What I’m Seeing This Week: The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, one of the highlights of Ithaca’s movie calendar, starts tomorrow! Read my interview with Co-Directors Andrew Utterson and Michael Richardson, then join me at Cinemapolis for the opening night screenings of Clash of Wolves (which will be accompanied by live music by Li’l Anne and Hot Cayenne) and Silent Friend. I’m also planning to see The Love That Remains and The Falling Sky at FLEFF on Saturday and Sunday respectively, plus I’m chaperoning a matinee outing to the Regal Ithaca Mall for Hoppers this weekend and hoping to catch Alpha at Cinemapolis later in the week.
Also in Theaters: My top new movie recommendation remains Sirât, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. Additional special events include a free screening of Remaining Native at Cornell Cinema this evening followed by a Q&A with director Paige Bethmann. Noteworthy repertory options include Bigger Than Life and Mad Max: Fury Road at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, No Country for Old Men at the Regal on Sunday, and On the Waterfront there on Monday. Finally, since you may be wondering, I have seen Project Hail Mary, which continues its runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, and it’s fine.
Home Video Recommendation: An early highlight of Movie Year 2026 was the program of experimental shorts by late Binghamton University professor Tomonari Nishikawa at Cornell Cinema last week which was introduced by his wife Miki and filmmaker colleague Sofia Theodore-Pierce. All seven films we saw were terrific and collectively created a beautiful progression. The clear highlight for me, though, was Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke, which like the other six is available on Vimeo. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd after the screening:
For a long time I misremembered Kenneth Anger’s Eaux d’artifice as being about fireworks for some reason instead of fountains. *This* is something like the film that existed in my mind all those years, which I think explains the intense feeling of déjà vu I experienced while watching it. Friend Brian Darr, who saw it many months before I did, notes in his Letterboxd review that “creating an optical soundtrack out of the explosive patterns” was one ingenious way Nishikawa found to make fireworks footage interesting; this is also the first time I can remember ever paying as much attention to the smoke they generate as their light, and the introduction of a trip-to-the half moon created a host of other associations for me. A stunner.
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 