What I’m Seeing This Week: I am excited to finally see All We Imagine as Light, the first film from India to compete in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years, at Cinemapolis!
Also in Theaters: Flow and Anora, which conclude their respective runs at Cinemapolis this week, are both contenders for the back half of my Movie Year 2024 top ten list, so those are definitely my top new film recommendations. I also enjoyed A Real Pain, which is also playing Cinemapolis just until the end of the week, as is Queer, which it sadly looks like I’m going to miss. All the blockbusters dominating local screens that I’ve seen deliver more or less what their previews and posters promise, so if you *think* you’d like them, you’re probably right: in (very) approximate order of preference, that’s Gladiator II (the Regal Ithaca Mall), Moana 2 (Regal), Wicked (Cinemapolis + Regal), and Red One (Regal). There are no repertory screenings of note this week, but there are a whole bunch of other movies opening at both Cinemapolis and the Regal on Tuesday or Wednesday that I’m eager to see, including Babygirl, A Complete Unknown, and Nosferatu.
Home Video: If you missed The Night of the Hunter when it played Cinemapolis last month as part of their “Noirvember” series, fear not: it’s screening on the Criterion Channel until the end of the year! This retelling of the fable of the reed and the oak features velvety black and white cinematography by Stanley Cortez that opens with disembodied heads on a starscape reminiscent of October, 2023 Drink & a Movie selection The Very Eye of Night and contains two of cinema’s most indelible images, a dead woman’s hair slow dancing with underwater reeds at the bottom of the river and knuckles tattooed with the words “love” and “hate.” With an ending set on Christmas morning, it’s also a great example of what I call a “holiday mixtape movie” in that it’s a terrifically terrifying change of pace from the wonderful, but tonally similar seasonal favorites that many of us spend the month of December watching.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 