Gary's Corner
Films this week 4/3/2026 to 4/9/26
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 3rd April 2026 | Gary's Corner
I’m back from some salutary travels in lands Down Under, where among many other wonders I visited a ‘distant relation’ of New Plaza Cinema, the Classic Cinema in Melbourne, courtesy of its gracious owners Eddie and Lindy Tamir. This beautifully designed TEN-screen complex offers many of the same films we’ve been playing, and other things we can currently only dream about: some commercial fare like Project Hail Mary (in 70mm!), full-service bar and concessions, a cozy jazz club, and a thriving rooftop screen (it’s now summer in Australia) hosting a long run of Marty Supreme. Not incidentally, the theatre also features an illustrated exhibit on the city’s once-flourishing Yiddish theatre scene.
The last leg of the trip was Fiji, where I had hoped to visit the Dateline 180 Meridian Cinema, which over two decades ago my American friend John Pierson and his family had taken over and run for a year, chronicling their experiences in the documentary Reel Paradise, possibly still viewable online. Sadly, a 2018 article in the Fiji Times revealed that the cinema – the only one in the world where you could conceivably cross to a new day if you changed seats – then stood “in ruins, casting a dismal shadow on the bustling shopping centre of Taveuni,” Fiji’s third-largest of its nearly 300, mostly smaller islands. My partner Kathy and I had to settle for a few days of searing heat, swimming, snorkeling and juice from freshly-macheted coconuts -“Nature’s Gatorade” – on the main island of Viti Levu.
But now, it’s back to reality this weekend at New Plaza Cinema: two films new to our program and five other holdovers and reprises. Last fall my colleague Abbe Harris and I attended an advance screening of Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s sprawling, uber-provocative new film YES, which I immediately dubbed ‘Israeli Satyricon’ and knew that we had to play upon its release. Lapid specializes in fearless portraits of Israel and its restless, diverse citizens (we played his previous feature Ahed’s Knee at NPC W 86 St), now more than ever, in this new work. Here’s the NYT’s Manohla Dargis in a passage from her Critic’s Pick review:
“Every work of art is autobiographical and “Yes” is at once both a portrait of a country and of artists in times of war. This personal approach is in keeping with Lapid’s previous features, each of which grapple with personal and national identity — as an artist, an Israeli and as an expat (he lives in France) — with degrees of analytic cool and narrative experimentation.”
YES is a headlong, kaleidoscopic account of a jazz musician and his dancer wife who offer their talents to help the nation after the October 7, 2023 attacks, with the husband tasked with composing a new national anthem.
You don’t need to know too much more than that; just prepare to immerse yourself in the vision of an undaunted. of-the-moment artist.
Also new this weekend: A Magnificent Life from French animator Sylvain Chomet, whose Triplets of Belleville delighted us a couple of decades ago. His latest, hand-drawn opus chronicles the life of Marseille-born novelist, playwright and filmmaker (the Marius-Cesar-Fanny trilogy, among others) Marcel Pagnol, looking back late in life on his work and beginning-to-fade memories. This will have maximum impact on a theatre screen…
Reprising this weekend : the recent Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature, Mr Nobody Versus Putin; SHTTL, now approaching the final screenings of a six month run; the crowd pleaser Calle Malaga, with another Q&A at Saturday’s show from NPC film historian Dan Cahill; and from opposite corners of the Middle East, the period dramas Palestine 36 and The President’s Cake.
And please take note for next weekend — two films whose tickets are now on sale are already approaching ‘sellout’ territory: Letters From Baghdad, one of the last documentaries to play the still-late /lamented Lincoln Plaza, with its filmmakers present; and not surprisingly, Rebel With a Clause, hosted by filmmaker Brandt Johnson and his leading lady, ‘Athena of the adjunct,’ Ellen Jovin.
Films this week 05/30/2025 to 06/05/2025
We've just finished a remarkable week at New Plaza Cinema, hosting the US theatrical premiere of Rebel With a Clause, the enlightening - and frequently hilarious - chronicle of filmmaker Brandt Johnson and his wife Ellen Jovin's six-year journey across all 50 states, in search of grammatical and punctuational veritas. Over a thousand patrons attended nearly two dozen screenings - many of which were sold out, and almost all hosted by Brandt and Ellen, with Q&As that were often uproarious and always filled with great audience energy and enthusiasm. We're grateful, as ever, for your support, and hope to have Brandt and Ellen back here next month for more personal appearances with their film. Keep an eye on our online...
Films this week 05/23/2025 to 05/29/2025
About a year ago Brandt Johnson and Ellen Jovin, a husband and wife filmmaking team, walked into New Plaza Cinema to describe a project they'd been working on for several years that was nearing completion. It was called Rebel With a Clause, chronicling their journey around the U.S. - eventually covering all 50 states - speaking from a roadside 'grammar table' to a very diverse group of Americans about their feelings on proper punctuation, spelling, adjectives, adverbs, Oxford commas, subjective clauses...and that's just a small sampling. The responses ranged from rhapsodic to rueful, frustrated to grateful, and always revelatory about everyday citizens' fascination with this subject. Eventually Brandt and Ellen brought the...
Films this week 04/16/2025 to 05/22/2025
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...
Films this week 05/09/2025 to 05/15/2025
New Plaza Cinema will be on 'partial hiatus' this weekend, as CUNY graduation celebrations continue, with screenings only on Sunday, May 11. We'll be back on our regular schedule next weekend. Holding over will be Francois Ozon's When Fall Is Coming, the crowd-pleaser Penguin Lessons with Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce, and a final screening of Oscar-winner No Other Land. Our new addition, direct from its sellout downtown premiere, is the documentary Drop Dead City, chronicling a saga many of us remember - New York City's brush with bankruptcy and myriad other municipal disasters in the mid-1970s. In The New Yorker last month, Richard Brody wrote: "At a time when the very function of government is being destroyed from within,...
Films this week 05/02/2025 to 05/08/2025
New Plaza Cinema will be on an abbreviated schedule over the next two weekends, as Macaulay Honors College hosts commencement celebrations for CUNY's senior class. We'll have two shows per day this weekend, and four screenings on Sunday, May 11. We will be back on a full weekend schedule starting May 16, with some extra weekdays of operation around the Memorial Day holiday to augment the US Premiere of Rebel With A Clause, whose new trailer is now running with most of our shows. Three of this weekend's screenings definitely fall into the 'unique' category. NY Times film scribe Jason Bailey in 2022 hosted what is still one of our best classic film talk-backs, with Al Pacino's debut in The Panic in the Needle Park. He recently...
Films this week 04/25/2025 to 05/01/2025
So many special New Plaza Cinema shows in the works in the coming weeks - personal appearances, premieres, Q&As - in no particular order, let's get rolling... NY Times film scribe Jason Bailey in 2022 hosted what is still one of our best classic film talk-backs, with Al Pacino's debut in The Panic in the Needle Park. He recently completed a new bio, "Gandolfini - Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend," and will join us on May 4 for a rare screening - via a refurbished DCP courtesy of Disney/Searchlight - of Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, an acerbic 2013 rom-com co-starring Julia-Louis Dreyfus. In his research, Jason was told by many who knew him that this role, a laconic divorced dad, was the closest to Gandolfini's true...
Films this week 04/18/2025 to 04/24/2025
This weekend's New Plaza Cinema program is topped by three 'sleeper' hits that have been playing here to near-capacity audiences: The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce; the droll documentary Secret Mall Apartment (check our website this weekend for possible Q&As); and the wistful tribute The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile. The latter screening's Q&A will feature filmmaker Michael Jacobsohn and veteran broadcast journalist Budd Mishkin, currently of 1010 WINS Radio. Mishkin has also graced the stage of the legendary Cornelia Street Cafe as a performer, captivating audiences with his renditions of songs by Russian tunesmith Bulat Okudzhava. Get your tickets online asap for this one. To honor the...
Films this week 04/11/2025 to 04/17/2025
Another 2025 Academy Award recipient joins No Other Land (now in its third month) on this weekend's New Plaza Cinema canvas. I'm Still Here, Brazilian director Walter Salles' chronicle of a family's heartbreak and resilience during the tumultuous early '70s, brought home the country's first-ever Oscar win, for Best International Feature. The film's tragedy is tenaciously embodied by its star Fernanda Torres (an Oscar nominee) and a surprise appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, star of the director's 1998 Central Station; both its lead actress and that film, you may recall, were nominees that year. After two sold out screenings last weekend, it was only fitting that The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile return for an encore. Its...
Films this week 04/04/2025 to 04/10/2025
There have been many New Plaza Cinema weekends when documentaries 'rule the roost,' but this one seems particularly exceptional. We'll be offering four shows of the Oscar-winning No Other Land, now in its seventh selling-out week; as always we recommend advance online ticket purchase, and please check your confirmations carefully. Our monthly first-Friday screenings of films on social justice issues will feature ace documentarian (The League, Sammy Davis Jr: I've Gotta Be Me) Sam Pollard's MLK/FBI, dissecting FBI monarch J. Edgar Hoover's obsessive mid-60s efforts to denigrate Martin Luther King, via wiretaps and other ruthless forms of surveillance. In his prescient, 2021 Critic's Pick review, the NY Times' A. O. Scott wrote:...
Have a question or comment for Gary?
You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org