Gary's Corner

Along with our still-thriving long runs of Oscar nominee Bill Nighy in Living and Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (now including a third show time), we're adding two new titles, each with some real-life drama of their own. Many of you may have read about the film To Leslie and its mercurial actress Andrea Riseborough, whose ultra-low-budget, under-the-radar Oscar campaign last week resulted in a surprise Best Actress nomination. What to most industry observers (and lovers of the underdog) seemed like a refreshing triumph, aided by many glowing online endorsements from her fellow actors and a few impromptu screenings, has somehow come to be viewed elsewhere with suspicion. Actress’s Path to...

As anticipated, New Plaza Cinema's watershed hit film Living received two Oscar nominations this morning: Best Actor for Bill Nighy and Best Adapted Screenplay by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. This has been an amazing experience for all of us here -- instead of being merely a small cog in a wide release, we've been one of just three theatres nationally whose enthusiastic audiences have packed the house for the past five weekends, keeping Living and Bill Nighy squarely in the sightlines of Academy voters and film industry "tastemakers." We have loved saluting the many hundreds of new cineastes who have discovered us at Macaulay Honors College. So here we are... Living will continue its run in the coming weeks, and we also hope to...

New Plaza Cinema's founder Norma Levy said in conversation this past weekend, "In the last three weeks, our cinema has been completely transformed." She was right, and one man is responsible for that. His name is Bill Nighy. Bill's beautifully understated performance in Living -- and that film's uplifting spirit -- have drawn hundreds of new visitors to our Macaulay Honors College screen since its December 23 premiere, with many sold out shows and resounding waves of applause when the credits roll. The Oscar nominations will be announced next Tuesday and Bill Nighy is well-positioned to receive his first, long-overdue nod. We're grateful to distributor Sony Pictures Classics, especially executive VP Tom Prassis, for having...

Happy New Year, everyone. You helped us close out New Plaza Cinema's very active 2022 by packing our screening room at Macaulay Honors College, for the first eleven days of what we hope will be a long residence by Bill Nighy in Living. I introduced many of those holiday week shows and heard the frequent after-screening applause and "thank yous," and saw how moved everyone was, both by NIghy's Oscar-contending performance and the stellar filmmaking on display. But what amazed us most was the number of new customers who came to the theatre -- at least 90% raised their hands at every show I queried. We feel that this bodes very well for audience-building in the new year -- a sure sign that Upper West Siders are indeed coming back...

This holiday season New Plaza Cinema has been presented with an extraordinary opportunity, to both premiere an exceptional new film and in doing so, vividly summon up the memory of our venerated Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. The film is titled Living and starring the beloved Bill Nighy in an adaptation of the Kurosawa classic Ikiru, by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Many of you may remember that 1952 original, about a repressed Tokyo bureaucrat who learns that he has only a few months left to live, and sets out to do so with a renewed, mournful exuberance. The story has been transposed to early 50s London and beautifully "inhabited" by Bill Nighy in a performance that's already won him Best Actor from the LA Film Critics...

This holiday season New Plaza Cinema has been presented with an extraordinary opportunity, to both premiere an exceptional new film and in doing so, vividly summon up the memory of our venerated Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. The film is titled Living and starring the beloved Bill Nighy in an adaptation of the Kurosawa classic Ikiru, by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Many of you may remember that 1952 original, about a repressed Tokyo bureaucrat who learns that he has only a few months left to live, and sets out to do so with a renewed, mournful exuberance. The story has been transposed to early 50s London and beautifully "inhabited" by Bill Nighy in a performance that's already won him Best Actor from the LA Film Critics...

This weekend New Plaza Cinema at Macaulay Honors College will be offering valedictory screenings of some of our most popular recent titles: Four Winters (with possible special guests to be announced) and Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen: A Journey, A Song. We'll also be reprising recent additions including the serpentine Korean romantic drama Decision to Leave (with a talk-back after Saturday's show by our resident expert on the film, house manager Andrew Lewis), the scorching Israeli documentary Tantura and the immortal Casablanca.    Our newcomer will be one of 2022's most acclaimed documentaries, All That Breathes, the chronicle of three Indian wildlife rescuers who devote their lives to an unlikely species -- Delhi's black kites,...

  As the holiday season seemingly hurtles toward us, New Plaza Cinema this weekend will be offering 'final screenings' of the Leonard Cohen documentary Hallelujah (with an encore Q&A by author Alan Light) and Peaceful, aka De son vivant (likewise, with oncologist Dr Gabriel Sara). Filmmaker Julia Mintz will also return for a Q&A on Sunday's screening of Four Winters, with its final presentations scheduled for next weekend. Three other new titles will join our lineup at Macaulay Honors College: Casablanca - What with our exuberant Talk Back last Sunday and last week's NY Times article about the just-opened Neue Galerie exhibit, we just couldn't resist doing a couple of shows of the Bogie-Bergman classic as its 80th...

This will be an abbreviated weekend for New Plaza Cinema — Friday screenings only — at Macaulay Honors College due to some previously scheduled student holiday events. We will be reprising last month's most popular titles, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen - A Journey, A Song and the definitive WW2 Partisans documentary Four Winters, including a Q&A with filmmaker Julia Mintz and Holocaust survivor Eva Haller. Both of those films will continue on the weekend of December 10-11  with featured Q&As, as well as a final appearance by Dr Gabriel Sara with the French drama Peaceful (De son vivant). We'll also be packing the next two weekends with a variety of 2022's most provocative features and docs, plus one beloved classic. Some of...