In Theaters: While I’m very curious about You Can See Everything, which opens at Cinemapolis tonight, this week is noteworthy first and foremost for its embarrassment of repertory riches. My top priority is the free screening of a 35mm print of Egyptian auteur Youssef Chahine’s Destiny at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. You can see my April, 2022 “Drink & a Movie” selection The Hole there on 35mm as well on Saturday. I’m definitely also going to catch The Double Life of Véronique at Cornell Cinema tonight or on Saturday, and while I unfortunately won’t be at the screening of Malombra accompanied by a live score by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton there on Sunday, it looks like a cool event. Finally, a new restoration of The Devils is at Cinemapolis all week.
The best new releases I’ve already seen are Digger and NAZA, which continue their runs at the Regal Ithaca Mall and Cinemapolis respectively. Here’s what I recently said about the latter on Letterboxd:
Begins, like Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989, on a rooftop, which underscores how tragically un-prophetic that film’s final word “enough!” has proven to be. With disquieting, implacable calmness, NAZA uses the words of its 24 Israeli soldier and intelligence officer interview subjects (who speak from the literal shadows with altered voices to preserve their anonymity) to assert without saying so outright that listening to them is the equivalent of hearing directly from Nazis carrying out the Holocaust while it was still in progress. By juxtaposing their testimony with hypnotic footage of Tel Aviv at night, the film also provocatively suggests that the people of that city may one day reap what their country is sowing. But even if you and your fellow moviegoers disagree sharply about whether either of these suggestions is fair or the degree to which the claims these subjects make should be taken at face value, NAZA can function as a platform for productive debate because the television news reports we glimpse through windows corroborate at least some of them. What if 10% of them are true? Or a quarter? Or half? Or most of them?
First-run fare I’m interested in, but don’t have time for this week, includes Whalefall, which opens at the Regal this afternoon, and Sense and Sensibility, which is there and at Cinemapolis. Finally, special events include a bevy of free events: two more Cine con Cultura screenings as that festival concludes, Makva: The Forest Song at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, a “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken at Cinemapolis on Sunday, competing screenings of the silent film The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador and the documentary Where Is Juan Moctezuma? there on Monday, and Everyone Is Lying to You for Money at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday.
Home Video Recommendation: I recently revisited Beau Travail after the director of the film I’m currently writing about for Educational Media Reviews Online cited it as an inspiration, and it struck me that this duel in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden sun:
Reminds me more of the version of The Odyssey that Fritz Lang is shooting in Contempt than anything in Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation! Friend of the blog Brian Darr asks on Letterboxd, “Has the land ever been filmed so inhospitably, and the sea so revivifyingly?” Which: the defining quality of the salt flats which play a prominent role in the movie’s climax is that they are without water, yeah?
Beau Travail also, of course, features a brilliant final shot. It is currently available on HBO Max with a subscription, for rental or purchase from a variety of other streaming video platforms, and on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
