What I’m Seeing This Week: I am going with Janet Planet at Cinemapolis.
Also in Theaters: The best new movie in local theaters *right now* that I’ve already seen is Fancy Dance, which was directed by Ithaca resident Erica Tremblay, but it closes at Cinemapolis today. After that the title will pass to Inside Out 2, which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall and which I think I’m planning to write about. The other films I thought about seeing this week were The Bikeriders, Kinds of Kindness, and MaXXXine, all of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. A Quiet Place: Day One and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are the latest editions in franchises that don’t interest me much which are at the Regal and seem to be getting decent reviews? I’m much more likely to eventually see Sundance darling Thelma (Cinemapolis), which features a pretty incredible cast, or Kill (Regal), an Indian action movie. Your best bets for repertory fare are Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday, and Altered States, which is at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.
Home Video: In preparation for my recent Beautiful City review for Educational Media Reviews Online, I watched or rewatched every film directed by Asghar Farhadi. I’ll be back next week with my five favorites, but in honor of Independence Day, my recommendation this week is his third feature Fireworks Wednesday, which current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students and New York state residents can watch online for free via Projectr. This is a must-see for all Farhadi fans, as like Beautiful City it contains many of his trademark techniques and themes in a not-yet-fully-developed state as well as a great lead performance by Taraneh Alidoosti. It’s a great “observer effect movie,” too, in that her character Roohi’s constantly shifting understanding of the truth of the situation she has landed in is very much affected by the reactions of others to her well-intentioned but impulsive interventions, and it may also change the way you look at About Elly, as it uses the sound of firecrackers in a very similar way as that movie uses of the sound of the ocean.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 