Gary's Corner
Films this week 3/6/2026 to 3/12/26
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 6th March 2026 | Gary's Corner
Two weeks to go until Oscar night…here at New Plaza Cinema we’re still slipping in a nominee or two we hadn’t previously had a chance to play. This weekend it’s Come See Me in the Good Light (courtesy of our friends at Apple TV) a Best Documentary Feature finalist. The NY Times’ doc specialist Alissa Wilkinson wrote in a recent column: “Few documentaries are quite as emotionally complex as Come See Me in the Good Light , Ryan White’s portrait of the Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson and their partner, the poet Megan Falley, in what would turn out to be the final year of Gibson’s life. Nonfiction films often grapple with mortality and the meaning of existence, and usually those center on grief. This one wraps its arms around the full range of feeling that follows a terminal diagnosis: fear, love, desire, anger, wonder, hope, despair, even joy.”
Come See Me…joins another documentary nominee that’s been playing for weeks here to packed houses: Cutting Through Rocks, portrait of a woman bureaucrat in a remote Iranian town (hopefully nowhere near this week’s bomb tonnage), filmed over the past decade.
Next weekend we’ll add a screening of Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’or winning It Was Just An Accident, another Iranian tragicomedy that’s now taken on new dimensions. Somehow I don’t think the director’s stated intention to return to Tehran after his months of Oscar campaigning is going to work out….
Our other weekend holdovers include Sentimental Value (9 Oscar noms including one for its director Joachim Trier, who recently thanked us during a Brooklyn bookstore appearance “for keeping our movie on the big screen;” Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil in Private Life; Korean helmer Park Chan-wook’s concussive No Other Choice; the wonderfully moving ‘sleeper’ The President’s Cake, and the expansive Jordanian drama All That’s Left of Us.
On the classic film front, thanks for supporting our recent four-film tribute to costume designer Ruth Morley; this weekend it’s Roman Polanski’s 1974 Chinatown, a great American movie with indelible performances by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, and Robert Towne’s devilishly intricate screenplay. That line “Forget it, Jake – it’s Chinatown” has been hammered into cinema history, and more than a few devoted viewers’ personal histories.
A number of our patrons have asked us to ‘encore’ Polanski’s recent ‘Dreyfus Case’ drama An Officer and A Spy, and we’ll be doing so on Saturday, March 21.
I’ll be travelling for the rest of this month in Australia and New Zealand, hopefully visiting a ‘Down Under’ version or two of New Plaza Cinema, and reporting back. My colleagues Abbe Harris, Andrew Lewis, Max Alvarez, Dan Cahill and others will be projecting, wrangling, introducing and Q&A-ing many diverse screenings…all the things that make us special.
Films this week 03/28/2025 to 04/3/2025
Here at New Plaza Cinema we have numerous 'unsung heroes' who work behind the scenes on our many special programs, occasionally appearing in person to introduce or discuss the work. Veteran independent filmmaker and newsfilm cameraman Michael Jacobsohn is the man behind our bi-monthly NYC Filmmakers Short Film Showcase, marking its second anniversary this Friday night. His tireless curation has allowed many local artists to see their films with an audience, and on a theatre screen for the first time. As always, this weekend's program has sold out, but a few cancellations may be available at show time. For the past few years Michael has also been working on a new feature documentary of his own, The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile,...
Films this week 03/14/2025 to 03/20/2025
This will be our last New Plaza Cinema weekend of 'limited operation' for a couple of months - we're closed on Saturday for some annual CUNY student events. Since so many patrons were turned away from last weekend's sold out shows of Oscar-winner No Other Land and There's Still Tomorrow, our Friday and Sunday schedules will consist solely of those two titles, each with three screenings apiece. Last weekend's full house was mesmerized from the opening scene of our 'sneak preview' of There's Still Tomorrow. In her Critic's Pick review, the NY Times' Beatrice Loayza wrote: "There’s Still Tomorrow is set in Rome after World War II, but it unfolds with timeless verve and romanticism. It’s the directorial debut of the Italian singer...
Films this week 03/7/2025 to 03/13/2025
New Plaza Cinema will be on an abbreviated schedule for the next two weekends, with no screenings on Saturday March 8 and 15. We will be squeezing in some extra shows on Sundays, along with several very special events in the second half of the month. As I - and many other pundits - predicted, the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature went to No Other Land, which has sold out every one of our screenings to date. The filmmakers' moving acceptance speeches were a highlight of the broadcast. And in a completely different emotional 'key,' so was Kieran Culkin's; we couldn't resist a victory lap show of A Real Pain. Elsewhere on this weekend's calendar, our monthly first-Friday series on social justice issues, both current and...
Films this week 02/28/2025 to 03/6/2025
On this abbreviated New Plaza Cinema Oscar weekend, we'll be saluting four nominees with 'good luck' screenings: Conclave (Best Picture, and seven other nominations), The Seed of the Sacred Fig (International Feature), A Real Pain (Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay) and No Other Land (Documentary Feature). The latter film sold out both screenings last weekend, so plan accordingly. And, we'll reprise the rueful comedy-drama Ex-Husbands with Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Richard Benjamin and Rosanna Arquette, which also played to packed houses. Our other film on this weekend's program is a singularly daft comedy and a highlight of last year's Cannes Film Festival. Universal Language captivated the NY Times' Manohla Dargis,...
Films this week 02/21/2025 to 02/27/2025
We have two very special events on tap this weekend - at 5 pm on both Friday and Saturday - courtesy of our friends at distributor Greenwich Entertainment. After the screening of their latest release, Ex-Husbands, we'll be joined for Q&As by its writer-director Noah Pritzker and stars Griffin Dunne (After Hours, This Is Us), James Norton (Grantchester; New Plaza Cinema favorite Nothing Special) and Miles Heizer. This rueful comedy-drama of three generations of American men and their ongoing couplings, and uncouplings, also boasts a sterling supporting cast including Rosanna Arquette, Richard Benjamin and The Sopranos' John Ventimiglia. Tickets are going to be airborne for these two shows. With Oscar season nearing its...
Films this week 02/7/2025 to 02/13/2025
In these convulsive recent weeks, the power of the movies to galvanize our engagement on issues of social justice seems more valuable than ever. At New Plaza Cinema last fall we commenced-- with titles like Following Harry and One Person, One Vote-- a monthly first-Friday-night screening series that continues this week with Ava DuVernay's 2023 film Origin. On this narrative screen adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's landmark historical survey Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, with a cast including Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal and Audra McDonald, the NY Times' Manohla Dargis wrote: "DuVernay’s Origin is as audacious as it is ambitious. At its core, it concerns an intellectual argument about history and hierarchies of...
Films this week 01/31/2025 to 02/06/2025
Our current focus at New Plaza Cinema remains on this year's Oscar nominees - a fascinatingly eclectic, impossible-to-predict-with-certainty lineup. Joining four others this weekend is A Real Pain, described with her usual acuity by the NY Times' Manohla Dargis: "Jesse Eisenberg races straight into life’s stubborn untidiness in A Real Pain, a finely tuned, melancholic and at times startlingly funny exploration of loss and belonging that he wrote and directed. He plays David, a fidgety, outwardly ordinary guy who, with his very complicated cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin), sets off on a so-called heritage tour of Poland. Their grandmother survived the Holocaust because of "a thousand miracles," as David puts it, and they’ve decided...
Films this week 01/17/2025 to 01/23/2025
Over this holiday weekend on which the nation witnesses an ongoing, unprecedented natural disaster on one coast and awaits, with near-equal measures of eager anticipation and dread, a presidential inauguration on the other, New Plaza Cinema's programs offer a diversity of snapshots of history both present and past, at home and abroad. While we await the (tentative) January 23 Oscar nominations announcement, we'll be offering reprises of both surefire nominees -- Conclave, Soundtrack for a Coup d'etat, Flow-- and two short-list contenders new to our lineup. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, filmed surreptitiously in his home country by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof (his 2017 A Man of Integrity was a highlight at our W 86 St...
Films this week 01/03/2025 to 01/09/2025
As we're now looking over our shoulder at 2024, we at New Plaza Cinema would like to thank all our patrons for your support in this past year. Our attendance was up significantly from 2023, and the number and diversity of new customers discovering our programs was particularly evident over this holiday season, notably at packed screenings of Conclave, Flow and Soundtrack to a Coup d'etat. All three of these films will be back later this month following the January 17 Oscar nominations announcement. I very much enjoyed - as perhaps you did, too- the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. We're working on a special Bob Dylan screening of our own, and hope to have full details soon. And, since Monday January 20, 2025 is both Martin...
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You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org