Films this week 10/10/2025 to 10/16/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 10th October 2025 | Gary's Corner
There will be a lot of ‘special activity’ around New Plaza Cinema’s screening schedule over the next three weekends, including shows on this Monday’s holiday, extra ones on the next three Thursday evenings, and theatre closings, for student events on October 17 and 24-25. Let’s get into it.
This weekend’s major addition – fresh from its boffo downtown premiere at IFC Center – is a new documentary from Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck, Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5. In her Critic’s Pick review, the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis rhapsodizes on this
“…essayistic documentary from Raoul Peck that surveys its title subject’s life and work, using them as a lens to explore authoritarian power in the past and the present. Densely packed, the movie is a whirlwind of ideas and images, by turns heady, enlivening, disturbing and near-exhausting. It’s a work of visceral urgency from Peck, who’s best known for his 2017 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, about James Baldwin.”
Peck, whose other documentaries include portraits of such heroic figures as Patrice Lumumba and Ernest Cole, often takes an idiosyncratic approach to his subjects. As Dargis writes,
“Although Peck folds in many other details and milestones, the director isn’t solely interested in the usual biographical basics. Peck is undeniably intrigued by Orwell the man, but always in relation to the world that he harrowingly diagnosed.”
We needn’t belabor the point that both Orwell’s fiction and journalism are as prescient and timely as ever.
Orwell: 2 + 2 =5 will have four screenings over this holiday weekend.
My colleagues Max Alvarez and Dan Cahill will on Sunday host a screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Contempt, the Nouvelle Vague master’s mesmerising, sunstruck potion of the pungent and the romantic. Its singular cast includes Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and legendary director Fritz Lang, with widescreen cinematography by the great Raoul Coutard.
Here at New Plaza Cinema we love to present classics shot in that “scope” format; in the past year we’ve presented – to name just a few- The Wild Bunch, Heaven’s Gate, East of Eden, The Hustler and High and Low. Great directors can use that expansive canvas to electrify both physical and emotional landscapes, and we’ll be presenting further vintage examples in the coming weeks.
Elsewhere on our program, these three films will have their ‘final screenings’ this weekend: Riefenstahl, The Blond Boy from the Casbah, and Monk in Pieces – the latter featuring a Q&A with director Billy Shebar and jazz artist Theo Bleckmann.
Holdovers include Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, and SHTTL, with three shows this weekend after its previous sell-outs, and its lead actor Moshe Lobel on hand for Q&A.
And, coming later this month:
- On Saturday, October 18 at 1215 pm, a special encore screening of Honoring Eric Bentley: A Centennial Tribute Concert, celebrating one of the most revered theatre critics, playwrights, editors and translators of the 20th century. Its producer, writer, and lead performer Karyn Levitt will join us for a Q&A along with CUNY professor Jerry Carlson and other special guests. On three consecutive Thursday evenings, October 16, 23 and 30, we’ll present screenings of several new releases (along with an abbreviated weekend schedule), which will include:
- Urchin – actor Harris Dickinson (Babygirl, Triangle of Sadness) makes a Cannes-acclaimed directorial debut with this hard-hitting UK drama
- Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost – direct from this year’s NY Film Festival, Ben Stiller’s very personal exploration of his family’s legacy
- Eleanor the Great – the beloved June Squibb, whose Thelma was a New Plaza hit, plays a ‘proudly troublesome’ starring role for debuting director Scarlett Johansson.