What I’m Seeing This Week: There are tons of movies I want to see in local theaters right now! I’m definitely hoping to catch Pavements before it closes at Cinemapolis today and The Phoenician Scheme and maybe Materialists there or the Regal Ithaca Mall later in the week as well.
Also in Theaters: In addition to the titles above, I’m also intrigued by The Life of Chuck, which opens at the Regal today and Cinemapolis tomorrow. Sticking just to stuff I’ve already seen, my favorite among the first-run fare is Ballerina, a spinoff contemporaneous with the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum that impressed me with colorful, imaginative action sequences that aren’t merely ornamental, but also perform the load-bearing function of advancing character development. I also enjoyed Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a satisfying farewell to a favorite franchise which makes up for a surfeit of self-aggrandizing fluff with an underwater set piece and bi-plane stunt that can stand toe-to-toe with anything in the previous seven films, and the entertaining dark bromance comedy Friendship, which continue their runs at the Regal and Cinemapolis respectively. Fun repertory options include Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which you can see for free at Cinemapolis on Sunday as they close out this season of their “Family Classics Picture Show,” and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which plays the Regal on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Finally, special events highlights include a screening of Marcella at Cinemapolis on Monday followed by a Q&A with director Peter Miller and one of Lost Nation there on Wednesday followed by a Q&A with writer/director Jay Craven and musical score producers Judy Hyman and Jeff Claus.
Home Video: I’m still working on my dispatch from this year’s Nitrate Picture Show. In the meantime, I noticed that Land of the Pharaohs, which as a lover of costume drams and procedurals has always been a favorite of mine, is streaming on Watch TCM until June 29. Upon revisiting it I realized that Jack Hawkins’s Pharaoh Khufu is pretty much exactly who Jorge Salcedo’s José Moran from NPS 2025 selection Hardly a Criminal wants to be–each is even described by a close associate in terms of a virtually identical story about a time when they were greedy in their youth! As such it isn’t a surprise that Moran similarly is so consumed by fears of losing the money he is finally able to accumulate during the course of the movie that he is unable to ever enjoy it. Pharaohs is also basically the perfect CinemaScope movie as famously defined by Fritz Lang in Contempt since it’s essentially a slow build epic funeral for snakes rendered as Orientalist poetry. If none of that sounds like your cup of tea, watch the first few minutes anyway and drink in the site of columns of thousands of real-life human extras receding into the distance: this is one case where it is completely accurate to observe that they really don’t make ’em like they used to!
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 