Entertainment
DTLA’s once-famed nightlife is flailing. Can this cozy DJ bar bring crowds back?
On a Saturday night, just an hour after the Dodgers won the World Series, Bar Franca started heating up. The freshly revamped, DJ-driven lounge in downtown’s historic core filled out with loft-dwelling locals still getting mileage from their Halloween costumes, while incoming Dodger fans hooted and revved their engines out on Main Street. The bar’s owner, concert promoter Rolando Alvarez, was off tending to another event, but Bar Franca’s two DJ’s for the night, Maddy Maia and Tottie of Sisters of Sound, wound up the ebullient crowd under a soft pink, hand-painted barrel roof.
If you squinted, you could have sworn it was 2019 again, back when downtown L.A.was the heart of the city’s nightlife before the pandemic knocked it sideways.
“Downtown needs an injection. It still feels like it’s been a struggle bouncing back in that area since COVID,” Maia said between sets. “I think it’s so important to invest in areas that have suffered and have been somewhat forgotten about. I’m so grateful that Bar Franca is bringing life back to that part of the city.”
“Downtown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,” said Bar Franca’s Rolando Alvarez.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
This year has seen unrelenting bad news for L.A. nightlife — the impacts of the wildfires, the continued Hollywood strike fallout, the cost-of-living crisis and ICE raids and protests that temporarily squelched downtown’s after-dark industry. That all came on top of a miserable post-pandemic environment for a vulnerable downtown neighborhood hit harder and longer than most.
Bar Franca, a passion project from one of the city’s elite dance music promoters, is a little sliver of re-growth in a neighborhood that desperately needs one.
“Downtown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,” Alvarez said. “We’re doing our best to have people back on the streets, from all corners and all sensibilities, coming and being like, ‘I want to hang out in downtown.’ But how do we take care of it? How do we get there?”
After two decades of hopeful growth and global cachet as a nightlife destination, downtown L.A. has suffered tremendously post-pandemic. While its resident population has stabilized and grown, a citywide shift to working from home, the ongoing tragedy of homelessness and recent political turmoil have added to the challenges for local restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Many beloved nightspots have closed, or worry they will soon.
Cole’s, which survived the Great Depression and two world wars but couldn’t withstand the current economy, will shutter Dec. 31, though the venue is currently up for sale. Concert hall the Mayan, which opened in 1927, closed after 35 years in its current incarnation. In the summer, after a lawsuit from a former employee, the sprawling queer bar Precinct said on Instagram that “We’re a couple of slow weekends away from having to close our doors. Like many small businesses, we’ve taken hit after hit — from COVID shutdowns and ICE raids to citywide curfews and the ongoing decline of nightlife.”
Patrons in Halloween costumes enjoy drinks at a table at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
From glamorous flagships like the Ace Hotel to locals-only dives like Hank’s, downtown has lost a lot of the places that made it such a compelling place to live and party. While some new spots like the Level 8 complex, Issa Rae’s bar Lost and the delightfully divey Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse have opened, even a booster group like the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles admitted in its September “Revive DTLA” report that “Downtown faces existential challenges. The pandemic, homelessness, ongoing immigration raids, and other crises have hit DTLA harder than other communities….The last five years have clearly demonstrated how a lack of representation and focused support can shift the trajectory of a neighborhood.”
“Every downtown in the country has experienced challenges since the pandemic, but what had been a virtuous cycle of growth is now a vicious cycle,” said Nella McOsker, the president and chief executive of the Central City Assn. “There’s huge potential for nightlife to succeed in downtown because the residential base is there. But when the street level experience or the perception of downtown is so fragile, we have to get it right for a safe and welcoming environment.”
Alvarez knows that as well as anyone. The founder of Midnight Lovers — a decade-old independent concert promoter focused on dance music, one much-acclaimed in its scene — lives just a few blocks from Bar Franca.
Franca first opened in 2018 as an alluringly feminine cocktail spot next door to the Regent Theater. With hand-painted Art Deco flourishes and an ear for great tunes (the bar used to house the electronic music record store Stellar Remnant in the back), Franca had a couple of exuberant pre-pandemic years before the surrounding area, just a block from Skid Row, began to backslide.
When Alvarez, a regular, heard the owners were thinking of selling this year, he leapt to invest in a permanent address for Midnight Lovers in the heart of downtown. Although Alvarez already leased a larger event space just over the L.A. River for his concerts, Franca was the kind of spot he’d be pained to lose in his neighborhood.
“If you live downtown, you know there’s only like a handful of places that have a nice atmosphere when it comes to music,” Alvarez said. “Someone brought me here a long time ago, and something about it felt so cozy. Sometimes we feel like going to the warehouse, sometimes we feel like the club, sometimes we feel like a nice little cocktail. I still feel like smaller, more intimate places is where the magic is.”
Franca’s physical interior hasn’t changed too much since the handoff in October (though the cocktail menu, from Broken Shaker’s Gabriel Orta and Jonny Child, now leans a little more seasonal and N/A friendly). What’s different is its aspirations to join the small list of bars — like Highland Park’s Gold Line and Lincoln Heights’ Zizou — that work as the front porch for L.A.’s club scene.
“I love playing and going to late night parties, but that’s not for everyone, and there aren’t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound,” said DJ Tottie. “Having a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca’s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.”
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
His typical shows are larger (and post-pandemic, younger-skewing) sets of house, techno and disco. But “it’s always been a dream to have something small,” Alvarez said.
As the street scene in downtown has gotten more erratic, and the costs and hassle of trekking to far-flung venues has escalated, he acknowledged that “friends have hinted that it’d be nice to have something low key, like if you’re on a date or have people from out of town that didn’t feel like going to a warehouse. We’re always morphing and developing, and at this moment, that’s where I want to be.”
The first thing Alvarez did was truck in a new hi-fi system and put Franca’s busy slate of DJ programming quite literally front and center behind the bar. For wizened millennials who might not have the juice to stay out until 6 a.m. at a warehouse party, or for young artists and promoters looking for a small room to re-cultivate local music scenes lost to the pandemic, these DJ-driven bars have become incredibly important.
“Being from the U.K., we grew up with so many drinking holes, which offer a sense of community — not just a rave,” DJ Tottie said on a break from her set. “I love playing and going to late night parties, but that’s not for everyone, and there aren’t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound. So having a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca’s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.”
Franca keeping its lights on is just as important for downtowners, who have had reason to wonder if their neighborhood will remain a vital place to go out at night. With so many generations-old venues closing, a sense of doom can become self-fulfilling.
“Living in downtown after 2020, it was back to back to back on different things that weren’t great for us,” Alvarez said. “But I still live downtown, and every time there’s a new business or something cool opening, I get happy, because there’s nothing more heartbreaking than to do my morning walk and see more for-lease signs up. If you see one or two, it’s fine, but if you start to see more it gets in your head, like, ‘What’s really happening?’ ”
Nicole Williams makes drinks at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
McOsker said that street-level nightlife is a bellwether for the broader downtown economy, and the community’s social health. “It matters a lot. What does it mean that a century-old institution like Cole’s closes in 2025 when it survived two world wars?” she said. “I hear people lament what kinds of social fabric were eroded in the pandemic. But I’m bullish on the nighttime economy as an anchor of downtown’s appeal, which is all more reason to keep reinvesting in it. It’s an ecosystem you can’t get anywhere else.”
Even amid the overlapping crises of homelessness, fires, economic travails, righteously disruptive protests, downtown has too much appeal to stay down forever. Franca alone doesn’t herald a revival, but it might get music fans back in the habit of cutting loose on Main.
“The architecture is still great here, there are still amazing places and you’re central to everything,” Alvarez said. “Midnight Lovers has always been driven by this little area. I have high hopes because downtown is so great and a lot of creatives still live in these buildings, even if some don’t want to go out because things aren’t the way they used to be from 2015-19. I think it’s going to take effort from all of us.”
A Private Life, 2025.
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski.
Starring Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste, Luàna Bajrami, Noam Morgensztern, Sophie Guillemin, Frederick Wiseman, Aurore Clément, Irène Jacob, Park Ji-Min, Jean Chevalier, Emma Ravier, Scott Agnesi Delapierre, and Lucas Bleger.
SYNOPSIS:
The renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
The first order of business here is to note that the so-called renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner is French, meaning that Jodie Foster speaks French throughout the majority of co-writer/director Rebecca Zlotowski’s mystery A Private Life. Her accent and handling of the language are also impressive, and that alone is a reason to check out the film. It also must be mentioned that Lilian isn’t precisely a psychiatrist fully attentive to her patients; if anything, she seems bored by them, which is perhaps part of the reason why her mind concocts a riddle to solve within her recordings when a patient, Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira), turns up dead.
One of Lilian’s patients also shows up hostile, demanding that their sessions be finished as he has found a hypnotist capable of curing his vices (smoking) in a limited time. This also piques her curiosity and brings her to that same hypnotist, where, even though she is condescending and dismissive of the entire concept, she finds herself falling under a spell that could hold clues to uncovering the murderer. With that said, it’s as much a film about Lilian questioning her purpose and the methods deployed regarding her line of work as it is a crafty, twisty puzzle box to solve.
Divorced from her husband, Lillan gets roped into helping Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), who gets roped into her bumbling around, which inevitably leads to discussions about their failed love life. Similarly, Lillan also has a fractured relationship with her grown son, Julian (Vincent Lacoste), now a parent himself, with the running joke that whenever she stops by, the baby wakes up and starts crying profusely. Her personal life is rife with confusion, and her professional life is a bore, pushing her further and further into a mystery that might solely be in her head.
Not to give too much away, but there probably wouldn’t be a movie if there was absolutely nothing to solve here. Naturally, A Private Life has plenty of suspects that crop up from the tapes Lilian plays back to herself, searching for something that will point her in the right direction. It turns out that Paula also led a dysfunctional family life, but, more concerning, it could also be a suicide potentially aided by Lilian herself, once accidentally prescribing the wrong dosage of medicine. With the way some of those recordings are shot and presented in a hazy, hypnotic flashback form, complete with close-ups of Paula lying down on the couch, one also begins to wonder if there is a psychosexual angle at play here.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that A Private Life (co-written by Anne Berest, in collaboration with Gaëlle Macé) is also aggressively silly while cycling through every potential suspect, and that, even if there are clear answers here, the narrative is less about what happened and more about and more proper, present method of conducting therapy. The message the film ultimately lands on there isn’t entirely convincing. To be fair, everything involving the hypnotism is also quite absurd and strains credulity. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that this is still an entertaining mystery with some compelling character work and an engrossing, controlled spiral of a performance from Jodie Foster.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
Originally published December 6, 2025. Updated December 7, 2025.
Entertainment
Review: Vaguely fantastical without ever being fantastic, ‘100 Nights of Hero’ is less than magical
“Are you ready? Then we shall begin.”
This narration, over an image of three moons hanging in the sky, begins Julia Jackman’s “100 Nights of Hero,” which she adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s 2016 graphic novel and directed. It signifies that we’re in for a level of heightened, self-reflective fantasy storytelling and, in fact, the revolutionary power of storytelling itself is the beating heart of this film.
Jackman takes her own stylistic approach to “100 Nights of Hero” without replicating Greenberg’s aesthetic. You can almost immediately tell this fantastical film has a feminine touch in its colorful, highly stylized look and sound; there’s a certain girlish wit in the vibrant pink hues and the centering of women’s narratives within the mannered compositions. The setting is a secluded, cult-like community that reveres their god, Birdman (Richard E. Grant, in a cameo), and fashions their patriarchal society around the usual tenets: controlling women, producing heirs.
Young bride Cherry (Maika Monroe) is married to Jerome (Amir El-Masry) and though he claims they are trying to have a baby, he is not. Too bad she’s the one who will suffer the consequences of failing to get pregnant. Soon, the hunky Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) shows up and the two men engage in a cruel bet: Manfred has 100 nights alone in the castle to seduce Cherry while Jerome is away on business. If he fails, he has to find a baby for Jerome, who is uninterested in sex with women. If Manfred succeeds, he gets the castle. But if Cherry strays, she hangs. (It’s a lose-lose situation for the wife, as expected.)
Cherry has one person on her side, Hero (Emma Corrin), her cunning maid, who distracts Manfred from his goal by telling the story of three sisters who engage in the “sinful, wicked and absolutely forbidden” (for women) pleasure of reading and writing. One of the sisters, Rosa (Charli XCX), is married off to a merchant who soon discovers her “witchcraft.”
Every night, Hero tacks on a new chapter of the three sisters, their story interwoven with Cherry and Manfred’s, while we discover that Hero is a part of the League of Secret Storytellers: women who collect tales and weave them into tapestries, their work hiding their true intention while the stories spread from ear to ear.
The issues here are basic and elemental: the trials and tribulations of sex, marriage, fidelity and procreation. Though brides are trapped in castles and men wearing bird masks want to burn the witches, this story is not so out of our time or place. The pressure to “produce an heir” lives on in current pro-natalist arguments and “trad wife” discourse, and the control of women’s bodies — and minds — is required to fulfill the goal of producing more and more babies. This tale doesn’t seem so ancient or fantastical at all.
However, there’s little nuance to the storytelling of “100 Nights of Hero” itself. It feels a bit like feminism for tweens, a young-adult approach to explaining how the liberation of minds is necessary for the liberation of bodies. The film is blunt and obvious to its detriment. Its quirky, opulent aesthetic can only sustain the exercise for so long.
As our interest wanes over the course of this 90-minute modernist fable, Manfred starts to slip away — natural for a folktale that seeks to deprioritize men. Unfortunately, Galitzine’s screen presence is just too powerful to ignore and we notice his absence. Perhaps it’s that Manfred is so swaggeringly confident, Galitzine’s embodiment of fluid sensuality standing in stark contrast to Monroe’s stiff, anxious, breathy performance as Cherry.
The most powerful image of the film, which is made up of interesting images, is of Galitzine covered in blood as he hauls a freshly killed stag home for lunch. If the film is about women discovering their own pleasure and sensuality outside of men, they shouldn’t have made Manfred the most appealing and earthy character on screen.
While “100 Nights of Hero” has compelling actors and beautiful visuals, its storytelling (about the power of storytelling) is unfortunately less than riveting. The urgency of the message is clear but the delivery leaves something to be desired.
‘100 Nights of Hero’
Rated: PG-13, for sexual material, some bloody images and language
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Playing: In wide release Friday, Dec. 5
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, 2025.
Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madson, Daryl Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Gordon Liu, Shin’ichi Chiba, Michael Parks, James Parks, Kenji Ôba and Perla Haney-Jardine.
SYNOPSIS
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair unites Volume 1 and Volume 2 into a single, unrated epic—presented exactly as he intended, complete with a new, never-before-seen anime sequence.
Over 20 years after Quentin Tarantino’s two-volume revenge epic Kill Bill was released in theatres, the director’s complete vision of one unified film finally sees its wide release after only a few rare showings of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. The result is a reminder of some of Tarantino’s strongest work as well as Uma Thurman’s powerful performance as the blood-spattered Bride which is made more impactful by combining the two volumes into one.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that even after so long Kill Bill remains one of Tarantino’s best works in his long career. The film is a great mix of the western and martial arts genres full of memorable characters, snappy dialogue and incredible action scenes. The Bride’s battle with the Crazy 88 gang feels entirely new as The Whole Bloody Affair‘s unrated cut sees the fight’s black-and-white sequence restored to colour, allowing viewers to soak in (no pun intended) all its blood and gore. The original black-and-white still has its own shine, but one can gain a newer appreciation with the colour’s vibrant setting and stellar choreography.
The combined nature of the film also provides more nuance to the story and performances. With Tarantino having re-edited the ending of Vol. 1 to remove the cliffhangers and Vol. 2‘s opening recap, the narrative structure flows very well to better convey the overall story even with Vol. 2‘s more dialogue-heavy and story-driven focus compared to the more action-packed Vol. 1. The throughline with its story, themes and character development is much more noticeable in The Whole Bloody Affair than having to switch discs or streaming the next part when watching the films back-to-back.
This is where Uma Thurman’s performance really shines through. The Bride was already one of her best roles 20 years ago, but watching her performance in this nature really highlights the strength of her arc and nuances she put into the character. This is especially clear in the different versions of The Bride she portrays, from her assassin training to willing bride to determined avenger. No scene is this clearer in when she discovers her daughter alive and well, a fact that in this cut of Kill Bill the audience finds out the same time as The Bride, giving the revelation a much stronger gut punch due to Thurman’s emotions and her subsequent scenes with BB.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair also benefits from additional changes. Aside from the removal of cliffhangers and the full-colour fight, some extra footage is added here and there but mostly in the anime sequence detailing O-Ren Ishi’s origin which includes a completely new scene of O-Ren exacting vengeance on another of her parents’ murderers. The new scene fits right in with the rest of the anime and is rich in its own right with the characters smooth movements and choreography. While it may not have been entirely needed, it is still very entertaining to watch and getting more backstory on O-Ren is never a bad thing as Lucy Liu made her quite a memorable antagonist.
Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair shows how much stronger many of its elements are as one film as opposed to two volumes. From the fight scenes, the story, the writing and the performances, a whole lot more nuance is gained in this cohesive film particularly with Thurman’s performance. If you’re a fan of Tarantino’s earlier work and of the Kill Bill films, The Whole Bloody Affair is the definitive way to watch this iconic story.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
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