Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: I didn’t go to any movies during my holiday travels after all but am hoping to make up for lost time over the next few days by seeing Resurrection (#1 on my “Cannes 2025 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list) at Cinemapolis and both Marty Supreme and Song Sung Blue at either there or the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: The Secret Agent and Hamnet, which continue their respective runs at Cinemapolis, obviously remain my top new movie recommendations. In addition to the titles listed above, I’m also still hoping to catch The Housemaid before it closes at the Regal. It’s another quiet week on the special events front, but noteworthy repertory options include John Wick at the Regal today, Ghostbusters there on Monday, and Mission: Impossible there on Tuesday.

Home Video Recommendation: New Year’s Day is a time for resolutions, but not everyone is actually going to change. The Conformist, which current Cornell faculty, staff, and students can view on Kanopy courtesy a license paid for by the library and which is available for rental on a variety of other platforms, is perhaps therefore not as incongruous a title to mention here as it may first seem. Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:

All surfaces, often literally–the camera will suddenly rack focus in the middle of a conversation between the occupants of a car to make sure we don’t miss its idle windshield wipers–and noteworthy less for any grand statement you want to read into it than the poetry of its constituent parts, such as a servant sneaking bites of spaghetti out of the bowl she just served her employers from, a low-angle tracking shot toward a car through giant fallen leaves blown by wind nowhere to be found earlier in the scene, and a blue sky baby room wall that says “yes, and . . . ” to the acres of marble which preceded it.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see The Secret Agent, which I ranked second on my “Cannes 2025 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list six months ago, at Cinemapolis! I’m also going to try to catch Avatar: Fire and Ash at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: Peter Hujar’s Day has one more screening before it closes at Cinemapolis this afternoon and is well worth 76 minutes at your time. I enjoyed Hamnet and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which remain there at least through the end of the week, too. We probably aren’t going to make it to Wicked: For Good (Cinemapolis and the Regal) or Zootopia 2 (Regal) before the end of the year, but they’re on my list as well, and I’m also hearing good things about The Housemaid (Regal). This week’s special events highlight is definitely the free screening of It’s a Wonderful Life at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Finally, on the repertory front, you can catch both my December 2023 and 2024 Drink & a Movie selections National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Elf at the Regal tomorrow and on Wednesday respectively. Those are probably *my* three favorite Christmas movies at all time, but if you’re a Christmas in Connecticut or A Christmas Story partisan, they play the Regal tonight and Saturday respectively as well.

Home Video Recommendation: Highest 2 Lowest currently only ranks 59th on the aggregator website criticstop10.com’s “Best Movies of 2025” list, but I’d put it ahead of all save one (Eephus) of the 33 films ahead of it that I’ve seen so far. Here’s what I said on Letterboxd in August after my first viewing at Cinemapolis:

When I made High and Low a “home video” recommendation on ye olde blog a couple months ago, I mentioned that “I definitely do see the appeal of turning director Akira Kurosawa’s literal and figurative wide-angle lens on today’s America.” This turns out to be one of the notes that director Spike Lee DOESN’T play, though. From his own songbook, a multi-character racist rant is also lacking because after all these years we no longer need anyone to break the fourth wall to know what they’re thinking. Howard Drossin’s lush original score and Matthew Libatique’s camerawork in the scenes it accompanies scream leather-bound books and rich mahogany and create a wonderful contrast with the grittiness of the world outside Denzel Washington’s David King’s penthouse apartment. Looking forward to watching this one again!

I revisited it on Apple TV the other day and am happy to report that it holds up just fine! Of course, between this and Blue Moon, which is likely to also end up on my own top ten list when I publish it in March, I now feel like I need to find 140 minutes to rewatch Oklahoma! before it leaves Watch TCM on January 8. I guess I know what my next Family (née Friday) Movie Night selection will be!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Peter Hujar’s Day, which is at Cinemapolis for one week only starting tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: One Battle After Another returns to the Regal Ithaca Mall tomorrow and reclaims its title as the best new movie in Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I also enjoyed Hamnet and Sentimental Value, which I won’t begrudge any of their wins this awards season, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which interestingly uses Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc as more of a structuring device than a main character, not dissimilarly to how director Jacques Tati utilized Monsieur Hulot in last December’s “Drink & a Movie” selection Playtime. All three are at Cinemapolis. Other first run fare I’m hoping to catch before it closes includes Wicked: For Good (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Zootopia 2 (just the Regal), and maybe Eternity (Cinemapolis and the Regal). Special events highlights include a screening of the documentary Eyes on Ukraine at Cinemapolis on Sunday followed by a “talkback” with the filmmakers. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include screenings of The Polar Express at the Regal on Saturday and Tuesday and Scrooged there just on Tuesday. The 2000 remake live-action remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I recently saw for the first time and was surprised to discover actually isn’t half bad, is at the Regal all week as well: as I said on Letterboxd, I think “Bizarro Elf“ is the proper lens to view it through. Speaking of which, there’s a “sing-a-long” screening of Elf (whatever that means) there on Sunday, too.

Home Video Recommendation: As was presumably obvious from this month’s “Drink & a Movie” post, I consider Die Hard to be one of the best movies of the 1980s. Its sequel Die Hard 2 is nowhere near as formally intricate but it is not at all without its charms, including a scene featuring William Sadler doing Tai Chi stark naked, and some spectacular special effects. But the final word on the merits of this film were already written by Kenji Fujishima, who in a 2009 blog post that I absolutely love said the following:

Many argue that Die Hard 2, on the other hand, is a crasser, cruder rehash of the original, emphasizing the action spectacle while downplaying character development, and upping the ante on violence and gore. All of that is indeed true. And yet, in the right mood, I find that Die Hard 2, in its own caveman way, provides more sheer pedal-to-the-metal excitement than the relatively sober-suited original. In fact, I would go so far as to put forth this notion: Die Hard 2 is the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom of the Die Hard series.

Do please read the whole thing to find out why, then go watch Die Hard 2 on Disney+ or Hulu!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: The snow on Tuesday waylaid my plans, so catching a screening of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at Cinemapolis is still my number one priority. I’m excited to finally see Hamnet there as well!

Also in Theaters: Sentimental Value (Cinemapolis) remains my top new movie recommendation. Other first run fare I’m interested in but haven’t gotten to yet includes Rental Family (Regal Ithaca Mall), Wicked: For Good (Cinemapolis & Regal), and Zootopia 2 (Regal). I mentioned Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Sisu: Road to Revenge, both of which continue their runs at the Regal, in this space previously, too, but my loving wife and I have pretty much made up our minds to save them for future movie marathons which also include their predecessors. Special events highlights include a free screening of an award-winning new documentary called Remaining Native at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Cornell Cinema‘s traditional end-of-semester “mystery screening” tonight. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair opening at the Regal today and another batch of holiday classics appearing there throughout the week, among them personal favorites December 2023 “Drink & a Movie” selection National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on Saturday, Love Actually on Tuesday, and The Christmas Chronicles, which features an energetic performance by Kurt Russell in the role of St. Nick, on Wednesday.

Home Video Recommendation: The Teachers’ Lounge was recently featured in the New York Times’s “Watching” newsletter, which reminded me that I somehow never got around to revisiting it despite the fact that it has been available on Netflix with a subscription for ages! Here’s what I said on Letterboxd back in February, 2024:

Features some of the Movie Year’s most excitingly thought-provoking final shots. Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch) solves the Rubik’s cube that Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) lent him earlier, confirming that like her he speaks the language of logic and mathematics. Which: compare her loyalty to him to her earlier refusal to speak Polish with her colleague Milosz Dudek (Rafael Stachowiak). Anyway, we then survey the empty rooms of the school where the drama has taken place before ending on a shot of Oskar being carried away by the police. The latter establishes the two characters as being united in their respective failures to unlock the escape room they have found themselves trapped in, but then the end credits roll to the strains of Mendelssohn’s overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, underscoring the sense of enchantment and theatricality pervasive throughout the entire film (most palpably in the protest or hallucination of the whole school wearing Eva Löbau’s Friederike Kuhn’s distinctive blouse). I’ll need at least one more viewing to figure out what exactly, but there’s definitely a lot going on here and I dig it!

After a second viewing I think what the Mendelssohn overture, which George Grove once wrote “stamps the fairy character of the work” from its opening four chords, brings to the party is the sense that “the world is turned upside down” as John McTiernan put it when writing about the influence of the Shakespeare play it was composed for on this month’s “Drink & a Movie” selection Die Hard. If anything I underrated this film by only ranking it seventh on my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” list, so do check it out!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: Happy Thanksgiving! We’re currently in Baltimore celebrating this holiday and my oldest daughter’s birthday with family, but I’m planning to see Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at Cinemapolis after we return.

Also in Theaters: I saw Sentimental Value and Bugonia at Cinemapolis last week and recommend them both because the former contains my favorite building and prop of Movie Year 2025 so far and the latter features some of the best costumes (by Jennifer Johnson). I also enjoyed Frankenstein, which continues its run there, and Lurker, a reworking of some scenes and themes from Whiplash that returns to Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. I will eventually take my kids to see Wicked: For Good at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall and Zootopia 2 at the latter, but am in no hurry because I expect them both to stick around for awhile. This might not be true of Rental Family (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Regal), or Sisu: Road to Revenge (Regal), but if so I’m content to just catch up with them on a streaming video platform down the road. Special events highlights include Casablanca breaking its own record as Cornell’s most-screened film of all time on Monday, while on the repertory front the Regal is kicking of the Christmas season with Gremlins tomorrow, Elf on Saturday, The Polar Express on Sunday, and The Holiday on Monday.

Home Video Recommendation: There aren’t a whole lot of classic movies out there that my loving wife has seen but I haven’t, but until just the other night Witness for the Prosecution was probably the most prominent. I enjoyed it first and foremost as a smorgasbord of great acting in a variety of styles by a bevy of legends including Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester, but Laughton’s character also struck me as a variation on the tragic heroes of some of my favorite Westerns like The Searchers and Canyon Passage for reasons I’d have to spoil the ending to explain but detail on Letterboxd if you’ve already seen it. We actually watched it on Tubi, but it’s also streaming commercial-free on Watch TCM through Sunday

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: Five months ago I ranked Sentimental Value, which opens at Cinemapolis tonight, seventh on my “Cannes 2025 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list, so that’s first up for me. I’m going to try to catch Bugonia there as well.

Also in Theaters: I will eventually take the girls to both Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2, but they don’t seem to be in a tearing hurry, so neither am I. The former opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight, and the latter opens at the Regal on Tuesday. My loving wife and I are saving Nuremberg, which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal, for a future date night, but I do intend to eventually watch it, too, as well as Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Sisu: Road to Revenge, both of which are at the Regal. I like Brendan Fraser, so Rental Family is on my list as well. It’s at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Sticking just to first run fare I’ve already seen, my top recommendation would appear to be Frankenstein, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events highlights include screenings of Drink and Be Merry and Occupy Wall Street: An American Dream followed by filmmaker Q&As at Cinemapolis tonight and Sunday respectively. Finally, repertory highlights include Casablanca at Cornell Cinema tonight; Thanksgiving classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles at the Regal tomorrow; and The Holdovers there on Wednesday.

Home Video: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the movie which inspired my new “I’ve Got Poetry In Me” series, is currently streaming on Criterion Channel, but only until the end of the month. In addition to being generally terrific, it’s also a perfect match for the early spell of bleak midwinter weather we’ve been experiencing in Ithaca lately, so be sure to check it out before it disappears!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Happyend and Lurker at Cornell Cinema and The Librarians at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: This week’s theatrical highlight is probably once again the 35mm print of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai screening at Cornell Cinema tomorrow night. Looking just at first run fare, my top recommendation is Die My Love, an instant classic of mother-in-law cinema that continues its runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Frankenstein, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, for Kate Hawley’s outstanding costumes and Movie Year 2025’s most tragically unrealistic closing line. In addition to the titles listed in the previous section, I’d like to see Nuremberg, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, as well, but I promised my loving wife I’d save it for a future Friday night; I’m interested in Bugonia (Cinemapolis and the Regal) and Good Fortune (just the Regal), too, but the latter is down to just one screening per day, so it’s probably not going to happen. Special events highlights include a program of works by the Irish film collective aemi called “The Said and the Unsaid” at Cornell Cinema tonight and free screening of Kirikou and the Sorceress at Cinemapolis on Sunday as part of their Family Classics Picture Show series. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include The Boy and the Heron at the Regal Saturday-Wednesday, All That Jazz at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the movie my loving wife and I saw on our very FIRST date, Hugo, at the Regal on Saturday.

Home Video: A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I’ve been slowly but surely picking off the greatest films I’ve never seen according to the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll. They’ve universally been terrific and The Last Laugh is no exception. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd after my second viewing:

After more than a century, still the cinematic gold standard depiction of the idea that, as Sarah Jaffe put it, “work won’t love you back.” Also the feelings of being pleasantly soused and crushed (literally here, by a high-rise) by guilt. But it’s the violent tonal swings that make this a masterpiece: almost Linnaean in their comprehensiveness, they catalog the various tricks (circumstantial, psychological, social, etc.) we “civilized” human beings compulsively employ to make ourselves and one another miserable and, by cancelling each other out, show how unnecessary and avoidable the entire pathological enterprise really is.

Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students can watch this film on Kanopy via a license paid for by the library, and because it’s in the public domain in the United States, everyone else can view it on a variety of free platforms such as Tubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with It Was Just an Accident at Cinemapolis and Die My Love either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall. I’m also going to try to see Frankenstein at Penn Cinema while visiting home this weekend.

Also in Theaters: It’s a hockey line change week, so today is your last chance to see Blue Moon, The Mastermind, and One Battle After Another at Cinemapolis. After that my top recommendation would have to be the 35mm print of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai playing Cornell Cinema tonight at 8:30pm. Another special events highlight is the free screening of the essay film John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office there on Monday followed by a conversation with writer/director Courtney Stephens. In addition to the titles listed in the previous section, I’m also hoping to see Bugonia (Cinemapolis & the Regal) and Good Fortune (just the Regal) before they close. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, The Wizard of Oz at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and Saving Private Ryan at the Regal on Tuesday.

Home Video: 432 minutes is an intimidating runtime, and with two intermissions, Sátántangó *can* be broken up into three viewings. It really is worth making an occasion out of it, though. As I recently wrote on Letterboxd:

I’ve now set out to watch this film in a single go while the family was away twice, first starting at 10am and then 9:00, but didn’t finish until long after the sun went down either time. I’d eventually like to try a theatrical screening on for size, too, but as of this writing I’m not at all convinced that stopping at the chapter breaks and intermissions to have a think while you walk the dog, smoke a cigarette (don’t tell!) and cook a meal or two and basically structuring an entire day around it isn’t in fact the best way to approach this lowkey apocalypse.

Which: Sátántangó could swap titles with Do Not Too Much from the End of the World to no ill effect in either direction. If I owned a hip bar, I’d cut all the long takes of Mihály Vig’s Irimiás and Putyi Horváth’s Petrina walking with trash swirling all around them in the wind together and play them on a loop with the sound off. The two characters function here like minor demons, terrifying to the poor mortals unfortunate enough to catch their gaze, but virtually anonymous in the immense bureaucracy of hell. Animal imagery is one structuring device, but it’s never too on the nose: a slow camera movement in on an owl suggests that Irimiás is a raptor, except that dialogue confirms that he fancies himself as a spider, and who’s to say that one of the escaped horses at the end isn’t actually the best fit? Throw the ten minute single take opening shot of meandering cows into the mix and you end up with an extradiegetic synthesis like he’s a sheepdog with wild traits not eradicated, but harnessed for a purpose.

However you want it, he’s a careful observer on a spectrum that has damnation on one end and fast (Erika Bók’s Estike) or slow (Peter Berling’s alcoholic doctor) death on the other, with the distracted villagers who make up most of the rest of the cast constituting the vast purgatorial middle. And then, of course, there are the twelve steps of the tango and a diagram of the solar system in the doctor’s house which foreshadow the reappearance of many of these same ideas and themes in Werckmeister Harmonies six years later. Which movie you prefer is likely just a matter of taste: a diffuse nebula and bright star are both beautiful! Definitely an experience.

Current Ithaca faculty, staff, and students have access to this film on Kanopy via an institutional streaming video license paid for by the library; all others are encouraged to purchase it on Blu-ray from Arbelos Films.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I didn’t make it to The Mastermind at Cinemapolis last week, so that’s my top priority. I’m hoping to catch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which opens there tomorrow, as well.

Also in Theaters: One Battle After Another, which closes at the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight but remains at Cinemapolis at least through next Thursday, contains some of the most exhilarating moments of Movie Year 2025. I think I *might* prefer Blue Moon, which also continues its run at Cinemapolis, overall, though. Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:

Ethan Hawke plays Lorenz Hart as a man so drunk with beauty wherever he finds it that when he reaches a pass where his dignity is the most valuable thing he has left in the world, he offers it up with a sacrifice without hesitation. Which: I’ve always loved John Leguizamo’s Toulouse-Lautrec from Moulin Rouge! but never thought he could carry an entire movie by himself. And indeed *that* character probably couldn’t, but this one is buttressed by a brilliantly witty screenplay, great supporting cast, and the origin story for a beloved children’s literature character. Lacks Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere‘s (an inevitable comparison considering that they’re sharing theater marquee space across the country right now) insistence that we must feel gratitude and pity for the artist in equal measure, which is to its credit.

In addition to the movies listed above, I’d like to see Good Fortune and Bugonia before they close, too, but I’ll be out of town most of next week, so I don’t know if it’s going to happen. The former is at the Regal and the latter is both there and at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events include “Sing-Along” screenings of KPop Demon Hunters at the Regal Friday through Sunday, a screening of the film Framing Ménerbes followed by a “talkback” with director Daniel Gwirtzman at Cinemapolis on Sunday at 3pm, and a program of three experimental films directed by women called “At Home/Far Away” at Cornell Cinema that day at 5:30pm. Finally, repertory highlights include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, Halloween at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, Singin’ in the Rain there on Sunday, and Clue at Cinemapolis on Monday.

Home Video: I’ve been trying to mix the greatest films I’ve never seen before according to the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll in with all the scary season fare I’ve been enjoying lately. One title that checked both boxes was Possession, which I recently watched for the first time ever on the Criterion Channel. Despite the presence of Sam Neill, it took me a second viewing to come around to it, but now that I have, I can definitely see it continuing to grow in my estimation. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

“Live every day like it’s your last one on earth,” they say. But what if people you want to spend it with are doing the same but have different priorities, and your actions and/or theirs appear to be somehow responsible for bringing it about? Or: H.P. Lovecraft updated for the nuclear age with terrific acting and maybe the best rendering of a collapsing marriage I’ve ever encountered outside of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road. Isabelle Adjani’s heels in her opening scenes are one of cinema’s great costume design decisions.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.