Films this week 5/28/2026 to 6/4/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 28th May 2026 | Gary's Corner
Classic films are writ large on this week’s New Plaza Cinema lineup, both established polestars and an aspiring ‘newcomer.’
Martin Scorsese’s 1976 scorcher Taxi Driver, with indelible performances from Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel and others will screen on Wednesday night in a special presentation by film historian and NPC friend Steven C. Smith.
Steven will focus in both his intro and Q&A on the film’s unique score by legendary composer Bernard Herrrmann; he’ll also be signing copies of his new biography of that irascible musical genius. A very few tickets may still be available on the day of the show.
Saturday morning we’ll encore Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause; some of you may remember our full-house screening of that convulsive melodrama during Christmas Week 2024. This time we’ll be joined afterwards by the late director’s daughter Nicca, along with 50s Hollywood historian Foster Hirsch and Make Me Famous filmmakers Brian Vincent and Heather Spore, who are deep into production on a new James Dean documentary.
The other ‘vintage’ title also played here recently to a full house and a heartfelt Q&A. I think it needs a bit more of a ‘set up’ than the other two, so I’m going to quote a good chunk of the program notes from its Moma premiere earlier this year:
“The late Michael Apted’s The Long Way Home, a revealing, rollicking portrait of the Soviet underground rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov, who became the first to record in the West during the early, optimistic days of Glasnost—not quite believing he would collaborate with Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Ray Cooper—was released to critical acclaim after its broadcast in the UK and premiere at Sundance, but has largely disappeared these past 30 years. By 1988 Apted was already a hot director both in fiction (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist) and nonfiction (the legendary Up series and Bring on the Night, his concert film about the making of Sting’s first solo album). Apted’s astonishing ability to get people to open up led to this complex study of an artist who seized a moment of unimaginable freedom to make new music with new musicians, yet who found members of his longtime band, Aquarium, feeling abandoned and his longtime Russian fans uncertain about his English-language songs when he returned home to perform them. Thanks to Steven Lawrence, the film’s producer, The Long Way Home will now have a second life in this newly remastered edition. In addition, together with Susanne Rostock, the film’s editor, he has created an epilogue charting Grebenshchikov’s fate following the release of his US album Radio Silence as an exile, and an outspoken critic of Putin’s war in Ukraine…”
Producer Steven Lawrence and editor Susanne Rostock will join us after Saturday’s show.
Various other filmmakers and guests will also be with us at selected screenings this weekend: our bi-monthly NYC Short Film Showcase on Friday night, with its tireless impresario Michael Jacobsohn, and the ‘talent’ (always a sell-out- plan accordingly); Rabbi on the Block (with its subject, Tamar Manasseh); The Unfixing, and Still a Revolutionary: Albert Einstein, with its respective directors, Nicole Betancourt and Julia Newman.
And, back by popular demand: Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers, Fatih Akin’s Amrum, Arnaud Desplechin’s Two Pianos, and Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy.