Gary's Corner
Films this week 01/17/2025 to 01/23/2025
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 17th January 2025 | Gary's Corner, Uncategorized
Over this holiday weekend on which the nation witnesses an ongoing, unprecedented natural disaster on one coast and awaits, with near-equal measures of eager anticipation and dread, a presidential inauguration on the other, New Plaza Cinema’s programs offer a diversity of snapshots of history both present and past, at home and abroad.
While we await the (tentative) January 23 Oscar nominations announcement, we’ll be offering reprises of both surefire nominees — Conclave, Soundtrack for a Coup d’etat, Flow– and two short-list contenders new to our lineup.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, filmed surreptitiously in his home country by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (his 2017 A Man of Integrity was a highlight at our W 86 St cinema) portrays a father inexorably caught up in the miasma of his nation’s dark justice system. The filmmaker has repeatedly put himself in jeopardy with his unflinching portraits; after completing this film just in time for last year’s Cannes Film Festival, he was compelled to flee to Europe.
From Ground Zero arrives here this weekend at an uncannily ripped-from-the-headlines moment. As the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson wrote, it is
“a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian filmmakers, which is shortlisted for an Academy Award in the international feature film category. The vignettes, personal essays and brief documentaries share accounts of civilian life and death in the Gaza Strip that might otherwise be drowned out, or simply ignored, in depictions of the Israel-Hamas war. Rather than directing ire at Israel’s retaliatory attacks on the Gaza Strip, which have led to accusations of genocide, the films underline Gazans’ steadfast survival and the role of art in sustaining their spirit (to a point).”
Also holding over, the kinetic, epic new French retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo.
We’ll have speakers galore this weekend, as follows:
- Obsessed With Light – the documentary portrait of early 20th century dance pioneer Loie Fuller is back, this time with director Sabine Krayenbuhl and choreographer/ dancer Jody Sperling; tickets are going fast for this one.
- Flow – for this gorgeous (and family-friendly) animated gem, J. Rebekka Bonner of Christ Church NYC will lead a discussion of the film’s themes relating to the planet and animals, in Room 204 adjacent to our rest rooms.
- The Seed of the Sacred Fig – an after-talk hosted by Mark Metzger from the civil advocacy group Better Angels.
And, our special MLK Day screening, the 1970 Oscar-nominated doc King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Memphis will include an after-discussion with myself and ‘Following Harry’ filmmaker Susanne Rostock. This is a film which I’ve seen multiple times over the past four decades, and it never fails to deeply move me, telling in speeches, marches and tumult the arc of Dr King’s momentous life: all the great oratory is there- the complete ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (“Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Georgia…”) , ‘How long? Not long,’ ‘I’ve been to the mountaintop,’ and so much more.
It ‘s also a documentary that from today’s vantage point has some unconventional aspects – a number of Hollywood’s then-biggest stars, including Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, periodically appear in a studio reading from Dr. King’s writings on nonviolence and social justice.
A contemporary doc would probably do things very differently, and would benefit from an infinitely greater knowledge of mid-60s American political history-with its many injustices- than was widely realized a half-century ago.
Susanne and I will explore the complex context of that -perhaps with some special guests – in what we believe will be an afternoon of timely inspiration and power.
PS – Special screenings next weekend: Bob Dylan Dont Look Back and Julia Mintz’ Four Winters on Sunday Jan 26; NYC Short Filmmakers Showcase on Jan 24. Tickets now on sale for the latter two shows.
Films This Week 12/10/21
We're continuing for another week with our current Virtual Cinema lineup, including Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose latest film, Drive My Car, was both a surprise "Best Picture of the Year" winner at last week's NY Film Critics' Circle awards, and #1 on NY Times reviewer Manohla Dargis' Ten Best List. While elaborating on her year-end list, Dargis also rhapsodized about the joyous sensations of returning to the cinema in mid-summer: being, as she wrote, "...back in the place that makes me supremely happy: I was at the movies. Since then, I have watched many new releases in person, including at two festivals where I gorged like a famished person. I had spent the first part of the year...
Films This Week 12/03/21
Greetings and Happy Hanukkah! Ninety-three nations have submitted an entry for Best International Film for the 2022 Academy Awards, tying a previous record. While only about a dozen of these have so far seen U.S. theatrical release, one of the most critically acclaimed Hive, from Kosovo — is this week's addition to New Plaza's Virtual Cinema lineup. Winner of three top prizes at this year's Sundance Film Festival, this is the story of one woman's desperate search for her husband in the aftermath of the 1998-99 Kosovo War, which drove invading Yugoslav forces (with heavy participation from NATO airstrikes) from the tiny country, at a considerable cost of lives and displacement. This wife, Fahrije (Blerta Basholli), with steely...
Films This Week 11/19/21
This coming week may well be the most dramatic of the 2021 movie year with the theatrical releases of Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, King Richard (with Will Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, and Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Cannes prize-winner, Drive My Car. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's previous film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (lauded at this year's Berlin Film Festival) joins our Virtual Cinema lineup today. In three separate episodes, this rising auteur explores the romantic trajectories of young men and women with dialogue and precise staging that recall such masters as France's Eric Rohmer and Korea's Hong Sang-soo. In her NY Times "Critic's Pick," my friend Manohla Dargis — always a perceptive...
Films This Week 11/12/21
We have two new additions to our Virtual Cinema lineup. Director Radu Jude has been 'coming up' on the international film scene in this past decade. His 'Romanian western' Aferim! played at Lincoln Plaza ('picked' by the NY Times' A.O. Scott), the black comedy I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians was featured in our NYIT programs and his new provocation, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was in this year's NY Film Festival and will soon open commercially. Today we're offering another recent film of his, described lovingly by Richard Brody in this week's New Yorker online: "Documentary-fiction hybrids are having a major moment, and there’s another remarkable one now coming out in theatres : Uppercase Print, a...
Films This Week 10/29/21
Good news this week for both art house theatres and moviegoers - Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch opened last weekend to 'smash' box office in its first engagements around the country, including over $100,000 at just one theatre, the Angelika in downtown Manhattan. It's a very hopeful sign that older specialized audiences are ready to come back to cinemas if the picture is 'right,' and that Anderson, despite some mixed reviews, remains the 'golden boy' of his generation of American movie makers. As there are no Virtual Cinema additions this week, it might be a good moment to highlight some of the 'heroes' of New Plaza Cinema' whose previous films played - sometimes to full houses - at our late, lamented NYIT cinema, and...
Films This Week 10/22/21
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to the great Akira) has over the past two decades built a body of work- gradually becoming better known in the US- to rival that of his Japanese contemporary Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose Shoplifters is a New Plaza favorite. Kurosawa latest, Wife of a Spy is this week’s addition to our Virtual Cinema lineup. Set in 1940 Japan, as the nation’s military aspirations were on the verge of explosive expansion, this tale of a wife gradually drawn into her spouse’s investigation of Japanese atrocities in Manchuria and elsewhere manages to strike a unique balance between wartime suspense and a transformative love story. In his recent Critic’s Pick review, the NY Times’ Glenn Kenny writes: “Wife of a...
Films This Week 10/15/21
We're very happy to add to this week's Virtual Cinema lineup the documentary In Balanchine's Classroom, direct from its downtown cinema premiere engagement. The legendary Russian choreographer who arrived in America in 1933 (via Paris' Ballets Russes) taught and provided lifelong inspiration to thousands of dancers, some of whom are interviewed here by filmmaker Connie Hochman, herself once a student at his School of American Ballet. As one interviewee explains, "When Balanchine came to America there was no real ballet training...he not only started a company, he changed the whole look of ballet.” A NY Times Critic's Pick review last month proclaimed, "In mathematics, there was Newton; in psychology, Freud; and in...
Films This Week 10/08/21
We're keeping our current selection of Virtual Cinema intact for one final week; next Friday an acclaimed documentary set in the dance world will be joining the lineup, and possibly others. Meanwhile, this weekend many eyes will be focused on whether James Bond can again save the world - perhaps this time, also the 'world' of movie theatres - as the 25th 007 installment No Time To Die opens nationwide. Its big UK opening and advance ticket sales here point to Daniel Craig's swan song doing very well and continuing the gradual arc of commercial cinema returning to pre-pandemic levels. But a cloud continues to hang over our little corner of the movie universe, not helped by comments like this one in the leading trade...
Films This Week 10/01/21
We’re continuing our current lineup of Virtual Cinema for one more week, with some new titles due later this month. ‘The Sopranos’ prequel film The Many Saints of Newark finally arrives in theatres this weekend - though few in my ‘hood seem to be playing it, perhaps due to its simultaneous availability on HBO Max. Reviews are mixed (Indiewire described it in part as “‘Sopranos’ fan service” and the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis was wholly unsympathetic); the track record of feature films that try to emulate successful TV shows is spotty at best. But another recent NYT article about the series’ newfound popularity among younger viewers reminded me how seldom I’m able to resist, whenever I’m trolling YouTube, sampling a vintage...
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You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org