Films this week 05/30/2025 to 06/05/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 30th May 2025 | Gary's Corner
We’ve just finished a remarkable week at New Plaza Cinema, hosting the US theatrical premiere of Rebel With a Clause, the enlightening – and frequently hilarious – chronicle of filmmaker Brandt Johnson and his wife Ellen Jovin’s six-year journey across all 50 states, in search of grammatical and punctuational veritas.
Over a thousand patrons attended nearly two dozen screenings – many of which were sold out, and almost all hosted by Brandt and Ellen, with Q&As that were often uproarious and always filled with great audience energy and enthusiasm.
We’re grateful, as ever, for your support, and hope to have Brandt and Ellen back here next month for more personal appearances with their film. Keep an eye on our online schedule for updates on that; Rebel With a Clause will continue regular showings this weekend, and into June.
Another sleeper-hit-in-the-making arrives at New Plaza Cinema on Friday, fresh from its boffo downtown premiere. Bad Shabbos is the tale of an upper west side, Friday-night Shabbat dinner that goes darkly, hilariously wrong for a young man introducing his (gentile) fiancee to a smotheringly attentive family.
Misunderstanding and mayhem quickly ensue, some of it even fatal, all of it knowingly and convulsively funny. The eclectic cast includes Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer, Josh Mostel, Jon Bass, Method Man and John Bedford Lloyd, and director Daniel Robbins will join us for Q&As following Friday’s 4 & 6 pm shows, and Saturday’s 7:45. A couple of these are already near capacity, so please plan your online ticket purchases accordingly.
Another show likely to sell out, as it usually does, is Friday night’s latest installment of New York Short Filmmakers Showcase. Curator Michael Jacobsohn, having moved us with his own recent non-fiction portrait The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile, has assembled another provocative program.
For Drop Dead City, one of our several strong ‘holdover’ titles this month, we’ll be visited on Sunday evening by its co-director Michael Rohatyn, whose father, investment banker Felix Rohatyn, was a key player in helping NYC stave off municipal bankruptcy in the fall of 1975. The documentary covers that saga in hair-raising detail.
Other ‘holds’ this weekend will include Francois Ozon’s spellbinding When Fall is Coming, and the Italian ‘winter’s tale’ Vermiglio.
Coming next weekend:
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Moving the Mountain– on the 36th anniversary of the events in China’s Tiananmen Square, we’ll revisit Michael Apted’s documentary investigation of how the Beijing student protests descended into tragedy; producer Trudie Styler, film editor Susanne Rostock and other guests will join us for a discussion
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East of Eden– James Dean’s incandescent 1955 debut film will continue our year-long examination of his brief, burning-bright career, hosted by Make Me Famous filmmakers Brian Vincent and Heather Spore, and 1950s film scholar Foster Hirsch
And later in June:
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June 14- a second encore of Woody Allen’s Bananas hosted by its co-star Louise Lasser, along with the 2018 short film Did You Know My Husband ?, written by Susan Charlotte and directed by Antony Marsellis
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June 22- Make Me Famous – the downtown ’80s art scene doc celebrates ‘Year Two’ of its New Plaza Cinema residency, with some special guests.
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June 27- A Photographic Memory- An intimate, genre bending portrait of the late journalist/photographer Sheila Turner Seed, constructed by her daughter Rachel, and hailed by the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson as “Reaching far beyond personal narrative, blooming into a moving meditation on memory, interpretation and the nature of photography itself. ” Filmmaker will be present.