Films This Week 10/29/21
by Gary Palmucci | 28th October 2021 | Gary's Corner
Good news this week for both art house theatres and moviegoers – Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch opened last weekend to ‘smash’ box office in its first engagements around the country, including over $100,000 at just one theatre, the Angelika in downtown Manhattan. It’s a very hopeful sign that older specialized audiences are ready to come back to cinemas if the picture is ‘right,’ and that Anderson, despite some mixed reviews, remains the ‘golden boy’ of his generation of American movie makers.
As there are no Virtual Cinema additions this week, it might be a good moment to highlight some of the ‘heroes’ of New Plaza Cinema’ whose previous films played – sometimes to full houses – at our late, lamented NYIT cinema, and whose new work is currently being showcased in various venues.
The annual festival DOC NYC will feature dozens of recent and new documentaries both in various cinemas and online from Nov 10-18, including these New Plaza alumni:
Attica– Producer/directors Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry, who generously joined us for a ‘Talk Back’ on their earlier Miles Davis – Birth of the Cool, revisit the infamous 1971 New York prison uprising in a scalding new work, which will also play an Oscar qualifying run Oct 29-Nov 4 at the Village East Cinemas.
In The Same Breath– Nanfu Wang, whose One Child Nation was a 2019 programming highlight for us, investigates how both the US and Chinese governments shaped information at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Julia– Filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen hosted two sold out screenings- as many of you may remember – of their indelible doc RBG in the first week of our NYIT programs. They have remained staunch New Plaza supporters and their newest, opening Nov 12 commercially, chronicles the amazing life of super-chef Julia Child.
The Rescue– Producer/directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chen, whose Oscar-winning Free Solo was also a big hit in our early weeks at NYIT, go inside on the dramatic rescue of 12 young soccer players and their coach trapped by monsoon floods inside a cave in Thailand.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain – From Morgan Neville, whose Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was a memorable early ‘draw’ for us, here’s another chance to see one of the most popular docs -or specialized films, period – of this year.
Also, being featured at MOMA’s annual year-end series ‘The Contenders’:
The Card Counter– Writer/director Paul Schrader appeared at two sold out NYIT screenings of First Reformed, which yielded the first Oscar nomination of his long, storied career. His new film stars Oscar Isaac as a gambler and military veteran haunted by his past , seeking to reform a young man bent on revenge against a mutual enemy. Both director and star will appear at a discussion / Q&A following a MOMA screening at 7 pm on Nov 18. (Ticket info – www.moma.org/film)
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema