What I’m Seeing: I’m going with Problemista at Cinemapolis.
Also in Theaters: The 2024 edition Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which has the theme “turbulence,” kicks off on Monday with an online new media exhibition. More on this next week after the movies get started! You’ve got one last chance to see the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron with “bonus content” at the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight; otherwise Dune: Part Two, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, remains the best new film now playing locally that I’ve seen, but depending on what else you’re into I might recommend Love Lies Bleeding, which is at Cinemapolis, instead. There are two free screenings at Cornell Cinema tonight which feature conversations with the filmmakers afterward, first Jole Dobe Na / Those Who Do Not Drown at 4:45pm and then The Art of Un-War at 7:30. Three films that garnered attention (some positive, some negative) on the festival circuit last year open at the Regal tonight: They Shot the Piano Player; Asphalt City (which premiered at Cannes with the title Black Flies), and Late Night with the Devil. Your best bets for repertory fare are Chinatown, which is at the Regal tonight; Dogtooth, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow; and The Matrix, which has a 25th anniversary screening at the Regal on Wednesday.
Home Video: One of my favorite things about The Criterion Channel is the wealth of short films available on it. Whenever I’m not pressed for time, I like to watch one before each feature I view at home. Many of them are grouped into collections, and I recently worked my way through everything in the “Animated Shorts” program. Three titles won’t be available after March 31 and are absolutely worth checking out before they leave. Spook Sport is directed by Mary Ellen Bute, whose Synchromy No. 4: Escape made a huge impression on me when I saw it at last year’s Nitrate Picture Show, and features direct animation by the OG Norman McLaren. Papageno is silhouette animation set to Mozart’s The Magic Flute directed by another giant of cinema, Lotte Reiniger, which has terrific backgrounds that lend outstanding depth to her compositions. Finally, A Night on Bald Mountain is a pioneering pinscreen animation by the technique’s inventors Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker which has many affinities with Movie Year 2023’s Godland (also on The Criterion Channel), including black and white living and dead horses, an erupting volcano, and the theme of civilization vs. nature. Additional highlights include Les Escargots, a tale of giant snails that my kids loved, and Something to Remember, a melancholy snapshot of a society of animals on the verge of collapse remarkably made in 2019 when, you know, HUMAN society was teetering on the brink. The pick of the litter, though, is the utterly charming Cockaboody, which recreates one of the great privileges and pleasures of parenthood: overhearing snippets of imaginative play.
Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 