What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with One to One: John and Yoko, which opens at Cinemapolis today, and Sinners, which also begins a theatrical run today there at and at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: I’d be prioritizing The Ugly Stepsister, which I heard intriguing things about out of Sundance, but it’s only playing the Regal and I’m without a car while the rest of the family spends spring break in Canada. Hopefully it will run for more than a week! The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Drop, an extended metaphor for what it must feel like to re-enter the dating pool as a single parent in 2025, which continues its run at the Regal. I hesitate to say I “enjoyed” the brutal and intense Iraq War film Warfare, which is there and at Cinemapolis, but it’s definitely worth seeing if you have opinions about that conflict or any other one. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of Santo vs. the Vampire Women, The Dybbuk, and Remembering Gene Wilder at Cornell Cinema on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday respectively, and of The Empty Chair at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are the screenings of Vengeance Is Mine, Parasite, and Star Wars: A New Hope at Cornell Cinema tonight, on Saturday, and on Sunday respectively. A New Hope might actually be the movie I’ve seen in theaters more times than any other, now that I think of it, and if you’re of my generation (X or Y depending on how you count) you really owe yourself the pleasure if you’ve never had it.
Home Video: I watched the biopic Better Man on Paramount+ (which I get for free through Spectrum) as part of my tantalizingly close to successful campaign to see very film nominated for one of this year’s Oscars (I caught 48/49) even though I honestly somehow didn’t know subject Robbie Williams as anything other than the fella who covered “Beyond the Sea” for the end credits of Finding Nemo and enjoyed it enough to go back and listen to everything he ever recorded on Spotify. I revisited it the other day and I’m happy to report that when you’re actually familiar with the songs, the way they’re presented in the film makes them even more interesting, especially the Baz Luhrmann-esque staging of “She’s the One,” acoustic retelling of the origins of “Something Beautiful,” and revisionist history of “Rock DJ” as a Take That track that Williams was actually permitted to write lyrics for. I still can’t (and probably never will be) recreate the experience longtime fans presumably had of seeing a familiar *face* in their lives replaced by that of a CGI chimpanzee, but even this works for me as speculation about where the trail blazed by last year’s documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin might lead in the future.
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 