Films 6/02 – 6/05/2022
by Gary Palmucci | 2nd June 2022 | Gary's Corner
As many readers may recall from last week’s “letter” (and our Friday NY Times ad), we listed three titles as having their “final screening” last weekend. Well, one of them, Drive My Car had such a bump in attendance that we couldn’t resist doing yet another “final show” this Saturday. For any skeptics, please be assured this will indeed be the final show, as next weekend we’ll be featuring the 1961 AND 2021 versions of West Side Story, both nearly three-hour films that will make it impossible to schedule additional titles of that length.
New additions to this week’s New Plaza Cinema program include Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story, a documentary chronicling that venerable town’s glorious, 50-plus-years-old annual spring bacchanal. I’ve been tuning in for many years via the WWOZ app — the greatest radio station in the nation! — and here’s a chance to relish both picture and sound. The NY Times’ Glenn Kenny noted in his review:
“As musicians from all over the world testify….the Louisiana city’s annual jazz festival has an irreproducible flavor, because it happens in the cradle of American music.”
The Last Laugh, a 2016 doc about envelope-pushing comedians (and their material) that sold out its screening at the recent Goddard Arts Festival, will be back this week for two more shows. On Thursday night director Ferne Pearlstein will host a Q&A with the late Gilbert Gottfried’s wife Dara Kravitz and on Sunday afternoon Ferne will return for another Q&A after our 5:20 show.
A discovery from last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hit the Road, will also make its New Plaza Cinema at the West End Theatre debut. Helmed by the son of embattled Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi (Taxi, The White Balloon), this film follows a family’s efforts to help their elder son flee the country, amidst both many mixed emotions and the beguiling antics of a younger sibling. In his “Critic’s Pick” the NY Times‘ A.O. Scott noted, “What makes the film so memorable and devastating is the way it explores normal life under duress.”
And continuing this weekend, our crowd-pleasers The Duke and The Automat (with another Sunday Q&A from director Lisa Hurwitz) and two American classics, Coppola’s The Conversation and Scorsese’s GoodFellas, with its great performance — among many others — from the late Ray Liotta.
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema