Gary's Corner

New Plaza Cinema jumps back into a full schedule this weekend at our Macaulay Honors College screening room — with at least one damaged seat now repaired!

The two new release additions to the line up are both NY Times Critic’s Picks: Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is hailed as “a documentary with a gold mine of material: drawings, journal entries, concert footage, family videos and vintage photographs. Included in the mix is audio from one of her therapy tapes, setting the stage for her unflinching confessional about abuse….an eloquent meditation on making peace with the past.”  

And the Times’ Amy Nicholson describes the heroine of the rousing biopic Nyad (Annette Bening) as “a record-breaking long-distance swimmer (with) the lung-capacity of a real blowhard…at 60, Diana vows to conquer the challenge that bested her at age 28. She’ll swim nonstop from Cuba to Florida – over two days of sharks, storms, stinging jellyfish and hallucinatory exhaustion.” Her indefatigable best friend (Jodie Foster) both sparring with her and never leaving her side, and co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (New Plaza Cinema heroes, from the Oscar-winning Free Solo) who, NIcholson reminds us, “specialize in documentaries about extreme outdoorsmen whose feats require a misery threshold, and a self-centered monomania that few can understand,” bring us along for the turbulent, inspiring ride.  

Back for encores this weekend are the no-holds-barred NYC socio-political comedy, The Persian Version, and the triumphantly re-released 1993 Hong Kong epic Farewell My Concubine. Seeing it again after three decades certainly brought back memories for me, as does our Sunday ‘Noirvember’ screening of Joseph H. Lewis’ 1949 classic Gun Crazy.  

I first saw this dark saga of two firearms-obsessed lovers on the run in the late seventies, double-featured with Taxi Driver — a once in a lifetime pairing. Max Alvarez and I will discuss it all after Sunday’s 3 pm screening.   

Last but not least — our latest installment of Short Films by NYC Filmmakers, curated by Michael Jacobsohn, will be presented as Sunday’s first show. This showcase has consistently sold out this year — get your tickets early.  

Coming next weekend, the return of the classic doc The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill with Bay Area filmmaker Judy Irving in person for selected shows, and another dose of “Noir” Jules Dassin’s Night and the City starring Richard Widmark and Laura’s Gene Tierney.