Films this week 6/07 to 6/09/2024
by Gary Palmucci | 7th June 2024 | Gary's Corner
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 earned a long round of applause.
New this weekend:
- Run Lola Run — This unheralded German drama had its North American debut at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival, and though I was elsewhere in the multiplex that day, I still recall hearing that, about twenty minutes into the screening, numerous film industry attendees began running out of the theatre — junior acquisition executives, no doubt, rushing to tell their bosses about what might well be “the next big thing” in art house cinema. They weren’t far wrong. Lola’s kinetic mix of narrative and visual styles “made” the international careers of director Tom Tykwer and star Franka Potente, and distributor Sony Classics is marking its 25th Anniversary with a new 4K restoration.
- The Apartment — Billy Wilder, a German director from a very different generation, capped his legendary career with this indelible Oscar Winner (Best Picture, 1960), an all-time great New York story that takes place (and was partly filmed) in the immediate vicinity of New Plaza Cinema. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston star. Max Alvarez and I will be present for some after-discussion. Another Wilder classic, One, Two, Three starring James Cagney, will be screened on June 23.
- Julia Scotti: Funny That Way — Decades ago, Julia Scotti performed as Rick Scotti and appeared on bills with Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. This recent documentary, shot over a five-year period, chronicles the trans comedian’s triumphant return to the stage as “the crazy old lady of comedy,” and her own personal, transformative story, including a hard-won reconnection with her family.
Julia Scotti will join us after the screening, along with producer-director-screenwriter Susan Sandler (who recently visited us with Crossing Delancey) and comedian-writer-podcaster Julie Klausner, creator of the Hulu sitcom Difficult People.
Coming next weekend, the ultra-acerbic Romanian black comedy Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, recently tabbed by the NY Times’ Manohla Dargis as one of the best films — so far — of 2024; and direct from its boffo downtown premiere, the new documentary Flipside, featuring This American Life’s Ira Glass and various other unforgettable characters and their chronicles.
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Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema