Films this week 02/28/2025 to 03/6/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 28th February 2025 | Gary's Corner
On this abbreviated New Plaza Cinema Oscar weekend, we’ll be saluting four nominees with ‘good luck’ screenings: Conclave (Best Picture, and seven other nominations), The Seed of the Sacred Fig (International Feature), A Real Pain (Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay) and No Other Land (Documentary Feature). The latter film sold out both screenings last weekend, so plan accordingly.
And, we’ll reprise the rueful comedy-drama Ex-Husbands with Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Richard Benjamin and Rosanna Arquette, which also played to packed houses.
Our other film on this weekend’s program is a singularly daft comedy and a highlight of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Universal Language captivated the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis, who in her Critic’s Pick review wrote:
“Universal Language, directed by Matthew Rankin, is a gently funny, gently moving, slightly surrealist little comedy that’s aimed at two groups of people: Canadians, specifically but not exclusively those who know Winnipeg, and aficionados of Iranian cinema. Surely there’s overlap between the two circles in that Venn diagram, but I can’t imagine it’s all that substantial. Combining the two cultural specificities, though, makes for something fresh and weird and delightful to watch — even if, like me, you’re not an expert on either one.
Mr Rankin and his co-screenwriters came up with a world that is sort of a thought experiment: What if Tehran were Winnipeg? Or Winnipeg were Tehran? What if the landscapes were snowy, the Tim Hortons were teahouses and everyone spoke Persian?”
An enraptured cast of characters, from mischievous schoolchildren to deeply meditative seniors, wander through a wintry Canadian urbanscape (definitely NOT the 51st State), enacting a series of vignettes that comes to make its own wacky, endearing sense. I was reminded a bit of the wonderfully deadpan comedies of Finnish master Aki Kaurismaki. Check out online the trailer we’ve been running at the cinema, for further illustration…
Coming next weekend :
- Our monthly first-Friday screening series on social justice issues, both current and historical, continues with the 2012 documentary Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners, chronicling our still-active articulator of resistance and her passionate, fearless life’s work.
- There’s Still Tomorrow (C’e Ancora Domani) In this moving comedic drama set in postwar Rome, a working-class wife and mother strives for a better future. Winner of 6 Italian Academy Awards, and a hit at arthouses around the globe, we’ll be joining in its US theatrical premiere.