Cinema News: Style and politics collide in ‘I Am Cuba’

May 15, 2026 | View in browser

Women in bathing suits lounge on a rooftop deck.

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This is one of those weeks where there are so many great movies at so many different venues all across town, it’s difficult to spotlight just a handful. Look at the lineup at Vidiots alone over the next few days: Saturday will see the new 4K restoration of “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” with an introduction by Gia Coppola. Sunday brings a 40th anniversary screening of Prince’s breezy romantic jape “Under the Cherry Moon” (origin of the “Wrecka Stow” meme). And on Monday comes a 20th anniversary screening of the documentary “Sir! No Sir!” about the antiwar movement within the U.S. military during Vietnam, with no less a personage than Jane Fonda appearing at the show.

All over town, though, it would not be a bad call to just pick a venue and park yourself there for the weekend.

Revolution in the air

Intended as a piece of pro-communist, anticapitalist agitprop, Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov’s “I Am Cuba” has instead become remembered for its formal daring and dazzling camerawork. The film was first released to U.S. theaters in 1995 and is probably best known for being a movie that Paul Thomas Anderson aped for one of his most impressive shots in “Boogie Nights.” The El Cine collective will show the film tonight at the Philosophical Research Society, where The Times’ Suzy Exposito, who chronicled her own trip to Cuba earlier this year, will introduce the screening.

Writing about the film in 2005, Carina Chocano said, “Every moment of the two-hour film pulses with visual ingenuity, giving ‘I Am Cuba’ the odd, time-capsule-ish air of what might have been had cinema not completely given itself over to computer graphics and special effects. In a sense, it’s a movie about looking past surfaces to see what’s in front of you. It takes the time to look around and discovers majesty, beauty and pathos everywhere it turns.”

Early Refn crime thrillers

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is the kind of stylish, impish provocateur often in short supply, which is why it is so exciting his first feature film in 10 years, “Her Private Hell,” is premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, now in progress. (See our item below.) For anyone needing a reminder of why Refn is such a vital, necessary filmmaker, on Saturday the Egyptian Theatre will host the West Coast premiere of a new 4K restoration of Refn’s “Pusher” trilogy: three sharp crime thrillers that helped push him to international prominence and also introduced the world to Mads Mikkelsen.

Writing about the “Pusher” trilogy in 2006, Robert Abele said, “Refn’s accomplishment with these films is formidable and fleet, the rush of suspense, black humor and swift violence given nimble shading through the character reflection and queasy redemption at the heart of each brutal, gut-punch narrative.”

A movie as a magic trick

Drawing on his long-standing interests in magic, fakery and hoaxes, Orson Welles’ “F for Fake” combines preexisting imagery and newly shot footage into a sharp, witty collage with a mischievous sense of play. What begins as a documentary on art forger Elmyr de Hory grows into something far trickier thanks to the presence of Clifford Irving, De Hory’s biographer, who would later gain notoriety for his own faked autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles’ film, screening in 35mm at Brain Dead Studios on Sunday, becomes something of an illusion all its own.

In an October 1973 report from the film’s premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Molly Johnson reported Welles as saying, “We are in a very curious period in which we are not sure what is art and what is not — the best artists living today are seriously trying to destroy art. Elmyr de Hory has dramatized the question of whether art exists or not. Is a good fake better than a bad original?”

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More than Clouseau

Part fable, part satire, 1979’s comedy “Being There” is about a simple gardener (Peter Sellers) who knows of the world only from watching TV. He is unexpectedly thrust into the center of Washington’s power elite. For those who know Sellers only for his broader comedic turns in the “Pink Panther” movies, this performance is a revelation. Directed by Hal Asby and with a wonderful supporting turn by Shirley MacLaine, the movie is showing in 35mm at the Academy Museum on Wednesday with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel in attendance.

In his original review, Kevin Thomas called it “a gentle, exquisitely funny film” while adding that it’s a “witty parable on the power of innocence and the impact of television upon politics and our perception of reality.”

The film world converges on Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival, both a haven for international cinema and an increasingly essential part of the Oscars cycle, is underway and our Amy Nicholson and Joshua Rothkopf are there. They prepared a preview of the 11 movies they are most looking forward to, including Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” and James Gray’s “Paper Tiger.”

Amy has already turned in the first of her critic’s notebook pieces, calling Schoenbrun’s “Camp Miasma” a “bold step forward. It’s got bravery and heart and a masked killer costumed like an air conditioning vent. Ultimately, it’s about challenging yourself to get vulnerable.”

Leading up to the festival, Glenn Whipp spoke to Cannes mainstay Pedro Almódovar, there with his new “Bitter Christmas.” Also, Carlos Aguilar spoke with actor Diego Calva, at the festival with Refn’s “Her Private Hell” and Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid.”

New this week

Our Summer Preview lands this weekend, anchored by Carlos Aguilar’s story on the much-buzzed “Backrooms,” the feature debut of 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who adapts his own popular YouTube series into an unnerving horror story starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The A24 movie releases May 29.

“I had nerves in the back of my brain questioning, ‘Am I doing this right?’ or ‘Are people looking at me weird because of my age?’ or ‘Am I fundamentally missing something about this?’” Parsons told us of his experience making the movie as a teenager. “It took a few days to clarify that this is going how it’s supposed to go. I’m getting what I want so what do I have to be stressed about?”

Additionally, here’s a look at 16 more movies we are looking forward to, including “Disclosure Day,” “The Odyssey,” “Maddie’s Secret,” “The Invite” and “One Night Only.”

Some of this week’s new releases:

Reviewer Katie Walsh identifies the real villain of “Obsession” as the “idea that young men believe they should simply be able to have whomever they want.”.
Of playwright Aleshea Harris’ filmmaking debut “Is God Is,” Walsh writes, “It’s rare that an artist is given such freedom to create a singular work, rarer still to witness the birth of a new voice ringing with such clarity on screen.”

And finally, a curtain call…

Rex Reed, the often-blustery, rarely boring film critic and interviewer who attained a rare level of celebrity himself, died this week at age 87. Charles McNulty wrote a deeply felt appreciation of Reed, noting, “He didn’t mince words or allow nuance or second thoughts to stand in the way of a zingy phrase or a colorful wisecrack. Unbridled opinion was his stock-in-trade. … He had no patience for what he didn’t like, but when he was in the presence of something he adored, he lavished his attention and could rise to his own level of greatness.”