What I’m Seeing This Week: I audibled to She Rides Shotgun last week on Bilge Ebiri’s recommendation after I realized it was going to close at the Regal Ithaca Mall after just one week, so Together (which continues its run there and at Cinemapolis) remains first up on my list. I’m also planning to catch The Naked Gun at the Regal.
Also in Theaters: I want to see Weapons, which is opening at Cinemapolis and the Regal, before it closes as well. The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Sketch, which continues its run at the Regal. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:
I can’t wait to watch this again with my kids, who are approximately the same ages as Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack Wyatt (Kue Lawrence) and like them possessed of a wealth of kindness, prodigious artistic talent (that they didn’t get from their parents, by the way: genetics are weird), and disconcertingly advanced vocabularies–my seven-year-old actually even trotted out “that tracks!” the other day. Anyway, Sketch represents an even more successful attempt to create a modern classic for the offspring of us children of the 80s to grow up with than Movie Year 2025’s The Legend of Ochi, which to be clear I also liked! Content and form are better married here, though–it’s going to scare the girls without giving them nightmares, and if it isn’t exactly blazing new trails with its moral compass, well, neither is my parenting style.
I also enjoyed Eddington, which is at Cinemapolis; The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is at the Regal; and Superman, which is at both. And She Rides Shotgun, which as Ebiri notes features terrific lead performances by Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger and has one final showtime at the Regal at 11:05 this morning. There don’t appear to be any noteworthy special events this week, but your best bet for repertory fare is the delectable Big Night, which stars legendary trencherman Stanley Tucci and screens Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their “Food on Film” August staff picks series.
Home Video: Rewatch season has begun! Here’s what I posted to Letterboxd after I saw Eephus, which is now available on Mubi with a subscription, for the first time at Cinemapolis in March:
Fictional chronicle of the last baseball game ever played on an unnamed Massachusetts (it was shot in Douglas) town’s Soldier Field which coyly hints at veering off into the mythology of W.P. Kinsella’s novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy but wisely never does because it doesn’t need to: every hit, out, and other component part of a baseball game at any level is a “Glory Days” conflation of past, present, and future waiting to happen. Some stories that rattled through my head included: getting tossed out of a Little League game by my father the umpire for arguing a called third strike a tad too vociferously, keeping score for his church league softball team, and most recently running out onto my back porch like a madman and screaming into the Ithaca, NY night “Pete did it!” during Game 3 of last year’s NL Wild Card round. Fun apropos fact: the building I took most of my film studies classes in at the University of Pittsburgh was built on the spot of Forbes Field and you can stand on its home plate to this day! Humorous not because it’s a comedy, but because its characters are, and every bit as attuned to the fascinating things athletes do when no one is looking as Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. First serious contender to top my Top Ten Movies of 2025 list.
After a second viewing I’m now thinking it might even be the single best film ever made about baseball, so yeah: this is one clubhouse leader that’s going to be hard to beat!
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 