LOS ANGELES — On a crisp Saturday night last month, a hundred movie lovers got into their cars and drove to the New Beverly Cinema, an old theater on Beverly Boulevard, to relive a golden age of Hollywood.
As a 1960s radio broadcast played overhead, ticket holders walked past a lobby filled with vintage artifacts like a “Make Love Not War” banner and “Green Hornet” poster before taking their seats.
“You open the doors and it’s 1969,” said Brian Quinn, a theater manager, who took the stage at 7:30 p.m. to introduce the night’s main attraction: “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, who also owns the New Beverly.
The audience gasped, laughed and applauded as they followed the tale of a fading TV star (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), his loyal stuntman (Brad Pitt) and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), set in the final days before Charles Manson upended Hollywood’s collective psyche.
Such cinematic time capsules have been a fixture at the New Beverly, a 225-seat, single-screen theater that is emblematic of an art house revival in Los Angeles and beyond. The theater shows studio classics and cult films, including many movies by Mr. Tarantino. And last July, when “Once Upon a Time” was released, it was added to the lineup, selling out more than 50 consecutive screenings.
“I saw it at the New Bev on opening night, and Tarantino was actually in the theater,” said Kevin Vasquez, 31, an assistant at an entertainment management company. “He was laughing and watching his movie, along with everybody else.”
The film, which is nominated for 10 Academy Awards including for best picture and best director, still draws hundreds of moviegoers every weekend, even though it has been available for streaming since November.
For Tarantino fans like Jackie Greed, who works at Amoeba Music nearby, there is no better place to obsess over the movie’s details. “I’m never bored with this movie,” said Ms. Greed, 50, who went three times that first month. “I still find little things to take in and pick up on. I don’t think I’ve reached my limit.”
Cinematic ‘Time Machine’
Nostalgia remains one of the theater’s biggest draws. “It’s the closest thing to a time machine I’ll ever see in my lifetime,” said Alison Martino, 49, a journalist and historian who has seen the film at the New Beverly 11 times.
When Ms. Martino first saw the scene in which Sharon Tate visits the Fox Bruin Theater on Broxton Avenue (which still stands), she recalled her weekend nights there as a teenager in the 1980s. “I cried, because so much of my childhood was there,” said Ms. Martino, who runs the Facebook page Vintage Los Angeles.
For those who weren’t around during those years, the theater offers a sense of camaraderie so often lost in the age of at-home streaming. “It’s a good escape,” said Mr. Vasquez, who has seen the film at least a dozen times at the New Beverly. “There’s no plot to the movie, really. But I just like to hang out with these characters, and be in that world.”
The theater has even become a hangout for some of the actors in the film, including Clu Gulager, 91, a veteran TV and film actor who appears briefly as a bookseller. On a recent visit, he lingered under the marquee to greet friends and fans, before taking a seat in the front row.
One of his favorite scenes is when Mr. Pitt’s character cruises through Los Angeles at night with his radio blasting, unburdened by traffic. “To me, that scene represents the state of mind of Hollywood,” Mr. Gulager said. “It goes down so easy, this movie.”
Art Houses Everywhere
The New Beverly is one of several old theaters in Los Angeles that have been revived as modern art house cinemas. The Nuart Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, which dates back to around 1930, underwent a major renovation in 2006 and is a jewel in the Landmark Theater chain.
The Egyptian Theater, built in 1922 in the style of a pharaoh’s temple, remains one of Hollywood’s beloved movie palaces. Netflix is in talks to buy the theater for red-carpet premieres and other events. (Netflix recently signed a long-term lease on the Paris Theater in Manhattan, saving the last single-screen theater in New York City.)
The Fairfax Cinema, the former site of the Silent Movie Theater from 1942, opened last Christmas with a bookstore, outdoor patio, cafe, gallery and 163-seat theater.
In New York City, several art house cinemas, including the Film Forum and Quad Cinema, have undergone renovations. New indie cinemas have opened, too, including Metrograph, a two-screen theater that opened in 2016 on the Lower East Side with a bar, restaurant and bookstore, and is frequently rented out for premieres.
“A generation of people who have only seen movies at home now want to see them” in theaters, said Jake Perlin, 44, the artistic director at Metrograph. “They’re realizing that nothing is greater than watching something like ‘Bells Are Ringing’ with another couple hundred people.”
“I’ve been going to the movies pretty much daily for about 25 years now,” Mr. Perlin added, “and this is probably the best time I can remember.”
When the Saturday night screening of “Once Upon a Time” ended, the crowd broke into sustained applause. Many stayed in their seats to savor the credits sequence featuring Mr. DiCaprio.
Next month, the “Once Upon a Time” screenings will move to the midnight slot, though like all of Mr. Tarantino’s films, it will likely be added to the theater’s rotation. (Mr. Tarantino, who helps curate the theater’s programming, declined to be interviewed.)
That’s good news for repeat viewers like Aaron Araki, 35, an Amoeba Music employee who was standing outside the theater, where “Once Upon a Time” T-shirts were being sold.
“What makes a movie really rewatchable is if it has a lot of personality, and character, and a really good sense of place,” Mr. Araki said. “This movie gives them that, and they just want to be keep coming back and be in that place again.”
