What I’m Seeing This Week: Cornell Cinema is starting off their spring lineup with a bang and I’m exited to see the new 35mm print of 8½ that they’re screening on Friday and Sunday! I’m planning to catch The Testament of Ann Lee at Cinemapolis as well. Finally, while I’m also eager to see Orwell: 2+2=5, which plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday, I’m going to wait until it returns next Thursday.
Also in Theaters: With the unveiling of this year’s Oscar nominees later this morning, four contenders for my Movie Year 2025 list are now playing Ithaca: No Other Choice continues its run at Cinemapolis, One Battle After Another and Sinners have returned to the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Marty Supreme is at both. You can’t go wrong with any of them, but my *top* recommendation is No Other Choice, one of the most thoughtful and darkly hilarious takes on the A.I. revolution we’re living through I’ve seen to date. Meanwhile, Movie Year 2026 is off to a good start with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, part two of a mashup-up between Green Day’s album American Idiot and Walter M. Miller Jr.’s novel A Canticle for Liebowitz that I’m beginning to think MIGHT just be a pop culture near-masterpiece–ask me again after I’ve gotten a chance to rewatch the first 28 Years Later film! I also enjoyed Father Mother Sister Brother, which continues its run at Cinemapolis; ’70s throwback Dead Man’s Wire, which you can see at the Regal; and Hamnet, which is at both. I should probably also mention that It Was Just an Accident is playing Cornell Cinema tonight because I seem to be an outlier in not thinking it is one of the best movies of the year (even though I do agree that it’s an important work and that its very existence represents a monumental achievement considering the circumstances under which it was made and current events). This week’s special events highlight is the return of the Ithaca Underground Music Video Festival to Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include the etymologically essential Gaslight at Cornell Cinema this evening, The Matrix at the Regal on Sunday, and the “final cut” version of Blade Runner there on Wednesday.
Home Video Recommendation: I often spend much of the last two weeks of each month watching films that are about to disappear from the Criterion Channel. Of the titles that expire on January 31, the clear cream of the crop is The Plot Against Harry. Here’s how I recently described it on Letterboxd:
Beautifully observed dispatch from the amorphous, arbitrary borderlands between disreputable and respected in Jewish New York City at the turn of the 1970s with a central message as relevant today as it was fifty-five years ago: don’t keep your boudoir photos in a ground-level drawer in the living room if you have kids!
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 