Gary's Corner
Films this week 05/02/2025 to 05/08/2025
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 2nd May 2025 | Gary's Corner
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 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 ‘Jim’ that this role, a laconic divorced dad, was the closest to Gandolfini’s true nature. In his NY Times Critic’s PIck review, A.O. Scott wrote:
“Now is the time to state that “Enough Said” is very funny indeed. Line for line, scene for scene, it is one of the best-written American film comedies in recent memory and an implicit rebuke to the raunchy, sloppy spectacles of immaturity that have dominated the genre in recent years.
Ideally, writer-director Nicole Holofcener would be able to work at a Woody Allen pace, issuing annual bulletins from the lives of people who, after 15 or 20 minutes, already seem like your friends.”
Please join us for this one – tickets are moving quickly.
Our monthly first-Friday social justice film series continues this week with Crime + Punishment , a coruscating chronicle of NYPD misconduct in the past decade, following a dedicated group of officers who’ve put themselves on the line to bring it to light. We’ll have our usual cadre of passionate speakers from advocacy group Revolutionary Reels, and guests from the film itself, including former NYPD Lt. Edwin Raymond, author of the recent “An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight To Change Policing In America.”
And, with 35th anniversary Twin Peaks celebrations – and homages to its incomparable creator David Lynch – in progress around the country, we’re offering on May 3 a special screening of the new documentary I Know Catherine, the Log Lady. Twin Peaks devotees certainly know and love the late actress Catherine Coulson, who enthralled us with both her log and ethereal presence. But her life had a much richer backstory than many of us were aware of; director Richard Green will join us on Saturday night to talk about it.
French auteur Francois Ozon has beguiled us in recent years with his dark comedies The Crime Is Mine and Everything Went Fine. His latest, When Fall is Coming, is set, per the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis,
“…in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we’re reminded, and as Ozon’s movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer… in a story about ladies who are old but not necessarily sweet.”
Finally, holding over (again) this weekend will be the ‘new French film talent’ sleeper Holy Cow, and Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce in the droll, rueful Penguin Lessons.
Films this week 6/14 to 6/16/2024
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...
Films this week 6/07 to 6/09/2024
Ten films grace this weekend's New Plaza Cinema screening schedule -- with five shows on Saturday alone -- including a couple of our long-running hits coming down to their final projections: Woody Allen's Coup de Chance and Daniel Auteuil in Farewell Mr Haffmann. We'll also be "encoring" Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in the rapturous The Taste of Things, which we've only had a chance to screen once; the documentary Veselka, whose director Michael Fiore will be back for another Q&A (advance online tickets sell especially fast for that one); NY Times Critic's Pick La Chimera; the raucous British comedy Wicked Little Letters, and another new "art world" documentary, Taking Venice whose first screening last weekend...
Films this week 5/31 to 6/2/2024
Three new titles join New Plaza Cinema's lineup this weekend: a lyrical Italian drama, a non-fiction portrait of the mid-20th century international art world, and a 21st century American classic. La Chimera features rising British star Josh O'Connor as a literal modern tomb raider, wandering Italy in search of both Etruscan artifacts and a lost love who may or may not be real, while beguiled by a female household presided over by Isabella Rossellini, in one of her best movie roles. In her NY Times Critic's Pick review, Manohla Dargis wrote: "La Chimera” is the latest from Alice Rohrwacher, a delightfully singular Italian writer-director who, with just a handful of feature-length movies — the charming, low-key heartbreaker...
Films this week 5/24 to 5/27/2024
New Plaza Cinema's "Memorial Day weekend mixtape" will include nearly a dozen titles: various holdovers, five screenings featuring Q&As, a couple of encores, and an Orson Welles classic. Woody Allen's Coup de Chance, Daniel Auteuil (premiering a new film at Cannes this week) in Farewell Mr Haffmann, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, Wicked Little Letters with its world-class British cast, the drily hilarious Gad Elmaleh in Stay With Us, and Ken Loach's mournful and moving The Old Oak will all be back on screen. The latter two titles were our surprise crowd-pleasers last weekend, and both worthy of your attention. In the "personal appearance" department: NYC Short Film Showcase -- Our tireless programmer Michael...
Films this week 5/17 to 5/19/2024
New Plaza Cinema is back on a full schedule this weekend. Our holdovers include Woody Allen's Coup de Chance, Daniel Auteuil in Farewell Mr. Haffmann, James Norton in Nowhere Special, and Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille, with director Larry Locke and special guests on hand for an after-discussion following Saturday's 5 pm show -- just a few tickets remain for that one. Plus four new additions to the program: The Old Oak -- In Ken Loach's latest (and perhaps final) film, a mining village in socio-economic decline undergoes both turbulence and spasms of hope when a group of Syrian refugee families arrive, fleeing tragedies that make even the impoverished locals' pale by comparison. In her Critic's Pick NY...
Films this week 4/26 to 4/28/2024
New Plaza Cinema's regular programming will be on hiatus over the weekends of May 3-5 and 10-12 during a series of CUNY student-related events, one of which (see below) will have some limited free screening tickets available to our patrons. As a result, we're packing this weekend's schedule with more films than usual, including multiple reprises of our sell-out hits, Woody Allen's Coup de Chance and the rockumentary Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille. Also encoring: Farewell Mr Haffmann, Karaoke, and Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding. Our previously-announced screening of Kiss Me Kosher, with guest John Carroll Lynch, has been postponed. We hope to reschedule it later this spring. Our one new release...
Films this week 4/19 to 4/21/2024
Woody Allen's acclaimed, French-language drama Coup de Chance sold out all its prime time shows last weekend -- the most exciting, gratifying weekend we've had at New Plaza Cinema since the premiere of Bill Nighy in Living during the 2022 holiday season. We're very grateful to our hardworking theatre staff and volunteer ushers, as well as our partners at CUNY's Macaulay Honors College, the film's maverick distributor MPI Media, and our friends at Sawyer Studios who design and place those Friday NY Times ads many of you read every week. This was truly a team effort. Coup de Chance will play four more prime time shows this weekend. As always we recommend early, online ticket purchases, and please keep an eye on our ongoing...
Films this week 4/12 to 4/14/2024
This has turned out to be one of the most "stacked" New Plaza Cinema weekends that I can remember. Let's get right to it! Woody Allen's Coup de Chance joins our lineup after its strong downtown opening last weekend. His 50th feature film finds Allen working for the first time in a foreign language -- French -- with a sterling cast, many of whom fans of le cinema Francais will recognize: Lou de Laage, Melvil Poupaud, and Valerie Lemercier. Cinematography is by the legendary Vittorio Storaro. This tale of the tenuous bonds of love, infidelity, and twists of fate is familiar ground for the filmmaker, even if in a new langage and milieu. I strongly suggest checking out Manohla Dargis' review in last Friday's NY Times -- it is...
Films this week 4/06 to 4/07/2024
New Plaza Cinema will be closed this Friday night for a previously scheduled CUNY student event. Last weekend was a brisk and exciting one here -- four of the nine scheduled shows sold out: Farewell Mr. Haffmann (twice), Perfect Days, and Ran. While this is very gratifying to us, we know that sell outs can create some disappointment and frustration among our loyal patrons, many of whom have been following New Plaza's journey since summer 2018. I can only offer two suggestions, but welcome any others you may have. The best way to secure seats for a popular film is to purchase tickets online as far in advance as possible. We know this isn't always feasible in our complicated lives, but I would also say that we'll always...
Have a question or comment for Gary?
You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org