Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: The snow on Tuesday waylaid my plans, so catching a screening of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at Cinemapolis is still my number one priority. I’m excited to finally see Hamnet there as well!

Also in Theaters: Sentimental Value (Cinemapolis) remains my top new movie recommendation. Other first run fare I’m interested in but haven’t gotten to yet includes Rental Family (Regal Ithaca Mall), Wicked: For Good (Cinemapolis & Regal), and Zootopia 2 (Regal). I mentioned Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Sisu: Road to Revenge, both of which continue their runs at the Regal, in this space previously, too, but My Loving Wife and I have pretty much made up our minds to save them for future movie marathons which also include their predecessors. Special events highlights include a free screening of an award-winning new documentary called Remaining Native at Cinemapolis on Sunday and Cornell Cinema‘s traditional end-of-semester “mystery screening” tonight. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair opening at the Regal today and another batch of holiday classics appearing there throughout the week, among them personal favorites December 2023 “Drink & a Movie” selection National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on Saturday, Love Actually on Tuesday, and The Christmas Chronicles, which features an energetic performance by Kurt Russell in the role of St. Nick, on Wednesday.

Home Video Recommendation: The Teachers’ Lounge was recently featured in the New York Times’s “Watching” newsletter, which reminded me that I somehow never got around to revisiting it despite the fact that it has been available on Netflix with a subscription for ages! Here’s what I said on Letterboxd back in February, 2024:

Features some of the Movie Year’s most excitingly thought-provoking final shots. Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch) solves the Rubik’s cube that Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) lent him earlier, confirming that like her he speaks the language of logic and mathematics. Which: compare her loyalty to him to her earlier refusal to speak Polish with her colleague Milosz Dudek (Rafael Stachowiak). Anyway, we then survey the empty rooms of the school where the drama has taken place before ending on a shot of Oskar being carried away by the police. The latter establishes the two characters as being united in their respective failures to unlock the escape room they have found themselves trapped in, but then the end credits roll to the strains of Mendelssohn’s overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, underscoring the sense of enchantment and theatricality pervasive throughout the entire film (most palpably in the protest or hallucination of the whole school wearing Eva Löbau’s Friederike Kuhn’s distinctive blouse). I’ll need at least one more viewing to figure out what exactly, but there’s definitely a lot going on here and I dig it!

After a second viewing I think what the Mendelssohn overture, which George Grove once wrote “stamps the fairy character of the work” from its opening four chords, brings to the party is the sense that “the world is turned upside down” as John McTiernan put it when writing about the influence of the Shakespeare play it was composed for on this month’s “Drink & a Movie” selection Die Hard. If anything I underrated this film by only ranking it seventh on my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” list, so do check it out!

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: Happy Thanksgiving! We’re currently in Baltimore celebrating this holiday and my oldest daughter’s birthday with family, but I’m planning to see Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at Cinemapolis after we return.

Also in Theaters: I saw Sentimental Value and Bugonia at Cinemapolis last week and recommend them both because the former contains my favorite building and prop of Movie Year 2025 so far and the latter features some of the best costumes (by Jennifer Johnson). I also enjoyed Frankenstein, which continues its run there, and Lurker, a reworking of some scenes and themes from Whiplash that returns to Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. I will eventually take my kids to see Wicked: For Good at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall and Zootopia 2 at the latter, but am in no hurry because I expect them both to stick around for awhile. This might not be true of Rental Family (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Regal), or Sisu: Road to Revenge (Regal), but if so I’m content to just catch up with them on a streaming video platform down the road. Special events highlights include Casablanca breaking its own record as Cornell’s most-screened film of all time on Monday, while on the repertory front the Regal is kicking of the Christmas season with Gremlins tomorrow, Elf on Saturday, The Polar Express on Sunday, and The Holiday on Monday.

Home Video Recommendation: There aren’t a whole lot of classic movies out there that My Loving Wife has seen but I haven’t, but until just the other night Witness for the Prosecution was probably the most prominent. I enjoyed it first and foremost as a smorgasbord of great acting in a variety of styles by a bevy of legends including Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester, but Laughton’s character also struck me as a variation on the tragic heroes of some of my favorite Westerns like The Searchers and Canyon Passage for reasons I’d have to spoil the ending to explain but detail on Letterboxd if you’ve already seen it. We actually watched it on Tubi, but it’s also streaming commercial-free on Watch TCM through Sunday

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: Five months ago I ranked Sentimental Value, which opens at Cinemapolis tonight, seventh on my “Cannes 2025 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list, so that’s first up for me. I’m going to try to catch Bugonia there as well.

Also in Theaters: I will eventually take the girls to both Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2, but they don’t seem to be in a tearing hurry, so neither am I. The former opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight, and the latter opens at the Regal on Tuesday. My Loving Wife and I are saving Nuremberg, which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal, for a future date night, but I do intend to eventually watch it, too, as well as Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Sisu: Road to Revenge, both of which are at the Regal. I like Brendan Fraser, so Rental Family is on my list as well. It’s at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Sticking just to first run fare I’ve already seen, my top recommendation would appear to be Frankenstein, which continues its run at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events highlights include screenings of Drink and Be Merry and Occupy Wall Street: An American Dream followed by filmmaker Q&As at Cinemapolis tonight and Sunday respectively. Finally, repertory highlights include Casablanca at Cornell Cinema tonight; Thanksgiving classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles at the Regal tomorrow; and The Holdovers there on Wednesday.

Home Video: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the movie which inspired my new “I’ve Got Poetry In Me” series, is currently streaming on Criterion Channel, but only until the end of the month. In addition to being generally terrific, it’s also a perfect match for the early spell of bleak midwinter weather we’ve been experiencing in Ithaca lately, so be sure to check it out before it disappears!

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 Happyend and Lurker at Cornell Cinema and The Librarians at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: This week’s theatrical highlight is probably once again the 35mm print of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai screening at Cornell Cinema tomorrow night. Looking just at first run fare, my top recommendation is Die My Love, an instant classic of mother-in-law cinema that continues its runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Frankenstein, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow, for Kate Hawley’s outstanding costumes and Movie Year 2025’s most tragically unrealistic closing line. In addition to the titles listed in the previous section, I’d like to see Nuremberg, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, as well, but I promised My Loving Wife I’d save it for a future Friday night; I’m interested in Bugonia (Cinemapolis and the Regal) and Good Fortune (just the Regal), too, but the latter is down to just one screening per day, so it’s probably not going to happen. Special events highlights include a program of works by the Irish film collective aemi called “The Said and the Unsaid” at Cornell Cinema tonight and free screening of Kirikou and the Sorceress at Cinemapolis on Sunday as part of their Family Classics Picture Show series. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include The Boy and the Heron at the Regal Saturday-Wednesday, All That Jazz at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the movie my loving wife and I saw on our very FIRST date, Hugo, at the Regal on Saturday.

Home Video: A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I’ve been slowly but surely picking off the greatest films I’ve never seen according to the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll. They’ve universally been terrific and The Last Laugh is no exception. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd after my second viewing:

After more than a century, still the cinematic gold standard depiction of the idea that, as Sarah Jaffe put it, “work won’t love you back.” Also the feelings of being pleasantly soused and crushed (literally here, by a high-rise) by guilt. But it’s the violent tonal swings that make this a masterpiece: almost Linnaean in their comprehensiveness, they catalog the various tricks (circumstantial, psychological, social, etc.) we “civilized” human beings compulsively employ to make ourselves and one another miserable and, by cancelling each other out, show how unnecessary and avoidable the entire pathological enterprise really is.

Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students can watch this film on Kanopy via a license paid for by the library, and because it’s in the public domain in the United States, everyone else can view it on a variety of free platforms such as Tubi.

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 It Was Just an Accident at Cinemapolis and Die My Love either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall. I’m also going to try to see Frankenstein at Penn Cinema while visiting home this weekend.

Also in Theaters: It’s a hockey line change week, so today is your last chance to see Blue Moon, The Mastermind, and One Battle After Another at Cinemapolis. After that my top recommendation would have to be the 35mm print of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai playing Cornell Cinema tonight at 8:30pm. Another special events highlight is the free screening of the essay film John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office there on Monday followed by a conversation with writer/director Courtney Stephens. In addition to the titles listed in the previous section, I’m also hoping to see Bugonia (Cinemapolis & the Regal) and Good Fortune (just the Regal) before they close. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, The Wizard of Oz at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and Saving Private Ryan at the Regal on Tuesday.

Home Video: 432 minutes is an intimidating runtime, and with two intermissions, Sátántangó *can* be broken up into three viewings. It really is worth making an occasion out of it, though. As I recently wrote on Letterboxd:

I’ve now set out to watch this film in a single go while the family was away twice, first starting at 10am and then 9:00, but didn’t finish until long after the sun went down either time. I’d eventually like to try a theatrical screening on for size, too, but as of this writing I’m not at all convinced that stopping at the chapter breaks and intermissions to have a think while you walk the dog, smoke a cigarette (don’t tell!) and cook a meal or two and basically structuring an entire day around it isn’t in fact the best way to approach this lowkey apocalypse.

Which: Sátántangó could swap titles with Do Not Too Much from the End of the World to no ill effect in either direction. If I owned a hip bar, I’d cut all the long takes of Mihály Vig’s Irimiás and Putyi Horváth’s Petrina walking with trash swirling all around them in the wind together and play them on a loop with the sound off. The two characters function here like minor demons, terrifying to the poor mortals unfortunate enough to catch their gaze, but virtually anonymous in the immense bureaucracy of hell. Animal imagery is one structuring device, but it’s never too on the nose: a slow camera movement in on an owl suggests that Irimiás is a raptor, except that dialogue confirms that he fancies himself as a spider, and who’s to say that one of the escaped horses at the end isn’t actually the best fit? Throw the ten minute single take opening shot of meandering cows into the mix and you end up with an extradiegetic synthesis like he’s a sheepdog with wild traits not eradicated, but harnessed for a purpose.

However you want it, he’s a careful observer on a spectrum that has damnation on one end and fast (Erika Bók’s Estike) or slow (Peter Berling’s alcoholic doctor) death on the other, with the distracted villagers who make up most of the rest of the cast constituting the vast purgatorial middle. And then, of course, there are the twelve steps of the tango and a diagram of the solar system in the doctor’s house which foreshadow the reappearance of many of these same ideas and themes in Werckmeister Harmonies six years later. Which movie you prefer is likely just a matter of taste: a diffuse nebula and bright star are both beautiful! Definitely an experience.

Current Ithaca faculty, staff, and students have access to this film on Kanopy via an institutional streaming video license paid for by the library; all others are encouraged to purchase it on Blu-ray from Arbelos Films.

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 didn’t make it to The Mastermind at Cinemapolis last week, so that’s my top priority. I’m hoping to catch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which opens there tomorrow, as well.

Also in Theaters: One Battle After Another, which closes at the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight but remains at Cinemapolis at least through next Thursday, contains some of the most exhilarating moments of Movie Year 2025. I think I *might* prefer Blue Moon, which also continues its run at Cinemapolis, overall, though. Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:

Ethan Hawke plays Lorenz Hart as a man so drunk with beauty wherever he finds it that when he reaches a pass where his dignity is the most valuable thing he has left in the world, he offers it up with a sacrifice without hesitation. Which: I’ve always loved John Leguizamo’s Toulouse-Lautrec from Moulin Rouge! but never thought he could carry an entire movie by himself. And indeed *that* character probably couldn’t, but this one is buttressed by a brilliantly witty screenplay, great supporting cast, and the origin story for a beloved children’s literature character. Lacks Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere‘s (an inevitable comparison considering that they’re sharing theater marquee space across the country right now) insistence that we must feel gratitude and pity for the artist in equal measure, which is to its credit.

In addition to the movies listed above, I’d like to see Good Fortune and Bugonia before they close, too, but I’ll be out of town most of next week, so I don’t know if it’s going to happen. The former is at the Regal and the latter is both there and at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events include “Sing-Along” screenings of KPop Demon Hunters at the Regal Friday through Sunday, a screening of the film Framing Ménerbes followed by a “talkback” with director Daniel Gwirtzman at Cinemapolis on Sunday at 3pm, and a program of three experimental films directed by women called “At Home/Far Away” at Cornell Cinema that day at 5:30pm. Finally, repertory highlights include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, Halloween at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, Singin’ in the Rain there on Sunday, and Clue at Cinemapolis on Monday.

Home Video: I’ve been trying to mix the greatest films I’ve never seen before according to the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll in with all the scary season fare I’ve been enjoying lately. One title that checked both boxes was Possession, which I recently watched for the first time ever on the Criterion Channel. Despite the presence of Sam Neill, it took me a second viewing to come around to it, but now that I have, I can definitely see it continuing to grow in my estimation. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

“Live every day like it’s your last one on earth,” they say. But what if people you want to spend it with are doing the same but have different priorities, and your actions and/or theirs appear to be somehow responsible for bringing it about? Or: H.P. Lovecraft updated for the nuclear age with terrific acting and maybe the best rendering of a collapsing marriage I’ve ever encountered outside of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road. Isabelle Adjani’s heels in her opening scenes are one of cinema’s great costume design decisions.

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: 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.