Gary's Corner
Films this week 2/13/2026 to 2/19/26
Gary’s Corner
by Gary Palmucci | 13th February 2026 | Gary's Corner
New Plaza Cinema will present a two-weekend, centennial tribute to Oscar-winning, New York-centric costume designer Ruth Morley, whose work spanned five decades and an eclectic range of movies including The Miracle Worker, Taxi Driver, The Front, Kramer vs Kramer, Tootsie and dozens of others.
Our first weekend will kick off – on Valentine’s Day, appropriately – with One From the Heart, including a newly recorded introduction by director Francis Coppola. And on Monday, President’s Day (part of our full schedule then) we’ll present a film that I think deserves to be better known – 1970’s Diary of a Mad Housewife, from the writer-director team Frank and Eleanor Perry, featuring Carrie Snodgress, Richard Benjamin and Frank Langella.
Joining us after each screening will be Ruth Morley’s daughter, Melissa Hacker, an independent filmmaker and world-citizen whose documentary (and part-family history) My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports will be included in ‘part two’ of our salute, on February 28-March 1, along with two other titles to be announced. This promises to be an exceptional series of programs.
A Private Life, Jodie Foster’s first French-speaking starring role (she’s been fluent from her teens) is new to this weekend’s NPC lineup. She plays an American psychiatrist in Paris whose emotionally cloistered life is upset by the unexpected death of one of her patients. The director – and a key supporting actress – will be familiar to many in our audience , per NY Times reviewer Manohla Dargis:
“French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski has a gift for creating intriguingly complex female characters, women whose lives are at once specific to them and recognizably commonplace. In her tender 2022 drama about women, love and mothering, Other People’s Children, the life of a teacher, played by Virginie Efira, grows increasingly complicated after she falls for a man and develops an equally fierce bond with his young daughter. Efira has a small, pivotal role in A Private Life as … an elusive yet seductive presence who appears in slyly teasing, fragmented flashbacks. Her death might be shrouded in mystery, but there was nothing enigmatic about her effect when she was alive.”
This fabulous cast is further augmented by those quicksilver actors Daniel Autueil and Mathieu Amalric.
Another, very different filmmaker whose last picture, Decision to Leave, was a New Plaza Cinema hit returns here with his latest; Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is an often pitch-black, serpentine saga of one family man’s struggle both to get a new job after losing his old one, and hang on to his dignity…and sanity.
Our holdovers include five Oscar nominees: Sentimental Value, Blue Moon, Cutting Through Rocks, The Voice of Hind Rajab and Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
Plus: All That’s Left of You, Holding Liat, and SHTTL, whose inexhaustible lead actor Moshe Lobel will Q&A with his own ‘special guest’ on Saturday afternoon.
Next weekend, Rebel With a Clause is back for another encore (only a very few tickets remaining!), along with The Cornelia Street Cafe in Exile, and a final screening of Ralph Fiennes in The Choral…
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