Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: Normally I restrict myself to just one movie in theaters per week so that I don’t miss out on too many bath and dinner times, but I occasionally make exceptions. The lead-up to the Oscars is one such time, and I’m planning to see both the “minus color” version of Best Visual Effects nominee Godzilla Minus One at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall and Best Picture nominee American Fiction at Cinemapolis, plus we’re taking the girls to see the dubbed version of Best Animated Feature The Boy and the Heron at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.

Also in Theaters: A whopping seven additional Oscar nominees are playing the Regal this week in “reissue” engagements, which doesn’t even include Poor Things since that one never closed there. Meanwhile, you can also see the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron at Cinemapolis all week and the subtitled version at Cornell Cinema on Saturday. My top pick isn’t any of these films, though, but rather All of Us Strangers, which is at Cinemapolis. Like Petite Maman, one of my favorite movies from last year, it suggests that the path to truly understanding our parents runs not through Reality or Fantasy but a different realm that we maybe don’t still have a name for in 2024. It also features four magnificent lead performances, one of the year’s best opening shots, and a brilliant Christmas scene starring the song “Always on My Mind” by the Pet Shop Boys (which you’ll never hear the same way again) among manifold other virtues. With Cornell Cinema back for the spring semester, there are great repertory options again, including a 35mm print of Rashomon tonight and on Sunday and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City on Monday. The Wizard of Oz is at the Regal on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, too. Finally, I’m intrigued by Origin, which opens at Cinemapols today, although I suspect it will close before it works its way up to the top of my list.

Home Video: In addition to all the movies listed above, there are a ton of other Oscar nominees available on streaming video and if you’re anything like me, they will dominate your viewing for the next six weeks. Before you get started, though, allow me to recommend setting aside one night to revisit City Lights like I did the other day. It has been on my mind ever since I saw Fallen Leaves, which pays tribute to it, so I put it on immediately when I noticed that it’s currently in Turner Classic Movies’ On Demand lineup and available via their Watch TCM app (as well as on Max and The Criterion Channel). The opening sequence is an all-time great; the boxing scenes are every bit as much a delightful travesty as the football scenes in Horse Feathers that I wrote about in August, 2022; and the final cut may be the most perfectly-timed one in the history of cinema. If that still isn’t enough to convince you, it also would pair beautifully with Best Live-Action Short Film nominee The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which is of course now streaming on Netflix.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: It’s basically a coin flip for me between American Fiction and All of Us Strangers, both of which open at Cinemapolis today. At the moment I’m leaning toward the former because the showtimes are slightly more compatible with my schedule, but I definitely reserve the right to change my mind and I’m almost certainly going to see the other one next week, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.

Also in Theaters: For the third week in a row, The Boy and the Heron and Poor Things rule the roost as the best new films I’ve seen currently screening in Ithaca. You can see the former at Cinemapolis in both its dubbed and subtitled versions and at the Regal Ithaca Mall with subtitles only; the latter is also now playing at both locations. I haven’t mentioned Wonka, which continues its run at the Regal this week, in this space previously because I almost certainly won’t end up seeing it in theaters, but it’s probably the next-best-reviewed option after these two and American Fiction/All of Us Strangers. Unless, that is, you count Pixar’s Soul, which is also now playing at the Regal once a day. You can see Cowboy Bebop: The Movie there as well with subtitles on Sunday and Tuesday and dubbed on Monday.

Home Video: I’m extremely late to this party, but the four shorts directed by Wes Anderson based on Roald Dahal stories that Netflix released a few months ago are pretty great! However, while I liked The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and most especially The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, my favorite is definitely Poison. Not necessarily because it represents the purest expression of Anderson’s style or a spur track into previously uncharted territory (which it may or may not), but simply because it’s a nearly flawless adaptation and one of the best films I’ve seen in Movie Year 2023, full stop. One fine moment is when Ben Kingsley’s Dr. Ganderbai administers serum to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Harry Pope, who supposedly has a highly venomous krait sleeping on his stomach. He holds up to the camera in turn a piece of rubber tubing, a bottle of alcohol, and a syringe as Dev Patel’s Timber Woods narrates in rapid-fire staccato on from the other half of a split-screen composition. The effect is neither specifically theatrical or cinematic, but something else. In a play we probably wouldn’t be able to see these objects, and in a more traditional filmic presentation they’d be expected to speak for themselves, but in this movie they function to draw attention to Dahl’s choice of words. Ditto Benoît Herlin’s stagehand spritzing water on Dr. Ganderbai’s forehead to simulate sweat. There are also a number of places where Poison departs from its source material to salutary effect, such as by giving Woods an implied backstory involving a hospital stay as a child, his memories of which are triggered by the smell of chloroform, or by manipulating the beats of everything from the moment he and Ganderbai begin the pull down the sheet covering Pope to the original final line: “you can’t be.” Another highlight is the lighting in the scene in which Pope bares his fangs. Outstanding across the board.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I haven’t seen many films by Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki, so I’m going with Fallen Leaves since you’ve got to start somewhere. It’s at Cinemapolis for one week only starting today.

Also in Theaters: The Boy and the Heron, which continues its run at Cinemapolis this week in both dubbed and subtitled versions and at the Regal Ithaca Mall with subtitles only, is one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2023. Poor Things, which remains at Cinemapolis, is another. If Fallen Leaves wasn’t here for such a limited time, I’d probably be seeing Napoleon this week since I missed it during it’s first Ithaca run last year. It’s back at the Regal for one show a day. Speaking of the Regal, one of the reasons it will be a tragedy if it ever does close for real is because they do a great job of programming new films from India. Two Telugu-language films, Guntur Kaaram and Hanu Man, open there today. Finally, I’m banking on The Color Purple, which is at Cinemapolis, picking up Oscar nominations in a couple of week and sticking around in or returning to local theaters, but you might prefer not to take the risk.

Home Video: Over winter break I watched as many documentaries directed by the talented Belgian-Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam as I could get my hands on in preparation for my EMRO review of her stellar first narrative feature Mambar Pierrete. My favorite was Chez Jolie Coiffure, which is about a Brussels hair salon. The most audacious is Delphine’s Prayers, which invites us into a room with one of the director’s fellow Cameroonian transplants and keeps us there until she’s said everything she has to say. Last but by no means least, Mbakam’s feature-length debut The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman and the collaborative (with An van Dienderen and Éléonore Yaméogo) essay film Prism are the ones most essential for understanding what she’s doing in Mambar Pierrette. Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to all of them through a great platform called Docuseek that the library subscribes to. Even if you aren’t so fortunate, they’re all available on DVD or a variety of commercial streaming video platforms from Icarus Films.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I pivoted to The Iron Claw last week for scheduling reasons, so Ferrari remains next up on my list. It is now playing at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: The Boy and the Heron, a dazzling inventive grown-up fairy tale which rates among director Hayao Miyazaki’s finest work, is back at Cinemapolis in both dubbed and subtitled versions and remains at the Regal with subtitles only. Poor Things, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, is a raunchy, steampunk-inflected ode to “practical love” which includes some of the years best images, sounds, and performances. The Iron Claw is a first-rate sports movie which will be at Cinemapolis for at least one more week. You can’t go wrong with any of them, so pick whichever one sounds the most like your jam! Among movies I haven’t yet seen, the one with the best buzz in the circles I run in after Ferrari is probably Godzilla Minus One, which is at the Regal.

Home Video: There are still two months to go before I write about my favorite films of the year on Oscar night since so many significant releases haven’t yet reached Ithaca, but the list is already starting to take shape. One title that will definitely appear on it is A Thousand and One, which is now streaming on Prime Video with a subscription and available for purchase on Blu-ray and DVD. “Well-executed period piece with a terrific female lead” describes a gratifyingly large number of recent films, but director A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature can stand toe to toe with any of them. Teyana Taylor is a force of nature and Spotify informs me that the opening theme by Gary Gunn was one of my most-listened-to songs of 2023, but maybe the most impressive thing about it is the way an empty apartment first gradually turns into a home, then suddenly becomes a haunted ruin.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I wasn’t able to make it to Poor Things in Baltimore during our holiday travels, so I’m going to catch a matinee screening at Cinemapolis on New Year’s Eve. Then, to avoid falling too far behind on new releases, I’m going to see Ferrari later in the week either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: I’m at an unusual disadvantage in that I haven’t yet seen most of the films playing in Ithaca! Of those I have, though, my clear favorite is The Boy and the Heron, which continues its run at the Regal. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, seeing director Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was one of the great moviegoing experiences of my life. If you know his work, you should see his latest because it ranks with the best of his oeuvre; if you don’t, you should see it for the same reason by way of getting acquainted.

Home Video: One More Time, which is now streaming on Netflix with a subscription, is not a remake of Groundhog Day, but it features a similar “time loop” narrative and deliberately (there’s literally a scene in which the main character watches the earlier film for clues about what’s happening to her) hits a lot of the same beats. To take a cue from One More Time‘s soundtrack, it has a similar relationship to its inspiration as Ashnikko’s “L8r Boi” does to Avril Levigne’s “Sk8er Boi,” only Jonatan Etzler and company aren’t so much reconstructing a beloved text with a bad foundation as reworking the facade a bit. Crucially, they understand that Phil Connor’s journey was not necessarily toward becoming a *better* person, but rather one who knows what he really wants. Throw in a good lead performance by Hedda Stiernnstedt, colorful secondary characters, and a depiction of the early aughts that this member of Conestoga Valley High School’s Class of 2000 found convincing if a bit rosy, and you have a fine example of what My Loving Wife and I call a “Friday night movie.” Hat tip: Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Times.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: Poor Things, which opened at Cinemapolis yesterday, is one of my most anticipated new movies of the year. We’ll be on the road all week, so I won’t be able to see it here, but I’m hoping to catch a screening at the Charles Theatre in Baltimore during our travels.

Also in Theaters: My top recommendation is The Boy and the Heron, which is at Cinemapolis until Saturday and at the Regal Ithaca Mall one day longer, albeit only with subtitles. Maestro is already available on Netflix (which is why I ended up choosing Dream Scenario over it last week), but you can see it on the big screen at Cinemapolis until Sunday. My Loving Wife, who is a rower, is excited to see The Boys in the Boat, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal on Christmas Eve. Ferrari, which opens at the Regal then as well and at Cinemapolis on Christmas Day, is directed by Michael Mann, which makes it an event for me. Last but not least, I’ve heard good things about The Iron Claw, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal all week.

Home Video: Michael Fassbender’s eponymous main character from The Killer and Alain Delon’s Jef Costello from Le Samouraï would probably enjoy not talking to each other over dinner. They’re both in the same line of work, are clearly intelligent, and appear to live according to a strict code. So why is one considered the epitome of a certain notion of “cool” while the other comes across as sort of a doofus? Part of this is attributable to costume design: the clothes they wear may both be precision engineered to blend in to their respective milieus, but it seems unlikely that The Killer’s German tourist attire will still regularly garner attention from fashion writers they way Costello’s perfectly calibrated fedora and trench coat do more than fifty years later. More importantly, though, we can hear The Killer’s thoughts and thus are privy to the DETAILS of his philosophy of life as opposed to just having a brief quote from a made-up samurai text to go on. And so it is that one man’s escape from the suddenly undeniably corrupt world he inhabits registers as noble and pure while the other’s decision to permanently retreat to an island paradise very much doesn’t. I revisted Le Samouraï as recently as just the other day and it remains one of the most icily beautiful films I’ve ever seen, but there’s a lot more going on in The Killer. I particularly enjoyed the main character’s fondness for Amazon lockers, Egg McMuffins, and rideshare scooters, which in addition to being character note are a reminder that an average middle class person in 2023 has access to luxuries that would be the envy of wealthy monarchs from centuries past. Meanwhile, Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography is ostentatiously spectacular, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have once again produced one of my favorite scores of the year, following up their work on Empire of Light with something similarly spare, but much different in tone. The Killer is now streaming on Netflix with a subscription. Highly recommended!

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: My official selection is Maestro, which opens at Cinemapolis today, but I think we’re also going to take the girls to see It’s a Wonderful Life there on Sunday as part of the “Family Classics Picture Show” series. More information about this screening, which costs only $2 per person or $10 for a family or group, can be found here.

Also in Theaters: In 2002 a bunch of college friends and I piled into a car and headed north to attend the Toronto International Film Festival for one weekend. We prioritized a handful of new releases by directors we were already familiar with like Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, but for the most part we just went by the descriptions in the program and created a schedule that allowed us to see as many movies as possible. And so it was that I found myself watching a man I had never heard of named Hayao Miyazaki introduce his latest film Spirited Away. The subsequent two hours remain one of the most magical and unexpected moviegoing experiences of my life, and the best compliment I can think to pay The Boy and the Heron, which is now playing at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, is to say that I believe I’d feel exactly the same way if *it* had been the film I had saw that day instead. The next best new film in local theaters that I’ve seen is The Holdovers, which ends its run at Cinemapolis on Sunday but continues at the Regal at least through the end of the week. Other holiday options include Die Hard, which continues at the Regal all next week; my most recent Drink & a Movie selection National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which is there on Saturday; and The Polar Express, which is there on Sunday. Finally, two films open in Ithaca at the end of the week that I’ve heard nothing but good things about: Poor Things and The Iron Claw, which both arrive at Cinemapolis on Thursday. The latter starts a run at the Regal then as well.

Home Video: I’ve mentioned a few times recently that my family typically watches nothing but Christmas movies during the month of December, but we’ve actually done a pretty terrible job of it so far this year! We did all gather in the living room together for my December, 2022 Drink & a Movie selection Elf this past weekend, though, and I’m delighted to report that my oldest daughter is so interested in how films are made that she basically asked me to provide a commentary track focused on the practical effects used in the North Pole sequences, which is one of the cooler things that has happened in my life recently. We have it on DVD, but you can also stream it on Max with a subscription or rent it from pretty much any major platform. If you’re looking for anything but a holiday movie, the Shah Rukh Khan vehicle Jawan, which I enjoyed thoroughly when I saw it at the Regal in September, is now available on Netflix with a subscription.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: Director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film The Boy and the Heron, which opened at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall yesterday, headlines this week’s new releases, but I’m confident that it’s going to stick around for awhile (and ready with a backup plan just in case), so I’m going with actor Nicolas Cage’s new movie Dream Scenario, which continues its run at the same two theaters.

Also in Theaters: This time of year is a mixed blessing: on one hand, there’s an abundance of films playing Ithaca that I want to see! On the other hand, there’s no chance I can make it to all of them. Critics whose opinions I respect seem to like Godzilla Minus One, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, but I’m probably going to need to wait to see it myself until it hits the streaming services next year. Ditto for Napoleon and Saltburn, which are more divisive, and which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Of the new titles I’ve already seen, I heartily recommend The Holdovers, which continues its run at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Oppenheimer, which is back at the Regal. As far as repertory fare goes, Die Hard (which scholar David Bordwell called “masterpiece of Hollywood filmmaking” in a 2019 blog post that he re-posted earlier this week) and Love Actually are both at the Regal. There’s also a Frozen sing-along and mystery screening at Cornell Cinema on Monday before they go on hiatus for winter break. Finally, Ithaca mayor Laura Lewis is hosting a free screening of the documentary film It’s Basic at Cinemapolis on Tuesday. You can register for tickets here.

Home Video: I can tell my cinephile origin story in as few as two words: Star Wars. The “special edition” versions of the original trilogy were released theatrically in 1997, my freshman year of high school, and me and all of my nerd friends saw each film multiple times. When we started to get our driver’s licenses shortly afterward, we expanded our horizons slightly by going to all of the movies we had spent the previous months watching previews for. One was Starship Troopers, which I plan to cover in a future Drink & a Movie post; another was Event Horizon, which is now streaming on The Criterion Channel with a subscription. If that sounds wrong to you, go watch the movie! But if you need extra convincing, check out this interview with director Paul W.S. Anderson that film critic Bilge Ebiri conducted for Vulture last year. Ghost stories are, after all, a Christmas tradition!

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: It’s a close call for me between the documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Monday, and Nicolas Cage’s latest film Dream Scenario, which opened at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall yesterday. I’m currently intending to go with the former, but reserve the right to change my mind at the last minute! My Loving Wife and I may also see Napoleon, which continues its run at both of those same theaters, with her history buff uncle depending on how many other relatives come to Ithaca this weekend for our girls’ Irish dance recital and how willing they are to babysit.

Also in Theaters: It has been a few years since I literally recorded music onto an actual audiocassette, but I still use the term “mixtape” for certain Spotify and iTunes playlists. The thing they all have in common is intentionality: I restrict them to a certain length and put thought into how the songs flow into one another and fit together as a whole. I’ve always believed that you can do the same thing with movies. A film studies course syllabus is one obvious example, and a film series is another. Holiday movie watching can be, too, if you approach it the right way. We binge on Christmas movies each December in our house, but I don’t want the exact same thing over and over again. The Holdovers, which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall this week, has the potential to be a great “holiday mixtape movie” in that it’s set during a private boarding school’s winter break and features twinkling lights and Andy Williams singing “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” but also quite a few somber notes, making it a seasonally appropriate change of pace. More traditional holiday fare screening at local theaters this week includes The Polar Express and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (the subject of my next Drink & a Movie post!), which are at the Regal Ithaca Mall on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Home Video: Another great holiday mixtape movie is Metropolitan, which a friend of mine mentioned in an email earlier this week. Although the 10-day period when it unfolds spans Christmas Eve and Day, its focus is specifically on the debutante parties which take place in Manhattan during this time. The Oscar-nominated screenplay is absolutely brilliant and contains one of my single favorite lines from any movie ever, Tom Townsend’s observation to Audrey Rouget that her behavior is “not something Jane Austen would have done.” Edward Clements and Carolyn Farina are terrific in those two roles, and the rest of the cast is great as well. Metropolitan is a Criterion Collection title and is now streaming on both The Criterion Channel and Max with a subscription.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: My Loving Wife and I are excited to finally see The Holdovers, either on a date night at Cinemapolis while visiting relatives watch our kids or at the Regal Ithaca Mall while they see Trolls Band Together or Wish in an adjacent theater.

Also in Theaters: Killers of the Flower Moon is *probably* still the best new movie now playing in Ithaca that I’ve seen, but Priscilla made it a lot closer than I expected. From the opening close-up of one of its lead actress’s (here Cailee Spaeny, who is outstanding) body parts to her final plunge into the great wide open, it’s very much in conversation with Lost in Translation, which like many people I’ve always regarded as my favorite film directed by Sofia Coppola. The big surprise is that I might actually prefer Priscilla! What I haven’t figured out yet is how much of this is attributable to the movie itself, and how much of it is the fact that Coppola and I are both twenty years older than we were in 2003 and I’m now a father of two girls. Either way: recommended! As is Elf, my favorite Christmas movie of all time, which has a 20th anniversary screening at the Regal Ithaca Mall on Sunday.

Home Video: As I mentioned last week, the first movie my family watches after Thanksgiving is traditionally Miracle on 34th Street, so that’s got to be my recommendation. We’ll be viewing our trusty old 20th Century Fox Special Edition DVD release, but it can also be streamed on Disney+, Hulu, and Prime Video with a subscription and most other major commercial platforms for a rental fee.

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