Hammer Museum

A project Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, Pinocchio) has long dreamed of realizing—even before he learned how to direct—Frankenstein is a deeply personal adaptation of Mary Shelley’s timeless novel, bearing the unmistakable touch of a filmmaker known for his signature blend of gothic horror and dark fantasy. Ambitious, arrogant scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) “plays God” by creating the Creature (Jacob Elordi), whose rejection by humankind ignites a tragic chain of events. Del Toro conjures a visually baroque, sensory-rich odyssey in which the Creature’s monstrous exterior conceals a soul aching for connection. Beneath layers of prosthetics and makeup, Elordi delivers a remarkable performance of anguish and vulnerability in this hauntingly beautiful reimagining of a classic tale. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. With Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth. DCP courtesy Netflix. 149 min. 139 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/frankenstein Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Struggling with a child’s mysterious illness, an absentee husband, and a collapsed ceiling in their apartment, a woman spirals into crisis in this dark comedy-horror mashup. Writer-director Mary Bronstein brings a perfectly calibrated touch of humor to her manic situations, serving both as stress relief and a sharp lens on her character’s absurd, surreal desperation. Rose Byrne’s bravura performance as a woman in full-throttle descent earned her the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, and she is ably supported by a stellar ensemble including Conan O’Brien, Delaney Quinn, A$AP Rocky, and Christian Slater. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Mary Bronstein. With Rose Byrne, Delanet Quinn, A$AP Rocky. DCP courtesy A24. 113 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/ifihadlegs Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Followed by a conversation with production designer Jeremy Hindle There is no time to waste when an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile bound for the US is detected; in under 20 minutes, it is on course to strike Chicago. Top-level government personnel spring into action to avert a crisis that, until now, was largely hypothetical. A brilliant ensemble cast (including Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Anthony Ramos, Jared Harris, and Tracy Letts) channels panic, composure, and quiet distress in equal measure. Known for high-stakes thrillers like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow once again combines kineticism and realism to craft an immersive, gripping portrait of doomsday in motion. The unmistakable plausibility of the scenario lends this apocalyptic vision a chilling immediacy. 2025. USA. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Screenplay by Noah Oppenheim. With Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso. DCP courtesy Netflix. 112 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/accident Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Director Sidney Lumet's dazzlingly inventive adaptation of the hit Broadway musical transplants L. Frank Baum's fantastical world from somewhere over the rainbow to somewhere over the Brooklyn Bridge. Diana Ross, as Dorothy, heads up the all Black cast featuring Michael Jackson, as The Scarecrow, Nipsey Russell as The Tin Man, Ted Ross as The Lion and Richard Pryor as The Wiz. 1978, dir. Sidney Lumet, 134 min.

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Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident sees the director returning to a more traditional narrative form, yet it is also his most daring, unflinching political work. Based on his own experience as a political prisoner, and on stories shared by fellow cellmates, the film brings together a group of Iranian citizens who debate what they should do with a man they believe tortured them in prison, after a chance encounter brings them together again. Fifteen years after being banned from making films by the Iranian government, during which time he produced a remarkable run of clandestine works, Panahi courageously confronts his oppressor with a psychological drama about survival, moral choices, and political resistance. 2025. Written and directed by Jafar Panahi. With Vahid Mobasseri, Ebrahim Azizi, Mariam Afshari. DCP courtesy NEON. In Persian; English subtitles. 103 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/accident Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

The Hammer's curatorial department leads free, insightful, short discussions about artists every Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. This talk on Made in L.A. 2025 artist Freddy Villalobos is led by curatorial assistant Juan Manuel Silverio. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/villalobos

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Presented in 70mm! Followed by a conversation with writer & director Ryan Coogler and actors Delroy Lindo & Wunmi Mosaku The horror film has never been as accepted as a mainstream storytelling genre, or a more powerful mirror of troubled times, as it is today. Rooted in the intertwined histories of Black cultural achievement and racism in America, Sinners is destined to be regarded as a landmark of the genre. Twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” (Michael B. Jordan, in a remarkable double performance), back from the trenches of WWI, use money stolen from the Chicago mob to purchase a sawmill and open an exclusive juke joint for a Black community in Mississippi. The irresistible energy of the music and dance emanating from within draws a coven of immigrant Irish vampires to the crowded club doors; at first they modestly request entry as fellow entertainers, but soon they are picking off locals before mounting a ferocious, climactic assault. Coogler uses vampirism as a metaphor for the complex history of racial “passing” and assimilation in America is profoundly affecting, as is the film’s inclusion of marginalized Chinese and Native American characters in the film’s horrific—and historically accurate—portrayal of the nation’s culture of prejudice. Not since the late Indigenous Canadian filmmaker Jeff Barnaby used horror to recall the history of abuse suffered by First Nations peoples in Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and Blood Quantum (2019) has a director so provocatively employed the genre to lay bare the monstrous political realities of his place and time. Sinners may be set in 1932, but it calls for serious reflection in 2025. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. With Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo. 70mm, courtesy Warner Brothers. 137 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/sinners Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Followed by a conversation with actress Zoey Deutch Richard Linklater pays tribute to a film that shook the world like few others and sparked an aesthetic revolution that still fascinates audiences: Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960). In Nouvelle Vague, the American director revives the French New Wave and goes back to the locations where Godard’s tiny film crew improvised scenes to offer a fly-on-the-wall tale on how a semi-chaotic, seemingly unimportant shoot led by a young, moody visionary became one of the most influential films in cinema history. 2025. France. Directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay by Holly Gent, Laeititia Masson, Vincent Palmo Jr., Michèle Pétin. With Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin. DCP courtesy Netflix. 106 min. Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/nouvellevague Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Hone your writing skills into an op-ed format and establish an authoritative voice that demands attention. With so much proverbial noise from AI generated content, bots, and constant social media chatter, knowing how to think critically and communicate clearly and from the heart will be the secret weapon for the leaders of tomorrow. Led by Ralinda Harvey Smith, a writer whose opinions and essays have been published in Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post. Her upcoming gift book Free Pass to Order Pizza for the Kids, published by Chronicle Books, is due to be released this fall.

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It has been thirty years since Noah Baumbach arrived on the scene with Kicking and Screaming (1995), a film that announced a generational talent. In Jay Kelly, Baumbach returns to some of the thornier areas of investigation in his work—the examination of failure, the endless complexities of family, and treacherous journeys of self-discovery. As uniquely embodied by George Clooney as the title character, and Adam Sandler as his endlessly loyal manager, we experience both the euphoria and pain of a creative life lived in the public eye. Co-written with Emily Mortimer and featuring an all-star line-up of acting talent, this is an "insiders" view that invites us all along for the ride. 2025. USA. Directed by Noah Baumbach. Screenplay by Baumbach, Emily Mortimer. With George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern. DCP courtesy Netflix. 132 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/jaykelly Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Understated auteur Kelly Reichardt's return to more suspenseful genre fare since Night Moves (2013) is The Mastermind, an art heist-turned-character portrait of a Massachusetts father inching closer to the fringes. A frequent visitor to the sleepy Framingham Museum of Art with his wife and kids, out-of-work architect JB Mooney (Josh O'Connor), enlists a shaggy group of local crooks to swipe a few Arthur Dove paintings from the galleries in broad daylight. As the investigation into the robbery begins, Mooney starts to unravel. Set in 1970, Reichardt skillfully uses an America upended by the Vietnam War and transformed by the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop for the frenzied and desperate Mooney to stay out of the hands of the authorities. Underpinned by stellar performances from the ensemble, including Hope Davis, Bill Camp, Alana Haim, Gaby Hoffman, and John Magaro, The Mastermind is an exemplary Reichardt film with a richly intimate and flawed world, populated by even more textured characters. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Kelly Reichardt. With Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Hope Davis. DCP courtesy MUBI. 110 min. Learn more: https://hmmr.buzz/mastermind Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Followed by a conversation with writer & director Scott Cooper In 1981, after his first number-one album (The River) and top-ten single (“Hungry Heart”), Bruce Springsteen was on the verge of becoming a worldwide sensation and fulfilling the vision of his manager, the former music critic Jon Landau, who had written just a few years earlier, “I saw rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Instead, Springsteen stepped back and isolated himself in his native New Jersey with an acoustic guitar, a portable four-track recorder, and Suicide’s eponymous debut album to lay out his personal demons on a cassette that became one of the most introspective DIY albums in history: Nebraska. Sunken in a depression and haunted by family ghosts, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is the story of a man facing the darkness that surrounds an anxious, luminous heart before embracing the future that awaits him. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Scott Cooper. Based on the book by Warren Zanes. With Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young. DCP courtesy 20th Century Studios. 120 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/springsteen Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!

Bob Ferguson is: a former revolutionary with the French 75, a self-described “drug and alcohol lover”, a single father to 16-year-old Willa (Chase Infiniti), and above all, a classic cinematic buffoon who has righteousness on his side but not much else. As embodied by Leonardo DiCaprio in a brilliant comic and tender performance, Bob is on the run— pursued by his past and by the vindictive Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw (an amazing Sean Penn)—while chasing his own daughter as she grows up and is drawn into the precarious world that he once inhabited. DiCaprio and Infiniti are supported by a volcanic Teyana Taylor as Willa’s MIA mother Perfidia Beverly Hills and Benicio del Toro as the calm and centered Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, and Anderson drops these characters into an epic story that sprawls across California and its unique alchemy of conspiracy and independence. The result is one of the best films of the year, and one that Paul Thomas Anderson originally shot in VistaVision and will be presented in 70mm at the Hammer Museum. 2025. USA. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Inspired by the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro. 70mm courtesy Warner Brothers. 161 min. Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/onebattle Tickets $10 Hammer members | $20 general admission Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!