Films This Week 6/25/21

by Gary Palmucci | 25th June 2021 | Gary's Corner

Hello everyone. We’ve added one new title to this week’s Virtual Cinema lineup, the acclaimed Israeli drama Asia, in which tragic circumstances coax a single Russian emigre mother and her ailing teenage daughter to forge an intimate bond previously missing from their lives. The daughter is played by charismatic young actress Shira Haas, featured in the popular Netflix series Unorthodox and the superb Israeli feature Foxtrot. Check out her special “hello” to New Plaza viewers.   

A headliner in last year’s Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals as well as Israel’s ‘Best International Film’ Oscar submission, Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney wrote,  “Asia will inevitably draw comparisons to Michael Haneke’s Amour in its unflinching depiction of love and sacrifice. But even when you think you know where this perceptively observed drama is headed, it continues to yield surprising nuances…The maturity of director Ruthy Pribar’s voice is evident…”   

I’ll be traveling this coming week and will miss Sunday’s talk back on Alan J. Pakula’s Klute, but Max Alvarez will be joined for what should be a riveting discussion by Daniel Cahill, whom many of you will recognize as a regular and ever-astute commentator on our Sunday afternoons.  

This 1971 film seems to me to just get more compelling with every passing year, as well as an indelible snapshot of NYC at that turbulent moment in time. Coincidently we’re still featuring on Virtual Cinema the restored documentary FTA, made the following year and a raucous snapshot of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland’s anti-war barnstorming tour of US military bases — or as close as they could get to them…

Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema