Films this week 5/8/2026 to 5/14/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 8th May 2026 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema will be operating only on Mothers Day this weekend; on May 16-17 we’ll begin our return to fuller operation. Appropriately enough, one of this Sunday’s films will be the long-running Calle Malaga, with its luminous performance by Carmen Maura as a Tangiers widow (and mother) whose life takes a series of surprising turns.
Our classic film series resumes with a rare theatrical screening of one of John Garfield’s most memorably intense portrayals, in 1950’s The Breaking Point, directed by Michael Curtiz, from Ernest Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not. Joining my colleagues, film historians Max Alvarez and Dan Cahill, will be Julie Garfield, John’s daughter and a longtime friend of New Plaza Cinema.
Two other classics will be featured later this month: the pitch black late ’40’s British comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (May 24) with Alec Guinness in no less than eight ill-fated roles; and on May 27, a special weeknight, 50th anniversary screening of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, hosted by historian Steven C. Smith, author of a recent study on the film’s composer Bernard Herrmann.
Steven will break down its alternately chilling and hauntingly romantic score, which the legendary composer completed literally hours before his death on Christmas Eve, 1975. Just a handful of tickets are still available for this very special event.
After a couple of packed-house screenings last weekend, we’re featuring two more shows of Steven Soderbergh’s spellbinding The Christophers, with its career-highlight turn by Ian McKellen. Please note the early start time — 1015 am – for Sunday’s first performance.
And, after its sold out premiere screening here in March, an encore of the ‘sleeper’ documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still, chronicling an unforgettable mid-70s day in that indisputably unique nation’s feminist history. My colleague Abbe Harris will moderate a Q&A with director Pamela Hogan.