. Hollywood Entertainment presented the 35mm screening at Brain Dead along with the director, writer and producer all in attendance. Christopher Collett steals the movie as the leader of said Rollerboys who glide into scenes with long white overcoats rustling behind them in sync rollerblade formation. Yes, it lives up to that description.
7. NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957) dir. Federico Fellini, at The Frida Cinema on Art House Theater Day
I did not know of “Arthouse Theater Day” before 2025 but wanted to support it in some way. Shooting the MovieTown episode at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana was immensely enjoyable, I came away from that production in shock that this theater exists in Santa Ana. It feels like a miracle in some way. This might be the best theater in the country at the moment.
So, when I saw they were showing 3 movies from the Arthouse Theater Slate I knew where I’d be. Prior to and after each movie I did interviews with moviegoers to give the sense of just one theater on this particular Thursday in 2025.
I put in a triple feature on this day and that’s a lot when combined with a one man video production. By the time Sean Baker’s 2015 iPhone feature TANGERINE played in the coveted one 7pm slot I figured I was sure to be fading.
However, Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA was the second film of the day for me and there is just something about catching a masterwork of cinema at the right time that rejuvenates the body and soul. I’d never seen NIGHTS OF CABIRIA in a theater and sometimes have to sort out in my mind which plot belongs to it and not to LA DOLCE VITA or LA STRADA.
Giuletta Musina stars as a prostitute who’s carved out a small (delightful?) life in a cement shake on the outskirts of Rome. She’s got her fellow ballgirl friends, her regulars and isn’t too jaded to fall in love. The thundering devastation that hits in this movie’s final few minutes will do nothing less than tear you apart.
I have to shake my head sometimes that this is what we as cinephiles sometimes seek out as a moviegoer, to be utterly laid bare, to be destroyed by the humanity coming across to you onscreen.
6. THE TARGET SHOOTS FIRST (1999) dir Christopher Wilcha at PRS pres. by Hollywood Entertainment
We’ve all had that experience at some time or other, you’re in the middle of a movie and thinking to yourself, “Was this movie made specifically for me, is this some cosmic prank?”
You look around and hopefully come to the conclusion that no, you are not the universal audience of one but just happen to be one among many people going through similar experiences at different times in history. All to say, such is the way I felt halfway through Christopher Wilcha’s 1999 first person documentary, THE TARGET SHOOTS FIRST.
Starting his first job straight out of college, Chris finds himself entering the corporate beating heart of the music industry, Columbia House Records. Yes, that service, the one where you get 8 CDs for the price of one! Or whatever the offer was they cooked up to cause the most confusion and ended up somehow having a copy of Garth Brooks album for which you were charged $38.
Chris has found himself in the marketing department in the mid 90s right when ‘Alternative Music’ has changed the course of youth consumer habits and left execs dumbfounded to this cohort they can’t market to any longer. Chris finds himself spearheading the new ‘Alternative’ category and magazine for the company. Oh, also Chris brings a little handheld camcorder he got as a college graduation present with him to work every single day.
The footage is astonishing and not in the way of it capturing some crazy behind the scenes work drama but just knowing the idea of someone documenting the day to day of a large corporation would be strictly verboten at this point in time.
We just won’t get this kind of movie ever again. Chris was a philosophy major more interested in the arts and filmmaking than a corporate marketing career and used the camera as his outlet or distancing tool to not see the path his life was taking.
My own personal history followed a very similar path some years after Chris shot his film. I took a corporate job with the Gap right out of college, found myself in a corporate culture of people who cared far, far more than I about the color and fit of a t-shirt and wondered what I had done with my life. Like Chris I would leave the job before too long to pursue the filmmaking life.
This movie is a very small slice of this one man’s first job but it’s everything I have come to want in a documentary. There are no well lit interviews here to comment back on the action, Chris is sometimes a fly on the wall, sometimes fly in the thick of it. I was completely riveted.
Hollywood Entertainment presented the documentary at PRS with 7th House screening and there was a great pre-recorded Q&A with the director that showed post post-film. Have you ever worked any kind of corporate job? Were you a Columbia House or BMG record club member? Are you someone who lived through the 1990s? Or maybe you just are a human that likes a good movie. This one is for you.
5. THE BLACK PIRATE (1929) w/live score on the Mighty Wurlitzer at The Old Town Music Hall
I think of myself as a fairly well versed cinephile on the general happenings in LA and the film culture at large, but perhaps the largest lesson I’ve learned this year in starting MovieTown is just how many treasures there were still to be found here.
Top of the list is without a doubt The Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, home of the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. For those that have attended a silent film screening accompanied by live organ score at Old Town this information will be met with a simple, “Yeah, no kidding.”
Maybe you’ve seen a live orchestral film score at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, or some other hallowed venue or an avant-garde sort of thing in the back of a back in Highland Park or even a Buster Keaton movie at the Egyptian with a highly thought of pre-recorded soundtrack.
I am just going to tell you very clear that you are getting a tenth of the experience of silent film compared to the Old Town maestros performing on the hundred year old organ sitting in the front of the theater. The only apt word that comes to mind to describe any of these organists is “virtuoso” - the talent on display is hard to comprehend unless you are familiar with one of these organs.
And then plate that with the Douglas Fairbanks silent epic, THE BLACK PIRATE and you have one of the absolute best filmgoing experiences I had of the year. The restoration that was screened showcases the earliest technicolor feature film, yes, technicolor, actually color. I didn’t know color had existed in the silent era but this was what paved the way for the high technicolor films to come.
Just about any silent film would be a great experience at Old Town but Fairbanks lays down the basics of nearly every pirate film to come. Enjoy Erroll Flynn sword fights on the high seas and Pirates of the Caribbean, you have Fairbanks to thank. I can’t wait to get out to El Segundo in 2026 (quite possibly the first time you’ve ever read those words together).
4. LIVE WIRE (1992) on 35mm at the New Beverly - Film #2 on 90s 4-Film Action Mystery Marathon
Four films all a mystery until unspooling in front of you. I’ve done triple or quadruple features of my own making before but I’d never as long as I’ve been going to revival cinemas here in LA I’ve never actually submitted myself to full on marathon.
It was time and being especially nostalgic for whatever reason in the summer of 2025 for the action filmmaking of the 1990s, I bought tickets as soon as I saw the announcement. Programmed by Phil Blankship of Heavy Midnites at The New Beverly with hand picked trailers rolling before each film that gave slight clues to the feature you were about to watch if attention was paid.
The film that makes my top ten here, LIVE WIRE (1990), directed by Christian Duguay, played in the second slot of the night. The affair kicked off with UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992), the Roland Emmerich helmed Van Damme/Dolph Lungren macho off.
This was the only film of the night I would actually doze off a bit through the film’s opening set piece at the Hoover Dam and the final fight amidst rising fire flames are what make people still come back to this movie but I was surprised how uninspired it was at the points in between. During the short break before the second film I was having my doubts about what I signed up for, it could be rough.
Settling back into my seat for the second film pre-show my skepticism was diminished for the moment as the trailers for the following films played in this order: SPEED, PATRIOT GAMES, THE SPECIALIST, BLOWN AWAY & GOLDEN EYE. This was an incredible gauntlet of trailers, but what in the world would the film be, a Keanu Reeves movie, Stallone, Spy thriller??
The second feature started and I immediately knew whatever we were watching was something I had seen before. I just didn’t know what it was, the title or anything other than a memory of it unspooling before me prior to this point.
The film opens with Pierce Brosnan heads between a woman’s legs to be revealed that the legs are of a driver stuck on an overpass atop a busy DC freeway. Brosnan is a bomb specialist and is defusing a car bomb that this woman’s cuckolded husband rigged up as a surprise for her. Pierce defuses it and we’re off - and what a ride we are on.
To say this movie killed is to put it lightly, I cannot believe this movie hasn’t found a foothold in the Revival Cinema scene. As the movie goes on and Pierce battles a terrorist wreaking havoc with indecipherable liquid explosives across the nation’s capital I couldn’t believe how much I knew every single scene of the movie. Prior to playing the third film in the marathon Phil would give some backstory of the movie’s life that made it all click for me.
The film was pulled by the studio prior to its theatrical release in 1991 over concerns about the on American soil terrorism being depicted. HBO ends up picking up the rights and has it be a straight to cable premiere and it’s here I remember watching the movie countless times.
Much of the joy of the film lies not just in the perfectly staged set pieces but in the continual humor threaded throughout. Brosnan’s wife has left him for a Senator (Ron Silver in just a classic Ron Silver role) and everywhere Brosnan goes other cops give him a hard time about his wife, he can’t escape the torture. It’s awesome.
This movie is very hard to find - looks like it was released on DVD at some point but man does this need a 4K/Blu Ray release and to be programmed. Theaters, take heed!!
3. THUNDERBALL (1962) on 35mm at the Vista - Sunday Matinee
The 10am weekend matinees are one of those under the radar gems that one hesitates to write about for fear of it gaining too much traction, but the Vista is a big place and it can accommodate plenty more folk before these screenings get too big.
I hit the THUNDERBALL screening on the Sunday of the first ever MovieTown Cinema Crawl in May. It was my first time catching the weekend matinee at the Vista and right off the bat there are so many details to love about this experience.
First is, would people come out for a 60s era James Bond film? Would people bring kids? The answer was yes to both questions. It was delightful to see the theater fill up with a genuinely diverse mix of old and young, men and women, cinephile and cinecurious.
The movie is a total joy, it’s often considered a top three Bond movie and you’ll hear no argument from me. My favorite aspect of watching this with a crowd in 2025 was how much it felt like the crowd needed to laugh at the sort of humor one finds in a Connery era Bond movie.
Yes, the culture has swung too far in its efforts not to offend anyone, that is a fairly general consensus these days and Bond feels like the absolute encapsulation of how much enjoyment is in humor or old, in wit and innuendo. Thank you, Vista, for playing this movie on 35mm film, count me in for any pre 2000s era Bond films.
2. THE ART OF DYING (1990) / LIVING TO DIE (1989) on VHS at Whammy! Analog - Stuck on VHS Wings Hauser Double Feature
The “Stuck on VHS” screenings at Whammy! Analog have become a regular feature of my monthly recs this year. Movies that never got a DVD or Blu Ray release, thus stuck forever on the tape medium (note: this doesn’t count shitty DVDs transferred from VHS that one does find).
VHS at large was a surprise for me this year. I had some inkling that people were collecting some old VHS tapes, maybe having an old VCR hooked up to a TV at home for fun but I was totally ignorant that there were actually screenings on VHS happening around town that people paid money to see.
Yes, I was skeptical. Having grown up in the VHS era I was there to see the jump in quality to DVD - being able to count on seeing a film in its correct frame ration, commentary tracks, and then on to Blu Ray and now the fantastic 4K releases we are so lucky to have. Why would anyone watch a movie on VHS at home, let alone in a theater?
The answer I was to find out over the course of 10+ VHS screenings this year was that some things just can’t be explained but it works and in some cases works better than other mediums.
Wings Hauser is an actor I didn’t know by name and certainly didn’t know he had a brief run as a straight to video film director in the late 80s/early 90s. THE ART OF DYING is straight through a great watch. Wings plays a detective tracking down the murders of “straight off the bus” kids on Hollywood Blvd getting pulled into the world of one wannabe film auteur’s snuff productions.
It’s a great LA movie, a great filmmaking movie and a great movie to watch on VHS. LIVING TO DIE is a surprisingly pitch black Neo-noir set in the mountains outside of LA with some genuinely shocking twists and deaths I won’t go into detail here. Get yourself a VCR, get a copy of Wings’ tape and watch for yourself.
1. THE STRAIGHT STORY on 35mm at Vidiots
There were a couple main through lines in Revival Cinema 2025: the microcinema, the return of VHS, but none bigger than David Lynch.
David Lynch died in January of this year and it’s hard to overstate the impact he had on cinema. Lynch Retrospectives began almost immediately and are continuing to run right up to the final day of the year.
Perhaps I wasn’t attuned to the impact TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN made upon its release, but I had no idea how beloved Lynch was especially for the younger generations. All of his films have mattered to me a great deal at various different points of my life but most dramatically in my teens and twenties.
The torch dimmed a bit over the years, occasionally I would revisit something like LOST HIGHWAY or an episode of TWIN PEAKS and be enthralled anew, but I hadn’t made my way out to revisit anything on his at the movies in some time.
I made it to Vidiots for this 4pm Saturday screening of THE STRAIGHT STORY on 35mm a good thirty minutes early. I wanted to mill about the lobby and video store a bit and take in the crowd for this sold out afternoon screening.
A mind boggling eclectic assortment of moviegoers made their way in while I sat at the Vidiots lobby bar before I finally made my way into the Eagle auditorium to find a seat. A Vidiots staff member asked the crowd who was seeing the film for the first time and a shocking number of hands shot up, at least seventy five percent of the crowd would be seeing the movie for the first time.
I have a copy of the movie on DVD but can’t remember the last time I played it, certainly over ten years would be my guess. Some movies seem to age along with you better than others and it shouldn’t be all that surprising that a movie about aging and coming to the end of one’s road here on earth is just such a movie.
THE STRAIGHT STORY is one that stays with you a long time after you leave the theater, it’s certainly stayed with me all this year since I saw it, partly since David Lynch screenings have continued across the city and I think of it whenever I see his name but also find myself thinking of it whenever talking to family or driving a particular lonely stretch of road.
Some films will stand the test of time no matter the environment one watches it in, but a film alone can’t create a transcendent experience.
That Saturday afternoon in Highland Park watching this movie from 1999 projected on 35mm film with close to three hundred other souls, over twenty years since it’s release and in the very year David Lynch left us was a transcendent moment in time and one I know I’ll have again at some other theater at some other point in my life down the cinematic highway.