Our weekly list of special movie events to check out in L.A.:

Thursday, Aug. 9

Don't Knock the Rock, Cinefamily's annual summer series of seminal rock & roll flicks co-founded by L.A. Weekly People 2012 person Allison Anders, kicks off tonight with a screening of Jobriath A.D., Kieran Turner's documentary about the first openly gay rock star, who died of AIDS in 1983.

Friday, Aug. 10

UCLA Film and Television Archive's series The Two Faces of Jean Arthur, dedicated to showcasing the blond screwball dame's surprising versatility, begins tonight with a double feature of two Columbia Pictures programmers from the mid-1930s: Whirlpool, a melodrama directed by Roy William Neill, and John Ford's The Whole Town Is Talking, a mistaken-identity flick featuring Arthur as the comedic/romantic foil opposite Edward G. Robinson.

The Downtown Independent has added shows this weekend of Takashi Miike's latest, Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai. The Japanese master's 3-D remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 Harakiri runs through Aug. 16.

Saturday, Aug. 11

If last week's Film interview with Julie Delpy got you thinking fondly about Richard Linklater's 1995 indie classic Before Sunrise and/or its 2004 sequel Before Sunset, the Aero is showing both as a double feature, starting tonight at 7:30.

Cinefamily hosts a fair number of once-in-a-lifetime events, but tonight's late show is truly something only they could — or would — program, since it's essentially an in-joke for their faithful audience. Behold, Split Image — a literal cult flick from 1982 starring Peter Fonda, Karen Allen and James Woods. The 35mm print screening tonight is super rare, but the movie's fireside initiation rave-up scene will be familiar to frequent Cinefamily attendees: It's the meat and potatoes of the theater's “Join Us!” membership promo, often shown before movies.

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