Gary's Corner

Two more newly anointed Oscar nominees join this weekend's New Plaza Cinema lineup: Cutting Through Rocks (Best Documentary Feature) and The Voice of Hind Rajib (Best International Feature). NY Times film reviewer Sheri Linden wrote: "Cutting Through Rocks unfolds over several years in a remote corner of northwestern Iran, its sense of place illuminating and the figure at its center as down-to-earth as she is heroic. This portrait of Sara Shahverdi, the first woman elected to the council of her village, is propelled by her no-nonsense resourcefulness..." Joining us on Saturday afternoon for a post-screening Q&A will be filmmakers Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki. The Voice of Hind Rajib balances documentary detail and...

It's Oscar nominations week here at New Plaza Cinema. This weekend's program includes three films in the running in various categories -- Sentimental Value (Best PIcture, Actress, Supporting Actor, Intl Feature), All That's Left of You (Intl Feature) and Nuremberg (Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay). Sentimental Value's distributor Neon has provided us with an augmented edition of the film, featuring a recent awards-season-centric Q&A with its scintillating cast, which we'll be screening on Sunday afternoon.   Last weekend we presented the NYC theatrical premiere of Midas Man, a smart, rueful biopic on Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, with its co-screenwriter Brigit Grant in from London for Q&As. Its strong...

New Plaza Cinema will be open for a five day stand this week, from Thursday through MLK Day on Monday, January 19. Our holdovers include Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale in The Choral, the Oscar contenders --nominations to be announced next week-- Sentimental Value and All That's Left of You (director Cherien Dabis joining us on Sunday afternoon) and, still selling out every show in its fourth month, SHTTL with the usual Q&A featuring lead actor Moshe Lobel. As we like to say, plan accordingly. Last year we celebrated MLK by screening the epic 1970 documentary King: A Filmed Record....Montgomery to Memphis; this year we'll revisit the 2014 feature film Selma, chronicling his immortal 1965 march to secure equal voting...

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 -...

Happy Holidays from all of us at New Plaza Cinema.       Our special year-end holiday attraction will be an exclusive uptown run of the new British drama The Choral, starring Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale; with a screenplay by Alan Bennett and directed by Nicholas Hytner, who previously collaborated on The Madness of King George.     When a vaunted choral society's male members enlist (or are dratted) in World War I, its demanding choirmaster Dr. Guthrie (Fiennes) is forced to recruit a group of inexperienced teenagers and adult amateurs, with results alternately tragic and enthralling. In this week's NY Times Critic's Pick review, Glenn Kenny called the film " a moving account of music as a way...

The biggest news from New Plaza Cinema today is that our beleaguered elevator, out of service last weekend, is now repaired and fully back in action. And looking ahead, we'll be on a 'partial' screening schedule this weekend and next (closed Friday, December 12), but starting December 19, a full schedule all the way through January 4. I'll have some initial details on our holiday programs next week.... Friday night's screening of the new documentary Fatherless No More is now sold out, and just a handful of tickets remain for Sunday's show of our long-running Shttl (hosted by lead actor Moshe Lobel), so proceed accordingly. Blue Moon and the Gallic Auction continue to hold over: Rebel With a Clause director Brandt Johnson and...

A raft of special guests will be joining New Plaza Cinema's lineup over the next five days. Our bi-monthly event, NYC Short Film Showcase - always a sellout - will occupy its usual Friday evening slot, with most or all of the filmmakers sticking around for a joint Q&A session. Next Tuesday night at 630 pm, we'll present another special weeknight screening, this time of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, hosted by director Oren Rudavsky and co-producer/film historian Annette Insdorf. We're very pleased that John Turturro (making his second visit to New Plaza Cinema) will join us to introduce the screening; coincidentally, he portrayed author Primo Levi, a later-in-life close friend of Elie Wiesel, in the film The Truce from the...

New Plaza Cinema is back to near-normal this weekend, with only Sunday on a limited-screenings schedule, due to the NYC Marathon's finish line being just a half-block east of us. Our first show will be at 5 pm, with film historian Dan Cahill and I hosting Robert Altman's smoky, funky 1971 'winter western,' Mc Cabe and Mrs Miller, starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Keith Carradine. Famously dubbed "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie" by Pauline Kael, the interactions of its beautiful losers in a makeshift frontier hamlet has endured as one of Altman's most resonant, haunting panoramas, buttressed by Leonard Cohen's transporting song score. Catch it on our Panavision-friendly wide screen. Film historian Annette Insdorf...

While this is probably our shortest week of screenings in 2025, you'll see that we've tried to make maximum use of the allotted showtimes....including special Thursday night shows on both October 23 and 30. This Thursday will lead off with the beloved June Squibb in Eleanor the Great, from debuting director Scarlett Johansson (a near-sellout in last weekend's screening), Stiller & Meara- Nothing Is Lost , and Roman Polanski's riveting An Officer and a Spy. And on Sunday we've shoehorned in five films - please the note early 11:15 am start for Orwell: 2 +2 = 5, Raoul Peck's provocative doc which literally feels more prescient by the hour; cutting-edge actor Harris Dickinson's directing debut Urchin, featuring a searing young...