Gary's Corner
Films this week 2/27/2026 to 3/5/26
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 27th February 2026 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema’s tribute to costume designer Ruth Morley concludes this weekend with a unique pair of ‘double-features.’ Saturday evening will lead off with My Knees Were Jumping: Stories of the Kindertransports; in her 1996 NY Times review Janet Maslin wrote:
“Melissa Hacker’s documentary is about the Jewish children who were saved by emigrating to Britain (from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia) 60 years ago. Since Ms. Hacker is the daughter of one such emigre — the costume designer Ruth Morley, an Academy Award nominee for The Miracle Worker—she approaches her poignant subject matter in a particularly earnest, intimate way.”
Melissa will do some Q&A after the screening, and then we’ll move on to a very rare theatrical showing of a feature her mother worked on, 1981’s The Chosen from the Chaim Potok novel. Jeremy Kagan (who’s generously provided us with a new intro) directs Maximilian Schell, Rod Steiger and Robby Benson in a coming of age story set in 1940’s Williamsburg. Melissa Hacker and production designer Stuart Wurtzel will discuss the film afterwards.
On Sunday afternoon, our own film historian Max Alvarez will join Melissa and I for a screening of The Front (1976), starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel, and of course costumed by Ruth Morley. The 1940-50s Hollywood Blacklist portrayed in the film is a specialty – indeed, a passion – of Max’s.
We’ll discuss The Front before-and-after, then proceed to a screening of Melissa’s My Knees Were Jumping. This promises to be a pair of very special evenings.
We’re also pleased to be presenting the first upper west side screening of The President’s Cake, which has perhaps been a bit overlooked in an excellent year for international cinema. In his Critic’s Pick review, the NY Times’ Ben Kenigsberg describes this tale – set in 1990, the waning days of Saddam Hussein’s regime – of a young schoolgirl who’s given a very unusual, and fraught assignment under the watchful eyes of her teacher and relatives:
“While regional generalizations are probably unfair, The President’s Cake, written and directed by the Iraq-raised filmmaker Hasan Hadi, has already won comparisons to child’s-eye classics of Iranian cinema like Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon, another portrait of a girl dealing with intransigent, sometimes frightening adults….it’s a striking, mature debut.”
We’ll be celebrating Black History Month on Saturday with two films: a reprise screening of Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round , the recent vivid documentary chronicling a mostly untold story of the early civil rights movement, with Q&A from its film editor Ann Collins; and A Man Called Adam, another rarely screened, 1967 drama starring Sammy Davis Jr (always underrated as a dramatic actor) as a jazz trumpeter struggling with personal and professional demons. The supporting cast includes Louis Armstrong, Ossie Davis, Cicely Tyson, Mel Torme and Peter Lawford, and we’ll be joined afterwards by jazz (and jazz-in-the-movies) historian Wayne Winborne.
For some time now our shorts film programmer Michael Jacobsohn has been talking up to me a doc called Jimmy in Saigon, about a filmmaker’s investigation of his older brother’s 1972 death in Vietnam, near the end of America’s decade-long immersion. It’s a story that traverses multiple continents, lifestyles and memories, and director Peter McDowell will visit us on Sunday to present it in person.
Michael’s own documentary, The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile was an unfortunate ‘scratch’ in last Sunday’s snowstorm, but will be rescheduled—probably in May.
Holdovers this weekend include the Oscar nominees Cutting Through Rocks ( a remarkable word of mouth success here) and Sentimental Value; Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil in A Private Life (advance purchase strongly recommended) and now entering its sixth month, SHTTL with, of course a Q&A by its tireless leading man, Moshe Lobel. man, Moshe Lobel.
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,...
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You can reach him at films@newplazacinema.org