What I’m Seeing This Week: I didn’t make it to The Mastermind at Cinemapolis last week, so that’s my top priority. I’m hoping to catch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which opens there tomorrow, as well.
Also in Theaters: One Battle After Another, which closes at the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight but remains at Cinemapolis at least through next Thursday, contains some of the most exhilarating moments of Movie Year 2025. I think I *might* prefer Blue Moon, which also continues its run at Cinemapolis, overall, though. Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:
Ethan Hawke plays Lorenz Hart as a man so drunk with beauty wherever he finds it that when he reaches a pass where his dignity is the most valuable thing he has left in the world, he offers it up with a sacrifice without hesitation. Which: I’ve always loved John Leguizamo’s Toulouse-Lautrec from Moulin Rouge! but never thought he could carry an entire movie by himself. And indeed *that* character probably couldn’t, but this one is buttressed by a brilliantly witty screenplay, great supporting cast, and the origin story for a beloved children’s literature character. Lacks Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere‘s (an inevitable comparison considering that they’re sharing theater marquee space across the country right now) insistence that we must feel gratitude and pity for the artist in equal measure, which is to its credit.
In addition to the movies listed above, I’d like to see Good Fortune and Bugonia before they close, too, but I’ll be out of town most of next week, so I don’t know if it’s going to happen. The former is at the Regal and the latter is both there and at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events include “Sing-Along” screenings of KPop Demon Hunters at the Regal Friday through Sunday, a screening of the film Framing Ménerbes followed by a “talkback” with director Daniel Gwirtzman at Cinemapolis on Sunday at 3pm, and a program of three experimental films directed by women called “At Home/Far Away” at Cornell Cinema that day at 5:30pm. Finally, repertory highlights include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, Halloween at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, Singin’ in the Rain there on Sunday, and Clue at Cinemapolis on Monday.
Home Video: I’ve been trying to mix the greatest films I’ve never seen before according to the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll in with all the scary season fare I’ve been enjoying lately. One title that checked both boxes was Possession, which I recently watched for the first time ever on the Criterion Channel. Despite the presence of Sam Neill, it took me a second viewing to come around to it, but now that I have, I can definitely see it continuing to grow in my estimation. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:
“Live every day like it’s your last one on earth,” they say. But what if people you want to spend it with are doing the same but have different priorities, and your actions and/or theirs appear to be somehow responsible for bringing it about? Or: H.P. Lovecraft updated for the nuclear age with terrific acting and maybe the best rendering of a collapsing marriage I’ve ever encountered outside of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road. Isabelle Adjani’s heels in her opening scenes are one of cinema’s great costume design decisions.
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 