Films this week 3/1 to 3/2/2024
by Gary Palmucci | 29th February 2024 | Gary's Corner
This is an abbreviated New Plaza Cinema weekend due to some CUNY special student events. Two of our five scheduled screenings — a surreal, one-of-a-kind backwoods comedy, Hundreds of Beavers mixing silent movie grace and Road Runner insanity; plus Up from the Streets, a documentary that looks at the culture of New Orleans through the lens of its exuberant music — are sold out or very close to it. A few standby-line tickets may be available at show time. Our other three screenings — all on Saturday — feature either Oscar winners or current nominees. Germany’s The Teachers’ Lounge and Italy’s Io Capitano, both Best International Feature candidates, continue their powerhouse engagements. On the latter film, the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis in her Critic’s Pick review wrote, “…in Io Capitano, which tracks a pair of Senegalese cousins as they struggle to make their way from their home in Dakar to Europe…(director Matteo Garrone) invites you into a story and demands your attention with visual clarity and narrative urgency. Yet his great strength here is the tenderness of his touch, which works as a kind of force field that keeps your own despair at bay and your sympathies on his complicated, transparent, achingly hopeful characters.” Last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary, Navalny, has now acquired a shattering poignancy with the Soviet dissident’s recent death in a Russian prison camp. We’ve had numerous requests to show the film, and fortunately distributor Warner Brothers moved quickly last week to put it back into theatrical release.Writing in the February 16th NY Times, film critic Alissa Wilkinson noted how “it’s chilling to watch… after reports of his death,” but also describes in detail how it ends on an inadvertent note of defiant hope: At the end of the film, director Daniel Roher once again asks Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he was imprisoned or even killed…”Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you…” He’s looking straight into the camera and picking up steam as he goes.“You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”
Gary Palmucci. Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema