Gary's Corner

Three recent feature films and a presentation by Oscar-winning actress Lee Grant highlight this weekend’s New Plaza Cinema lineup. Grant, whose long career as an actress (including a Best Supporting statue for Hal Ashby and Warren Beatty’s Shampoo) was supplemented by a second one — directing for television and film.

She will join us on Sunday afternoon to present and discuss two of those: The Stronger, a short film of the Strindberg play, and Tell Me a Riddle, her 1980 adaptation of Tillie Olsen’s short story with Melvyn Douglas, Lila Kedrova, and Brooke Adams. Both films were recently restored and have played at film festivals around the country.

The NY Times’ film critics recently compiled a list of their favorite films from the first half of 2024: two of them (Io Capitano and La Chimera) we’ve already played here and another, the darkly comic Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, joins our schedule on Friday night. Manohla Dargis wrote that its lead character, Angela “is a production assistant for a foreign company that’s making a workplace safety video in Romania. Among her tasks is interviewing men and women who’ve been injured on the job….As she changes gears, and the movie switches back and forth between a still-relevant 80s black and white film and color video, Angela flips off other drivers, acidly critiques all that she encounters, creates Tik Tok videos, and effectively maps the geopolitical landscape of contemporary Romania…From one angle, not much has changed, but if the roads are still jammed and people hungry, it’s now capitalism rather than communism that keeps this world busily spinning.” 

An American “personal essay” documentary, Flipside, is fresh from its downtown premiere, and I think our friends at the IFC Center describe it most eloquently:

“When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a New Jersey teenager, he finds the one-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. Flipside documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local Jersey cable TV hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and Deadwood writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive – a moving meditation on music, work and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.”   

In Songs of Earth, another doc from a very different corner of the world, Norwegian filmmaker Margreth Olin guides us through that nation’s staggeringly beautiful mountain landscapes which her parents — who’ve been married for 55 years — still visit, and are sustained by. NY Times critic  (and documentary “specialist” )  Alissa Wilkinson rhapsodized, “It’s an altogether extraordinary film, one I’ve thought about often since I first saw it, and I’m delighted that it’s playing in theatres — the immersive nature of its sounds, music and landscapes are worth experiencing with the full concentration a cinema affords.” Among its executive producers are Liv Ullmann and Wim Wenders (Perfect Days).

Back for additional screenings this weekend: Veselka (with director Michael Fiore generously returning for another Q&A), Woody Allen’s Coup de Grace (following last weekend’s near-full house), Daniel Auteuil in Farewell Mr. Haffmann, Taking Venice, Wicked Little Letters, and the kinetic, 4K restoration of Run Lola Run.

And, coming soon:

• June 23 — James Cagney in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three
• Opening June 28 — Revival ’69 – The Concert That Rocked the World, featuring John Lennon and Eric Clapton, filmed by D.A. Pennebaker
• June 30 — Make Me Famous — First anniversary screening, with special guests.
• July 7 and 21 — Fellini classics: La Strada & Nights of Cabiria
• July 13 — Risky Business: special screening with very special guests

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