Films This Week 4/23/21

by Gary Palmucci | 23rd April 2021 | Gary's Corner

Hello everyone. It’s Oscar weekend and we’re continuing to headline our five nominated films: Another Round, Minari, The Father, Collective, and Aida, Quo Vadis?

We’ve also added a French drama that, had there been a 2020 Cannes Film Festival, would’ve been in the Official Selection. In Slalom, a teenage ski prodigy must navigate the patriarchal world of this uber-competitve sport, including a predatory coach (Dardennes brothers’ frequent leading man Jeremy Rennier).

Indiewire critic David Ehrlich writes, “(Slalom) snaps across your face like a blast of cold mountain air…Shot with the kineticism of bodies in motion and the sensitivity of an early Celine Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) film.”

Some New Plaza members recently had a chance to screen the movie via a French Film Office promotion, and we’re pleased to add it to this week’s schedule. Scroll down for a discount code which will give you $2 off the ticket price. We also have a $4 discount code in honor of Earth Day for The Race to Save the World. You can find the code on the info for the film below.

Now, back to the Oscars…some audiences (and even Academy voters) profess to be a bit underwhelmed by this year’s eight Best Picture nominees.  In a “normal” year, several of the long-postponed major studio heavyweights including Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake and Tom (Spotlight) McCarthy’s drama Stillwater might also have been in the mix.

But I would say that I still find — without naming too many names — the six nominees I’ve seen to be worthy choices and that, to paraphrase Hamilton, Nomadland has my vote. Director Chloe Zhao (whose The Rider we screened at New Plaza) may have shot her film before the pandemic, but she still managed to capture a melancholy restlessness in American life that…oh, boy…so many of us have felt hit home in this raucous, stricken year.

Call it luck, serendipity, or cinematic destiny — but I predict the Oscar will go to Nomadland on Sunday night.

Happy viewing.

Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema