Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: Lots of movies are arriving in Ithaca that I’ve been looking forward to! Most notably, The Mastermind, which I identified last June as the Cannes 2025 selection I was third-most eager to see, opens at Cinemapolis tonight. I’m also going to try to catch Blue Moon there and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: I’ve got high hopes for The Mastermind, obviously, but One Battle After Another remains my favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen for now. It continues its respective runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, although it’s down to one showtime per day at the latter. Otherwise, this week is all about special events! Two silent films lead the pack: you can see Dawson City: Frozen in Time at Cinemapolis tonight, and Cornell Cinema continues an annual Halloween tradition by screening The Phantom of the Opera at Sage Chapel with a live musical accompaniment by The Invincible Czars tomorrow. The Wharton Studio Museum’s Silent Movie Month then concludes with The Gold Rush at Cinemapolis on Sunday. There are three free screenings at Cornell Cinema this week: Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution on Monday, Chasing Time (which also features free concessions) on Tuesday, and Io Capitano on Wednesday. Finally, seasonally appropriate repertory highlights include screenings of Dracula at the Regal tomorrow, Frankenstein there tomorrow, Halloween at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and Nosferatu the Vampyr at Cinemapolis on Tuesday among many other options.

Home Video: One Battle After Another is the third movie this year to reign as my favorite new release in Ithaca theaters for at least four straight weeks. I recommended The Phoenician Scheme in this spot last month, and it’s high time that I mentioned that the first to do it, Sinners, has been streaming on HBO Max with a subscription for a while now! Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd back in April:

As someone who grew up reading Anne Rice novels about immortals, the first post-credits scene might be the part of this movie that resonated with me the most, economically gesturing as it does toward a whole alternative universe of her Vampire Chronicles in just a few minutes. It was interesting to have the Dutchman quotation from Masculine Feminine and the Django quotation from The Harder They Come rattling in my brain throughout this also very referential movie. Ruth E. Carter’s costume designs are worthy of another Oscar nomination.

As an added bonus, if you watch it now you can pair it with the short film Return to Glennascaul, an atmospheric ghost story set in Ireland, which is available on Watch TCM until November 2.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with After the Hunt at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: Ideally I’d also catch Anemone (which I wasn’t able to make it to last week), Good Boy, Good Fortune before they close, but it’s a busy time of year, so we’ll see. Anemone is at Cinemapolis and the other two are at the Regal. One Battle After Another continues its reign as king of the first run fare I *have* seen for a third consecutive week. It’s at both of those venues. I also enjoyed Eleanor the Great and The Smashing Machine, which are just at Cinemapolis. Special events highlights include free screenings of the films E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Big Payback at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Tuesday respectively and of Marwencol at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. Finally, this week’s noteworthy repertory options include screenings of Spirited Away, which is at the Regal Saturday-Wednesday; a Harold Lloyd double feature of Speedy and Now or Never at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; Meet Me in St. Louis there on Sunday; and Event Horizon at the Regal on Tuesday.

Home Video: I try to always have enough silly projects going to guarantee I’m never bored enough to start contemplating the meaning of life or lack thereof, and recently it occurred to me that I should make sure I’ve actually seen every feature and short I own on physical media. So it was that I found myself systematically working my way through my copy of the Criterion Collection’s By Brakhage anthologies. Old favorites Dog Star Man and Mothlight were every bit as impactful as I remembered and new discovery The Garden of Earthly Delights if anything improves on the latter, but the real revelation for me was The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

An even more rigorous cinematic rendering of the Holy of Holies than Window Water Baby Moving. This is a humble work, and director Stan Brakhage casts himself as neither High Priest nor the one who tears the temple veil–he is, rather, just the person holding the camera. Extraordinary.

Just in case I’m underselling it, the all-time top ten list I published in August was my first one in probably ten years; I saw Act of Seeing less than a week later and was tempted to immediately make another update to substitute it in for Stalker as my very favorite film of the 1970s! I’m still not *quite* ready to go there two months on, but it’s close, and I’m now thinking about folding this exercise into my annual end of year posts so that I can keep changing my mind back and forth. Anyway, we’re about due for a Criterion Collection flash sale, and if you don’t already own By Brakhage, this one title alone merits adding it to your cart!

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Anemone at Cinemapolis. I’m also intrigued by Good Boy, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, which is at both aforementioned theaters, but we’ll be up north for most of the next week celebrating Thanksgiving with our Canadian relatives, so they’re going to have to wait.

Also in Theaters: One Battle After Another, which continues its run at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, remains my favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I also enjoyed The Smashing Machine, which is sort of a remake of The Lusty Men transposed into a mixed martial arts setting, and Scarlett Johansson’s feature-length directorial debut Eleanor the Great, which struck me as the dramatic alter ego of last year’s best pure comedy Ricky Stanicky. Both are at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events highlights include a free screening of the film Santiago De Las Mujeres at Cinemapolis on Sunday and a free screening of RBG at Cornell Cinema tonight which also features free popcorn, as well as a Silent Movie Month in Ithaca presentation of The Flying Scotsman there tomorrow. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare include screenings of After Hours at Cornell Cinema tonight; Battle Royale at the Regal on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday; and Prince of Darkness there on Wednesday.

Home Video: Speaking of Prince of Darkness, it’s one of the titles in a new Criterion Channel collection called “Directed by John Carpenter,” so if you aren’t free on Wednesday, you can watch it online! I wrote about Thom Bray’s character Etchinson on this blog in 2019.

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Eleanor the Great at Cinemapolis and The Smashing Machine either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: I’m also hoping to see Anemone, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, before it closes. My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is One Battle After Another, which continues its runs at Cinemapolis and the Regal. As I noted on Letterboxd, my loving wife and I are currently working our way through the cinematic adventures of Jack Ryan, and this movie struck me as an improved version of Patriot Games during moments like a rooftop shadow play with the moral that revolution is a young man’s game and a high-speed car chase through ember waves of asphalt, which I think might make it a “Democrat dad movie”? This week’s special events highlights include a free screening of the film Simshar followed by a discussion with director Rebecca Crimona at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday, a free screening of Yanuni there tonight, a free screening of Border Dwellers at Cinemapolis on Sunday, and the return of Cat Video Fest to Cornell Cinema this weekend. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include A Nightmare on Elm Street at Cornell Cinema and the Regal on Saturday, His Girl Friday at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and The General at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.

Home Video: Most of my Family (née Friday) Movie Night selections are old favorites that the girls haven’t yet seen, but every now and again I like to mix things up by choosing something new to me as well. In this spirit I recently went with Dangerous When Wet, which is streaming on Watch TCM until October 16, and am glad I did because we all loved it and have been singing the song “I Got Out Of Bed on the Right Side” ever since! Here’s what I said on Letterboxd:

Esther Williams plays future farmer of America Katie Higgins, who first allows herself to get sweet-talked into swimming the English Channel and then nearly dies in the attempt all because her father (William Demarest) has no idea how to run a business. Positively European in its attitude toward sex, highlights include a sort of color-by-number invitation to imagine Williams in a skimpy bikini, Charlotte Greenwood as Higgin’s mother contorting her body into Slender Man proportions in a solo dance number, and a great group reaction shot to a man answering a knock on a door thought to belong to a single woman.

I also note that because Tom and Jerry appear in an animated/live-action dream sequence, we paired it with the Merrie Melodies short Speedy Gonzales, which features the eponymous mouse squaring off against the Sylvester the Cat and would go well with One Battle After Another, too, for reasons of surprising relevance to current events. We watched it on DVD, but you can also rent it from 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.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see One Battle After Another at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall and to watch a 35mm print of Bringing Up Baby on the big screen at Cornell Cinema on Saturday!

Also in Theaters: I’m also intrigued by actress Scarlett Johansson’s feature-length directorial debut Eleanor the Great, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to it before it closes. My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is The Baltimorons, a love letter to the city I moved here from with The Holdovers vibes that won me over with its earnestness and persistence. It continues its run at Cinemapolis this week. This week’s special events highlights include the presentation of a 35mm print of The Lady Eve at Cornell Cinema on Sunday and free screenings of La Soledad (which I reviewed a few years back), The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Framing Agnes there on Thursday, Monday, and Tuesday respectively. Finally, other noteworthy repertory options include a screening of The Natural at Cinemapolis on Sunday to “celebrate the life and legacy Robert Redford,” Sisters at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and three classics at the Regal that every cinephile should see on the big screen at least once: Vertigo (tonight), 2001: A Space Odyssey (tomorrow), and Lawrence of Arabia (Sunday).

Home Video: I mentioned The Happening on this blog in August when I noticed that it has basically the same exact beginning as Groundhog Day, then again last month when I suggested you can read its ending as saying something very similar to the final shots of The Exterminating Angel. Now my oldest daughter’s fifth grade class is working on a version of the number doubling exercise John Leguizamo’s math teacher Julian gives his carmates to distract them from their imminent demise. *This* is obviously just a coincidence, but the multiple recent comparisons to other films aren’t–I think about The Happening, which I consider to be one of the great modern “B movies” and director M. Night Shyamalan’s masterpiece, all the time! Its budget may have been bigger than Val Lewton-produced fare like my October ’24 Drink & a Movie selection The Leopard Man, but the way a quotidian phenomenon like wind rustling leaves is imbued with menace is straight out of his playbook. Reviewers killed it on release and half the folks I follow on Letterboxd who have rated it are still going with scores of one-and-a-half stars or less, but I’m gratified by how many of the people whose opinions I respect the most are at the whole other end of the spectrum, which suggests to me that a critical reappraisal is already in the works. The Happening is currently available on YouTubeTV with a subscription and Prime Video for a rental fee–check it out and join us in the vanguard!

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with The Baltimorons at Cinemapolis and maybe Him at the Regal Ithaca Mall depending on what kind of reviews it gets.

Also in Theaters: I’m not crazy about any of the first run fare playing Ithaca right now that I’ve already seen. Luckily, there’s plenty happening on the special events and repertory fronts! One highlight in both categories are the screenings of 35mm prints of Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Sunday respectively. There are also three free movies there this week: Memories of a Burning Body on Saturday, Cocote on Monday, and El Norte on Wednesday. There are quite a few free events at Cinemapolis as well, including the final four screenings in the third annual Reproductive Rights Film Festival and a “Family Classics Picture Show” presentation of The Wizard of Oz on Sunday, along with a concert film featuring local band Microbes Mostly on Tuesday. Finally, this week’s repertory offerings at the Regal include Do the Right Thing tonight, Psycho tomorrow, A Clockwork Orange on Sunday, and Casablanca on Wednesday, while Dead Man plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday.

Home Video: The Phoenician Scheme, which is now streaming on Peacock, isn’t quite a *lock* to make my year-end Top Ten list, but it was sitting pretty in third place at the halfway point. While Ballerina might pass it on a rewatch, nothing I’ve seen since then has come close. I talked about those two films in the context of one another on Letterboxd in June:

Playing alongside Ballerina in multiplexes nation wide as it is, the main character of director Wes Anderson’s sometimes shockingly (for him) graphically violent new film struck me as the Baba Yaga of mid-20th century industrialism: undefeated, but not indestructible, as demonstrated by the visibly increasing wear and tear on his body, only he’s trying to stay *in* the game, not get out of it. Also as in the World of John Wick, plot is secondary–there to set pieces, here to the pieces which comprise the sets, including a series of artworks on loan to the production called out in the end credits. Anchored by masterfully understated performances by Benicio Del Toro and Mia Threapleton in the lead roles and a brilliantly exaggerated supporting turn by Michael Cera. Alexander Desplat’s Stravinsky-inspired score is my favorite of Movie Year 2025.

But like I said after my second viewing, the thing I find most interesting about it is that it’s “a 2025 movie set in 1950 that treats that era’s titans of business like the European royal families of the first half of the 20th century.”

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: Memories of Underdevelopment is the eleventh-greatest film I’ve never seen according to the 2022 Sight and Sound Critics Poll, so the free screening at Cornell Cinema on Monday is my top priority! I’m also going to try to catch The Long Walk at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which opens at the Regal today and Cinemapolis tomorrow, would probably be listed above, only I promised my loving wife I’d save it for a future date night. The best new movie in local theaters that I’ve already seen is Familiar Touch, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday evening. I don’t want to say much about it because I strongly suspect that at least the first scene plays better the less you know, but to pique your interest I will note here (as I did on Letterboxd) that it’s “a great food movie in the same way Spanglish is which also deals well with sensuality and desire in late adulthood + features terrific sound design, a pretty incredible lead performance by Kathleen Chalfant, and H. Jon Benjamin.” Other first-run fare I enjoyed include Caught Stealing and Weapons, which continue their respective runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is playing just the Regal. This week’s special events highlight is the opening of the third annual Reproductive Rights Film Festival, which features three free screenings at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Sunday. Finally, we are once again blessed with great repertory options at all three Ithaca venues, including screenings of Jaws and The Thing at Cinemapolis and the Regal respectively tonight, The Thin Man at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, Sunset Boulevard at the Regal on Monday, and a free presentation of a new 4k restoration of The Draughtman’s Contract at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday.

Home Video: Love Me Tonight is a wildly creative pre-Code musical directed by Rouben Mamoulian that features music by Rodgers and Hart, “male gaze”-defying beefcake shots of Maurice Chevalier, some of the best music-of-the-streets and catchy-song-catching-on montages of this or any other era, and perhaps the single funniest use of slow motion in moving picture history. And clothes by Edith Head, whom Turner Classic Movies is celebrating this month, including a riding habit that is identified in the diegesis as representing the height of fashion, which strikes me as a particularly daunting challenge for a costume designer. Anyway, this film is a shoo-in for any Best of the 1930s list I might ever find myself moved to make, so check it out on Watch TCM before it leaves next Wednesday!

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Familiar Touch at Cornell Cinema tonight and Splitsville at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall on Tuesday.

Also in Theaters: Highest 2 Lowest closes at Cinemapolis today, at which time its reign as the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen will end. After that the title belt will pass to, hmm . . . let’s go with Caught Stealing, an entertaining “feature-length proof purporting to demonstrate that actually two wrongs *can* make a right set in 1998 that could be director Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to Pi which he put in a time capsule for some reason” (as I recently said on Letterboxd) that continues its runs at Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Sorry, Baby, which plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday; The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is still going strong at the Regal; and Weapons, which remains there and at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events highlights are the encore presentation of a 35mm restoration print of Donnie Darko at Cornell Cinema tonight and a single screening of local favorite My First Film at Cinemapolis tomorrow to help launch The History Center‘s “Tompkins Treasure Hunt” event. Finally, the next seven days feature an embarrassment of repertory riches at all three Ithaca theaters, including 50th anniversary presentations of Jaws at Cinemapolis and the Regal all week, a new 4K restoration of Paris, Texas at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and a screening of Citizen Kane at the Regal on Sunday. You can also see The Godfather there on Saturday, Goodfellas there on Tuesday, and It Happened One Night at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, among other things.

Home Video: We finally checked out KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix after my youngest daughter got invited to a “KPop Demon Hunters Meets Unicorns and Rainbows”-themed birthday party, which: if you need any additional proof that this is a bona fide phenomenon, there you go! Anyway, this is now the girls’ favorite movie of the year and while it isn’t breaking any narrative or stylistic ground, my loving wife and I were pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a sturdy piece of work elevated by clever touches like an OCD demon tiger and catchy musical numbers, including my new clubhouse leader for the Best Original Song Oscar, “Golden.” Now I suppose we’ll find out how many sequels my goodwill can survive. . . .

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

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Americana at the Regal Ithaca Mall and Relay at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: It seems fitting that a movie year which will see the Criterion Collection release The Beat That My Heart Skipped, one of my favorite remakes ever, also features Spike Lee repatriating Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King’s Ransom in Highest 2 Lowest, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. Similar to how director Jacques Audiard ran the plot of Fingers through his camera backwards and upside down, Lee relies on our familiarity with High and Low to appreciate the notes he’s not playing, most notably when he switches out Kurosawa’s wide-angle look at Japanese society for a close-up on one record mogul’s relationship with African-American culture. In the battle of new horror films, I prefer Together, which remains at the Regal (although it’s down to just one screening per day), to Weapons, which is both there and at Cinemapolis, but they’re both fun. Other first-run fare at the Regal I enjoyed includes Sketch, The Naked Gun, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Superman in approximately that order. I’m also hoping to see Honey Don’t!, which opens at Cinemapolis today, and maybe Ne Zha II, which is there and at the Regal, depending on what I think about the original Ne Zha after I get a chance to check it out on Peacock. This week’s special events highlight is definitely the free “Silent Movie Under the Stars” screening of The Eagle in Upper Robert Treman State Park on Saturday, but the KPop Demon Hunters “Sing-Along Event” at the Regal on Saturday and Sunday may be of even more interest if that’s your thing. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are Tampopo, which plays Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their “Food on Film” August staff picks series, and Ponyo, which has showtimes at the Regal on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday.

Home Video: I recently reviewed Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming), the second and third installments in a nearly ten-hour-long documentary trilogy directed by Wang Bing, for Educational Media Reviews Online. To my very great surprise, this experience resonated with another time-consuming cinema project I was already in the middle of, working my way through the first decade or so of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with my loving wife. Did you know, for instance, that the collective runtime of the first four Avengers movies is almost exactly the same as the Youth cycle? And this isn’t the only thing they have in common! As I said on Letterboxd after re-watching Hard Times, it and Avengers: Endgame are each “more enjoyable if you also watch the movie that preceded it, but both also render that film largely superfluous.” Meanwhile, Homecoming is in a lot of ways an extended coda. The main challenge of “durational” cinema for me isn’t its length per se but rather the opportunity cost it represents, which as I mentioned a few months ago is the reason I don’t go for TV series–after all, including collections, I have almost a hundred films on my Criterion Channel watchlist that I could be watching instead. And so, just as I intend to propose a “cheater’s MCU” as soon as I’m caught up, I’m here today to tell you that if you’re merely *curious* about the Youth trilogy, you can totally get a good sense of what it’s all about just by watching Hard Times! And then, if you really dig it, you can go back and watch all three movies in a row, which even in the absence of definitive testimony from Bing (which might not alter my opinion regardless) is how I think they’re MEANT to be seen. Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to this film through a subscription to Docuseek paid for by the Library and it’s also available for rental from 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.