What I’m Seeing This Week: My loving wife and I are shipping our kids off to a sleepover and indulging ourselves in a date night! The agenda includes dinner at Gola Osteria, drinks at Bar Argos, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at Cinemapolis. I don’t usually read reviews of movies I’ve already made up my mind to see, but I did hear a few critics say good things about this one on podcasts following its premiere at Cannes and we loved Mad Max: Fury Road, so I’m confident we’re in for a good time!
Also in Theaters: There’s quite a bit of turnover at Cinemapolis this week, but my favorite film of Movie Year 2024 so far remains. I Saw the TV Glow is a groundbreaking representation of the trans experience which doubles as a exploration of the disorienting feeling that any cinephile can relate to of not always confidently knowing where in the mélange of movies you’ve seen and imagined, half-remembered dreams, and things you’re pretty sure you remember actually experiencing the “real world” lies. The only other new movie on Ithaca screens that I’ve already seen is The Fall Guy, a crowd-pleaser like they supposedly don’t make any more which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall. If I was selecting what to see this week only from the titles arriving in town today, my top choices would probably be The People’s Joker (Cinemapolis) and Inside Out 2 (Regal) in that order, since I anticipate that the latter will stick around for awhile. I’m also intrigued by Flipside, which is at Cinemapolis–descriptions of it remind me of the concept of “golden handcuffs,” which I learned about from the director of a commercial I interned on while I was in college. On the repertory front your best bet is the special screening of the horror film X at Cinemapolis on Wednesday which includes a sneak preview of its sequel MaXXXine, which opens next month next month.
Home Video: Last week I highlighted films directed by newly-minted Palme d’Or laureate Sean Baker which are available on streaming video platforms. I definitely am excited to see Anora, but I’m looking forward to another 2024 Cannes award winner even more: Grand Prix recipient All We Imagine as Light, a sophomore feature-length effort by director Payal Kapadia which was the first Indian film to be selected for the main competition in thirty years. While we wait for it to debut stateside, subscribers can watch Kapadia’s previous film A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the L’Oeil d’or award for best documentary at the 2021 edition of Cannes, on The Criterion Channel.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 