We’re blessed here in the Third Row with contributors in several film centers around the world – Toronto, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and others all have thriving film cultures. It’s always fascinating to me to hear what film-going opportunities other cities have on offer – seriously, I used to pick up the New Yorker just to check out what was playing at the Bam Rose Cinema and Film Forum. When I moved out to LA a year and a half ago, I expected to have easy access to all the new releases, both major and arthouse, but I’m not sure I expected to find as diverse a repertory culture as I did. For any readers in Los Angeles wondering where to get beyond the next-big-thing Hollywood mindset and find some hidden gems, here are some good places to start.

Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theatre

My personal favorite place to see repertory screenings is Cinefamily, operating out of the old Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax in Hollywood. It ain’t just silent films any more, though they do devote Wednesday nights to the extensive silent film collection they inherited from the previous owners. Programmer Hadrian Belove introduces nearly every film with brief anecdotes about it, silent films are accompanied with live piano and sometimes a live band, weekend shows often include free beer on the back patio in between shows, and though the cinema is hardly the height of technology or comfort, the audiences are among the best in town. My favorite thing about the Cinefamily? You can buy a membership for $25 a month and go to ALL their regular series (as many as 25 films a month) without paying anything extra, as well as get a $4 discount on all special event screenings. Fantastic deal for film discovery.

After the jump, schedules for Cinefamily, the American Cinematheque, the New Beverly Cinema, LACMA, the Nuart Cinema, and more.

Czech New Wave Series – early Saturday evenings
“Literate and witty, playful and poetic, visually evocative and tonally rich — these are but a few of the qualities marking the wide-ranging films exported by Czechoslovakia in the ’60s.” Full descriptions

• Feb 6, 7:30pm – Daisies (1966, dir. Vêra Chytilová)
• Feb 13, 7:30pm – Intimate Lighting (1965, dir. Ivan Passer) – director in person
• Feb 20, 7:00pm – Marketa Lazarova (1967, dir. František Vláčil)
• Feb 27, 7:30pm – Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970, dir. Jaromil Jireš)

Post-Punk Junk – Thursday music films
Thursdays are always devoted to music of some sort – musicals, concert films, live performances, etc. This time the theme is post-punk. Full descriptions

• Feb 4, 8pm – Night Flight Presents: A Tribute to New Wave Theatre
• Feb 11, 8pm – Post-Punk Junk Mix Night, Feat. Car Cemetery
• Feb 18, 8pm – Athens, GA: Inside Out (1987, dir. Tony Gayton) – director in person
• Feb 25, 8pm – Liquid Sky (1983, dir. Slava Tsukerman) – director in person

Flappers – Silent Wednesdays
Wednesday nights pay tribute to the Silent Movie Theatre’s original niche. This month, the films celebrate one of the quintessential types of the 1920s. Full descriptions

• Feb 3, 8pm – The Flapper (1920, dir. Alan Crosland, w/ Olive Thomas)
• Feb 17, 8pm – Getting Gertie’s Garter (1927, dir. E. Mason Hopper, w/Marie Prevost) / Up in Mabel’s Room (1926, same)
• Feb 24, 8pm – The Patsy (1928, dir. King Vidor, w/Marion Davies)

HOLYFUCKINGSHIT: 2009 – late Saturdays
They always run the HFS series late Saturdays, basically made up of trash or cult cinema, or just stuff that makes you go WTF!? The theme this month appears to be trash cinema released in 2009. Full descriptions

• Feb 6, 10pm – Bad Biology (2009) – director Frank Henenlotter in person
• Feb 13, 10pm – SUPER SECRET SCREENING (2009)
• Feb 20, 10:30pm – not announced yet
• Feb 27, 10pm – Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2009) – director James Nguyen in person

The Art of Exploitation – Friday double features
“Long-forgotten exploitation gems with an emphasis on their artistic value, trashy good times or not.” – Full descriptions

• Feb 5, 8:00pm – Poor Pretty Eddie (1975) / The Loners (1972)
• Feb 12, 8:00pm – Fleshpot on 42nd St. (1973) / The Body Beneath (1972)
• Feb 19, 8:00pm – Teenage Divorcee (1972) / Teenage Hitch-Hikers (1975)
• Feb 26, 8:00pm – Game Show Models (1977) / The Boob Tube (1975)

Jerry Beck’s Animation Festival – Toonstruck: Cartoons in Love – February 9th, 8pm
Jerry Beck of the wonderful Cartoon Brew animation blog hosts an animation series one night a month where he basically just shows a bunch of cartoons around a loose theme, this time romance-driven ‘toons in honor of Valentine’s Day. He tends to pull more heavily from classic animation, but he shows a little of everything, usually throwing in as many forgotten studies and characters as he does well-known and loved ones. This is one of the “event” screenings, so it’s not included in the $25 membership, but if you’re a member, you’ll get in for $9 instead of $13. And it’s totally worth it.

American Cinematheque

Pretty much the only reason I’m not at the Cinematheque as often as I am at Cinefamily is because they don’t have an all-inclusive membership plan. Their version of membership is pay $50 a year and get $2 off every film. Which I figured out means you’d have to go to at least one film every week at $8 a film to make back your investment, and that doesn’t encourage the kind of “well, let me just check random stuff out” behaviour that Cinefamily does. Because otherwise, between the Hollywood Egyptian and Santa Monica Aero locations, the Cinematheque shows some damn fine cinema. Selected schedule below; the full schedules can be found here: Aero and Egyptian. I apologize in advance for the eye-strain their site will cause.

Aero Cinema, Santa Monica

• Feb 6, Noon – Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
• Feb 10, 8:30pm – Inherit the Wind (1960) / Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
• Feb 12, 7:30pm – La belle et la bête (1946) / Donkey Skin (1970)
• Feb 13, 7:30pm – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) / Sabrina (1954)
• Feb 14, 7:30pm – Rebecca (1940) / Notorious (1946)
• Feb 17, 7:30pm – War of the Worlds (1953) / China Gate (1957)
• Feb 25, 7:30pm – Jacques Tati series: Playtime (1967)
• Feb 26, 7:30pm – Jacques Tati series: Mon Oncle (1958) / The Magnificent Tati (2009)
• Feb 27, 7:30pm – Jacques Tati series: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) / The Big Day (1949)
• Feb 28, 7:30pm – Jacques Tati series: Traffic (1971) / Parade (1974)

Grauman’s Egyptian, Hollywood

• Feb 13, 7:30pm – Wings of Desire (1987) / Edward Scissorhands (1990)
• Feb 14, 7:30pm – Casablanca (1943) / Double Indemnity (1944)
• Feb 18, 7:30pm – A Face in the Crowd (1957) / Wild River (1960)
• Feb 19, 7:30pm – Man on a Tightrope (1953) / On the Waterfront (1954)
• Feb 20, 7:30pm – Baby Doll (1956) / A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
• Feb 25, 7:30pm – Gremlins (1984) / Gremlins 2 (1990)

New Beverly Cinema

The New Bev is the classic neighborhood rep/cult film cinema, and I don’t go nearly as often as I should. Here’s a selection of what they’ve got up in February. Find the full schedule over at their site.

• Feb 3-4 – Cassavetes double feature: Husbands (1970) / Gloria (1980)
• Feb 5-6 – Revanche (2008) / The Virgin Spring (1960)
• Feb 2 @ Midnight – Inglourious Basterds (2009)
• Feb 10-13 – The Exiles (1961) / Killer of Sheep (1977)
• Feb 14-15 – Summertime (1955) / All That Heaven Allows (1955)
• Feb 19-20 – Guest Programmer Jason Reitman: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) / Election (1999)
• Feb 21-22 – Guest Programmer Jason Reitman: Shampoo (1975) / Boogie Nights (1997)
• Feb 24-25 – Guest Programmer Jason Reitman: Breaking Away (1979) / Bottle Rocket (1996)
• Feb 26-27 – Born Yesterday (1950) / It Should Happen to You (1954)
• Feb 26 @ Midnight – Reservoir Dogs (1992)
• Feb 27 @ Midnight – Videodrome (1983)

Other Rep or Reissues

LACMA Series
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art almost closed down their film series last year, but they got enough requests to keep it going that they did. This month the series is Essential Eastwood, with a nice selection of Clint Eastwood-starring films. These run on the weekends, double features starting at 7:30pm.

• Feb 12 – Dirty Harry (1977) / Tightrope (1984)
• Feb 13 – The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) / Pale Rider (1985)
• Feb 19 – Bronco Billy (1980) / Honkytonk Man (1982)
• Feb 20 – Unforgiven (1992) / White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
• Feb 26 – Bird (1988)

Nuart Cinema
The Nuart is owned by the Landmark chain and does often show first-run arthouse fare, but in between they show some interesting reissues, repertory and cult series (including regular Saturday night midnight screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show). Check the Landmark site for specific times as screenings get closer. While you’re at the Nuart, make sure to stop in at the video store Cinefile next door – it’s pretty amazing.

Best of British Noir

• Feb 6/7/9/11 – Brighton Rock (1947)
• Feb 5/6/10 – The Third Man (1949)
• Feb 7/8/11 – It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
• Feb 7/8 – Peeping Tom (1960)
• Feb 9/10 – The Fallen Idol (1945)

CineINSOMNIA – Friday midnight screenings

• Feb 5 – Dead Birds (2004)
• Feb 12 – Harold and Maude (1972)
• Feb 19 – Shock Treatment (1981)
• Feb 26 – Antichrist (2009)

Reissues
The only major reissue coming through in February is the restored version of Vittorio DeSica’s neo-realist classic The Bicycle Thief, which is playing at Laemmle’s Monica 4-plex right now, and coming to Pasadena Playhouse on February 13th.

New Releases

Of course, LA is one of the two or three places in the US that limited release films often come first. Here are some of the more notable limited releases coming to LA this month.

A TOWN CALLED PANIC (Landmark Nuart; opened 1/29, ONE WEEK ONLY) – I saw this at AFI and LOVED IT; it also got positive reactions from Kurt and others at TIFF.

FISH TANK (Laemmle Sunset/Playhouse/Town Center; opened 1/29) – Another festival favorite, hitting both my and Marina’s top ten lists for 2009.

TERRIBLY HAPPY (Laemmle Sunset/Monica/Playhouse; opens 2/12) – Reviews of this Danish cop-transposed-to-a-small-town-with-a-mystery film have namechecked the Coen Brothers and David Lynch. Sold.

ORDER OF CHAOS (Laemmle Sunset; opens 2/12) – I don’t know much about this film, other than seeing the poster in John’s post about his favorite posters of 2009, but honestly, that poster was enough to whet my interest.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (Laemmle Sunset/Town Center; opens 2/19) – This André Téchiné film stars Catherine Deneuve. That’s enough for me.

A PROPHET (Laemmle Playhouse/Town Center; opens 2/26) – The French Best Foreign Film entry to the Academy Awards this year, and easily the co-frontrunner for the award with The White Ribbon.