Films this week 10/02/2026 to 10/08/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 2nd October 2026 | Gary's Corner
This weekend’s New Plaza Cinema slate features nine films ; three of them – Marching Band, The Invite and American Doctor – will most likely be back for more screenings this fall. The other six will be on screen this weekend only, prior to our Oct 9 opening of NAZA.
Here is the rundown:
You Had to Be There – fresh off its socko downtown opening, this exuberant doc chronicles the 1972 Toronto stage production of Godspell, which ignited the careers of multiple generations of multi-media comedians, including Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin and Victor Garber.
The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and the Art of Survival – one of our more successful documentaries of last year; for the first time director Julie Rubio and producer Blake Wellen will join us for Q&A.
Songs of Slow Burning Earth – Museum of the Moving Image’s critical website Reverse Shot describes this recent doc:
“Ukrainian filmmaker Olha Zhurba doesn’t tell the story of her country’s war on the level of military strategy or political maneuvers. Nor does she follow one character or family trying to escape violence…the result is less a collective narrative of the ongoing war than a collage of impressions and feelings that guide the viewer across geographical terrain and reveal a country’s citizens processing their trauma in wildly different ways.”
Director Zhurba and producer Darya Bassel will be on hand for an after-discussion.
Take Me Home – A standout from this year’s Sundance Film Festival (winner of the prestigious Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award); astute Variety critic Lisa Kennedy hails
“a deeply felt examination of the challenges so many face when familial love is swamped by economic reality.”
Sweet Smell of Success – Dan Cahill and I will host a screening of the 1957 Burt Lancaster – Tony Curtis Times Square Passion Play, with one of the most pungent screenplays in American movies.
The Samurai and the Prisone – Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s serpentine 16th century sword-and-subterfuge drama is back for one more round.
Finally, here is NY Times chief film critic Manohla Dargis reporting last week from the NY Film Festival on NAZA:
“The powerful documentary “NAZA” is tough but necessary viewing. It’s the latest from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, Israelis, who, with two Palestinian colleagues, directed the 2025 documentary “No Other Land,” about the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here, Abraham and Szor focus on the Israeli military’s actions following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. The movie’s revelations are similar to reporting that appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere, and hinge on nighttime interviews on a Tel Aviv roof with anonymous Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers. With chilling detail and an occasional drawing, the interviewees describe secret methods used in the bombing of Gaza, sections that filmmakers intersperse with coolly detached surveillance-like images of the city and its residents going about their everyday lives.”
Tickets are now on sale — and selling fast – for our full schedule of shows on Oct 9 and 10. There will be additional screenings on Oct 11 and 12, show times to be announced early next week.