Films this week 7/17/2026 to 7/23/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 17th July 2026 | Gary's Corner
This is a ‘holdovers and encores’ weekend at New Plaza Cinema’s summer residency at the Museum of Art and Design. In the past few weeks we’ve had many requests to bring back Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, from patrons who were away on the July 4th weekend, dodging that heat wave, or otherwise just unable to make it. If Saturday afternoon’s screening reaches a certain level of attendance, we’ll keep it running.
As this so-far somewhat meager new-movie year progresses, writer/director/star Matthew Shear’s rueful romantic comedy Fantasy Life increasingly looks like one of the stand-out debut features of 2026. In the spring Matthew graced us with a series of warm, funny Q&As, and he’s agreed to pay us a visit once again following Saturday’s 4:30 pm show. As usual, my colleague Abbe Harris will moderate; Matthew has surrounded himself with a beautiful, NYC-centric cast here, including Amanda Peet, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Martin, Judd Hirsch and Bob Balaban.
We reached another milestone last weekend at the beautiful MAD cinema – a completely full house (143 seats) for our premiere screening of Reading Lolita in Tehran, with its expansive, seen-it-all Israeli director Eran Riklis joining us for a moving after-discussion. As a result, we’ll be doing two screenings of the film on Saturday, in hopes that this time, no one will be unable to get in!
Next month will feature at least two more encores: on August 1, Rebel With a Clause, with the customary Q&A from director Brandt Johnson and his leading lady, peripatetic parser of past participles, Ellen Jovin.
On August 15, Make Me Famous, the scrappy downtown ’80s art scene doc, which recently celebrated the third anniversary of its debut New Plaza screening; this time, filmmakers Brian Vincent and Heather Spore will be joined by a very special guest from that ‘era,’ appearing for the first time at an MMF Q&A.
Tickets are now on sale for both of those shows.