Films this week 10/31/2025 to 11/06/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 31st October 2025 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema is back to near-normal this weekend, with only Sunday on a limited-screenings schedule, due to the NYC Marathon’s finish line being just a half-block east of us. Our first show will be at 5 pm, with film historian Dan Cahill and I hosting Robert Altman’s smoky, funky 1971 ‘winter western,’ Mc Cabe and Mrs Miller, starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Keith Carradine. Famously dubbed “a beautiful pipe dream of a movie” by Pauline Kael, the interactions of its beautiful losers in a makeshift frontier hamlet has endured as one of Altman’s most resonant, haunting panoramas, buttressed by Leonard Cohen’s transporting song score. Catch it on our Panavision-friendly wide screen.
Film historian Annette Insdorf will then join us for a Q&A following our 8 pm screening of the bracing documentary Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, on which she served as a co-producer. Annette, who has tirelessly introduced and Q&A-ed numerous New Plaza screenings this fall, will also be moderating an after-discussion following Saturday’s 1215 pm encore screening of Riefenstahl, an unflinching reassessment of the legendary German filmmaker. This time, its director Andres Veiel will be joining us in person; with some of our seats already reserved for critics and other industry guests, we suggest you order tickets online posthaste.
Another very special documentary screening will follow on Saturday at 445.
In Turbulence, through a series of tender, honest and visually stunning cinematic letters to her long lost mother, award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion recounts her sometimes shocking odyssey in search of resolution and peace.
Anne will also join us for a Q&A , along with New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch.
This week’s new feature film addition, Koln 75, was hailed by the NY Times’ Ben Kenigsberg as a
“fleet-footed period piece, directed by Ido Fluk, that concerns a moment in 1975 when jazz pianist Keith Jarrett caught lightning in a bottle in Cologne, West Germany, at a (completely improvised) concert that, luckily enough, was recorded. The Köln Concert remains one of the best-selling solo piano albums in history.”
Jarrett is played by John Magaro, recently seen on screen in September 5 and a New Plaza favorite, Celine Song’s Past Lives.
Our trio of special “October Thursday” screenings will wrap up this week with Eleanor the Great, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost and Shttl ( hosted, as ever, by leading man Moshe Lobel). All three of these films will encore elsewhere over the weekend; Stiller & Meara’s shows will be the final performances of our run, courtesy of Apple +.
Other classics coming in November:
-
Sunday, November 9 at 1215 pm – Three Days of the Condor – our salute to Robert Redford. Tickets on sale next week.
-
Sunday, November 16 at 1215 pm – Carnal Knowledge – Mike Nichols & Jules Feiffer’s blistering dissection, starring Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret and Candice Bergen.
-
Saturday , November 29 at Noon – George Stevens’ Giant, from Edna Ferber’s novel, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean, hosted by several special guests.