What I’m Seeing This Week: I wasn’t able to make it to Poor Things in Baltimore during our holiday travels, so I’m going to catch a matinee screening at Cinemapolis on New Year’s Eve. Then, to avoid falling too far behind on new releases, I’m going to see Ferrari later in the week either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: I’m at an unusual disadvantage in that I haven’t yet seen most of the films playing in Ithaca! Of those I have, though, my clear favorite is The Boy and the Heron, which continues its run at the Regal. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, seeing director Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was one of the great moviegoing experiences of my life. If you know his work, you should see his latest because it ranks with the best of his oeuvre; if you don’t, you should see it for the same reason by way of getting acquainted.
Home Video: One More Time, which is now streaming on Netflix with a subscription, is not a remake of Groundhog Day, but it features a similar “time loop” narrative and deliberately (there’s literally a scene in which the main character watches the earlier film for clues about what’s happening to her) hits a lot of the same beats. To take a cue from One More Time‘s soundtrack, it has a similar relationship to its inspiration as Ashnikko’s “L8r Boi” does to Avril Levigne’s “Sk8er Boi,” only Jonatan Etzler and company aren’t so much reconstructing a beloved text with a bad foundation as reworking the facade a bit. Crucially, they understand that Phil Connor’s journey was not necessarily toward becoming a *better* person, but rather one who knows what he really wants. Throw in a good lead performance by Hedda Stiernnstedt, colorful secondary characters, and a depiction of the early aughts that this member of Conestoga Valley High School’s Class of 2000 found convincing if a bit rosy, and you have a fine example of what my loving wife and I call a “Friday night movie.” Hat tip: Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Times.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 