Films This Week 10/08/21
by Gary Palmucci | 8th October 2021 | Gary's Corner
We’re keeping our current selection of Virtual Cinema intact for one final week; next Friday an acclaimed documentary set in the dance world will be joining the lineup, and possibly others.
Meanwhile, this weekend many eyes will be focused on whether James Bond can again save the world – perhaps this time, also the ‘world’ of movie theatres – as the 25th 007 installment No Time To Die opens nationwide.
Its big UK opening and advance ticket sales here point to Daniel Craig’s swan song doing very well and continuing the gradual arc of commercial cinema returning to pre-pandemic levels.
But a cloud continues to hang over our little corner of the movie universe, not helped by comments like this one in the leading trade publication Deadline, reporting on a potential sale of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures (good friend and supplier of films to New Plaza)–“It’s been a challenging time for specialized film and the arthouse market as its key older demos have been slower to return to theatres post-Covid.”
However, there are also optimists like the venerable website Indiewire, in an article this week:
“The light at the end of the pandemic box office tunnel may be in sight. Speaking during a recent NY Film Festival panel, distributors said they are going to be carefully watching the performance of new releases like the wild French Cannes winner Titane (which opened last weekend – I was there and it IS wild) and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (October 22) to help gauge the path forward.
CEO Tom Quinn of distributor Neon (another New Plaza ally) said, “Some of what’s not being discussed in the industry is there hasn’t been a lot of really fantastic movies for people to take the risk of feeling comfortable in a theater. Some larger movies certainly have generated significant mainstream box office, but the platform film, the specialized film- I think this was the first weekend. Over the next four to six weeks, we’ll see what the appetite is.”
We’ll see, indeed, and this columnist will be there in various cinemas with fingers crossed, trying to make sense of it all….
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema