What I’m Seeing: I’m going with Here, which is screening at Cinemapolis this evening as part of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.
Also in Theaters: Two other FLEFF selections that I mentioned last week, Last Things and Pictures of Ghosts, are back at Cinemapolis again this afternoon and Sunday night respectively. Another good choice is the 1926 Soviet classic Mother, which continues a longstanding festival tradition of programming silent films when it screens there on Friday night accompanied by Ithaca’s own Cloud Chamber Orchestra. FLEFF’s full remaining lineup can be found on their website. The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is 4x Oscar winner Poor Things, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Friday. The most intriguing new movies I haven’t seen are All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the 28th-place finisher in the most recent Indiewire Critics Poll, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, which is there on Sunday. Other movies I’m hoping to see in the coming weeks include Civil War, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight, and La Chimera, which begins a run at Cinemapolis tomorrow. On the repertory front your best bets are All That Breathes, my pick for last year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, which is at Cornell Cinema on Monday; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow; and two films directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight and Interstellar, which are at the Regal tonight and Wednesday respectively.
Home Video: I’m delighted to report that Mambar Pierrette, which I wrote about for Educational Media Reviews Online and included on my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” list, is now streaming on The Criterion Channel as part of a collection called “Three by Rosine Mbakam”! It also includes two short films, Doors of the Past and You Will Be My Ally, which pay testament to how far Mbakam has come as a director since the start of her career. I discussed the four feature-length documentaries which bridge the intervening ten or twelve years (Criterion and IMDb disagree on a couple of dates), all of which are available to current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students via Docuseek, in January.
Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 