In Theaters: My Loving Wife and I are driving more than 90 minutes to the Cinemark Tinseltown Rochester and IMAX to see The Odyssey on the biggest screen possible, so yes: that’s this week’s biggest new release! It opens locally at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall today. I’m looking forward to seeing Maddie’s Secret at Cinemapolis as well.
But I’m burying the lede (to borrow a joke from the movie I’m about to mention): Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass has finally ended Obsession‘s two-month-long reign of horror as my most highly recommended holdover! Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:
30 years ago David Wain and The State taught some of us that the first commandment of comedy is that “anything that isn’t true is funny.” Which: if you don’t just get it, there’s no loose stack of documents in the world big enough to make you understand. Anyway, it’s good to see so much of the old gang back together again still breathing new life into this creed! Favorite The Wizard of Oz riff since Rookie of the Year, and “Make U Sick” for Best Original Song Oscar, Non-Paul Rudd Category!
It remains at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, as does Obsession. I also enjoyed The Invite, which as I quipped on Letterboxd could also be titled Who’s Afraid of Veruca Salt? <PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER> and Disclosure Day, which continue their respective runs at the same two theaters, and Toy Story 5, which is just at the Regal. Finally, a quiet week on the special events/repertory front is highlighted by a screening of Buena Vista Social Club at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.
Home Video Recommendation: By the Bluest of Seas is a great film to pair with The Odyssey because it features one my favorite cinematic Penelopes, Yelena Kuzmina’s radiant collective farm leader Maria:
Who memorably shows her disapproval of Nikolay Kryuchkov’s mimbo Alyosha playing hooky to buy her a pearl necklace in a terrific slow-motion sequence I posted about last week. Bluest also opens with a series of seascapes that according to Nicole Brenez gave French film producer Dominique Païni an erection, which: gross! But while that may be taking things too far, they are pretty spectacular:
Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to this movie on Kanopy via a license paid for by the Library, and you might as well! If you have an all regions DVD player, you can also purchase it from a couple different foreign labels on Amazon and elsewhere.
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 
