In Theaters: We aren’t a Minions household for whatever reason, and the girls are in Canada for the summer anyway, so this is a “meh” week for us for new releases. I didn’t get to Leviticus last week, so seeing it at Cinemapolis is my top priority, and I’m going to try to catch either Ask E. Jean or Girls Like Girls there as well. Obsession, which continues its run there and at the Regal Ithaca Mall, remains my favorite holdover. I also enjoyed Disclosure Day and Toy Story 5, which are at the same two venues and, as I noted on Letterboxd, have basically the same ending. I think it must just be too damn hot for special events, but repertory highlights include 85th anniversary screenings of Citizen Kane at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday and My Own Private Idaho at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.
Home Video Recommendation: The World Cup and Wimbledon are in full swing, the Tour de France is right around the corner, and it’s going to be a while before the buzz of the Knicks finally winning a banner wears off, so I’ve got sports on the brain! That makes now a great time to watch what for my money is one of the most underrated movies of the millennium, Undisputed. As I recently argued on Letterboxd:
Over the past two months, millions of parents around the country let their children stay up late to watch the New York Knicks’ run to their first NBA title in 53 years, creating shared memories they will cherish for the rest of their lives. O.G. Anunoby’s tip-in in Game 4 and highlights from Jalen Brunson’s performance for the ages in Game 5 will be celebrated and replayed not just by fans of the team, but all lovers of the sport. The championship brought a city together. It also resulted in 63 arrests, Spurs fans being assaulted, and the destruction of five school buses.
Undisputed is one of the great sports movies because it’s laser-focused on the fight between Ving Rhames’ George “Iceman” Chambers, a world heavyweight champion recently fallen from the mountaintop of fame and fortune, and Wesley Snipes’ Monroe Hutchen, a could-have-been-a-contender convicted of murder in his prime and undefeated after ten years of underground prison bouts, not as the climax of a story but as an object of inquiry in its own right. The beauty of boxing, as Peter Falk’s aging Cosa Nostra connoisseur says, lies in its simplicity: “two guys fighting to the finish but just one guy wins because he’s the better man and that’s what the goddamn sport is about.” That’s what all sports are about, even if parasites and poets create spectacles, rackets, and morality plays around them.
Characters are introduced by the crime they committed first, then their name, because what matters most for the purposes of this narrative is how they got here. Lloyd Ahern’s camera is restless. It searches for truth in the main story, archival footage of old fights, flashbacks to the one time Hutchen lost control, and the face of the woman who has accused Chambers of rape. But it doesn’t tell us what it finds because this is no The Jericho Mile or The Longest Yard. Those are both fine movies, but they’re about something else. Undisputed is about a boxing match between two men who fight to the finish according to the London Prize Ring Rules. Just one guy wins because he’s the better man. Neither of them appears to learn anything. And that’s it. Whatever else we come away with is something we brought with us.
You can stream Undisputed on Paramount+ with a subscription or rent it from a variety of other platforms, and it’s also available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
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 