Gary's Corner

New York City filmmaker Ric Burns has over three decades compiled an impressive body of documentary work on American history and culture, including a collaboration with his brother Ken on the classic series The Civil War. In 2015 Ric began shooting a series of interviews with the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, shortly after Sacks learned that he had a terminal illness. For over eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends and notebooks from over six decades of his thinking and writing about the brain, he spoke about his personal life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world and man's place within it. Among many other interviewees were Jonathan Miller, Temple Grandin, Paul Theroux and Kate Edgar. The film,...

Regular readers of this column know that I frequently quote favorable NY Times reviews to 'plug' whatever we're showing in a given week, since New Plaza Cinema denizens seem to know the Times and its critics better than any others.  (Plus, for me, NYT scribe Manohla Dargis is a longtime acquaintance.) This week, however, we're making use of two more of America's better working film critics: New York Magazine's Bilge Ebiri and Ty Burr, formerly of the Boston Globe, now covering the celluloid waterfront for various web services. Many of you may know Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice,  whose 1973 Spirit of the Beehive is one of that nation's indelible classics.  Sadly, he's worked infrequently in the past half-century - I...

Three new titles are joining this weekend's New Plaza Cinema lineup. The NY Times' Manohla Dargis in her Critic's Pick review describes War Game, a highlight of this year's Sundance Film Festival, as "a nail biter of a documentary that asks a question a lot of us don't want to even consider: What if there's another Jan. 6, only bigger, better organized and more ideologically cohesive?  ...Two filmmakers turned their cameras on a nonpartisan group of politicians and intelligence and military advisers who were role-playing in a fake crisis like the assault on the Capitol. Like actors in a grim sequel ,they were taking part in an unnervingly familiar scenario, racing to prevent a coup and maybe civil war....This particular game...

At New Plaza Cinema we are often "tracking" films entering the marketplace -- usually at film festivals or via their sales agents -- months before they reach opening day in NYC. The Sundance highlights Thelma and Ghostlight, now nearing the end of their runs, and a documentary traveling both the festival and word-of-mouth circuit, I Like It Here, each came to us by those routes. I Like It Here, making its Upper West Side debut with three Labor Day weekend screenings, was first spotted by NY Times documentary specialist Alissa Wilkinson at the True/False non-fiction film festival in Columbia, MO. After its downtown premiere last weekend, she rhapsodized: "Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck is a veteran documentarian, and I Like It Here is...

This Friday night's special screening of the 2015 film Suffragette, hosted by City Council Member Gale Brewer, is sold out, and there will not be a standby line.  However, a few tickets remain for next Friday night, August 23rd's special presentation of Rachel, Rachel -- followed by a Q&A with Melissa Newman, daughter of the film's star Joanne Woodward and its director, Paul Newman.   We're very pleased to welcome to this weekend's lineup the new 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, direct from its six-week downtown run. New Plaza Cinema viewers who reveled in our sold out March screenings of Rashomon and Ran are in for another feast of epic storytelling, cinematography, editing, action staging and iconic...

Attentive readers (and there are many) of New Plaza Cinema's weekly schedule have asked us why there are often nine or ten different films shoehorned into our weekend program, often affording only a single chance to see their particular film of choice. To the extent that there is a coherent explanation, I would offer this: with the ongoing shortage of upper west side cinema screens, many distributors as well as individual, self-distributing filmmakers regularly solicit us to play their movies. We try to accommodate as many of these new releases (along with at least two classics per month) as possible, to provide an eclectic array of international cinema, and also in the hope that a few of these pictures will "stick" and become...

After a long-planned, three-week vacation trip through Portugal, Morocco and Spain, and on my return, an urgent and completely unanticipated visit to an eye surgeon to repair a detached retina, I'm back at the keyboard as a very busy New Plaza Cinema weekend awaits us. Here are the highlights: Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger -- Packed with beautiful and extensive clips, home movie, and behind the scenes footage and non-stop cinematic insight from Martin Scorsese, this documentary is both a loving tribute and splendid introduction to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's body of work. On Sunday we'll be joined after the screening by two very special guests: Powell's widow, executive producer and three-time...

Over the years in our various incarnations, New Plaza Cinema has presented the best in rock and soul concert films and biographies -- the Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, portraits of Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby, Aretha Franklin, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Anita Pallenberg, and the LA folk-rock scene, just to name a few. To that illustrious list we are this weekend adding the exclusive NY theatrical premiere of Revival 69: The Concert That Rocked the World. This new documentary celebrates the twelve-hour concert that took place in Toronto on September 13, 1969, with performances by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, The Doors, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. There was plenty of behind-the-scenes drama leading...

An eclectic quartet of new programs join this weekend's New Plaza Cinema program -- we have plenty of options to escape the sweltering heat! Filmmakers Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss have for over forty years been producing penetrating documentaries on the American social and political landscape. Last year they joined us for screenings of The Five Demands, about the momentous 1969 student strike at City College. Greta will be back on Saturday afternoon with their latest, Love Letters which, per their website Jezebel Films, "tells the remarkable story of feminist scholar Catherine Stimpson and musicologist Elizabeth Wood. Now in their 80s, they recall a time when living together and loving unapologetically was a radical...