Category: Ithaca Film Journal

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.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Challengers at Cinemapolis or maybe the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: For at least one more week, the best new movie now playing locally remains Dune: Part Two, which continues its run at the Regal. Civil War, which is there and at Cinemapolis, is also definitely worth seeing. The Beast has a few more showtimes at Cinemapolis today before it closes; if you like it, you may be interested to know that you can see the Met Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly at the Regal on Saturday and Wednesday. I hear that The Fall Guy, which is at the Regal, is a fun time at the movies and hope to see it there before it closes. It’s once again slim pickings for repertory fare, but you can see Amélie at Cinemapolis all week.

Home Video: I’m absolutely thrilled to report that Turner Classic Movies has devoted the first three Thursdays of May to films directed by Frank Borzage, who up until now perhaps my most glaring cinephile blind spot! Here’s tonight’s lineup (all times in Eastern):

• 8pm: History Is Made at Night
• 10pm: Smilin’ Through
• 12am: Seven Sweethearts
• 1:45am: Flirtation Walk
• 3:30am: Shipmates Forever
• 5:30am: Hearts Divided

And here’s next week’s:

• 8pm: The Mortal Storm
• 10pm: Three Comrades
• 12am: Flight Command
• 2:15am: The Spanish Main
• 4:15am: Strange Cargo
• 6:15am: The Shining Hour

Each film they showed last week showed up on WatchTCM shortly after it aired, and hopefully that will be true of these titles, too–if so, I’m determined to watch all of them! Of the movies there now, the highlight is definitely Man’s Castle, which is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the cinematic equivalent of a Bruce Springsteen song–just change the setting to New Jersey in your mind, listen to that long whistle whine, and tell me I’m wrong! I’m also a big fan of the two Gary Cooper vehicles, A Farewell to Arms and Desire, which I believe is the first movie I’ve ever seen set in San Sebastián, Spain, one of my favorite cities in the world. The Circle, No Greater Glory, and Secrets are excellent as well. Also are available are two I haven’t watched yet, Mannequin and Stranded. Meanwhile, History Is Made at Night, the one Borzage film I’ve seen more than once and the subject of a future “Drink & a Movie” post, is also available on The Criterion Channel.

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

What I’m Seeing: I’m going with The Beast at Cinemapolis for this week’s theatrical screening.

Also in Theaters: Challengers, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, is penciled in as my theatrical selection for next week. The Fall Guy, which opens at the Regal today, will likely work its way up to the top of my list later in May. The best new movie now playing in Ithaca that I’ve seen is Dune: Part Two, which remains at the Regal. Civil War, which is there and at Cinemapolis, is neither as good nor as bad as you’ve heard, but it’s definitely worth seeing so that you can form your own opinion. Finally, repertory pickings are slim with Cornell Cinema done until fall following a “mystery screening” tonight, but options worth considering include Amélie, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow and runs all week, and Alien, which closes at the Regal tonight, but definitely not Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, which: why is this back in theaters?

Home Video: I typically make it a point to only recommend movies in this space that I have watched recently, but decided to make an exception after reading in the New York Times yesterday that Uncut Gems is leaving Netflix on May 8. It would have been a shoo-in for my Top Ten Movies of 2019 list had I made one that year and I remember it fondly every time one of my sports books runs a promo that suckers me into a silly NBA parley, which happens more often than I’d like to admit. I haven’t seen it since right before the pandemic, though, and My Loving Wife hasn’t seen it all, so this definitely what we’ll be watching this weekend!

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

What I’m Seeing: Local theaters are full of intriguing options right now! I’m going with the movie of the moment Civil War at Cinemapolis because I enjoyed the first three films that Alex Garland directed and because national treasure Stephen McKinley Henderson is in it.

Also in Theaters: I hope to catch both Challengers, which is at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and The Beast, which is at Cinemapolis, before they leave Ithaca. Had I but world enough, and time, I’d see Monkey Man (the Regal) and Sasquatch Sunset in theaters as well, but it probably isn’t going to work out. Oh well. Following a lot of turnover on local screens, the best new movie in Ithaca that I’ve already seen is once again Dune: Part Two, which is at the Regal. Cornell Cinema is winding down their spring programming with Cléo from 5 to 7 on Monday, a free screening of Borders on Tuesday, and a Science on Screen event which includes a screening of Back to the Future and a lecture by Professor Eilyan Bitar on Wednesday. Your other best bets for repertory fare are Spirited Away, which is at the Regal in dubbed or subbed versions Saturday through Wednesday, and Alien, which opens at the Regal tomorrow and runs all week.

Home Video: The name of this blog refers to the fact that I took a roughly decade off from intensive movie watching between finishing graduate school in 2009 and the birth of my second child in 2018 to concentrate on my family and career. I’m sure I still saw more films than an average person during this time, but there were also a lot of prominent new releases that I completely missed. I finally caught up with one of them the other day after Jason Bailey noted in the New York Times that Whiplash is leaving Netflix on April 30. As you probably already know, it’s terrific! J.K. Simmons is a Best Supporting Actor of the Decade candidate for his performance as Terence Fletcher, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack nonstop on Spotify all week, and the final sequence is absolutely stunning. I think I like it best, though, for its treatment of art and sport as two sides of the same coin. Sport is the art of the body, and artists are competitors just as surely as athletes are–they just have different ways of keeping score. Whiplash is about how much we’re missing when we focus only on concerts and games and ignore the countless hour of practice and decision-making that preceded them: if we applaud the final performance without understanding what led up to it, who knows what kind of awful behavior we’re condoning? At the same time the only way to convincingly rebut Fletcher’s claim that his methods are necessary if we value greatness is with a thoughtful definition of what that word does and should mean.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am psyched to finally see La Chimera at Cinemapolis!

Also in Theaters: The best new film playing Ithaca this week that I’ve already seen is Aurora’s Sunrise, which screens for free at Cornell Cinema on Monday. I had the pleasure of catching this ingenious blend of original (partially rotoscoped) animation; interviews with Armenian genocide survivor Arshaluys Mardigian; and footage from Auction of Souls, a 1919 American silent film about her life in which she played herself, at last year’s Maine International Film Festival. I also recommend Dune: Part Two, which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall. New movies I hope to get to before they close include Sasquatch Sunset, which is at Cinemapolis, and Civil War, which is there and at the Regal. Best International Feature Film Oscar nominee Io Capitano, which opens at Cinemapolis today, is supposed to be good as well, as are De Humani Corporis Fabrica and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, both of which play Cornell Cinema tonight. Your best bets for repertory fare are once again two films directed by Christopher Nolan: Interstellar, which is playing the Regal this afternoon, and Inception, which is there on Wednesday. Finally, there are free screenings at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and Wednesday, of the movies Bad Press and In Search of My Sister respectively, and a showcase of short films presented by Bike Walk Tompkins is playing Cinemapolis on Sunday with tickets available on a sliding scale from $2-$10.

Home Video: I recently finished watching everything in the “Directed by Kinuyo Tanaka” collection on The Criterion Channel. The highlight for me is Forever a Woman, which I *thought* I saw nearly 25 years ago as a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh under the title The Eternal Breasts, but I must just have remembered that it was playing as part of a local film series because its best scenes are unforgettable. It stars Yumeji Tsukioka as a long-suffering wife and daughter based on Fumiko Nakajō who is trying to finally live for herself a little as a poet before she dies of cancer and is probably the most explicit treatment of what seems to me to be Tanaka’s main theme: contrasting feminine-coded artistic pursuits like poetry and flower arrangement as a way of finding meaning in life with masculine-coded vocations like politics and journalism that are obsessed with controlling people’s destinies.

This is complicated somewhat in her next-best film as a director, Girls of the Night, in that the reformatory that former prostitute Kuniko Sugimoto (Chisako Hara) graduates from is run by women. I strongly recommend watching this film back-to-back (maybe even as a double feature) with Tanaka’s impressively assured debut effort Love Letter because it feels like an explicit attempt by a now more established director to correct the latter’s distractingly censorious attitude toward women with the audacity to seek economic security and sexual pleasure in the arms of foreign soldiers. Love Letter also includes what may be Tanaka’s single best scene, an arresting finale which cuts back and forth between the two main characters (Yoshiko Kuga’s Michika and Masayuki Mori Reikichi) but ends before the two of them ever share the frame together again.

Tanaka’s first color film, the historical epic The Wandering Princess, has really started to grow on me. The middle portion is an inversion of Forever a Woman: instead of using poetry to make meaning out of an unhappy marriage, Machiko Kyô’s Hiro Saga channels her thwarted aspirations to become a painter into building a blissfully happy home even as the world goes up in flames around her. There are also a number of nice scenes involving flowers and trees. The remaining two entries in the series, The Moon Has Risen (which is based on a script by Yasujirô Ozu and Ryôsuke Saitô) and Love Under the Crucifix, have their moments as well. All of these movies deserve to be better known, so check them out!

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

What I’m Seeing: I’m going with Here, which is screening at Cinemapolis this evening as part of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.

Also in Theaters: Two other FLEFF selections that I mentioned last week, Last Things and Pictures of Ghosts, are back at Cinemapolis again this afternoon and Sunday night respectively. Another good choice is the 1926 Soviet classic Mother, which continues a longstanding festival tradition of programming silent films when it screens there on Friday night accompanied by Ithaca’s own Cloud Chamber Orchestra. FLEFF’s full remaining lineup can be found on their website. The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is 4x Oscar winner Poor Things, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Friday. The most intriguing new movies I haven’t seen are All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the 28th-place finisher in the most recent Indiewire Critics Poll, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, which is there on Sunday. Other movies I’m hoping to see in the coming weeks include Civil War, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight, and La Chimera, which begins a run at Cinemapolis tomorrow. On the repertory front your best bets are All That Breathes, my pick for last year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, which is at Cornell Cinema on Monday; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow; and two films directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight and Interstellar, which are at the Regal tonight and Wednesday respectively.

Home Video: I’m delighted to report that Mambar Pierrette, which I wrote about for Educational Media Reviews Online and included on my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” list, is now streaming on The Criterion Channel as part of a collection called “Three by Rosine Mbakam”! It also includes two short films, Doors of the Past and You Will Be My Ally, which pay testament to how far Mbakam has come as a director since the start of her career. I discussed the four feature-length documentaries which bridge the intervening ten or twelve years (Criterion and IMDb disagree on a couple of dates), all of which are available to current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students via Docuseek, in January.

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