Category: Ithaca Film Journal

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.

In Theaters: I decided to wait on American Doctor a bit when Cinemapolis announced that they were holding it over for another week, so that remains my top new movie priority. Cornell Cinema Director Molly Ryan singled out Filipiñana and Levitating when I interviewed her earlier this month, so I’m excited to see the former there on Saturday; I’m going to wait on the latter, which screens this Sunday, until it returns on October 2. We’re also taking the whole family to the Regal Ithaca Mall for Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom this weekend, and I’m going to catch Resident Evil there or at Cinemapolis later in the week. Other new releases I’m interested in, but unfortunately don’t have time for, include If I Go Will They Miss Me, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, and Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, which is there and at the Regal all week.

Of the stuff I’ve already seen, my favorite is The Odyssey, which continues its impressively long run at the Regal. I also enjoyed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, another summer stalwart still going strong at the Regal as we turn the corner into fall, and Chronovisor, which returns to Cornell Cinema on Saturday. Here’s what I said about that one on Letterboxd:

Highbrow Dan Brown that swaps long shots of the grand edifices that house the world’s secrets for extreme close-ups of the texts within, and which wears its 80s influences on its VHS sleeve. As a librarian, I appreciate its love for libraries and archives, but resent how it reduces the people who tend them to disembodied voices. Long live the old flesh!

Special events include three free screenings at Cornell Cinema: A Poet tonight, The Librarians (which has issues of its own, but does at least foreground my profession) on Tuesday, and Cinema Pe Cinema: The Theatres. The Movies. And Us on Wednesday. You can also see a 35mm print of Better Luck Tomorrow there tonight. Finally, additional noteworthy repertory options include North by Northwest at the Regal tomorrow, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior there on Tuesday, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.

Home Video Recommendation: Last week I compared Ross McElwee’s latest documentary Remake to Journey to Italy, which reminded me that it had been a while since I last watched the Roberto Rossellini film I’ve long thought of as one of my favorites! So long, in fact, that I’d forgotten some of the plot details and was therefore pleasantly surprised to discover that they dovetail with one of my recent fixations, trying to spot the influence of James Joyce’s “The Dead” on, well, everything. Anyway, here’s what I wrote on Letterboxd last week after revisiting it:

I had completely forgotten that the plot is largely set in motion by the tale of a rain-soaked admirer at the window who died young, and that the married couple played by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders are named Joyce! I’m fond of reading the Beatles song “For No One” as an “adaptation” of Dubliners‘ “The Dead” because while I understand that it isn’t really, Paul McCartney’s lyrics might as well be about Gabriel. What I like best about Journey to Italy is how it does the same thing in reverse by letting us wake up with Gretta the next morning: in the story she falls asleep immediately after puncturing her husband’s bubble, and then “snow was general all over Ireland.”

You can watch Journey to Italy on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max with a subscription, buy or rent it from a number of other streaming video platforms, and it’s available from the Criterion Collection as part of “3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman” Blu-ray and DVD box sets.

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

In Theaters: This is a truly excellent week for movies in Ithaca, and although I’m staying in tonight to watch football (Hail to Pitt!), I’ll be seeing something for six days in a row after that, which is a lot even for me! The one I’m most excited about is Chronovisor, which I started hearing great things about when it premiered at Rotterdam in January and have been tracking ever since. It plays Cornell Cinema tomorrow evening. I’ll be returning on Saturday to see the “2026 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour” and again on Sunday for the 35mm print of Vagabond screening in their “Wayfaring Strangers” series.

Speaking of Sundance, I’m also going to see The Weight, which got great reviews there, at the Regal Ithaca Mall. Last but not least, I’m hoping to catch both of the documentaries starting one-week runs at Cinemapolis tomorrow, American Doctor and The Cycle of Love. Other noteworthy new releases that I’m going to wait on a bit include Filipiñana, which screens at Cornell Cinema tonight but will return on 9/26, and Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, which opens at the Regal today and will hopefully stick around awhile.

So that’s what I’m up to. One film you should definitely check out at Cornell Cinema on Sunday if you missed its first screening there last week is Remake, which is easily my favorite documentary of Movie Year 2026 so far. Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:

“I used to be a filmmaker,” director Ross McElwee says in the aftermath of the death of his son Adrian, but not by way of declaring this to be his last movie. As he recently told David Schwartz in an interview for Film Comment, “that’s meant to be a kind of mournful acceptance of the fact that something’s different now. I don’t say what that is right away.” Although McElwee then immediately adds, “I didn’t really see how I could continue to be a filmmaker,” his practice of capturing big and small moments from his life on camera comes across here as compulsive and not entirely unlike the addictions that plagued Adrian.

This sense that this is something McElwee needed to do binds Remake to this year’s critical darling Blue Heron. Writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, Ariel Schweitzer described the goal of that film’s director Sophy Romvari as “reconstructing the past in order to better understand it, in the hope of healing the wounds of her childhood.” But where Romvari meticulously recreates the late 1990s to process a trauma that occurred then, McElwee is acting more like an archaeologist of his own autobiography. What he gives us, the audience, when he cuts footage shot by Adrian into his film is something akin to what Katherine and Alex Joyce experience in Journey to Italy when they witness a plaster cast being made from the cavity a Roman couple’s bodies left behind at Pompeii.

Holdovers I especially enjoyed include The Samurai and the Prisoner, a rangy period piece which features both a subtle tea ceremony smile and an equally delightful close-up of a spider that’s anything but, and The Odyssey, which I’ve already talked about in this space a bunch of times. They continue their runs at Cinemapolis and the Regal respectively.

Special events include four free Reproductive Rights Film Festival screenings at Cinemapolis tonight through Saturday, a free “Family Classics Picture Show” presentation of Akeelah and the Bee there on Sunday, free screenings of Overburden and The Message at Cornell Cinema tonight and Tuesday evening respectively, and a “Drag Movie Night” presentation of Steel Magnolias at Cinemapolis on Wednesday hosted by Tilia Cordata. Finally, additional repertory highlights include Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 at the Regal on Saturday, L’Eclisse at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and Mad Max: Fury Road at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.

Home Video Recommendation: Last weekend I shared my Movie Year 2026 Mid-Point Top Ten (Percent) list on Bluesky and X, and while Power Ballad didn’t quite make the cut, I did list it as an honorable mention. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd in June:

I was so angry at this movie for not being more worthy of Paul Rudd and its promising I Love You, Better Man premise, until suddenly it was! Some of that trajectory is attributable to frontloading obvious jokes with no prayer of working before we’ve gotten to know the characters. In retrospect, though, certain aspects of its Candide-esque message about the importance of tending your own soundgarden may have also hit a bit close to home for this adamantly (TOO adamantly?) amateur film blogger. If Ballad doesn’t take home a Best Original Song Oscar, I give up, by which I am of course referring to the delightfully cheesy “Finishing Line”, not “How To Write a Song Without You”.

Power Ballad is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Lionsgate, and can be rented or purchased from a variety of streaming video platforms.

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

In Theaters: This week brings two new movies to town that I’m pretty excited about. Although neither Hope nor The Samurai and the Prisoner generated quite enough buzz to crack my “Cannes 2026 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list back in May, the trailers I’ve seen for both since then are intriguing. Samurai opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, and Hope is already playing there and at the Regal Ithaca Mall. Other noteworthy new releases include legendary documentarian Ross McElwee’s latest Remake, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the well-reviewed concert film Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow. Our family is also finally going to go see Coyote vs. Acme, which continues its run at both Cinemapolis and the Regal.

My highest-rated holdover remains The Odyssey, which continues its run at the Regal, but I also enjoyed Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Regal), Tony (Cinemapolis), and Late Fame (Cinemapolis), which features Willem Dafoe as an Unfrozen Caveman Beat Poet. And although I personally thought Buddy tries way too hard to be weird, I note with interest that the number of screens it’s playing on at the Regal has been INCREASING as the weeks go by, which actually doesn’t shock me because the crowd full of young people I saw it with really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Here’s what I said about this one on Letterboxd:

Perverse in the manner of Meet the Feebles at its best, but unwilling to go all the way. Buddy is also hampered by a mise en abyme effect whereby even the ostensibly “real” scenes feel sitcom-artificial, masking what (if anything) might be at stake until the last shot. The idea in 28 Years Later that 90s children’s television could *spawn* evil is much more interesting than this film’s contention that it actually was the work of the devil, but Cristin Milioti has a moment of trippy brilliance as a brainwashed nurse in a blue uniform, and the kids are alright as well.

Special events include the start of the Reproductive Rights Film Festival and free screenings of The Eyes of Ghana and Cinema Nomad: Nepal at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Monday, and Huesera: The Bone Woman and American Experience: Bombshell at Cornell Cinema on Monday and Wednesday. The Cinema Nomad and Huesera events will both also feature “talkbacks” with the filmmakers.

Finally, it’s another great week for repertory fare! The highlight for me is a 35mm print of Vagabond, one of my favorite movies by pantheon filmmaker Agnès Varda, which screens tomorrow as part of the “Wayfaring Strangers” series that Cornell Cinema Director Molly Ryan talked about in my recent interview with her. You can also see a new 4K restoration of Days and Nights in the Forest there tonight; Rear Window at the Regal tomorrow; Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fast Times at Ridgemont High at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; and Duck Soup at the Regal on Monday.

Home Video Recommendation: Speaking of the Marx Brothers, the start of the NFL season always makes me think of my August, 2022 “Drink & a Movie” selection Horse Feathers, which I recently realized I’ve never mentioned in THIS space. Here’s how that post ends:

When I remember great NFL moments like Santonio Holmes’s game winning touchdown catch in Super Bowl XLIII, I don’t just think about the play itself, but also the drive that made it possible, the offseasons that brought the players involved in it to Pittsburgh, and the ruling on the field that yes, this really was a completion. But what counts as a catch and what doesn’t in the NFL is based on rules that at the end of the day are essentially arbitrary and subject to change, as indeed they have multiple times since that February night in 2009!

Horse Feathers understands this fundamental truth about football, even as it’s indifferent to it otherwise except as a platform for jokes. Baravelli announcing the play that Huxley is about to run (“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Professor Wagstaff gets the ball!”) is basically the exact opposite of Peyton Manning calling out audibles at the line of scrimmage. Either way, you’ve got adults play[act]ing something that started out as a children’s game. I’d argue that in both cases the principals have elevated what they’re doing to the status of art, but if you aren’t having fun watching them, you’re doing it wrong.

You can purchase or rent Horse Feathers from a variety of streaming video platforms, plus the Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection DVD box set I watch it on is still widely available.

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

In Theaters: We’ll be out of town for most of the next week, so the only movie I’m going to be able to catch is former Film Comment editor Kent Jones’s latest Late Fame, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow. It’s actually pretty quiet on the new release front otherwise, but there are some outstanding repertory options to choose from!

The one I’m sorriest to miss is The Searchers at the Regal Ithaca Mall tomorrow. I’ve written about it quite a few times on this blog and elsewhere, including as recently as July in a post called “What Makes a Man To (Not) Wander.” The Regal is also showing Halloween tomorrow, Double Indemnity on Saturday, and The Last Picture Show on Wednesday. Cornell Cinema is screening Aguirre, the Wrath of God tonight, Jia Zhangke’s debut feature Pickpocket tomorrow, and a new 4k restoration of Days and Nights in the Forest on Saturday. Finally, Cinemapolis gets in on the action with Studio Ghibli’s production of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya on Tuesday.

The Odyssey, which closes at Cinemapolis today but continues its run at the Regal, reclaims its title as my favorite holdover. I also enjoyed The End of Oak Street, It Ends (which I only saw last night and am still processing), Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tony, and Toy Story 5. All of them are at the Regal, and both It Ends and Tony are at Cinemapolis as well.

Last but not least, special events include free presentations of Palestine 36 at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday, The Sludge War at Cinemapolis on Wednesday, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday featuring an introduction by Cornell alum Dominique Thorne, who plays Riri Williams. There’s also a screening of the documentary A Place in the Ring at Cinemapolis on Saturday which will feature a talkback with subject Katja Schumann.

Home Video Recommendation: Speaking of Princess Kaguya, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter that she originally appeared in also inspired one of the wackiest movies I’ve seen so far this year, Cosmic Princess Kaguya! Here’s the somewhat befuddled reaction I posted to Letterboxd in April:

What if Hermione, Harry, and Luna Lovegood were all the same person? I am not the target audience for this and frankly didn’t fully understand what the heck was going on during most of it, but found its frenetic pace and colorful images enjoyable in a people watching in downtown Tokyo after downing two double espressos sort of way. If you can’t handle the soundtrack, don’t even think about tackling the full audiovisual experience.

Kaguya! is available on Netflix with a subscription.

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

In Theaters: As you have no doubt noticed if you live in Ithaca, the “collegers” (as my girls call them) are back and that means so is Cornell Cinema! They kick off their fall lineup with a new 4k restoration of Thelma & Louise this evening in honor of its 35th anniversary. I’m going to catch the final screening of The Wrong Girls at Cinemapolis before it closes myself, though, then follow it up with Buddy and/or It Ends at the Regal Ithaca Mall later in the week. We’re also hoping to see Coyote vs. Acme as a family there or at Cinemapolis but not until after next Thursday.

The holdover I’m highest on is Mutiny, which continues its run at the Regal. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

Jason Statham in non-mythological mode. The film takes advantage of the agoraphobic/claustrophobic contrasts afforded by a cargo ship on the high seas: an open-air showdown in the former register lets us feel the full heft of a fire axe, and while the close-quarters fight choreography typical of the latter might not be flashy, it does rank among the year’s best. I don’t know if Mutiny will still be on my top ten list come Oscar night, but Adrian Lester’s U.S. Navy captain who leads by looking away is the excuse I’ve been waiting for to write about the lessons I learned as a manager from Damian Lewis’s Major Dick Winters in Band of Brothers, so stay tuned to ye olde blog around then for more!

I also enjoyed The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Tony, which wisely leans into the hagiography inherent in most biopics. All three movies likewise remain at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I wasn’t as keen on Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which continues its run at the same two theaters, but it does feature some beautiful matte paintings.

Special events include a screening of Project Hail Mary at Cornell Cinema tomorrow introduced by Lisa Kaltenegger and Abigail Bohl from the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and followed by an open telescope night at the Fuertes Observatory. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include Terminator 2: Judgment Day (which like Thelma & Louise also turns 35 this year) at the Regal Saturday-Wednesday and a celebration of the letter “P” at Cornell Cinema on Saturday that consists of first The Producers and then Perfect Blue.

Home Video Recommendation: Speaking of films from 1991, even with the fall semester in full swing, now is a fine time to watch A Brighter Summer Day. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd earlier this month:

Perhaps the shortest four-hour-long movie ever made. Every single scene contains an object or a line of dialogue that anticipates a later event and/or echoes an earlier one, but like the works of Hawks and Tolstoy that we are explicitly invited to compare it to, Brighter Summer Day‘s construction feels organic, not mechanical. 

Great art might also follow a blueprint, but it can’t be taken apart and put back together again the way Chi-tsan Wang’s Cat does with the radio that belongs to his friend Xiao Si’r (Chang Chen). Take the advice that Si’r is given by his father (Kuo-Chu Chang), for instance: “a person who’ll apologize for wrongs he didn’t commit is capable of all sorts of terrible things.” It indicts the state he works for when it demands this very thing of him later and resonates with Honey’s (Hung-Ming Lin) observation that Shandong (Alex Yang) doesn’t “seem the type that’s not afraid to die.” But look how far these insights get each of them!

Director Edward Yang clearly hopes that *we* will be able to make more out of his grand design than Honey took away from War and Peace, but it’s hardly as if he fancies himself Lao Tzu at the Han-ku Pass. While he knows the flashlight he wields is better than a knife and while he hopes the path he’s lighting leads to a better world than the one he’s depicting, the burden is on us to follow it and find out.

Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to A Brighter Summer Day on Kanopy via a license paid for by the Library. It’s also available on the Criterion Channel with a subscription, for rental or purchase from a number of other streaming video platforms, and on Blu-ray 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.

In Theaters: I will be in Rome, New York tomorrow until Sunday to attend Capitolfest 23, my very first time at this event–stay tuned for a “dispatch” blog post in a couple/few weeks! I’m going to Canada for a couple of days after that, but am hoping to catch The End of Oak Street at the Regal Ithaca Mall after I return. My Loving Wife is a big Matthew McConaughey fan and we’re planning a date night outing to see The Rivals of Amziah King at Cinemapolis as well, but ideally we’ll have the luxury of waiting until next week.

The Odyssey, which continues its run at both theaters, remains my favorite holdover for a third week in a row. I also enjoyed I Want Your Sex (Cinemapolis), Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Cinemapolis & Regal), and Toy Story 5 (Regal). Finally, your special events/repertory highlight is definitely the two screenings of Mulholland Drive at Cinemapolis on Tuesday because all David Lynch fans should experience it on the big screen at least once.

Home Video Recommendation: I recently caught up with Bellissima after missing it at this year’s Nitrate Picture Show (which I only attended for one day) and it’s great! I marked my Letterboxd movie diary entry for it as “contains spoilers,” but those don’t start until the second paragraph. Here’s the first:

Reminds me of French Cancan, except here the film director Alessandro Blasetti (playing himself) is helpless in the face of humanity as a force of nature–not just the stage mothers shouting “mine is bellissima!” which Pauline Kael says inspired it, but also his braying colleagues–instead of able to harness it. Except, of course, that the true analog for Jean Gabin’s Henri Danglard is Anna Magnani’s streetwise I-will-survivor Maddalena Cecconi. 

Read the rest after you see it, then drop me a line in the comments if you can think of a more misleading DVD cover than this one for the Entertainment One release I recently bought on Amazon, which gives no hint whatsoever that the film is a lively comedy:

Bellissima is also available for rental on Prime Video.

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

In Theaters: My Loving Wife and I spent a pretty big chunk of last year catching up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and consequently Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the movie we’re planning to spend our Twelfth Wedding Anniversary Observed celebration with (we’ll be in different countries on the actual date). We’re probably going to see it at Cinemapolis this weekend before or after dinner at Thompson and Bleecker, but it also opens at the Regal Ithaca Mall today. I’m going to see I Want Your Sex at one of those two theaters this week as well. My top recommended holdover is The Odyssey, which continues its run at both venues, and I enjoyed The Invite (Cinemapolis) and Toy Story 5 (Regal) as well. You also have two final chances to see Rose of Nevada, one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2026, at Cinemapolis this afternoon and evening before it closes.

Special events include a “National Art House Day” presentation of Network at Cinemapolis tonight and the Continuum Showcase, a free “opportunity for artists, creatives, and movie lovers to come together and appreciate this moment in the continuum of cinema,” there on Sunday. Elsewhere on the repertory front, there are 55th-anniversary screenings of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday, and two showings of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.

Home Video Recommendation: Speaking of my favorite films of the year, I’ve been meaning to mention that My Father’s Shadow is now available on Mubi with a subscription! As I mentioned on Letterboxd, it’s the reason I recently reread James Joyce’s Dubliners, which is in turn the reason I was thinking about “The Dead” while I was working on the “What Makes a Man To (Not) Wander?” post I published a couple of weeks ago. It also features a Something Wondrous This Way Comes opening gust of wind and terrific original score by CJ Mirra and Duval Timothy.

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