What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Evil Does Not Exist at Cinemapolis.
Also in Theaters: Hands down the best new movie now playing in Ithaca that I’ve seen is I Saw The TV Glow, which is at Cinemapolis. It’s mostly set in a late 90s suburban environment I remember well, stars Brigette Lundy-Paine as a fellow member of the Class of 2000, and includes a terrific rendition of “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” one of my favorite songs, so in some ways I’m its target audience. I came to many of its pop culture touchstones like Buffy the Vampire Slayer late, though, and don’t have firsthand experience with the issues of identity that it creates a new cinematic vocabulary to explore except in the most general sense, so may I humbly suggest that you consider this a “two thumbs up” ® endorsement from two different people: one who saw himself up on the screen, and one who loved it as a window into an unfamiliar world? I’m letting Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, ride for a couple of weeks in the hope that I can see it with my loving wife, but that’s the next most interesting title in local theaters; Challengers, which is at the same two theaters, is the second best new movie that I’ve already seen. It’s all quiet on the repertory front unless you’re one of those people who was really into The Crow, which is at the Regal Wednesday evening; you also have one last chance to see Amélie at Cinemapolis later today.
Home Video: I missed I Saw The TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun’s previous film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair during its theatrical run at Cinemapolis after my whole family came down with COVID, and when I caught up with it on streaming video at home a few months later, I confess that I was somewhat underwhelmed. This isn’t unusual for movies with a lot of buzz (I heard a lot about this one coming out of Sundance) which I was only able to see on the small screen, though, so I’m not surprised that I found it much more interesting the second time around. Like I Saw the TV Glow it features an excellent soundtrack by Alex G, a strong lead performance (especially considering that Anna Cobb was still a teenager during production), and some incredible images–I was especially taken by the static shot of us watching Cobb’s Casey watch the video that We’re All Going to the World’s Fair derives its title from. I think my previous hang-up was that as a result of age and inclination, the internet has never really been anything more to me than a place to look stuff up, so I don’t identify with it nearly as closely as the location of broken social scenes like the internet game community that Casey is a part of. Now that I’m looking at this as a Pink Opaque analog, the film resonates differently. Now streaming on Max.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 