Gary's Corner

Hello everyone. No new additions this week to our film lineup of virtual cinema titles. However, I have included below links to three trenchant pieces of journalism about the current raging debate on our state of movie watching as theatres and film festivals finally, fitfully start to rev their engines. Depending on your internet-carrier situation, one or two of these may require subscriptions to the linked publications. My friend and veteran film critic and journalist Todd McCarthy — joined by a colleague — reviews both the "vibe" and many provocative films unveiled in this year's Cannes Film Festival and despite some initial misgivings, finds the event to have been a surprising triumph. Many of the films discussed will be...

Hello everyone. We're augmenting this week's virtual cinema lineup with two recent documentaries. In Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland stitches together extensively researched archival footage of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, creating a lively conversation between two writers who clearly had a lot to say "to" and "about" each other.   Per Ben Kenigsberg of the NY Times, among many other topics "they express disappointment with films adapted from their work. Williams felt the censorship was so heavy you often needed to see the stage version for comprehension.  Capote says Paramount 'double-crossed' him by casting Audrey Hepburn (whom he nevertheless praises) instead of...

Hello everyone. We have no new additions this week to our virtual cinema lineup, but there are a couple in the works for next Friday. Many of you have no doubt read various reports on the opening of this year's Cannes Film Festival, delayed two months (after the 2020 edition was flat-out cancelled) by circumstances we know all too well. As someone who was very fortunate to attend a number of previous Cannes festivals, I've been canvassing the coverage and was particularly struck by a piece from a longtime journalist friend, Todd McCarthy, now patrolling the Promenade de la Croisette for the trade publication Deadline. His column, titled "It's Covid, Jake," (an immortal movie reference) can be read here in its entirety. For...

Hello everyone. I'm vacationing this week in Wellfleet, MA on Cape Cod where Henry Thoreau once said, "A man may stand and put all America behind him."     One can indeed stand, hypnotized, astride the other-worldly beauty of its ocean-side beaches currently teeming with seals — which also means predatory sharks are seldom far away. The local drive in theatre, in business since the late 1950s, (where I first saw The Dirty Dozen way back in '67), tonight features its annual screening of Jaws, this time double-billed with Jurassic Park.   Our own virtual screen today is adding two films that recently premiered downtown at Film Forum. I first encountered Iranian filmmaker Mohammed Rasoulof with his Iron Island at Cannes 2005, and...

Hello everyone. We've added one new title to this week's Virtual Cinema lineup, the acclaimed Israeli drama Asia, in which tragic circumstances coax a single Russian emigre mother and her ailing teenage daughter to forge an intimate bond previously missing from their lives. The daughter is played by charismatic young actress Shira Haas, featured in the popular Netflix series Unorthodox and the superb Israeli feature Foxtrot. Check out her special "hello" to New Plaza viewers.    A headliner in last year's Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals as well as Israel's 'Best International Film' Oscar submission, Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney wrote,  "Asia will inevitably draw comparisons to Michael Haneke's Amour in its unflinching...

Hello everyone. We're continuing for another week with our current lineup of Virtual Cinema titles. We'll be adding at least one new film next week...the acclaimed, multi-award-winning Israeli drama Asia starring charismatic Shira Haas from the Netflix series Unorthodox. In the meantime, I recommend this Indiewire article from an old friend, art house film buyer turned industry analyst Tom Brueggemann. He reports on the complex set of factors surrounding the box office performance last weekend of In the Heights. Readers may recall my comments last week that a strong opening for In the Heights might be an important barometer signaling an overall uptick in national theatrical box office as we move toward the second half of the...

Hello everyone. This week's addition to our virtual cinema lineup currently holds a rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes score via 18 US and international critics. Recipient of a Special Jury Prize from the Rotterdam Film Festival — always a reliable incubator of  "new waves" — Take Me Somewhere Nice is the mercurial, neon-tinted work of Ena Sendijarevic, a Bosnian-born refugee raised in Holland who's now one of Dutch cinema's fastest-rising talents. Her debut feature follows a young woman, herself a Bosnian emigre, whose return to her home country to visit an ailing, long-estranged father devolves into a road-movie-like series of misadventures that she experiences with a growing devil-may-care detachment, and newfound maturity....

Hello everyone. This week New Plaza is adding a recent German drama, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit from Caroline Link, director of the enduring 2003 Oscar-winning Nowhere in Africa. The film is based on the first of a trilogy of best-selling children's books — and life experiences — of author/illustrator Judith Kerr, whose family in the early 1930s fled the Nazis first to Switzerland, then Paris, eventually returning to a battered Berlin after the war. Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday wrote last month: "In tone and approach, 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit' recalls "To Kill a Mockingbird." This is a very grown-up story couched in a coming-of-age tale of discovery and perseverance, the kind of child-centric narrative that...

Hello everyone. The double-Oscar-nominated Collective was withdrawn this week from virtual cinema release but another Romanian film, the dark comedy Two Lottery Tickets, passed across our radar via a smart, scrappy new distributor, Dekanalog, so we're giving it a shot. In a "Critic's Pick" last weekend, the NY Times reviewer wrote that this twisted tale of a down-on-his-luck mechanic whose jackpot lottery ticket is apparently stolen "comes to life when (he and his) friends start interrogating the colorful characters at an apartment complex, including fortune tellers, sex workers and a group of stoners — all ripe for hilarious vignettes driven by misunderstanding. Director Paul Negoescu... gives the film fresh zest with droll...