Films this week 8/2 to 8/4/2024
by Gary Palmucci | 1st August 2024 | Gary's Corner
After a long-planned, three-week vacation trip through Portugal, Morocco and Spain, and on my return, an urgent and completely unanticipated visit to an eye surgeon to repair a detached retina, I’m back at the keyboard as a very busy New Plaza Cinema weekend awaits us.
Here are the highlights:
- Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger — Packed with beautiful and extensive clips, home movie, and behind the scenes footage and non-stop cinematic insight from Martin Scorsese, this documentary is both a loving tribute and splendid introduction to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s body of work. On Sunday we’ll be joined after the screening by two very special guests: Powell’s widow, executive producer and three-time Oscar winning Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and film critic/writer/director Kent Jones. This will be a sure sell-out, so act quickly to secure your tickets!
- How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer — John Buffalo Mailer will join us for a third consecutive weekend of Q&A on this richly detailed doc portrait of his father’s life and work. Buffalo — as he enjoys being addressed — has hinted that one of his siblings may join him on Saturday. Check our website for updates on that…
- Israel Swings for Gold — Distributor Menemsha Films, New Plaza’s foremost supplier of Israeli and Jewish-themed films (Farewell Mr Haffmann, America, the held-over The Boy in the Woods) serves up this non-fiction portrait of Israel’s 2021 baseball team, which competed in that year’s Olympics for the first time. With no media then allowed in Tokyo’s Olympic Village, the players recorded their own experiences. Mostly “newly minted” Israeli citizens, they encountered not-unexpected doses of anti-Semitism and the lingering dark shadow of Munich ’72. Filmmaker Jeremy Newberger chronicled their mix of triumph and struggle, on and off the diamond, and will join us for Q&As on both Saturday and Sunday, perhaps with an athlete or two. Check our website about that, as well.
- L’Avventura — This past year we’ve showcased to packed houses classics by Visconti and Fellini ; this August we’ll feature Italy’s other mid-century cinematic master, Michelangelo Antonioni in his opus magnum, featuring Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Gabrielle Ferzetti, and some uncredited arrangement work on its indelible musical theme by Ennio Morricone. Later this month we’ll present his now rarely-screened The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson.
- Robot Dreams — In this recent, family-friendly Oscar nominee for best animated feature, a NY Times Critic’s Pick, Amy Nicholson wrote,
“Director Pablo Berger, who also adapted the screenplay, expands Sara Varon’s short graphic novel of the same name into a minor epic. To describe the plot — an NYC dog and a robot are best friends, until they aren’t — the film sounds pitifully small. But the world inside it feels huge, a sprawling landscape of joy and heartbreak and mixed emotions…”
And, holding over: our consummate crowd-pleaser Ghostlight, Richard Armitage starring in The Boy in the Woods, Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson in Daddio, and June Squibb, Parker Posey, and Richard Roundtree in Thelma.
Hope to see you at one or more of them!
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Gary Palmucci
Film Curator