Gary's Corner
Films this week 04/16/2025 to 05/22/2025
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 16th May 2025 | Gary's Corner
We are back on a full New Plaza Cinema schedule – and then some – this weekend. Holdovers include the incisive French dramas When Fall Is Coming and Holy Cow, Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce in The Penguin Lessons and, following its sell-out last Sunday, two more shows of the NYC fiscal saga Drop Dead City.
Louise Lasser will return for an encore presentation of Woody Allen’s Bananas and a 2018 short film in which she co-stars, Did You Know My Husband?, with a Q&A conducted by the latter’s screenwriter Susan Charlotte. This show is sold out, but we’ve just added a third screening, on Saturday June 14 at 5 pm. Tickets should be on sale late next week.
Also joining us on Sunday, following a noon screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1957, nearly docudrama-style The Wrong Man, will be Christopher McKittrick, author of a new biography of Vera Miles, who co-starred in the film with Henry Fonda. We’re looking forward to his insights on this underrated actress, in one of Hitch’s most unusual films, atypically filled with lots of location work in Queens and midtown.
Director Charles Burnett’s 1978 American indie classic Killer of Sheep is another film that deserves to be better known and more deeply appreciated. Its portrait of a struggling family in LA’s Watts neighborhood was at the forefront of two decades of important work by that city’s African-American filmmakers, but for many years the film’s exposure was limited by music rights and other contractual issues. After a long, diligent effort, independent distributor Milestone Films in 2007 finally gave the picture a proper national release, and the edition we’re screening on Saturday also reflects a recent picture and sound upgrade. This is simply an American classic, a must-see.
We’ll be screening on Friday The Encampments, another documentary examining the reactions of students at Columbia University and elsewhere to these past nineteen months of agony in the Middle East. At press time we were still awaiting confirmation of a speaker with that evening’s show– please check our website and social media for updates.
Jacob Elordi offered a memorable portrait of Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s recent film Priscilla, along with his strong role in Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada.
He also stars in the new drama On Swift Horses (screening Sunday), described thusly by the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson:
“Often the movies treat love and desire as if they’re easy to define: romantic, platonic, familial, sexual. Either you want him or you don’t; either you love her or you don’t. But the messy places in between those poles are where real life lies, and that’s where “On Swift Horses” dwells. Based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, the story is set in the 1950s, in a world in which characters might act on desire but do not really speak of it directly. The air around them is thus charged with something that crackles and explodes, and the movie, when it works, is electric.”
Elordi has undoubtedly been inspired by James Dean, whose 1955 debut film East of Eden we’ll be screening on Sunday, June 8.
Here’s a round up of some other New Plaza coming attractions :
- May 22-28 Rebel With A Clause – a special one-week engagement (note the Thursday opening date) of the delightful new documentary that follows a husband and wife’s 50-state ‘road trip’ in search of punctuational and verbal veritas. The filmmakers will appear at most shows. Check out this recent NY Times article for further details:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/nyregion/ellen-jovin-new-york-grammar-table-film.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CRebel%20With%20a%20Clause%E2%80%9D%20celebrates,imparts%20grammar%20rules%20to%20strangers.&text=While%20reporting%20this%20story%2C%20Katherine,difference%20between%20affect%20and%20effect. - May 23 – Big Night – screening of the 1996 culinary classic starring Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and Tony Shalhoub, with a special guest speaker, ‘food-on-film’ author Deborah Geis.
- May 30 – Bad Shabbos -our premiere weekend of a raucous NYC Jewish family comedy featuring Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer and Method Man.
- June 22- Make Me Famous – the downtown ’80s art scene doc celebrates the second year of its New Plaza Cinema residency, with some special guests.
- June 27- A Photographic Memory – An intimate, genre bending portrait of the late journalist/photographer Sheila Turner Seed, constructed by her daughter Rachel, and hailed by the NYT’s Alissa Wilkinson as “Reaching far beyond personal narrative, blooming into a moving meditation on memory, interpretation and the nature of photography itself. ” Filmmaker will be present.
Films this week 12/27/2024 to 01/02/2025
We've had a great run of Christmas week screenings here at New Plaza Cinema, with many patrons visiting us for the first time. Films like Conclave, Songs for a Coup d'etat and Flow have been consistently playing to capacity houses; there'll be more shows of each in the coming week, but as always we strongly recommend advance online ticket purchase, as well as arriving at the theatre at least 20 minutes early. There are some other very worthy films playing this coming week to which we'd like to call your attention: Classics, including the full-length version of Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece Fanny and Alexander: parts 1 & 2 will screen on Saturday Dec 28 at parts 3 & 4 on Sunday Dec 29, at 1215 pm on both days. A very rare...
Films from 12/20/2024 to 1/5/2025
New Plaza Cinema will be operating for seventeen consecutive days during the upcoming holiday stretch, from Friday December 20 through January 5, 2025. Unlike previous years here at Macaulay Honors College where we offered just one or two new, first-run arthouse films, this year will feature a more diverse lineup of current specialty films, several classics and a sneak preview of an upcoming documentary. Awards season watchers no doubt noticed this week the results of the first round of Oscar-related voting, the 'short lists' of documentaries, international features and various other categories that will each be whittled down to five finalists in mid-January balloting. Four of these titles are featured in our holiday lineup:...
Films this week 12/13 to 12/19/2024
The two additions to New Plaza Cinema's abbreviated weekend schedule (we're closed on Friday night for CUNY holiday events) are both NY Times Critic's Picks. The Latvian animated film Flow (repping that country in this year's international-film Oscar competition) continues our occasional looks at work in that genre from around the globe - Robot Dreams, Aurora's Sunrise, Memoir of a Snail...in this family-friendly feature, we follow a lovable cat, a dog and a capybara (aka a rodent) fleeing the aftermath of a flood of biblical proportions. Without a word of dialogue, this unlikely trio finds a route to survival. NYT reviewer Calum Marsh wrote: "It sounds saccharine, but the filmmakers largely avoid the sort of whimsy and...
Films this week 12/6 to 12/12/2024
This very abbreviated New Plaza Cinema weekend - due to annual CUNY student holiday events - will consist of the following: Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat- an encore screening, following last weekend's total sellout, of this fascinatingly detailed documentary of the world in revolutionary foment, circa 1960. Hundreds of Beavers - I've been told this is National Beavers Week, so we could hardly resist one more showing of this one-of-a-kind, anarchic indie, hosted by its 'gag man' Mike Wesolowski who also plays "The Horse" onscreen. I've been getting emails this week about concurrent screenings around the country selling out - including our IFC friends downtown- so plan accordingly. And unlike last week's Memoir of a Snail, this one...
Films this week 11/29 to 12/5/2024
We'll be adding extra screenings starting Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, of New Plaza Cinema holdovers including Saoirse Ronan in Blitz and The Outrun, Kate Winslet in Lee, Demi Moore in The Substance (final screening!), the 'adult-animation' Memoir of a Snail and Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, whose director Ric Burns will return for another Q&A following Saturday's 1215 pm show. Two other screenings this weekend will feature filmmaker Q&As. In Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, a best-documentary nominee at next week's Gotham Awards, filmmaker Johann Grimonprez posits the 1960 assassination of Congolese president Patrice Lumumba as the launchpad for a richly-detailed mosaic of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary...
Films this week 11/8 to 11/14/2024
A dizzying concurrence of early awards season nominees, personal appearances and streaming dates have contributed to a ten-film holiday weekend lineup at New Plaza Cinema. The Gotham Awards, handed out right after Thanksgiving, are the one of the first stops on the crowded accolades calendar. Several committees composed of many of our best film critics choose nominees for best picture, acting performances, international films and documentaries within a certain budget range. We're featuring three of them this weekend : The Substance (Demi Moore, Best Actor), the surprise - and often jaw-droppingly outrageous- box office hit about an actress' "body exchange" experiment that goes viscerally wrong: A Different Man (Best PIcture,...
Gary’s Letter 11/1/24
This will be another abbreviated New Plaza Cinema weekend- we'll be closed on Sunday, due to the NYC Marathon's finish line being just a few hundred feet from our doorstep. But it'll be the last one of those for a while - in fact, next weekend will be a four day stanza, including the Veteran's Day holiday. There's still plenty going on this weekend. Next Tuesday will be -regardless of the outcome - one of those 'crossroads' moments in American history. Whichever side you're on, we urge you to get out and vote (if you haven't already) and we have a very relevant documentary screening on Friday night. The title is One Person, One Vote? My colleague Abbe Harris has been involved in programming several 'sleeper' documentary hits...
Films this week 10/29/24
New Plaza Cinema Short Film Showcase’s 10 th screening with programming curated by Michael Jacobsohn. Doris Casap: F^¢K '€M R!GHT B@¢K, A Black, queer aspiring Baltimore rapper must outwit his vengeful, out to get him day job boss after accidentally ingesting pot at a party. Klay Enos and Cornelius Tulloch: Elements of Being, This video is a collaborative split-screen art piece where diverse artistic disciplines give voice to underrepresented narratives of climate change. Joy Le Li: The Musician Under New York, Underground Musician tells the story of a Chinese immigrant in New York City who overcomes language barriers and rediscovers his passion for music in the subway, finding both survival and fulfillment. Mark Stryker,...
Films this week 10/29/24
New Plaza Cinema Short Film Showcase’s 10 th screening with programming curated by Michael Jacobsohn. Doris Casap: F^¢K '€M R!GHT B@¢K, A Black, queer aspiring Baltimore rapper must outwit his vengeful, out to get him day job boss after accidentally ingesting pot at a party. Klay Enos and Cornelius Tulloch: Elements of Being, This video is a collaborative split-screen art piece where diverse artistic disciplines give voice to underrepresented narratives of climate change. Joy Le Li: The Musician Under New York, Underground Musician tells the story of a Chinese immigrant in New York City who overcomes language barriers and rediscovers his passion for music in the subway, finding both survival and fulfillment. Mark Stryker,...
Have a question or comment for Gary?
You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org