Films this week 9/12/2025 to 9/18/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 12th September 2025 | Gary's Corner
This weekend’s New Plaza Cinema schedule includes a crowd of two-hour-plus ‘schedule busters,’ in film biz parlance, but we hope you’ll agree they’re all worth presenting.
At the top of the list is the recent documentary Henry Fonda for President. In his NY Times ‘Critic’s Pick’ review, Glenn Kenny (an NPC friend) writes,
“Henry Fonda was inarguably one of the greatest actors ever produced by the United States. The Austrian filmmaker Alexander Horwath pushes this self-evident truth further in his purposefully expansive documentary Henry Fonda for President. The movie convincingly posits that Fonda was, cinematically, the embodiment of America itself. Horwath has gathered a vast amount of archival material from film, television, radio and more to make his case.”
Fonda’s many iconic roles – some of which we’ve screened both in-theatre and on our ‘classic film talkbacks’- include Young Mr Lincoln, The Lady Eve, My Darling Clementine, The Wrong Man, Twelve Angry Men, Once Upon a Time in the West, and even a famous 2-part TV episode of Maude from the late ’70s. Another superb essay on the film –and Fonda himself – that I recommend is from former Village Voice critic J. Hoberman, in Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/columns/j-hoberman-henry-fonda-for-president-559591/. Director Alex Horwath will join us for a Q&A following Saturday’s 11:30 a.m (note that early start time) screening.
Following last weekend’s sold-out shows we’re pleased to reprise our ‘back to back’ replay of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, as well as Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (for two screenings). My esteemed colleagues Max Alvarez and Dan Cahill will on Sunday present Louis Malle’s 1957 feature debut Elevator to the Gallows, with Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet and a landmark, improvised score by Miles Davis. Later that afternoon, the downtown-80s-art scene doc Make Me Famous, now in the third year of its NPC ‘residency,’ will return, ushered by its director Brian Vincent and producer Heather Spore, with some special guests.
Also back for encores- some new, some ‘as usual’- are Bad Shabbos (with co-screenwriter Zack Weiner joining us), director MIchael Winterbottom’s Palestine period drama Shoshana and Rebel With a Clause. The Blonde Boy From the Casbah and East of Wall will have their previously-announced encores next weekend.
And, coming soon:
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NYC Short Filmmakers’ Showcase – The latest installment of curator Michael Jacobsohn’s ongoing series highlighting new, local filmmaking talent will roll next Friday, September 19 at 7 pm.
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Ain’t No Back to a Merry Go Round – on September 20 at 430 pm (with director present) we’ll screen this new documentary on an untold story of the early civil rights movement, set in 1960 Washington DC: radical black students, liberal white suburbanites, a carousel, a segregated park…
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More Sunday afternoon classics: Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, on September 28, with its luminous star, Brooke Adams joining us for a Q&A.