What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie at Cinemapolis and Scarlet at the Regal Ithaca Mall. Other new movies at the Regal that I’d ideally like to see before they close include Crime 101; Dracula; Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die; and Wuthering Heights, which is also at Cinemapolis. There’s no way I can get to all of them, though, and it’s going to be next week before I catch any.
Also in Theaters: You have one last chance to see Magellan, my favorite new film now playing Ithaca, on the big screen at Cinemapolis today at 5pm! Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:
Just as the 28 Years Later trilogy may well turn out to be the closest thing we ever get to a movie adaptation of one of my favorite science fiction novels, this film is a beautiful cinematic rendition of the best idea from another, Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. That book postulates that if just one or two things had gone differently, we could easily be living in a world where Mesoamericans “discovered” and subjugated Europe instead of vice versa; in Magellan, a trick played on Gael García Bernal’s titular conquistador by Ronnie Lazaro’s Raja Humabon and a late shot of the former in a metal carapace looking like nothing so much as a crab ready for the boil establish that this film’s civilizations were also on much more even terms than Western history books typically like to acknowledge. Another way I could have gone with this was “Dead Man with boats instead of trains.”
No Other Choice, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, will almost certainly make my Movie Year 2025 top ten list as well, and I also enjoyed Hamnet and Send Help, both of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal.
Special events highlights include a free screening of The Outrun at Cornell Cinema tonight which also includes free popcorn, a free “Family Classics Picture Show” presentation of A Night at the Opera at Cinemapolis on Sunday, and a free screening of Memories of Love Returned at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday featuring an appearance by director Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include a “Galentine’s Day” double feature of All That Heaven Allows and Letter from an Unknown Woman at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, screenings of Hollywood classics Casablanca and Roman Holiday at the Regal on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and 40th anniversary presentations of Pretty in Pink there Saturday-Monday.
Home Video Recommendation: The New York Times recently published a helpful explainer on why, as two-time gold medalist Ted Ligety puts it, “ski racing is a sport where the favorites often don’t win.” It’s a great compliment to the realism of my second-ever “Drink & a Movie” selection Downhill Racer that the film is a great illustration of a number of its main points. As I said four years ago while the Beijing Games were in full swing, it’s also a great movie to watch right now when many of us are glued to NBC’s Olympics coverage because “Downhill Racer‘s subject isn’t just skiing or sports in general, but rather how sport is mediated through television.” That said, for as modern and ahead of its time as it appears in some ways, recent reporting by The Athletic *does* indicate that unlike Robert Redford’s Dave Chappellet, today’s American athletes probably know what a bidet is:
Downhill Racer is now streaming on Prime Video with a subscription and is also available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
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 