What I’m Seeing This Week: My loving wife’s side of the family is in town until Saturday, then we’re off to Virginia to spend second Christmas with mine, but I’m hoping to catch Marty Supreme at the Regal Harrisonburg during our travels or at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall after we get back. I might try to see Song Sung Blue at one of those theaters as well.
Also in Theaters: I’m still processing The Secret Agent, but it’s definitely my favorite of the new releases now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I also enjoyed Hamnet and Wake Up Dead Men: A Knives Out Mystery. All three of these films continue their runs at Cinemapolis. At this point I’m pretty sure we’re waiting for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, Wicked: For Good, and Zootopia 2 to become available via streaming video, and while director James Cameron presumably wants you to see Avatar: Fire and Ash on the biggest screen possible, the best thing about it is Oona Chaplin’s performance, so I think it’s safe to wait on that one as well. I am still hoping to see The Housemaid before it closes, though. All five of these films are at the Regal. There understandably isn’t much happening this week on the special events front, but noteworthy repertory options include personal holiday favorites It’s a Wonderful Life, Gremlins, and Daddy’s Home 2 at the Regal today, tomorrow, and Monday respectively.
Home Video Recommendation: I was planning to wait until New Year’s Day to talk about Mystery of the Wax Museum because that’s when a lot of the main action takes place, but I’m moving it up a week because it it disappears from HBO Max on Wednesday. There is a green and red Christmas tree that shows off the color separations of two-strip Technicolor:
Which are admittedly done greater justice by the wardrobes of Glenda Farrell and Fay Wray:
But while the post-holiday hungover world of this movie is positively drenched in these hues, here they represent envy and embalming fluid, not holly and mistletoe. It’s the ending that really fascinates me, though, as I recently noted on Letterboxd. That review contains spoilers, so I won’t copy-and-paste it into this post, but leave me a comment if you do decide to watch Mystery of the Wax Museum on my recommendation and let me know what you think!
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 