What I’m Seeing This Week: Normally I restrict myself to just one movie in theaters per week so that I don’t miss out on too many bath and dinner times, but I occasionally make exceptions. The lead-up to the Oscars is one such time, and I’m planning to see both the “minus color” version of Best Visual Effects nominee Godzilla Minus One at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall and Best Picture nominee American Fiction at Cinemapolis, plus we’re taking the girls to see the dubbed version of Best Animated Feature The Boy and the Heron at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.
Also in Theaters: A whopping seven additional Oscar nominees are playing the Regal this week in “reissue” engagements, which doesn’t even include Poor Things since that one never closed there. Meanwhile, you can also see the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron at Cinemapolis all week and the subtitled version at Cornell Cinema on Saturday. My top pick isn’t any of these films, though, but rather All of Us Strangers, which is at Cinemapolis. Like Petite Maman, one of my favorite movies from last year, it suggests that the path to truly understanding our parents runs not through Reality or Fantasy but a different realm that we maybe don’t still have a name for in 2024. It also features four magnificent lead performances, one of the year’s best opening shots, and a brilliant Christmas scene starring the song “Always on My Mind” by the Pet Shop Boys (which you’ll never hear the same way again) among manifold other virtues. With Cornell Cinema back for the spring semester, there are great repertory options again, including a 35mm print of Rashomon tonight and on Sunday and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City on Monday. The Wizard of Oz is at the Regal on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, too. Finally, I’m intrigued by Origin, which opens at Cinemapols today, although I suspect it will close before it works its way up to the top of my list.
Home Video: In addition to all the movies listed above, there are a ton of other Oscar nominees available on streaming video and if you’re anything like me, they will dominate your viewing for the next six weeks. Before you get started, though, allow me to recommend setting aside one night to revisit City Lights like I did the other day. It has been on my mind ever since I saw Fallen Leaves, which pays tribute to it, so I put it on immediately when I noticed that it’s currently in Turner Classic Movies’ On Demand lineup and available via their Watch TCM app (as well as on Max and The Criterion Channel). The opening sequence is an all-time great; the boxing scenes are every bit as much a delightful travesty as the football scenes in Horse Feathers that I wrote about in August, 2022; and the final cut may be the most perfectly-timed one in the history of cinema. If that still isn’t enough to convince you, it also would pair beautifully with Best Live-Action Short Film nominee The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which is of course now streaming on Netflix.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 