What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with The Baltimorons at Cinemapolis and maybe Him at the Regal Ithaca Mall depending on what kind of reviews it gets.
Also in Theaters: I’m not crazy about any of the first run fare playing Ithaca right now that I’ve already seen. Luckily, there’s plenty happening on the special events and repertory fronts! One highlight in both categories are the screenings of 35mm prints of Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Sunday respectively. There are also three free movies there this week: Memories of a Burning Body on Saturday, Cocote on Monday, and El Norte on Wednesday. There are quite a few free events at Cinemapolis as well, including the final four screenings in the third annual Reproductive Rights Film Festival and a “Family Classics Picture Show” presentation of The Wizard of Oz on Sunday, along with a concert film featuring local band Microbes Mostly on Tuesday. Finally, this week’s repertory offerings at the Regal include Do the Right Thing tonight, Psycho tomorrow, A Clockwork Orange on Sunday, and Casablanca on Wednesday, while Dead Man plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday.
Home Video: The Phoenician Scheme, which is now streaming on Peacock, isn’t quite a *lock* to make my year-end Top Ten list, but it was sitting pretty in third place at the halfway point. While Ballerina might pass it on a rewatch, nothing I’ve seen since then has come close. I talked about those two films in the context of one another on Letterboxd in June:
Playing alongside Ballerina in multiplexes nation wide as it is, the main character of director Wes Anderson’s sometimes shockingly (for him) graphically violent new film struck me as the Baba Yaga of mid-20th century industrialism: undefeated, but not indestructible, as demonstrated by the visibly increasing wear and tear on his body, only he’s trying to stay *in* the game, not get out of it. Also as in the World of John Wick, plot is secondary–there to set pieces, here to the pieces which comprise the sets, including a series of artworks on loan to the production called out in the end credits. Anchored by masterfully understated performances by Benicio Del Toro and Mia Threapleton in the lead roles and a brilliantly exaggerated supporting turn by Michael Cera. Alexander Desplat’s Stravinsky-inspired score is my favorite of Movie Year 2025.
But like I said after my second viewing, the thing I find most interesting about it is that it’s “a 2025 movie set in 1950 that treats that era’s titans of business like the European royal families of the first half of the 20th century.”
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 