Category: Ithaca Film Journal

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.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Highest 2 Lowest at Cinemapolis and Weapons either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen remains Sketch, which continues its run at the Regal. I also got a kick out of how much fun Together has with relationship cliches that are quite horrifying when literalized and enjoyed The Naked Gun, a throwback to the immature, laugh-a-minute staples of the sleepovers I attended as a child in the 80s and early 90s that they should totally release on VHS: I’d buy a copy! The former is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, while the latter is just at the Regal. Other new releases I’m happy to endorse if they sound interesting to you include Eddington (Cinemapolis), Superman (Cinemapolis & the Regal), and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Regal). It’s another quiet week on the special events and repertory fronts, but things will pick up soon when Cornell Cinema kicks off their Fall 2025 season, so get your All-Access pass today! At just $25 (for grad students) to $40 (general public), it’s the local arts scene’s absolute best value in the opinion of this cinephile. In the meantime, two short documentaries directed by Les Blank will screen at Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their “Food on Film” staff picks series: Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking and Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers.

Home Video: Movie Year 2025 has been just fine so far! I’ve definitely seen at least five Top Ten-worthy films, and that’s all you can really ask for at the halfway point. The highlight of the past six months for me has been the older fare I watched for the first time and absolutely loved, though. One recent example is The Tall Target, which is available on Watch TCM until September 5 and is representative of what is classically regarded as extremely fertile ground for new discoveries: movies by great directors that aren’t typically talked about as their best work. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

Made in 1951, Anthony Mann directs Dick Powell in a taut thriller that would have done Alfred Hitchcock proud as Detective John Kennedy, who’s trying to save President-elect Lincoln from assassination in 1861, but the film (most of which is set on a train) looks and sounds like something from the 1960s. Yet another example of how the canon is still at least a century or so away from being fully calibrated, because: !

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 audibled to She Rides Shotgun last week on Bilge Ebiri’s recommendation after I realized it was going to close at the Regal Ithaca Mall after just one week, so Together (which continues its run there and at Cinemapolis) remains first up on my list. I’m also planning to catch The Naked Gun at the Regal.

Also in Theaters: I want to see Weapons, which is opening at Cinemapolis and the Regal, before it closes as well. The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Sketch, which continues its run at the Regal. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

I can’t wait to watch this again with my kids, who are approximately the same ages as Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack Wyatt (Kue Lawrence) and like them possessed of a wealth of kindness, prodigious artistic talent (that they didn’t get from their parents, by the way: genetics are weird), and disconcertingly advanced vocabularies–my seven-year-old actually even trotted out “that tracks!” the other day. Anyway, Sketch represents an even more successful attempt to create a modern classic for the offspring of us children of the 80s to grow up with than Movie Year 2025’s The Legend of Ochi, which to be clear I also liked! Content and form are better married here, though–it’s going to scare the girls without giving them nightmares, and if it isn’t exactly blazing new trails with its moral compass, well, neither is my parenting style.

I also enjoyed Eddington, which is at Cinemapolis; The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is at the Regal; and Superman, which is at both. And She Rides Shotgun, which as Ebiri notes features terrific lead performances by Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger and has one final showtime at the Regal at 11:05 this morning. There don’t appear to be any noteworthy special events this week, but your best bet for repertory fare is the delectable Big Night, which stars legendary trencherman Stanley Tucci and screens Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their “Food on Film” August staff picks series.

Home Video: Rewatch season has begun! Here’s what I posted to Letterboxd after I saw Eephus, which is now available on Mubi with a subscription, for the first time at Cinemapolis in March:

Fictional chronicle of the last baseball game ever played on an unnamed Massachusetts (it was shot in Douglas) town’s Soldier Field which coyly hints at veering off into the mythology of W.P. Kinsella’s novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy but wisely never does because it doesn’t need to: every hit, out, and other component part of a baseball game at any level is a “Glory Days” conflation of past, present, and future waiting to happen. Some stories that rattled through my head included: getting tossed out of a Little League game by my father the umpire for arguing a called third strike a tad too vociferously, keeping score for his church league softball team, and most recently running out onto my back porch like a madman and screaming into the Ithaca, NY night “Pete did it!” during Game 3 of last year’s NL Wild Card round. Fun apropos fact: the building I took most of my film studies classes in at the University of Pittsburgh was built on the spot of Forbes Field and you can stand on its home plate to this day! Humorous not because it’s a comedy, but because its characters are, and every bit as attuned to the fascinating things athletes do when no one is looking as Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. First serious contender to top my Top Ten Movies of 2025 list.

After a second viewing I’m now thinking it might even be the single best film ever made about baseball, so yeah: this is one clubhouse leader that’s going to be hard to beat!

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: For reasons we’re beginning to question as exhaustion sets in, My Loving Wife and I recently decided to finally immerse ourselves in the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’d both previously skipped aside from a handful of titles each. Although we’re still a few films shy of caught up, we are nonetheless planning a date night outing to the Regal Ithaca Mall to see The Fantastic Four: First Steps. I’m also hoping to catch Sorry, Baby at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: The Phoenician Scheme is enjoying one final day as my favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen before it closes at Cinemapolis and passes that torch to Eddington, a beautifully-shot (by Darius Khondji) revisionist history of the United States during the pandemic if everyone really was as terrible as the people who disagreed with them on issues like masking said they were. It’s at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Superman, which is at the same two theaters. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is In the Mood for Love, which continues its run at Cinemapolis.

Home Video: I would take Superman over the three Guardians of the Galaxy films James Gunn directed for Marvel in part because of what I called (to “coin a Norman phrase”) its “Superman-tricity” on Letterboxd:

The kryptonite (if you will) of many MCU movies is that the bad guy is portrayed as being COMPLETELY UNSTOPPABLE . . . until the plot requires them to be stopped by whomever our hero happens to be this month. Here Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luther has spent the better part of his life focused on the single-minded goal of defeating this one guy, so when he creates a “pocket universe” to imprison his enemy in, it bolsters his resume without straining credibility since we aren’t also being asked to believe that he’s the greatest threat to intelligent life as we know it since, you know, the last one.

It follows a very similar formula otherwise, though, and if you too need a break from superhero movies, you’d therefore be far better served by Out of the Fog, which I recently watched on the Criterion Channel after new Ithaca resident (!) Zach Campbell recommended it on X, and Rancho Notorious, which is available on HBO Max. The former is an atmospheric ode to the supporting actor featuring John Qualen, Thomas Mitchell, Leo Gorcey, and Eddie Albert among others that was alert to the symptoms of fascism in the American body politic as far back as 1941, but whose message is “the Lord helps those who help themselves”–no assistance from the “first Avenger” required! Meanwhile, while the latter’s protagonist Vern Haskel (Arthur Kennedy) is every bit as much “consumed by vengeance” as his counterparts in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, director Fritz Lang pointedly declines to provide any compelling evidence that either he or society is worse off when he chooses the path of “hate, murder, and revenge” as Ken Darby’s lyrics to the memorable opening credits song “Legend of Chuck-A-Luck” has it.

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