What I’m Seeing This Week: I didn’t make it to I’m Still Here last week, so I’m going to try to catch it at Cinemapolis after work today, plus I hope to see all three of the Oscar-nominated shorts programs screening there and at Cornell Cinema before next Thursday!
Also in Theaters: I’m saving it for next week for scheduling reasons, but No Other Land is actually the new release opening in Ithaca (at Cinemapolis) today that I’m most looking forward to. The best first-run movies now playing locally that I’ve already seen are The Brutalist and Nickel Boys, both of which are at Cinemapolis as well. I also enjoyed Dahomey, which screens at Cornell Cinema tonight; A Complete Unknown, which continues its run at Cinemapolis; Moana 2, which is still going strong at the Regal Ithaca Mall; and two films which close at Cinemapolis today, Memoir of a Snail and The Seed of the Sacred Fig. This week’s special events are highlighted by the return of the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival to Cornell tomorrow and Saturday and a free screening of Benji at Cinemapolis on Sunday as part of their “Family Classics Picture Show” series. Your best bets for repertory fare are two 4k restorations at Cornell Cinema: The Annihilation of Fish screens there tonight, and Happy Together follows it tomorrow.
Home Video: If, like me, you were scared away from last Saturday’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État screening at Cornell Cinema by the weather forecast, fear not! Current Cornell faculty, staff, and students can view this ambitious and stylish found footage documentary about the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on Kanopy thanks to a license paid for by the Library, and everyone else can rent it from a variety of streaming video platforms. It is edited to the sound and rhythm of the jazz musicians who were unwittingly being used as “cultural ambassadors” to the third world by the same American government that likely killed him until they got wise, and although at 150 minutes it runs a bit long, it’s frequently funny, sometimes shocking, and never dull.
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 