What I’m Seeing This Week: My loving wife and I have a Dune: Part Two date night planned for this weekend at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall, plus I’m going to see Love Lies Bleeding at one of those theaters as well.
Also in Theaters: There’s a ton of interesting stuff at Cornell Cinema this week! The highlight for me is probably a visit from experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris with his works Reckless Eyeballing, Distant Shores, and Still/Here tomorrow or the screening of the “immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience” 32 Sounds on Saturday. Only 100 tickets are available to the latter so that every member of the audience can be given their own set of headphones. Two movies that appeared on plenty of top ten lists last year, How to Have Sex and Monster, are also there tonight and this weekend. Unfortunately, *none* of these showtimes work with my schedule! Oh well. The best new film that I’ve already seen remains The Taste of Things, which is at Cinemapolis, for at least one more week. The two biggest winners at this year’s Oscars, Oppenheimer and Poor Things, are back at the Regal. Finally, my top repertory recommendation is The Secret of Kells, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday afternoon.
Home Video: After all the controversy that Saltburn generated last year and with Swimming Home garnering attention on the festival circuit, I though it was high time that I finally watched Teorema, which both movies have been compared to. As a film almost entirely constructed out of captivating screen presences (including most notably Terence Stamp, Anne Wiazemsky, and Silvana Mangano) being captivating, it’s absolutely worth seeing. I’m not entirely convinced that it achieves all that it appears to aspire to in the realms of philosophy or theology, but at worst it may just be the definitive cinematic text on the phenomenon of the quarter/midlife crisis. It also features an intriguing sepia-toned silent introduction to the main action, Ninetto Davoli as a spirited herald-mailman, and a naked and epically hairy Massimo Girotti stumbling through an ashen Mount Etna landscape. Teorema is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 