What I’m Seeing This Week: I think I’m going to try to check out The Apprentice (which is at Cinemapolis) before the election on Tuesday as intended even though I’ve already voted.
Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is either The Wild Robot, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, or Conclave, which is both there and at Cinemapolis. I’m expecting both of them to be among this year’s Oscar nominees, and I won’t be mad if they win a few. Of the films I haven’t yet seen, the one I’m most interested in is Here (which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal), although I’m annoyed that it shares a title with one of my favorite movies of the year. Your best bets for repertory fare are Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday; Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Sunset Boulevard, which are there tomorrow; and John Wick, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday. Unless you have kids who haven’t yet experienced Labyrinth, that is, in which case your top priority should be taking them to see it at Cornell Cinema on Sunday!
Home Video: In the Drink & a Movie post I’m going to publish later today, I will refer to The Leopard Man as “the film I’ve long thought of as my favorite B movie” and House of Usher as “the one which recently stole that crown.” This is all true! But between you and me, that’s only because I forgot how good I Walked with a Zombie, one of my acquisitions during the most recent Criterion Channel flash sale, is. Its brisk 69-minute runtime is filled with enough atmosphere to fill six seasons of a television series, and it also includes the following exchange of dialogues which I consider to be the final word on the pros and cons of the tiki movement:
BETSY CONNELL: I don’t know about zombies, doctor. Just what is a zombie?
DR. MAXWELL: A ghost. A living dead. It’s also a drink.
BETSY CONNELL: Yes. I tried one once. But, there wasn’t anything dead about it.
It also contains one of the best uses of a troubadour (played by Sir Lancelot) I’d ever seen prior to this movie year’s La Chimera. There truly isn’t any other movie quite like it, and you can watch it on Watch TCM until November 3, so what are you waiting for?
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
Home Video: My favorite horror movie of Movie Year 2023 was When Evil Lurks, which is now available on Hulu with a subscription. I recently revisited it after La Ciénaga, which I talked about in this space a few weeks ago, reminded me of it. Two scenes in particular really stuck with me, one involving a little girl and her pet dog and another featuring a boy and his grandmother’s necklace. Like the film as a whole, each is predictably less surprising on a second viewing, but even more disturbing, I think because director-writer Demián Rugna and company have indulged in just the right amount of world building: everything which transpires has a logic too it, but we never dwell on the details. Ezequiel Rodríguez’s Pedro’s doomed efforts to do right by people he no longer has any credibility with is also frustratingly relatable.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
What I’m Seeing This Week: I’ll be glued to my television watching the Mets play the Dodgers tonight and tomorrow, engaging in various seasonal festivities (e.g. my kids are throwing a Halloween party) this weekend, then traveling for work next week, so I’m taking the week off from theatrical screenings.
Also in Theaters: My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca remains Megalopolis, which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall. I also enjoyed The Wild Robot, which is also at the Regal, and My Old Ass, which is at Cinemapolis. Films I’m hoping to see on the big screen before they close include Rumours (Cinemapolis), The Outrun (Cinemapolis), The Substance (Cinemapolis and the Regal), and maybe even Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (the Regal) if it sticks long enough. I’m also very intrigued by Pepe, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, but its showtime is incompatible with my schedule. This week’s noteworthy special events include a free screening of the film Machuca at Cornell Cinema tonight featuring a “talkback” session with screenwriter Roberto Brodsky, a “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein at Cinemapolis on Sunday (tickets = $2 apiece or $10 for groups of five or more), and the free premiere of a new documentary by Ithaca-based filmmaker Thomas Hoebbel called ¿Are We There Yet?: A Compassionate Exploration of Contemporary Immigration at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Your best bets for repertory fare are Sunset Boulevard and Nostalghia, which are at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and on Saturday respectively. Two of my kids’ favorite Halloween movies, Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas, are also at the Regal all week.
Home Video: I talked about the “Directed by David Cronenberg” collection on the Criterion Channel in this space last week. Anyone who checked it out likely noticed that they’re also currently featuring a bunch of great films about witches, including my October, 2022 Drink & a Movie selection Suspiria. If you’ve already seen that one and are looking for something else to watch, try The Love Witch, which is a fun, subversive update of B-movie tropes that features outstandingly garish colors, including a magnificent purple house that is one of my all-time favorite movie locations! It’s also available on Mubi.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
Also in Theaters: I opted for “Mets magic” over the movies last week, so my top new film recommendations remain Megalopolis and The Wild Robot, both of which are at the Regal Ithaca Mall. There are a whopping *three* movies playing at Cornell Cinema that I would have gone to this week were they playing at different times: Pepe, which screens tonight at 7pm; Wings, which is there tomorrow at 6pm; and the screening of L’Inferno at Cornell’s Sage Chapel next Wednesday accompanied by a live score by Montopolis. So it goes! Other new films I’m still hoping to see on the big screen include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, My Old Ass and The Substance, all of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal (although Beetlejuice Beetlejuice closes at Cinemapolis today). Finally, in addition to the Cornell Cinema titles mentioned above, your best bets for repertory fare are Carrie, which is at Cinemapolis on Tuesday, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, which opens at the Regal tomorrow.
Home Video: October is a month when many cinephiles’ fancy frighteningly turn to thoughts of the horror genre. Meanwhile, our family is heading north this weekend to celebrate our first Thanksgiving of the year with My Loving Wife’s family in Ontario. This makes the “Directed by David Cronenberg” collection now available on the Criterion Channel a doubly seasonally appropriate selection! The Fly, which is probably the Canadian auteur’s most famous work, is only available until 10/31, so you may want to start there. If you somehow only have time for one movie, though, I’d go with Rabid, which features an utterly terrifying depiction of Montreal under martial law during what is for all intents an purposes a zombie apocalypse and a lead performance by Marilyn Chambers that will reward your patience in the final reel when we suddenly find her wrestling with an impossible dilemma far beyond anything her male counterparts have been presented with. The Brood and Scanners are also well worth a look, but the early semi-silent featurettes Stereo and Crimes of the Future are for completists and superfans only.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
What I’m Seeing This Week: It is officially the time of year when I can’t possibly keep up with all the movies I want to see before they leave theaters, especially for as long as the Mets’ World Series hopes remain alive! I think I’m going to go with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall while the original Beetlejuice, which My Loving Wife and I watched on Max just the other day, remains fresh in my mind.
Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Megalopolis, director Francis Ford Coppola’s idea of a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “let’s put on a show!” film filtered through the lens of Ayn Rand as interpreted by Cecil B. DeMille. It continues its run at the Regal this week. My family was collectively a *bit* disappointed by The Wild Robot, which is also at the Regal, but it’s nonetheless one of the best kid-friendly movies of the year. I’m not free at 5pm on Sunday, but if I was I’d be going to see Brazil’s official selection for the 2024 Academy Awards Pictures of Ghosts at Cornell Cinema. Other new films I’d love to see on the big screen include A Different Man (Cinemapolis), My Old Ass (Cinemapolis and the Regal), The Substance (Cinemapolis and the Regal). Noteworthy special events include a screening of Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom followed by a conversation with director Manthia Diawara and Cornell professor Salah M. Hassan at Cornell Cinema tonight and a free screening of The Settlers at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are definitely the screenings of Notorious and Nostalghia at Cornell Cinema on Saturday and the screening of Possession at Cinemapolis in Tuesday, but I’d remiss if I didn’t also call out the screening of The Mummy at Cornell Cinema tomorrow since it’s the movie that briefly made me want to become a filmmaker. Because I thought it was terrible and could do better, to be sure, but I revisited it for the first time since I was in high school a couple of years ago and it’s actually quite fun if you don’t take it seriously.
Home Video: While watching La Ciénaga on the Criterion Channel recently, I kept thinking of the following lyrics from the Los Campesinos! song “Feast of Tongues” off their recent album All Hell:
When the black cloud comes, if one flame flickers We will feast on the tongues of the last bootlickers To the tune of the National Anthem Of a country that didn’t survive In a language I’d learned and forgotten I’ll stay home, keep the garden alive
The opening shots, including the zombie-like shuffling of drunk, overweight bourgeoisie sunbathers and the vaporous font of the credits, establish it as a ghost story, a reading confirmed by the ending which evinces the same attitude toward religion as las year’s When Evil Lurks: as David Oubiña wrote in an essay for the Criterion Collection DVD release, “Martel has created her own version of a world without God.” The sound design in both of these scenes and (as, Oubiña and many others have noted, all throughout the film) is brilliant, including clinking ice cubes at the beginning which sound like Jacob Marley rattling his chains and a cleverly-deployed dial tone at the end in the role of a flatlining heartbeat monitor. Lucrecia Martel remains one of my most glaring cinematic blind spots, but at least now I know why!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts canbe found here.
Also in Theaters: You’ve got one last chance to see Sing Sing, my top new movie recommendation, at Cinemapolis today. This screening will be followed by a talkback session featuring actors andfacilitators from Phoenix Players Theatre Group and ReEntry Theatre Program. Other new releases I hope to catch before they close include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and The Substance, both of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I’m not able to attend, but there’s a free screening of the very well-reviewed new documentary Sugarcane at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Another new documentary, Film is Dead. Long Live Film!, plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday. There are free screenings of the films Clara Sola and La Pecera at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Sunday respectively as part of the Cine Con Cultura Latin American Film Festival. On the repertory front the highlights are once again Seven Samurai and Whiplash, which continue their runs at Cinemapolis, but additional great options include Howl’s Moving Castle, which is at the Regal all week, and Notorious, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow.
Home Video: Raphaël Nieuwjaer, a critic for the legendary French publication Cahiers du Cinéma, recently called Ricky Stanicky “almost […] a masterpiece.” I can’t go quite this far myself, but watching it was gratifyingly like running into a bosom companion from my youth for the first time in decades and discovering that they somehow haven’t changed a bit. Peter Farrelly’s films are to other Hollywood comedies as Sammy Cohen is to the other characters in the Strawbs’ song “How Everyone but Sam Was a Hypocrite,” so this is perhaps not a friend you’d take just anywhere, but anyone who can see past the vulgar exterior to the heart of gold within is A-OK in my book! Be sure to stay through the end credits for the mock mashup of William H. Macy’s Summerhayes. Ricky Stanicky is now streaming on Prime Video.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
What I’m Seeing This Week: I still haven’t made it to a screening of Seven Samurai at Cinemapolis, so that remains next up for next up for me.
Also in Theaters: My top new movie recommendation is still Ithaca’s own My First Film, which ends its regular run at Cinemapolis tonight, but returns for a special screening on Tuesday that will be followed by a moderated discussion featuring director Zia Anger, co-writer Billy Feldman, and DP Ashley Connor. Other 2024 releases I enjoyed include Between the Temples, which closes at Cinemapolis tonight, and Sing Sing, which will be there at least through the end of the week. The real action this week is special events and re-releases, though. To start with the former, the Reproductive Rights Film Festival runs tonight through Sunday at Cinemapolis and features five free screenings each followed by a “talkback” session. You can also attend the world premiere of a film called Possible Landscapes at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. Finally, there’s a free screening of the documentary The Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous followed by a talkback with subject Frida Berrigan at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. On the repertory front, the highlight is definitely Seven Samurai, but I wouldn’t blame you if you went with Whiplash, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall and which features an outstanding Oscar-winning performance by J.K. Simmons and one of the best endings of the past decade, instead. You can also see The Matrix at the Regal tonight and on Sunday, and Cornell Cinema’s solid lineup includes The Manchurian Candidate (tomorrow), Fight Club (tomorrow), and Roman Holiday (Sunday).
Home Video: If you can’t make it to My First Film today or Tuesday, fear not! It’s already available on Mubi.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.
What I’m Seeing This Week: I audibled to My First Film last Friday to catch one of the screenings at Cinemapolis introduced by director Zia Anger, which means Sing Sing (also at Cinemapolis) is still next up for me. I’m super excited to see Seven Samurai there as well since I think it’s literally been decades since I last watched it, so I’m going to try to make this a two movie week.
Also in Theaters:My First Choice is my top recommendation this week. It is instantly my favorite movie about/set in Ithaca–I especially appreciate the way it connects to our surprisingly rich cinema heritage through the inclusion of clips and reuse of locations from If Women Only Knew, which was shot here more than a century ago–and also contains one of the boldest and original filmic depiction of abortion I’ve ever seen. I also enjoyed Between the Temples, which remains at Cinemapolis, and two movies that continue their impressively long runs at the Regal Ithaca Mall: Inside Out 2 and Twisters. New movies I haven’t yet seen but want to include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Cinemapolis and the Regal) and Dìdi (Cinemapolis); I’d love to catch Blink Twice (Regal) before it closes as well, but it’s already down to one showtime per day, so this probably isn’t in the cards. There’s a free screening of the documentary Divisible at Cinemapolis tonight followed by a panel discussion which includes director, producer, and cinematographer Lizzy Barrett. In addition to Seven Samurai, the other standouts in a great week for repertory fare include The Godfather and The Shining, which are at Cinemapolis tomorrow and Saturday respectively as part of the Ithaca is Books festival; Roman Holiday, which is at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; and Blazing Saddles, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday.
Home Video: One of the highlights of the 2023 Nitrate Picture Show was a film I had never even heard of before despite the fact that it is directed (Fritz Lang), shot (Charles Lang), and scored (Kurt Weill) by a trio of legends, You and Me. The scenes that made the biggest impression on me after my first viewing were the ones in which Sylvia Sidney’s Helen Roberts performs calculations on a blackboard to “prove” that crime doesn’t pay, which reminded me of Hippolyte Girardot’s mathematics in A Christmas Tale, and the tour of late-30s New York City ethnic restaurants that she and new husband (George Raft) embark upon in lieu of a honeymoon. This time it was the expressionistic prison break flashback sequence that stuck out as the most obvious example of its genius. Anyway, the film is now available on the Criterion Channel as part of their “Rebels at the Typewriter: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s” collection and you should definitely watch it!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts canbe found here.
Although the majority of it technically falls within summer, it’s hardly any wonder that in the United States the month of September is more closely associated with fall when it marks the beginning of the school year, return of football, and appearance of pumpkin beer on grocery store endcaps. This makes the Autumn Winds created by St. Louis bartender Matt Seiter and collected in Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology a perfect cocktail to highlight right now because it uses sage, which I’ll always associate with Thanksgiving stuffing no matter how many times I combine it with ingredients like peaches and tomatoes, to whisper of the season to come while still offering up enough lemony brightness to make it a great porch sipper. Here’s how you make it:
Make the Brown Butter Sage liqueur by browning 10 tablespoons of butter, stirring constantly, over medium heat. Remove from heat, add 3/4 oz. lemon juice and a chiffonade of 12-15 sage leaves, and rest for 10 minutes. Add 1 cup simple syrup and 12 ozs. vodka (Tito’s) and allow to stand at room temperature for 4-6 hours. Refrigerate overnight, skim solids from the top of the mixture, and strain into a bottle. Make the cocktail by shaking all ingredients with ice, straining into a chilled champagne coupe, and garnishing with a spanked fresh sage leaf.
If you’ve never spanked a sage leaf, it’s exactly what it sounds like, and you don’t want to skip this step as it releases odors that are essential to the way the drink works. Regan mentions that a small amount of butter solids will remain in the liqueur even after straining, which is true, and that it’s best to shake the bottle before mixing to make sure you get all of that flavor. Seiter calls for Ransom Old Tom, the first gin I ever fell in love with, in this Feast Magazine article, and I’m sure it works great, especially in late September when it actually starts to get cold! But I like Citadelle because it resonates not just with baking spices in the liqueur, but also the lemon, plus it’s an additional (along with the Bénédictine) French connection to this month’s movie. Speaking of which:
History Is Made at Night contains one of the most deliriously happy endings in cinema history, but even more than most movies made in the 1930s, its atmosphere is redolent with signs of World War II. Here’s a picture of my Criterion Collection DVD release:
It can also be streamed via The Criterion Channel with a subscription, and some people (including current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students) may have access to it through Kanopy via a license paid for by their local academic or public library as well.
Andrew Sarris famously argued in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 that “History Is Made at Night is not only the most romantic title in the history of cinema but also a profound expression of [director Frank] Borzage’s commitment to love over probability.” The specific paramours in this case are Charles Boyer’s Paul Dumond and Jean Arthur’s Irene Vail, who as the film begins is attempting to leave her husband, Colin Clive’s sadistic and irrationally jealous shipping magnate Bruce Vail. Unwilling to accept the possibility that she hasn’t been cheating on him, but unable to prove that she has, he devises a scheme to “catch” her in his chauffeur Michael’s (Ivan Lebedeff) arms in order to prevent the divorce from becoming final (because she will no longer be “blameless” in the eyes of the law). Unfortunately for Vail, Paul just happens to be putting a drunken companion to bed (“you can’t drink all of the wine in Paris in one night–it’s practically impossible!”) next door from the apartment where the tawdry scene will play out and hears something:
He creeps out onto the balcony and peers through the neighboring window:
When Michael begins to force himself on Irene, Paul makes a split-second decision to pose as a robber. He pulls his hat down over his eyes:
Climbs inside:
And lays Michael out with what Nick Pinkerton amusingly characterizes as “one of those right-on-the-chin one-punch knockout swings so prevalent in Golden Age Hollywood filmmaking”:
Just then Vail and his lawyer Norton (George Meeker) come rushing in. Paul holds them with a pretend gun (the old finger in the coat pocket trick):
“Steals” Irene’s pearl necklace and other jewelry as they look on and then orders her to get her coat:
Finally, Paul locks Vail and his lawyer in the closet and he and Irene make their escape:
Cue the film’s first of many major tonal shifts. As described by Hervé Dumont in his book Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic, “after this busy, Dashiell Hammett-like aperitif, regulated like a ballet and photographed in the style of film noir (Gregg Toland), we go into an English waltz.” Once they are alone together in a cab, Paul first offers a puzzled Irene a cigarette, then returns her necklace and jewels:
He explains that he is not, in fact, a thief and merely wanted to help her out of a sticky situation, to which she says, “all I can seem to say is ‘oh!'”
Paul proposes dinner and instructs the driver to head to an establishment called the Château Bleu when she accepts. Unfortunately, the neon sign out front goes out right as they arrive. This doesn’t deter Paul, who addresses the gentleman locking up (Leo Carrillo): “Cesare, you are not closing!” He replies, “no, we are not closing–we are closed!”
But Paul appears to know more about this man than just his name, and by playing to his vanity (“everyone here knows that you are the greatest chef in Paris, that is no news, but would you believe that you were that famous in America?”) convinces him to reopen the kitchen for a private engagement:
The musicians and their leader (George Davis) who preceded Cesare out the door are brought back even more easily by the mere mention of a champagne party:
And with that what Dumont calls “the paradigm of sequence of seduction” is off and running. Paul orders lobster cardinale (which according to Saveur was invented in Baltimore, where I spent most of the 2010s, by the way) à laCesare and salad chiffonnade. Then he draws a face on his hand, as one does, and introduces Irene to “the woman he lives with,” Coco:
I admit to feeling perplexed by this particular decision the first few times I watched History, but part of the shtick is that Coco doesn’t have a filter, which gives Paul a way to let Irene know that he is single and ask her what the hell precipitated the scene in her apartment earlier without technically violating societal norms. Dan Callahan further observes that when she reappears toward the end of the film, “Borzage uses this comic explosion to keep us off balance, unguarded, making us laugh so that when the lovers are reminded of their problems, we feel their pain much more deeply.”
Anyway, Paul and Irene tell Cesare to keep their food warm, much to his chagrin, and commence to dance until dawn, with Irene discarding clothing all the while. To again quote Dumont:
The camera frames Irene’s shoes, pans to her mink stole lying on the floor, and finally insistently follows the languorous steps of the dancers. The polysemy of images makes this erotic striptease–Irene is only wearing a long silk negligee–the outward expression of confidence and progressive abandonment (without saying a word, she says more to Paul than she has ever said to her husband), but also one of detachment, of breaking off: jewels, shoes, and mink are signs of Bruce Vail’s property.
But although to them the night they have passed together qualifies as the year that Paul must wait as a gentleman before its in good taste for him to utter the “only thing important enough to say to [Irene] tonight,” they soon discover that they are not yet free to be together. Irene returns home, she thinks just to pack up her belongings, to find Vail waiting for her. He leads her and the police to believe that Paul’s blow killed Michael, when in reality he finished the poor guy off himself:
Then tells her that unless she joins him on a trans-Atlantic steamer that very afternoon, he’ll commit all of his resources to “finding the murderer.” Cut to Paul at the Château Bleu, where–surprise!–he is the head waiter. He recommends a French 75 to the man he put to bed the previous evening as a hangover cure, then writes the special du jour on a blackboard:
He’s expecting Irene to join him at five o’clock, and when his shift is over buys a newspaper to read while he waits. That’s when he sees this headline:
He resolves to follow Irene to New York, but locating her proves to be more challenging than he expected, because duh. Luckily Cesare decided to join him, and the two hatch a scheme to convince the owner of a restaurant called Victor’s to hire them to turn it into the hottest place in the city, which they do. Finally, one night Irene shows up in a dress that I’d *love* to see sparkle on a good nitrate print and claims the table he has ordered the staff to keep empty for her every night.
Sure, she’s with Vail, but yada yada yada the next thing you know she’s showing Paul how to make “eggs à la Kansas” the following morning:
And that, two-thirds of the way through History Is Made at Night, is when things *really* start to get interesting. Because, as noted by Brian Darr, screenwriters Gene Towne and Graham Baker appear to have intentionally capitalized on the 25th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by ending the movie with a ship hitting an iceberg! There is, as yet, no hint of this in the breakfast scene depicted above, but on a postprandial stroll Irene lets it slip that the reason she and Vail were about to depart for Paris on the Hindenburg (seriously) was so that she could testify against the man arrested for the death of Michael. Paul barely hesitates: he and Irene will return to Paris on Vail’s boat the Princess Irene because he cannot allow an innocent man to go to the guillotine for a crime he believes he committed. And suddenly the stakes Borzage are gambling become clear. He is famous for placing obstacles between his romantic leads, but this one is a doozy even by his standards: the barrier is their own human decency. The film’s climax reenacts their star-crossed love affair, but on a bigger canvas to emphasize the universality of their plight. When Vail orders the captain of the Princess Irene to speed forward despite the hazardous conditions his vessel is sailing through, ostensibly to set a record but really to destroy Paul and Irene, he is no longer imperiling just their lives, but thousands of others.
Their union was already on death row, but once the ship starts sinking and its lifeboats fill up, the sentence is extended to hundreds of other couples.
The fundamental injustice of the two soulmates being separated from one another has been compounded, their sacrifice takes on even more heroic dimensions, and the only suitable reward is a miracle: although he and Irene don’t know it yet, Paul has already been acquitted, and a pardon comes through for their fellow passengers at the eleventh hour as well: “attention everyone, attention. The forward bulkheads are holding and the ship is in no danger of sinking,” comes the unexpected announcement. “Help is on the way. The lifeboats are standing by and you will soon be with your families.” Their reactions represent the full range of emotions that Paul and Irene, who for now still think they’ve only been granted a stay of execution, will presumably soon feel:
The final image of a kiss promises that our heroes truly will live happily ever after:
…at least until the Germans march into Paris about three years later. Of course, we could take things one step further and read the suicide of Bruce Vail as anticipating the end of that conflict. This, ultimately, is what connects this month’s movie and drink in my mind: the thing to remember about autumn is that it’s followed by winter, spring, and summer, just as war follows peace follows war. So be merry, pour yourself another glass of champagne, and have another helping of lobster cardinale:
Because the worst of times must by definition eventually get better, and nothing gold can stay.
Cheers!
All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka My Loving Wife.Links to all of the entries in this series can be found here.
What I’m Seeing This Week: Colman Domingo might be my favorite working American actor, so this is an easy choice: I am going with Sing Sing at Cinemapolis.
Also in Theaters: My favorite new film playing in Ithaca RIGHT NOW is Good One, but its final screening at Cinemapolis is today at 2pm–see it if you can! Starting tomorrow my top recommendation will once again be Between the Temples, which is also at Cinemapolis. I wrote about why last week. Other new films I enjoyed include Inside Out 2 and Twisters, which are at the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Love Lies Bleeding, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow night. There are more other movies I’m interested in playing Ithaca theaters than I’ll have time to see, with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Blink Twice (the Regal), and Dìdi (Cinemapolis) topping the list. All three screenings of My First Film, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, will be introduced by director Zia Anger, who is an Ithaca College grad. There will be a free screening of the film Cornell Commits to Confronting Climate Change Activists at Cinemapolis tomorrow followed by a Q&A with local activists and members of the crew. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is Eyes Wide Shut, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Saturday as part of their “Party Like It’s 1999” series. I still remember walking home alone at night along Route 30 after seeing it at the Wonderland 4 Cinema (RIP) when I was in high school, as on-edge as I ever had been in my entire life. I’d actually prioritize this ahead of any of the new movies I mention above, especially if you’ve never seen it on a big screen before.
Home Video: My favorite movies from the first half of Movie Year 2024 are starting to hit the streaming platforms, which means it’s time to start revisiting them. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, has actually been available on Mubi with a subscription for awhile, but I finally got around to watching it again the other night and it’s even better on a second viewing. I got so lost in its wildly inventive narrative mélange the first time, for instance, that I failed to appreciate the beautifully textured 16mm black & white photography of what I’m lazily going to call the “main” plot. It also has a wonderfully thought-provoking title. Who or what exactly should we temper our expectations about? Ourselves, because we’re too busy cultivating social media personae to ever stand up and do more than just rage against the falling of a 40 hour work week, safe roads, civil liberties, &c? Or are reports of the total subjugation of the proletariat greatly exaggerated so long as there are still people as smart and resourceful as protagonist Angela Raducanu (Ilinca Manolache) around? Neither interpretation is a perfect fit, but I favor an optimistic reading. It also features a killer soundtrack, which some kind soul compiled into a Spotify playlist. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is now a lock for my top ten list for 2024, so: more to come!
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts canbe found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 