Melnitz Movies
- Movies are screened at the James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409 on the UCLA campus.
- All screenings and appearances are subject to change on short notice, so please check our listings before showtime.
- All movies are FREE to UCLA students, staff, faculty and members of the general public, unless otherwise noted.
- Melnitz Movies is funded through the UCLA Graduate Students Association and the ASUCLA Student Interaction Fund.
- Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis (one ticket per person) at the Melnitz box office one hour before showtime.
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Upcoming Screenings
February 16, 2012 - 7:30pm
New Visions of Japanese Cinema
Sponsored by UCLA's Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies
Residing quietly beneath the floorboards are little people who live undetected in a secret world to be discovered, where the smallest may stand tallest of all. From the legendary Studio Ghibli (SPIRITED AWAY and PONYO) comes THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY, an animated adventure based on Mary Norton's acclaimed children's book series "The Borrowers."
Arrietty (voice of Bridgit Mendler), a tiny but tenacious 14-year-old, lives with her parents (voices of Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) in the recesses of a suburban garden home, unbeknownst to the homeowner and her housekeeper (voice of Carol Burnett). Like all little people, Arrietty remains hidden from view, except during occasional covert ventures beyond the floorboards to "borrow" scrap supplies like sugar cubes from her human hosts. But when 12-year-old Shawn (voice of David Henrie), a human boy who comes to stay in the home, discovers his mysterious housemate one evening, a secret friendship blossoms. If discovered, their relationship could drive Arrietty's family from the home and straight into danger.
Note: Melnitz Movies will be presenting the...
February 21, 2012 - 7:30pm
Cyril, almost 12, has only one plan: to find the father who left him temporarily in a children’s home. By chance he meets Samantha, who runs a hairdressing salon and agrees to let him stay with her at weekends. Cyril doesn’t recognize the love Samantha feels for him, a love he desperately needs to calm his rage.
Grand Prix, Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection, Melbourne International Film Festival
Official Selection, New York Film Festival
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection, BFI London Film Festival
Official Selection, Vancouver International Film Festival
Official Selection, Chicago International Film Festival
Official Selection, São Paulo International Film Festival
Official Selection, Stockholm International Film Festival
Official Selection, Miami International Film Festival
“[Captures] the wild, primal emotions at the heart of society and show that well-ordered republics -- and families -- run on passions that are hard to accommodate or tolerate.” –Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“An edge-of-your-seat emotional roller-coaster ride about ordinary people in a nondescript neighborhood, it's sometimes terrifying, often heart-rending and...
February 23, 2012 - 7:30pm
A hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, WALKER, from British director Alex Cox (REPO MAN, SID & NANCY), tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris), who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune, and for several years dictator of Nicaragua. Made with mad abandon and political acuity – and the support of the Sandinista army and government during the Contra war – the film uses this true tale as a satirical attack on American ultra-patriotism and a freewheeling condemnation of “manifest destiny.” Featuring a powerful score by Joe Strummer and a performance of intense, repressed rage by Ed Harris, WALKER remains one of Cox’s most daring works.
Our 25th anniversary screening of WALKER will be preceded by the short film, WALKER 2008 (Alex Cox, 2008), and followed by a Q&A with director Alex Cox, producer Lorenzo O'Brien, actor Miguel Sandoval (Parker French), actress Linda Callahan (Mrs. Bingham), actor Dick Rude (Washburn), actor Sy Richardson (Capt. Hornsby), and additional members of the cast and crew.
“One of the greatest and most representative...
February 24, 2012 - 6:30pm
Melnitz Movies is proud to present a double feature of classic films programmed from the UCLA Film & Television Archive by our Alumni Guest Programmer, filmmaker Alex Cox (SID & NANCY, REPO MAN).
Filmmaker and UCLA alumnus Alex Cox will be in attendance to introduce both films to the audience and provide historical and cultural context for each film and the filmmakers.
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)
Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) is a cowboy who is ill at ease with the modern world of the early 1960s. He rolls his own smokes and cuts through fences when they are in his path. He carries no ID, not even the requisite draft card. He is on a collision course with the world around him. When he learns that his best friend has been jailed for helping illegal aliens he gets himself arrested so he can break his friend out. When his friend refuses to become a fugitive, Burns breaks out on his own and sets off a manhunt.
“Beautifully acted by a superb cast, it's a gripping, elegiac movie, imbued with a very real nostalgia for a vanished world.” –Time Out Film Guide
“And as this leathery derelict, a man not about to mark time on a dude ranch or stop at fences, Mr. Douglas is superbly...
February 28, 2012 - 7:30pm
GENERATION P, adapted from the iconic bestseller by Victor Pelevin, is a rude and funny dispatch about Moscow in the '90s, ground zero to the money, terror, and image-driven logic which replaced the Cold War.
The story details the parallel rise of poet-turned-copywriter Babylen Tatarsky through both a nascent advertising business and the shadowy Cult of Ishtar, whose acolytes control the media. Along the way, we meet, among others, Che Guevara, a fiery dragon with very bad news about TV, and a chauffeur with a marked resemblance to Vladimir Putin, who is elected president of Russia.
When Babylen was a "Young Pioneer," his generation received a gift from the decaying Soviet state in the form of a bottle of Pepsi, made in Russia. Not just a beverage, it was also a symbol of hope that someday a new, magical life would arrive from the other side of the ocean and transform their lives. The arrival of this new magic, and what it did and did not transform, is the story of Generation P.
GENERATION P is a riddle, a farce, a romance about the ecstasy of disintegration, and a joke about the end of the world.
Following our screening there will be a Q&A with co-writer and director Victor...
February 29, 2012 - 7:30pm
Co-Curated by Marina Goldovskaya and Samuel B. Prime
A Melnitz Movies and Documentary Salon Co-Presentation
In his latest documentary film, Ross McElwee (SHERMAN’S MARCH, BRIGHT LEAVES) finds himself in frequent conflict with his son, who is no longer the delightful child he loved, but an argumentative young adult who inhabits virtual worlds available through the internet. To McElwee, his son seems to be addicted to and permanently distracted by those worlds. The filmmaker undertakes a journey to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany where he worked for a spring as a wedding photographer’s assistant at age 24 – slightly older than his son is now. He has not been back to St. Quay since that visit, and hopes to gain some perspective on what his own life was like when he was his son’s age. He also hopes to track down his former employer, a fascinating Frenchman named Maurice, and Maud, a woman with whom he was romantically involved during that spring 38 years ago. PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY is a meditation on the passing of time, the praxis of photography and film, digital versus analog, and the fractured love of a father for his son.
Featuring a Q&A with writer/director Ross McElwee,...
March 6, 2012 - 7:30pm
WHORES' GLORY is a cinematic triptych on prostitution: three countries, three languages, three religions. In Thailand, women wait for clients behind glass panes, staring at reflections of themselves. In Bangladesh, men go to a ghetto of love to satisfy their unfulfilled desires on indentured girls. And in Mexico, women pray to a female death to avoid facing their own reality. In worlds where the most intimate act has become a commodity, these women have physically and emotionally experienced everything that can happen between a man and a woman. For this they have always received money, but it has not made their lives rich in anything but stories.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women
Horizons Award - Special Mention, Venice International Film Festival
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection, BFI London Film Festival
“Thriving on contradiction and observational curiosity as usual, Glawogger still resolutely rejects social cause-pandering, but scratches for something deeper by contrasting the rituals of love (for sale) in three different cultures, religions and economies: a look not just at prostitution, but the relationships...
March 8, 2012 - 7:30pm
An ordinary bank teller turned financial analyst is forced to sell high risk securities to her customers in order to meet her sales target. A small-time thug delves into the futures index hoping to earn easy money to post bail for a buddy in trouble with the law. A straight-arrow Police inspector who has always enjoyed his middle income lifestyle is suddenly desperate for money when his wife puts a down payment on a luxury flat she can’t afford and his dying father wants him to look after a young half-sister he never knew he had.
Three little people who are in dire need of money for the predicaments in their respective lives have nothing in common until a bag of stolen money worth five million dollars forces them into making soul searching decisions about right and wrong and everything in between.
Official Selection, Venice International Film Festival
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection, San Sebastián International Film Festival
Official Selection, Vancouver International Film Festival
Official Selection, Mar del Plata International Film Festival
Official Selection, !F Istanbul AFM International Independent Film Festival
“Relentless and...
March 22, 2012 - 7:30pm
Before 2009, few martial arts film fans had ever heard of the traditional Indonesian combat style of silat, let alone seen a film from that part of the world. That all changed when writer/director Gareth Huw Evans made fan favorite MERANTAU, which ushered young fighter Iko Uwais into the celluloid arena. Uwais and Evans have teamed up again for THE RAID, a fresh assault of fists and feet that has already been tagged as a martial-arts fusion of DIE HARD and ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13.
In the heart of Jakarta lies a rundown apartment infested with druggies and drifters. It’s ruled by Tama, a ruthless drug lord who uses the tenement to shelter his junkie customers, as well as his pushers, enforcers and killers. The apartment block is considered untouchable by even the bravest of police — until one morning when, cloaked under dawn’s darkness, an elite swat team led by Rama (Uwais) sweeps in. when their cover is blown, Tama’s men lash back with a hellish fury, unleashing a hail of bullets that cuts the team of lawmen down by half. with their exits blocked and munitions running low, Rama and his men must rally their energy and face off against a hive of vicious killers.
As Rama’s squad...
April 3, 2012 - 7:30pm
No starched lace, no panoramic views, no sweeping score — Andrea Arnold takes Emily Brontë’s classic novel and strips it to the root of youthful passion, restoring its stark power for a contemporary audience. Following her bracing portraits of female desire in RED ROAD and FISH TANK, Arnold pushes even further here, portraying love as a rush of heart-stopping beauty, cruelty and impulsive acts.
In a remote farmhouse on Yorkshire’s nineteenth-century moors, Mr. Earnshaw brings home a wary biracial boy, whom he names Heathcliff. Adopted into the family under Christian values, Heathcliff’s new presence is met with mixed feelings. Hindley, Earnshaw’s teenaged son, treats him with contempt, while Catherine, Hindley’s younger sister, embraces the outsider with curious warmth. An intense relationship begins to form between Heathcliff and Catherine as they play on the moor. Their pleasant days are brought to an abrupt end, however, with Mr. Earnshaw’s death. Hindley takes control of the farm and drives Heathcliff away. Edgar, the son of a wealthy neighboring family, courts Catherine in marriage. Torn between love and reason, Catherine’s decision sets the three of them on a tragic course....