What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, which plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and I’m Still Here, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow.
Also in Theaters: My favorite new release now playing Ithaca is once again All We Imagine as Light, which screens at Cornell Cinema tonight. The Brutalist, which is at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Nickel Boys, which is at Cinemapolis, are contenders for my Movie Year 2024 top ten list too, and I also enjoyed A Complete Unknown (Cinemapolis + the Regal), Memoir of a Snail (Cinemapolis), Nosferatu (Cinemapolis + the Regal), and The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Cinemapolis). Noteworthy special events include free screenings of I Didn’t See You There (which is directed by Reid Davenport, whose new film Life After just debuted at Sundance to much acclaim) and Oppenheimer at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively and a screening of Bisbee ’17 followed by a conversation with director Robert Greene there on Monday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are The Third Man, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which play Cornell Cinema Friday and Sunday respectively. You can also see Nosferatu the Vampyre there tonight.
Home Video: Speaking of my top ten list, I now know for sure that Evil Does Not Exist, which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, will be on it following a second viewing. Oft-described as an eco-fable or -parable, it is more broadly about the concept of balance: although the bare-bones plot revolves around a “glamping” concern descending on a rural farming community, the gutshot deer at the beginning of the film which was dead before they ever arrived demonstrates that the one at the end doesn’t have anything to do with it directly. Playmode (what a great awful name!) employee Takahashi (Ryûji Kosaka) is instead standing next to Hitoshi Omika’s Takumi when they encounter it because he has gotten absurdly carried away with an idea of who he *could* be, which only serves to reveal how little he knows about the man he actually is and the world he’s trying to shoehorn himself into. Evil Does (Not) Exist (which is how the font coloring of the title card suggests it maybe should be written) also features a satisfyingly crisp winter color palette and a frustrating community feedback meeting that I have been on both sides of the table of at least a hundred times in my life.
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 