What I’m Seeing This Week: I plan to close out the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival with the screening of Faust with live musical accompaniment by Cloud Chamber Orchestra on Saturday and The Blue Trail on Sunday. I’m also going to check out local production No Choice during its limited run at Cinemapolis that starts on Monday and am hoping to finally see The Drama there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall as well.
Also in Theaters: You have one last chance to see Alpha, my favorite film of Movie Year 2026 so far, at Cinemapolis this afternoon: don’t miss it! Special events include the Ithaca Short Film Festival at Cinemapolis on Wednesday and five free events at Cornell Cinema: a “Science on Screen” screening of A Good Year this evening, a screening of TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Louis Massiah which also includes free popcorn tomorrow, Tongo Saa on Monday, Microhabitat on Tuesday, and Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire on Wednesday. The FLEFF screening of An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday afternoon is free as well. Finally, repertory highlights include a 3D presentation of House of Wax at Cornell Cinema on Saturday and Mad Max: Fury Road there later the same evening. If you want to make a day of it, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is playing the Regal, where you can also catch National Lampoon’s Vacation tomorrow and Caddyshack on Sunday.
Home Video Recommendation: I watched India Song for the first time a few months ago and I doubt a day has gone by since when I didn’t find myself whistle its titular theme at least once! Here’s what I said about on Letterboxd after my second viewing in February:
In the same way that I’m no longer capable of hearing the Beatles song “For No One” without thinking about James Joyce’s short story The Dead, now that I’ve convinced myself of the affinities between this film and John Cale’s “Paris 1919,” I’m probably doomed to forever think of it as an “adaptation.” But maybe the hypnotic brilliance of Carlos D’Alessio’s score is enough to guarantee something more like a two-way street? This month’s selection for the two-person film club I’m in with my buddy Scott is also a weirdly perfect follow-up to the last couple, featuring as it does interiors with a green-red color scheme that matches the two-strip Technicolor tones of Mystery of the Wax Museum and a similarly estranged relationship between sound and image as Blue.
It is now streaming on the Criterion Channel and is also available on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection in a two-film box set with Baxter, Vera Baxter.
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 