Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see The Shrouds, which opens at Cinemapolis today! I’ll probably try to catch The Legend of Ochi there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is the blues-drenched People’s History of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles Sinners, which meets both of Fritz Lang’s requirements for widescreen cinematography (snakes and funerals . . . check and check!) and continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Drop, which is down to one showing per day at the Regal, and One to One: John & Yoko, which remains at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events are highlighted by a bevy of free screenings, many of which feature panel discussions and Q&A sessions: The Brutalist and Machines in Flames at Cornell Cinema tonight, Beyond the Straight and Narrow at Cinemapolis tonight, Human Again and National Velvet at Cinemapolis on Sunday, Deaf President Now! at Cornell Cinema on Monday, and Fancy Dance there on Tuesday. Finally, Anora now counts as “repertory fare,” so the screening at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday is my top recommendation in that department.

Home Video: An old and new favorite that I mentioned on this blog in the past year are both among the films leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month. The Palm Beach Story, my “Drink & a Movie” selection for last April, begins with an all-time great opening credits sequence, ends with an impressively advanced special effect for its era, and features maybe my single favorite movie prop ever, he notebook in which Rudy Vallee’s J.D. Hackensacker III writes down all of his expenses, in between. Of more recent vintage, About Dry Grasses came in eighth on the top ten list I published in March. I don’t actually say much about it there, but as I noted on Letterboxd after my first viewing, Deniz Celiloglu’s Samet is one of 2024’s most compelling unlikeable protagonists, and as I added after a second one the subjective sound design that puts the viewer in his headspace right from the start is also interesting.

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 One to One: John and Yoko, which opens at Cinemapolis today, and Sinners, which also begins a theatrical run today there at and at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: I’d be prioritizing The Ugly Stepsister, which I heard intriguing things about out of Sundance, but it’s only playing the Regal and I’m without a car while the rest of the family spends spring break in Canada. Hopefully it will run for more than a week! The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Drop, an extended metaphor for what it must feel like to re-enter the dating pool as a single parent in 2025, which continues its run at the Regal. I hesitate to say I “enjoyed” the brutal and intense Iraq War film Warfare, which is there and at Cinemapolis, but it’s definitely worth seeing if you have opinions about that conflict or any other one. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of Santo vs. the Vampire Women, The Dybbuk, and Remembering Gene Wilder at Cornell Cinema on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday respectively, and of The Empty Chair at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are the screenings of Vengeance Is Mine, Parasite, and Star Wars: A New Hope at Cornell Cinema tonight, on Saturday, and on Sunday respectively. A New Hope might actually be the movie I’ve seen in theaters more times than any other, now that I think of it, and if you’re of my generation (X or Y depending on how you count) you really owe yourself the pleasure if you’ve never had it.

Home Video: I watched the biopic Better Man on Paramount+ (which I get for free through Spectrum) as part of my tantalizingly close to successful campaign to see very film nominated for one of this year’s Oscars (I caught 48/49) even though I honestly somehow didn’t know subject Robbie Williams as anything other than the fella who covered “Beyond the Sea” for the end credits of Finding Nemo and enjoyed it enough to go back and listen to everything he ever recorded on Spotify. I revisited it the other day and I’m happy to report that when you’re actually familiar with the songs, the way they’re presented in the film makes them even more interesting, especially the Baz Luhrmann-esque staging of “She’s the One,” acoustic retelling of the origins of “Something Beautiful,” and revisionist history of “Rock DJ” as a Take That track that Williams was actually permitted to write lyrics for. I still can’t (and probably never will be) recreate the experience longtime fans presumably had of seeing a familiar *face* in their lives replaced by that of a CGI chimpanzee, but even this works for me as speculation about where the trail blazed by last year’s documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin might lead in the future.

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 happy to report that I am finally going to make it to the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival! The screening I’m targeting is the one of 7 Walks with Mark Brown at Cinemapolis on Sunday. I’m also hoping to catch Warfare there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall and Drop at the Regal.

Also in Theaters: Had I but world enough, and time, other FLEFF events I’d want to attend include the screenings at Cinemapolis of Sleep with Your Eyes Open tonight and The End of St. Petersburg (which includes live musical accompaniment by local legends Cloud Chamber Orchestra) on Saturday, and the live performance using 19th-century optical devices called “Elliott and Schlemowitz’s Magic Lantern Show” there on Sunday. My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is The Woman in the Yard, a well-crafted chilling psychological horror film about my greatest fear as a parent which continues its run at the Regal, but maybe only for one more week (it’s down to one showing per day). I also enjoyed Black Bag, which closes at Cinemapolis tonight, and A Working Man, which continues its run at the Regal. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of last year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar winner I’m Still Here at Cornell Cinema on Monday and Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer’s at Cinemapolis on Wednesday and free “sensory-friendly” screenings of the PBS children’s television program Carl the Collector at the Tompkins County Public Library on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are the 4k restorations of North by Northwest and my November “Drink & a Movie” selection The Searchers at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Sunday respectively as part of their “VistaVision!” series.

Home Video: I’ve been meaning to check out Wooden Crosses on the Criterion Channel ever since Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell (RIP) referred to it as a “masterpiece unknown to most modern viewers” in their “The ten best films of … 1932” blog post a few years ago and I finally got around to it the other day. Here’s what I posted to Letterboxd after my second viewing:

As a committed pacifist war films aren’t my favorite genre. It is the shame of our species that we’re still fighting each other at this point in our development, and there isn’t much else to say about the matter. Wooden Crosses is largely exempt from this argument, though, because of when it was made and because it isn’t so much anti-WAR as it is anti-war PROPAGANDA. While it has elements that are maybe more appropriate to the silent era like a double exposed dual parade of living and dead soldiers, it’s very smart about sound and neither of its most crucial scenes would work as well or even at all without it. First Corporal Breval (Charles Vanel), far from leaving his comrades with lofty sentiments or pearls of wisdom as he expires instead instructs them to make sure everyone knows what a slut his wife is. Then Gilbert Demachy (Pierre Blanchar) is denied a hero’s death and succumbs to a gutshot wound after an entire day spent whimpering pathetically in no man’s land as he waits for nightfall and the promise of stretcher bearers who never arrive. The point is clear: there is nothing ennobling about their “sacrifice.” Their stories were simply cut short and wasted, leaving behind a lifetime of unfinished business. Wooden Crosses is also justly famous for the documentary-style combat footage that is the reason 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck bought the North American rights to it (so that the footage could be reused in The Road to Glory), the maddeningly incessant sound of artillery is again the reason this is *effective*. I would even go so far as to say that it compares well to some scenes from Band of Brothers, which is impressive considering it preceded that work by nearly 70 years.

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 am currently out of town at a library conference, but I’m hoping to catch a few films at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival while I’m away. I’ll write them up in a dispatch blog post if I’m successful, so stay tuned! I’m also going to try to see The Woman in the Yard, which I’m hearing good things about from people I trust, at the Regal Ithaca Mall after I return.

Also in Theaters: If I was in Ithaca this week, I’d be prioritizing the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, specifically the screenings at Cinemapolis of Snow Leopard on Friday; Sleep with Your Eyes Open on Saturday; and Little, Big, and Far on Tuesday. The best new movies now playing local theaters that I’ve already seen are the enjoyable genre exercises Black Bag (spy film), which continues its runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, and A Working Man (Jason Statham), which is at just the Regal. This week’s special events are highlighted by free screenings of the movies Improper Conduct and The Accelerator at Cornell Cinema on Monday and Tuesday respectively. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is Princess Mononoke, which is at the Regal all week.

Home Video: I’ve been digging the fact that there have been many pre-Code movies with ~60 minute runtimes featured on Watch TCM lately because they’re the perfect thing to watch when, say, we miraculously get the kids settled on Thursday night with about an hour to spare before Top Chef comes on. My favorite recent discovery is the 1933 film Female, which starts where Movie Year 2024’s Babygirl ends: with a girlboss CEO exiling an employee she has slept with to a faraway branch office. A lot of people seem to be hung up on the messaging of the climax, but the preponderance of available evidence suggests to me that whatever they say to each other in the final scene, Ruth Chatterton’s Alison Drake is much more comfortable in the board room than George Brent’s engineer Jim Thorne is ever likely to be. Anyway, the film also features delightfully profligate back projection and some outrageous wipes, so be sure to check it out before it disappears from the platform on April 9!

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 a single parent for the next four days while My Loving Wife is out of town, and I’m planning to take the girls to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie at the Regal Ithaca Mall while she’s away. I’m also going to try to sneak in a screening of A Working Man there during the brief window of time between her return and my departure for a conference in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Also in Theaters: This week’s highlight is definitely the beginning of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival! For the reasons described above, I won’t be able to make it to any of the initial screenings, but some titles that jumped out at me include Little, Big, and Far; Snow Leopard; and Youth (Hard Times), which screen at Cinemapolis tomorrow, Saturday, and Tuesday respectively. Eephus is the first serious contender for my Top Ten Movies of 2025 list, but it’s sadly down to its last two screenings at Cinemapolis today at 5:50 and 8:20pm. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora closes there today as well, and there’s also a screening of Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land at Cornell Cinema tonight at 7pm. After that my top recommendation will become Black Bag, a relationship movie disguised as a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett and shot by Steven Soderbergh (sorry: Peter Andrews) to look like a sleepy child’s view of Christmas lights out a car window. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which plays Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and Before Sunrise plus its sequel Before Sunset, both of which are at Cinemapolis all week.

Home Video: Speaking of Anora, it is now streaming on Hulu! Critic Noel Vera was kind enough to engage me in a back-and-forth in the comments section of his review last November about Ani, the character Mikey Madison won a Best Actress Oscar for portraying, and whether or not it’s believable that she falls so completely for Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya. To him Ani “feels too smart for that; at least as Madison plays her” and thus “the ending, glum as it is, doesn’t quite hit as hard” because the film “still feels every bit the fairy tale.” To me, though, that’s precisely the point. Ani may be clever and tough, but she still has Disney princess dreams that make her vulnerable. I rewatched Cinderella, the specific one she mentions, the other day, and it’s not like Prince Charming does anything to convince his bride that he’d be willing to stand up for her against his father the king if she turned out to be unable or unwilling to have children! Anyway, the mere fact that we spent so much time talking about this is a testament to how successful Madison and writer-director Sean Baker were at creating a memorable movie heroine and a world for her to inhabit.

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: My top priority is On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, since it will be at Cinemapolis for one week only, and I’m planning to see Eephus there as well because I don’t want to risk missing it either. Finally, our plans for a “date night” outing to Black Bag at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall last week fell through, so My Loving Wife and I trying again tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca RIGHT NOW that I’ve already seen No Other Land, but its final screening at Cinemapolis is today at 2:50pm. After that it will be Anora, which continues its post-Best Picture Oscar run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. That should definitely be your first choice if you somehow haven’t already checked it out, but otherwise it’s all about special events and repertory fare this week. Highlights on the former front include free screenings at Cornell Cinema of an experimental short films program called “Matter Falling Out of Form” tonight, The Year Between on Monday evening and a shorts program called the “Women’s Adventure Film Tour 2025” on Wednesday, as well as a double feature of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land there on Saturday. My other “old movie” recommendation is Peeping Tom, which closes out Cornell Cinema’s “Powell and Pressburger: Titans of Technicolor” series tomorrow.

Home Video: My oldest daughter Lucy recently scored the first two points of her basketball career in the final game of her second season. We’re extremely proud of all the hard work she has put in on and off (her coaches think that indoor rock climbing has had a noticeable impact on her upper body strength) the court and have enjoyed watching her improve each week. In addition to the bucket, she also fought for rebounds and let her teammates know when she was open, which she attributes to our new pre-game ritual of playing the song “Defying Gravity” on repeat in the car so that she and her sister can lustily sing along to it to warm up her voice. In honor of this momentous event (which literally brought tears to My Loving Wife’s eyes!) in our family’s history, this week’s home video recommendation is Love & Basketball, which Cornell Cinema actually screened in February and which is now streaming on Peacock.

This film was released theatrically almost exactly one year before I officially became a diehard basketball fan during my freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh when my soon-to-be-beloved Panthers went on a Cinderella run during the Big East (RIP) tournament. Although this wasn’t enough to secure an NCAA Tournament bid that year, they went on to appear in the next ten and came within a heartbreaking miracle Scottie Reynolds coast-to-coast basket of the Final Four in 2009. Throughout this run they always had great point guards, so I was delighted when this turned out to be the position that Love & Basketball‘s protagonists Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) both play and in heaven when the movie’s pivotal moment turns out to be Wright taking a charge. It also features one of cinema’s great one-on-one games (along with Arthur Agee’s showdown with his father in my March, 2024 Drink & a Movie selection Hoop Dreams) followed by a heartwarming final scene celebrating the WNBA, which was still only in its third year of existence during shooting.

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 wasn’t able to make it to Mickey 17 last week after all, so seeing it at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall is my first order of business. My Loving Wife and I are also planning a “date night” (we’re probably actually going to hit a matinee) outing to Black Bag at one of those two theaters as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new film now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Close Your Eyes, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday. No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, made my “Top Ten Movies of 2024” list too, and I recommend Best Picture Oscar winner Anora (Cinemapolis and the Regal) as well. I’m also intrigued by Toxic, which is at Cornell Cinema tonight, and am looking forward to selecting Paddington in Peru (Regal) and The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Cinemapolis and the Regal) for Family (née Friday) Movie Night later this year. Noteworthy special events include an event called “Nosferatu x Radiohead: A Silents Synced Film” at Cornell Cinema and a free Pi Day screening of the documentary Counted Out at Cinemapolis tomorrow; a free “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of An American Tail at Cinemapolis on Sunday; and a free screening of Alien at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are Peeping Tom and The Red Shoes, which play Cornell Cinema tonight and Saturday respectively.

Home Video: It recently occurred to me that The Crowd, one of my favorite movies of all time, has now been in the public domain in the United States for more than a year. I was utterly shocked to discover that it nonetheless remains unavailable on a good R1 Blu-ray/DVD release. It can, however, be streamed on Watch TCM until March 21. Here’s what I wrote about it on Letterboxd after revisiting it there last week:

John Sims (James Murray) stars as a man who inherits the vision of exceptionalism his father (Warner Richmond) had for him and learns the hard way each time how to fall in love with first the mother (Eleanor Boardman) of his first child (Freddie Burke Frederick); then Mary, the actual flesh-and-blood woman who occupies that role; and finally the life they’ve been really living all the while he was dreaming, hopefully just in time to finally lay a foundation before the Great Depression that not even the filmmakers know is barreling down upon them hits. Mary’s brothers (Daniel G. Tomlinson and Dell Henderson) are perfectly dour avatars of bourgeoisie judgmentalism, and the depictions of the titular urban masses constitute all-time great cinema images which clearly inspired David Lynch, Jacques Tati, Orson Welles, and any number of other giants who followed.

The Welles film most commonly associated with this one is The Trial, but the Crazy House sequence in The Lady from Shanghai, which I wrote about in January, was clearly inspired by it as well. The works by Lynch and Tati I mainly have in mind are Twin Peaks: The Return and Playtime, which I wrote about in December.

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 am excited to finally see Universal Language, which I heard great things about as it worked its way across the film festival circuit last year, at Cinemapolis! I am also going to try to catch Mickey 17 there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall on the only other evening I’m free.

Also in Theaters: Cornell Cinema has an absolutely killer lineup this week that my schedule doesn’t permit me to take advantage of, but you should if you can! If I was free on Saturday, I would definitely be going to the “unique Cornell version of Eno,” and if I was free tomorrow I’d probably prioritize Toxic ahead of Mickey 17 and Universal Language. They’re also screening Close Your Eyes, which landed at fifth place on my Top Ten Movies of 2024 list, tomorrow and my August, 2024 “Drink & a Movie” selection Black Narcissus on Sunday. Otherwise, the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is newly-minted Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, as does this year’s Best International Feature Film I’m Still Here. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora is back in local theaters as well at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Other noteworthy special events include “An Evening with John Cameron Mitchell” at Cornell’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on Friday; free admission to the Streets Alive! Film Festival at Cinemapolis on Sunday, a free screening of Song Lang at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday, and a preview screening of The Friend at Cinemapolis that same evening. Finally, another repertory highlight is The Adventures of Prince Achmed at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.

Home Video: Speaking of my top ten list for 2024, the film that placed sixth on it, All We Imagine as Light, premieres live on the Criterion Channel at 9pm on Sunday! The first film from India to compete in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years, it won the Grand Prix there and placed fourth in the IndieWire Critics Poll, which is definitely the list of this type that I put the most stock in. Looking back on the only “Ithaca Film Journal” post where I actually had occasion to recommend this movie, I realize I didn’t say anything about it because I assumed I already had! Anyway, it’s a sumptuously photographed tale of platonic and romantic love with a delightfully poetic “plot twist” and an outstanding final shot that features a kid absolutely rocking out to headphone music.

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: As longtime readers of this blog know, I consider the “movie year” to begin and end on Oscar night. The Monkey, which I’m planning to catch at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall, will therefore be my first theatrical screening of 2025. More about this when I publish my top ten list on Sunday!

Also in Theaters: No Other Land, the film I’ll be rooting for to win this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, continues its run at Cinemapolis and remains the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I also recommend Best Picture nominees I’m Still Here and The Substance, which are at Cinemapolis all week, and A Complete Unknown, which closes there today. This week’s special events are highlighted by the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival, which is at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Cornell Cinema on Sunday. There is also a free screening of local filmmaker Ira McKinley’s The Throwaways accompanied by excerpts from his new work A Tale of Two Journeys at Cinemapolis tonight and a free screening of the movie Lilting at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. Finally, doors open for Cinemapolis’s annual Oscar night fundraising gala at 6:30pm on Sunday. On the repertory front, your best best bets are the screenings of Black Narcissus (which I wrote about last August) and The Annihilation of Fish, the rerelease of which Carlos Valladares recently called “the cinematic event of the year,” at Cornell Cinema on Friday and The Red Shoes on Saturday.

Home Video: If you want to see *all* of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts, you’ll need to head to Cinemapolis or (in the case of the documentaries) Cornell Cinema. The ones I’ll be rooting for are all available online, though! In the Best Animated Short Film category, my favorite is Wander to Wonder, a tale of survival starring characters from a creepy 70s/80s kids television program that uses Shakespearian quotation and engages with the idea of unfathomably (and therefore “indistinguishable from magic) advanced technology (here: VHS!) in a way that reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama. It is available for rental via Vimeo. My pick in the Best Live Action Short Film category is streaming on Vimeo for free: A Lien is a tense, effective Paul Greengrass-style shaky cam thriller about the despicable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) practice of arresting people at their green card interviews. But the cream of the whole crop is Best Documentary Short Film nominee Incident, which uses stunningly complex and effective split-screen editing to recreate the cacophony and chaos of being on the scene of an “incident” (the almost completely unmotivated killing of a black man by a white police officer) that everyone knows never should have happened and fears will blow up into something even more horrible any second and debunks the proceduralist myth of infallible law enforcement professionalism in the process. It is available via The New Yorker. By way of an honorable mention I also recommend Instruments of a Beating Heart, which I described on Letterboxd as “the Muppet Babies version of Whiplash” and which is probably my second-favorite one of these movies overall. It is available via The New York Times.

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 decided I didn’t want to risk missing out on No Other Land last week, so I still have one Oscar-nominated shorts program left to go: I’m planning to catch the live action shorts at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, but they’re also playing Cinemapolis all week.

Also in Theaters: No Other Land is a contender for my Movie Year 2024 top ten list (which I’ll publish on Oscar night like usual) and my top new film recommendation. It continues its run at Cinemapolis. Of the two Oscar-nominated shorts programs I’ve already seen, the documentaries are significantly better than the animated shorts. You can see the latter at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and both are playing Cinemapolis all week. Other first run features I enjoyed include A Complete Unknown and I’m Still Here, both of which are at Cinemapolis. You also have one last chance to see The Brutalist and Nickel Boys, one of which (I still haven’t made up my mind) I’ll be rooting for to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar, there today. On the special events front, the highlights are free screenings of the documentaries The Bomb at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and of Anonymous Sister and Free For All: The Public Library at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Tuesday respectively. Your best bets for repertory fare are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Fantastic Mr. Fox, which are at Cornell Cinema tonight and Sunday respectively. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not also mention that Twilight, which is beloved of my favorite film scholar who graduated from Cornell Matt Strohl (class of 2003), is screening there on Saturday.

Home Video: Sometimes works of art feel like adaptations even when you know they aren’t. The best example of this for me might be the Beatles song “For No One,” which I always hear as retelling James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” It is perhaps therefore appropriate that when I finally saw the movie Distant Voices, Still Lives for the first time a couple of weeks ago, the overwhelming impression I got was that it was director Terence Davies’ version of his fellow Liverpudlians’ “In My Life.” I’d have a lot more to say about this movie, which is commonly regarded as both the first and second volumes in a trilogy were it not for the fact that its conclusion, The Long Day Closes, is a straight-up masterpiece. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

The Christmas dinner interior/exterior mash-up tableau is an all-time great movie image, although the exterior shot of the rowhouse with just the top of a Christmas tree with blinking lights visible through the windows as a drizzly rain falls which follows shortly afterward and the lengthy study of how an old carpet looks at different times of day might resonate with me even more for personal reasons. The opening and closing shots which derive power and meaning from a later string of overhead tracking shots connecting child’s play to cinema to church to school (where the lesson is about the forces of erosion) also rank among the great bookends in cinema history. Finally, if that wasn’t already enough, The Long Day Closes is the best argument I can conceive of for why some (to be clear: not all!) films definitely should have 85-minute runtimes that I can possibly imagine.

The Long Day Closes, which is now streaming on the Criterion Channel, is perfectly intelligible as a standalone work, but it’s totally worth ponying up $2.99 to rent Distant Voices, Still Lives on Prime Video so that you can watch the entire cycle.

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