Films this week 7/31/2026 to 8/06/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 31st July 2026 | Gary's Corner
This weekend’s New Plaza Cinema lineup features a new release from Watermelon Pictures, distributor of such outstanding international titles (which we’ve screened) as All That’s Left of You and Sudan-Remember Us. Their latest is A Sad and Beautiful World, a resilient love story that unfolds across three decades of the tragic Lebanese civil war. In her Critic’s Pick review last week, the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson wrote,
“A Sad and Beautiful World fits some of the contours of the classic wartime romance, with its multi-decade love story happening amid periods of havoc and instability in Beirut. But the story it tells is more intimate than epic, and somehow more contemporary as well, with a pressing question at its core: How do we retain our humanity when the world is full of atrocities?”
New York State Assembly District 67 member Linda Rosenthal will join us for Saturday’s classic film screening, director John Frankenheimer’s ever-prescient, 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, with its career-defining performances by Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey and Angela Lansbury. Ms. Rosenthal was our guest last fall for a showing of The Candidate, shortly before its iconic star, Robert Redford passed away. She is an aficionado of political films in general, and our after-discussion of this one’s uncanny relevance should be lively.
Last weekend’s deeply heartfelt audience response to the documentary Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World ensured an encore show. This film has become one of the ‘sleeper hits’ of the summer’s art house scene.
We’ll also be reprising the ever-popular
Rebel With a Clause, with its 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, will be back. Filmmakers Brian Vincent and Heather Spore will be joined by two special guests from that ‘era,’ appearing for the first time at a Make Me Famous Q&A : Annina Nosei, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first gallerist, along with art model and writer Claudia Summers.
Tickets are now on sale for this unique screening.