What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with After the Hunt at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: Ideally I’d also catch Anemone (which I wasn’t able to make it to last week), Good Boy, Good Fortune before they close, but it’s a busy time of year, so we’ll see. Anemone is at Cinemapolis and the other two are at the Regal. One Battle After Another continues its reign as king of the first run fare I *have* seen for a third consecutive week. It’s at both of those venues. I also enjoyed Eleanor the Great and The Smashing Machine, which are just at Cinemapolis. Special events highlights include free screenings of the films E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Big Payback at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Tuesday respectively and of Marwencol at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. Finally, this week’s noteworthy repertory options include screenings of Spirited Away, which is at the Regal Saturday-Wednesday; a Harold Lloyd double feature of Speedy and Now or Never at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; Meet Me in St. Louis there on Sunday; and Event Horizon at the Regal on Tuesday.
Home Video: I try to always have enough silly projects going to guarantee I’m never bored enough to start contemplating the meaning of life or lack thereof, and recently it occurred to me that I should make sure I’ve actually seen every feature and short I own on physical media. So it was that I found myself systematically working my way through my copy of the Criterion Collection’s By Brakhage anthologies. Old favorites Dog Star Man and Mothlight were every bit as impactful as I remembered and new discovery The Garden of Earthly Delights if anything improves on the latter, but the real revelation for me was The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:
An even more rigorous cinematic rendering of the Holy of Holies than Window Water Baby Moving. This is a humble work, and director Stan Brakhage casts himself as neither High Priest nor the one who tears the temple veil–he is, rather, just the person holding the camera. Extraordinary.
Just in case I’m underselling it, the all-time top ten list I published in August was my first one in probably ten years; I saw Act of Seeing less than a week later and was tempted to immediately make another update to substitute it in for Stalker as my very favorite film of the 1970s! I’m still not *quite* ready to go there two months on, but it’s close, and I’m now thinking about folding this exercise into my annual end of year posts so that I can keep changing my mind back and forth. Anyway, we’re about due for a Criterion Collection flash sale, and if you don’t already own By Brakhage, this one title alone merits adding it to your cart!
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 