What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m looking forward to the screening of Orwell 2+2=5 at Cornell Cinema this evening and am also planning to catch Best Animated Feature Film Oscar nominee Arco at Cinemapolis, and Send Help either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: You can currently see three films likely to make my Movie Year 2025 top ten list on the big screen locally! I’ve already written about No Other Choice, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, and Marty Supreme, which is there and at the Regal. I was also impressed by The Testament of Ann Lee, a visually and sonically inventive big swing anchored by a powerful lead performance by Amanda Seyfried that succeeds in translating the appeal of the Shaker movement her title character founded into contemporary terms–just switch celibacy out for polyamory and either veganism or temperance and their Niskayuna settlement starts to look like an 18th-century precursor to hippie communes and Silicon Valley. It’s at Cinemapolis, where you have two final chances to see my first favorite film of Movie Year 2026 as well, the surprisingly contemplative follow-up to this week’s home video recommendation (see below) 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is also at the Regal. Noteworthy special events include part two of the Ithaca Underground Music Video Festival at Cinemapolis tonight and free screenings of the films Wisdom of Happiness on Sunday at Cinemapolis and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat on Monday at Cornell Cinema. Finally, a solid week for repertory fare is highlighted by screenings of Total Recall at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, The Godfather Part II at the Regal on Saturday, and Groundhog Day at the Regal on Monday. The Lego Movie, which recently inspired me to post some musings on film criticism, is there in 3D tomorrow through Wednesday, too.
Home Video Recommendation: Here’s what I said on Letterboxd after I saw 28 Years Later at the Regal in July:
Don’t wanna be a post-zombie apocalypse quarantine British idiot. Curious to see where the Sympathy for the Infected plotline goes. Is this as close as anyone has come yet to making a movie version of A Canticle for Leibowitz?
Sentence #1 was originally intended as a jokey reference to Green Day’s “punk rock opera” American Idiot, but The Bone Temple actually does develop Jack O’Connell’s character into something very much like a evil St. Jimmy and his battle with Ralph Fiennes’ orange-skinned anti-Trump Dr. Ian Kelson for the soul of Alfie Williams’ Spike more or less follows the contours of the album’s plot. But while 28 Years Later arguably shares some of the same flaws that Robert Christgau pointed out two decades ago, “there’s no economics, no race, hardly any compassion” reads more as an inventory of facts than a critique when it’s referring to a story that begins with the end of the world. Which: this trilogy definitely *is* shaping up to be as close to an adaptation of Walter M. Miller Jr.’s classic sci fi novel A Canticle for Liebowitz, one of my favorites, that we may ever get! The first installment also features a terrific score by Young Fathers that like Fiennes’ performance should have been nominated for an Oscar and a number of unforgettably gorgeous-harrowing scenes like a race across a partially-submerged causeway under the aurora borealis. It is now streaming on Netflix and is also available on both Blu-ray and DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
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 