What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Highest 2 Lowest at Cinemapolis and Weapons either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen remains Sketch, which continues its run at the Regal. I also got a kick out of how much fun Together has with relationship cliches that are quite horrifying when literalized and enjoyed The Naked Gun, a throwback to the immature, laugh-a-minute staples of the sleepovers I attended as a child in the 80s and early 90s that they should totally release on VHS: I’d buy a copy! The former is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, while the latter is just at the Regal. Other new releases I’m happy to endorse if they sound interesting to you include Eddington (Cinemapolis), Superman (Cinemapolis & the Regal), and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Regal). It’s another quiet week on the special events and repertory fronts, but things will pick up soon when Cornell Cinema kicks off their Fall 2025 season, so get your All-Access pass today! At just $25 (for grad students) to $40 (general public), it’s the local arts scene’s absolute best value in the opinion of this cinephile. In the meantime, two short documentaries directed by Les Blank will screen at Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their “Food on Film” staff picks series: Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking and Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers.
Home Video: Movie Year 2025 has been just fine so far! I’ve definitely seen at least five Top Ten-worthy films, and that’s all you can really ask for at the halfway point. The highlight of the past six months for me has been the older fare I watched for the first time and absolutely loved, though. One recent example is The Tall Target, which is available on Watch TCM until September 5 and is representative of what is classically regarded as extremely fertile ground for new discoveries: movies by great directors that aren’t typically talked about as their best work. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:
Made in 1951, Anthony Mann directs Dick Powell in a taut thriller that would have done Alfred Hitchcock proud as Detective John Kennedy, who’s trying to save President-elect Lincoln from assassination in 1861, but the film (most of which is set on a train) looks and sounds like something from the 1960s. Yet another example of how the canon is still at least a century or so away from being fully calibrated, because: !
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 