Films 3/24 – 3/27/22
by Gary Palmucci | 25th March 2022 | Gary's Corner
We’re going “all in” this Oscar weekend at the New Plaza Cinema @ West End Theatre with ten nominated titles. Two of them are new to our programs, from our recent association with Netflix: previous Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s Neapolitan family drama The Hand of God (a Best International Film nominee) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (three nods including her adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel).
To me, the main fascination with this year’s Oscars is how two of the main categories — Best Picture and Best Actress— seem to be utter “toss-ups. I can see scenarios in which three or four different films could win “Best Picture,” and after seeming a complete free-for-all “Best Actress” seems to have come down to Jessica Chastain vs Penelope Cruz, both of whom we’ve showcased here. Parallel Mothers even played to a sold-out house last weekend — our first since Summer of Soul, the documentary feature favorite. That’s one Oscar category where New Plaza Cinema was able to snag all five contenders.
Watching — as well as often projecting — so many of this year’s nominees in a concentrated period has for me been a bracing experience, proving how much dedicated aspiration and sheer talent is still very much out there in the movie world… Stanley Nelson’s scorching investigation of Attica and Guillermo del Toro’s sprawling, go-for-broke canvas in Nightmare Alley are only two examples.
I suspect there are a few of these ten you haven’t yet seen. Please join us this weekend, at the West End Theatre’s big screen!
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema