What I’m Seeing This Week: My gamble paid off! Evil Does Not Exist, which I passed on two weeks ago in favor of The Fall Guy knowing I would have to wait until after the Nitrate Picture Show to see it, is still at Cinemapolis, so that’s my pick this week because director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s last film Drive My Car was one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2021.
Also in Theaters: My Loving Wife and I have a date night outing to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, planned for next week, so that’s very much on my radar. The best new movie now playing in Ithaca which I’ve already seen is I Saw the TV Glow, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. Here’s a good piece about it by Emily St. James. I can also recommend the stylish and entertaining Challengers and The Fall Guy, which is a good, old-fashioned romantic comedy. With explosions. The former is at Cinemapolis and the latter is at the Regal. Babes (Cinemapolis), The Dead Don’t Hurt (Regal), and In a Violent Nature (both) have all garnered solid reviews, so if they sound interesting to you, they may be worth checking out as well. On the repertory front the highlight is Run Lola Run, which is at Cinemapolis. I originally saw it at the Point of View Cinema in Millersville, Pennsylvania (RIP) during high school, and I thought it was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Finally, a 70-minute shorts program will screen at Cinemapolis on Saturday as part of the sixth annual Quiet on the Set! Film Festival sponsored by the Wharton Studio Museum.
Home Video: If you’re like me the announcement of this year’s Cannes Film Festival award winners was a prompt to start adding previous work by the people who made them to your watchlist in anticipation of everything arriving in stateside theaters come fall. I’ll be using this space over the course of the next few weeks to highlight titles available on streaming video platforms beginning with films directed by Sean Baker, who took home the Palme d’Or for Anora. I first became aware of Baker about ten years ago, but somehow never got around to seeing a single one of his films. Well, unless you count his Taco Bell commercial, I guess. That’s all about to change, though! Here’s what I’ll be watching in the coming weeks and where:
- Take Out, which Baker co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, is available via The Criterion Channel with a subscription.
- Starlet is available via Mubi with a subscription.
- Tangerine is available via Netflix with a subscription.
- The short film Snowbird, which is was commissioned by the fashion brand Kenzo, is available on Vimeo via the director.
- The Florida Project is available via Max with a subscription.
- The short film Khaite FW21, which was commissioned by the fashion brand Kaite, is available on Vimeo via the director.
Red Rocket is also available for rental on a number of platforms.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 