Gary's Corner
Films this week 02/7/2025 to 02/13/2025
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 7th February 2025 | Gary's Corner, Uncategorized
In these convulsive recent weeks, the power of the movies to galvanize our engagement on issues of social justice seems more valuable than ever. At New Plaza Cinema last fall we commenced– with titles like Following Harry and One Person, One Vote– a monthly first-Friday-night screening series that continues this week with Ava DuVernay’s 2023 film Origin.
On this narrative screen adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s landmark historical survey Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, with a cast including Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal and Audra McDonald, the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote:
“DuVernay’s Origin is as audacious as it is ambitious. At its core, it concerns an intellectual argument about history and hierarchies of power, but it’s also about the fraught process of making this argument. It’s a daunting conceit that DuVernay has shaped into an eventful narrative that is, by turns, specific and far-ranging, diagnostic and aspirational. It is a great big swing about taking a great big swing, and while the film is more persuasive as a drama than the argument it relays, few American movies this year reach so high so boldly.”
Our after-screening discussion will be hosted by The Gathering for Justice, an advocacy group formed in 2005 by Harry Belafonte.
Another special event this weekend will feature film critic and author Stuart Klawans presenting Preston Sturges’ 1941 screwball-romance classic The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda and William Demarest. In his recent biography Crooked, But Never Common, as well as a special illustrated intro he has prepared for us, Stuart provides a rich portrait of why Sturges still matters–and cracks us up– as a pioneer writer-director who inspired multiple generations of American auteurs. Special thanks to New Plaza board member Paul Downs for putting this one together.
Also this weekend, encores of our ongoing Oscar-nominated hits Conclave (an open captioned screening), Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, A Real Pain and The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
There’ll also be Q&As featuring the filmmaking team from Liza: A Totally Terrific Absolutely True Story (on Sunday, one of three shows this weekend), and Three Birthdays, with director Jane Weinstock.
On President’s Day weekend we’ll be open on that holiday Monday, with more Oscar nominees both returning and debuting on the schedule , including Porcelain War, The Girl with the Needle,
The Wild Robot, Sugarcane and The Substance, along with a short-lister, the acclaimed Norwegian drama Armand.
Films 5/19 – 5/22/2022
We're continuing this weekend with our long-running hits — The Automat, Drive My Car, Belfast — and some recent additions such as Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen, Irmi and Tampopo. Three other diverse titles are joining the program: My Coffee With Jewish Friends was one of the very last titles to open at Lincoln Plaza in January 2018. In an over 60-year career documentarian Manfred Kirchheimer has specialized in portraits of (often Jewish) New Yorkers. The NY Times' reviewer noted that "...in this film he speaks with more than 20 people and comes away with countless viewpoints, as well as some smiles and bittersweet tales...intercutting conversations that range from wistful to indignant to delighted." Francis...
Films 5/12 – 5/15/2022
This weekend's New Plaza Cinema @ West End Theatre screening schedule is packed with special presentations and personal appearances. In addition to our ongoing runs of Oscar-winners Drive My Car and Belfast, crowd-pleasing docs The Automat (special guest tba) and Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen and the fascinatingly eccentric drama Tale of King Crab, consider these: On Thursday, two very different takes in our ongoing series of recent Jewish-themed and Israeli cinema. Irmi featured at closing night of the 2021 NY Jewish Film Festival relates the inspiring life story of Irmi Selver, a refugee who in the 1930s escaped her hometown of Chemnitz, Germany during the Nazi onslaught. And on a completely different note, the...
Films 5/05 – 5/08/22
This weekend at New Plaza Cinema @ the West End Theatre we're adding Kenneth Branagh's Oscar winning Belfast (Best Original Screenplay) to our ongoing runs of The Automat, Drive My Car and The Wobblies, as well as three new releases and a 1960s British reissue. Anaïs in Love - I strongly recommend perusing in the NY Times Manohla Dargis' heartfelt tribute to this French romance with a first-rate cast. Its young title character — a contrarian in both her emotions and life choices — falls into an affair with a publisher, then in love with his charismatic wife, an author (the radiant Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi). Dargis notes, "Anaïs is, in other words, a 21st century human being who, in finding herself on her own stubborn, singular,...
Films 4/29 – 5/01/22
A very eclectic mix of films is on this week's New Plaza Cinema @ West End Theatre schedule. In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day we'll be screening on Friday and Sunday afternoons a double bill of reflective documentaries. Black Flowers is the inspiring story of five Israel-based Holocaust survivors who choose art as a vehicle for healing the wounds of their past. Director Tammy Federman — with sponsorship from the American Jewish Committee — will join us for a Q&A after Friday's show. Commandment 613 introduces us to Rabbi Kevin Hale, a joyful sofer (Torah scribe) who restores scrolls that were saved from destruction in Czechoslovakia during the Shoah. After Sunday's screening, Rabbi Hale will invite audience members for...
Films 4/21 – 4/24/22
Another headlong week… Apple on Monday morning informed us that this coming weekend would be the final one for their post-Oscar "victory lap" theatrical re-release of CODA. Some of you may have overheard me asking, as our many full-house audiences exited the theatre, “Does that get your vote for the Oscar?” The answer almost uniformly was "yes." So, just four more chances to see it with a rapt audience on the West End Theatre’s big screen… The Automat continues its "boffo," as Mel Brooks might say, run this weekend, including a Sunday night appearance at 7 pm by director Lisa Hurwitz, in conversation with Jay Shockley, Senior Historian at the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. Get your tickets online early! Last week's...
Films 4/14 – 4/17/22
We're following up our phenomenally successful weekend at New Plaza Cinema at the West End Theatre (five sold-out shows!) with additional daily screenings of The Automat and Best Picture Oscar-winning CODA. Advance online ticket purchase is strongly recommended. We'll also be adding multiple Oscar nominee The Worst Person in the World to the program and reprising Almodovar's 1999 classic All About My Mother, which I introduced last weekend. It has aged beautifully. Two other hard hitting foreign films, Donbass from Ukraine and Ahed's Knee from Israel, will return next weekend, with special guest speakers. New Plaza Cinema @ The West End Theatre is also presenting a Saturday-Sunday exclusive NYC premiere, a recent,...
Films 4/07 – 4/10/22
A series of unexpected, last minute developments have led to a particularly bounteous program this weekend at New Plaza Cinema @ West End Theatre. Early Monday morning I received word that the distributor of the surprise Oscar-winning Best Picture CODA had gotten approval for additional play dates, including at New Plaza Cinema! From the clips we saw on Oscar night it’s clear that this film’s deeply emotional "swell" is best experienced with an audience. A couple hours later we heard from filmmaker (and our Upper West Side neighbor) Lisa Hurwitz that her acclaimed documentary The Automat had completed its successful downtown run and was available to the West End. Lisa will join us on Saturday night for a Q & A. G et your...
Films 3/31 – 4/03/22
Movie lovers far and wide are still processing Sunday night’s Oscar spectacle. History was made by several of the winners, as well as more than a jot of infamy. The distributor of the evening’s biggest triumph has apparently declined to make the film available for theatre screenings this weekend, so New Plaza Cinema has assembled the most reflective Oscar program that we could. My thoughts, in random order: Dune - Six Oscar wins including cinematography, score and sound: the latter being showcased in all its stentorian glory on the West End Theatre’s sound system. The Tragedy of Macbeth & King Richard - Denzel Washington reportedly told Will Smith in between The Slap and The Speech, “In your highest moments, be careful....
Films 3/24 – 3/27/22
We’re going "all in" this Oscar weekend at the New Plaza Cinema @ West End Theatre with ten nominated titles. Two of them are new to our programs, from our recent association with Netflix: previous Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s Neapolitan family drama The Hand of God (a Best International Film nominee) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (three nods including her adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel). To me, the main fascination with this year’s Oscars is how two of the main categories — Best Picture and Best Actress— seem to be utter "toss-ups. I can see scenarios in which three or four different films could win "Best Picture," and after seeming a complete free-for-all "Best Actress" seems to have come down to Jessica...
Have a question or comment for Gary?
You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org