New Films 4/16/21
by Gary Palmucci | 16th April 2021 | Gary's Corner
Hello everyone. With the 2021 Academy Awards ceremony just ten days away, we’ve managed to add two more nominees to this week’s Virtual Cinema lineup.
The Father showcases two Oscar winners — Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman — as a father and daughter struggling to deal with the parent’s increasingly tenuous grip on reality and his daily circumstances. The film’s six nominations include Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (helmer Florian Zeller co-adapting his own play, presented in 2016 on Broadway with Frank Langella) and nods for Hopkins and Colman.
The NY Times’ Jeannette Catsoulis wrote, “At once stupendously effective and profoundly upsetting…Zeller plays with perspective so cleverly that maintaining any kind of emotional distance is impossible.”
Another hard-hitting addition this week is a nominee for best international film (we’re now offering three of those five) Quo Vadis, Aida? from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslims in the town of Srebrenica is recounted through the eyes of a local teacher-turned-UN translator caught up in a nightmare of tragic, absurd contradictions.
In his “Critic’s Pick” the NYT’s Tony Scott noted, “The film’s rigorous honesty is harrowing, partly because it subverts many of the expectations that quietly attach themselves to movies about historical trauma….”
Also, after a brief interruption last weekend, the beloved Minari is back for screenings this Friday (4/16) through Sunday (4/18).
And with Earth Day falling next Thursday April 22 and “earth issues” seemingly in the news and on our minds daily, we’re previewing a new documentary The Race to Save the World for a limited run starting on that celebratory day. Per Dennis Hayes, coordinator of the very first Earth Day back in 1970 , “The Race offers a frank look at some Americans who have chosen to place their bodies at the ‘tip of the spear’ in the fight for climate justice. Their courage and resolute optimism is inspiring.” See a link to the trailer and other info here. Closed captioning available.
Next week we’ll take a look at some of the other Oscar nominated films and events in this singular movie year….
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema