Gary's Corner

Gary’s Corner

by Gary Palmucci | 18th July 2025 | Gary's Corner

While our still-strong holdovers are dominating this weekend’s schedule, we also have a new film – spotted on the film festival circuit by my programming colleague Abbe Harris – making its US theatrical premiere at New Plaza Cinema.

The Blond Boy from the Casbah, a recent French-Algerian co-production shot in spacious widescreen, recalls Cinema Paradiso in its portrait of the Jewish quarter of Algiers when, in the late 1950s, Muslims and Jews co-existed peacefully. We all know The Battle of Algiers as the eternal classic of that period, but this film, with its warm, empathetic portrait of an extended family (including a movie-obsessed young son), also merits our patronage.

Its director is Alexandre Arkady, a veteran French picturemaker who’s been at work for over four decades. In the strange way that movie memories often unexpectedly bubble up in our minds, I was recalling this week an earlier film of his, Pour Sacha, a 1991 drama with a beautiful French-Israeli cast: Sophie Marceau, Richard Berry, Emmanuelle Rive, Yael Abecassis, which I saw in a sidebar screening at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. A powerful drama set in a kibbutz near the Syrian border in spring 1967, it for some reason never got a US release. Perhaps The Blond Boy from the Casbah will bring Mr Arkady some new, well-deserved attention.

This week’s holdovers of course include Bad Shabbos (in its 8th week, with more appearances by co-screenwriter Zack Weiner), along with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Shall We Dance? and the piercing Palestinian drama, To a Land Unknown.

On July 25-31 New Plaza Cinema will present another ‘full week’ of programming, as we did in May, with both holdovers and various new titles, including:

• All to Play For – rising French actress Virginie Efira, who beguiled us here in Other People’s Children , returns in a piercing new family drama.
• NYC Short Filmmakers’ Showcase – the latest, all-new program in our bi-monthly series, presented by Michael Jacobsohn
• Volver – after attending a sold out screening last month at the downtown Metrograph of Pedro Almodovar’s 2006 classic, it seemed to me appropriate to bring it to our neighborhood…
• Sinners – 2025’s most stylistically daring, soulful big-studio release to date from director Ryan Coogler and double-duty star Michael B. Jordan
• Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophuls’ visually exquisite 1948 romantic melodrama, starring Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan and the director’s peerless roving camera. Max Alvarez and Dan Cahill will again preside.
• Tatami – a new drama set in the world of international wrestling, co-directed by an Israeli and Iranian filmmaker, and acclaimed by two ‘friends of New Plaza,’ historian Annette Insdorf and filmmaker Aviva Kempner
• Goodfellas – Martin Scorsese’s on-endless-repeat classic, remembering its late stars Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino, Frank Vincent and Catherine Scorsese, as well as cinematographer MIchael Ballhaus.

And, in August –

• Familiar Touch – beloved stage actress Kathleen Chalfant galvanizes this American indie drama of a woman’s journey through memory loss.
• Reds – two screenings of Warren Beatty’s consummate 1981 political epic (frequently requested by New Plaza regulars), co-starring Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton and Maureen Stapleton.

Gary Palmucci
Film Curator