In Theaters: I still haven’t made it to a screening of The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, so catching it at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall remains my top priority. I’m also looking forward to seeing new releases Godzilla Minus Zero and Wild Horse Nine and maybe (finally!) Wildwood at the same two theaters this week.
Wicker, which continues its run at the Regal, remains my favorite holdover. I also enjoyed You Can See Everything and Fjord. Here’s what I recently said about the latter on Letterboxd:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed outsider has no advantage when it comes to navigating their bureaucracy. Much more of a courtroom drama (which isn’t my favorite genre) than I would have expected from the reviews coming out of Cannes, Fjord is overtly an exercise in empathizing with the Other–see the self-aware post-trial sequences which take the ostensible heroes down a peg. What you experience may depend on your particular brand of liberal politics: I can see how this might play as a horror movie where the Nanny State is the monster to some or a straw man snoozefest to others. It definitely isn’t a case of classical Hollywood tragic failure to communicate, because neither “side” wants to: as The Simpsons taught us years ago, it’s a safe bet that anyone who cries, “Won’t somebody please think of the children!?” isn’t.
You Can See Everything remains at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, while Fjord is now just at Cinemapolis.
Special events include the return of the HUMP! Film Festival to Cinemapolis tonight, a free “Arts Unplugged” double feature of Deaf President Now! and Fancy Dance at Cornell Cinema today, and a program of experimental films called “This Beguiling Membrane” there on Sunday. Cornell Cinema is also hosting screenings of Blue Velvet tomorrow and Sunday which are free for Cornell students, and a screening of the new documentary One in a Million on Tuesday that is free to all.
Last but not least, repertory highlights not already mentioned include The Night of the Hunter at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and a bunch of good stuff screening at the Regal for one day only, such as Under the Skin tomorrow, Portrait of a Lady on Fire on Saturday, former home video recommendation Seconds on Monday, and Blow Out on Tuesday.
Home Video Recommendation: One of my favorite first-time viewings of an older film so far this year was Destiny, which I saw at Cornell Cinema a few weeks ago with friend of the blog Zach Campbell, whose Substack Attendance Optional you should definitely subscribe to! He tipped me off to the fact that this film is available on the Criterion Channel as part of a collection called “Titan of Egyptian Cinema Youssef Chahine” that I’m looking forward to starting as soon as I finish the “Directed by Mikio Naruse” one I’m working my way through now. I’m hesitant to say much about Destiny now because, as I mentioned on Letterboxd, I’m planning to revisit it next year in a sequel to my recent “A Canticle for Dr. Kelson” blog post:
I declined to say much about Digger recently on the grounds that it resonated with the blog post I’m working on, which I wanted to finish first. This unexpectedly did, too, and I’m now planning to come back to both films in a follow-up post next April! Its working title is “Fossil Fuels on the Hill: Further Thoughts on the End of the World,” and some other works I can finally tackle in it include Eijanaika, Kaagaz Ke Phool, and Les Témoins. Stay tuned!
I’m now thinking I will also address Beau Is Afraid, a tonally similar inward-looking counterpart to Digger‘s epic of the body. And other films, no doubt!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
