Films this week 02/7/2025 to 02/13/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 7th February 2025 | Gary's Corner, Uncategorized
In these convulsive recent weeks, the power of the movies to galvanize our engagement on issues of social justice seems more valuable than ever. At New Plaza Cinema last fall we commenced– with titles like Following Harry and One Person, One Vote– a monthly first-Friday-night screening series that continues this week with Ava DuVernay’s 2023 film Origin.
On this narrative screen adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s landmark historical survey Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, with a cast including Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal and Audra McDonald, the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote:
“DuVernay’s Origin is as audacious as it is ambitious. At its core, it concerns an intellectual argument about history and hierarchies of power, but it’s also about the fraught process of making this argument. It’s a daunting conceit that DuVernay has shaped into an eventful narrative that is, by turns, specific and far-ranging, diagnostic and aspirational. It is a great big swing about taking a great big swing, and while the film is more persuasive as a drama than the argument it relays, few American movies this year reach so high so boldly.”
Our after-screening discussion will be hosted by The Gathering for Justice, an advocacy group formed in 2005 by Harry Belafonte.
Another special event this weekend will feature film critic and author Stuart Klawans presenting Preston Sturges’ 1941 screwball-romance classic The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda and William Demarest. In his recent biography Crooked, But Never Common, as well as a special illustrated intro he has prepared for us, Stuart provides a rich portrait of why Sturges still matters–and cracks us up– as a pioneer writer-director who inspired multiple generations of American auteurs. Special thanks to New Plaza board member Paul Downs for putting this one together.
Also this weekend, encores of our ongoing Oscar-nominated hits Conclave (an open captioned screening), Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, A Real Pain and The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
There’ll also be Q&As featuring the filmmaking team from Liza: A Totally Terrific Absolutely True Story (on Sunday, one of three shows this weekend), and Three Birthdays, with director Jane Weinstock.
On President’s Day weekend we’ll be open on that holiday Monday, with more Oscar nominees both returning and debuting on the schedule , including Porcelain War, The Girl with the Needle,
The Wild Robot, Sugarcane and The Substance, along with a short-lister, the acclaimed Norwegian drama Armand.