What I’m Seeing This Week: We rented a theater at Cinemapolis for a private screening of my oldest’s favorite movie The Mitchells vs. the Machines for her ninth birthday party, which we’re all pretty excited about! I’m planning to see Gladiator II there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall this week as well.
Also in Theaters: I’d be seeing Flow, which opens at the Regal tonight and Cinemapolis tomorrow, if I wasn’t saving it for next week when it will be eligible to be my Family (née Friday) Movie Night selection. In the meantime, my favorite new film now playing Ithaca remains Anora, which is at Cinemapolis, and I enjoyed A Real Pain (Cinemapolis), Conclave (Cinemapolis), and The Wild Robot (Regal) as well. Upcoming special events include the free student-led Hilltop Film Festival of Diversity and Inclusion screening at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Cornell Cinema‘s traditional end-of-semester “mystery screening” of a 35mm film print tonight. They’ll be back with their spring lineup in January. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is the Studio Ghibli classic My Neighbor Totoro, which is at the Regal Saturday through Wednesday.
Home Video: With no disrespect to winner Encanto, The Mitchells vs. the Machines was easily my favorite nominee for the 2022 Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, so you really should check it out on Netflix if you haven’t already! Our girls, who have never known a world without YouTube, dig its clever use of a meme aesthetic, while my loving wife and I appreciate the way it finds meaningful things to say about parenting without devolving into sappiness, and we all love Beck Bennett and Fred Armisen voicing malfunctioning robots with the “human names” of Eric and Deborah . . . bot . . . 5000.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 