What I’m Seeing This Week: Director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film The Boy and the Heron, which opened at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall yesterday, headlines this week’s new releases, but I’m confident that it’s going to stick around for awhile (and ready with a backup plan just in case), so I’m going with actor Nicolas Cage’s new movie Dream Scenario, which continues its run at the same two theaters.
Also in Theaters: This time of year is a mixed blessing: on one hand, there’s an abundance of films playing Ithaca that I want to see! On the other hand, there’s no chance I can make it to all of them. Critics whose opinions I respect seem to like Godzilla Minus One, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, but I’m probably going to need to wait to see it myself until it hits the streaming services next year. Ditto for Napoleon and Saltburn, which are more divisive, and which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Of the new titles I’ve already seen, I heartily recommend The Holdovers, which continues its run at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Oppenheimer, which is back at the Regal. As far as repertory fare goes, Die Hard (which scholar David Bordwell called “masterpiece of Hollywood filmmaking” in a 2019 blog post that he re-posted earlier this week) and Love Actually are both at the Regal. There’s also a Frozen sing-along and mystery screening at Cornell Cinema on Monday before they go on hiatus for winter break. Finally, Ithaca mayor Laura Lewis is hosting a free screening of the documentary film It’s Basic at Cinemapolis on Tuesday. You can register for tickets here.
Home Video: I can tell my cinephile origin story in as few as two words: Star Wars. The “special edition” versions of the original trilogy were released theatrically in 1997, my freshman year of high school, and me and all of my nerd friends saw each film multiple times. When we started to get our driver’s licenses shortly afterward, we expanded our horizons slightly by going to all of the movies we had spent the previous months watching previews for. One was Starship Troopers, which I plan to cover in a future Drink & a Movie post; another was Event Horizon, which is now streaming on The Criterion Channel with a subscription. If that sounds wrong to you, go watch the movie! But if you need extra convincing, check out this interview with director Paul W.S. Anderson that film critic Bilge Ebiri conducted for Vulture last year. Ghost stories are, after all, a Christmas tradition!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 