Nathaniel Bell

This unabashed celebration of noir — a term coined by French critics to describe a film style derived from hardboiled American fiction and characterized by low-key lighting, doomed protagonists and fateful narratives in urban settings — is the fruit of a cinematic triumvirate: the Film Noir Foundation, a nonprofit founded by author-programmer-historian Eddie Muller; biographer-programmer-historian Alan K. Rode; and the American Cinematheque, whose Egyptian Theatre hosts the annual event....

Hollywood movie star and trailblazing director Ida Lupino was born 100 years ago. To celebrate her centennial, UCLA will present a series of double bills featuring the British-born Lupino both in front and behind the camera....

Noir City: Hollywood, the longest-running festival of vintage crime films in Los Angeles, kicks off its 20th year at the Egyptian. The first program in the 10-night series begins with a 35mm screening of The Blue Dahlia, a classic yet seldom seen postwar murder mystery....

One Day Pina Asked... is Chantal Akerman's lush, munificent portrait of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch and her German-based dance company....

The Art Deco Society of Los Angeles presents a 35mm screening of The Three Musketeers, featuring Douglas Fairbanks at his swashbuckling-est as d'Artagnan....

The Fallen Idol may not be quite as well known as director Carol Reed's postwar masterpiece, The Third Man, but it has an even stronger emotional pull....

The Adventures of Robin Hood swoops into the Billy Wilder Theater to restore a measure of innocence to the jaded moviegoer....

UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater will screen Spike Lee's Girl 6 as part of the collaborative series Working Girls: America's Career Women on Screen. The first Spike Lee joint written by someone other than Lee — playwright Suzan-Lori Parks — the film concerns a struggling actress (Theresa Randle) who becomes a phone sex worker to help make ends meet....

In the wide world of horror, Frank Henenlotter has carved out a gory niche for himself as a good-natured exploitation filmmaker. His breakout feature, Basket Case, about a man who carries around his hideously deformed, homicidal twin brother in a picnic hamper, has an elusive attitude that places it somewhere in the neighborhood of John Waters....

The American Cinematheque salutes Studio Ghibli — the venerable Tokyo animation house responsible for a number of animated masterpieces — with a 35mm screening of Howl’s Moving Castle....