What I’m Seeing This Week: For reasons we’re beginning to question as exhaustion sets in, my loving wife and I recently decided to finally immerse ourselves in the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’d both previously skipped aside from a handful of titles each. Although we’re still a few films shy of caught up, we are nonetheless planning a date night outing to the Regal Ithaca Mall to see The Fantastic Four: First Steps. I’m also hoping to catch Sorry, Baby at Cinemapolis.
Also in Theaters: The Phoenician Scheme is enjoying one final day as my favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen before it closes at Cinemapolis and passes that torch to Eddington, a beautifully-shot (by Darius Khondji) revisionist history of the United States during the pandemic if everyone really was as terrible as the people who disagreed with them on issues like masking said they were. It’s at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Superman, which is at the same two theaters. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is In the Mood for Love, which continues its run at Cinemapolis.
Home Video: I would take Superman over the three Guardians of the Galaxy films James Gunn directed for Marvel in part because of what I called (to “coin a Norman phrase”) its “Superman-tricity” on Letterboxd:
The kryptonite (if you will) of many MCU movies is that the bad guy is portrayed as being COMPLETELY UNSTOPPABLE . . . until the plot requires them to be stopped by whomever our hero happens to be this month. Here Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luther has spent the better part of his life focused on the single-minded goal of defeating this one guy, so when he creates a “pocket universe” to imprison his enemy in, it bolsters his resume without straining credibility since we aren’t also being asked to believe that he’s the greatest threat to intelligent life as we know it since, you know, the last one.
It follows a very similar formula otherwise, though, and if you too need a break from superhero movies, you’d therefore be far better served by Out of the Fog, which I recently watched on the Criterion Channel after new Ithaca resident (!) Zach Campbell recommended it on X, and Rancho Notorious, which is available on HBO Max. The former is an atmospheric ode to the supporting actor featuring John Qualen, Thomas Mitchell, Leo Gorcey, and Eddie Albert among others that was alert to the symptoms of fascism in the American body politic as far back as 1941, but whose message is “the Lord helps those who help themselves”–no assistance from the “first Avenger” required! Meanwhile, while the latter’s protagonist Vern Haskel (Arthur Kennedy) is every bit as much “consumed by vengeance” as his counterparts in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, director Fritz Lang pointedly declines to provide any compelling evidence that either he or society is worse off when he chooses the path of “hate, murder, and revenge” as Ken Darby’s lyrics to the memorable opening credits song “Legend of Chuck-A-Luck” has it.
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 