Films this week 9/11/2026 to 9/17/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 11th September 2026 | Gary's Corner
Mid-September is a ‘lull before the tempest’ time for art house moviegoing here in NYC. When the NY Film Festival kicks off on Sept 25, at least a couple dozen new art films will begin to move into various stages of release, some of them landing at New Plaza Cinema. We can’t announce anything just yet, but I can assure you there’s plenty of provocative film fare on the horizon.
In the meantime, several summer releases are still drawing full houses in our convivial cinema. The Invite, an uproarious late addition to last weekend’s schedule, will have a trio of screenings this time around, along with the French heart-tugger The Marching Band, and the intricately constructed doc Wild Inside, starring Flaco the Eurasian owl. Its director Penny Lane will join us for one more Q&A, right after Sunday’s 12:15 pm show.
This weekend’s other holdovers and reprises:
American Doctor – the powerhouse account of three courageous US doctors’ experiences in the hospitals of war-ravaged Gaza has been moving audiences around the country; we invite more NPC audiences to give it their attention.
A Sad and Beautiful Life – the latter film’s distributor Watermelon Pictures has released many, diverse feature and documentary looks at tragedy and hope in the Middle East and Africa, including this resilient love story that unfolds across three decades of the Lebanese civil war.
We’re giving this one another shot; in her recent Critic’s Pick review, 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?”
An Officer and a Spy – Filmed seven years ago but only released (briefly) here last August, Roman Polanski’s masterful cinematic chess game on the Dreyfus Case draws packed houses whenever we reprise it. Theatrical screenings are currently the only way to see the film in the US – we’ll keep periodically programming it as long as our patrons keep attending…
Next weekend, my colleagues Dan Cahill and Abbe Harris (with occasional pinch-hitting from yours truly) will recommence our Sunday afternoon classics series. First up on Sept 20 will be Norman Jewison and John Patrick Shanley’s romantic, tonic Moonstruck with Oscar-winners Cher and Olympia Dukakis.
Tickets will be available early next week, and an extensive schedule of upcoming classic titles, later this month.