What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m a single parent for the next four days while my loving wife is out of town, and I’m planning to take the girls to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie at the Regal Ithaca Mall while she’s away. I’m also going to try to sneak in a screening of A Working Man there during the brief window of time between her return and my departure for a conference in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Also in Theaters: This week’s highlight is definitely the beginning of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival! For the reasons described above, I won’t be able to make it to any of the initial screenings, but some titles that jumped out at me include Little, Big, and Far; Snow Leopard; and Youth (Hard Times), which screen at Cinemapolis tomorrow, Saturday, and Tuesday respectively. Eephus is the first serious contender for my Top Ten Movies of 2025 list, but it’s sadly down to its last two screenings at Cinemapolis today at 5:50 and 8:20pm. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora closes there today as well, and there’s also a screening of Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land at Cornell Cinema tonight at 7pm. After that my top recommendation will become Black Bag, a relationship movie disguised as a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett and shot by Steven Soderbergh (sorry: Peter Andrews) to look like a sleepy child’s view of Christmas lights out a car window. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which plays Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and Before Sunrise plus its sequel Before Sunset, both of which are at Cinemapolis all week.
Home Video: Speaking of Anora, it is now streaming on Hulu! Critic Noel Vera was kind enough to engage me in a back-and-forth in the comments section of his review last November about Ani, the character Mikey Madison won a Best Actress Oscar for portraying, and whether or not it’s believable that she falls so completely for Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya. To him Ani “feels too smart for that; at least as Madison plays her” and thus “the ending, glum as it is, doesn’t quite hit as hard” because the film “still feels every bit the fairy tale.” To me, though, that’s precisely the point. Ani may be clever and tough, but she still has Disney princess dreams that make her vulnerable. I rewatched Cinderella, the specific one she mentions, the other day, and it’s not like Prince Charming does anything to convince his bride that he’d be willing to stand up for her against his father the king if she turned out to be unable or unwilling to have children! Anyway, the mere fact that we spent so much time talking about this is a testament to how successful Madison and writer-director Sean Baker were at creating a memorable movie heroine and a world for her to inhabit.
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 