B(V)PH: Five new flicks open this week

B(V)PH: Five new flicks open this week: Five new Magnolia Pictures’ flicks enter the Bedford Playhouse’s Streaming Library just in time for Memorial Day weekend. Here’s what’s playing there now. Stream any of the movies in BPH’s virtual library  and BPH gets half of your rental fee. Magnolia Pictures’ is an independent film distributor of narrative movies and documentaries.

New this weekend

Lucky Grandma: Sasie Sealey’s dark comedy, Lucky Grandma, about a chain-smoking 80 year old woman from NYC’s Chinatown debuted at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and received a 94% Critics Rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The story follows her auspicious reading at a fortune teller to her trip to a casino where she goes all in. Her fortunes turn when she gets caught up in a full-on gang war. Find out who’s the real bad-ass!

The Painter and the Thief: Desperate for answers about the theft of her 2 paintings, a Czech artist seeks out and befriends the career criminal who stole them. After inviting her thief to sit for a portrait, the two form an improbable relationship and an inextricable bond that will forever link these lonely souls. A Special Jury Award-winner for Creative Storytelling from the Sundance Institute, this 2020 documentary from Benjamin Ree received a 100% Critics Rating from 32 critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy: Here’s one for foodies. This full length documentary of cookbook author and environmental activist Diana Kennedy, the very British master of Mexican cooking, explores her unconventional life in Michoacán mastering Mexican cuisine.

Military Wives: Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) directs Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan in this uplifting story about a group of women who form a military wives choir while their husbands are serving in Afghanistan. The story, inspired by true events, takes them from their cloistered life on a military base to an international stage.

City Dreamers: Joseph Hillel’s documentary explores the careers of four female architects who have transformed the conventional wisdom about modern cities. The film follows their career paths from their early collaborations with Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Mies van der Roh to their peak of independent influence.

Still Playing

New York International Children’s Film Festival: Kids Flicks 1 features 56 minutes of short films recommended for children ages 3 to 7. These 12 shorts from 9 countries include: Belly Flop from South Africa, Mi Abuelita from Guatemala and Flipped, a UK film where the little ones are in charge while the grownups stay home to play. NYICFF’s Kids Flicks 2 presents 8 shorts (72 minutes running time) from around the world for ages 8+. Including Slow Dance from Sweden that explores male bravery on a middle-school dance floor. And A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year Old Girl from Australia – which needs no explanation. These NYICFF highlights are screened each year at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

Crescendo: Academy-Award nominated director Dror Zahavi (Alexander Penn, Everything for my Father) directs this gripping drama about a world famous conductor who tries to create an Israeli/Palestinian youth orchestra. Only to be quickly drawn into a tempest of unsolvable problems. Spaceship Earth chronicles the controversial adventures of eight visionaries who in 1991 spent two years quarantined inside a self-engineered replica of Earth’s ecosystem called BIOSPHERE 2. The experiment was a worldwide phenomenon, chronicling daily existence in the face of life threatening ecological disaster and a growing criticism that it was nothing more than a cult. Up From The Streets, a multi-award-winning documentary that profiles New Orleans culture through the lens of music – from the drumming in Congo Square to the city’s contemporary music scene. Another documentary, The Booksellers takes viewers inside the fascinating world of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers and their role in preserving history.

Check out the lineup here.

Friday Night Movies Curbside Concessions

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