Gary's Corner

We’re coming down the home stretch with two more Saturdays of programming in the beautiful cinema at Columbus Circle’s Museum of Arts and Design. This weekend will feature: 

 

The Last PIcture Shows – A brand-new documentary on America’s still-resilient single-screen movie houses, with its director Rustin Thompson present for a Q&A. In his NY Times Critic’s Pick review, Glenn Kenny wrote, “This spare and beguiling movie opens with a quote from Hungarian novelist Esther Kinsky, ‘ A trip to the cinema expands the world and stretches time.’  

We are introduced to a feisty variety of old-school movie houses, many in remote corners of America,  trying valiantly to survive in a business climate that, Mr. Kenny notes, “…have made movie watching a platform-neutral if not platform-indifferent activity….The narratives are compelling, but the movie’s lyrical and elegiac tone makes it truly resonant.”  

 

Make Me Famous – The scrappy downtown ’80s art scene doc, which recently celebrated the third anniversary of its debut New Plaza screening with filmmakers Brian Vincent and Heather Spore and special guests, is sold out for this weekend’s screening.  We expect to screen it again when we return to CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College this fall.   

 

Il Sorpasso (aka ‘The Easy Life’) Here’s a gem that more New Plaza Cinemas need to know about and see: Dino Risi’s 1962 Italian classic with Vittorio Gassman, Jean-Louis Trintignant and the luminous Catherine Spaak, which happens to take place on an August 15th, Feast of the Assumption, as two restless young men cross paths on a sultry afternoon when Rome is nearly deserted, its natives away for their holidays….

A favorite of Martin Scorsese – who once programmed it in a Lincoln Center film series, double-billed with his own, picaresque The Color of Money – Alexander Payne and many others, Il Sorpasso belongs in the same league with the Fellini, Visconti and Antonioni gems you’ve enjoyed here over the years.  Here’s the perfect moment to discover it, on a late August Saturday afternoon, the same day on which it takes place!

 

Wild Inside- A new documentary from eclectic filmmaker (and NPC guest) Penny Lane, this is the story of Flaco, the itinerant Eurasian eagle-owl who captivated many thousands of New Yorkers – including our own ‘resident’ doc- and grammar-bedrock-makers, Rebel With a Clause’s Brandt Johnson and Ellen Jovin.  

Ellen reports, “Flaco used to visit around our (UWS) apartment.  He was once right below our living room window, just one floor down.  We miss him!”  

The NYT’s Alissa Wilkinson declared,  “…ultimately the loveliest part of the movie is the portrait of the community that grows in a city – most any city – around a creature like Flaco…Living in a city is a group effort; nobody is really going it alone.”  

 

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And here’s a preview of next Saturday’s lineup:  

 

How to Divorce During the War– In this 2026 Sundance prize-winner (for best international director), and Lithuania’s Oscar submission,  a couple’s efforts to end their marriage get caught up in the chaotic first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.   

Director Andrius Blazevicius will join us for a Q&A with my colleague Abbe Harris.

 

The Marching Band (aka En Fanfare)- In this new French crowd pleaser – already requested by several NPC patrons who’ve seen it abroad and at festivals – two brothers who’ve never previously met discover each other’s musical gifts, in the milieu of a small-town marching band.  

 

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds – Paul Newman directs his beloved Joanne Woodward in a 1972 adaptation of Paul Zindel’s play.  First NYC screening of a recent 4K restoration, with Melissa Newman joining us for an after-discussion with film historian Max Alvarez.  

 

NYC Short Film Showcase — our bi-monthly sampling of local filmmaking talent closes out this ‘MAD summer,’ on a bigger canvas than usual…. filmmakers, as always, will be on hand afterwards for Q&A with 

curator Michael Jacobsohn.