Screenings

Thursday May 7 2026, 7:00 pm

12 Monkeys (1995) is director Terry Gilliam’s gorgeously dark, bizarre, and mind-bending pre-apocalyptic thriller that follows time-traveler Bruce Willis as he arrives from the future with a mission of preventing the end of the world—if only he can prove that he isn’t insane. Apocalyptic visions, grimy institutions, and a terrifying reality of plague, paranoia, and duct-taped time travel, filmed in Gilliam’s signature style of glorious collapse.

Preceded by the short film La Jetée (1962) by French director Chris Marker. While this 1962 classic is known as “the short that inspired ” it’s also the ghost in the machine of all modern sci-fi. Built almost entirely from still photographs, it is a uniquely unsettling vision of unavoidable fate and the end of the world. Time travel here isn’t a storytelling gimmick, it’s an open wound, a trap, a premonition you can’t shake. -Josh O.

Sunday April 26 2026 1:00pm – 5:00pm

Quality Film Club presents two animated films for kids and their grownups.

1:00 pm: Titan A.E.
In Titan A.E. humanity blows up, Earth is toast, and one reluctant kid gets handed the keys to a secret “save the species” project. Space chases, weird aliens, and teen angst follow, along with a surprisingly earnest belief that maybe we can rebuild the world without totally mucking it up this time.

3:00 pm: Wolfwalkers
Wolfwalkers, made by Irish animation auteurs Cartoon Saloon follows an apprentice hunter who moves to a misty village and promptly befriends the wolves she’s supposed to kill —who, it turns out, are more complicated than they appear. It’s a gorgeous, hand-drawn story about friendship, freedom, and adults being wrong wrong wrong. Soft, wild, mystical and rebellious. -JO

Thursday, April 16 2026 Doors: 6:30 Screening 7:00pm

John Carpenter is the People’s Director. In his best work, he elevates “lowbrow” genres–sci-fi, action, horror–in films permeated by class consciousness and sympathetic to workers and other underdogs. In Escape from New York (1981), a folk hero convicted bankrobber is coerced into rescuing the Nixon-esque US president he despises. In The Thing (1982), an isolated ice station crew has their solidarity eroded by an infiltrator. In They Live (1987), an unhoused construction worker pierces the veil to see through to the heart of capitalist exploitation in what Carpenter described as an explicit critique of Reaganomics.

But before all that, there was Dark Star (1974), which started as an USC film school project but, in an example of reclaiming one’s own labor, Carpenter opted to drop out and abscond with the work in progress rather than relinquish the rights to the University (which retained ownership of all student efforts). Carpenter and his classmate collaborator Dan O’Bannon then secured outside funding to expand the film to feature length and in the process invented the “used future” aesthetic lifted by George Lucas for Star Wars (1977) and the blue collar astronaut “truckers in space” concept that O’Bannon himself recycled in his script for Alien(1979).

Despite its serious influence on Hollywood sci-fi, Dark Star itself plays for laughs. But just beneath its surface of schlocky slapstick and stoner humor, there is a claustrophobic existential discomfort and an earnest attempt at finding meaning in the void, as if to suggest that when one has traveled as far as it is possible to go, the only place left to turn is inward.

We’ll be setting the cosmic tone with landmark educational film short Powers of Ten (1977) as an interstellar appetizer.

Thursday, April 2 2026 Doors: 6:30 Screening 7:00pm

Zazie Dans le Métro directed by Louis Malle was released in 1960, just as France was coming out of the postwar era and launching the new wave of cinema. A chaotic kid gets dropped off in Paris under the care of her drag queen uncle and everything goes off the rails insane. No adults in charge, no rules respected, nonstop visual noise, and a middle finger to anything boring or proper. Fast, silly, surreal, and unhinged. -JO

In French with English subtitles.

Come early, mix and mingle.

Thursday, March 5, 2026 6:30pm

Stanley Kubrick is arguably the most highly regarded filmmaker of the latter half of the 20th century, if not all time. Say his name and you might think of the magisterial 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a millennia spanning sci-fi epic that speculates on the origins and meaning of human existence. Or the brutally dystopic vision of A Clockwork Orange (1971), where individual agency is overridden by state-sponsored psychological manipulation. Or the films Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) that subvert notions of moral clarity and the typical framing of war as a clear-cut battle of good vs. evil. Or The Shining (1980), a masterpiece of suspense that leaves viewers questioning whether the horror resides without or within.

But say his name and it’s unlikely that the first thing you think of is laughs, which is a shame, because he could be damn funny. A mordant wit undergirds all his films, and moments of humor provide relief to the drama and tension he builds. Plus, he made one of the greatest satires of all time, Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Based on the dead serious cold war novel Red Alert (1958), it wasn’t initially intended to be a comedy, but the subject matter–global thermonuclear annihilation–was so ominous and depressing that he decided the only possible approach was to play it for laughs. (So much so that the script included a slapstick pie fight, which was later cut.) The result is a film that stares down the barrel of impending doom and responds with a shrug and guffaw. You’ll laugh until you cry.

Screening Thursday, March 5, 2026. Doors 6:30, screening 7:00pm.

Wednesday February 25, 2026 7pm

***NOTE: This is a Wednesday night; Thursday programming resumes in March***

Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) is best known for his surrealist short film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), a collab with his then buddy Salvador Dali that inspired that Pixies song. He lived most of his life in self-imposed exile in the USA and Mexico after his home country Spain went fascist in 1939. He directed dozens of films, most of which were done for hire and over which he had little creative control, but those where he was able to realize his unique vision are classics–Viridiana, The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, and Belle de Jour, to name a few. The Exterminating Angel (1962) is peak Buñuel, a beguiling and mysterious film that imparts sharp social critique under the guise of an uncanny psychodrama that typifies his flair for blending wit and suspense. This is a juicy one to unpack!
(In Spanish with English subtitles.)

We’ll also show the short Un Chien Andalou (1929). A cornerstone of surrealist cinema, it’s interesting to see the seeds of visual motifs that would persist in Buñuel’s work even decades later. What does it mean?

Thursday Feb 19, 2026 7pm

When asked who their favorite American music group was, the Beatles replied, “Nilsson.” That’s Harry Nilsson, a prodigy whose greatest legacy is that coconut song–which goes to show you never know what’s going to stick. He also took a lot of acid, drank like a lunatic, and wrote a beloved children’s story called The Point, which aired as a made-for-TV feature-length cartoon movie in 1971. It’s simple enough for a child to follow but offers enough complexity and psychedelic weirdness to keep grown-ups engaged.

At the other end of the animation spectrum, Heavy Metal (1981) is an adult sci-fi rock-and-roll fantasy anthology film about an evil intergalactic green orb that inspires heinous acts wherever it goes. Famously parodied by the South Park episode Major Boobage, the over the top violence, sex, and profanity is tempered by a number of pretty good jokes and the overall tongue in cheek tone.

Doors at 7pm. $5-$15 suggested donation. Cash bar. Come early, stay late.

Thursday January 22, 2026 7pm

Quality Film Club premieres with Věra Chytilová’s 1966 Czech New Wave classic, DAISIES (original Czech title: Sedmikrásky):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisies_(film)

Thursday January 22, 2026. Doors at 7 pm. Film starts 7:30.