Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: My family is still out of the country, so I’m tentatively planning on seeing a whopping three films at Cinemapolis: Kinds of Kindness (since I audibled to Longlegs last week), MaXXXine, and National Anthem.

Also in Theaters: Inside Out 2, which continues it’s run at the Regal Ithaca Mall, remains the best new movie in Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I enjoyed Thelma, a crowd pleaser starring June Squibb as a nonagenarian vigilante at Cinemapolis which also features the late Richard Roundtree in his final role, as well. In addition to everything I’m seeing this week, I’m hoping to catch Twisters at the Regal before it closes or maybe at Cornell Cinema this fall. Your best bets for repertory fare are two family-friendly films at the Regal: The NeverEnding Story, which has screenings on Sunday and Monday, and The Lion King, which is there all week.

Home Video: Like many people I’m shaken by current events. I found solace in two films I watched a few nights ago and am therefore recommending them as a double feature. The first is The Pig, a cinéma vérité-style short (50 minutes) documentary directed by Jean Eustache which is available on The Criterion Channel. Like his previous film The Virgin of Pessac, this one (which was made in 1970) seems to cry out to be read as commentary on the events of May 1968 given its proximity to them. If you’re a chef you might disagree–after all, it’s a fairly straightforward depiction of the butchering of the titular animal: we watch as it’s bled, scalded, and broken down into primal cuts, then witness the preparation of casings and stuffing of sausages. Introductory text explains that because the subjects are speaking in a local dialect, there are no subtitles, and although even non-French speakers will catch a few words they recognize like “coeur,” for the most part we’re left to our own devices to make sense of what we see. If you eat meat, you might reach for words like “timeless,” “humane,” or even “beautiful”; however, if you’re a vegetarian, it probably strikes you as barbaric. What I’m certain of is that both camps can benefit from this clear-eyed look at what exactly happens when a hog becomes “pork” which depicts an event that took place at a specific time and place, but also has happened every day around the world for generations.

I followed The Pig up with House of Usher, which was directed by the recently deceased B-movie legend Roger Corman, stars Vincent Price as Roderick Usher with a Draco Malfoy haircut, and is available on Turner Classic Movies On Demand and WatchTCM until July 25. It’s highly enjoyable for its lurid colors, overwrought performances, and nervous breakdown soundscape. Watching it when I did, I was also struck by the terms Usher uses to describe the curse which he believes afflicts his family:

This house is centuries old. It was brought here from England. And with it every evil rooted in its stones. Evil is not just a word. It is reality. Like any living thing it can be created and was created by these people. The history of the Ushers is a history of savage degradations. First in England, and then in New England. And always in this house. Always in this house. Born of evil which feels, it is no illusion. For hundreds of years, foul thoughts and foul deeds have been committed within its walls. The house itself is evil now.

Poe’s story already was a tale about original sin become self-fulfilling prophecy, but in the hands of Corman and screenwriter Richard Matheson it takes on practically geopolitical dimensions! I don’t mean to suggest that either House of Usher or The Pig offers *answers* for our current moment, but they’re both full of great questions that it would behoove ourselves to ask, most notably who are we (however you define that): pig or butcher? Roderick Usher or Mark Damon’s Philip Winthrop? Philip Winthrop or Myrna Fahey’s Madeline Usher? Or Harry Ellerbe’s Bristol, perhaps? And then, of course, what now?

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m dropping My Loving Wife and our dog Sally off at the family cottage in Ontario–our kids are there already with their grandmother–this weekend, then returning home alone to spend the rest of the month by myself before I join them all again in early August. During this time I’ll be at liberty to see as many movies as I want, and I plan to kick things off with screenings of both Thelma and Kinds of Kindness at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: Inside Out 2, which I started writing about last weekend, is the best new movie in local theaters that I’ve already seen, but the quietly intense coming of age (sort of) story Janet Planet isn’t far behind. The former is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, the latter is at Cinemapolis. In addition to the films I’m seeing this week, I’m also hoping to catch the horror movies MaXXXine and Longlegs at one of those two theaters before it closes. Can You Still Love Me, the directorial debut by local filmmaker Adam Howard, screens at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is either Princess Mononoke, which is at the Regal Sunday through Wednesday, or The Lion King, which is there all week, depending on whether you’re more of a Studio Ghibli or Disney kind of person.

Home Video: Last week I promised a list of my five favorite films directed by Asghar Farhadi. Here it is!

5. A Hero (available on Prime Video). Not just a return to form after the relative disappointment of Everybody Knows–I could justify ranking this as high as third! I’ve been trying to avoid reflexively using auteurist terminology like “Farhadi’s A Hero,” etc. out of respect for the complexity of filmmaking, but I do still tend to organize my movie watching around individual artists (i.e. not just directors) in large part because I enjoy encountering the same techniques, ideas, and faces appear again and again and watching them accrue ever more complex and subtle meanings. Here the opening shots of Naqsh-e Rostam are some of my favorites in Farhadi’s entire oeuvre: it’s his signature house in a state of disrepair, except the house is the nation of Iran! Similarly, Amir Jadidi isn’t just playing Rahim, he’s also playing the side of Shahab Hosseini’s Hojjat that we don’t get to see in A Separation. Speaking of which:

4. A Separation (available on Prime Video). Farhadi’s first Oscar winner (for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year–it was also nominated for Best Writing, Original Screenplay) and considered by many to be his best film. Payman Maadi’s Nader is perhaps Farhadi’s best unlikeable protagonist, but what stands out most in my mind is Shahab Hosseini’s terrifyingly wild physicality in the role of Hodjat, which is even more striking because he plays one of the most sympathetic characters in Farhadi’s previous film About Elly, which I’ll discuss further in just a minute.

3. The Past (available for rental from Apple TV+ and Prime Video). Easily the most underrated film on this list. I think it can sometimes be challenging to encounter a familiar director working in another language or setting because it forces you to reconsider what exactly you like about them. In the case of Farhadi, I suspect that his movies introduced many Americans to an Iranian U.H.B. that they didn’t know existed; transplant them to France, and what previously felt like a bridge between the citizens of countries two whose leaders are antagonistic toward one another becomes a case of “yeah, well of course *they’re* just like us.” Farhadi is hardly the first filmmaker who had to learn from experience that a little flash goes a long way, and A Separation is his first movie after he truly got all of the “art school” out of his system, but it advances almost too far in the direction of neorealism. The Past has all of that movie’s virtues, but with more three-dimensional characters and a successful return to stylistic flourishes like shots of people talking who we can’t hear because we’re separated from them by soundproof glass which he didn’t yet know hot to utilize fully effectively in films like Beautiful City: in other words, it’s his most “mature” work to this point.

2. About Elly (current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access through Kanopy via a license paid for by the Library; it is also available for rental from Apple TV+). There’s also a lot to be said for youthful exuberance, though! I had never heard of Asghar Farhadi when I saw this movie at the Silk Screen Film Festival (RIP) in Pittsburgh, PA in 2010 and it absolutely knocked my socks off. Had I been making year-end top ten lists at the time, I’m nearly certain it would have come in at number one. So this could be a sentimental pick, but I also think that it’s a masterful portrait of people who spend so much time and energy trying to convince themselves and others that they’re living their best lives that there’s none left over for genuine empathy, which is of course also a recipe for political complacency, and Taraneh Alidoosti’s Elly flying a kite is pure joy.

1. The Salesman (available on Prime Video). Not just number one on this list, one of the best movies of the 21st century so far. From the House of Usher opening to the subtle intertwining of its plot and themes with the play-within-a-movie Death of a Salesman to lead performances by Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, my favorite Farhadi regulars, that draw power from the other roles they’ve played for him, The Salesman represents his richest and most original treatment of his main themes.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am going with Janet Planet at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie in local theaters *right now* that I’ve already seen is Fancy Dance, which was directed by Ithaca resident Erica Tremblay, but it closes at Cinemapolis today. After that the title will pass to Inside Out 2, which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall and which I think I’m planning to write about. The other films I thought about seeing this week were The Bikeriders, Kinds of Kindness, and MaXXXine, all of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. A Quiet Place: Day One and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are the latest editions in franchises that don’t interest me much which are at the Regal and seem to be getting decent reviews? I’m much more likely to eventually see Sundance darling Thelma (Cinemapolis), which features a pretty incredible cast, or Kill (Regal), an Indian action movie. Your best bets for repertory fare are Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday, and Altered States, which is at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.

Home Video: In preparation for my recent Beautiful City review for Educational Media Reviews Online, I watched or rewatched every film directed by Asghar Farhadi. I’ll be back next week with my five favorites, but in honor of Independence Day, my recommendation this week is his third feature Fireworks Wednesday, which current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students and New York state residents can watch online for free via Projectr. This is a must-see for all Farhadi fans, as like Beautiful City it contains many of his trademark techniques and themes in a not-yet-fully-developed state as well as a great lead performance by Taraneh Alidoosti. It’s a great “observer effect movie,” too, in that her character Roohi’s constantly shifting understanding of the truth of the situation she has landed in is very much affected by the reactions of others to her well-intentioned but impulsive interventions, and it may also change the way you look at About Elly, as it uses the sound of firecrackers in a very similar way as that movie uses of the sound of the ocean.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’ll be in San Diego for the American Library Association’s annual conference until Tuesday. I always try to make space on my schedule for a visit to a local arthouse theater, and although it feels a bit odd to travel to the whole other end of the country to watch a movie directed by someone (Erica Tremblay) who lives in Ithaca, the most appealing option playing at the Digital Gym Cinema while I’m there is Fancy Dance, and I’m just gonna roll with it. I also intend to see The Cinema Within at the conference itself when it screens as part of the Now Showing @ ALA Film Program.

Also in Theaters: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga holds on to the title of Best New Movie in Ithaca That I’ve Already Seen for one more week, but it’s down to one screening per day at the Regal Ithaca Mall, so its reign is probably coming to an end. Inside Out 2, which is there as well, unsurprisingly doesn’t live up to its predecessor, but none the less makes for a good time out with the whole family. The reviews for Janet Planet, which opens at Cinemapolis today, are absolutely glowing, so that’s the new release I’m most looking forward to seeing; as a devotee of Top Chef I’m instinctively wary of “trios,” but I’m hoping to catch director Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest Kinds of Kindness there before it closes as well. This may mean I’m waiting for The Bikeriders (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Ghostlight (just Cinemapolis), and Thelma (ditto) to arrive on a streaming video platform, but they’re all on my list as well. On the repertory front your best bet is definitely 2001: A Space Odyssey, which kicks off a “Staff Picks” series at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. You can also see the imaginative 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at the Regal on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Home Video: I’m apprehensive about Jury Prize recipient Emilia Pérez based on what I’ve heard about it, but I’m going to close out my series on 2024 Cannes award winners with director Jacques Audiard anyway because his 2005 film The Beat That My Heart Skipped, a brilliant riff on writer-director James Toback’s Fingers, was one of my very favorites of that movie year. It doesn’t appear to be available on any streaming video platforms, but you can pick up a DVD copy on Amazon for barely more than the price of a rental like I just did upon realizing that it wasn’t already part of my physical media collection. Audiard is probably best known for his follow-up effort A Prophet, which is available for rental from Apple TV+ and Prime Video. Finally, his three most recent films are all available to stream for free with subscriptions or on ad-supported platforms. In reverse order: Paris, 13th District is on Hulu; The Sisters Brothers is on Tubi; and Dheepan is on The Criterion Channel.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: We’re celebrating the end of the school year on Tuesday with hibachi at Sumo and Inside Out 2 at the Regal Ithaca Mall!

Also in Theaters: The best film now playing in Ithaca (at the Regal) that I’ve already seen is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is a worthy prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road and quite possibly the best action movie we’re going to get this whole year. Of the new titles opening this week which I haven’t yet seen, the one I’m most interested in on the strength of the previews I’ve been watching at Cinemapolis this month and director Jeff Nichols’ previous work is The Bikeriders, which is both there and the Regal. Thelma, Fancy Dance, and Ghostlight (all of which open at Cinemapolis tonight or tomorrow) don’t necessarily *look* like my bag, but they each attracted positive reviews out of Sundance by critics I like, so I’d be happy to give all of them a chance, probably in that order. There’s not much happening locally on the repertory front, but South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut might scratch an itch for you that nothing from this year can.

Home Video: All this month I’ve been highlighting films by 2024 Cannes award winners in this space. I made up my mind to focus on Best Director honorees and am going to stick with this plan despite the fact that the pickings are lamentably slim for Miguel Gomes, who took home the top prize for Grand Tour. You can, however, watch his 2012 film Tabu on Mubi. Meanwhile, you can watch I Am Not a Witch, the first feature by co-winner (for On Becoming a Guinea Fowl) of the Un Certain Regard section’s Best Director award Rungano Nyoni, free with ads on Prime Video. Movies by The Damned director Roberto Minervini, who she shared this award with, are unfortunately as hard to come by as Gomes’s, but The Other Side is at least available on ad-supported free streaming video platform Tubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: My Loving Wife and I are shipping our kids off to a sleepover and indulging ourselves in a date night! The agenda includes dinner at Gola Osteria, drinks at Bar Argos, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at Cinemapolis. I don’t usually read reviews of movies I’ve already made up my mind to see, but I did hear a few critics say good things about this one on podcasts following its premiere at Cannes and we loved Mad Max: Fury Road, so I’m confident we’re in for a good time!

Also in Theaters: There’s quite a bit of turnover at Cinemapolis this week, but my favorite film of Movie Year 2024 so far remains. I Saw the TV Glow is a groundbreaking representation of the trans experience which doubles as a exploration of the disorienting feeling that any cinephile can relate to of not always confidently knowing where in the mélange of movies you’ve seen and imagined, half-remembered dreams, and things you’re pretty sure you remember actually experiencing the “real world” lies. The only other new movie on Ithaca screens that I’ve already seen is The Fall Guy, a crowd-pleaser like they supposedly don’t make any more which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall. If I was selecting what to see this week only from the titles arriving in town today, my top choices would probably be The People’s Joker (Cinemapolis) and Inside Out 2 (Regal) in that order, since I anticipate that the latter will stick around for awhile. I’m also intrigued by Flipside, which is at Cinemapolis–descriptions of it remind me of the concept of “golden handcuffs,” which I learned about from the director of a commercial I interned on while I was in college. On the repertory front your best bet is the special screening of the horror film X at Cinemapolis on Wednesday which includes a sneak preview of its sequel MaXXXine, which opens next month next month.

Home Video: Last week I highlighted films directed by newly-minted Palme d’Or laureate Sean Baker which are available on streaming video platforms. I definitely am excited to see Anora, but I’m looking forward to another 2024 Cannes award winner even more: Grand Prix recipient All We Imagine as Light, a sophomore feature-length effort by director Payal Kapadia which was the first Indian film to be selected for the main competition in thirty years. While we wait for it to debut stateside, subscribers can watch Kapadia’s previous film A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the L’Oeil d’or award for best documentary at the 2021 edition of Cannes, on The Criterion Channel.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: My gamble paid off! Evil Does Not Exist, which I passed on two weeks ago in favor of The Fall Guy knowing I would have to wait until after the Nitrate Picture Show to see it, is still at Cinemapolis, so that’s my pick this week because director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s last film Drive My Car was one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2021.

Also in Theaters: My Loving Wife and I have a date night outing to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, planned for next week, so that’s very much on my radar. The best new movie now playing in Ithaca which I’ve already seen is I Saw the TV Glow, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. Here’s a good piece about it by Emily St. James. I can also recommend the stylish and entertaining Challengers and The Fall Guy, which is a good, old-fashioned romantic comedy. With explosions. The former is at Cinemapolis and the latter is at the Regal. Babes (Cinemapolis), The Dead Don’t Hurt (Regal), and In a Violent Nature (both) have all garnered solid reviews, so if they sound interesting to you, they may be worth checking out as well. On the repertory front the highlight is Run Lola Run, which is at Cinemapolis. I originally saw it at the Point of View Cinema in Millersville, Pennsylvania (RIP) during high school, and I thought it was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Finally, a 70-minute shorts program will screen at Cinemapolis on Saturday as part of the sixth annual Quiet on the Set! Film Festival sponsored by the Wharton Studio Museum.

Home Video: If you’re like me the announcement of this year’s Cannes Film Festival award winners was a prompt to start adding previous work by the people who made them to your watchlist in anticipation of everything arriving in stateside theaters come fall. I’ll be using this space over the course of the next few weeks to highlight titles available on streaming video platforms beginning with films directed by Sean Baker, who took home the Palme d’Or for Anora. I first became aware of Baker about ten years ago, but somehow never got around to seeing a single one of his films. Well, unless you count his Taco Bell commercial, I guess. That’s all about to change, though! Here’s what I’ll be watching in the coming weeks and where:

• Take Out, which Baker co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, is available via The Criterion Channel with a subscription.
• Starlet is available via Mubi with a subscription.
• Tangerine is available via Netflix with a subscription.
• The short film Snowbird, which is was commissioned by the fashion brand Kenzo, is available on Vimeo via the director.
• The Florida Project is available via Max with a subscription.
• The short film Khaite FW21, which was commissioned by the fashion brand Kaite, is available on Vimeo via the director.

Red Rocket is also available for rental on a number of platforms.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am heading to Rochester, NY for the Nitrate Picture Show in a few hours and will spend the majority of the next three days watching movies! The opening night selection is Intolerance, and the rest of the schedule will be announced at a press conference later this morning. I’m hoping to post initial reactions on Letterboxd within ~24 hours of each screening and publish a dispatch on this blog like the one I wrote last year sometime during the next week or two–stay tuned!

Also in Theaters: I Saw the TV Glow is my favorite film of Movie Year 2024 so far and it continues its run at Cinemapolis this week, so that’s obviously my top recommendation! I also enjoyed Challengers, which is there and at the Regal Ithaca Mall, and The Fall Guy, which is just at the Regal. I played with fire a bit when I decided to see the latter earlier this week instead of Evil Does Not Exist, since I am hoping to catch that film before it closes at Cinemapolis–hopefully it will stick around awhile longer! My Loving Wife and I are also making plans for a date night outing to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga either there or at the Regal. My number one repertory pick for this week is The Muppet Movie, which is screening at the Regal on Sunday and Monday to commemorate its 45th anniversary.

Home Video: Intolerance star Lillian Gish’s last silent film appearance was in the The Wind, which entered the public domain in the United States this past New Year’s Day. I finally caught up with it the other day and was impressed by both her performance and the stunningly expressionistic final scene. Although the ostensibly “happy” ending is one of the more notorious examples of studio interference in Hollywood history, numerous people I follow on Letterboxd suggest that it leaves an even more bitter taste in your mouth than the original one would have, and I’m inclined to agree. This is now fair game for screenings, and if that’s the kind of thing you organize, you should consider programming this one–I think contemporary audiences would dig it! The Wind is available on DVD and the ad supported free streaming video platform Tubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Evil Does Not Exist at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: Hands down the best new movie now playing in Ithaca that I’ve seen is I Saw The TV Glow, which is at Cinemapolis. It’s mostly set in a late 90s suburban environment I remember well, stars Brigette Lundy-Paine as a fellow member of the Class of 2000, and includes a terrific rendition of “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” one of my favorite songs, so in some ways I’m its target audience. I came to many of its pop culture touchstones like Buffy the Vampire Slayer late, though, and don’t have firsthand experience with the issues of identity that it creates a new cinematic vocabulary to explore except in the most general sense, so may I humbly suggest that you consider this a “two thumbs up” ® endorsement from two different people: one who saw himself up on the screen, and one who loved it as a window into an unfamiliar world? I’m letting Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, ride for a couple of weeks in the hope that I can see it with My Loving Wife, but that’s the next most interesting title in local theaters; Challengers, which is at the same two theaters, is the second best new movie that I’ve already seen. It’s all quiet on the repertory front unless you’re one of those people who was really into The Crow, which is at the Regal Wednesday evening; you also have one last chance to see Amélie at Cinemapolis later today.

Home Video: I missed I Saw The TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun’s previous film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair during its theatrical run at Cinemapolis after my whole family came down with COVID, and when I caught up with it on streaming video at home a few months later, I confess that I was somewhat underwhelmed. This isn’t unusual for movies with a lot of buzz (I heard a lot about this one coming out of Sundance) which I was only able to see on the small screen, though, so I’m not surprised that I found it much more interesting the second time around. Like I Saw the TV Glow it features an excellent soundtrack by Alex G, a strong lead performance (especially considering that Anna Cobb was still a teenager during production), and some incredible images–I was especially taken by the static shot of us watching Cobb’s Casey watch the video that We’re All Going to the World’s Fair derives its title from. I think my previous hang-up was that as a result of age and inclination, the internet has never really been anything more to me than a place to look stuff up, so I don’t identify with it nearly as closely as the location of broken social scenes like the internet game community that Casey is a part of. Now that I’m looking at this as a Pink Opaque analog, the film resonates differently. Now streaming on Max.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing: I’m going with I Saw the TV Glow at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: Dune: Part Two is down to one screening per day at the Regal Ithaca Mall, so its month-long reign as the best new movie in Ithaca that I’ve already seen may finally be about to end. It’s closest competition is probably Challengers (see what I *didn’t* do there?), an energetic tennis movie starring attractive humans Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. If I was able to attend two screenings this week, my second choice would be The Fall Guy, which remains at the Regal. Your best bets for repertory fare are North by Northwest, which screens at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which will be at Cinemapolis as part of their Family Classics Picture Show series. Tickets cost just $2 each or $10 for a family group of five or more. Other family-friendly options include Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky, either of which is screening at the Regal every day from Sunday-Wednesday.

Home Video: For better or worse, Election Day 2024 draws ever closer. For a sneak peak at some of the politicians who may be campaigning for your vote a few years down the line, check out the Boys State and Girls State on Apple TV+. Both films purport to document editions (Texas, 2018 and Missouri, 2022 respectively) of the annual summer leadership programs by the same names run by the American Legion, but only the latter is expansive enough to function as an examination of just what they are and how they [in]compare to each other. I actually found Boys State‘s character study of four individuals jockeying for the top honor of governor as candidates or party chairmen/campaign managers more entertaining, but if you’re going to watch one, you really should make time for both, because they’re true companion pieces.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.