Gary's Corner
Films this week 1/9/2026 to 1/15/2026
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 9th January 2026 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema audiences packed our auditorium for numerous sold-out screenings of The Choral during last month’s 12-day holiday stretch , producing the single biggest box office gross for the film on the US arthouse circuit. We are delighted – if a bit exhausted by the holiday ‘marathon’ – and as always, grateful for your support. The Choral, with its beautifully understated performance by Ralph Fiennes as well as a gifted and diverse supporting cast, will continue here for at least the rest of January, including four shows on this week’s Thursday-Sunday schedule.
On Saturday morning we’ll be doing a very special screening of the epic (5 1/2 hours, with 15 minute intermission) documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, which has swept virtually every ‘best doc’ award from the major critics’ groups –including the NY, LA and National Society of Film Critics — as well scoring a slot on the Oscar shortlist.
Of this gripping saga about a group of young Russian journalists who put their careers (and lives) on the line reporting on the Ukraine invasion, the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson wrote:
“Yes, I know that is a substantial commitment of time. Hear me out. I’m trying to avoid hyperbole, but I don’t know how else to say this: It is perhaps the most essential investment of time you can make in a movie theater this year. And yet it is not just ‘important’ or consequential — it is brilliant, riveting, vital, devastating.”
After Saturday’s screening we’ll be joined by Ksenia Mironova, one of the journalists chronicled in the film, in conversation with US film reporter Jeff Reichert.
On this week’s calendar we’ll also be reprising several of our most popular recent holiday films including Nuremberg, Blue Moon, Sentimental Value, Shttl (with another Q&A by its tireless lead actor Moshe Lobel) , and the scintillating US indie Peter Hujar’s Day.
Finally, we’re offering ‘sneak previews’ of two additional Oscar short-listers. On Thursday night, Jordan’s submission for Best International Film — All That’s Left of You, from Palestinian-American director Cherien Dabis and executive producers Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, a sprawling chronicle of multi-generational struggle on the West Bank. Tickets are going fast for this one.
And on Sunday night, Palestine 36, a dramatic recounting of the 1936-39 Arab revolt against British colonial rule during the Mandate period.
Jeremy Irons, Hiam Abbas and Saleh Bakri head the large cast, and director Annemarie Jacir will join us afterwards for a Q&A.
Films this week 7/14 – 7/16/2023
Released in June 1969 -- a pivotal summer in American life -- Midnight Cowboy has exerted an enduring fascination for generations of Americans, myself included. I first saw it at age fifteen, stayed up late to watch its Best Picture Oscar win, read the source novel, wore out the soundtrack, and over time showed it to friends and family. In a new documentary joining New Plaza Cinema's lineup this weekend, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy we hear testimony from a diverse group of its creators and others still struck by its heroic influence, including actors Jon Voight, Brenda Vaccaro, and Bob Balaban, as well as Brian de Palma, Jim Hoberman, and photographer MIchael Childers, long time friend of the...
Films this week 7/07 – 7/09/2023
After a whirlwind, extended Fourth of July holiday weekend New Plaza Cinema is back with several sturdy holdovers and a couple of newcomers. We're offering something special in our first two screening slots on Friday -- a single-admission David Lynch "double feature": the documentary Lynch/Oz, in which various actors and filmmakers muse on his apparent fascination with a certain 1939 Hollywood classic, and his own 2001 classic Mulholland Drive, voted Best Picture of that year by the NY Film Critics. Also on Friday night, director Brian Vincent and producer Heather Spore will return for another generous Q&A after their revelatory NYC-downtown-art-world doc, Make Me Famous. Many of you may recall the 2019 Italian feature...
Films this week 6/30 – 7/04/2023
On this unusually elongated Fourth of July holiday, our generous hosts at Macaulay Honors College have allowed us to create a five-day weekend of diverse film entertainment, including over a dozen separate programs. Holdovers will include Close to Vermeer, The Night of the 12th, Persian Lessons, Jacqueline Bisset in Loren and Rose, and Make Me Famous (with filmmaker Q&As at both the film's shows.) Following our very successful screening last spring, filmmaker (and New Plaza Cinema "visual historian") Michael Jacobsohn has compiled a second collection of NY-based short films which will screen on Friday night, accompanied by many of their creators. We'll be reprising two of our most popular documentaries: Turn Every Page,...
Films this week 6/23 – 6/25/2023
We have a veritable feast of actor and filmmaker personal appearances this weekend at New Plaza Cinema’s screen at Macaulay Honors College. Legendary actress Jacqueline Bisset -- seen over the years at New Plaza Cinema venues in Two For the Road and Truffaut’s Day for Night -- will join us for a Q&A after Saturday’s 12:15 show of her new film Loren and Rose, in which she plays an iconic actress whose series of encounters with an ambitious young filmmaker evolve into a moving series of life lessons and artistic epiphanies for each of them. Many Americans remember all too well the 2003 lead up to and tragic decade-plus consequences of the invasion of Iraq. The 2014 documentary We Are Many is having a "return engagement"...
Films this week 6/16 – 6/18/2023
New Plaza Cinema audiences have in recent weeks enthusiastically embraced a wide variety of recent releases, including Close to Vermeer, It Ain't Over, Chile '76, and Other People's Children. We holding these over for at least one more weekend to give those of you who haven't yet "caught up" another chance. Of course we're also adding some new titles: In The Night of the 12th, this year's winner of the Cesar (or French Oscar) for Best Picture, the NY Times' Nicolas Rapold writes, "a French investigator labors away at a murder case before reluctantly abandoning it. This is a refreshingly grounded, deceptively plain picture of crime-fighting...the movie (based on a nonfiction book by Pauline Guena) matter-of-factly avoids the...
Films this week 6/9 – 6/11/2023
Long time New Plaza Cinema devotees may recall legendary writer-director Paul Schrader joining us for a pair of riveting Q&As - one of which I moderated - at NYIT screenings of his Oscar-nominated First Reformed back in December 2018. His new film Master Gardener chronicles another of 'God's lonely men,' first assayed by Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver and later by Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke and others. This time he's played by Joel Edgerton - "like a clenched fist," as Manohla Dargis notes in her NY Times Critic's PIck review - a horticulturist toiling somewhere in the South whose fateful interactions with his employer (Sigourney Weaver, another New Plaza favorite) and her biracial grandniece propel the narrative forward....
Films this week 6/2 – 6/4/2023
We have two additions to New Plaza Cinema's program this weekend. Even for those of us who aren't Yankee fans, the career of catcher Yogi Berra-15 times an All-Star, 3 MVP awards, 10 World Series rings - has an irresistible appeal. The "lively, engaging and moving" (NY Times) new documentary It Ain't Over chronicles his phenomenal baseball skills and exemplary life (including D-Day service) along with, as the Times' Glenn Kenny wrote in his Critic's PIck review, "the inevitable trotting out of his folksy malapropisms known as Yogi-isms....the best of them, when you really turn them over, are as profound as Zen koans: 'If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.' Only an original like Berra could come up with that." Our...
Films this week 5/26 – 5/29/2023
We have a 'packed' Memorial Day weekend on tap at New Plaza Cinema: three new independent films, two classics, a trio of the best in recent European cinema and by popular demand, a reprise of our most popular film to date. That, of course, would be Bill Nighy in Living which, despite its four-month run here a number of our loyal patrons somehow missed, and have asked us for a return engagement. Voila. The three new indie releases include: --MONICA, in which a long- estranged mother (Patricia Clarkson) and her transgender daughter (Trace Lysette) rekindle their relationship in surprising, piercing fashion. In her NY Times 'Critic's Pick' review Teo Bugbee writes, "the director Andrea Pallaoro doesn't burden this delicate tale...
Films this week 5/19 – 5/21/2023
Penelope Cruz, one of New Plaza Cinema's "heroines" for her Oscar-nominated performance in Parallel Mothers, is showcased in the new Italian film L'Immensita, an addition to this weekend's program. Its director, Sicillan native Emanuele Crialese studied at NYU Film School and his previous US releases, Respiro (2002) and Golden Door (2006) provided vibrant starring roles for Valeria Golino and Charlotte Gainsbourg, respectively. In L'immensita, per NY Times reviewer Beatrice Loayza, "Cruz is a vision of tragic beauty when she first appears...the camera captures her in adoring closeup as it grazes over her eyes...Her character, Clara, is an ordinary upper middle class mother of three, but in the mind of her eldest, Andrew,...
Have a question or comment for Gary?
You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org