In Theaters: Happy Birthday Cinemapolis! Our local arthouse movie theater is celebrating its 40th with a Free Movie Day on Saturday that includes a screening of a 1916 version of Snow White accompanied by harpist-composer Leslie McMichael and violist Barbara McMichael to kick off the Wharton Studio Museum’s annual Silent Movie Month. That would also be an excellent time to check out 2026 films The History of Concrete, which I’m hearing great things about, and Digger, which I’m not, but am going to see anyway. I didn’t make it to Resident Evil last week, so that’s on my list as well. It and Digger are also at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
The other new release I’m making time for is Levitating, which plays Cornell Cinema Saturday evening. I have varying degrees of interest in If I Go Will They Miss Me (Cinemapolis), Primetime (Cinemapolis and the Regal), and Verity (Regal) as well, but they’ll have to wait. My favorite holdover, meanwhile, is once again The Odyssey.
Special events include two more free Silent Movie Month screenings of Out Here at Cinemapolis and The Great K&A Train Robbery at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art‘s Carriage House Theatre on Sunday and Wednesday respectively; a bunch of free Cine con Cultura 2026 screenings at Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema throughout the week; the return of CatVideoFest to Cornell Cinema this weekend; and a free program of short films from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday called “Poetics of Life and Death.” Finally, noteworthy repertory options include The Shining at the Regal on Friday, Stalker at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and House at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.
Home Video Recommendation: Speaking of silent movies, although the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series box set Silent Naruse is out of print, you can still (and should!) watch the five films it includes on the Criterion Channel with a subscription. Apart from You and No Blood Relation contain exuberant tracking shots which, as I noted on Letterboxd, struck me as “another link in the chain between the ‘unchained camera’ of F.W. Murnau and Karl Freund and the Guru Dutt/V.K. Murthy collaborations Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool” that “represent for me the pinnacle of expressive cinematography.” But if you only have time for one movie, my recommendation is Flunky, Work Hard! Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:
Wife! Be Like a Rose! was THE discovery of last year’s Nitrate Picture Show for me, and while this fellow noun-imperative work by director Mikio Naruse isn’t quite on the same level, it also more than earns its exclamation point with a dazzling display of technique and seamless shift in tone. Highlights include a wife nearly sweeping out the (toy) baby and a picture of the husband she’s mad at with the dustbin, two insurance salesmen endangering a whole neighborhood of children in their distracted zeal to make a sale, and a montage featuring every (visual) trick in the 1931 edition of the book to represent a man’s reeling reaction to an unthinkable tragedy. Watched with my kids coincidentally just minutes after I lectured them about lashing out at each other, which was convenient.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
